The Unlikely Nit

This was another night of unsuccessful poker from my last Vegas trip. The session produced two interesting hands,

After about two hours, the only pot I had dragged in was a chopped one.  Somehow, I still had about $160 of my $200 buy-in.  Yeah, I was that card-dead.  The guy on my immediate left was an aggro German (redundant?).  More annoying than his aggression was the fact that he was coughing a lot.  At least we were separated by the dealer.  I was about to get up and ask for a table change when this hand happened.

I limped in with pocket 2’s. It was four-way, including the German.  The flop was 7-5-2, two clubs. I bet $8 and the German made it $20 and it folded back to me.  I decided to just call.  Based on his play, I had every reason to believe he would do the betting for me the rest of the way.  He might have been semi-bluffing with the flush draw, but I thought that was unlikely.  A blank hit the turn, I checked and he put out $31, which I called.  Maybe that was the time to get it all in?  I dunno, but it wouldn’t have mattered in this case.  The river was another 7, which I thought I liked. I checked, confident the German would bet.   I was right, he put out $58.  Of course I shoved my last $120 or so.  He snapped called and flipped over 7-5 off suit.  Ugh. I was ahead the whole way until he rivered a bigger boat than I did. 

I bought another $200, and was still thinking of asking for that table change when my German friend took a break.  I figured I hang around until the German and his cough came back.  Well, he was gone for a good 45-minutes and when he came back, he racked up his chips without playing a hand.  I wasn’t sorry to see him go, but seriously, I hope there is a special place in Hell for people who do that, tie up a seat for any length of time and then come back and leave without playing again.  Why the hell didn’t he just take his chips and leave the seat available in the first place?  That is just so damn rude.

Then suddenly there was brief period where I actually got some cards—and won nothing.  I had pocket 9’s, raised, and no one called.  Same thing happened a few hands later when I had pocket Queens.  Just a few hands later I got pocket Queens again.  I was in the small blind, it folded to me, so we chopped.  And then my “rush” was over.  That’s how I was running, folks.

Then came the strangest hand ever.  I had Jack-10 of clubs in the big blind.  There was no raise.  I repeat, there was no raise. There were four of us seeing the flop, including an Asian fellow on the button. He was fairly new to the table and hadn’t made an impression on me yet.  But to repeat, he was Asian and he limped in from the button.

The flop was 7-7-3, rainbow.  No one bet.  Again, that includes the Asian who limped in on the button.  A Jack hit the turn, so I led out for $6. It folded to the button, who was the Asian guy who had limped in from there, and he called. The river was a blank. I bet $10.  He called. I showed my hand.  He said, “No, you needed a 7.”  And flipped over his pocket Aces.

WTF?  An Asian who limped in with pocket Aces from the button?  And didn’t bet a flop like that? I won’t even get into his passive play on the turn and the river (since he let me get there so cheaply, he might have been worried that I caught something bigger than his overpair). I just couldn’t believe it.  He didn’t seem like he was a new player, he wasn’t that old, it just totally baffled me that he could play that so nitily.  Wow.  I think I almost fainted when I saw his Aces.  I would only expect play like that from a really old geezer playing in a locals room.

Did I mention he was an Asian?  Not that I’m stereotyping or anything.  I would never do that.

But yeah, he was Asian.

I did manage to win a few dinky pots after that.  One of them was when there were four limpers in front of me and I had Aces in late position.  I made it $16 and everyone folded.

It was just another bad session during a trip with an unusual number of them.

Did I mention the Asian guy who limped on the button with pocket Aces…….

Julius Caesar & Princess Leia (Halloween 2015)

This Vegas Halloween report (aka, the Halloween Slut Parade) will be a bit different from the past two, which you can find here and here.  Although it was wonderful night for people watching, there’s less for me to tell you about than in previous years.  Describing costumes is a lot less interesting than seeing them for yourself, and I think I pretty much have run out of ways to describe them by now.  Plus, there were just fewer interesting relatable stories from this year than in the past.

But unlike previous years, I was able to get some of my own pics from the night.  However, none of these pics were posed, and I kind of got them surreptitiously. I could tell  you how I got them, but I’d have to kill you.  The last three pics in this post were not taken by me and are not pictures of ladies I saw on Halloween.  The other ones were all from yours truly.  Since they weren’t posed, the quality might not be that great and I certainly don’t necessarily have the best angles, and I apologize for that.  But hopefully it’s better than nothing.

