Day 2: Started Ugh, Finished Fine

11:30 Vegas time on Friday morning, after four hours of addled sleep I woke up with the overwhelming feeling that I’d rather not have. I thought I was going to avoid this this time, and I suppose it was improvement from July. But. I. Hurt.

I could not get back to sleep. So I undertook to shovel, shower, and schlep myself downstairs (a few others eshes as well I am sure). At the Geisha bar, I think were the brothers MrGrupp and Penner.

Feeling the dire need for a grease injection, I peeled off Penner and we marched up the strip. I’m not sure I was really providing coherent conversation, but I very much appreciated the camaraderie though I envied his human-normal hydration levels.

One Big Mac later, we resumed our northward march, taking a gander at the new Venetian poker room on the way to meeting up with Gracie and Maudie’s crew for brunch at the Wynn. Little did I know the feelings of pain and illness I felt as we walked through were not just my hangover but premonitions of my last session in Vegas—but enough of that now.

Onward to the Wynn I lurched with Penner (he wasn’t lurching). We then picked up strings of bloggers, including the soon-to-be Gigli and the entertaining author
of the red and green squiggles that adorn this piece as I type, and a long list of others as we filed into the buffet. I am afraid post-golden arches and inter-death haze I really wasn’t up to getting my money’s worth; I grabbed the most expensive looking food I could see but there was really no way I was getting more than one plate’s worth.

I sat across from Linda, and the Quiet Lion soon took the seat to my left. I managed to chat with him several times over the weekend—I personally found him funny as hell, though he had an odd, sick and twisted just this side of offensive sense of humor. I wasn’t present for the most egregious exchange that has been reported in the blog-o-sphere, and it sounds like he may have crossed the line. Poor attempt at humor or straight up deuchebaggery I will not deign to determine. Nevertheless, having heard the quotes, the offended people have every right to be offended, even if it was just an own-goal attempt at a joke.

Back at the IP, I shuffled up to my room for a desperately needed nap if I was to have any chance at catching the mixed games. I put a call into GCox, to whom I’d offered the second bed in my room as a small cost defrayal, to get him to grab his key. I drifted off, leaving the door ajar so he could get in without waking me up. 45 minutes later, from 10 feet outside the room, he phoned me. Doh!

He rolled on in for his own crash nap, especially since his night had tracked my own without the 4 hour sleep interlude. I drifted off, bliss—until THIS. Three times.

I’m not sure if I verbalized it, but I am sure thought crossed my mind to ask Gary if he felt his cell phone would work as well after bouncing from our tenth story balcony.

Lesson learned, I employed earplugs for the rest of the trip. Notwithstanding this, Gary was a pretty damn good roommate, particularly as I think that two hour naptime was the longest he spent in the room the whole weekend.

Since true sleep didn’t seem to be in the cards (pun intended), I put on my favorite shirt (if anything happens to said shirt, Mrs. SoxLover is the top suspect) and we headed down to see who was at the IP poker room. I saw a seat open at the 1-2 table to the right of Dawn and Karol, across from Falstaff, who greeted me with an insult (forget which one, they still blur) and next to some quiet dude with black hair intensely studying the table. Gary, you’ll be surprised to learn, hit the bar.

I played fairly tight, only blowing off chips a few small dust-ups with Karol, while I noticed a pattern emerging from the guy on my left. Dawn would bet, he would raise. Dawn was getting steamed, and I too got the feeling he might be coming in light. After awhile of this, the following hand came up. Dawn limps in middle position, I have QT sooooted and limp in behind her. Quiet guy makes it 15 to go and I can feel the daggers being eyed from my left to my right as it folded around to Dawn, who, with a scowl and a hiss, mucked her cards. I decided I would test my theory and see a flop.

Flop was AQ6 rainbow. I checked. Quiet guy makes it 20 to go. I thought for a little and made it 60. He went into the tank and finally mucked. Aha I thought, he was full of it! “Now maybe he’ll cut that shit out”, said Dawn.

