I had a big day yesterday. I started out the day drinking lots of espresso at coffee pub to get myself wired and ready to make the long stretch. Then I headed over to the Bellagio to start gambling.
Dave, Josh and I went to the racebook to place some horse bets at Arlington. We missed some races and watched the chalk horses finish 1-2 3 races in a row, and figured this wasn't going to be the spot for a big score. Josh and I went over to poker and Dave stayed behind to keep betting horses. Like a rational and intelligent person, he figured he'd just look at the odds and put the top two favorites on top with several other horses in a trifecta since the first three races came down chalk-chalk. This strategy worked. Twice. He cashed two trifecta tickets for over $200. He admonished me for not being there to celebrate with him. I reminded him that if I was there I would have talked him out of such an obviously smart play and he would never have won.
In the poker room, I was confronted with another dilemma. The 15-30 list was super long, but the 30-60 had a seat available. I tell the floor that I'd take the 30-60 seat but that I want a 15-30 seat when one opens up. Then I sit down in terror, knowing that it is completely possible that I go dead broke for my whole bankroll before they ever call me up for 15-30.
Fortunately that doesn't happen, and I win some pots for around $400. I play a little more aggressive than I normally would at this stake. I think I was motivated to because as I sat there I watched one gigantic poker star after another stream in to the high limit room to play in big games. I wondered to myself "what is the difference between me and them?" I came to the conclusion that the best players in the world play to win. They build pots, they put in value raises, they constantly attack pots and weak players. I asked myself if I wanted to be a shark or a minnow. Do I want to sit there and call people down, letting the sharks raise me off of hands, or do I want to be the shark who takes pots from other people? So I loosened up a bit and got tough with people and managed to win a couple of large pots I didn't otherwise deserve. I felt good.
When they call my name to move to 15-30, a voice in my head says "stay here, you're going to win thousands!" But my better judgement took over and I picked up and moved from the game $400 closer to even, and in a great frame of mind to play aggressively in the 15-30.
My 30 game had a great mixture of passive old people trying to see the river as cheaply as possible and one loud, chubby, drunk, aggressive player who was hooting and hollering and spewing chips into every pot with all kinds of hands. It was 12:30 pm in Las Vegas and this guy was tossing back pints of Guiness and drunk as a skunk. What a town. The game was set up perfectly for me to play tight and aggressive. Many people think they are playing tight and aggressive when they are really playing tight and passive. The tight part is easy, but the aggressive part takes real balls. Most people wait for a good hand and will raise or three-bet them but then shut down when someone plays back at them or shows any aggression of their own. But I think tight aggressive in a situation like this one meant to tighten up and play fewer hands against people playing lots of hands then bet them like crazy,k even when you miss. With so many passive callers in the game, I decided I should reraise as often as I could to try to get Guiness heads up. Then I played Guiness by raising him on flops where I had just overcards. This strategy seemed to be working. I was raking in pot after pot. Of course I caught a few cards as well. But I even won a huge pot with 7-2 in the blind when the entire table limped in.
The drunk guy was fantastic. He was building lots and lots of pots and playing every hope wish and dream he had. Gutshot draws, bottom pairs, runner runner flush draws. Occassionally his hopes and dreams came true and he raked extremely large pots. So his stack fluctuated pretty dramatically. The man sitting next to me kept commenting how he was going to go broke eventually the way he played. I said "those guys never go broke. They just see saw all day. And if he does bust, I guarantee he pulls a nut out of his pocket and peels off another grand."
The guy next to me couldn't stand the drunk guy, and kept taking joy in the drunk's losses. I on the other hand wanted the drunk guy as riled up as possible. I was quoting movies with him, telling him jokes, egging him on. At one point the drunk lost a big ass pot and started sulking and of course he tightened up. The guy next to me says gleefully "he isn't such a big talker now." I shoot him a glare and say "no shit, we have to cheer him back up." So I start joking with the drunk again, berating him for not straddling, talking to him about how bad he plays, all to egg him on to start playing more hands again. It works, and soon enough he's tilting his chips off again.
At one point I get up to go tell Josh about my good fortune. I was up around $600, which is a great score for that game. When I return, I missed the blinds, so I decided to wait a round and go back to the racebook. I look at the current race at Arlington and on first glance into the form notice a horse that stands out to me purely based on beyer figures, but the horse is 13-1! I go wheel her on top of the field in exactas. She wins by a mile, but the favorite comes in second, so instead of scoring a big bomb I get a booby prize of $160. Still nice for so little effort though, and it boosts my spirits even more.
