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#218 – Poker Purgatory, or What’s on the Left Side?

Posted by Michael Craig

I am back in Las Vegas. I came to play in the final four events of the Orleans Open, and I’m immediately wondering whether I made a mistake. Among the many, many posts I’m writing is the one I expect to post later tonight, titled “Harrah’s Valedictory”, about how I thought Harrah’s did operating the World Series this year. I was about to write the section about the Rio, about which I have a few negative things to say.


I’ll still say them but I’ve got some advice for anyone (like myself) who wants to run down the Rio. Spend a couple minutes at the Orleans. To get right to work, I picked up a chili dog and brought it up to my room for dinner.

This chili dog was so bad ….

Now, it’s rare for a chili dog to actually be “good,” but picture this: it was so bad that I cut it up in little pieces and flushed them down the toilet, so I wouldn’t be nauseated by the smell or the look of the thing in my tiny trash can.

I also took the escalator from the casino to the Mardi Gras Ballroom, where the poker tournament is being held. I wondered if I’d run into anyone I knew. Just one person.

I saw Eskimo Clark standing up in the room as I walked in. He was rubbing and poking the left side of his abdomen. That’s not good, Paul. I don’t really know Clark very well but I’m a little concerned about his health. During the razz event, he had either three strokes or three heart attacks or multiple amounts of some kind of potentially fatal health scare, but he was in the chip lead so he wouldn’t leave.

That will be the soon-to-come post titled “Viva Los Muertos.” It would be a great bit of punctuation AFTER that story to see Paul four weeks later and see him prodding his stomach and asking other players about it. But we have to take are stories – and our Eskimos – as we find them, so I’ll get Vivo Los Muertos, about one of the strangest nights in WSOP history (and I know that’s saying something) out to you as soon as I can.

I can promise you this: You’ll have some good reading at least a couple times a few for the next several weeks, just off what I’m working on from the World Series. That doesn’t even include some other things I’m cooking up, plus the next FTOPS, the Legends of Poker, and World Series of Poker-Europe, assuming I get the opportunity to cover those.

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