Mr. Cubic Zirconia here, dear reader. Today I’d like to tell a story about going “all-in” with a bad bet and what can happen when you underestimate the wrong woman.

Fair warning: My wife Mrs.Cubic Zirconia may dispute that this story happened exactly the way I’m telling you it did. That’s NOT AT ALL because men have a better memory for events than women; it’s just that a lot of alcohol was consumed by us both on the night in question.

The story also highlights an important, stress-reducing fact you should know as the buyer of one of our loose AAAAA/5A diamond-quality cubic zirconia stones.

TLDR: Most of our customers know that our Lifetime Warranty promises that we’ll replace any of our 5A CubicZirconia.com stones that break, chip, dull or suffer discoloration-- free of charge. But what’s lesser-known is that we’ll even help replace a lost stone-- at a discount. If you ever lose a single stone you purchased from us, it won’t be expensive to replace.

Our high-quality cubic zirconia stones may LOOK expensive, but if you lose one-- unlike the diamond disappearance disaster that precedes many of our first-time customers to buy a “replacement” cubic zirconia instead-- it will be cheap, easy and fast for us to help you replace that hypothetical lost CZ stone if it’s ever needed.

OK, the story...

It all happened when Mrs. Cubic Zirconia and I organized a barbecue pool party with some friends we’d made while vacationing in Mérida, Mexico.

Anyway, the party was at the home of a Belgian bar owner who’d moved to Yucatán, Mexico -- where Mérida is the state capital.

The beer was cold.

The tequila was flowing fast and fierce.

The international music was upbeat.

The pool felt warmly inviting on the skin despite it being late December-- and remained a comfortable dipping temperature even long after the sun went down and a barbecue pool party morphed into something a bit more daring.

We’d already made friends with some of the partygoers while renting a room in Mathieu’s home for a few weeks; indeed, “Mateo” (his Spanish name) often had house guests from all over the world. You could just lose yourself in the babble of 3 or 4 languages all conversing cross-table at once. It was great fun making some new friends that night even though while my wife was fluent, I had just started learning Spanish the month before (that becomes really important in a minute).

There was a social smorgasbord of cultural fusion...

• A raucous group of Mexicans and transplants from varied countries played “Beer Pong”. 
• Two Mexican architects took shots as he and she talked over upcoming work projects.
• Two French nuclear engineers grilled lamb kebabs wearing only wet towels after someone hid their swimming trunks.
• A newly arrived American couple gathered rental house ideas from locals. 
• Mexican college students danced to the music and made fun plans for winter break.
• A Canadian couple celebrated the end of their annual mushroom-profiting season.

And that’s how I found myself learning 4 new things:

1. It’s surprisingly easy to teach a large group of people the game of “Beer Pong” even without speaking common languages.
   
   
2. Apparently the Japanese are willing to pay such exorbitant prices for certain rare mushrooms that there are actually people who can afford to pay all their bills and travel the world simply by gathering and selling less than fifty pounds of hard-to-find, in-demand ’shrooms that only grow in a limited number of remote hiking areas a few months of each year.
   
   
3. My wife is super sneaky
   
   
4. When playing high-stakes poker with international players, the group should adopt a single “house rule” language everyone knows and forbid other languages from being spoken at the table during play.

Where did that come from? 

Well, you see, I love poker about as much as I love to travel. 

In fact, for years I’ve just about always traveled with a Texas hold’em poker set.

And when big money crosses the table on the fastest of hands...two female poker players working together and scheming in a language only they could understand might be costly for the guy who can’t understand that language because he just started learning.

To explain...I’m pretty competitive about being a good poker player. I may boast and bluff but it’s a fact that I almost always win. 

That’s probably one thing about me that has always most annoyed my wife.

(I don’t know why exactly, but I think maybe she believes a man should be humble and cooperative rather than ego-driven and consumed by the competitive need to win.)

And it was at this party that the future Mrs. Cubic Zirconia helped another woman teach me a lesson that I’d never forget.

“I’m a beginner at poker” she’d said at the beginning of the night.

Then this wily young Mexican woman named Pamela turned over hand after hand beating my best, and took pot after pot when it seemed like she KNEW WHAT CARDS I WAS HOLDING!

The last poker hand of the night when she cleaned me out sticks in my mind.