We all get up because everyone is winning and feeling good and decide to go eat. XXX insists on Hooters, and he insists that it is close enough to walk. I dumbly assume that XXX knows a Hooters that is closer to us than the Hooters casino and agree. It is 105 degrees outside. And I've never been to Hooters. But XXX is in full-on XXX mode, explaining to us the wings at Hooters as if he was talking about fine wine or steak.
On the way there, I ask if anyone else has never been to a Hooters. Josh never has, but suprisingly Peter has been once, on a bachelor party with some very conservative Christian friends. He tells us about how they ate at Hooters then went back to someone's hotel to watch the movie Orgazmo, a movie with no nudity at all, and that half the party objected and went home before the movie even started. A bachelor party where Peter is the wildest guy, now I've heard everything.
Hooters is a corny and embarassing place. Setting aside for a moment the obvious objectification of the waitresses, Hooters also seems to take some kind of tounge-in-cheek glee at their own lowbrow reputation. There is self-depricating humor on the menus, t-shirts, even in the descriptions of the food. At this particular Hooters, there is a pool right outside the restaurant where The Best Damn Sports Show Period is taping an episode, and there are girls on bouncy balls bouncing around the pool. There appears to be a very bust girl on a raft in the pool being pelted by guys throwing footballs at her in some kind of weird game. XXX is ordering for the table without even really asking people what they want. He orders like 500 wings. The food is completely unremarkable and it is beyond me why anyone tries to argue that they enjoy the food at this place. I ate 3 wings and called it quits.
Our conversation was a little raunchy though, because XXX brought up prostitution and wanted to know if any of us had ever slept with a hooker. He claimed he never knew anyone who had. Nobody owned up to it, and I pointed out to XXX that he likely knows several people who had but that was the kind of thing people didnt really admit to. Then I suggested that XXX was probably feeling us out to see if this was a safe place to reveal his own desire to pay for sex. I remark that "the guilty dog barks first" or "the one who smelt it dealt it," and say that XXX should just come clean and he'd get more honesty from people. Of course he refuses to, and insists that he finds the whole idea strange. But several people tell stories of almost getting with hookers or attempting it with bad results. And one person in the group finally admits that he lost his virginity to a prostitute and the floodgates open up. Even XXX tells a hilarious and raunchy story about himself that he made me promise not to reprint on the blog, but pretty much confirmed many of my suspicions about him and other square-ish, whitebread types: that below their vanilla exterior lies a sick demented pervert. I am pretty agog at the level of sexual perversity being revealed, and go from once feeling like the most experienced of this group to feeling like a little ashamed I didn't have more skeletons in my closet. I'm laying 2-1 that XXX brings up prostitution again this weekend and 8-1 that he flat out suggests that someone hire a hooker in total seriousness. I don't think XXX wants to get with a hooker, though. I believe he wants someone else to do it to satisfy his own curiosity.
Our bill was also absurd. $100 for a pile of chicken wings. We roulette it and RBDT wins. He also won at Coffee Pub so he's 2-2 on the day!!
After our sexually depraved lunch at Hooters, we cab it back to the Bellagio where I start off by hitting Wheel of Fortune for $60 after one spin. Then I get back on the list for 15-30. While I'm waiting I go to the racebook where I notice that my friend Mario is there playing Lone Star's night card. I go talk to him and he's trying to decipher a pick 3 bet. I check the form and see that there are two races with 6 horses in the pick-3, so I decide to play it. I make a $20 wager, then they call my name for the game.
This game has fewer drunks in it but a few older guys who are playing lots of hands and calling lots of raises. There are also more guys with ipods and sunglasses, too. I think the later it gets the more of these guys that show up. I still do pretty well, winning about $400 more before all the older guys seem to disappear and more ipods appear in their places. I also hit my pick 3 for about $100. I get up from the table and go find the other guys on the other side of the room. I'm feeling like a million bucks, back from being stuck, back on top, winning everything I play. But I'm done gambling for the day, I tell them, and I want to go swimming. Josh agrees to join me and gets up from his game. RBDT and Chonko are celebrating a baseball parlay they just hit and want to stay and play poker.
