When we last left Otis, he'd already busted out of a low-limit tourney, played four hands of $4/$8, busted out of a NL game, then doubled up in a NL game, then found the blogger table. We join the story just three hours into his arrival in Las Vegas
"I am the only one at this table who doesn't have some sort of prostate problem."
I was grumpy. BadBlood and I had just made it to the Excalibur poker room. The blogger table ($1-$3 spread limit) was in full effect. The entire room was submerged in the table's hammer screams and nearly non-stop laughter.
I wanted to sit down with them, drop the Hammer, pound my chest, and scream, "Me Otis! You hammered!" But Ari said the table was full and there was a waitlist. Of course there was. There's always a five-deep waitlist for online blogger games. Why wouldn't there be one here?
I slumped to the lobby of the hotel to make a business-oriented phonecall (more on that in the coming days), then returned to the room to find the table was still full.
And so I sat down with my rack of white (er....blue) at a $2-$6 table. I was cramped into the one-seat next to a guy with a hearing aid. The guy next to him had a hearing aid a cowboy hat. No one at the table was less than 60 years old. They were all talking about the National Finals Rodeo that looped on the big screen in the back of the room.
Grumpy.
I considered asking the dealer if he would give me a prostate exam, just so I could feel like I fit in.
I posted and folded for thirty minutes while the other table had fun. It's like being stuck on a see-saw by yourself when all your buddies are hanging like monkeys from the jungle gym and looking up Sally's skirt.
I wanted to look up Sally's skirt. Or, more to the point, I wanted to rake a pot off the old guys. My chipstack-libido got the better of me, as time and time again I tried to hang from my own personal jungle gym in such a way I could get a little glimpse of a win. Before I knew it, I was down about $85 at a piddly $2-$6 table.
I got nervous that my fellow bloggers would see that I was a loser. When they walked by, I'd lean over what remained of my buy-in and pretend I was experiencing prostate problems. To no avail, though. Pauly noticed I'd bled away most of my first buy-in. I hadn't been in the room for two hours and I'd already outed myself as a poor poker player.
And then the shift that would define the trip to Vegas happened. Sally climbed to the top of the jungle gym and stood there for me to look as long as I wanted. That is to say, I began a string of good fortune that would last for the next five days.
Within thirty minutes, my TPTK, Hilton sisters, and set of jacks held up. I made back every thing I lost, plus about fifty bucks. Then Ari called me over to sit in the ten-seat of the blogger table.
Turns out I didn't have a prostate problem after all.
On Tennis Balls and Soco Shots
Many bloggers have already written about how sitting down at a live blogger table isn't that much different than sitting at an online blogger table. That's true for the most part. The conversations are the same, the friendship gels in the same way, and the non-bloggers at the table look at us like we're the devil. I sat with Mas, BG, Pauly, Mrs. Can't Hang, and Derek, slinging chips for an hour or so, and expressing my desire to make a million dollars by re-inventing the hospital walker.
Anyone who has spent a great deal of time in a hospital has seen the dozens of people who walk around with their walkers. Two legs on every walker have tennis balls stuck to them. I suggested to the table of bloggers that a guy could make a lot of money if he could somehow outfit walkers with a high-tech, state of the art, tennis ball-like apparatus already installed on the walker. It would save the orderlies a lot of time that they'd normally be spending hiding out at local tennis courts, stealing tennis balls, and cutting them open with box cutters.
Then some smartass blogger said, "Or you could just put wheels on them."
Well, yeah, I guess you could do that, too.
***
Under no circumstances would I ever pretend to know how to successfully play O8. Under no circumstances would I sit down at a casino and play O8 against people who know how to successfully play the game.
Well, there is one circumstance: When Felicia and Al have cooked up a game in the back of the poker room and the stakes are only $2/$4.
And, so I moved to the O8 table and sat down to Al's right. I scooped a couple of pots early and decided that I was the best O8 player who ever lived. And then I looked across the table at Felicia who gave me a half-smile that indicated that I was not only not a good O8 player, but that I was well on my way to embarassing myself. It's a lot like thinking you have the biggest johnson in the room, whipping it out for all to see, then looking up to discover you're at a John Holmes Look-Alike Convention.
So, I did what every reasonable poker blogger would. I accepted Al's offer of a shot of Soco.
Enter blurry poker play.
When I emerged from my first-shot haze, I heard a delcaration blaring from the seat to my left.
"That's not gumbo. That's not gumbo. Gumbo only comes from New Orleans. That's not gumbo!"
Al was moving into a land I like to call, "Full effect." He had two dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts under his chair, a sideboard of Soco shots lined up at his sidetable, and a sure insistance that what I was eating was bad free buffet food.
Like always, Al was right.
A nice lady sat down to Al's left. Felicia quietly mentioned the woman fit Maudie's description. Always the interrogator, I politley prodded the woman. It would be just like a blogger to sit down and pretend to be somebody else. Before the weekend was over, I was pretending to be the Surgeon General.
"Ma'am, do you mind me asking where you're from? It wouldn't be Oklahoma, would it?"
The woman responded in the negative and eyed me warily. It didn't deter me, though. I was beginning to steadfastly believe I was sitting in the presence of Maudie.
At some point, she and Al had agreed to share a side table for their drinks. I turned away briefly then looked back to see the woman fanning her face.
"What WAS that?" she said.
Al looked at her with no small amount of confusion.
"I think I just drank your drink," she said, scanning the room for a bottle of water.
"That was, Soco, ma'am," Al said. "Would you like a doughnut?"
"That'll get you, Maudie," I thought to myself.
***
By and by, the real (and much, much sweeter) Maudie arrived and the O8 table broke as bloggers went in search of grub (and the ever-AWOL Grubby). I had dropped about $50, but had a bellyful of non-gumbo and SoCo.
What had began as a slow, boring losing session was quickly turning into a high-octane, do you want a doughnut, I've seen Sally's panties and I like they way they look losing session.
At some point I decided someone needed to get out of his damned mind.
I decided that would be me.
Coming soon to a blog near you:
*The Hammer and the Hdouble
*Meeting the Dwarf
*Pai Gow and the Human Response
*Sherwood Forest Pt. 1
*Oh, jeebus, what's happening to me?!