FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#159 – WSOP #9 – Shattered

Posted by Editor | Filed under Annie Duke, Chris Ferguson, Gavin Smith, Marco Traniello, Me in live tourneys, Smoke & Disinfectant Inn

TRAGEDY – When something bad happens.

REAL TRAGEDY – When something bad happens and you can’t blog it.

Just before noon today, on my way to watching two final tables featuring several of my friends, I discovered that someone had broken into my car. They busted through the front driver-side window and took the navigation system and some copies of the FULL TILT book.

You see, that’s a tragedy but not a real tragedy. Yes, for reasons I’ll explain soon, it may necessitate the termination of my relationship with the Smoke & Felony Inn (SFI). But my loss was not primarily financial. I can get more books and the navigation system, while a honey of a system by Garmin with Australian supermodel Elle McPherson’s digitized voice, can be replaced for $700. (My deductible for theft on the car is higher, and the auto glass is covered.)

I loved that nav system. It has some cumbersome-to-replace addresses. I’ve got Chis Ferguson’s girlfriend Fabiola’s address in there. I can get it from her but I never need it unless I’m driving over to visit. Now I have to remember to ask. I’ve got Matusow’s address and Annie Duke’s (old) address and Robert Williamson III’s. His, when entered manually, takes you to the wrong place. I was able to enter the longitude and latitude from his driveway to get that right. I have Ted Forrest’s girlfriend Roxana’s address, along with her gate code, which changed recently. I never put most of these in my address book. I entered them when I had to drive there and didn’t give it another thought. Until now.

And not just cool poker addresses. Two places in Las Vegas to get sushi at 3 AM. The grave site – the actual physical place where the bodies are buried – of two people brutally murdered in San Diego in 1966. The office of the San Diego County Coroner, which is largely concealed from the street. (There is no visible signage and the only signal from the parking lot that this isn’t some annex to the nearby hospital is the spray-painted message on several parking places: “EVIDENCE VAN PARKING ONLY”.

And then there’s the time. I was going to leave at noon, run some frivolous errands – the pen I really feel like using today needs a refill, for example – and get to the Rio in advance of two fascinating final tables. Two of my best friends in poker, Annie Duke and Chris Ferguson (and they are great friends with each other) made the final table of the Stud/Omaha Hi-Lo. And Gavin Smith, like Chris a collaborator on the FULL TILT book, is trying for his first bracelet in Pot Limit Hold ‘Em. Marco Traniello, a cool guy responsible for two of the best anecdotes in SUICIDE KING, is also trying for his first bracelet.

Instead of being loaded for bear, ready for Freddy, insert whatever cliche you like, I was hauling all my equipment on my back to the Rio at ten minutes to three. I’m not complaining that it’s an especially long way. I could use the exercise and, in fact, have been walking in the morning, either around (patrolling) the SFI or in the direction of the Rio. But it’s a hundred thousand degrees out by now and I’m schlepping my backpack with my computer and fetish-long-list of notebooks. And though the distance is short, it’s depressing as hell. On the few occasions that I’ve walked it, there has usually been one car rolling slowly behind me or making some bizarre inexplicable u-turn right in front of me. And then there’s this gigantic puddle I have to cross. It’s the summer in the middle of the goddamned desert. Why is there stagnant water in an abandoned concrete lot?

I could have gotten a ride from someone, but who? I knew only two people who were arriving at the Rio just before 3 PM. Unfortunately, they were Annie Duke and Chris Ferguson, and they were going to play a final table. They didn’t need that hassle; not that going 6 blocks out of the way to pick me up is such a hassle, but having to hear my loser story and soak of this loser aura just wasn’t something I wanted to impose on them.

(I approached them both just before the final table started and told them both, “you owe me” for sparing them. Chris said thanks. Annie said, “You should have called me. I’d have picked you up, no problem.” (I’m sure Chris would have too.)

There is also collateral damage, mostly in time. This cost me close to three hours today, and it’s going to take some of my time tomorrow to get the window glass replaced. (The installer has to visit me at the SFI because the car isn’t drivable with approximately 20 pounds of ground glass scattered through the driver’s side interior.) I was already planning on staying today to watch the final tables with Chris, Annie, and Gavin, and provisionally decided with Jo Anne that I’d stay until after Saturday’s event, then come home for most of next week.

With that in mind, I’m going to play tomorrow’s $2000 NLHE, which starts at noon. But the glass installers won’t give me a more specific time for repair than 8 AM – Noon, plus it takes at least an hour after they arrive to replace the glass.

In addition, the whole thing makes me feel like such a loser. Even though this was no fault of mine, my tale sounds too much like all the sob stories I’ve heard from people hitting me up for dough in the middle of the night over the last 3 World Series. (“The guy I’m staying with left town and all my stuff is locked in his place. Can you loan me $200 until Monday?” “Some douche bag broke into my ex-girlfriend’s car and stole my bag with all my money. Can you give me $300 so I can try to satellite into tomorrow’s event?”)

My experience reporting all this to the hotel staff wasn’t exactly reassuring. Of course, I immediately thought someone connected with the hotel was responsible. They HAVE a security guard, that nearly immobile dude who was huffing and puffing in a chair when I checked in. My car was packed in the very back of the lot, away from the street. I parked next to a trailer so the driver-side door was relatively inaccessible. Because of the tinted glass of the windows, someone had to peer in from close range just to see that I had a navigation system. And I didn’t get back to the hotel until 3:30 AM, so there wasn’t much of a window between my arrival and daylight. Maybe it’s from watching too many episodes of Columbo and Mannix growing up, but I’m thinking “inside job.”

When I went to the front desk to tell them about the robbery (that that the promised weekly cleaning of the room did not occur on Monday as warranted), the desk was abandoned. I hunted for sign that said, “gone to pawn shop, back in 5 mins” but there was nothing. When I returned there near three o’clock, there was a guy in front of me complaining that his desk key was given to some unauthorized person and things were stolen from his room.

When I told the clerk what happened, she blurted out, even before I finished the sentence, “We aren’t responsible for what happens in the parking lot.”

So now I have to find a new place to live for now through July 18, and I can’t even move my stuff there until at least tomorrow because I don’t have a car.

And i’m constantly reminded of what a hard-luck case I am, not something you want at the biggest poker tournament on earth. Like when I sat in the media room, I emptied my pockets into my backpack and my car key was in one of my pockets. Why am I even carrying it? I guess to remind me of my loss. Then I decided to make the $1000 donation to the Nevada Cancer Institute and get access to their hospitality suite. [Incidentally, I'm not writing anything that goes on in there. It's clearly a place for people to go to relax and blow off steam. It wouldn't be fair to either be "under cover" or force people in the room to worry about whether something would be written about what goes on. And nothing much is going on. There's a pool table and a putting green, so if you're missing out on anything, it's silly gambler behavior.]

All they needed to set up my donation and access was my drivers license. I pulled out my wallet. My license is gone! Come on?!? My first thought is that maybe I never got it back from Harrah’s when I registered to get paid on Saturday afternoon. But I don’t want to jump into the maw of the bureaucracy to ask if that’s not the case. Maybe what I’ll do is drive back to the hotel and check … Oh, never mind.

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