Josh and I hit the pool. It's 7:30pm but it's still light outside. There is hardly anyone left down there so it feels like we have the place to ourselves. Eventually they close the pool and the hottub is still open for another hour. We go play some chinese poker in the hottub and talk about how much we love our signifigant others. A saccharin conversation to be sure, but one that was despereately needed after the raunchy conversation at lunch. And it was sincere and a nice conversation, the kind Josh reminds me that we rarely have anymore.
Eventually we notice that the place is completely shut down and we are the only two people down there, well past closing time. We head back up and Josh takes off with Wayne and Nick for dinner. Peter, RBDT, Chonko and I decide to head over to the Sahara for the 11pm tourney.
Readers of my blog will remember this tourney from my last trip to Vegas. This a very popular tournament for the low roller set because for $60 you get 5000 chips. We draw our seats and somehow Peter and RBDT are not only at the same table, but right next to each other. This was particularly hilarious because over the course of the day a poker rivalry has cropped up between these two. Evidently they sat at the same 4-8 table all day and Peter not only constantly critiqued Dave's play, he also kept offering up unsolicited life advice about Dave's job situation. I have been reminding Dave that both of these things were completely and utterly absurd considering the source and that he had no reason to get upset. However it was clear that Peter was bugging Dave, so Dave starts giving Peter poker advice. We have to set up a heads up match before the week is over.
There are 10 tables and we all go pretty deep in the tourney. There are so many bad players and characters that I don't feel like describing them all. I make it to close to two tables before busting. But I win a last longer bet from Peter.
I have good stories from the tournament, but they will have to wait because Josh is here and I'm getting out of here. More later.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Poker: It's all over but the crying
As if I needed anymore reminders that I'm getting old, last night I slept a full 8 hours. I would have updated last night, but I learned my lesson about prematurely updating when, after I posted the last update, Brandon and RBDT show up in the room at 4am after having been robbed by a toothless man in the Paris bar. He approached them and offered them "VIP passes" to nightclubs if they would buy him a drink. They refused, and he grabbed Dave's lighter and smokes and took off running. Security chased him down and caught him outside, and then later a large, square man named 'Whitey' shows up with Dave's smokes and lighter, although somewhat crumpled. Dave describes Whitey as the guy from Casino who put the dude's head in a vice. "Charlie M? You stole these smokes for Charlie M?" Anyway, it was a reminder that the good stuff usually happens after midnight.
But last night nothing happened. At least nothing that I know about. I just woke up to a cacophany of snoring in my room. I believe Josh and Chonko arrived last night after I went to sleep as well. So there may be a story there, it will just have to wait till tomorrow. That is, if I can remember it.
Yesterday was also Brandon's last night in town. He flew out at 9pm last night. He was filled with emotion about the end of his career as a professional poker player. He was also filled with ambivalence about his failure to win any money on this trip and losing more than he was comfortable with. Although if he was truly uncomfortable with it, he hid it well. We spent the last few hours he was in town shooting dice and he was spreading the money out on the layout like a madman again, however the Bellagio stickmen offered him no advice. Instead, they kept selling him more bets and reminding him to get his come bets down. Vultures.
Brandon got up from his poker game at one point yesterday and asked me to come to the Bellagio sportsbar to "have a talk." I think he was just feeling a little wired and weird and wanted someone to listen. He was going on and on about how he still liked poker despite getting a job and that he wanted to continue to challenge himself. He couldn't understand why he had been performing poorly at higher limits and in live games. He questioned whether or not he had the mettle to keep playing that high.
My advice was simple. I told him that we all had jobs, he was one of us now. How much money any of us make at our jobs is irrelevant. I'm probably one of the lowest paid members of this group, but every penny I bring to Vegas is money I made playing poker or gambling somehow. As long as he plays and builds a bankroll, he can play any limit he wants without worry. And it just takes experience to get better at a certain limit, once you have the bankroll. I also said that we play for fun and for the challenge, and that's much more liberating than playing for a living.
The Brandon situation is weird. We all admired him for becoming a professional poker player. We all lived vicariously through his adventures. The time he made the final table at the WSOP, we were all sweating him and bursting with pride. And now it is over. Which is fine, really, but the job he's getting is really no different. Being a trader is basically gambling, and he admits it. Sure he will have a pension and health insurance, but I wonder, after hearing him be so nostalgic and emotional about leaving poker, why he did it.
