6/21/2008

The excitement builds....

Today's the day!

FTM II goes today, out on the back deck here in Bedrock. Although we had a ton of last minute drop-outs for various reasons, the 13 players that are showing are all quality players and even more importantly, quality friends.

It sounds like despite the poker starting around 2:30 or so, the fun will begin around noon. All the beds have been made and the camping area completely smoothed out. Keys WILL be taken at the door!

Since the numbers dropped so dramatically and the booze flow looks to be around 12 plus hours long, we've made a couple of changes to the format. We'll go to a 10,000 chip deep-stacked and run a short-handed game as well. This will allow for a LOT more drunken blog-foolery and probably a bunch of good material for follow up posts. ;o)

The core Tucks will all be there including, brudder Carson and SuzY_Q, DonKaaa and QueenKaaa, NutzFirth, Pebbles, Toty-G etc.... Special guests, Yummy-Mommy and Mr. Bankwell will be in attendance, as well as the lovely Katitude. But beware and be fore-warned of one of our very special guests each and every one of you, BarBill himself will be in-da'-house for this game of luck-boxery and gambooling! Yup! At the ever younger age of 1,000,076 Peb's Dad "Twinkle-Toes" Flinstone will be making his first ever blogger game appearance. Can you say winner-winner, chicken dinner?

We're pretty excited about hosting another game here at the cave and, just plain can't wait to see everyone here again.

Let the liquid flow, the games begin and may the luckiest of all the drunks come out on top! Thanks to brudder Carson and his mad procurement skillz, there's a $500 Canon digital camera on the line for first prize. I fully expect the winner to be far too drunk, to be able to use it right away.

My sincerest thanks for dropping by....

6/19/2008

Vegas... Day 5....

Yeah I know. "What the hell happened to day 4?" you're asking.

Day 4 was officially "Pebbles Day" in Vegas. Who the hell wants to hear what she wanted to do all day? Besides, she could post it over at TuckFards if it was so exhilarating right?

For the record, Day 4 was a hoot! We did the list of 'things we've never done together in Vegas.' One of which I am truly amazed at how much frickin' fun it really was. We may have just found our own version of Crack in what is lovingly known as, The Penny Slots.

Yes! Penny Slots!

Quick question for anyone who is a Penny Slot Junkie. How the hell do you win at those things? I mean, we hit rows full of starfish, rows full of shithawks, rows full of lighthouses and hundreds of rows full of various other shite, that each paid us a grand total of $0.90 for the $0.75 we had invested. But there were times when I couldn't count all the connected zig-zagging lines that went through complete crap, that paid us $22.00 or more a pop. What's the real secret gang? Are these things the NLHE of slot machines or what? Hit complete crap and come out a huge winner!

We each found one that made us laugh out loud and like moths to a flame, we were drawn in every time we were in the Penny perimeter. Mine was Rock Lobster. Yes it played the song every time we hit the bonus. I went on one run of picking traps in the bonus round that let us hear the song 1 1/2 times through. We danced in the aisle the whole time and thus, caused our server to literally LOL. We didn't care and it showed, so she joined in and busted some pretty good B-52 like moves right along with us. We grabbed our drinks and I looked down at the bonus payout I'd just hit. The machine said $11.95. I gave the great dancing Liz a $12 tip. It just seemed reasonable.

Then Pebbles came across a sweet old blue hair playing a game called Village People Party. Just as she was walking by, the machine lit up the entire area and started belting out YMCA. I'll be damned if that old doll didn't boogie her ass off, right there in the seat. We were rolling on the floor as she explained, "You don't win if you don't dance baby!" And dance she did! Complete with the arm actions you see made by really drunk guests at an open bar wedding. Well this causes quite the commotion and some guy sits in the seat at the end of the old girls row. Peb's gives me "the look," and sits down at the middle machine. Her hand reaching up and over her shoulder, I hand her some cash. First pull. FIRST FRIGGIN' PULL and that thing was wailing out the tune again. Instantly, all three of them are out of their seats and doing some form of disco-sonic-hustle-bump motion and singing at the top of their lungs.

As I fell to floor, (due to lack of oxygen intake from serious 90% exhale-only laughter) I hit my back on one of the chairs behind me. None of them noticed though, they were all firmly entranced with the beauty of the dance, and the cha-ching of the Pennies racking up on Pebbles machine. Apparently drink bringing B-52 Liz noticed and as she handed me my Scotch, at least asked if I was alright, before bustin' another move with my wife.

