Incompleteness as the inevitability I'll have to live with...aka Stacked and Stacked again (and that's the good news)...aka Vegas Baby!
Standard Disclaimer with Ammendents, on Advice of Legal Counsel:
This shit is long. Although it’s agreed in principal that people are at least vaguely curious as to what the guy whose blog it is has been doing since the last time they stopped by – even I can see you’d have to be pretty fucking curious (ie. morbidly obsessed with me) to find what follows worth the time investment. Just how long is it? I haven’t even written one word of it and felt the need to begin with this caveat. Forewarned is forearmed, or so they say.
Just Some of the Indictable Offenses You Will Find Below:
Well, almost. First some housecleaning with random thoughts in no particular order - just the way a post should be edited.
Here’s A List of People Who Didn’t Come to Vegas Despite Me Personally Telling Them To…aka Slow Folk I Like Anyway:
The Coolest Thing That Happened To Me in My Absence:
But about the trip...
Vegas was great.
In fact, it was that true rarity of travel events; a journey that exceeded expectations at all turns. To echo my boy D, those of you who knew it would be so were absolutely correct. Those of you who hesitated because you worried you wouldn’t know people, you must make the next one. Nobody cares if you’re new, old or no school. If you like and write about this bizarre, soul-sucking time-eater we call poker - you’re in. That simple. The great and powerful Oz (well perhaps it was another Little Person) had never heard of me or this interstate urinal that passes for a blog, but it didn’t stop him from buying me a drink (despite the fact he hated my choice - a Corona to chase my last jack and coke - mea culpa Iggy) and shooting the shit with our crowd for a good couple of hours on a late Sunday evening at the Ex.
It was that kind of nirvana: more come as you are, less territorial pissings.
But it began with a flight dogged by an early self-consciousness concerning the tedium of movements we all have to make in order to travel. A restlessness that held no hope in the promise of lasting significance was close upon me. To be cleaner about it: I wanted to arrive the moment I set out, but as usual reality proved far tougher to chew through.
The late night I booked prior to takeoff and the 3-hour time difference began to mess with my head as soon as I touched down. The first sign of exactly where I had mailed myself was easily interpreted. Along with the initial, unflinching blast of Nevada atmosphere, came the long-suppressed yearning for a cigarette and her attendant nihilism. Even the oxygen in Vegas encouraged self-destruction and poor decision making. Yet I wasn't paying enough attention to this distant early warning to foresee what lay ahead. Rookie.
After that bleak cab ride in from the airport, one which I spent ruminating on the observation that The Strip during the day looks like a 6-Flags before sundown: underdressed and undisguiseably artificial, I hit the MGM. I unpacked and celebrated the absence of my usual crew of noisemakers by taking a solid one hour nap. Unsurprisingly, I awoke sleepier than before and tried a shower to try and light this candle on my first EVAH trip to Vegas.
How strange is it that at 35 I was making my inaugaral trip to Vegas? It’s strange. Nevah played poker in a casino before either. Weird. Although I suppose there’s no better place to get deflowered than in Vegas. If Pauly’s right, it’s happening on the hour every night in BasinCity, so who am I to fight the tide when it’s ripping? That’s right, no one at all.
Lunch followed my meetup with Don. Though we have pretty different backgrounds and stories to date, D and I seem to have been friends for-evah. Meeting him just confirmed what Chris and Mookie have already posted about – he’s the real deal. We had lunch at the studio café where I ploughed through a passable cheesesteak and then got down to business playing ½ at the Fish Tank. D already covered how my first stack went bye-bye, so I’m going to save my bad beat tale for later. I won't even get into stack #2, where a guy rivers the nut flush over my already made not nut-flush. Yeesh! The fates took pity on me briefly when I got to meet everybody’s favourite pokergirl, Carmen, who took a photo of me my wife really likes, before departing to prepare for her first encounter with Waffles.