I think the market for professional online players has bubbled badly. I don't think the games are there anymore for prop players to beat up on. I don't think the potential is there anymore to earn 6 figures a year for anyone but the very best. With the deflation of the market, the competition got fiercer, and I think Brandon is smart enough and unegotistical enough to have recognized it and jumped out of the water before he got gobbled up by sharks. A fate, he reminds me, that very few of his friends weren't smart enough to avoid. Even now, as the WSOP rages on for another year, not a single one of Brandon's pro friends from the year before were out here playing high limits. The end of Brandon's run is actually pretty symbolic of what is happening to poker right now everywhere. This year was the first year in the history of the WSOP that there were fewer players than the year before. And last night in the Bellagio poker room as I was cashing out, I saw Jamie Gold playing 300-600 mixed games. It's all over but the crying, man.
We went to the room to help Peter with his job interview he had. It was pretty underwhelming. Peter had been all stressed about it, his first interview with a finance company. He brought tons of books of brain teasers and whatnot to study to prepare for it. He ended up on the phone with some lackey who was asked to talk to him since the interviewer couldn't make the call. The guy hadn't seen Peter's resume and just asked him finance questions for 20 minutes then said he'd reschedule a time to talk to the actual interviewer. We gave Peter some feedback and advice and reminded him that he shouldn't get disappointed, he would ahve to do dozens more of these before he landed a job.
Peter is pretty bad at stuff like this. His current job, from what I'm told, was handed to him by his adviser in grad school. He hates it terribly and wants to make big money like his friends in finance. But he has no experience at all interviewing for jobs or selling himself this way. Anyone who knows Peter knows that he has a small amount of social anxiety and akwardness, so the prospect of doing something foreign to him and the pressure of being desperate for a new job just implode inside of him. He had been up like $600, but after the shitty interview he lost $200 playing poker then started complaining that we were going to too many fancy restaurants and he couldn't afford it. He got testy and started snapping at people. Then at dinner that night he lost credit card roulette for the check and that was the last I saw of him. I heard he was last seen at the 4-8 table turning down RBDT's request to go get a beer at the bar with him so who knows what kind of state he's in now?
Oh and Wayne arrived last night and b-lined for the 4-8 game. 2-1 says he's still there.
I took a shot at the old 30-60 game. Less because I wanted to gamble high and more because the list was about a fifth the size of the 15-30 list. There are two big tournaments going on right now. The Bellagio World Cup WPT event is going on as is the WSOP main event so the poker rooms are overflowing. I got a seat fairly quickly and quickly went up $700 after winning a huge pot with AK against A2 who flopped a worse two pair. Then ended up losing about $500 in the game after my own two pair got rivered in two seperate hands. It was a nice game, but I just didn't want to blow any more than that in it so I got up and went to bed. That game plays sooo much bigger than 15-30. I was winning and losing in each pot what it takes me all night to win or lose in the 15-30 game. So I'll wait till later on to take another stab at it, assuming I don't go broke in other games.
My girlfriend is coming out here on Friday for some work stuff and I told her she should stay through Sunday. But it is going to be a little weird having her out here. I'm sure she will spend the day laying out at the pool, but it sets a new precedent for the UWSWSOP. I'm still excited to see her though. I'm hoping that she can learn to love Vegas as much as I do. And she can also loan me money if I'm bust.
But last night nothing happened. At least nothing that I know about. I just woke up to a cacophany of snoring in my room. I believe Josh and Chonko arrived last night after I went to sleep as well. So there may be a story there, it will just have to wait till tomorrow. That is, if I can remember it.
Yesterday was also Brandon's last night in town. He flew out at 9pm last night. He was filled with emotion about the end of his career as a professional poker player. He was also filled with ambivalence about his failure to win any money on this trip and losing more than he was comfortable with. Although if he was truly uncomfortable with it, he hid it well. We spent the last few hours he was in town shooting dice and he was spreading the money out on the layout like a madman again, however the Bellagio stickmen offered him no advice. Instead, they kept selling him more bets and reminding him to get his come bets down. Vultures.
Brandon got up from his poker game at one point yesterday and asked me to come to the Bellagio sportsbar to "have a talk." I think he was just feeling a little wired and weird and wanted someone to listen. He was going on and on about how he still liked poker despite getting a job and that he wanted to continue to challenge himself. He couldn't understand why he had been performing poorly at higher limits and in live games. He questioned whether or not he had the mettle to keep playing that high.
My advice was simple. I told him that we all had jobs, he was one of us now. How much money any of us make at our jobs is irrelevant. I'm probably one of the lowest paid members of this group, but every penny I bring to Vegas is money I made playing poker or gambling somehow. As long as he plays and builds a bankroll, he can play any limit he wants without worry. And it just takes experience to get better at a certain limit, once you have the bankroll. I also said that we play for fun and for the challenge, and that's much more liberating than playing for a living.
