Thursday, 28th March 2024 20:16
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It’s nearly five minutes into the first break of the last event of the 2012 PCA, and this guy won’t make up his mind. It’s a queen-high board, there is a bet to him, and the guy seems content to just spend his break thinking.

Meanwhile, Marie Frick’s eyes don’t leave the man’s forehead. Her hand is clutched tightly around the stub of the deck. Nothing on her body is moving until the man does something. She does all this knowing that just as soon as Mr. Thinker comes to a decision, she will be able to take a break from dealing. To look at her, you might wonder how she could remain so poised. It’s all I can do to not call the clock on the guy from the rail. Finally, he mucks (tankers always fold, or so goes the axiom) and gets up to take his break. Frick pushes the pot, gathers the cards, and steps away from the table.

She’s toned, that much is clear, but how much so is hard to tell under the standard issue dealer shirt.

“I work out eight times a week,” she reveals when I ask.

I should be clear about this: I don’t go around asking good-looking women about their workout habits. It’s frowned upon by PCA managers (and, for what it’s worth, a woman who answers to “Mrs. Willis” back home). Today, however, it’s my job.

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Marie Frick

This morning, Frick won her age division (25-29 years old) in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5k race here in the Bahamas. She was part of a big crowd of people who got up at the crack of dawn this morning and ran from Nassau, over the bridge, and on to Paradise Island.

A personal note here: I do a fair bit of running myself, and since I’ve been at the PCA this year, I’ve run several times. One of those times was over the bridge and back. I’m happy to be alive to tell you that bridge is a steep one, and the fact that I didn’t vomit over its side on the way back home is a testament to…well, the fact I didn’t eat breakfast before I left, I guess. Point being, it’s quite steep.

“I didn’t think it was that bad,” Frick says to me. Because, of course, Saturdays are the days the world has picked to make me feel old and decrepit. Fricks says the worst thing about her run this morning was the humidity.

That’s the point I start asking her how serious she is about this whole running thing.

“Actually, I’m a kickboxer,” she says.

As I take a step back, the Danish lady from Copenhagen explains that her eight weekly workouts are split evenly between kickboxing and running. She considers herself a kickboxer with a running hobby.

So, while everyone else in the Bahamas was sleeping off the rum drinks, while all the other dealers were massaging each other’s necks and dreaming about getting through the last day of the PCA, Frick was strapping on her running shoes, winning her division in the 5k, and then getting cleaned up for an entire day of dealing. For fun.

“I had heard about it before,” she explains. “I like running, and it was for a good cause.”

Before long, the break is over and Frick is getting pushed to the next table. It’s occurs to me to tell the players there to be careful, but decide against it. On this last tired day of the PCA, it might liven things up if somebody got kicked in the head by a 20-something kickboxer/runner/poker dealer.

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