I will say that I did not have a great poker experience in Vegas. I got stacked twice playing ½ getting my money in well ahead both times, only to be rivah’d both times. However that shit pales mightily in comparison to Saturday's cockpunch. My exit at the blogger tourney was nothing short of revolting – I played the hand exactly as I would have if I could have seen John’s hole cards, would have been near the chipleader, but instead got handed my scrotal sack sans testes. I’d like to think I took all the card deadness and beats I worked through over the three days like a man, but I wasn’t watching myself. For example, it’s entirely possible some of you heard me whisper MothahFuckah when Tuscaloosa John (a very nice guy, but also a guy whose number I had the entire time we played together) did me in. If so, let me state for the record it was directed at the river, not my tablemate. Chalk it up to inexperience and please excuse the gaffe.
Back to MGM. I had a headache and was seriously questioning whether I even wanted to be in Vegas, if all I was going to be was a donator, or worse - another schmoe stuck in the Probability Matrix and unable to catch a break. However, a realistic bankroll saved me from despair. I had allotted 5 buy-ins for the weekend, which allowed me to feel like I was still okay, and with a change in the wind I might be able to turn it around before the end. I broke from the Tank while D was still hard at work, and decided to walk around outside in the Nevada afternoon and see if the heat could make me vomit or go blind from a migraine. The answer turned out to be “no, but very close”. The experience left me so dehydrated and head sick I essentially passed out in my hotel room and didn’t wake up until 3AM Vegas time. I caught Carmen’s phone message, still have it in fact, which summed it up succinctly.
“Iak! Where are you?! Get the fuck down here – everybody is here!” Is there anything cooler than a beautiful girl using the word fuck? If there is, I’m not aware of it.
How new was I to Vegas and hanging with bloggers? I mulled over wandering down there but guessed that at 3 AM there’d be nobody left. So I went back to bed, and missed the party of the blogger calendar year. Everybody was in fact there. And stayed there until the dawn’s unforgiving gaze found her way to the FishTank. What a retard. I missed meeting the Progenitor, Pauly, Change, Speaker, TheRooster, Felicia, Al & Eva, and of course, all of the people I tend to think of as our crew. Even now, all I can say is, “You Fucking Retard.” And worse, what a lousy precedent to set. Waffles & Jules would both site me as a bad influence when they retired early Saturday night, presumably independent of one another…(I keed, I keed!)
Saturday morning, I met the Legend some call Waffles. He was one floor down from me at MGM, so we cabbed it over to Caesar’s together. Aside from stiffing me on the cab fare, I have to say Waffles is a great guy to kill time with. His take on the world is dry enough to make a decent martini from. He seems genuinely surprised by the popularity of his writing, but I think that we’d all have to agree that few people out there lay it out as honestly and carefully as our boy. Plus unlike me, he’s a true blogger, posting 5 times a week and putting out a boots-on-the-ground version of his life that some of us are just too neurotic to master.
Waffles and I played Meet 'N Greet at the door to the poker room. We ran into many people I have read on and off over the last 6 months – none of whom had ever heard of me or my site (no shock there), but every one of whom knew who Waffles was and got a surprised, often impressed look on their face when speaking to him. I thought to myself as I waited for D and Carmen, “I am E, hanging with Vince at the QB premiere”. I have to say that just the idea of that comparison still makes me smile.
Caesar’s poker room is elegant and cleanly tailored, but what an opaque sign-in process – could not have been more keystone coppish if they deliberately tried! Of course, that is not in any way meant to besmirch the tournament organizers, who did an amazing job. April, I am very sorry I was too distracted to introduce myself and say thank you for putting this great time together. Everyone I met there was having as much fun as I was - and that was a shitload, for lack of a more evolved description. Thanks.
I can’t say much about my tournament play itself, primarily because I was booted only 2 hours after it started. I was pleased with my decisions and my ability to put the players to my right on hands with decent accuracy. I stupidly did not recognize that StB was sitting at my table from the get-go, in the 2 seat to the left of Carmen, with me clear in his sites in the 7 spot - but thankfully I picked up on his stone cold killer vibe early and then avoided him like he was exhaling bubonic spores. Suffice it to say, when I got all my money in it was an honest stack, around 3900 or so, and I got it in good with an opponent who had me covered by just a hair. KK v. QQ decided most unkindly by the last arrow in the bolt.
