-On this trip, I’m reading Blood and Thunder:  The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West, a book written by Hampton Sides during my downtime.  I know I’ve mentioned this a time or two before, but this book reinforces how astonishing modern Las Vegas is.  The fact that every square foot of this town is now crammed full of architectural monstrosities, fat guys and sluts is nothing short of a miracle. 

Las Vegas is located in the corner of the continent that was considered absolutely uninhabitable during Manifest Destiny’s heyday.  The most brutal portion of the trek from the midwest to Southern California was through this area.  Traversing this desert on an animal’s back required stamina and perseverence, and those who successfully passed through seldom returned.  The area was not settled for permanent residence until about 100 years ago, and the early settlers were a few brave souls who lived barbarous, squalid lives.

Today there are but two vestiges of Las Vegas’ early history:  the streets downtown, which are named for the first white people to cross this then-forgettable corner of the globe, and the thin layer of dust that collects on your clothes and in your throat if you walk around for more than ten minutes.   That layer of dust is telling us something.  It’s saying “I would own you if not for the Hoover Dam and modern climate controls.  All those fat guys and sluts would not be possible.  I used to own this town.  Bah!”

 -As I’ve probably mentioned before, I have a friend who now lives in this desert wonderland:  my boy Jonny Y.  And so on this trip I got my very first taste of non-Strip, locally-flavored nightlife.  On Saturday night, Jon, longtime DZ.com contributor Christian and I attended a party for one of Jon’s co-workers at The Griffin, which is a bar in downtown Vegas.  I loved The Griffin.  It stands out in this town for its mere refusal to make any kind of spectacle of itself.  The place has two rooms.  The front area is a tasteful loungy kind of scene, and the back room is a no-frills dance space reminiscent of New York’s Lower East Side venues.  I say that first because there is no decor to speak of, but especially because the Griffin has something I had never experienced anywhere else in Las Vegas:  local DJ’s with a clue!  The dudes in the back room played a very enjoyable mix of old funk and hip hop, and not just the obvious stuff.  Really well done.  I danced my drunk ass off.  Two enthusiastic thumbs up for The Griffin.  Vegas nightlife is NOT one giant cliche.  Who knew?

One place that hasn’t changed in many years was my next stop from Saturday night:  Drai’s afterhours.  Drai’s has serious lasting power, many other late night options have come and gone in the past six years, and Drai’s continues to hold its own.  It still gets rammed full of nutjobs at around 4:00 am.  The one thing that was different this time around was the music:  apparently cheesy remixes  and silly anthems have fallen out of favor with the silicone set (pun intended); the DJ’s at Drai’s now spin numbing tech-house for hours on end.  Go figure.

-I am staying at MGM Grand right now, which of course can mean only one thing:  You can say “this is where 2Pac got shot!” to yourself every time you get into or out of the elevator. 

-I am down to almost zero tolerance for craps (the game).  I used to love shooting craps, but I can’t stand it anymore.  I say this despite being up a few hundred dollars in my two efforts on this trip.  So why do I still play?  Because I suspect that cheap room rate offers would stop appearing in my mailbox if I quit entirely.  The first time I played on this trip, it was so obvious that I wanted to be elsewhere that the dealer on my end said “color coming in” (i.e., that I was cashing out) at the end of a roll, before I had even asked.

-Now that I have been to the actual Bellagio, I find myself pronouncing it the fruity way the guys from the Italian water taxis say it, in instead of the regular American way.

Some poker stuff:

-I am running really, really bad out here so far.  And I don’t mean that I’m playing bad and but sugar coating things by saying that I’m running bad.  I mean that I’m running baaaaad.  I think it has to do with the fact that I’ve been placed in the one or ten seat for every single tournament I’ve entered so far.  This means that I have to use the muscles in my neck instead of just whatever controls my eyeballs if I want to see what other players are doing.  Unpleasant.  Poker players’ neck muscles aren’t made for moving.  Also, it really sucks to play flawlessly (if I do say so myself) for 12 hours and leave a two-day event empty handed.

-You know you’re a professional poker player when you start to recognize at least two or three faces at every table you sit at, even when you’re all the way across the country.  Even when you sit in the MGM Grand’s nightly $125 tournament.

-Speaking of that particular tournament, playing in it was like playing a video game against a blind person.  Well, not really.  My point is that there was no discernable reason for any of the plays these people were making and it ended up confusing the shit out of me.  Sigh….

Okay, that’s all for now.  Bye!

My poker hiatus finally over, I was back in business today.  ‘Twas not a good day. 

For years, I have read on poker forums about how insane online poker Sundays are.  However, I never really experienced it for myself.  During football season I abstain completely, and from Feburary through August I pick out a few tournaments each Sunday and concentrate on those.

Today I decided to treat my Sunday the way real online multitable grinders do:  I fired up all of the good ones and went to work.  Ugh, I wish I hadn’t.  I took the collar.  Yes, 0-fer the entire day.  Although the dent in my bankroll was small, it made me supremely annoyed.  It’s a very unpleasant feeling to play so many of these freakin’ things without so much as a sniff of the money.

