Where Did the Time Go?

It seems like it's been such a long time since I've done this, I hope I remember how.

By "this" I mean write a blog post.  Yeah, I posted something Monday night before going to bed (this), but let's face it, even those of you who complain about my posts being too long couldn't be pleased with that.  It was such a trivial post I didn't even tweet it out.  I just stuck something up here so you'd all know I wasn't dead.  At least the GIF was nice.

I really can't believe I found so little time for writing while I was in Vegas for an entire month.  Where did the time go?  I honestly don't know.

I really expected to write and publish more than three "real" blog posts while I was up there.  I can't account for all the seemingly lost time.

Sure I played a lot of poker, but I bet I played less poker, on a percentage basis, than I have on most if not all of my recent Vegas trips.  I worked of course, but I wasn't overworked.  For a change, most of the Vegas rooms holding series didn't have a lot of last minute changes and corrections for me to tend to. And I saw friends and socialized, but really not as much as I would have expected.

And I can tell from the way I felt dragging my ass out of bed my first morning in L.A., I sure didn't spend much time in Vegas sleeping.

I just don't know where the time went, but it didn't go to blogging.

Perhaps the problem was that I wasn't very inspired.  It was a disappointing trip in many ways, and I don't just mean the poker. I mean, I did ok on the cash side but (spoiler alert) I failed to cash in any of the tournaments I played—and I played in a lot of tourneys.  I used to think I was a better tournament player than a cash game player, but I guess I need to rethink that.  Or maybe it was just being on the wrong side of variance.  On the other hand, maybe those times I did cash in tournaments (in what seems like the ancient past), I was just on the right side of variance?  But with all the series going on while I was there, this was certainly the time play tournaments if you like to play tournaments.

But it was more than the poker.  I was hoping to get some really great stories to write up, and the amount of good material I came back with was, again, disappointing.  There's not one incident, one story I'm dying to write up, and that's unusual.  And honestly, I haven't a really crazy/funny and or salacious story to write in a long time.  Those are the kind of stories that inspired me to start this blog and that I most like to write.  Just writing up poker hand histories is starting to bore even me—especially when the outcome is not favorable.

It got so bad—the lack of that kind of material to write about—that I actually considered playing some 2/4 limit. One night, I decided to take a break from poker and somehow found myself at the Flamingo.  That's the only poker room on the Strip where you can still find a 2/4 game.  I went over to check it out, thinking I may play some 2/4—not to play as much as to see if I could find a fun game that might just give the kind of story I'd like to blog.

Well, as it happens, they had just called a new 2/4 game when I got over there, and I checked out the players at that game.  OMG.  What a miserable looking group of human beings.  When I was playing it regularly, 2/4 games were fun—people laughing, joking, talking.  They were there to have a good time, not necessarily to take your last four bucks.  And there were usually women there.  Almost always.  And women were always a key part in my early, fun stories.  I sure do miss the "woman saids."

But this group...yikes.  All male, every last one of them miserable looking, like they had just lost their last ten bucks and had to beg on the street to come up with the buy-in for this game.  Not a one had a smile on their face, nor spoke a word.  You could tell just by the way they were all sitting there they had no interest in socializing. All with headphones or earbuds. It was sadder than the worst tableful of 1/2 grinders I had ever seen.  I suppose I could have looked at another 2/4 game but once I saw that game, I had no interest in playing 2/4 anymore.  The only story I could have gotten out of this game was a bad beat one. No thanks.

And truth be told, this trip just continued to sour me on the whole Vegas experience.  I've talked about this in the past, but really, aside from the poker (and a few friends who live there or I meet there), Vegas really has nothing for me anymore.  It used to be a bargain to go there, but now it's just a money pit.  There are no bargains. The rooms are expensive,  the food is expensive, and of course, they are now charging for parking most everywhere (not that I have to pay—yet—but it's only a matter of time).

When my buddy Norm and I used to visit Vegas regularly back in the day, aside from the gambling, we'd really look forward to a variety of really cheap, really great food options.  A lot of the time we'd hit a great buffet for just a few bucks that would usually provide us enough food for the entire day.  If not, we'd hit a really great snack bar for something to tide us over til morning.  Again, it was cheap.  We'd actually look forward to eating at all these places and plan our trip so that we could hit them all in the short time we had.  There were also great food specials at most of the casinos' coffee shops (and no, I don't mean a Starbucks).

Now it's so pricey to eat that I try to eat almost exclusively where I can use my poker comps—especially since now it seems those poker comps are going to expire, so if you don't use them fast you are gonna lose them.  That means I also choose where to play poker that night by where I have comps I can use.  And those places that take my comps—well, it can get pretty boring to keep eating there.

And as I get older, I have less patience with the inconveniences of Vegas and of Vegas poker.  For example, I won't mention any names but there are some poker rooms that are just too damn cold to be comfortable in. It was obscenely hot in Vegas when I was there—over 110° virtually every day and hitting 117° a couple of times.  But in the poker rooms, at least some parts of them, I felt like I needed a parka and gloves to be comfortable.  It's ridiculous. Seriously, I carry around a zipped sweatshirt but I'm not going to carry a heavy jacket around when it's over a hundred out there.

Also, a lot of rooms (again, no names) are not built for comfort.  For various reasons, the tables are too close together.  Certain seats are jammed up against the seat behind you from the table behind you.  Others, there's just a narrow path between them—too narrow for the average human to get through.  This doesn't stop people from trying.  It annoys the piss out of me when people walk behind me and bump into my chair, especially when they fail to exhibit the common courtesy to say "Excuse me."  Yeah, that really upsets me.

In most cases, it wouldn't take much effort to go around, just a few seconds.  And surely these people who do it have to be able to tell they can't really fit between those two chairs without bumping into people.  Perhaps these folks think they are a lot skinnier than they are.  But in a lot of cases, even if these guys were as fit as they were in high school—and clearly they no longer are—they wouldn't fit.  They'd have to be freakishly skinny to squeeze in, and they are not.

So what happens is I go to a room based on the comps I can use and then get sent to a table and a seat where I am freezing and being bumped into.  So I have to ask for a table change and maybe a seat change too.  And then I end up choosing a game to play based not on what table would be the most profitable for me, but based on where I won't freeze to death and also where I won't want to kill the next person that bumps into me.

Nowhere in any poker book have I read the section on "game selection" and read about picking a game in the warmest part of the room.  One time I actually left a really juicy game because I was too cold to concentrate on the poker.

So, I really dunno when I will be returning to Vegas.  Lately, every time I come home, I feel less and less eager to return.

But I don't want to sound too negative (too late?).  I did have a lot of fun, and I got to meet up with some friends and some fellow bloggers.  I'll have reports on those meetings for you at some point.

Assuming, that is, I can light a fire under myself to get to writing them up.  Like I said, maybe it wasn't the lack of time that prevented me from doing more writing.  Maybe it was lack of motivation.

Sigh.