Fuck. I mean seriously, Just Fuck. What can you do? When it’s not your turn, it’s not your turn. That was the recurrent message Vegas wanted me to receive in no uncertain terms. All weekend she smiled with the willing interest of a quarterback’s bored girlfriend, but demurred when I placed a hand on her waist. I simply hadn’t paid my dues yet, thus it wasn’t my turn.
And there you have it - what else can I say? Congrats to F-Train and everyone else who went deep and hard at it. Next year in Jerusalem, with any luck.
OK, TBC pronto, wherein I will focus almost exclusively on the people I met, photographed and got to know.
Later.
This shit is long. Although it’s agreed in principal that people are at least vaguely curious as to what the guy whose blog it is has been doing since the last time they stopped by – even I can see you’d have to be pretty fucking curious (ie. morbidly obsessed with me) to find what follows worth the time investment. Just how long is it? I haven’t even written one word of it and felt the need to begin with this caveat. Forewarned is forearmed, or so they say.
Just Some of the Indictable Offenses You Will Find Below:
- A painfully detailed trip report, redeemed only by the welcome absence of any actual details. Instead, prevarications and generalized dissembling will stand-in as needed.
- Hand histories accompanied by a poker logic that might be amusing if the regrettable transfer of wealth from a blameless child’s college fund was not intimately associated with aforementioned logic.
- A bad beat. Yep. For Real. I got royally fucked at the WPBT and I am gonna write about it, whether human retinas ever indulge those pixilated photons or not. It’s therapeutic. Or so I am told, and will soon find out.
- Lengthy encounters with old and new schoolers alike and me stuck with nauseatingly pleasant things to say about all of them. Fuck, we’re good people. Well…maybe not me, but the rest of you are totally solid.
- An abundance of cursing that could easily be avoided by someone with an imagination, a vocabulary and any kind of self-restraint. Nope, 2/3 just don’t cut it on this one.
Well, almost. First some housecleaning with random thoughts in no particular order - just the way a post should be edited.
Here’s A List of People Who Didn’t Come to Vegas Despite Me Personally Telling Them To…aka Slow Folk I Like Anyway:
- Fuel: Sure it takes balls to call a guy whose game is so A-list he won his WSOP-ME seat months ago slow, but that’s how I, yah know, roll.
- Eric: FYI you & Fuel each owe me diez Washingtonians for settling our bet with D. After the trainwreck that was my cashflow in Vegas, I am waiting on you so I can buy groceries. Milk, Bone-Daddy, Milk. It does a body good.
- Wes: Find a way to take yourself off the Spammer’s list man, or I am gonna be forced to comment several times a post. And you bettah believe I will. That trophy is mine, all mine, so you may as well get it engraved now.
- Hacker: Yeah, you were running wild at the tourneys in my absence, but really belonged down southwest with the big boys. You were made for Vegas, Hack, you know that.
- Chris & Mookie: These guys get a pass ‘cause who doesn’t love a family guy? I won’t regale them with tales of the incredibly hot Thai cocktail waitress at RedRock who mashed her rack into the back of my head twice while serving Waffles. You both know the second time had to be on purpose. Sure it’s a spectator sport for me too, but boobie-mashafication is a victimless crime as far as I’m concerned. Like I said, I won’t bore you with it. I’d have put an emoticon there, but then I'd have to take a steel-toed boot to my own genitals. Use your imaginations if so inclined.
The Coolest Thing That Happened To Me in My Absence:
- Without a doubt, having a picture of me playing poker posted on the Tao of Poker just four months after I started a poker blog, and playing in my first true MTT. For the curious, that’s me 3 down from Amy Callistri’s cleavage, waiting on the two-outer rivah that will send me running in tears from the WPBT Summer Classic. Years from now when I have my WPT Fallsview title, I will look back at that photo as starting the revolution.
But about the trip...
Vegas was great.