I know I am especially upset about today’s whiffage because I just shaved.  This is a strange quirk of mine:  when I am really pissed off, I shave.  Not when my facial hair has grown to a certain length, not when I have a formal event to attend, not Tuesdays Thursdays and alternate Saturdays.  The schedule doesn’t work that way.  I shave when I’m pissed off.  Something about a long hapless day of online poker makes my skin crawl, it makes me physically uncomfortable.  You see, I spend 99% of my life blissfully unaware of what I look like and of how my skin feels.  The other 1% of the time is when I’m very frustrated:  Under those conditions I suddenly cannot stand the whiskers on my face and must remove them at once.  I want to tear my hair out, except it’s the hair on my face.  I do feel a bit better once I’ve shaved.  So if you see me walking around without even a hint of facial growth, feel sorry for me.  It means that some jackass has cracked my pocket aces with 10-8 offsuit in the past couple of hours.   

Next up for me is a long trip to Las Vegas, which will include a welcome return to brick & mortar poker.  The Deep Stack Extravaganza at the Venetian and the Wynn Poker Classic.  This clean shaven online donk wants revenge.

I have played no poker for about two weeks.  Instead, I have been moving forward—quickly–with my personal life.  I have two pieces of good news to share.

First, Janeen and I have bought an apartment in Brooklyn.  It’s been over a year since I initially decided that I’d had enough of my current neighborhood and set Brooklyn as my preferred next destination.  At the same time, Janeen and I were feeling ready to move forward with the relationship, so when I took Janeen on a driving tour of my favorite borough and she decided that many of its neighborhoods remind her of Chicago (her hometown), we started apartment hunting in earnest.  That was around Thanksgiving.

A couple of weeks ago, Janeen found a listing for a converted brownstone on a very nice block in Carroll Gardens.  We took a look at these new condos and we both liked them very much.  They had much more space (three bedrooms) and were much nicer (completely new fixtures) than what we’re used to.  Upon leaving the brownstone, I declared that we would soon be living in it.  And that’s pretty much how I usually roll– I’m not much of a shopper.  Still, I wasn’t sure if my history of impulse purchasing would (or should) apply to real estate.  As it turns out, I was true to my word.  After a bit of haggling, Janeen and I now find ourselves “in contract” for one of the condos, which means that while we don’t officially own it yet, it would be a pretty bad beat if we don’t end up moving into the place in a month or two.

This apartment will be the first truly grownup purchase of my life.  And the majority of the down payment, which is not a small sum of money, has been won playing poker.  It occurred to me that I would never have been able to afford this apartment had I remained a lawyer.  This fact has put my success over the past two years into sharp perspective, and, naturally, made me quite pleased with myself.  Our new home will very much be a poker place:  not only will it be purchased with poker proceeds, the third bedroom will be converted to an office, providing me with an amazing spacious new place from which to play.

The apartment news is big, but it’s not the biggest recent development in my personal life.  I am also happy to announce that Janeen and I are now engaged!

If you watch basketball regularly, you are probably familiar with the following scenario:  one team is leading comfortably with less than a minute to play.  The game’s outcome has been decided.  The fans recognize this and begin to file out.  The players also recognize this, and their intensity wanes as they jog up and down the court going through the motions.  All that really remains is for the clock to expire, and then they’ll all go take showers.  But wait!  What’s this?  Oh no.  The coach of the hopeless team orders his players to intentionally foul the players on the winning team, thereby stopping the game clock and sending the other team to the free throw line.  He’s trying to trade short three point possessions for one or two points on the other end.  This can be very effective in a close game, but it is nothing more than so much futile nonsense in a blowout, and it can extend already-decided games for what feels like ten or fifteen additional minutes.  Many basketball coaches will needlessly employ this strategy even when it is apparent to anyone watching the game that victory has become a mathematical impossibility.  It’s quite annoying.  Okay, so what’s my point? 

In recent months, I had become that stupid coach.  Janeen and I have long ago discovered our love for each other, the mutual trust we share, and our comfort level in our relationship.  Our eventual marriage has been a foregone conclusion for some time.  But the remnants of my old commitment-phobic self had kept me calling silly timeouts even though the game was really over.  On Thursday night, I finally decided to just let the clock roll.

Those who know me well are aware that I’ve historically been somewhat of a wandering soul in general, and a reluctant and sometimes reckless partner in many of my relationships.  I now believe those traits were symptomatic of the discord and dissatisfaction I felt during the eight years that I was unhappy with my job.  My unhappiness never drove me to seek solace in a partner.  I was more inclined to use all of my free time searching.  Ironically, it took a change to professional gambling for a stabilizing effect to occur—the self-satisfaction this switch created put me in a place where I was finally willing to accept (and perhaps was even seeking) permanence in my relationships.  So poker made my engagement possible in a way.

Which is not to say that Janeen isn’t awesome in her own right.  She’s the perfect partner for me, and I’m so happy that I’ve met her.  She’s smart, kind, beautiful, witty, fun and supportive.  She also understands what makes me tick.  While poker may have made my engagement to Janeen possible, I also firmly believe that there is a symbiotic affiliation between the two, because I would not be doing as well as I am at poker without Janeen.  Even though she can barely name the four suits in a deck of playing cards, she’s my official poker coach.  That’s because she instills confidence.  She knows all the right things to say to me when I’m running bad, and she understands and tolerates the lifestyle I’ve chosen.  Having her on my side is the best.  In order to exercise clear thought and sharp decision making, you have to be emotionally at peace with yourself.  Janeen has put me there, and she is an indispensable element of my success.  I love you Janeen!

So how do a pair of new Brooklynites get engaged?  You take a limo to Brooklyn’s quintessential five star restaurant—Junior’s—and order champagne and comfort food.  Duh!

Ghetto fabulous baby!