Tao of Poker

A Really Bad Vegas Day

I didn't get to sleep until 6am. I was working on a few things. If I had two days off and worked 48 straight hours, I still wouldn't catch up on all my email and other writing assignments. I'm swamped over here. I'm in the craziest city in the world and I have been to exactly zero strip clubs and have played live poker only twice for a total of three hours since I started working.

I decided that today would be a well-deserved half a day for me. I'm hitting the wall over here. I don't have an army of people helping me cover the WSOP like other organizations. It's just me, Flip Chip, and the Poker Prof. I was not scheduled to head to work until after 4pm and closer to 5pm. The plan was to go to bed early, catch up on sleep, get up early and play in a NL tournament on the Strip somewhere to prepare for my WSOP event next week. I stayed up much later than I wanted and woke up just as tired as I had been all week. Yep, I fucked up right there. What good is a half-a-day off if I don't catch up on sleep?

I called for a cab and jumped in the shower. She said 15-20 minutes so I assumed that meant 30 minutes. In NYC all I have to do is walk outside and flag down a taxi. It's pretty simple and convenient. Snagging a Vegas cab sucks donkey balls. It's against the law to flag one down in the street. You have to be at a taxi stand at a casino or call for one. Either way, you have to wait a long ass time.

I called when my cab was late. I was supposed to play at noon and figured calling one hour before would be sufficient time for them to send one over. No such luck. By the third time I called to ask where my ride was, the dispatcher told me it was still going to be 15 minutes. At this point it was 10 minutes until noon and I was standing outside waiting for a cab that never showed up. Even when I bitched at her it was my third time calling and I was going to miss a poker tournament at noon, she said "Five minutes."

The heartless cunt was fucking lying to me. I didn't call her bluff. I simply folded. Nothing more I could do so I hung up and looked for a wall to punch my fist into. Today was the first time I had off in a very long time and how did I spend it? Not playing in a casino that's for sure.

I grabbed a quick lunch at Wendy's, then wandered back to the Redneck Riviera and logged onto Party Poker using dial up. I know it sucks after being used to Wi-Fi at the Rio. I'm such a loser. I'm playing online poker in Las Vegas. I signed up for a $100 NL tournament with 210 players. I liked my chances in that field but my stack was crippled when my pocket kings ran into AJ. I finished in 161st place. Unimpressive.

Depression of the Sylvia Plath nature began to sink in. I considered turning on the oven and sealing my windows.

Laundry quickly came to mind. I'm out of clean underwear so I loaded up all my dirty clothes and headed for the laundry room. I have no detergent and figured I'd buy some from a vending machine in the laundry room. No such luck. I went to the front desk and asked them where I can score some detergent. They told me at the gas station. With my laundry flung behind my back, I walked three blocks in the hot Nevada sun to find out that the lady behind the counter at the gas station can barely speak English and has no clue what I'm looking for. I searched the aisles franticly and found nothing. I walked back to the laundry room in hopes of borrowing some detergent from my friendly neighbors. I found one overweight woman in the laundry room folding her oversized panties and told her my sad story. She offered to sell me some of her detergent for $20!

What the fuck? $20 for a cup of liquid Tide? I can score a bag of ditch weed for $20. I can get a crappy handjob from one of the crack whores in the building next door for $20. I told her, "Piss off."

I'll be wearing dirty boxers for one more day.

No sleep. No cab. No tournament win. No detergent. No clean clothes. My half a day off is ruined. Yeah, I'm having my worst day in Las Vegas since I moved here.