Strip Poker Steve
About 2006 I was serving time for an assault and battery. I got sentenced to 9 months and was back in the system. After my initial orientation I was moved to a pod for inmates sentenced to anything over 6 months. There was alot of mandatory boring classes required of us. But in our free time most showered, made calls, worked out, or gambled. Gambling is pretty big in jail. Black jack is probably the most popular game, but inmates also gamble on spades, pitty pat, hearts, etc. At this time poker had already became popular. I had already been playing online/casino and was pretty decent. I can't say the same for everyone else. They were either not smart or had never been exposed to internet poker or playing in the casino. They definitely didn't have access to strategy forums and didn't get to watch poker on TV. That didn't stop them from wanting to play. All the times I've been locked up ,I was big on gambling too. This time around I decided to push the angle of No-Limit Texas Holdem. They had an idea of how to play, but I had to give them reminders of the rules. We would play cash and even tournaments. There is no actual cash in jail. The currency is items from commissary. Whatever those items cost on the commissary list is their value. So if you wanted to play the $5 freeze out. You had to bring 10 soups to ante up. Well I destroyed these guys for 2 weeks straight and had my cell stocked with everything from cookies to acne cream.
During this time I met another kid my age named Steve. He wasn't too bright, but loved to gamble and really loved poker. Come to find out he knew some of my friends. He actually had been to my house to visit my roommates when I wasn't around. But now he was in jail doing maybe 18 months for stealing his girlfriends car and driving it to Miami. He had a prior armed robbery charge where he held someone up for their bicycle when he was younger and was still on probation for it. So the judge wasn't happy about this new charge. We got to talking and he told me the story about the auto theft. Now believe it or not these actions take place over a 3-4 week period. He met a girl named Brenda who was a stripper. He had sex with her and fell in love. They started dating. He got chlamydia from her and got rid of it. He got her name tattooed down his arm in big letters. He proposed and they got married. He got chlamydia again. He steals her car and drives straight to Miami from Mass. He then calls her from a payphone to say he is sorry. She calls the cops and they trace the call. Miami police show up and arrest him. She files for divorce. He does 3 months in Dade county. He gets bus voucher back to Mass and has to serve time from his probation violation for picking up a new charge. So now he serving his sentence and waiting for the final divorce motion. Quite the weirdo, but oh well he likes poker. I have a good paid lawyer on my case and he gets me out after doing 3 weeks of my 9 month sentence on a revise and revoke motion. Long story but it works. I knew I was going home so I left all my winnings with Steve to donk off the rest of his sentence.
Now it's 2008 and I'm big into poker. I had sold my truck to a friend for $10,000 because I had lost my license. He didn't have the money so my mother had gotten him a loan and he would make the monthly payments. He stopped by to drop off the payment and surprise, he was with Steve. This friend who bought the truck was the previous link Steve had to being at my house years before. Steve was so happy to see me and wanted to talk poker. I was actually playing online at the time and showed him my account. He told me he plays online too now and has $10k in his account. I was very skeptical but hey anyone can get lucky. I later found out he was referring to play chips. He was very intrigued about poker and was eager to go the casino with me. He was already re-married to an older girl he met in jail. She was a nurse there who gave him his psych meds. Somehow he ended up talking her into quitting her job and marrying him while he was still in jail. She already had 2 kids and had been divorced. Steve isn't a bad looking kid but she is hideous. Short, fat, red hair, glasses, acne, and an ugly mug. Steve loved it because he had a free place to live and could drive her car whenever because it's not like she had to be to work or anything.
This situation works out good for me because I need transportation. Its hard to find someone with nothing else to do then drive you to the casino everyday. So we make our first trip. We play 1-2 no-limit. Steve is still as terrible as he was before. He lost his $140 he brought rather quickly and I lent him another $100. He ends up eventually losing that but did manage to hit a royal flush and win a chip set. That made his day though. I think I won a few hundred and tried to talk strategy with him on the ride home. That was painful. He ends up telling me he will have my $100 for me soon. He just needs to get paid for his delivery. He tells me he is a ****ing newspaper delivery boy. OMFG! He 25 years old and delivers newspapers for $160 a week. I told him not to sweat the hundred that he will get it back. I much rather prefer to have him cart me around to the casino for $100 poker stakes. This goes on for a while. He would lose time after time. I didn't mind because I was making money, so the $100 round trip cost wasn't to bad. But I couldn't keep giving him money to play after he would burn the $100. He got sick of waiting hours for me to finish playing to bring me home. He needed to figure out how to afford his habit. He pawned TV's, jewelry, and video games. Torched that money. Then there was one time when he made full house after full house and made $1200 on a 1-2 table. He thought he was on top of the world. He was actually willing to head to Atlantic City with his new bankroll of $1300.
We left with another friend at 12am and arrived around 530am. I was ready to check-in and get some sleep. But Steve heard about the Borgata and was ready to destroy the tables like his previous session. I pleaded with him to go to bed or at least give me half his roll. He refused and hopped a cab from the Trump Marina. My other friend played slots all night and I got some sleep. About 1230pm I wake up, shower, and head down to grab a bite. I call Steve and he sounds like he lost his balls. He donked off all his money as the regulars abused him for buy-in after buy-in. He needed money for a cab back to the Trump. I told him to wait there, that I was heading over and would give him money. I gave him $100 and that didn't last too long. He spent the next couple nights trying to sell every possession he had to me. By the time we left I owned 80% of his clothes, his beat up shell toes, bracelet, a $10 winning scratch ticket and 2 Big Y coins. He also had his wife give my friend back home her 30mg percocet script for cash down there.
He was very depressed after this trip but I told him to keep his head up. I still needed these rides. God thing for him was it was tax season and his wife gets about a $10k return for having 2 kids and having income below the poverty line. That money was gone in a month of casino trips, local cash games, and internet deposits. Once he had that much money, my $100 stakes weren't good enough anymore. He needed to stay in action and that newspaper gig wasn't cutting it. So someone tipped him off to Club Xstatic. A male strip club with predominantly male customers. I don't know what the interview process was like, but he got the job. He was now grinding on men's lap for $20 a song plus tip. Poker is a helluva drug. He had to get his fix and was willing to do whatever was necessary. He started making decent money and was always in action. He would get certain customers/sugar daddy's who would give him money outside of the job. I'm not positive of every extent he went to for the pay check. But I've heard enough to believe he was Gay for Pay. His rates depended on his poker funds. If he has money and was doing OK in poker, he wouldn't be bothered with any customers. If he needed a tourney buy-in, he was going on a date with a guy to a restaurant and then to the casino for the tourney. It always amazed me how he could donk off his stack calling a big raise with T6 sooted and never fold once he hit middle pair. I mean if I had to do what he did for that money, I would bury it in a treasure chest in my back yard.
I've stayed in contact with Steve through the years and everyone locally knows him as Strip Poker Steve. He is proud of what he does and still loves poker. He is pretty open about most things. He does love girls. He is big into internet dating and probably sleeps with a new girl a week on average for the past couple years. His range is wide when it comes to women. But poker is his main priority and he has gotten better over the past 6 years. I have many stories over the years with Steve and thought I would give a general story line on him. Sorry in advance about the pics. Thought it would really give some visual insight.
Cody is his stage name.