That wasn't the only thing bustin' over there though. With the combination of her arms spelling out YMCA, and the nearly there outfit they supply for Liz to perform her liquidious duties in, let's just say it was like her tip had now turned into more of a lap dance payment! Peb's managed to rack up about $36 on her little boogie-thon so I slipped Liz $20. It seemed only fair with everything I enjoyed during the dance and besides, she was definitely better qualified than most of the afternoon shift we'd seen so far on the trip. And we were giving them $20 for a much lesser view and very sub-standard dance moves. Well, having our little dances and showing a sizable Penny profit, Peb's cashed off the machine. It was then that Liz mentioned her favorite machine over in the back there. "I love that one because it plays Santana." she said.

There comes a time in every man's life, when he must realize the real secret to having a great marriage. I needed to utilize that secret right at that moment. I looked my darling wife right in the eyes and said, "Don't you just love Santana?" Many a man would wait for the question and say something like, "whatever you want" or the worst offender of all, "Yes Dear." Not me! It was her day and I was going to take part in it dammit! After the hug was over, I dropped another $20 into Black magic Woman. This $20 didn't do so well. We sat there and lost it in no time playing $0.75 at a pull. No bonus round, no music, no Liz and Peb's bumpin' body parts in the aisle. WTF ??? I thought this might just get us to quit the new habit cold turkey. We sent a very sad puppy looking Liz, away for more drinks. We needed to re-group and come up with a plan of attack. How were we going to get our Penny Jones back on?

After seeing the look on poor Liz' face as she skulked over to the bar, I was terrified to look over towards what surely must have been a devastated Pebbles! BUT NO !!! There was Peb's just sitting there, humming along and right in the middle of the chorus. Da-da-da-magic-woman-da-da-da-da. She looks up at me and says, "I can't imagine what kind of dance Liz does to that hun?" I plugged my $48 slip from Rock Lobster into Black magic Woman, just as Liz was returning with our drinks. Both of their faces lit up the room and then on the fifth or sixth pull of that damn arm....

My Pebbles Day happy place?

Second verse..... Liz on one side..... Peb's on the other.

Don't turn your back on me, baby.
Don't turn your back on me, baby.
Yes, don't turn your back on me, baby,
Don't mess around with your tricks;
Don't turn your back on me, baby,
'cause you might just wake up my magic sticks.

With a very wry smile and quite the gleem in her eye, my Pebbles looked me right in the eyes and said, "Hmmm, well I guess THATS how she dances to that song honey,"

;o)

Last day........ on it's way.

My sincerest thanks for dropping by....

6/18/2008

Vegas.... Day 3....

Day #3 saw momentum switch over to the good guys of poker. :o)

With our full intention being a return to the MTT at The Riviera, we sat down at a table of Let it Ride/three card poker early in the morning there. We figured we'd kill some time until the 10 am start of the NLHE event. We would not make the 10 am event!

I went on a run that I've only ever seen others get on before. Now no real monster hands as such, but a run of no-brainer after no-brainer, followed by dealt down trips, followed by dealt down trips turned boat, followed by a three card straight flush turned 5 card flush etc..etc...etc...

Let me tell you, there's something SOOOOOOOOOO special about having the pit boss at a gaming table, come over and ask if he can chip you up because, "you seem to have the vast majority of $25 chips available at the table sir!" It was now 11:30 and we'd been sitting there for a couple of hours. We took the chip up as a sign to leave happy. So we did. We left the Riviera and headed right to the IP. Back to Let it Ride and three card poker! How well did we do there you ask? I thought the chip up was very special at the Riv. That was until I realized I had "brown-suits" watching me at the IP.

Our dealer said, "you're on a good run!"
The Pit Boss said, "Quite the run you have going!"
Roz the Cocktail waitress said, "The guy in the brown suit, is security."
Bam-Bam said, "How come no one ever pays attention when I lose 10 in a row?"

Yep, I went ten winners in a row.

6- No brainers of which 2 turned into a set.
3- Nothings that turned into a pair of 10's or better
1- three card straight that improved to make the five card straight.