I played in two rooms on Halloween.  I started out at Planet Hollywood late in the afternoon.  The interesting thing about that is that PH allowed their staff to dress up if they wanted to.  This wasn’t necessarily a good thing.  The hot girls dealing in the “Pleasure Pit” were generally wearing less sexy costumes than their normal outfits.  Same thing with the cocktail waitresses who decided to come in costumes.  None of the outfits in the pit that I saw were all that interesting,

A couple of the poker dealers were in costume.  The one that made me take notice was a guy wearing a toga and a laurel reef (he had a t-shirt on so it wasn’t inappropriate).  As he pushed in, I looked at his named tag.  It was definitely an official Planet Hollywood name tag.  And it said, “Julius” and I started laughing.

“Julius, huh?” I asked. “What’s the last name, Caesar?”  He put his fist to his chest and then stuck his arm straight out, the Roman salute.  The whole table was laughing.  Another player inquired and lo and behold, Julius wasn’t his real name.  Somehow he had gotten a hold of the perfect badge for his costume.  Then he said he was going to use the tag next year with some kind of “orange” theme.

I played there a few hours and, like so many sessions from this trip, it was totally unremarkable and contained nothing to blog about.

I moved on to MGM, where I anticipated another great night of the Halloween Slut Parade.  I wasn’t disappointed. Somehow, just by pure coincidence, I found myself sitting in one of the primo seats to view the parade, I mean the costumes, as the folks headed to and from the club.

Now, there weren’t that many costumes that stood out for their uniqueness or creativity.  As usual, there were a lot of costumes I couldn’t identify.  The ones I could identify weren’t all that imaginative, with a few exceptions.  I think the most memorable costume was on a guy.  He was naked except for briefs.  He was covered head (bald) to toe in silver paint—seriously.  He was the Silver Surfer.  I knew this because of the “surfboard” (also completely sliver) he was carrying.  Although it was actually an ironing board.  He was with a woman in a costume I couldn’t identify, it was colorful and somewhat bikini-like but with a frilly bottom and a frilly top.  But honestly, this was one time I was paying more attention to the guy than the girl. 

One costume that got the attention of all the guys at the table was a gal in a German beer hall outfit, or maybe she was supposed to be St. Pauli Girl.  She had a low cut top, with a heavy duty push-up bra.  The resulting boobage was quite abundant. One of the guys at the table commented that the boobies we were seeing were definitely “after-market.” The dealer said, “Yeah, way after-market.  Like at least 10 years after-market.”

Well, she disappeared but after some time she came back, walking the other way.  She was with a guy, and I have no idea if he was in costume or not.  Anyway, the girl got our attention again and the guy noticed that suddenly everyone at our table was looking at his companion.  So he stopped and said to us, “Come on….they’re just titties.”

Apparently I missed the best costume of the day by leaving Planet Hollywood too soon.  A guy at my table said he had seen the best costume over there earlier.  It was probably about an hour or so after I had left.  In the main casino, he noticed a woman wearing a really accurate Princess Leia slavegirl outfit.  Apparently, she was wearing it really, really well.  She was just wearing the hell out of it.  Anyway, he watched as she and a guy dressed as Han Solo walked over to the poker room, where he was headed anyway. Although to hear this guy tell it, she was so smoking hot I think he would have sat at any casino game she was playing just to get a better look. Leia and Han were seated at the same table, and this guy requested a table change and eventually managed to get a seat right next to Leia.  Then he told us that it sure as hell looked like Leia was not wearing any underwear.  I believe he spent most of the time at the table with her trying to determine this for sure, and finally reached 99% certainty she was commando.

He then he told us, “Unfortunately, after about a half hour, Obi-Wan came by to get them and they left.”

I found that highly amusing. “Wait, no Luke?  Where was Luke?”  Apparently, Luke was off trying to destroy a Death Star or something.

Although the costumes as costumes weren’t all that memorable, an awful lot of the females wearing costumes were showing an awful lot of skin. This did create a significant distraction from the poker, as you can imagine.  Although there were plenty of legs, and partial buttocks, and bare midriffs, this year there seemed to be more cleavage than in the past.  I mean, Geez, was there a lot of cleavage.  On more than one occasion, I felt compelled to get up and ask the ladies to cover up.  Yeah, you can be sure that happened. 