In fact, it was that true rarity of travel events; a journey that exceeded expectations at all turns. To echo my boy D, those of you who knew it would be so were absolutely correct. Those of you who hesitated because you worried you wouldn’t know people, you must make the next one. Nobody cares if you’re new, old or no school. If you like and write about this bizarre, soul-sucking time-eater we call poker - you’re in. That simple. The great and powerful Oz (well perhaps it was another Little Person) had never heard of me or this interstate urinal that passes for a blog, but it didn’t stop him from buying me a drink (despite the fact he hated my choice - a Corona to chase my last jack and coke - mea culpa Iggy) and shooting the shit with our crowd for a good couple of hours on a late Sunday evening at the Ex.
It was that kind of nirvana: more come as you are, less territorial pissings.
But it began with a flight dogged by an early self-consciousness concerning the tedium of movements we all have to make in order to travel. A restlessness that held no hope in the promise of lasting significance was close upon me. To be cleaner about it: I wanted to arrive the moment I set out, but as usual reality proved far tougher to chew through.
The late night I booked prior to takeoff and the 3-hour time difference began to mess with my head as soon as I touched down. The first sign of exactly where I had mailed myself was easily interpreted. Along with the initial, unflinching blast of Nevada atmosphere, came the long-suppressed yearning for a cigarette and her attendant nihilism. Even the oxygen in Vegas encouraged self-destruction and poor decision making. Yet I wasn't paying enough attention to this distant early warning to foresee what lay ahead. Rookie.
After that bleak cab ride in from the airport, one which I spent ruminating on the observation that The Strip during the day looks like a 6-Flags before sundown: underdressed and undisguiseably artificial, I hit the MGM. I unpacked and celebrated the absence of my usual crew of noisemakers by taking a solid one hour nap. Unsurprisingly, I awoke sleepier than before and tried a shower to try and light this candle on my first EVAH trip to Vegas.
How strange is it that at 35 I was making my inaugaral trip to Vegas? It’s strange. Nevah played poker in a casino before either. Weird. Although I suppose there’s no better place to get deflowered than in Vegas. If Pauly’s right, it’s happening on the hour every night in BasinCity, so who am I to fight the tide when it’s ripping? That’s right, no one at all.
Lunch followed my meetup with Don. Though we have pretty different backgrounds and stories to date, D and I seem to have been friends for-evah. Meeting him just confirmed what Chris and Mookie have already posted about – he’s the real deal. We had lunch at the studio café where I ploughed through a passable cheesesteak and then got down to business playing ½ at the Fish Tank. D already covered how my first stack went bye-bye, so I’m going to save my bad beat tale for later. I won't even get into stack #2, where a guy rivers the nut flush over my already made not nut-flush. Yeesh! The fates took pity on me briefly when I got to meet everybody’s favourite pokergirl, Carmen, who took a photo of me my wife really likes, before departing to prepare for her first encounter with Waffles.
I will say that I did not have a great poker experience in Vegas. I got stacked twice playing ½ getting my money in well ahead both times, only to be rivah’d both times. However that shit pales mightily in comparison to Saturday's cockpunch. My exit at the blogger tourney was nothing short of revolting – I played the hand exactly as I would have if I could have seen John’s hole cards, would have been near the chipleader, but instead got handed my scrotal sack sans testes. I’d like to think I took all the card deadness and beats I worked through over the three days like a man, but I wasn’t watching myself. For example, it’s entirely possible some of you heard me whisper MothahFuckah when Tuscaloosa John (a very nice guy, but also a guy whose number I had the entire time we played together) did me in. If so, let me state for the record it was directed at the river, not my tablemate. Chalk it up to inexperience and please excuse the gaffe.
Back to MGM. I had a headache and was seriously questioning whether I even wanted to be in Vegas, if all I was going to be was a donator, or worse - another schmoe stuck in the Probability Matrix and unable to catch a break. However, a realistic bankroll saved me from despair. I had allotted 5 buy-ins for the weekend, which allowed me to feel like I was still okay, and with a change in the wind I might be able to turn it around before the end. I broke from the Tank while D was still hard at work, and decided to walk around outside in the Nevada afternoon and see if the heat could make me vomit or go blind from a migraine. The answer turned out to be “no, but very close”. The experience left me so dehydrated and head sick I essentially passed out in my hotel room and didn’t wake up until 3AM Vegas time. I caught Carmen’s phone message, still have it in fact, which summed it up succinctly.
