My days off; my tablemates for Day 2

After closing out Day 1, I finished my last blog entry, then intended to go to sleep, but then I decided that I had two days off, so playing a little pai gow poker wouldn't hurt.

I like pai gow because the pace is stately, as opposed to blackjack, in which you shed money like a guy making it rain at a strip club.  Unfortunately, the pai gow table was completely occupied by people with big piles of money, so against my better instincts, I looked for a blackjack table.

Bally's live blackjack tables were priced at $50 a bet, too rich for this suburban dad.  What now?  I shrugged my shoulders and put $200 into a video blackjack machine.  I am not a fan of these things, because I'm sure they are finely calibrated through doctoral studies at MIT to psychologically strip you of your money while subliminally flashing messages like: 

"DON'T WORRY, YOU CAN MAKE MORE WHEN YOU GET BACK HOME"

"WOMEN LIKE MEN WHO LOSE MONEY AT BLACKJACK" 

"CVS IS HAVING A SALE ON SALTED CASHEWS - $4.49"

Somehow, I paced myself and won $100.  Ignoring the subliminal message "WASN'T THAT FUN?  NOW BET IT ALL," I extracted myself from the machine, cashed out, and went to bed.

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I didn't sleep long.  Vegas time is like no other.  In the evening, you look at your watch and say, "It's only 10:30.  The night is young!"  But in the morning, your body says, "It's 8:00 in Houston.  Time to get up!" at 6:00 a.m. local time.

That's what happened to me.  After going to bed at about 12:30, I was up at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep.  I had also left the blackout curtains open in my room and it seems like Vegas sunlight attacks awfully early.

I did the Wordle (solved in 4 guesses) and the Tuesday New York Times crossword (9 minutes, 30 seconds, not good).  I read the Times and the Chronicle online, turned on CNN, and made an appointment for a pedicure at 11:00.  I then rolled over and tried to sleep some more.

At 9:00, I woke up, showered and went down to play some pai gow.  This time, it was just one very lady at the table with bad tattoos who wanted to tell me how GREAT pai gow is.  I put down $200 and smiled.  About 30 minutes later, I was up $235 and had enough of hearing how GREAT pai gow is, so I cashed out. 

I went to my video blackjack table - the hypnotic command subliminally implanted in me the night before must have worked - and won another $100.  Up $435 at the tables for the day, I went back to my room and deposited the money in the room safe and headed for my pedicure.

Since I had all of this ill-gotten gain, I upgraded to a pedicure with a scrub and a paraffin treatment.  The pedicurist was very nice and spent practically the whole hour talking about her mostly unsuccessful love life and how hard it was to go dancing in Vegas without running into her ex or one of his friends.  I don't dance, so I couldn't relate.  But she gave me a pretty excellent pedicure and foot massage, so I was happy when I left.  Why don't I do more of that at home?

Spa Man!

I then hopped into a cab and raced to the Gold Coast for the 1:00 Bingo session.  I bought 129 cards for $60 and loaded them onto this iPad device that keeps track of them all as the numbers are being drawn.  After returning a call to my friend Lise, I settled in to "play" bingo, which really means sitting there sipping cranberry juice and vodkas while getting caught up on my email.

They played 11 games and I had nothing.  That was okay - winning wasn't really why I was there.  I just wanted to decompress some more after yesterday's long session of poker, and bingo is just the cure: meditative, quiet, and linear.

The last game was a blackout - your card wins when all the numbers have been called.  There would be three winners: the first bingo wins $1000, then the second bingo wins $1000, then the third bingo wins $1000.  I half-watched my device as the numbers accumulated until I saw that I had a card with just one number left.  Would I win the jackpot?

Nope.  Two people bingoed on the next number and split the first jackpot, $500 each.  I looked around to see if everyone else was packing it up for the day and remembered that there were two more prizes to be won.

I bingoed the next number.  The floor verified my winning board and since no one else had bingoed, I didn't have to split it with anyone.  A nice lady brought over $1000 in nine hundreds and five twenties.  Taking the hint, I tipped her $20.

Three people bingoed on the next number and split the last jackpot. I gathered myself up and called my Bingo sensei, Tammy, to let her know.  Tammy and our friend Marena had introduced me to the joys of bingo on a previous trip and I was sad that I had missed out on playing with them last week.  Tammy was excited for me and told me to put the winnings in the safe and forget about them until I left.  

Sound advice, which I mostly followed.

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Returning back to Bally's in triumph, I changed into a swimsuit and went back to the spa at the Paris and sat in the sauna for fifteen minutes with a guy from San Jose, who told me that rents are going down in California, but housing prices are not.

According to the temperature gauge, the sauna was 165 degrees and humid.  In other words, just another day in Houston.

I went back to my room, showered, and finished an early Robert B. Parker Spenser novel, Promised Land, before heading to Caesars for dinner at the Gordon Ramsey Pub and Grill with my poker buddies Anar, Samm, April and Suzie.

Dinner was excellent, as was the conversation.  I am really lucky to have these wonderful friends.

Beef Wellington at the Ramsey Pub

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I went to bed at 10:30 and woke up at 6:30, a nice eight hours.  Anar had texted me that my table listing for Day 2 was available and he sent me the names of the guys I would be playing with on Thursday.

They haven't filled the third seat yet, but this is going to be much tougher table than Table 666.  My internet searches yielded the following information about these guys:

Seat 1, Francis "Frank" Rusnak:  843rd all-time money list with 2.3 million dollars.  Definite poker pro.

Seat 2, Peter Nagy:  Talented amateur.  Cashed in a deep stack in June, but otherwise not much there.  Small stack will be gone by the end of the first level if he doesn't improve quickly.

Seat 4, Wee Yee Tan: Looks like a hedge fund guy, but Poker News showed him bubbling a final table in 2010 in Macau, so who knows if he has undocumented history.

Seat 5, Daniel Ferketa: Talented amateur with $93,206 in total winnings.  He cashed in two deep stacks last week.

Seat 6, Alexander Dombroff:  Talented amateur.  Cashed in the Mini Main Event last week.

Seat 7, Casey Carroll: Table chip leader and looks like he's a pro, but no major wins.  Nonetheless, I'm glad he's to my right.

Seat 8, Me: Semi-talented amateur.  $13,677 total winnings.  One final table.  I'm sure that Carroll is glad that I'm to his left.

Seat 9, Michael Gathy: Best player at the table, good enough to have his own Wikipedia entry.  419th all-time money list with 3.8 million in winnings, and four WSOP bracelets.  And he's to my left.  Sigh.

So to summarize, I have a medium stack, the two players to my left are world-class pros, and the chip leader is to my right.  But there might be a saving grace in that if Gathy is thinking about bullying me off a hand, he has to worry about Rusnak to his left.  But all things equal, I'd rather be in Seat 2.

Rather than obsess about this, I plan to hit the M&M shop for some personalized candies for my kids, and then get a Gordon Ramsay cheeseburger for lunch.  Then I'll finish another Parker book and go swimming.

See you tomorrow!