THE DEATH OF THE JETTA, A COUPLE OF GOOD FINDS, AND...WHAT'S IN OMAR HIKARY'S CLOSET...

Hola from Vegas, once again, disloyal, fickle readers! ;)

It's been quite a journey coming back here with a good bit to tell, so let's get started with a bunch of pictures from this week.  I like pictures.  They are great space-killers and it lessens the load of all the quality writing I have to churn out.  I can put the ol' cerebrum on auto pilot for this blog and let the pix do most of the talking...

For starters, I think we can all agree that these two lights (engine and battery) are not the kind of thing you would like to see on your dashboard when you are in the middle of the desert smack dead in the middle of New Mexico, whose state motto, if you are inclined to believe that sort of thing, is the "Land of Enchantment." Enchantment? I must have missed that right turn.  Arid, flat desert.  Horizon.  Screaming sunlight.  Large predatory birds circling overhead.  Waiting.  Watching.   Waiting.

So it is with great regret that I must report that the All-Terrain-Jetta, whose adventures many of you followed in my previous blog...is no longer with the company.   Yes, I too am sad about such a loss of one of our staple characters to my blog's ever evolving storyline.  The Jetta transported me across this great land from casino to casino. The All-Terrain-Jetta had a cult following on this board.  I am aware of this.  My All-Terrain-Jetta received fan mail from Indonesia, Brazil, Slovakia, Belize...  sometimes written crudely on bits of scrap paper with pencil or crayon; sometimes a gift attached...a spark plug, an Armor-All wipe, a rubber fitting for a windshield wiper...  everyone across our global community wanted to see this lovable loser of a car succeed.  

So it is with great, great sorrow that I now issue the standard corporate cookie-cutter, pre-fabbed, emotionally void statement of grief that all politicians nowadays use whenever they address someone's death...

"I am shocked and saddened to learn of the sudden passing of [The All-Terrain-Jetta].  [It] will be greatly missed."

Shocked and saddened.  Watch for someone to use that meaningless catch phrase next political death.  I guarantee it.

Also, well not so much shocking and saddening, as it is a little disappointing is the fact that I will apparently not have a backer this WSOP.  Not the biggest inconvenience in the world, but it sure would have been nice to play twenty or so events on someone else's dime this year.  Maybe next year.

Before the demise of the Jetta, I did manage to stop in Amarillo, TX on the way back to Vegas for something I've been wanting for quite some time now.  A pair of really nicely crafted boots.  And where better on Earth to buy a pair than Amarillo, Texas, whose double-Ls in the town name's logo, are, after all, cowboy boots?

Ostrich -- it's what's for dinner.  New boots at the dark edge
of the horizon for the Jetta...just stay with me here, folks, there's
a reason I'm talking about shoes...just wait
for it...wait for it...

So I have to say, they do take a little getting used to.   I wonder if this is what it feels like to have to wear high heels?  Pretty uncomfortable over all, and kind of off balance.  Makes me think that maybe cocktail waitresses shouldn't have to be forced to work in high heel shoes.  That has to be hell.  Note to self:  quit having feminist inner monologues.  You just bought BOOTS!  Stop acting sensitive!  Wuss!

Last week I told you all about the venerable Sahara Canino going bankrupt and being "dark" permanently.  Well, a few days ago I noticed they were having a liquidation sale starting at 10 am.  Great!  Sounds thrifty and predatory!  What's not to like?  But upon arrival that morning, the line of huddled masses extended a good quarter mile down the road (no exaggeration) of people wanting to have fun with an auction format to try to steal a piece of memorabilia...  Forget that.  Can't do lines.  But... I did go back a couple of days later to hope that I might just be lucky enough to find something that I really wanted that was overlooked somehow...and BAM!  There it was!