“Iak! Where are you?! Get the fuck down here – everybody is here!” Is there anything cooler than a beautiful girl using the word fuck? If there is, I’m not aware of it.
How new was I to Vegas and hanging with bloggers? I mulled over wandering down there but guessed that at 3 AM there’d be nobody left. So I went back to bed, and missed the party of the blogger calendar year. Everybody was in fact there. And stayed there until the dawn’s unforgiving gaze found her way to the FishTank. What a retard. I missed meeting the Progenitor, Pauly, Change, Speaker, TheRooster, Felicia, Al & Eva, and of course, all of the people I tend to think of as our crew. Even now, all I can say is, “You Fucking Retard.” And worse, what a lousy precedent to set. Waffles & Jules would both site me as a bad influence when they retired early Saturday night, presumably independent of one another…(I keed, I keed!)
Saturday morning, I met the Legend some call Waffles. He was one floor down from me at MGM, so we cabbed it over to Caesar’s together. Aside from stiffing me on the cab fare, I have to say Waffles is a great guy to kill time with. His take on the world is dry enough to make a decent martini from. He seems genuinely surprised by the popularity of his writing, but I think that we’d all have to agree that few people out there lay it out as honestly and carefully as our boy. Plus unlike me, he’s a true blogger, posting 5 times a week and putting out a boots-on-the-ground version of his life that some of us are just too neurotic to master.
Waffles and I played Meet 'N Greet at the door to the poker room. We ran into many people I have read on and off over the last 6 months – none of whom had ever heard of me or my site (no shock there), but every one of whom knew who Waffles was and got a surprised, often impressed look on their face when speaking to him. I thought to myself as I waited for D and Carmen, “I am E, hanging with Vince at the QB premiere”. I have to say that just the idea of that comparison still makes me smile.
Caesar’s poker room is elegant and cleanly tailored, but what an opaque sign-in process – could not have been more keystone coppish if they deliberately tried! Of course, that is not in any way meant to besmirch the tournament organizers, who did an amazing job. April, I am very sorry I was too distracted to introduce myself and say thank you for putting this great time together. Everyone I met there was having as much fun as I was - and that was a shitload, for lack of a more evolved description. Thanks.
I can’t say much about my tournament play itself, primarily because I was booted only 2 hours after it started. I was pleased with my decisions and my ability to put the players to my right on hands with decent accuracy. I stupidly did not recognize that StB was sitting at my table from the get-go, in the 2 seat to the left of Carmen, with me clear in his sites in the 7 spot - but thankfully I picked up on his stone cold killer vibe early and then avoided him like he was exhaling bubonic spores. Suffice it to say, when I got all my money in it was an honest stack, around 3900 or so, and I got it in good with an opponent who had me covered by just a hair. KK v. QQ decided most unkindly by the last arrow in the bolt.
Fuck. I mean seriously, Just Fuck. What can you do? When it’s not your turn, it’s not your turn. That was the recurrent message Vegas wanted me to receive in no uncertain terms. All weekend she smiled with the willing interest of a quarterback’s bored girlfriend, but demurred when I placed a hand on her waist. I simply hadn’t paid my dues yet, thus it wasn’t my turn.
And there you have it - what else can I say? Congrats to F-Train and everyone else who went deep and hard at it. Next year in Jerusalem, with any luck.
OK, TBC pronto, wherein I will focus almost exclusively on the people I met, photographed and got to know.
Later.
posted by Iakaris aka I.A.K. at 11:46 PM
18 Comments:
You played very well! I was happy to have you at my table. I hope you and your wife will come back very soon and stay at the Red Rock (so I can keep the room key) and we will all have a great time hanging together.
