Honest...

I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!!!


Ok--I really wanted to do a bunch of writing this weekend, but my quality time with the keyboard was severely limited.

On Friday night, I played in an online tournament--I was the chip leader the whole way, and then when we got to the final table after about three hours, I ran into Aces twice and went out in 9th place. Grrrr.... So I left the house and headed down to Binion's to play in their 11:00 pm tourney. I played really well for a couple of hours, but then my pocket eight's got cracked by some douchebag with a King-Nine offsuit, and I didn't even sniff the money. I did a bit of wandering on Fremont after that, looking to take some decent pictures, but it was kinda rainy and blah outside, so it was a pretty fruitless evening.

I didn't make it home until around 3:30 in the morning, so I stayed up watching TV until the sun started to peek through the windows. Since I'd been up for so long, I ended up sleeping all day. No writing on Saturday... Around 8:30 that night, I got called into work and had and extremely long and productive night in the poker room.

Once the game broke, I hung out talking to the floorman for a bit, and we decided to hit up Sierra Gold for their $5.99 steak & eggs special after work. The bartender there is one of our regular poker players, so we hung out talking to him for a couple of hours. I think I got home and got to bed around noon, and again, I slept all day Sunday.

I was puttering around my room most of the evening, and I actually had a few notes and an outline of stuff I wanted to write about, fully intending to spend the entire night pecking at the keyboard so that you all had tons of stuff to read today. But at 1:40 this morning, the phone rang again, and the floorman at work said Hey, I've got a shorthanded game and no 1:00 AM dealer--I may need you to come in if the game doesn't break by three o'clock.

So I showered and got dressed, and then headed back down to the casino, hoping that I'd get at least an hour's worth of dealing in, maybe make about fifty bucks or so, and call it a night. When I got there, there was one six-handed 4-8 game going, and the dealer had been locked down since 11:30, so she was glad to see me. The floorman warned me that a couple of the players were kinda drunk and obnoxious, but we wanted to walk a fine line--we wanted to keep the game going for at least another 45 minutes or so, so that I could make a little cash, but the most obnoxious guy at the table was also the biggest fish and was holding the game together, so we didn't really want to cut him off and break the game right away, either. So we had the cocktail waitress slow it down to a crawl.

On the other hand, I had instructions to 'rake the shit out of that game', as in, even though it's a shorthanded game, don't cut the house rake until somebody asks for a reduction. And none of them were askin', so I went into ninja mode when it came to taking the rake. Again--we had that fine line to walk--nobody was being overserved, but they were just kinda being dicks and just barely toeing the line without crossing it. So we figured that the full rake would break the game after an hour or so. That way nobody had to get cut off or thrown out and the game would end more 'naturally'. Anyhow, a lot of dealers are obvious and loud about it and have a really shiatty technique, but me, I've learned a few tricks on how to be unobtrusive, and I'm very sly and stealthy and nobody ever really notices the five bucks that gets yoinked out of every pot when I'm in the box. (Four for the house, one for the jackpot).

But the game held together all night long, and I swear I dropped about forty pounds of dollar chips down the hole by 7:00 am. I also picked up another couple hundred in tokes because it was such a loose game and there were no stiffs, so I was happy. But when I walked in, I thought I'd be lucky to pull thirty bucks off that table before everyone split.

Anyhow, a new dealer came in at seven, so I punched out after four hours. The floorman got out the same time I did, so we headed back over to Sierra Gold again. This time I got some potstickers and popcorn shrimp, which were both amazingly good. The bartender got done around 8:00, so he joined us when the morning crew came in. And the morning crew was a couple of absolutely smokin' hot brunettes, so we ended up hanging out for another four hours sipping cocktails and keeping them company (we were the only customers in there for a couple of hours).

Around noon, I couldn't sit there any longer--I was tired and wanted to come home and go back to bed. Even though I only worked four hours last night, I got worked. (It was one of the more difficult tables I've ever had to work, but luckily it went smoothly). And five more hours in the bar was enough for me.

So all that lack of writing that you saw this weekend--I have an excuse. I've been busy. But I'm free for the rest of the day and all of tomorrow, so once I get some rest, I fully intend to do more writing. We'll see how it goes.

Mikey