Original, great condition, even replete with chewing gum under the table!  Felt is in great shape, just a little dirty.  Last one!  Total steal.  $327 total out the door price!   Anyone can buy a poker table, but the way I see it, this is a little piece of history and pretty darn cool memorabilia.  I can only imagine they brought this one in from storage that day.  I told one of the workers I'd slap him a "finders fee" if he could locate another one, and he thought that was a great idea; even let me know that they could have some poker table Sahara new "felts" for the tables that were never used coming up tomorrow.  Stay tuned.  Lastly, I did pick up about 64 decks of Sahara playing cards that I'll probably sell most of.  See me if you're interested.  Unwrapped.  Unused.  History in the palm of your hands for a measly $5!  Tip optional.

Yesterday, the South Mississippi/ GCP crew for the most part headed out to cash game specialist/ Armani fashionista/ quasi-heterosexual militant Omar Hikary's lavish Turnberry Place condominium just off the strip for a really well put together barbeque.  Omar ponied up for a lavish spread of grilled sausages, burgers, ribeye after ribeye...Newcastle on tap, ice cold drinks by the pool...really well done!

Gabe Costner's lips are moving, but as Oren
Zweig savors the last juices of his ribeye
off his fingertips, he hears only one thing...
"pie...pie.......piiiieeee......"

Monkey and Omar on the 36th floor.  Monkey's
monolithic skull impedes a great view of the
Las Vegas Strip.

Omar as Audrey Hepburn, some random dude who
laughs a lot, the rarely photographed recent WSOP
bracelet winner David Diaz as Zach Galifianakis, TK
Miles, Rastafarian Warlord.

Omar is always a lot of fun at the tables, and it sucks that Uncle Sam relocated him to Las Vegas (great for him though).  He's become a cash game machine within the last couple of years, and tonight I hope to see why he talks up the Aria's poker room so much.  In fact, I plagiarized Omar's trademark look of gigantic Armani shades a while back; putting my own twist to it.  Whereas he would have expensive oversized designer shades, I went with gigantic, really, really ugly shades...and never looked back.  The kind of look that makes people quizzically stare at you and think, "Is..he..serious?  Does he think he looks good in those?  Is he kidding?  Is he borrowing some girl's glasses?  Is he totally metro?  I wonder if he sells drugs.  Or ponies...  Seriously... what's up with that dude's shades?"  The way I see it, the more confused you make the other guy, the better off you are.  Keep 'em wondering.

So at the barbecue, I stripped down from my jeans into my swimsuit.  Giving credence to the Shawshank Redemption's theory that no one really ever looks at the shoes you're wearing...well, once I took my shoes OFF and laid them on the table, Omar took immediate notice of them and, well, most of you know how Omar does that thing where he exclaims really loudly...

"SON......WHAT........IN THE WORLD...........ARE.......THOSE?!?!"

Green is the new red.  Just ask any socialist.
Think about it.

Ok.  I get it.  I'm stretching a bit far with my shoes.  I thought they were a good buy.  I don't spend a lot of money on myself, and I thought they were cool.  I still do.  The boots I'd wanted for years.  This was something cheap, practical, and fun.  Yes...they're high-tops.  And green canvas.  Whatever.  I'm still feeling pretty good about my purchase.  Yes, I know I'm thirty-nine.  And, yes, I'm probably trying to look more youthful and hip with the shoes than I am.  I think I'm allowed to have an early mid-life crisis in my footwear if I chose to.  Damn!  Why I gotsta bees called out like dat?

So after an inordinate amount of ribbing, we take the grand tour of Omar's condo...which is an awesome, well laid out pad.  270 degree view of the Valley.  Three bedrooms.  Totally stylin'...

All was going well for Omar's condo tour until he bragged up his spacious walk-in closet.

That's when I noticed...

wait for it...

wait for it...

Omar's recently bought, pristine "FLINTSTONE HIGH TOPS!!!"

Suddenly my mouth went dry with fear and horror.  My body froze.  You know that cinematic effect when the most horrible grizzly event just happens in the climax of a horror movie...and the camera slowly zooms in on the horrified guy's face, but the hallway behind him slowly appears to get longer and longer?  Where escape out a confined area seems a million miles away -- and you know, right there, that escape is impossible now; there's no way out...   and you     belong     to     the      monster!

