Category: trip reports

“Tongs,” the meat man commands. “Thank you.” I was unaccustomed to pieces of filet mignon being vertically flayed into my plate from a twenty eight inch harpoon. A little slow as to my part of the performance. “Excuse me.” I flipped the juicy flesh off the skewer onto my plate of cold squash, lightly oiled kale, and the sweetest pepper bacon known to man and shuddering beast. “What I […]

It would have been a better choice, to walk toward the Sands Convention Center and then through the Wynn. Instead, I decided to take what looked like a more direct route on Desert Inn to the Encore’s new poker room, promised to be near the entrance of the secondary but still lovely hotel.  Along the way, guided by grey columns of the monorail, I sought the slim […]

Wherever we have gone, we have been between the season and the spot; snow and sun; dark and light, dry and wet, high and low, desert and forest, peak and off peak.  I can’t tell if my father is passing from old to elderly, nor where I am in the freefall of middle age.  Even our latest destination, Las Vegas, is nearly unrecognizable to me.  It’s black […]

I’m here at the “Full of Crepe,” finally having found some decent breakfast, more than a mile from my hotel at the Sands Casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  This isn’t the first amusing appellation on my trip out here.  The “Actia”- not to be confused with the painful social disease- transport group, owners of big local bus carrier Trans Bridge, took me here, smoothly, and without any judgmental […]

“Loitering for Gambling” is the citation, handwritten and barely readable on the pink carbon copy.  It’s a shameful one, not for the gambling, but for the “loitering,” which is anything but what I was doing.  Or is it?  There are many other things to do on a bright day in the city, and I left the museum of Natural History before it closed.  I’m here to continue to […]

The reinforced door to the host’s apartment is being repeatedly struck and will soon be destroyed; small pieces of it fly into the hallway.  A hinge snaps.  The players are frozen by the unsettling combination of the loudness of the battering ram and the silence of the intruders behind it. I look at the high window but it’s several stories down: futile.  There is no other way […]

Note: I’m staying again with a friend in Manhattan so I was inspired to write up something that happened during last year’s visit. **************************   Without connections, it takes a bit of time to get into a private game in Manhattan.  There are endless Craigslist advertisements, but none of the hosts respond directly.  Maybe this is security.  Maybe it’s bad customer service.  Maybe I sound like cop. So […]

Seven hundred big blinds in front of me, Q3o in the hole, six callers, getting lazy; something else is on my mind.  Sorry, it’s on me; can I cbet this monotone board?  Yes, apparently, as I watch my hands pushing chips. Chinese Eager Beaver next to me, raising his body upwards and erect in a literally pointed display of strength, shakes his head in parodic frustration while […]

Thanks to Red Chip Poker I have bumped up my flight to Vegas from a flight accommodating a short family visit and a concurrent $1000 NL paper chase, to a free lotto ticket in the so-called Colossus reentry marathon beginning May 29.  The four starting flights of this inaugural tourney will be spread over two busy days without dinner breaks, with felted players allowed entry into any […]