Vegas Gossip

Met a few interesting people in Vegas, as usual ! I found myself sitting next to The Car Wash Guy in a single table satellite. He was cool, modest and talked interestingly about the final. Unfortunately he was mostly drowned out by some nerk across the table who thought everyone would rather hear the tragic tale of how he finished 9th in the same event. Judging by the way he played the single table, he should count himself lucky he even qualified for the WPT event (I can't believe he put $10K of his own up), never mind won $55K (I checked, and it was him). This wasn't the only "I coulda been a contender" story I heard while I was out there. I suppose for every WPT final there are 3 or 4 people who make the last two tables, miss out, and will never be there again. It's a bit sad that they're bitter about the biggest score they'll ever make. What's that poem that ends something like "the saddest words - it might have been" ?

On another occasion I was talking to a dealer who, it transpired, dealt the famous Hellmuth-Grizzle confrontation. I'm not one to tell tales out of class - let's just say that she only described one of them as "a despicable human being", and it wasn't Phil. In between some horrific stories of dealer abuse she talked about certain players who are all smiles on TV but very badly behaved off it. Yet more reason that seeing isn't believing on the dreaded gogglebox. It reminds me of a comment I saw on another blog recently : "but I haven't seen you on TV so I can't judge your character". If it was a joke, very good, but I suspect it wasn't.

I bumped into the new slimline Peter Costa one afternoon. He was telling me how he was playing tennis and 5-a-side, cooking for himself instead of eating out, and so on. The poker lifestyle is a very unhealthy one, and it's always nice to see a little less of a player I get on with, in one sense ! (Hint hint to more than one person who reads this).

Finally a great story I heard while playing blackjack. Shock horror, I know, table games ! Well, $5 blackjack is only costing me 5c per hand and it passes the time if there aren't any satellites to play. Anyway, the floorwoman told us how the dealer at the next table had rented a cabin in the Grand Canyon but had to pay up without staying there because she couldn't find it. Not the cabin - she couldn't find the Grand Canyon ! I had to laugh, but I can see myself doing that - driving round in circles going "Bloody hell, I'm sure it's round here somewhere".