Yeah.  That's how I felt.  A stultifying fear washed over me in a cold sweat.  I was paralyzed with fear and...well, disgust.

Suddenly, TK walks in and GRABS the high tops!  Like, with no fear at all.  Like each shoe was NOT a coiled up Cobra or something.  I felt my stomach drop to the floor.  We are all going to die.  We are all going to die right here in this closet because these shoes are going to violently f***ing murder us and eat our bodies.

That's when everyone saw them and the room expolded with fear and panic.

Since you are reading this, it's obvious that somehow, I escaped.  I don't know how... I kind of blacked out there for a minute.  I just remember a lot of screaming, a mob rushing in a frenzied panic out of the condo for the elevator, the sound of children getting trampled, that thing where blood starts pouring down the walls...distant blood curdling howls from those left behind in the condo..."NO.....HELP US.....HEEEELLLLLLPPPP  USSSSSSSS  AAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHH...."

Omar, I hope that many years from now, you look at those shoes and think, "Damn!  I was really running well in 2011.  I had way too much money!"

I mean, seriously, dude, where would you ever wear shoes like that?  To protest a funeral?  To your own DIY exorcism?  To a bingo function for blind jazz musicians? To a Mormon Baptism?  I can't think of one social event, even remotely, that you could actually get away with wearing those things!  To a job interview for a "funeral comforter?"  To an interview with the law school admission board?

Wait.  I got it.  You know what would actually be cool?  You know how the state hires someone to actually pull the switch at a state execution of a criminal?  Yeah.  You could be that guy.  Black hood.  Black suit.  Flintstone hightops.

That would be awesome.

But even more than looking back on 2011 and the shoes with regret, I actually never hope you notice.  I hope each year, you make so much money, you never even begin to take notice.  I hope you never notice the leopard print Jeep you'll probably buy in 2012.  Or the mink coat you'll buy in 2013.  Or the Sengali hand crafted marble and ivory waterbed with the disco ball spinning on top of it you're sure to buy in 2014.  Or the ostrich skin boots you're certain to buy in...

wait...

I have no Amazon books to peddle to you people this month.  It's been a slow reading month, so go see the X-Men.  It's really good.  Or buy some Sahara playing cards from me.  Or don't.  Maybe I could sew together a card-jacket for you-know-who...

ADVENTURES IN LAS VEGAS

Hello, voyeurs!

Been a long time since I've blogged.  Wouldn't really be fair of me to raise the subscription price since I've been so inconsistent, huh?

Vegas's former number one cheesy photo op, and
 a once thriving hotel in the disco era suffers disrepair...read: Bargain prices!

Anyway, yes, I'm here in Vegas with my ol' standbye roommate, Senor Monkey.  Got in Monday night and yesterday, June 4th, I got to SMELL a WSOP bracelet.  Just a whiff...    just as if it were a  passing dream...  



Yes, I came within five people of capturing one of the highly coveted fifty-nine gold bracelets available to the players this year.  Instead, a consolation prize (like a parting gift for a game show loser) of sixth-place money would have to do.  You'll hear it a million times  -- the agony and bitterness, and the apparent disrespectful ingratitude of how anyone could be so miserable to make such great money in one day. " Sixth place?  Great run! Congratulations!"

Whatever.  I lost.

The Zen masters have a saying.  "In a journey of a hundred miles, ninety-nine miles is about halfway."



The Riviera's theme?  Broken glass!  Bring the kids!

If you've ever played a poker tournament, you totally get this saying.

Three hundred fifty-seven players slapped down $1500 four days ago for the Seven Card Stud tournament.  As has become tradition it seems, the worlds biggest leg-humper would be placed to my immediate left.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term (I'm pursuing a trademark on it), a leg-humper is someone on your left who will CALL for any price, thereby leaving your large bet unprotected, and giving pot-odds for anyone who wishes to join the fray, in a now completely unmanagably large pot.  Your split Aces or pocket Kings now have to survive a four way drunken chip carnival, and their highly-favored-holding status is completely diluted by a large pot, and worse, Stud is a LIMIT game.  You can't just throw a grenade into the pot and expect everyone to stop, drop, and fold.