And boy was the club packed that night.  I was there during the first month the club opened and it was busy as hell.  But I never saw anything quite like this.  There was actually one line that went all thru the front of the casino, outside into the alley, almost reached the Strip.  I guess it was kind of a perfect storm, what with Halloween falling on a Saturday, and it also being the end of Daylight Savings Time, so an extra hour to party.

But again, another unmemorable poker session.  I played over 5 hours and finished up $10.  I took several very nice scenic tours around the casino when I was done, and as I said, managed to get a few pictures worth publishing.

Hope you enjoy them.

Note, the pics above were all taken by me, but the pics below were not.  I included a Wonder Woman because as with last year, that was the single most common costume for girls to wear.  I can assure you tho, none of the Wonder Woman I saw looked anything like the WW below.

Breaking Bad Beat

I apologize for not having your regularly scheduled blog post ready for you this evening.  This isn’t really a blog post, and is certainly not a Vegas and/or poker related blog post.  It’s more like a fake blog post. Like fake boobs, only not really like that all.

Anyway, the reason I don’t have a “real” post ready today is that I took a break over this past weekend and binge-watched the final season of Breaking Bad.  Yeah, yeah.  I know I’m late to the party.  I’m pretty sure I’m the last person on the planet to have watched the complete series.  I mean, a few months back, my dentist even brought it up to me, and I had to stop him from spoiling anything by telling him I wasn’t through watching it.  (Note:  There are NO spoilers in this post)

I didn’t really intend to take so much of the weekend watching it, but man, at a certain point, I just couldn’t stop.  I only took breaks to sleep, play a little session at the Bike (here) and then do a quick blog post about that session.  So, if you were wondering why my last post was so short, now you know. 

I really do like publishing three posts a week, that’s always my goal, and preferably on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings—at least when I’m home.  When I’m in Vegas, the schedule gets messed up.  Now, you recall that a month or so ago I had what you may call a mid-life crisis and considered ending the blog.  Fortunately, I handled my mid-life crisis a lot better than Walter White did.  It was suggested to me that I merely publish less often.  But once I decided to continue, I really wanted to keep posting three times a week.

And then I got caught up with the last season of Breaking Bad, and lost a weekend.

I’m sure everything that could possibly be said about Breaking Bad has already been written, so I’m not really going to write about my reaction.  Needless to say, I thought it was one helluva show.  If you want to say it was the best dramatic show of all time, I wouldn’t necessarily argue with you.  If you want to say it was the best black comedy of all time, well, you’d almost surely be right.

It did take me awhile to get into it, I started watching many months ago.  It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, but I was just always too busy to get to it more often than not.  Truth is, it was so dark, I almost didn’t keep at it.  It was only because a couple of my close friends were raving about it that I kept going.  They have watched the complete series about five or six times, minimum, and they keep sending me texts during the evenings telling me that they are watching it again.  Seriously.  So I kept at it and then got really, really into it as the show progressed.

The difficulty for me, especially at the beginning, was that there were basically no good guys.  I kind of like real heroes (and real villains).  I like characters I can actually root for, who I want to win at then.  But this was so dark, so depressing, so violent, and so nihilistic.  Just not what I usually like in any way, shape or form.  But the incredible writing, direction, and acting finally won me over.  So I watched three episodes Friday nite, three more Saturday night and the final six on Sunday.  Phew!

And, even tho this is not a real post, I can actually tie Breaking Bad into the blogging world somewhat.  You see, I am quite sure I first heard of the show (back when it was in first run on AMC) from fellow blogger grrouchie soon after I started up my own blog.  He mentioned it a few times on his blog, I don’t think he said that much about it, other than he really liked it.  I recall asking him about it in person one of the first times I played poker with him.  He tried to sell me on it, the idea of ordinary High School Chemistry teacher turning into a drug dealer.  But man, did that ever sound like something I’d have absolutely no interest in.  I mean zero.

But like I said, hearing some of my closest friends tell me that they were on the fifth time through the entire show, I took notice.  Besides, by the time I gave it a shot, I heard so much about it, it seemed like I just had to watch.  I mean, you can’t be the only person on the planet who hasn’t seen Kim Kardashian’s ass right? And so, you can’t be the only person on the planet who hasn’t seen Breaking Bad.

Anyway, that’s done, and hopefully I will have enough time to do a regular, poker and /or Vegas related blog post for Thursday.