Gutshot Maniac

Finally, a day off in Vegas.  I only worked six days in a row, but when you’re working in the Rio covering the World Series of Poker, you tend to lose all track of time.  It honestly felt as if I had been working nonstop for six days straight.  The work isn’t the cause to this, it’s the fact that I’m cooped up in the same rooms in the Rio for anywhere from 8-14 hours a day seeing the same poker tables, the same staff members, the same walls, and the same poker players.  I love my job, but it does cause you to lose track of the outside world.

On the day off, Tim and I both slept in and then made our way down the strip to jump in the Harrah’s nightly deep stack.  Rich joined us as well and we all swapped a nice 10% of one another.  Tim and I had a last longer bet as well.  The bet was for a 5% share in the next cash game or tournament of the other player.  I played well and made what I felt to be all the correct moves.  I outlasted both Rich and Tim, but failed to cash as I finished a few spots out of the money.  When we reached the final two tables, I felt my chances to win were huge and I was really getting excited to take this down.  But luck wouldn’t been in the cards for me and I finished sooner than later.

Tim and Rich were playing a $4-8 H.O.R.S.E. game at one of the adjacent tables.  I took some time to wind down, grabbed a sandwich down the hall, and then returned to jump in on the game with them.  I ran terrible, well, others players ran really well.  People really just have no concept of mixed-game play which makes things so juicy.  Needless to say, I lost in the game, but I did have one hell of a time playing “Lodden Thinks” and watching Rich get absolutely slaughtered in props.

During Lodden Thinks, Rich’s German friend, and midget, Todo, was the one coming up with the answers to the questions Tim proposed.  Some of his answers were ridiculous and cost Rich a lot of money.  We were playing $10 a point and I was up eight points on him by the end of the night.  That wasn’t the worst of it though for Rich.

He was playing a nice prop game with Todo.  Rich had red cards and Todo had black ones.  Each card was worth $5.  You took the total red and black cards from the board if it was a community card game or a combination of each other’s up cards in a stud variant.  Each player also had a bonus card.  Rich’s was a king and Todo’s a deuce.  These bonus cards were worth $20 a piece.

I can’t tell you how many times a black deuce appeared on the felt to dent Rich’s pocket by $25.  It was amazing to see how bad he lost.  At first, he was down $135.  He then ran well for a nice period of time to get his deficit to only $25, but then went on a crazy run all the way back down $175.  After that, Rich decided that he would try and get it back down to owing only $100.  He got down to $110, but decided still to try and make it an even $100.  From there, things just blew up in his face.  He ran it all the way to $365, clearly Todo was running like a god.  Rich did manage to make it back to $300 even and called the game off.

I ended up going bust in the H.O.R.S.E. game, but the hit didn’t hurt nearly as much thanks for Richie Rich losing eight points to me on Lodden Thinks.  To highlight some of the questions and crazy answers the “thinker” gave, see below.

What percentage of people in the world have blue eyes? (48%)

How many poker tables are located in the state of Nevada? (9,580)

How long has it been since Scotty Nguyen’s last haircut? (198 days)

How many people have attended a Rolling Stones concert? (10.5 million)

We got up from the poker table at about 6:15 am.  Because our new German friend Todo was running so damn well in both prop bets and on the table itself, we decided to let him roll for us at craps in the pit.  So there we headed.

After one guy rolled for what seemed like ages, Todo finally picked up the dice.  On his first roll, instead of setting the point, Todo rolled a seven, landing everyone a nice payday.  Rich was loving it and called him the new messiah.  Todo then set the point at 10 and then on his first roll after, nailed it.  Things seemed like they were going to be miraculous, but then Todo crapped out.  From there, it was all downhill.  Rich went broke and even cost Jon Kalmar about $700 when he rolled about the worst roll ever.  He kicked off his roll with aces, followed it up by setting the point, and then crapping out on the first roll… sweet.  If he don’t know Kalmar, he final tabled the 2007 WSOP Main Event.

Just as we were going to bounce and head home, Tim took some crazy advice from Rich to lay his $14 of profit on “box cars”, or double sixes.  It’s a longshot that pays 30:1.  He went with it, not rerally knowing what he was doing.  The dice were slid to the next in line and rolled… BAM!  Rich took off running like a deer hearing a gunshot.  Tim looked up and said, “What happened!?!?  What did I win!?!?” while Rich was yelling and running up and down the row.  He came back and let Tim know he just won $400 on that roll.  Tim was pumped!  He couldn’t believe it.  The dealer counted out the chips in some nice stacks of $25 green chips and passed them over.  Of course, he would be buying breakfast now.