Alternative Lifestyles

Imagine sneaking up behind Jules Verne, clocking him with a lead pipe, and stuffing him into a freezer. Then thaw him out almost two hundred years in the future and show him videos explaining the fax machine, the atom bomb, and Paris Hilton. Now look at that expression of slack jawed, bewildered disbelief on his face. That was the expression that I wore for about 43 minutes the day before the final event of the World Series started. That was when I first laid eyes on the 1st annual Poker Lifestyles Exhibition, a convention hall full of vendors that you had to walk through to get to the tournament area in the Rio.

Now it may come to pass that in the far future my reaction will seem very confusing. Not so many people find it bizarrely jarring to walk into a Foot Locker store and see Michael Jordan sports jerseys and other NBA merchandise. Perhaps my initial reaction to all this poker marketing will seem very dated very shortly but for me the Poker Lifestyles gig is still a little disorienting.

Sure there has always been a "poker lifestyle" but it just wasn’t really something that you wanted decent folk to even see, much less ask them to buy. Not very long ago the poker lifestyle was somehow being able to scrounge up enough money to play Twister with hookers in your hotel even though you were living out of the back seat of a ‘92 Lincoln. Now, believe me, I’m not saying there’s anything intrinsically wrong with that. I’m just saying I didn’t think it was something for which you would get your own bobblehead doll.

Anyway, here’s a couple quick snapshots from the inaugural Lifestyle exhibition:

In case you were wondering what you would get if you applied the acute aesthetic sense of a poker player with the stylish world of high fashion I imagine it might look something like this.

As promised: bobbleheads! I just checked the website and the Mel Judah bobblehead has officially sold out. The funny part being that I’m not kidding. Way to go Mel.

Here I am actually standing next to Mr. fancy pants acclaimed author PETER ALSON. Or as we used to call him at the club in New York: Peter.

Here’s Peter researching his upcoming book on this year’s WSOP, a book about trying to win the money he needed for his pending wedding and the life he’s starting with his new wife. What does that have to do with playing poker with trade show hussies? I haven’t quite figured that out myself but since I think the readership of this blog consists solely of my parents and you I don’t imagine Peter’s wife will see this.

Now having this at the poker show actually made a lot of sense. When you think of poker lifestyle what do you think of? Exactly, you think of filthy tax cheats. Sure you could put stacks of hundred dollar bills in a safe deposit box at a bank but who wants "The Man" knowing you’ve got a box somewhere that could possibly have something in it. That’s where the Sovereign Solution comes in. The only I.D.ing that they do is through biometrics. Instead of giving them an address and driver’s licence you just go through a retina scan. No paperwork to link you to whatever you want to lock away in the Sovereign vaults. Of course if you’re ever in a horrible Lawn Jarts accident and lose your scanned eye I’m not quite sure what happens to your vault.

Ans speaking of taxes, this is an actual picture of my actual accountant at the Bodog booth. I can smell the audits from here.

Hand for Hand

This is one of my favorite moments that I wasn’t personally involved in from the final event. We’re starting the 3rd day. I think we have about 569 players left at this point. 560 players are being paid so the decision is made to start the day out going hand for hand. If you don’t know what going hand for hand means then go ahead and skip to the next photo. If you have played in tournaments though and have had to go hand for hand with one player before the money, everyone clinging desperately to their last chips, and maybe 3 tables left, you know that it can take some time. Now imagine that there are over 60 tables left and you have to wait for every one of those tables to play their hand out before you can deal the next hand at your table. In 2001, the first year I played the final event, there were a total of 613 players. Going hand for hand with 560 plus players would almost be like starting the first day of the 2001 final event and having to wait for every single table to finish every single hand before moving to the next. We knew it would take a while.

What they decided to do was to have every dealer in the room to stand up once they finished the hand they were dealing. Already exhausted from working double and triple shifts they now had to deal a hand sitting down and then stand up for minutes at a time as they waited for everyone else to finish. At first I really felt for the dealers who had put up with so much over the last 6 weeks. However, after looking over to the table next to mine I realized who the real victims of this hand for hand tedium were: the degenerate gamblers.