The Brandon situation is weird. We all admired him for becoming a professional poker player. We all lived vicariously through his adventures. The time he made the final table at the WSOP, we were all sweating him and bursting with pride. And now it is over. Which is fine, really, but the job he's getting is really no different. Being a trader is basically gambling, and he admits it. Sure he will have a pension and health insurance, but I wonder, after hearing him be so nostalgic and emotional about leaving poker, why he did it.
I think the market for professional online players has bubbled badly. I don't think the games are there anymore for prop players to beat up on. I don't think the potential is there anymore to earn 6 figures a year for anyone but the very best. With the deflation of the market, the competition got fiercer, and I think Brandon is smart enough and unegotistical enough to have recognized it and jumped out of the water before he got gobbled up by sharks. A fate, he reminds me, that very few of his friends weren't smart enough to avoid. Even now, as the WSOP rages on for another year, not a single one of Brandon's pro friends from the year before were out here playing high limits. The end of Brandon's run is actually pretty symbolic of what is happening to poker right now everywhere. This year was the first year in the history of the WSOP that there were fewer players than the year before. And last night in the Bellagio poker room as I was cashing out, I saw Jamie Gold playing 300-600 mixed games. It's all over but the crying, man.
We went to the room to help Peter with his job interview he had. It was pretty underwhelming. Peter had been all stressed about it, his first interview with a finance company. He brought tons of books of brain teasers and whatnot to study to prepare for it. He ended up on the phone with some lackey who was asked to talk to him since the interviewer couldn't make the call. The guy hadn't seen Peter's resume and just asked him finance questions for 20 minutes then said he'd reschedule a time to talk to the actual interviewer. We gave Peter some feedback and advice and reminded him that he shouldn't get disappointed, he would ahve to do dozens more of these before he landed a job.
Peter is pretty bad at stuff like this. His current job, from what I'm told, was handed to him by his adviser in grad school. He hates it terribly and wants to make big money like his friends in finance. But he has no experience at all interviewing for jobs or selling himself this way. Anyone who knows Peter knows that he has a small amount of social anxiety and akwardness, so the prospect of doing something foreign to him and the pressure of being desperate for a new job just implode inside of him. He had been up like $600, but after the shitty interview he lost $200 playing poker then started complaining that we were going to too many fancy restaurants and he couldn't afford it. He got testy and started snapping at people. Then at dinner that night he lost credit card roulette for the check and that was the last I saw of him. I heard he was last seen at the 4-8 table turning down RBDT's request to go get a beer at the bar with him so who knows what kind of state he's in now?
Oh and Wayne arrived last night and b-lined for the 4-8 game. 2-1 says he's still there.
I took a shot at the old 30-60 game. Less because I wanted to gamble high and more because the list was about a fifth the size of the 15-30 list. There are two big tournaments going on right now. The Bellagio World Cup WPT event is going on as is the WSOP main event so the poker rooms are overflowing. I got a seat fairly quickly and quickly went up $700 after winning a huge pot with AK against A2 who flopped a worse two pair. Then ended up losing about $500 in the game after my own two pair got rivered in two seperate hands. It was a nice game, but I just didn't want to blow any more than that in it so I got up and went to bed. That game plays sooo much bigger than 15-30. I was winning and losing in each pot what it takes me all night to win or lose in the 15-30 game. So I'll wait till later on to take another stab at it, assuming I don't go broke in other games.
My girlfriend is coming out here on Friday for some work stuff and I told her she should stay through Sunday. But it is going to be a little weird having her out here. I'm sure she will spend the day laying out at the pool, but it sets a new precedent for the UWSWSOP. I'm still excited to see her though. I'm hoping that she can learn to love Vegas as much as I do. And she can also loan me money if I'm bust.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Coming of Age in Las Vegas
It's sweltering hot outside and thousands and thousands of socially inept losers are swarming through the Rio convention center for the World Series of Poker. That can only mean one thing, it is time for the old Upper West Side gang to reunite once again in sin city for the UWSWSOP.
This year's pilgrammage carries a special relevance for me, however. On Friday the 13th I turn 30 years old. It is a milestone, indeed. The boy can no longer pretend to not be a man. And what better way to come of age than in the city I've come to love so much specifically because I associate it with my childish desires to play and pretend?