Iak, it was an absolute smash hanging with you, Don, Hoy, the red-headed goddess who commented above me, and so on. Glad as hell you were able to make it out...just wish I had more time to take my flight of folly with Iakaris. This must happen again, man. It must happen again...
Teach me to write like you.
Sucks about the KK Vs.QQ hand, but what can you do. You'll get 'em next time.
great post man......
Wish I coulda joined ya....
Iak, it was a pleasure meeting you in Vegas, and hopefully it'll happen again sooner rather than later.
Great trip report...really kicking myself for not finding a way out there.
Any chance you are going back in December ?
Ick use big words make Sir head hurt. It was a pleasure hanging out with you and stiffing you for cab fare. I think it was an even trade since I had to imagine your bracelet.
Agreed, the second time HAD to be on purpose. No boutadoubtit.
Yup, I missed out, plain and simple. Had a good time in Maine though and will make it in December. Hopefully you are sufficiently addicted now and will turn up again. Great post.
I hate you and your ASS FACE!!!!
OK, I stole that from Waiting For Guffman, but jeez, nothing like rubbing it in for those of us who couldn't come along for the ride.
I will say that cleaning a loose dump out of my three year old Wiggles underwear sounds like it equates perfectly with your luck at the tables last week.
Now post the damn pictures...
hey nOOb,
it wuz cool hanging out with you guys for the short time you weren't crashed out. i like how you stack your chips in separate little piles. much more intimidating than one tall stack.
LOL
Sorry I didn't get to meet you in Vegas ... next time, I'll find you.
Carmen, just listened to the last message you left on my phone...it was indeed a pleasure, and I can't wait to bring my girl down so we can couple it up. Have to admit I really want to see Ka and O.
Hoff: likewise bro, likewise. anfd yep..to be continued definitely
l'artiste: Welcome, and thanks - this bad beat recanter will take all the empathy he can get.
JJ: I almost included you on the list with Chris and Mookie, but remembered you qualified for an even better exemption given the girls! Next time brotha fer sure.
Bobby: Welcome - like an idiot I left you off that old school list, I'll fix that. hanging with you in the X's bar will feature prominently in the conclusion. I said it and I meant, let me know if you're evah out my way. BTW I hear you won the WWdN - congrats! Now play the Mookie as promised.
Mookie and Chris: No doubt we will hit one of these simultaneously in short order. Ask D and Waffles about Jello Shot Girl at the MGM, if you really want a story...
Waffles: you may not remember this, but we actually got married on Saturday night...dont worry I filed the annulment before I left.
BP: I am back on diaper duty as I type, so the refuge was brief, but well deserved. Blogger bitchslapped me when I tried to download photos, but I'll give it another try with Part 2.
Smokkee: How dumb did I look, constantly trying to figure out how much I actually had every ten minutes! Yeah, yeah...pretty fucking dumb. How do you big-stacking bastards do the math?
Mark: Welcome - it would have been cool to meet in Vegas, next time.
Had a blast Iak and yes It's was truly "All that!"
Get your ass back her ASAP.
And don't you fret Jello Girl will make and appearance soon enough. No way that story goes unpublished. Where was the bracelet when we need him?
dam man wish u had a better run of luck in the city of the fishes and shark's....dont worry there is always next time...wish i could have been there take care and nice recap
blah, blah, blah. platitude, platitude, platitude. when do the hookers and blow stories get told? we need some cheap vicarious thrills here, for god's sake.
Anxiously await part II man.
Awesome meeting you and hanging in Vheygas. Wish I could have had the pleasure of stacking you once or twice at the cash tables like everyone else apparently did.
Too funny. They come with their bankrolls and small town heros trying to take down the big guns. I can't tell you how my first trip to Vegas went....ouch! Thus, I understand your pain. Nice meeting you over at the Castle, man. I'm sure everyone knows who you are now...you remind me of Robbie Benson.
D, Rav, Hack and Hoy - part 2 is up for your amusement on sleep-induction assistance.
Rooster: welcome! fuckin' cool to meet you in Vegas. next time hopefully get more time to talk.
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