I looked behind me and my heart went out as I thought of poor Sammy Farha sitting there and not being in action for minutes at a time. I’ve had some brief experience with the man and, my lord, I don’t even want to know what that eternity between hands must have been like for him. As it turns out though my fears were somewhat unfounded as Farha is plenty resourceful.

After his table’s hand was over he told the dealer to spread the deck. He then randomly drew a card, the 4 of clubs. Sean Sheikhan, who was also at his table, drew a 10 of hearts. Sammy peeled $1,000 off his wad of hundreds and said "double or nothing." As we waited for the next hand to start $1,000 became $2,000 and then $2,000 became $4,000. Eventually the floor came over and was simply aghast at the idea of bets being made without the house getting some kind of cut. The floorman explained that if they make the dealer do this again he’ll lose his job. No problem. Sammy reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a quarter. Sheikhan calls tails and it comes up tails. This goes on for a little while. By the time the next hand is about to start though Sammy has finally had enough and he nonchalantly pulls one casino chip out of his front pocket and flips it over to the young man who had been taking his action.

Now the thing to remember is that we’re still on the bubble in the largest poker tournament in the history of the world. I’m sitting there in excruciating desperation clawing my hair out at the thought of making the mistake that will cost me the $12,500 bottom money.

Of course at the table behind me, after a few high cards and coin flips, the young man goofing around with Farha proudly displays the $25,000 Bellagio chip he just won; and then we all sit down to play our next hand.

The Single Most Important Picture of this Year's World Series of Poker

All right, I know the photo above doesn’t look like much. On a personal level though, this may be the single most important picture from this year’s World Series. I’m going to make an attempt at explaining why. It might not work but bear with me.

For context, this is from the 3rd day of play in the final event. The people looking into the camera are all friends from New York. The person they are looking at is the person taking the picture, me. Also helpful is the following photo which gives a geographic context:

The important part of this second picture is that empty space in the middle. The people in the 1st photo are on the left of this empty space. I am on the right. Now at first glance the empty space in the middle may not seem that large, a space of maybe 3 feet. But if you look a little closer you’ll see that the distance between the two groups is over 56 million dollars.

At the instant that the top photo was taken I’m in the money in the largest poker tournament that has ever existed. Everyone sitting at a table to the right is guaranteed some portion of the 56 million dollar prize pool, anywhere from $20,000 to $7,500,000. Guaranteed. The people on the left get jack. Granted some of the people in that 1st photo are smarter than I am, and some of them are far wealthier, and one in specific has significantly more anonymous gay sex than I do. But right now they are left side people and I am a right side person. For this brief shining moment I am special and I have friends who are happy for me and it’s actually kind of cool. (As the top photo empirically proves.)

Of course at the time I took it all for granted. I was a little busy and didn’t really have time to wax philosophic. The day after I got knocked out though it hit me. Before catching my plane, I went back to the Rio to cash out a couple chips I had stashed in my room. As a left side spectator I watched the tournament for a minute or two. That’s when I actually noticed that empty space in the middle, that one-way membrane that separates us common folk from the people who could still become this year’s world champion.

I try to explain what it’s like to get knocked out of the WSOP final event. It’s been said that the worst day of every poker player’s year starts the moment they get knocked out of the final event. There’s a little truth in this but I don’t know if it translates. I mean, I imagine it’s got to blow to get shanked in the kidney with a sharpened screwdriver but until I lose a prison fight I don’t know if I’ll fully understand the actual pain.

Try to imagine the best Christmas you’ve ever had. You’ve got the friends, and the family, and someone actually put some thought into a present that you actually love, and you’re all ‘nogged up, and you’re thinking "this really rocks." Then you hear a buzzer go off. A referee steps in and escorts you outside. All of a sudden you’re standing on the lawn in the cold. Now the worst part of it is that everyone else is still having Christmas. You look in through the window and everyone is still laughing and getting presents and everyone is having way too much fun to care that Christmas just ended for you. That kind of describes how it felt to go back and be there on the left side and watch everyone else play.

