With Valentine's Day fast approaching, the GX team were intent on discovering how attractive a trait poker is, and whether or not it could lead to romance. 

After an abysmal run of form that has seen the past few Valentine's Days culminate in nothing more than a burnt microwave meal for one and an expensive phone conversation with somebody who I thought at the time worked in the adult telephone business, but was actually an undercover member of the neighbourhood watch team, I made a promise that this year would be different.

And so along with another member of the GX team, I decided to create an online avatar of myself, pretending to be a professional poker player with the intention of seeing if it would lead to a somewhat more successful Valentine's Day this time around. The rules were simple; everything I posted about myself had to be true, with the only exception being my real name and, of course, my occupation. And the mission was even more straightforward: Find out whether poker gets you laid.

The Birth of Aces Hansen

When creating an online profile, the difficulty comes in selling yourself to the opposite sex without it sounding like some kind of personal statement on a CV - but you also need to ensure it doesn't read like every other profile going.

Giving my real name was not an option as five minutes of Facebook stalking and Google searching would quickly reveal that I was not a professional poker player, and would probably result in another phone call from the neighbourhood watch team. So I went for a username that would combine the ideal hand with Danish heartthrob Gus Hansen and settled upon Aces Hansen. I also thought that if any potential suitors were unaware who Gus Hansen was, they'd at least have heard of the long-haired, feminine-looking, 90s American pop trio and singers of Mmmbop, Hanson.  So I'd be in either way.

Then came the hard part; my personal profile. This is clearly the bit where people allow their creativity to consume reality, but I'd made a set of rules and I was going to stick to the truth.  So after browsing through a selection of other profiles to get an idea of what not to write, and to ensure that mine stood out, I settled on this:

And with that, Aces Hansen was born. I posted this profile on a handful of dating websites and all I needed to do now was sit back and wait for the responses to come rolling in.

Teething Problems

Two hours after creating my profile, I decided it was time to check my inbox to see what kind of responses I was getting and who was sending them. But after logging in to my brand new account, I thought there had to be some kind of mistake as asides from the emails confirming that my various profiles had been created, there were no responses at all. So I did the sensible thing and emailed myself from my hotmail account just to check it was all working properly. I then re-checked my profile on the dating site, and after reading that my profile had been viewed thirteen times by other people, I rested easy, safe in the knowledge that the responses would soon be there in abundance.

My partner in deception meanwhile, had set up her own profile pretending she too was a poker player, and had posted her profile on a handful of sites as well.

Valenina79, it seemed, had gone for a different approach to me, preferring a friendly flirtatious approach to my cynical dry humoured effort. And between the two of us, one of us at least must have got it right.

I soon found out that it was Valentina. As while I was patiently waiting for the first reply to hit my inbox, Valentina (not her real name) was busy rifling through the responses which she'd already received. And within the same two hour time span that had seen me receive nothing at all, Valentina had been sent 22 messages from the various sites and had also been added to the 'Favourites' list of a whole host of admirers.

I decided against panicking just yet and assumed that while Valentina's admirers were abiding by the mantra of 'going in for the kill as soon as possible,' mine were simply 'playing it cool.' Given that it was a Friday afternoon, I decided I'd check for replies one more time before leaving the office, would check again on Monday morning, and would then set about trying to arrange a few meet ups.

And sure enough, after logging into Aces Hansen's email account before heading off for the weekend, a sudden pang of excitement surged through my body as I saw a brand new unopened message patiently waiting for me. It read: 'This is me checking your email is working. I bet you haven't got any other messages yet. Unlucky.' Needless to say this was the email I'd sent myself earlier. I left the office a few minutes later. Valentina stayed put, engrossed in her responses.

The Morning after the Weekend Before

Upon coming into the office on Monday morning, I couldn't wait to tell Valentina the good news. But before I managed to do so, she had helpfully printed off several responses she'd had and placed them on my desk. They read:

After reading Valentina's printouts, my first thought was that she should go for Boris Becker's mate - if only because he sounded rich and would have good access to the German tennis legend. My second thought was that the response I'd secured over the weekend was not nearly as newsworthy as I'd thought it would be. Valentina also had plenty of non-poker related responses, some of which were too graphic to repeat here. But I printed mine off anyway, it read:

At this stage it seemed that poker wasn't getting me anywhere at all. While Valentina had been inundated with poker related messages, the girl who'd taken a liking to me made no mention of the fact that I was a poker player, yet found it necessary to tell me how she'd crawled on her belly through a swamp. I tried not to picture it in my head.

I had in fact, received another response over the weekend, with an incredibly attractive girl sending me her picture and suggesting I check out her page on a social networking site. But after following the link I was asked to enter my credit card details to verify that I did not have a criminal record. Now although the ins and outs of the law are not something I can claim to have studied in too much detail, my credit card details would have been useful for one thing and one thing only, robbing me blind. So I steered well clear as it was nothing more than a scam.

Desperate Times Call for desperate measures

With the days passing and our self-imposed deadline rapidly approaching, I was beginning to consign myself to the fact that poker would not in fact get me laid. "You can't necessarily blame it on poker," Valentina told me, "they're probably just not interested in you as a person, regardless of your job." I thanked Valentina for her extremely insightful and morale boosting comment, having had my only excuse whipped out from underneath my feet.

What further compounded my misery was the fact that every time I opened a newspaper, all I read about were yet more blonde nightclub hosts or minxy cocktail waitress confessing to steamy love affairs with Tiger Woods. But what did the millionaire golfer have that I didn't?

Valentina meanwhile, had so many people asking to take her out that there simply wasn't time for her to take them all up on their offers. And the number of contenders vying for her company over Valentine's weekend made Alan Sugar's search for his Apprentice look nothing like the gruelling twelve-week multi-million pound process it supposedly is, and more like a simple choice between a packet of cheese and onion or salt and vinegar crisps.

So after two whole weeks of absolutely nothing, Aces Hansen's sex life was over before it had even begun. I told myself I could now break free from the shackles that pretending to be a professional poker player had held over me, and get back to being my true self. Yet when I went out that weekend, I couldn't help myself from giving it another shot, and happily lied away to the girls who I met that I was indeed a professional poker player and that I'd be jetting off the following morning to play in the Aussie Millions in Melbourne - the rationale behind it being that if I was going to lie then I might as well make it a good one.

And to my utmost surprise, one of the girls actually bought it. She'd never met a poker player before and was intrigued in both me and my job in equal measure. My conscience was telling me from somewhere that what I was doing was wrong - but after assuring myself that it was in the name of a scientific experiment, any thoughts of guilt were immediately repressed. We ended up swapping numbers and agreed to get together on my return, which if I really was going to Melbourne, would be a week or so before Valentine's Day.

So while there is as of yet no finite answer as to whether poker does get you laid or not, there's still hope in Aces Hansen yet. I've done the hard part, now all I need to do is look like I've spent the last three weeks in the blazing Aussie sun while somehow coming up with an enormous pile of Australian dollars. I did say I was a poker player after all...

Text by: Fred Palley

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