As we were nearing the final showdown, we noticed astonished people looking at us from nearby tables. That’s because-- at my wife’s urging, I later found out-- Pamela had talked me into betting not only all the poker chips I had left in the game but for me to match her bigger stack of chips she also wanted me to put in the pot something extra from my wife’s purse: 3 large, clear stones that looked like perfect diamonds.

The game observers didn’t know we were just playing a Texas Hold’em winner-takes-all game for a stack of not-real-value ceramic poker chips we’d each bought for what amounted to five U.S. dollars.

They also didn’t know that my loving but sneaky wife had been passing info in Spanish to Pamela at key moments during the whole game, letting her partner-in-crime get the better of me as both chuckled at my increasing frustration not just losing to a woman (yes I can be a chauvinist at times, but I’ve been in therapy)...but a woman who claimed she’d just learned to play poker that day.

Those astonished poker observers knew none of that.

They just saw my wife open her purse and give me the verbal go ahead to answer Pamela’s final bet and push those three flawless 3 carat stones the watchers believed were genuine diamonds worth hundreds of thousands of US dollars into the center of the table!

Note: If you’re at all intrigued by the idea of “diamond” cubic zirconia poker chips, be sure to read the P.S. below.

Pamela knew from past conversations that these were cubic zirconia my wife had in her purse because of some work stuff we’d been doing before the day’s party began.

But I didn’t know everyone at the party and they didn’t know about our diamond-alternative jewelry business.

I didn’t want anyone to think we were putting on airs.

So when I looked at all the chips in the pot, smiled and laid down my Three Kings & Two Aces “full house” poker hand with the anticipation of winning the hand, I opened my mouth to tell people watching that the stones weren't “real” diamonds.

But just then Pamela flipped her own cards face up on the table.

That crazy Mexicana minx laid down a monster four 7’s hand with a flourish. 

People gasped in horror as they realized her 4-of-a-kind hand beat my certain-to-win full house.

‘Beginner’, yeah right.

I think one of the watchers may have even fainted when Pamela gave my wife a shrug and a smile and reached to the center of the table to pull in her winnings-- including those 3 large, perfect “diamonds” sparkling like six-figure rainbows in the flickering outdoor patio candlelight.

With everyone's mouths wide open in disbelief at what just happened, I casually said to my wife: "Don't worry about losing those diamonds, sweetie. I'll get you some more."

LOL, sorry not sorry.

I couldn’t help myself. 

It was the perfect moment underscoring our CubicZirconia.com company motto:

“If you can’t tell the difference, why pay the difference?”

When I said that I’d replace those humongous lost ‘diamonds’ for my wife, I swear I heard actual thumps as jaws hit the floor among party-goers who didn’t know us well enough to know about our diamond-alternative jewelry biz.

Once the joke was over, I made sure everyone understood what happened.

After all, I didn’t know everyone at that party as well as others.

The last thing I’d want is some greedy potential thief thinking ‘here’s this stupid American so rich he loses a quarter million dollars in diamonds and shrugs it off like nothing’.

Of course, I didn’t suspect until later that the whole time my wife was helping Pamela win.

The last lesson of the day?

#5 If you underestimate the wrong woman, you can learn a lesson you’ll never forget.

In that light, I hope my story lesson in humility helps you remember that you don’t need to worry too much if you ever “lose” the cubic zirconia stone(s) you purchase(d) from our company.

They do look expensive but it’s cheap, easy and fast for us to help you replace any lost stone.

Thanks for indulging me a bit in this story…

I know some of our blogs and emails are a bit odd.

But we have fun with our business.

And we’re very grateful our happy customers have given us the income and freedom to live life on our own terms.

We try to take good care of you!

What with ordinary concerns about work, family-life balance, and sneaky spouses...life is stressful enough, so let that one worry of losing your “diamond” stone(s) go!

-- Mr. Cubic Zirconia 

P.S. Are you at all intrigued by the idea of “diamond poker chips”? As a fun side project, I’m working with a high-end ceramics poker chip manufacturer to create a limited-edition set of poker chips featuring CubicZirconia.com stones inset directly into the highest-value colored chips in addition to the normal black, white, blue, red and green poker chips.

If you’d like to see these cubic zirconia poker chips and have a chance to purchase a set as soon as they’re made, just send us an email with the phrase “CZ poker chips” in it to the email address displayed in the header top right section of our website-- and let us know. We’ll make sure you get the announcement first.