The Kid Part II
One Bad Apple Didn't Spoil the Bunch
By By Debbie Burkhead and Susie Isaacs

As we were saying in Debbie's article on April 1, we had a strange experience with a "novice" poker player on our poker cruise to the Mexican Riviera. We had met a nice, friendly "non-poker" couple at dinner and encouraged them to visit the poker room on board the cruise ship.

Now here comes the really weird part... a few days later we overheard a couple of players and a dealer talking about a cocky kid who had come in, played in the $10-$20 hold'em game and had become very obnoxious with one of the other players. This mystery man even boasted that he had won mega-bucks during the last year playing poker and even went as far as challenging one of our group to play heads-up no-limit hold'em. The description fit the young man we had recruited. Could this be our nice young man who had never played poker? Why would he venture into a beginners game if he knew how to play poker? What was his motive? We thought, how could it be, he didn't even know how to play poker and he told us he wasn't with our group.

We didn't put two-and-two together until we were told that the young man at our dinner table, the "novice" had WON the cruise in a poker tournament in the Bay area. Why did he lie about winning a poker cruise or being a poker player? Then we heard he had also been bragging about "setting up" the majority of the poker cruisers for his kill.

We were beginning to get the picture. He must have seen the movie "Rounders." This little whipper snapper thought he'd found the perfect set-up for a poker scam.

After hearing all of this we began putting the pieces together. This kid had become the topic of conversation...a novice player who had played with him in the baby game came to us and said she thought it was odd that he claimed not to be a poker player but he riffled his chips like a pro. A dealer told us he had observed him discard his cards with a flick of a finger, also that of a seasoned player. And he was playing $10-$20 on his third venture to a poker room? Was this stranger a quick study or rich and brave? Neither of which was the case.

His scheme was backfiring and we were going to make sure he knew we were on to him. Kid-Scam had stopped having dinner at our table but he couldn't hide from us, it was a ship, not a city. Sooner or later we would find him and confront him.

Bingo! We eventually spotted him in the dinning room having dinner with his new group of friends. As we approached his table we could see his eyes widen with, what seemed to be fear of what we might know about his con game. The closer we got the more uncomfortable he appeared. We now could see through his fake innocent boyish grin, and he knew it. He started to stand and give us one of his polite welcomes, but before he could get up we let him know that we weren't bluffing, we were calling him down, the scram was up, and we poker players weren't as stupid as he might think.

Kid-scam was never seen in the poker room again. For that matter I'm not sure if he was ever seen on board again. I doubt he will ever try to pull another stunt like that on the poker community.

Along with the live action games, poker tournaments are also a big part of poker cruises. On our latest poker cruise they had three buy-in events, one freeroll for past cruisers and one freeroll for all first-time cruisers, and a dealers tournament in which the players got to deal. Susie took 3rd place in the $120 buy-in limit hold'em and Debbie took 1st place in the $230 buy-in no-limit event. We found out later that the kid had been planning on taking down the no-limit tournament for his finale, but after his scam backfired, he didn't have the nerve to show up.

You might also enjoy knowing in addition to the $11 lose in the baby game, "Kid-Scam" lost in the $4-$8 game and lost over $300 in the $10-$20. His investment to set us up turned into a big red minus in his record book. Our advice to him would be to take more poker lessons before trying to pull a poker scam.

We are proud to be part of the poker community and feel this kind of behavior from anyone in any poker environment is inappropriate. Poker cruises are a great opportunity to mix travel, fun and poker all in one trip. We were not about to let one bad apple spoil the bunch.

Now go out there and show'em you can play poker.