So I've learned here to completely SKIP betting on fourth street; it's a small bet that only works against you when the pot is so large. (Apologies to those of you already falling asleep with the idea of Seven Card Stud being discussed...I understand).



Long story short, it got to the point where every time I would four-bet on third street, the rest of the table would begin to openly laugh at the guy calling my raise.  I'm showing an Ace.  It's not like all three cards are hidden.  You can actually SEE what I have.  Even if you omit deductive reasoning from your mind about what four bets could possibly mean in this situation...dude...you still SEE I have an Ace.  Even small children with poor attention spans can put two and two together in this situation and decide to fold. 

Hump.  Hump.  Hump...    Here he comes again along for the ride, bringing everyone else in with him...

Because of him, within about six hours I'm down to half my starting stack while the field is getting whittled down and everyone else has tripled up and is stacking chips.

And as I'm boiling over angrily about this guy...who has no plan other than to CALL himself into a Mutually Assured Destruction scheme for the both of us, and as I'm wondering HOW, HOW do I get this insanity to stop, he looks at me and says, "Huh huh huh...I remember you from last year!  You were buying everybody shots and you were a lot of fun!"



Yeah, the guy whose very flesh I'm imagining covered in a pack of angry, rabid Dobermans amped up on a cocktail of PCP and Red Bull, is just having himself a good ol' time.  Not too concerned about winning, mind you...at all...just here for the social aspect of the whole thing.  And apparently, according to him, I've Butterfly Effected myself a monster from some forgotton drunken late night 1-2 NLHE game from last year in Vegas!

So he's become the ultimate pest.  The pest who is not only destroying your plans for chip accumulation, but who actually LIKES you.   Ugggghhhh...

I went for a run that Thrusday morning, hours before the start of the tournament.  I think a long run before the start of any tournament is the best thing that one can do.  Gets out all the funk, hate demons, tension...but most importantly, I try to go for a distance a little further than I'm comfortable with. It kind of programs the brain to get into the mode of thinking "marathon; not a sprint."  Every tournament I've done well in, without fail, was played after an early morning long distance run.

For that morning's run, I deliberately picked the worst possible route from our hotel, The Riviera.  Um, yes, we're truly doing the "budget" thing this time.  I ran the crack corridor in between the Riviera and downtown Las Vegas.  The area known as NOTS...north of the Stratosphere.  I wanted a little motivation that the artificial sunshine of the Strip can't provide.  There's a perverse beauty in that area with all its tattoo shops, pawn stores, peep shows, bail bonds, street walkers, street sleepers, immigration lawyers, ethnic food dives...it's the ghetto hammocked between the two of the fakest areas of the planet.  It reeks of reality, has a few areas even Clark Griswold and his family would avoid, and makes for a good run.  In fact, you might find the motivation to run even faster.  I run past The Sahara.  Despite numerous reinventions of iteslf and reinvestment, the Sahara is now permanently "dark."  I run past the Rummell Motel, advertising "Non-smoking rooms  Hourly rates!"  Classy place.  All the freaks, povs, pervs, and weirdos Travis Bickle crusaded against surround me.  Suddenly I get chills how the randomizer on my iPod has chosen the Red Hot Chili Pepper's "Tell Me Baby."  It's an amazing song about the Sunset Strip and those trying so hard to "make it," while the city eats them alive.  The Sunset Strip and the NOTS corridor are like mirror images of each other.  I jog deeper and deeper into the 'hood.



Bad day to go jogging in a red t-shirt...
time to head back!

It's funny...if some Vegas resident had made a bet in the 1970's as to what would last longer, The Sahara, or the careers of Cher and Tom Jones, anyone would have arrogantly taken The Sahara.  Eventually, as you see from the picture to the right, I came to the conclusion that I've run far and deep enough for the day.  The back of my throat is cracked from the dry air, the sweat evaporates off me instantly as I'm panting, and I decide that I've had enough and start to head back.