Later, he told me he folded a weak ace. Oh, it turned out he was no Muggle, he was VinNay, one of our own, albeit a very quiet one of our own. We were to meet again on the final table the next day.

I ended up stuck a small amount for the session, and we cabbed it over (Gary and some others) to the MGM to find the blogger mixed games. These are a lot of fun since it’s a rare chance to play live games that I spend a lot of time playing online. HORSE is not my absolute favorite as I detest LHE and don’t really like O8, but all three stud games I love. (SoxLover’s ideal mixed rotation would be REST: Razz, Stud Eight, Stud High and Triple Draw, but despite my personality type, the world does not always run according to SoxLover.) I played the 2-4 HORSE for a little while, but when I realized a partial blogger 4-8 HORSE table was forming, I made the jump.

The only blogger I remember being there when I sat down initially (apologies if I forgot someone) was Toby. She was there with her beau, and I’d met them both at the Crackhouse tourneys back in the day.

I figured a random table would be soft since most people don’t play these games enough, but after a little while at my table, it became clear that most of the non-bloggers who had joined in did in fact play these games quite a bit—English accents were a big tell. It seems most people seeing the 4-8 on the board saw it as a great opportunity to get cheap practice for the much higher limits rotation usually is spread at in live rooms.

The table was tight and there were only a few obvious mistakes. Fortunately, the deck hit me and I was able to capitalize. I actually quartered some guy in a genormous stud 8 pot when we had the exact same low, very unlikely but nicely lucrative, especially as we had a couple of others along for the chase until 6th street.

Veneno/Al Can't Hang eventually joined us, with V playing the LHE and O8, and Al playing the stud games. This considerably loosened the table.

Later, the Quiet Lion and one of affiliates, a Simon something-or-ruther sat down with Michael Craig. I never mixed it up with the Lion, but he seemed to raise every single pot Michael played. It took awhile for the guy in between them to wake up to this pattern.

I hadn’t immediately realized Simon was with the Lion, but I did realize he knew what he was doing. We got in one big dust-up O8 hand when we both flopped the lock low, he with a straight redraw and me with a nut flush redraw. He got there, and worse yet my low got counterfeited on the river, ouchie. But I was able to rake in enough in various and sundry razz and stud hands to have a nice double up of my buy-in, that despite me missing a switch from razz to stud and capping 3 ways on third street with 7 hi. Oops.

In the meantime, Carmen showed up to compliment my awesome shirt and have it photographed for posterity. At the bar, Iggy later offered $125 to give the shirt to him off my back, but that was not nearly enough to part me from something the sight of which puts Dawn on autotilt (that plus the barman denied Iggy’s request to let me go shirtless, sorry ladies).

Pokered out for the night, I cashed out and went over to the bar to hang out with the gang. I kept it mellow, not trying to keep up with the general state of inebriation as I had the night before, and enjoyed the scene, chatting with Carmen, Iggy, Karol, Don, Joanne and others. It was a nice scene.

My favorite highlights were the Iggy-Karol GOP intramural debate and, of course, Waffles.

Favorite quotes from the dueling elephants were too long to repeat, but one riff included “it’s time to stop drinking the Kool Aid”, one of my personal lines as well. Nothing like a reference to mass suicide for a good chuckle!

As for Waffles, well, it was quintessential Waffles. Three marines at the bar, one of them making repeated attempts to, um, get to know Carmen and Love Elf, notwithstanding the fact that the latter had had a brand-new shiney rock on her finger placed there several hours before by the angriest man in poker.

After one last pass by a drunk Marine at Love Elf, and Waffles let the following rip:

"Don't you have some people to go kill?"

Luckily enough, the corporal was apparently too drunk to actually hear him as Don and I scurried in to stop what seemed to be imminent mayhem.

And that was the last highlight for Day 2 as I avoided the temptation to stay up with the crowd playing craps at the IP and got a full six(1) hours sleep as a prelude to the tourney.