Of course, this year, to console my delicate sensibilities I did receive something:
This blurry sealed bag that happens to contain a couple years worth of rent, all in casino chips. Naturally they can’t just give you cash or a check which you would put in your pocket. No, the Harrah’s Corporation has to take one last shot at you as you’re walking out. They give you chips and make you walk through the casino in the off chance you might decide to let it all ride on red 5 before making it to the cage.

I succeeded in keeping Harrah’s hand out of my wallet but you know you can never get away completely clean. I couldn’t dodge the post game dinner shakedown at the Wynn with some friends. And of course I want a special thanks to go out to Richie "the Dwarf" Bell for telling the waitress "ehh, just bring me whatever you recommend," when she asked him what kind of sake he wanted. There’s nothing like picking up the tab on a $50 glass of sake.

So then finally, you’re in Vegas with a few friends and you’ve just outlasted over 5,400 people in the largest poker tournament ever, what could you possibly do to top it? You bowl the crap out of that town, that’s what you do! The roll of film with all the photos of the, uh, hookers and the blow and whatever else it is that cool people do when they win money got misplaced. Here’s an exciting bowling pose though.

Nippontastic Voyage Pt. 1 (The Why)

A while back American Airlines ran this incredible promotion. In hopes of building loyalty and combating JetBlue on a couple of their most popular routes AA offered a free ticket to anyone who made two trips from New York to California or Florida within one year. Between the number of decent LA tournaments I could go to and the fact that both my parents and Christi lived in Florida it was the perfect promotion for me. I easily completed the two required trips and was mailed my free ticket. Now the thing that made this offer so impressive was that the ticket was good for anywhere in the world that American Airlines flew to. I looked up the world map on the AA website and found that every continent short of Antarctica was positively littered with tiny red dots representing cities you could get to using AA. All I had to do was take two flights to places I was going to anyway and I would get a free ticket to anywhere in the world, it seemed too good to be true.

Now, as it so happens I’m not all that well traveled. I’ve seen a fair cross section of the large and lushly diverse country that I call home. I’ve lived in Michigan, Florida, Massachusetts, and New York. I’ve taken various road trips out west, along the Eastern seaboard, from Florida to Chicago, and so on. If it’s a state with a major legal casino I’ve probably made a business trip to it. However, I’m not so much a world traveler. I've never even made it over to Europe. I did spend about a month in Ethiopia in ‘99 but beyond that I'm not so much a member of the international community.

Luckily I’ve a fair number of friends who are far better traveled than I am and I spent almost a year interviewing them on what I should do if I had the chance to fly anywhere in the world for free. I received a decent range of suggestions but with the parameters I set one country came up more than most of the others, Thailand. So I called up American and told them "I’m going to Bangkok!" to which they replied "No you’re not."

What I quickly discovered was that American Airlines defines "anywhere in the world" fairly differently than I do. While the world map on the AA website was littered with tiny red dots that represented AA cities, the subtle difference between a Codeshare City, a Oneworld City, and an AA/Codeshare had eluded me. While you could get to Bangkok through AA it was not the specific Bozo type of city required for my ticket.

Well, I had backup and I told AA that I’d go to New Zealand instead. Now, the woman on the phone didn’t actually laugh out loud at me but there was a moment as she tried to figure out the best way to convey not only that I was not going to New Zealand but that it was a pretty dumb question in the first place and to convey all of that without insulting me too much. She got the first two ideas across but failed slightly with the third.

From there the conversation went: Australia? No. China? No. Singapore? No. And eventually I just gave up and asked "what’s the farthest point I can get to with this ticket?" She thought a second or two and said "Tokyo. I guess," to which I replied "Lock it up!"