This year may be somewhat different than past years' group outings. For one, several of our members are now married. For another, almost all of them have finally finished their schooling and have moved on to lucrative and important jobs. I'm anxious to see how it affects their sensibilites. I'm anxious to see how turning 30 will affect my own.
Already as I sit here at the end of my first full day in Vegas I am experiencing some of this collective coming of age. Brandon, our resident professional gambler, our patron saint and hero, has been out here for some time now recklessly destroying what little is left of his once proud and sizeable poker bankroll. He recently decided to give up on his life of wager and chance and accept a real job as a junior trader. And Peter is out here, too, enviously pestering Brandon with pleas for assistance and advice at landing his own finance industry gig. I remarked to them that it was a pity to see them use their incredible brains and talents to make already insanely rich people even richer. These two guys are PhDs in PHYSICS. They are some of the most precious minds of our generation. And they are going to be junior traders. The title alone just oozes with inadequateness. It doesn't belong to someone who understands string theory or can grow a nanotube. And a mind like that doesn't belong in a trading office.
But of course, if it doesn't belong there, it certainly is wasted in the Bellagio poker room. And I find this realization profound. This game, as fun and challenging as it may be, does all of our minds a disservice. And there is no greater reminder of this fact than the incredibly banal and idiotic conversations I continue to have with my opponents across the table wherever I go in this fucking town.
So Brandon is retiring, and going out in style. Our safe here at the Paris is bursting with rolls of bills and stacks of yellow chips and flags. He is playing high stakes poker games that he barely knows the rules to. At one point today he comes up to me in the Bellagio poker room and tells me a bad beat story from a badugi hand, and he realizes that he doesn't even understand the game well enough to explain to me what happened. But he was at least comforted by the fact that the other players told him, after losing a huge pot, that he played his hand fine. As an afterthought while walking away, he turns to me and says "they probably just don't want me to quit."
None of us do, Brandon. But for so many different reasons, none of which have anything to do with your skills, you probably should.
So I arrived in Vegas late on Monday night after airplane hell and immediately took to Brandon's laptop in his hotel room to play some poker. I know it seems strange to be in Vegas and play online, but for the past couple of weeks I've been propping to build up a bankroll for this trip. And I needed to get some more hands in to get paid for the week. What I meant to be a quick two hours mindlessly folding turned in to an all night three tabling stress fest where I slowly and stressfully climbed back from being stuck about $800. After finally getting even at around 4am, I grabbed a pillow and a slice of the floor and went to sleep.
Today we played some poker at Bellagio, made a trip to the Rio to gawk at the insanity of the main event, and then to the Palms so I could buy tickets to see Coheed and Cambria. There we settled in to some $10 craps and I managed to quit the game $100 winners, my first craps win I've booked in a decade probably. Peter and Brandon continued to play, Brandon still burning up the bankroll like it was Brewster's Millions by spreading so many green chips on the layout that the goddamn croupier had to stop him. "That's too much, man. You're risking too much money to win too little." Have you ever heard of such a thing? An employee of a Las Vegas casino urging a customer to STOP making bad bets? That's how bad it is, friends.
Despite his best efforts to lose, and true to Brewster's fashion, Brandon manages to book a $500 win, and Peter another $200. We go to the Palms poker room to kill time before the concert with a little 1-2 no limit. I of course manage to piss away my $100 craps victory plus another $100 without ever even saying all in. Peter managed to post yet another win, around $200, despite checking aces full in last position on the river. Add this to Peter's $200 win in 4-8 and he is rolling pretty hard. For context, please go back and read some of the old trip reports.
He is also sitting right next to none other than Sully from Godsmack the entire time, and has no idea who he is. After we retire from the game I tell him about his famous tablemate and he says "I suppose it would be to dumb to go up to him now and ask for an autograph since he will know I didn't know who he was before." I answer "no, what's dumb is that you want the autograph of a rockstar you've never even heard play before." "But I listen to them whenever they are on the radio!" he replies. I have no answer to this, but Peter still decides against the autograph.
I take my leave of Peter and Brandon and go see Coheed and Cambria play. I'm embarassed to admit how much I like this band, mostly because I've seen them 3 times now and every time I felt like I was easily the oldest person in the crowd by a factor of 2. And because they sell their records at Hot Topic. But I really do like them quite a lot and was excited to see them.