Then in a brilliant move, the lovely old girl that we'd met everytime we'd played at the IP, hadn't put her money on the three card bonus the very next hand. I put $5 on it for her. I get dealt trip Jacks and set my cards down immediately. She looks over at me and says, "WOW!" As the first card up is the 6 of hearts, she tucks her cards under the last chip and say's, "Let 'er Ride!" I ask what she has, but she just smiles at me the same way she had been doing on the earlier days. The King of hearts comes up on the river and she smacks her hands together and say's, "DAMN!" She was dealt the 3, 4 and 5 of hearts for the three card straight flush. The 6 of hearts gave her two outs for the five card straight flush and she wanted it pretty bad. The whole time, I thought her wow was for the hand I'd been dealt.

She tried to give me a lot of the chips she'd just won, but I kindly refused. So the next hand we played, she tossed my chip from the three card bonus spot back to me and said, "I got this one." It was my first loss since sitting down.

Up an awful lot of chips and feeling the hunger pangs of a degenerate gambler, I suggested to Peb's that we head out and grab a bite to eat. We left the second Casino of the day, up a substantial amount.

We managed to make it to one of the later NLHE MTT's at The Riviera and it was game on from there. Had it been a knock-out format, I think I would have made an awful lot of moola on this one. I single handedly removed each player at my table with monster hands such as, flopped Quads, flopped nut straights and several nut boat over boat situations. Today was my day and the cards just kept on coming. The four starting tables were breaking down very rapidly and by breaktime, we were down to just two. As I went for my smoke, I surveyed the remaining stacks, Pebbles seemed to be the chip leader over at her table as well. I sensed something special right at that moment. In the next 30 minutes, we managed to get down to final table. Everyone moved to the table I was at, and for a very good reason! It would have taken us forever to rack my chipstack at that point! Even chipping me up took the dealer and T/D a solid 5 or 6 minutes to do. What a feeling!

In the perfect situation that Hollyweird itself couldn't have scripted, it came down to me and Peb's heads up. One look at the prize money involved for first and second places in a $50, 36 player event and our decision to make the chop was easily made. Besides, the faster we got out of there, the faster we could get back to the tables.
(read : Degenerates!!!!!)

Later that night as we wandered around the tables at The Rio, we decided to sit down again. Let's just say that by the time we'd heard from CK and VinNay, we were about to leave our third very successful session of Let it Ride for the day. ;o)

I bought cmitch his Birthday beer as promised. We chatted with Bayne and CK a whole lot more, and met Pvanharibo, (although I was not aware of it at the time!) and a few others. So some drinks at the bar and some great conversation, made for a perfect cap to the night.

More later....

My sincerest thanks for dropping by....

6/17/2008

Vegas.... Day 2....

Day #2 saw Pebbles and I get up pretty early once again. Just another couple of hours of sleep, and it seemed our Vegas motors were all charged up and ready to rock and roll. Since she hit for about $46.00 on an impulse played nickel slot, (we hadn't even made it 200 feet from the elevator!) something told me that this was going to be Pebbles day.

After a little bit of messing around with the odd machine hear and there, we bought in to the 10:00 am NLHE tourney at the Riviera. 26 runners @ a $50 buy-in, made for an $1100 pot. We like the Riv's game, as it offers the auto 6% to the dealers and then a 90% payback of the entry fee as well. Also at only $50.00, the play can still be soft enough that you can go in feeling pretty confident in making it fairly deep. Of course my confidence wained just a touch, as I drew the same table as Peb's and she pulled the seat just two to my left. Yikes ! I smell a "chaaaark!"

It ended up not mattering where we sat for the most part. I hit a pretty sick run of crap cards. In my BB, I finally woke up with K-K to two limpers. I made a 3x raise and only UTG made the call. A flop of J-3-7 rainbow came out and I check-raised my opponents bet of 2 BB's, to a total of 6 BB's. He called. The turn brought out a second Jack and I could tell that he hated this card with a passion. I bet out pot and watched, as he squirmed in his chair like a school kid that just got caught writing his girlfriends name on his desk. He then called. (?) I'm lost as to where I stand now and, I seriously needed to re-evalute the hand. My first instinct was A-A. The river brought total crap to the board and I needed to make a decision. The one I decided upon, was the appearance of a value bet. I figured if it looked like I was just trying to get the exact amount I thought he'd call, he might be able to put me on the set. He called and then, flipped up A-A. I was the crippled stack, instead of him. His reasoning? "I can't fold those ever. I'da called your all-in, even though I really thought you had the Jack!" I told him that this was good to know.

