#885 – The Great Full Tilt Blogger Showdown

MICHAEL CRAIG (The Full Tilt Poker Blog) vs.

ALCANTHANG (Poker From the Rail)

Who Will Last Longer in the FTOPS XIV Warm-Up?

The Stakes? Read on ….

The initial idea was Al’s, but I take most of the credit – or the blame – for the stakes.

Just after noon on Saturday, I received an e-mail from AlCantHang. Al is a friend and writes the other blog on Full Tilt, Poker From the Rail. He noticed we were both playing in the FTOPS XIV Warm-Up on Sunday at 15:05 ET and suggested we make a Full Tilt blogger last-longer bet.

I should have ignored the e-mail. It’s a five-buck tournament with about 50,000 players, a guaranteed pigfuck. And the way I’ve been running lately, my bankroll is going on fumes. I shouldn’t even be playing gangbangs like that if I plan on spending my dwindling funds on the big Sunday events.

More important, I should be thinking twice before tangling with this Al character, especially when it comes to crazy prop bets. Al treats dignity like Phil Ivey treats money. I mentioned to Al later that I almost proposed that the loser had to bring a blow-up sex doll to the Final Table Media Conference. He replied that people would merely say, “looks like Al lost yet another prop bet.”

I think he was being a little kind to himself. I was worried people would say, “looks like Al WON a prop bet.”

But I couldn’t resist. I’m competitive and I figured I’d look like a total pussy if I refused a last-longer on a $5-tournament. At least if I took the lead and suggested the stakes, I’d save face and keep Al from suggesting anything really heinous.

I suggested three possible consequences for the loser: (1) Standing on the Strip at midnight for a half-hour with the escort-service pimps handing out copies of WATCHTOWER; (2) Making a collage from escort brochures into a giant “congratulations” card for the winner; and (3) Submitting losing keno cards from three crappy casinos. I later clarified this last one by saying “the winner picks the places as long as they are (a) in the Vegas area, and (b) certifiable shit-holes.” (I never really gave any thought to what agency would provide the certification.)

Al chose the third option because “I can torture my friends by making them come along.” I wondered how the guy could have so many friends. Every time I saw him at the Series, he was at the center of a crowd. I’d be lucky to get one person to accompany me on the Keno Tour of Shame – Shauna – and even then it would be only if I made it a condition of her job.

When Al gave his assert by saying “lock it up,” I thought, “Lock up WHAT?” So I wrote back, “I’ll make sure the El Cortez and the California Club are still offering keno.”

He told me, in that case, that he would stock up on hand sanitizer, and after reading my blog last week, he might choose the Gold Coast, though playing keno there would beat playing a poker tournament.

Suddenly, we both realized that the bet had changed. Despite the quality of play in the FTOPS Warm-Up, we aren’t keno fiends. We are poker fiends. The loser would have to play a poker tournament in Vegas when we met up for the Final Table while giving the winner a free 50% interest.

That’s what got me asking myself where I could find the WORST daily poker tournament in Las Vegas. (Suggestions are welcome.) The 3 AM Dunes tournament, which Tony Holden wrote playing about in BIG DEAL as a way of paying penance, obviously long gone. (I wouldn’t surprise me, however, if they ran it for a couple years as squatters in the mid-1990s after Steve Wynn imploded the place to make way for the Bellagio.) The 2 AM Aladdin tournament, my personal definition of Hell with Playing Cards, doesn’t seem to have survived the ownership change. (The zombienight I played that tournament, three players moved all-in on the first hand. The player in the big blind asked how many chips each had. The dealer groaned and said, “Same as you sir. It’s the first hand.”)

I narrowed it down to two choices: “Binion’s has a 2 AM $55,” I wrote. “The Strat has one at 12 AM that costs $60. What’s worse, the Stratosphere at midnight or Binion’s at 2 AM?”

Al, who writes in his blog about time spent in dangerous bars and nasty strip clubs – or is it nasty bars and dangerous strip clubs? – threw me a curveball. He replied, “I was down at Binion’s during the Series (two friends went deep in their O8 tourney)” – which I guess explains why he has friends – “and it was scary as shit at 2 AM.”

Binion’s it is!

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