But I still look for the Gambler's General Bookstore in that area, which I couldn't find that day on foot.  Back then, in the early 2000s, if you wanted ANY poker literature at all, you had to come to this place to get it.  It was like a trove of esoteric knowledge cleverly hidden in a little known store hidden in a cess pool of humanity.  Only those strange enough to want to gamble for a living but too anti-social to get themselves on a blackjack card counting team pursued poker.  Some of you probably remember this store.  Ha!  Nowadays, of course, ample poker literature is in every bookstore.

As I finish my run, I cross the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard when there's no traffic.  The street creeps all look up at me at the same time with a look of condemnation and astonishment.  I forgot!  No one on the West Coast jaywalks.  Ever.  Suddenly, to everyone around me, I'm the criminal and weirdo...

So I attribute my outlasting the Leghumpapotamus to gearing my brain properly from that early morning run.  He finally busted out!  Whew.  A little while later the field has been cut in half.  Feels like we are about half way there...  But with the forehead vein protruding frustration built up from his presence over the last several hours, towards the end of the night as I'm involved in a big three-way pot, I snap verbally at a new guy at our table who pairs his 10 on sixth street.  "Awesome!" I scream sarcasticaslly.  "Just Awesome!" after he bets into us.  I think I mumbled that he's a bananahead or something totally uncool, since the guy is right next to me, but deep down I know that he had the right odds to call at that point. I'm just very frustrated and behaving in a way I never do.  He's a quiet, polite clean cut Jewish guy talking about living in Israel with another Jewish guy at the table.  He scoops a big pot, and looking down his nose at me for my little fit (which I never throw...if that tells you the effect leg humpers have on me) and asks what limit I usually play.  "2-5, 5-10 Hold 'em, 20-40 stud...why?"  He just scoffs at me.

A few hours later we're bagging up our chips for the day.  I peek over at his bag as he writes "J-o-s-h  A-r-i-e...."   Ooops.

The next day I skip the run but do lots of sit ups.  I have a ill-formed new age theory that the gut is a primitive brain, and the more sit-ups one does, the better tuned your "gut" instincts will be.  I realize that I have opened up a window for anyone to make fun of me for that theory, but it's ok.  I'll accept it.  That's actually about as weird as I get, despite the fact that I once frequented the Gambler's General Bookstore.

Tom Dwan, Shannon Shorr, and Josh Arieh are assigned to my table, but if anything, I'm encouraged by that.  I've been playing Stud longer than the first two for sure.  I get Aces full of Queens to take a good sized pot off of Dwan, but realize that I missed a bet along the way, attempting a greedy check-raise.  Those little value mistakes cost you tournaments.  In a scene no one would have guessed, the amateur microstacks devoured the pros at that table with a good bit of luck.  It's the middle of day two and it kind of feels like I'm halfway there.



We're well into 2 a.m. when Shaun Deeb gets moved to our table.  We have to fade about twenty more people to make the money.  Then just ten more.  Deeb takes two murderous bad beats from the pudgy British kid on my left, who I've named "Devilboy."  He seems to take an unholy liking to his new nickname, and I wonder if I've encouraged this calling-station too much.  Yes, I have.  I really have.  He slaughters Deeb, clearly the best player at the table, giving the cards and the players intense concentration.  First Devilboy two outs him.  Then he two outs him again.  Deeb is brooding is his chair; once the chip leader, he now sees his fate as a min-casher.  His fuming behavior reminds me a lot of myself when I take bad beats.  After several minutes of steamng, he reaches for his cellphone and rapidly thumbs at it, then puts it down, feeling a little better.  "Facebook or Twitter?" I ask, kind of smirking.  "Both!" he almost shouts, "...and I was way too polite about it!"