And that more or less is the short explanation of why I ended up in Tokyo. Now just in case the idea of me trying to wade through Tokyo alone not knowing a single person or a word of Japanese wasn't silly enough I actually convinced Christi to put aside her debilitating fears of earthquakes, Asian bird flues, and having the only person she knows on an entire continent be me, and I dragged her to Japan as well. This all resulted in the following photos: Nippontastic Voyage Pt. 2 (The Photos)

Nippontastic Voyage Pt. 2 (The Photos)

Part 1 (The Why): here

This was the Japanese Inn we stayed at our first night.

The room was small but we liked the room service.

The view rocked as well.

This is Christi riding the subway. As you can tell all she had to do was throw on a black coat and she was indistinguishable from everyone else on the train.

This is Christi so hopped up on unfiltered Sake that she pretended to be a painted fiberglass bear...

...and then a sumo, where she yelled "FIGHT ME!!" and challenged the confused locals. Luckily, after about 20 minutes she eventually got bored.

This is Christi either at a Buddhist temple or in 1940's Germany.

Here's Christi at Shinjuku Train Station which made Grand Central look like an Amish buggy junction.

I didn't get any decent pictures of the neon of Shibuya so here's a stock picture of Time Square that's blurry enough that you can pretend it's Tokyo.

Here's me in front of a building with a giant bug crawling up the front of it. I'm still not entirely sure why there was a giant Japanese cockroach on the terrace but somehow in Tokyo it didn't seem too out of place.

As it turns out the whole city is pretty much laid out like the West Village, which makes it great for cruising around and randomly exploring little neighborhoods but not so good for actually finding anything specific. The fact that they choose to not even name most of their streets, much less list them in English, doesn't help either.

This impressed me though. It's not enough that you can buy a can of sake in any 7-Eleven. Their cans of sake actually have a button on the bottom of them that you can push and within a minute you have steaming hot sake no matter where you are. Those little bastards are crafty!

And speaking of crafty bastards, I stepped out of the shower and I couldn't understand why the area over the sink hadn't fogged up. Then I touched it and realized, heated mirrors. These fricking guys and their high tech mirrors. As you can clearly tell though, we westerners still have them soundly dominated on the hirsute front.

Completely by accident, we ended up in Japan at pretty much the exactly perfect time for all the touristy spring time activities. The weather was perfect for seeing cherry blossoms...

...and shrines...
...and gardens...

...and of course giant radioactive spiders.

This was where we ate the first morning.

And this was what we ate (after putting some wasabi on it). The restaurant was about 50 feet from the fish market that supplies all of Japan. It seemed pretty fresh.

This was one of our favorite restaurants.

It was almost like being in the Japanese pavilion at Epcot Center but it felt even more real.

Here's another of our favorite restaurants. All pampkin, all the time. We tried the pamkin pizza and pamkin curry. Actually very good.

This is a gratuitous shot of me on our picnic in order to show off my new haircut.

I'm not sure why, but for some reason I thought pachinko would be somewhat less dumb than slot machines. I was wrong.

This was of course great for my allergies.

I still have no idea what this thing is but the picture fits very well into the "Things Growing Out of Our Heads" series of shots, which also includes...

this...

...and this.

And speaking of things sticking out of heads, the only thing cuter than a giant robot shaped like a panda is of course a giant panda shaped robot with a little panda pilot sitting in it's head. These people do love their cute.
For Culture we hit the Kubuki theater. As you can tell, the Gaijin seats were pretty far back. Those little tiny colors in the distance are a bunch of Samurai's and Geishas and crap like that. We had headphones that were supposed to translate the play into English. However, what happened was that someone on stage would go into a 15 minute Shakespearean monologue and then at the end, through the headphones, all we would hear was "Let's go boss!" I imagine some of the nuance fell to the wayside.
This was an instillation piece at the Mori Museum. What was great was that the white things on the floor were hundreds of plastic cups arranged aesthetically. Two different times during the 20 minutes I was there I actually heard a shattering crash as some older Japanese lady would accidentally barrel through the cups. A very crafty people, the Japanese, but perhaps not so coordinated.

And finally, this was the view as we sadly journeyed back to our empirically inferior Caucasian country.

Here's Christi miserable to be back wallowing among the muddied, miscegenated, masses of New York.