Several more hands of crap and I am running out of stack to fight back with. Again I get a raiser in my BB and then a re-raise from the next position. I look down at 6-6 and then consider my opponents. Both have played A-x several times and the vast majority of those hands, were with A-x under 6. I have a chance to race for a triple-up, before the blinds eat me alive. No brainer IMHO. I'm not going anywhere in the event, if I don't get some kind of chip stack anyhow. I pushed. I get both callers and they have me covered. On a craptastic flop, there is a check from seat #4, and then seat #5 bets him out of the pot. We open up, my 6-6 against A-K off. I am ahead and see a turn King, quickly followed by the River Ace. I'm out in 11th.

Pebbles final tabled and I wanted to rail her pretty bad. But she was in "that" zone if you know what I mean. If you've played against her, you probably do! I sat back instead and let her keep focused on the action. I only sent the odd blown kiss here and there, when I thought it would not be a distraction of any kind. Three spots were paying and they were now down to six players. No matter where I went to get a good look, I couldn't get an accurate count of her stack. It didn't look too healthy though, and I was a little worried. I found out later that she'd apparently taken over the position of getting dealt my cards. A run of 8-2, 9-3 etc... while there were some really big pots being developed. She was also seeing real hands win pots, so making a move would have been a fairly dangerous proposition. She ended up pushing for an additional 1/2 of her BB, with two paint cards and lost. Peb's busts out in 6th. and stares me right in the eyes and says, "We're coming back here. We're coming back to win too!" (more on that later!)

With that all over and done with, we pointed ourselves towards Freemont Street. No real plans, just to play something down at Binions or The Nugget or maybe even the Freemont itself. Once we got there, we'd decide. Peb's made the decision to focus on the left side of the street. I agreed and along we went. By the time we'd come upon La Bayou, we'd broken even at everything we'd done. The girls outside La Bayou did the bead thing they do and walked us in arm in arm towards the floor. It was all slots. Peb's and I are not big on slots at all, but they were bringing us a couple of Margarita's and you know what? The place was fun inside. "What's $20?" I said. So we picked a machine and sat down. We alternated pulls and of course,

-I draw blank
-Peb's hits for $5
-I draw blank
-Peb's hits for $1
-I draw blank
-Peb's hits for $3
(you get the picture!)

We sat at that stupid machine for over an hour.
(or utilizing the proper measurement method, 4 Margarita's each +1 Beer for me)

Properly lubed up for some more gambling adventures, we made our way towards The Plaza. As we waited for the light to change so we could cross, we noticed a casino just down and to the right. Main Street Station said the signage.

"We've never been there Peb's." I said.
"Nope." Was the response, with that ever so slight slurage I love when she's pleasantly pissed.

So we headed over. There was a Let it Ride and Three card poker table that had two seats open beside each other. The rest of the table was laughing and the dealer had a great big old smile on her face. "Presto!" I actually said out loud. We'd found our spot. Three hands after sitting down, the dealer was changed. I hate it when the dealer can't get into the spirit of the table and have fun with the folks playing. This guy had potential at first, to be the type that can make me leave a table. But things changed dramatically, as he really came around and had some fun with the entire group. About 15 minutes into his break coverage for our previous dealer, Peb's gets dealt trip 5's. A nice payday in both games, but she wasn't done yet. The case 5 comes out to, for a score of $900. WoooooOOOOOoooooT !

Peb's tosses "Tom the Dealer," $50 and says, "Thanks!" Well I can tell you something for absoloute certain, Tom hadn't seen a lot of $50 tips! Man did he beem and he continued to do so, all the way down the pit as he went off on break himself. It was good to see. Before he left for his little 1/2 hour break, he managed to deal Peb's a full house and a couple of straights as well. All no brainers so, she got maximum value out of the chips she had on the table. Together we'd bought in for $200. Pebbles had about $1200 sitting in front of her and oh yeah, another Margarita! I didn't go broke or make anything special down there. In fact, I think I ended up down $5 after hour 3 or so hours of play. That makes it about $0.50 each, for all the Beer and Scotch I drank and I think I'll take that!

We left way up and will definitely try to let Main Street Station get some of it back, the next time we're in town. It's not the party that is the IP, and it's not stuffy and hoity-toity like the Wynn. It's a damn fine mix of both and I'd recommend Main Street Station to anyone. Clean, friendly, great clientele and a staff that knows you're there to have a good time! Hell, we may just stay there next time around! (read : I sense a comp in Peb's future!)

