Vegas.... the first 24 HRS....

With working the day of our trip, the flight itself and the required degenerate gambling for as long as you can stay conscious on your first night in Vegas, Monday turned into a 24 hr. endurance test for Myself, Peb's, brudder Carson and Suzy_Q. Ending with a free for all coin tossing game, in one of those arcade style "coin pusher" machines. 'Cept we were launching dollar coins, not nickels. Occasionally as we all attempted to rapid fire and give at least the appearance of being some type of semi-automatic weaponry, we were launching $15 to $20 a shot, only to see $8 to $12 getting returned. Let me see, fire one coin and get 5 back. Fire 20 at a time, maybe see 8. Coin launching is so rigged!

Peb's and I crashed for about an hour and a half before we realized that I'd missed a text from CK the night before.

It said, "crashing early, WSoP PLO."

Now there was no way I was going to miss out on an opportunity to rail a good friend at the WSoP while I was in town. So we figured out how to get a little food into the system and headed out to the Rio. Initially as we made the turn down the hall to the poker area, we almost walked right by CK. She was hiding beneath her hat and behind some sort of wall. We soon found out that the "wall," was Bayne. ;o) Apparently, he would also be playing in the event. So now we rail two players.

There was a Pauly siting, but just a brief one. He had a lot on the go and we figured we'd hook up later on.

There were quite a few pros in the field and they were drawing a lot of attention from the media types. CK was only a couple of tables off the rail, so we were able to keep an eye on her play fairly easily. Unfortunately, getting and keeping a good eye on Bayne's position was going to be a huge challenge. He was stuffed out in the middle of the floor and his back was to us. I kept in good standing with a couple of the guys running the chip counts out to Card Player. They were always nice and would give me a count by glance when they could. One clown at the end there however, basically leaned in and partially pushed poor Bayne back so he could count his stack. I'm still really sorry about that Bayne! There were some big names passing through CK's table and there are some great stories about it on her blog. You can read it all HERE. My personal favorite part, was the hand where she crippled Greg Raymer.

Standing in the poker room area for 4 1/2 hours, can take a little out of you. So we were in and out quite a bit. It was on our first break out in the Poker Kitchen area, that I got my first "Baby" of the day. As we were coming back in from our smoke, I noticed two people coming in right behind us. I held the door open and as a hand grabbed me by the bicep I heard, "Thanks baby. You're alright!" I wished Scotty good skill and he turned back, stuck out his fist for a bump and said, "Yeah baby, that's what its all about baby."

I had a Pauly moment out in the men's room near the Poker Kitchen too. Phil Gordon pulled into the next stall so I'd have a pro I pissed next to comment to post. I also met him out in the hallways a little later. We had a laugh about shaking hands with each other being okay, since we both washed our hands after the pit stop. It seemed like a pretty comical moment for us both, and I was a little surprised at how easy going he seemed to be. I told Peb's I'd give him a few bonus points and move him up the list of poker players I like to cheer for. Not way up, just up!

I literally had just turned around and started to talk with Pebbles about the experience, when one of the players I really do like to cheer on was headed my way. I stuck my hand out and it was met instantly by the hand of Barry Greenstein. I told him I'd be pissed at myself if I didn't take the opportunity to let him know how much I've enjoyed watching him play all forms of poker. We talked for a bit about several different topics, from poker to the RIO itself. He came across as genuine and as happy or, as the guy I'd always imagined him to be. Barry was already pretty high up on my list to begin with but after meeting him and having our little talk, I've bumped him up to just about top spot. If you're lucky enough to get the chance and he's not jammed up busy and running around, try and get a little one on one with the man. He's accessible and open for discussion and even better than that, he's an excellent conversationalist.

CK had told us that F-Train was going to be covering the 2-7 re-draw event over in one of the other areas. I wanted to meet him and knowing that he was usually keeping everyone up to-date on how CK was doing when she played, I thought I could try and give him an update every now and again as well. We wandered over to see if we could find him. As I stood beside the ropes and near a poker table set up with sealed plastic bags, I hear Pebbles engaged in a conversation with some dude.

Dude : "Here we go."
Pebbles : "Good thing you don't play Basketball for a living!"
Dude : "Come on. That one just floated on me a bit."
Pebbles : "Yeah right. You 'floated' it like crap. Hee-Hee"

Dude turns around and with a large smile and great laugh say's,
"Yeah, you're right."

The Dude was Sean "Sheiky" Sheikhan.

A quick look around for someone other than F-Train had revealed, we were standing at one of the coolest tables in the whole event. Playing were, Sheiky with Doyle and Todd Brunson. Standing around and chatting them up were, E-Dog, John Juanda, David Williams, Ted Forest (ok not so cool! ;o) ) Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson, and old 'bunny-nose' herself, Jennifer Harmon. And yes! She did the wascally wabbit thing, while she looked me right in the eyes from 4 feet away. I had to laugh out loud. Everytime I see her do that with her nose, I think of that hand when David Williams looked up at her after she'd raised his check, he grabbed his chips and with a pretty bad impersonation of Elmer Fudd said, "Oooooooooo, I waise you you wascally wabbit."
So I leaned in a little to get closer to Williams, "Wascally Wabbit huh?" I asked. He turned to me and said, "Instant Classic huh?" I just roared.

Once we were pushing almost 5 hours of being on the rail, I could see it in poor Pebbles eyes. On just a couple of hours sleep, even my back was starting to ache from all the standing around and protecting our spots. We needed to make a move. This was made a little easier for us, as several of the TuckFard crew that had met CK back in February at EH-Vegas had arrived. Knowing that she'd have some new railers for the next little while made it not quite as difficult to make our way out to dinner.

Later that night, we met up with cool kids of The Corporation. The Imperial Palace was our location of choice and they tried to talk me into playing the table version of Texas Hold'em. This was a VERY short lived experiment, as it became abundantly clear to me early on, that our dealer was in fact a phricken' RNG !!! After I think she ran herself two straights and trip Aces all back-to-back-to-back.... I moved on to something else. There was much letting of it rideth and even a little three-card poker to be played on the night. I also wandered over and let out a few PAI-GOW's every once in a while. The results you ask?

Let-it-Ride : -EV for the first time in a long time.
Three-Card : +EV and should be included in every game I ever want to play.
PAI-GOW : HAHAHAHAHAHA..... what else? Pooooosh!

It was a great time and I truly look forward to hooking up with the Corporation gang again in the near future. I'll have to figure out how to better prepare for Gadzooks infectious laugh though. It's not loud, it's not a snort, it's not anything out of the ordinary at all actually. But it's one of those laughs that just says, "hey... I'm here and I'm really having fun!" and they're my favorites. What can I say?
I have a thing for good laughs.

(***Side note***... G-Rob, a message for you has been left with a very special dealer at the I.P., I just hope she's good to her word!)

More tomorrow....

My sincerest thanks for dropping by....