I got seated in the mezzanine level because floor tickets were sold out. This really sucked because I like to dance and jump around when I see bands I really like and that would be even more akward and weird if I was in the Mezzanine seats. I sat down next to some other lonely guy about 20 years old. He is here on vacation with his sister and her husband but is too young to gamble so he has spent every day this week walking from the Palms to the strip smoking weed. He has seen several celebrities in the Palms and has asked each of them to smoke weed with him. None have accepted his offer yet. He asks me if I want to smoke weed with him after the show and I decline but assure him that I don't judge him for it. He couldn't care any less.
I notice a cute girl standing near the wall that seperates our seats from the main floor and I walk over to her.
"You're going to jump the wall, huh?"
"Yeah, but that porter keeps looking over here."
She's british or something, probably about 18 tops. I look over at the 'porter' and realize he's probably not much older than her and completely bored out of his mind.
"That guy? That guy doesn't give a shit what you do. Tell you what, as soon as that security guard goes into that tunnel let's go for it."
She no sooner nods her head than he turns and goes into the tunnel and over the wall we went. We quickly merge into the big crowd and we are safe. I spend the show dancing and saving the cute girl from getting trampled in a sweaty moshpit over and over again. She stands next to me the whole show. I get weirded out and move farter away from her. Afterwards I take a cab home alone. I smile when I realize that if I was 18 and did drugs that I could have just had the night of my life. I'm truly getting too old for the proverbial "shit like this."
On my return to the Paris Brandon and Peter are already in bed exhausted. They both continued their winning streak at blackjack before leaving the Palms. Peter is having a trip for the record books so far, and was so proud of his new fortune that he brought it over to me like a small child showing off his new toy. He handed me a stack of 10 or so c-notes and said "do you want to see?" God I hope he can hold on to this money all week. He needs it and he deserves it.
Brandon, who is leaving tomorrow and has just 24 more hours to either get rich or die tryin', is conked out on the bed snoring as I type. The poor guy. If only he were 18 and did drugs, he maybe could put those stacks of bills in our hotel safe to some good use. Instead, he is sleeping, fully clothed, soundly on the bed at midnight in Las Vegas.
Brandon turned 30 three years ago.
Fuck.
This year's pilgrammage carries a special relevance for me, however. On Friday the 13th I turn 30 years old. It is a milestone, indeed. The boy can no longer pretend to not be a man. And what better way to come of age than in the city I've come to love so much specifically because I associate it with my childish desires to play and pretend?
This year may be somewhat different than past years' group outings. For one, several of our members are now married. For another, almost all of them have finally finished their schooling and have moved on to lucrative and important jobs. I'm anxious to see how it affects their sensibilites. I'm anxious to see how turning 30 will affect my own.
Already as I sit here at the end of my first full day in Vegas I am experiencing some of this collective coming of age. Brandon, our resident professional gambler, our patron saint and hero, has been out here for some time now recklessly destroying what little is left of his once proud and sizeable poker bankroll. He recently decided to give up on his life of wager and chance and accept a real job as a junior trader. And Peter is out here, too, enviously pestering Brandon with pleas for assistance and advice at landing his own finance industry gig. I remarked to them that it was a pity to see them use their incredible brains and talents to make already insanely rich people even richer. These two guys are PhDs in PHYSICS. They are some of the most precious minds of our generation. And they are going to be junior traders. The title alone just oozes with inadequateness. It doesn't belong to someone who understands string theory or can grow a nanotube. And a mind like that doesn't belong in a trading office.
But of course, if it doesn't belong there, it certainly is wasted in the Bellagio poker room. And I find this realization profound. This game, as fun and challenging as it may be, does all of our minds a disservice. And there is no greater reminder of this fact than the incredibly banal and idiotic conversations I continue to have with my opponents across the table wherever I go in this fucking town.
So Brandon is retiring, and going out in style. Our safe here at the Paris is bursting with rolls of bills and stacks of yellow chips and flags. He is playing high stakes poker games that he barely knows the rules to. At one point today he comes up to me in the Bellagio poker room and tells me a bad beat story from a badugi hand, and he realizes that he doesn't even understand the game well enough to explain to me what happened. But he was at least comforted by the fact that the other players told him, after losing a huge pot, that he played his hand fine. As an afterthought while walking away, he turns to me and says "they probably just don't want me to quit."
None of us do, Brandon. But for so many different reasons, none of which have anything to do with your skills, you probably should.
