Vegas FUBAR Part II and Other Rants

Writing comes easy to me. Always has. Probably always will. I keep a poker journal, a gardening journal, a 'real-life-horrific-events' journal, a cancer journal, half a dozen to-do lists, etc. I can't help it. I write. The fact that I'm not that great at it, and my writing is juvenile, is of no matter. I must do it, so I do. Thank God most of it is never posted for public consumption ;)

Soooo, I left off my story when we were leaving Bellagio to check out the greener pastures of Red Rock.

As we were walking out, I happened to bump into another friend of mine, Marcel Luske. Looking awesome as usual. I ranted and raved about him not returning my e-mail after he had begged me to write him and keep him up-to-date on chemo, only to find out that his assistant or someone had deleted thousands of e-mails accidentally as he was attempting to upgrade servers or some such nonsense. That's me, always willing to make a fool out of myself in public.

Marcel has recorded a song he made up for Charlie Tuttle right before Charlie died last year, and is trying to release it. He has run into some legal snags, since I think the song uses the Rawhide music, or something like that. At any rate, he has paid money to be able to use the music, and although he knows that he is just going to take a loss, he is doing it because he wants everyone to remember what happened at the 2005 WSOP and the magic that the top players created there.

Marcel did several hugs and kisses (ick, ick), and we were headed out. Just joking about the hugs and kisses part...I'm tolerating contact and getting a little more affectionate these days :)

Okay, so Red Rock is way the heck out there. I tried to warn Glenn how far we'd have to drive, even past rush hour, but I don't think he realized exactly what I meant. An hour later we finally arrived.

I noticed right off that RR has chosen to leave off the "stations" part, lol, sort of like Green Valley. If I were known as a Redneck-Vegasland chain, I'd probably choose to leave the "Station" part off of my new, decent casino, too. Does one really want to be reminded of Palace or Boulder when one enters RR or GV? Naw, didn't thinks so!

RR is nice, kind of reminds one of Palms when strolling around.

The lead floor was I.J., who looked familiar to me, but I couldn't place to save my life. Finally, being my loudmouth, typical self, I asked him if I knew him. Yeah. He was a green dealer just getting into dealing and working the tourney circuit at the Four Queens Classic back in 2004. He said that I was extremely gracious and understanding when he was new. I don't even remember that. Chemo must have wiped it out. I do remember having an absolute FIT over the Razz cheating debacle, and the two cheaters getting kicked out, as well as the TD getting fired. That is about it.

So I kept telling I.J. that he must have been hallucinating if he thought I was nice. Nice is something that is just not used to describe me. Nice, gracious, understanding...those adjectives just don't quite fit, do they?

I.J. was really accommodating throughout our session, at any rate, so I do appreciate the effort.

RR was so unorganized and screwed up. Like they would have 20 names on a list, tons of people standing around, or wanting transfers, yet the games they were looking to enter had four open seats! To make matters worse, they had the remote controlled tables to announce seats open, fills, etc. And they still couldn't fill tables worth a crap. Maybe they will iron out their problems.

The one time I did go completely off was when some dealer tried to convince me that RR is an Indian casino and I can't have money on the table. Okay, first off, money doesn't play at RR. No problem. I have no issue with that, other than it's stupid. So instead of having my tiny buy-in in chips (per normal) with cash behind, I just got some reds, so that I didn't have pyramids all over the place and could move easily.

But I still kept some hundreds under my stack. And this dealer sat down and tried to "force" me to get more chips. At first I tried to be okay with it. I agreed to get some chips due to losing about $150 and having some room. But then he noticed I had MORE hundreds, and tried to bully me into getting chips for them, too. I told him I didn't WANT more chips. He then tried to tell me that the "rule" was that I couldn't have any cash on the table at all, period.

I told him to mother-effing show me that rule, and challenged him on it. I asked if Red Rock was an effing Indian casino and told him I had no pockets (true) and what did he want me to do with mother effing hundreds, eat them? I told him that I understood that cash doesn't play, but I'm NOT going to have a mountain of chips in front of me, while I'm waiting for a transfer and that I didn't know what he expected me to do with the hundreds when I have no pockets and that I'm going to sit and wait for him to show me the rulebook which says I cannot have paper on the table.

No, I was not "nice." No, I was not "gracious" or "understanding," lol. Yes, I was my normal, regular self. Why in God's name any CRM would want me in his cardroom is beyond me! Yes, I told I.J. this :)

Finally after a hour or so they got the O8 running again (prior to that, I had been playing Omaha High, which is a horrible game).

I won back everything save $35 playing O8. Oddly enough, one dealer kept pushing me pot after pot. About 20 or 25 minutes into his down, he said to me, after having pushed me yet another pot, and having heard me vocalize many times, "Sir, your action." HUH? Okay, I look like a dude. Maybe I dress like a guy. I have no chest. I have no hair. But my voice is not deep. I am a soprano with a huge range. Go figure!

We ended up staying at Gold Coast, which is cheap, yet has decent bedding. We slept so badly, however, that we decided to come home the next day and not play anymore in Vegas, even though Richard had invited us to dinner either on Tuesday (if he busted out of the Caesars event early; he didn't) or Wednesday if he was still in at 7pm (he was, but unfortunately didn't make the money).

We were home by noon, and I was back to my little garden, which seems to mean so much more to me than the scummy poker world.

If it weren't for my friends up there playing the tourney circuit, I wouldn't even bother. I never thought that I'd actually WANT to be friends with that subculture. ANY subculture, actually, but especially that one. I hate people, in general. I don't WANT to be liked, and I certainly don't like almost anyone. So why I want to remain in contact with these guys is beyond me, but whatever, it works, and I'm happy to see then whenever I'm in Vegas or LA, etc. There are some great people in that crowd.

So now I am back in my little refuge, and I do want to talk about some things. Poker psychology, for instance. My forte. And I will speak a little bit about blogs, too. Why not? Everyone else seems to have an opinion these days.

Talk to you all soon,

Felicia :)