Bloggers Night at Planet Hollywood

I might as well get to this brief session I had at Planet Hollywood on the last Friday in June.  Special guest stars were TonyBigcharles, VegasDWP and Lightning.  In fact, it was only because I knew the three of them were all there that I even went there.  Otherwise, I would have spent that part of the evening in my room, quietly sobbing.

You see that was the day—or evening, I should say—that I had planned to play in the Giant over at the Rio—the only pokering I did at the WSOP all summer.  I suppose I will do a separate post about that experience one of these days—but today is not that day.  Suffice it to say that I didn't get to play in the Giant nearly as long as I had hoped to.

Even before I had unceremoniously busted from that event, I had learned through texts and social media that that the aforementioned trio were all at Planet Hollywood—and in fact, were all at the same table. As it happened, I'd had a much more hectic day before the tournament than I had planned (starting time was 7pm) but I felt fine until that critical moment when I ran out of chips.  Suddenly, almost at once, all the energy completely drained out of my body.

I staggered to a bench in the WSOP hallway and checked my phone to see if the gang was all still there.  They were.  But for awhile, I couldn't drag my ass off the bench.  I was really too tired to play any longer.  I know that if I had remained alive in the tournament, the adrenaline would have kicked in and I would have been fine, but once I was done there, I was really out of it.

I was pretty sure I'd skip PH, but somehow, as I started driving out of the Rio, my car inexplicably headed toward the Strip and towards Planet Hollywood.  And I realized that tired as I was, I wanted to be sociable for a change.

By the time I parked and took the long walk to the poker room, I was almost in a zombie like state.  I knew I was in no shape to think, so I vowed to nit it up even more than usual and play almost nothing but nuttish hands.  I'd just be there to shoot the breeze with my buddies.  If I happened to get Aces, I'd hope they wouldn't get cracked.

I arrived and found the table.  Tony, DWP & Lightning were sitting next to each other in seats 3,4,& 5.  I said hello.  Tony greeted me with a long explanation of what he meant in a recent post of his where he seemed to blame me for all the spam comments his blog has been getting lately (as has mine).  Maybe it was because I was out of it, but I didn't follow Tony's explanation.

As an aside, he's sure right about the spam comments, they've been totally out of control of late.  So just recently I switched the setting on my blog so that you have to verify you're a human before it will accept the comment.  Fortunately it's one of the less intrusive kind of verifications—you just have to check a a box. I hope that won't inconvenience anyone too much.

Anyway, after Tony gave his explanation to me, he returned his undivided attention to his phone, and, as far as I can tell, barely looked up from it for the rest of the time that I was there.  Seriously, I didn't see him say a word to anyone the rest of the time I was there.

So I went to the podium to put my name on the list.  It was a long list, but there were lots of games running (the room was packed) and it didn't take all that long for my name to get called.

The guy took me to a table which was not the one the boys were at.  I asked him, "Can you put me on a table change for table 6?"  He said, "You want to play at table 6?"  Yes, you could certainly take that inference from what I had just then said.  "We have a seat open there, let me take you there."  Nice.  And thus I joined the party.

The open seat was seat 9 (the game is 9-handed).  So I was far from Tony and Lightning and not really that close to DWP. And at this hour of the evening (11:30pm I suppose), Planet Hollywood is one of the noisiest poker rooms around.  The poker room is not really separated out from the casino, and is near the "Party Pit" where they have loud music and go-go dancers dancing behind the pit tables.  And a whole lot of people walking by, talking, screaming, shouting and just generally acting like they're in Vegas.

I don't believe that PH has a nightclub ala Hakkasan, so I had forgotten that despite that, in the evenings it is a damn fine place to, um, "people watch."  There were scores of very attractive young ladies wearing outfits that would encourage their fathers to send them to a convent if they ever saw them (regardless of whether or not they were Catholic).  Sadly, my back was to the main pathway for these young ladies, so I didn't get to enjoy the show nearly as much as DWP & Lightning must have (I left out Tony because he was too into the game he was playing on his phone to ever look up).

So I didn't really accomplish the main purpose of my trip there—to chat with my friends.  But then, I may have been too tired to carry on much of a conversation anyway.  But as best I could tell, DWP and Lightning weren't talking to each other much anyway.