So I arrived in Vegas late on Monday night after airplane hell and immediately took to Brandon's laptop in his hotel room to play some poker. I know it seems strange to be in Vegas and play online, but for the past couple of weeks I've been propping to build up a bankroll for this trip. And I needed to get some more hands in to get paid for the week. What I meant to be a quick two hours mindlessly folding turned in to an all night three tabling stress fest where I slowly and stressfully climbed back from being stuck about $800. After finally getting even at around 4am, I grabbed a pillow and a slice of the floor and went to sleep.
Today we played some poker at Bellagio, made a trip to the Rio to gawk at the insanity of the main event, and then to the Palms so I could buy tickets to see Coheed and Cambria. There we settled in to some $10 craps and I managed to quit the game $100 winners, my first craps win I've booked in a decade probably. Peter and Brandon continued to play, Brandon still burning up the bankroll like it was Brewster's Millions by spreading so many green chips on the layout that the goddamn croupier had to stop him. "That's too much, man. You're risking too much money to win too little." Have you ever heard of such a thing? An employee of a Las Vegas casino urging a customer to STOP making bad bets? That's how bad it is, friends.
Despite his best efforts to lose, and true to Brewster's fashion, Brandon manages to book a $500 win, and Peter another $200. We go to the Palms poker room to kill time before the concert with a little 1-2 no limit. I of course manage to piss away my $100 craps victory plus another $100 without ever even saying all in. Peter managed to post yet another win, around $200, despite checking aces full in last position on the river. Add this to Peter's $200 win in 4-8 and he is rolling pretty hard. For context, please go back and read some of the old trip reports.
He is also sitting right next to none other than Sully from Godsmack the entire time, and has no idea who he is. After we retire from the game I tell him about his famous tablemate and he says "I suppose it would be to dumb to go up to him now and ask for an autograph since he will know I didn't know who he was before." I answer "no, what's dumb is that you want the autograph of a rockstar you've never even heard play before." "But I listen to them whenever they are on the radio!" he replies. I have no answer to this, but Peter still decides against the autograph.
I take my leave of Peter and Brandon and go see Coheed and Cambria play. I'm embarassed to admit how much I like this band, mostly because I've seen them 3 times now and every time I felt like I was easily the oldest person in the crowd by a factor of 2. And because they sell their records at Hot Topic. But I really do like them quite a lot and was excited to see them.
I got seated in the mezzanine level because floor tickets were sold out. This really sucked because I like to dance and jump around when I see bands I really like and that would be even more akward and weird if I was in the Mezzanine seats. I sat down next to some other lonely guy about 20 years old. He is here on vacation with his sister and her husband but is too young to gamble so he has spent every day this week walking from the Palms to the strip smoking weed. He has seen several celebrities in the Palms and has asked each of them to smoke weed with him. None have accepted his offer yet. He asks me if I want to smoke weed with him after the show and I decline but assure him that I don't judge him for it. He couldn't care any less.
I notice a cute girl standing near the wall that seperates our seats from the main floor and I walk over to her.
"You're going to jump the wall, huh?"
"Yeah, but that porter keeps looking over here."
She's british or something, probably about 18 tops. I look over at the 'porter' and realize he's probably not much older than her and completely bored out of his mind.
"That guy? That guy doesn't give a shit what you do. Tell you what, as soon as that security guard goes into that tunnel let's go for it."
She no sooner nods her head than he turns and goes into the tunnel and over the wall we went. We quickly merge into the big crowd and we are safe. I spend the show dancing and saving the cute girl from getting trampled in a sweaty moshpit over and over again. She stands next to me the whole show. I get weirded out and move farter away from her. Afterwards I take a cab home alone. I smile when I realize that if I was 18 and did drugs that I could have just had the night of my life. I'm truly getting too old for the proverbial "shit like this."
On my return to the Paris Brandon and Peter are already in bed exhausted. They both continued their winning streak at blackjack before leaving the Palms. Peter is having a trip for the record books so far, and was so proud of his new fortune that he brought it over to me like a small child showing off his new toy. He handed me a stack of 10 or so c-notes and said "do you want to see?" God I hope he can hold on to this money all week. He needs it and he deserves it.
Brandon, who is leaving tomorrow and has just 24 more hours to either get rich or die tryin', is conked out on the bed snoring as I type. The poor guy. If only he were 18 and did drugs, he maybe could put those stacks of bills in our hotel safe to some good use. Instead, he is sleeping, fully clothed, soundly on the bed at midnight in Las Vegas.
Brandon turned 30 three years ago.
Fuck.
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