Now appearing in your local shopping mall...

(A weekday, about 2 p.m. your local shopping mall.)

That RV you see parked there isn’t your typical shopper. In fact beside a cup of coffee at Starbucks I will spend no money at all in this mall. I am here, because I read every poker book that is published. Note, I said I read, not buy. Part of my commitment to improving my knowledge and skill at the game also includes wisely managing my bankroll.

So, what does an aspiring poker professional do when he takes a break from playing poker on a poker road trip? Why he frequents a neighborhood Barnes & Noble bookstore to read in the store the latest published poker book of course! (B.T.W. my lunch in the RV today, was a fifty cents Wal-Mart frozen pot pie cooked in the RV microwave. It was washed down by a free bottle of water from the last casino I visited.)

I do have some standards, (low though, they may be,) so I refrain from bringing in a steaming cup of instant coffee made in the RV, into the bookstore. I reluctantly purchase an overpriced $1.75 cup of java, and assure myself that I am now a “paying customer”. I have earned the right to spend countless hours sitting and reading books that interest me.

I read incredibly fast, so in the last two hours I read the “The Gambling Nation” an amusing book by a “Sports Illustrator” staff writer who has lost most of his retirement money, but somehow not his wife and family, via his “gambling problem”. I don’t think, he thinks, he has a problem. That is my observation. He has a successful best seller to further convince him he doesn’t. It is well worth a read. My perception of his “problem” is only incidental to the subject material of the book.

One of the chapters talks about the Mormon Church’s recent revelation by their head Apostle about Poker. (Apparently over 40% of the population of Salt Lake City, makes the pilgrimage across the desert to Wendover, Nevada to the casinos.)

The modern day apostle head Mormon has a recent word, that he needed to speak out, that the “church” is against it! No surprise there, but the author makes a clever argument, for why most religious systems are against Gambling. It is because they are competitors of each other with interesting similarities. The faithful in both systems are filled with the hope-filled, faithful, who believe that playing by the rules, and trusting in “what you can’t see, or the “unseen to come”, will result in a big payoff in the end! And both count on the steady inflow of money from the faithful. I find that a very interesting analogy.

Yet, the reality of life was further revealed when a local Mormon pastor was asked if a member who confessed to his poker playing in his mandatory pre-marital counseling would be prohibited from an approved church wedding? He reluctantly answered probably not. I wonder if that means the groom would be “sealed for time & eternity as a poker player?

I am planning on going back in again and reading the “History of Gambling” a little later. I have heard it is a well written & researched treatise on gambling throughout human history.


Speaking of religious events.... Here is a blog I wrote at Christmas time and forgot to post....

My most wonderful time of the year, Vegas at Christmas time.

There is something so congruent about the way we celebrate our commercial veiw of Christmas and Las Vegas. Slots, and pots, with Christmas carols in the background just bring out this time of the year for me! The weather in Las Vegas is bright and sunny and the nights are clear and cold with shining stars. (Or is that just more neon lights in the distance?)

Pokey the dog, and I have driven up from San Diego to celebrate a week here before we provide support for Caren’s surgery. The surgery is scheduled for the 27th.

We left San Diego yesterday after that great San Diego Chargers victory over Denver where L.T. broke the all-time record for most goals scored in a season. He should break it, again and again, with the amount of time left in this season.

We stopped at Lake Elsinore Casino off Interstate 15.

I played a couple of hours of 6/12 limit. I had nachos for dinner at the table, and then drove the rest of the way to Vegas. We stopped for a couple of walks at rest stops on the way and then slept in the parking lot, of the casino, formerly known, as the South Coast Casino. We were nestled in between about 50-60 horse trailers as the Cowboys and Cowgirls spent their last night in town for the Rodeo.

I wish I had gotten here earlier. I heard there was a lot of good poker action served up with a lot of beer to a lot of cowboys. Some good players probably made a lot of money last week.

I went to the “house of the arches” for a “double cheese cow burger” and then played the noon Omaha tournament at the Orleans. I went out number 22, but I enjoyed it and made up my buy-in afterwards in a live No-limit game.

Dealers can be such jerks sometimes. I

have found more rude, lack of consideration, poker dealers in Vegas then I have found anywhere else I have played. I found another one here at the Orleans.

During the Tournament, I had been moved to a new table and was one off the button. I figured it was a good time to go to the bathroom, so I did thinking "I would miss just that hand."

I got back to my seat just in time to sit down, picked up my hand, which was AAK2 double-suited. (A very good starting hand in Omaha, in fact the best one I got in the whole tournament.) I stood up with my cards to see who else had come into the hand and announced "raise" while I was standing. The dealer saw me “standing” and yelled “that hand is dead” and grabbed it out of my hand and threw them into the muck.

I was shocked that he just grabbed that he had just grabbed them out of my hand. I said “what did you do that for?

He said the rules state "you have you be in your seat when it is your time to act or your hand is dead." I said I was in my seat. I picked up my cards and I stood up to get a better look.

He said "you weren’t in your seat, when I looked at you!"

Of course an Ace and a pair of 4s flopped which would have given me Aces full.

He left the next hand and it took me a couple of hands to get over how rude that was.

I hope I get in a live game with him later I think I might announce after winning a pot that my rules state that all my dealer tips are dead to rude dealers.

Then again, I probably won’t because I don’t want to be the kind of “jerk” that he chooses to be.

Merry Christmas and good cheer to all.....