The main dynamic at this table was that there was a loud-mouth European sitting on my immediate right, and a very chatty, bubbly young lady sitting immediately on DWP's left.  The young lady had reddish brown hair (or perhaps it was brownish red) and was cute in sort of a "Plain Jane" way.  But she had a whole lot of personality.  She was clearly having a good time.  And most of the time, all I could hear above the casino noise and music, was the aforementioned woman and the obnoxious European on my right bickering, bantering, blathering and generally talking to and at each other non-stop.

Sitting between these two was a rather quiet guy who never-the-less seemed to be enjoying himself.  He may or may not have been with the Plain Jane gal, I never could quite tell if they were a couple or if they just met at the table.  I guess he was talking to both the girl and the obnoxious guy but the other two were so loud and so boisterous—and were talking non-stop—that I really couldn't hear anything he said.  (Edited to add:  Please be sure to scroll down and read the comment from VegasDWP giving a lot more detail on the three characters I just introduced you to.)

I only mention the quiet guy because he figured into the big hand of the night.  At least it was the big hand that I witnessed during my brief time there.  It didn't involve me, but it did involve VegasDWP.  Since I wasn't involved, I didn't take contemporaneous notes, so I'm basing my retelling of this hand based on voice notes I made a day after it happened.  I may have some of the details wrong.  If I have anything significantly wrong, DWP can correct me in a comment.

I believe DWP raised preflop and both the quiet guy and the obnoxious guy called.  Others may have called as well, but after the flop they became irrelevant (assuming they ever even existed).

The flop came Ace-high, two clubs.  The non-club card was 4.  DWP bet and the quiet guy shoved.  Now I had noticed when I get there that DWP had a healthy stack of at least $400.  The quiet guy had considerably less, probably less than $200 but not by much.  Now the obnoxious guy went in the tank, and he agonized verbally for a good long time before he finally said, "OK, let's gamble," and shoved himself.  I guess his stack was in the neighborhood of the quiet guy's stack.

So it went back to DWP who also went in the tank.  He did so a lot more quietly than the obnoxious guy.  But finally he said something like, "I'm feeling good....I call."

I'm pretty sure they all showed their cards at this point.  DWP had Ace-King (no clubs).  The quiet guy had 4-3 of clubs.  So a pair, a flush draw and possibly a straight draw (not sure about the straight draw).  The obnoxious guy had 10-6 of clubs, so a bigger flush draw than the quiet guy.

The turn was a harmless Queen of hearts, but the river was another 4, giving the quiet guy trips and the pot.  DWP reacted stoically, the quiet guy seemed happy but was still rather quiet but the obnoxious guy was acting as if he won—he was really happy, even though he lost.  He said, "I love that.  Look at that, I lost the biggest pot of the night," and he was laughing.  I think he just loved the gamble that both he and the quiet guy had exhibited.

Later, I guess maybe when the obnoxious guy was away from the table, DWP told the girl that I was a famous writer and that I'd be writing about this game—and about her.  So that's the main reason I even mentioned her in this story—I didn't want to make a liar out of DWP.  The girl, by the way, didn't seem the least bit interested in the fact that I was supposedly a famous writer.

Then he said to me, "Rob, when you write about that big hand, please try to make me look good.":  I said, "Yeah, of course.  Hell, you were ahead when you got it all-in."  He replied, "that's right, I was."

As it happened, I only wrote down one hand that I played.  It turned out that Tony was also in the hand.  From the button, I limped in with Jack-10 suited.  I was too tired to think about raising there.  There had been a few limpers, and I think four of us saw the flop.  Tony was either the big blind or had limped in under-the-gun.

The flop contained two of my suit (I was too tired to even note which suit it was).  Tony led out for $5 and I called, and we were heads up.  The turn was a blank and I checked behind him.  I hit my flush on the river.  Tony checked, I bet $10 and Tony folded.  Real exciting, huh?  I think it must have been the only hand I won.

Did I mention I was tired?  Also, I was developing a nice headache, I guess from the noise of the casino and also from having the obnoxious guy talking loudly in my ear for the past hour.  So when the seat on Tony's right opened up, I didn't bother to move to it because I knew I was basically down to my last orbit.

And thus when the big blind came around again, I racked up, said goodbye and took off.  I had just enough strength left to make the long walk to my car and then drive back to my room.

It was nice to see everyone—at least to the extent that I did in my drowsy state.