It was now time for the slush-buckets to get some food into them. All I'm gonna' say is, Flamingo = 1/2 a cow. I'd remembered being told about the Flamingo's Prime Rib dinner a long time ago by Barney. I hadn't been back there for several years and I was suspicious about whether it would still be the same or not. When we first walked in I took a look around at the plates I could see out on the tables. "Freaks!" I said to Peb's. Everyone was having some form of green frickin' salad! I wanted to see me some COW ! We were sat in a booth with a few tables of two to four dispersed around the area. I noticed that each section almost seemed to be divided by age, as the slightly younger were in one area, the more mature in another and what appeared to be happy go lucky "our agers," all in the section in the middle.

Well I got me some cow! I'd say about 2/3 of one, and man was it good! A properly seasoned and well cooked Prime Rib, has a very special and dear place in my heart. (and in my belly!) At first, I called Peb's a freak too. But then I realized why everyone had one of those stupid salad bowls out in front of them. It was a Crab & Shrimp salad of some sort. Yeah the bowl had Lettuce and other green crap in it but on top! On top was a gazillion Crab legs and some of the best looking Jumbo Shrimp, I may have ever seen. Peb's is a Crab nut like me and she says besides being slightly watery from being served up split, the Crab was great.

Once our bellies were full to the top, we decided to take in a little more WSoP action at the Rio. All of the usual suspects were there and this would be as close as I would come to shaking hands with "Jesus." It didn't work out as planned however, as I did get my, "Hey, how's it going?" from Chris Ferguson, but someone else with large breasts managed to get his attention away from me. I am not bitter, this is one of the things I like about the man!

Then while watching and waiting for the LHE money bubble to pop and players playing in a hand-for-hand situation, Daniel was taking the time to ham it up with the crowd and pose for the odd picture. He was called back to the table and said, "sorry, I gotta' run!" and he preceded back to the table with a little skip.

"Yeah BUT, it doesn't mean you can run like a girl!" I said to him.
He glanced over with quite the look of dis-belief on his face. He looked down at his cards while kneeling on the edge of his seat, and then tossed them into the muck. It was then that he stared over at me once again.

While he was staring, I said, "I can say that. I'm Canadian!"
"Yes. Yes you can then." He responded. "What part of Canada you from?" he asked, while making his way over to me.
"About an hour North of your home town." I said, and I could tell that this got his serious attention. We had a very short window to get a few key points and comments in, but then he had to look back at the hand in play and that got his full attention for sure. The bubble had just burst and it was break time. He grabbed his gear and was gone in a separate direction to everyone else. I missed my chance to get a little one on one time right then. He took one look back and we both gave a wave, I said to Peb's, "I know he's going to win this Mother." and he proved me right.
My favorite quote of Daniels to-date?
"The heads up match was 'bam-bam' quick."

More to come....

My sincerest thanks for dropping by....

6/16/2008

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....

6/15/2008

The highlight reel....

Just got back in the door and I'm going with point form for now.
Much more about the latest Vegas trip later.

-Far too much alcohol.
-Not enough time with good friends.
-CK... Just plain rocks!
-Some quality time with Pauly and Change, is ALWAYS time well spent.
-Three. (the number of times I was called "Baby" by Scotty Nguyen)
-Thirty-seven. (the number of dial-a-shots made or received)
-In honour of, (and with all due respect to) Pauly, the first pro I pissed next to was Phil Gordon.
- Had a very classy conversation with Barry Greenstein.
-Finally met F-Train.
-Bayne doesn't look like he should ever struggle with anything.
-It was a week full of Quads for both Peb's and I.
-Didn't leave millionaires but you know what?
Thousandaires has a nice ring to it. ;o)
-Spending a night with The Corporation, was a hoot.
-VinNay is certainly one of the cool cats.
-Peb's is the hot chick you want shooting for you in craps!
(35 minutes straight!)
-I now own Jack Binion's last gold dollar!
-Degenerate gambling is one of the things I do bestest.
-We heard it was pretty hot outside all week.

Lot's more to talk about but.... the red eye seems to be kicking the crap out of me right now. Red eye flights pointed East and that one screaming kid on the plane, make for a pretty tired Bam-Bam.

My sincerest thanks for dropping by....