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["Vegas on $2,000 a Day" is be a series of features on personal experiences at the World Series of Poker, offering (a) information and insight to those traveling to Vegas during the Series; (b) a "virtual experience" for those who won't be able to make it; and (c) entertainment at my expense, because it appears I have hooked up with, for the second year running, a landlady who wants to kill me. Read on!]

Tuesday, May 26, 10:40 AM

BOULDER CITY, NEVADA – The World Series hasn’t started yet. I haven’t even made it inside the Las Vegas city limits. Nevertheless, I am physically and mentally wiped out. It’s appropriate that my audio companion, Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, is about the world’s most gruelling footrace. (Excellent audiobook, by the way; probably the only thing to keep me from completely chucking my sanity and pitching my Mercedes over a guardrail into the Hoover Dam.) I’ve been awake for 26 hours, driven 400 miles, and am about to arrive at a destination that I currently have no means to enter.

I’m in the parking lot of a strip center in Boulder City, Nevada, by a storefront named “Boulder Psychic.” If there is really a psychic in there, he or she should be busting out of that door at any moment to chase me off the premises. Apart from a carload of clothing and office equipment for an eight-week trip, I’m carrying bad karma. I’m sitting here waiting for a phone call I’m worried I may never receive. Like Moses banished to the hills above Jerusalem, I may never make it to my ancestral (and new) home.

Last week, I rented a house for the Series from a nice woman named Patty. I gave her permission to charge $2,700 to my credit card and talked poker with her nephew, but other than her fax and cell numbers, it’s now dawning on me that I know nothing about this woman.

In the past eighteen hours, I have called her five times, sent a pair of e-mails, and just left a text because her phone is giving the recorded message that “the person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time. Please try again later.”

How much later? An hour? Five minutes? Five seconds? There isn’t even a prompt to leave another voicemail, not that it would do any good.

Other than five pictures on the Internet, I have no evidence whether this four-bedroom house in a gated community even exists.

10:50 AM – After two more phone calls, I can reveal the following: (1) I have yet to receive the keyless entry code to get inside the house I was planning on spending the next eight weeks. (2) Patty has, according to American Express, charged me $2,700, representing one month of rent and a non-refundable cleaning fee. I have no issue with the cleaning fee, if I can apply it to my two-day-old clothes and the fact I’m about to soil myself because I’m starting to think I paid $2,600 to a non-existent person for a non-existent house. (3) It’s just dawned on me who the sucker is at this table.

In two days, the $40,000 No-Limit Hold ‘Em event starts. In four days, the $1,000 No-Limit Hold ‘Em event starts. And in five days, the Champions Invitational commences, pitting the living champions from the last 39 Main Events. I have some very ambitious plans about covering those events and, hopefully, playing in the $1K on Saturday.

I think the $40K and the Champions Invitational will be televised. If so, I will be easy to spot on ESPN. I’ll be the guy who looks like he’s been wearing the same clothes for a week and sleeping in his car.

Estimated/potential cost of this post: $2,700.

[Post-script: 5:30 PM Tuesday. I finally reached Patty, who thought she gave me the access code and either didn't receive or didn't acknowledge the starker-level e-mails and voice messages with which I've been carpet bombing her. No problem, she said, revealing the four-digit code. Because I'd been dozing in my car in the driveway of Forbidden City, ducking my head out of sight when neigbhorhood security vehicles rolled past, I scurried to the front door, let myself in, and secreted my car in the garage. Hey, this place is actually pretty nice.]

[Post-Postscript: You can keep up with all Full Tilt's excellent World Series coverage on its 2009 WSOP Coverage Page.]

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One Response to “#743 – 2009 WSOP #1 – Vegas on $2,000 a Day #1 – Bad Omen? Or, The Canary is Already Dead”

1. Byron Wigodner Says:
   May 31st, 2009 at 9:06 am

   I am anxious to hear what happened with the house?

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