The energy of day two was heightened by all the commotion going on at the Main Stage right next to us.  In a highly billed match, Jake Cody took on Yevgeniy Timoshenko head up.  But since Timoshenko is a Full Tilt representative, and since there were about two hundred British hooligans in the audience, the loudest most creative chants for Jake Cody and heckles againts Timoshenko rocked the entire Amazon pavillion room at the Rio.  The drunk British hoolgans would chant "USA! USA! USA!," which was funny enough in itself, but purely amazing in the fact that the heckling and chanting kept up solidly for at least seven hours!  Every chant was funny, perfectly and spontaneously coordinated, and set to no less than few hundred base melodies!  It was like being at a rowdy soccer match overseas.  I made sure to join the fracas on any one of my breaks, and they welcomed me and fed me lots of Heineken from their own individual kegs.

We finally make the money and my friend sweating me, Greg Grivas, brings over a big shot of encouragement to me.  The guy my friend brings over is an acomplished player, almost blinded this past winter by riding and crashing motorcycles in Vietnam.  He's a pretty energetic guy.  Not bad for seventy-one years old.  Men "The Master" Nguyen suddenly greets me right next to my table as we are re-starting.  The greeting was one of two hands held out to clasp my single handshake, then pull me into a big hug into his tiny frame.  He was greeting me like I was a long lost relative come to pay the rent.  Pretty nice of him, since we only have a mutual friend in Greg.  The hug gives me instant credit at my table, as he knew it would, and gives me some encouraging words.  He won the $10K Stud event last year, and is second in WSOP cashes only to Hellmuth.   The guy is radiant; a very charasmatic energy comes out from him.  Men has had an illustrious poker career probably most analagous to Pete Rose's career in baseball.  Men, one of the best ever, is now hungry to take the lead and recently encouraged to leave a better legacy for himself, each day diminishing that asterisk on his stat sheet.  And with the amount of energy and vitality the guy possesses, I'm here to tell you it won't be long before he takes the lead.

 We bag up our chips once again and come back for day three with twelve of us left.  The last nine of us would make the final table.  As we do, we're taken to the "kiddie table" of final tables, off to the side of the casino, a far cry from the glorious production set of the televised final table area.  I understand...it's Stud.  Boring enough to play, definitely nothing anyone wants to watch on TV.

I'd run card dead the whole day.  That's just the way it goes sometimes. As if a cruel joke, I'd once look down at rolled up Aces (5525:1 against ever seeing that hand) to watch everyone fold behind me. I'd get half way through the last days field of twelve people, crashing and burning out at sixth place.  It may have felt like halfway, but really only second place is half way.  And big congratulations to cosmonaut Yevgeniy "Eugene" Katchalov for his victory making it all the way.  His patience and concentration were top knotch throughout, and a very hard man to read with his icy cold Russkie demeanor.

Sixth place and the scent of a WSOP bracelet is a hard pill to swallow, but the consolation prize of money in my pocket, some of which was Negreanu's, Dwan's, and Arieh's just days ago is a little comforting. Stud is my best game and I hope the growing lack of interest doesn't kill it in the near future...

Anyway, I hope to come back to Vegas for another shot at this year's WSOP soon.  We will see how things go back home in Mississippi...

As always, thanks for reading my blather, and have an awesome day!

Full of giggles.  Daily.

Lastly, the booky stuff...



Here's my two highest recommendations for the month.  First the brilliant book Hollywood ruined last month by dumbing down the script to a vapid romance film.  Written in a simplistic, almost Hemmingway style, Water for Elephants exposes our own necessary needs in life for illusions, and the destruction it causes.  Brilliantly parallels the pains of growing old, the circus, hardships, and poverty.  Next up, Havana Nocturne.  Another serious page turner.  Expertly researched about the mob, gambling, Batista, Castro and the Revolution (wan't that a band?), Havana Nocturne takes you back in time to a very real and very scary world just a few miles off our own coast.  Despite yourself, you'll find Castro very intelligent, heroic, and likable...if not only because of how over-the-top awful his own enemies were.