Celebrity sighting

I played poker Wednesday night with Dr. Pauly, one of the uber-bloggers of the poker world.

I was at Mandalay Bay from 10:20 p.m. to 12:05 a.m. (according to my records). When I sat down at the back table in seat 1, I looked around the table and noticed that the guy in seat 9 looked an awful lot like the photos I had seen of Pauly. But with the dealer to my immediate right, I couldn't get a good look. Besides, when you've only seen someone in pictures, it's hard to identify him or her confidently. If I had been keeping up with his blog (http://taopoker.blogspot.com/) lately, I would have known he was in town, which would have made me more confident of my impression.

Anyway, now I know that I was right, because he mentions this session in his entry for Thursday:

I got up and walked back to the Excalibur. Insomnia struck and I couldn't
sleep. I headed down to Mandalay Bay to play at 2am. [Note: He's a little off here.] There was one 1-2 NL table running. I sat down next to a hot thirty-something chick from Southern California that was hammered. She slurped a frozen daiquiri from Ruby Tuesdays and kept asking the dealer, "Is this my big blind?"

She didn't have too many chips. But she was bleeding off $100 at a time.
She'd rebuy. Piss it away and dig back into her Gucci purse and rebuy again. The
accent told me she was from the East Coast originally. She had mentioned that
she played at the Bike on occasion and had lived in Los Angeles. She had a rock
on her finger the size of a Titleist and she had a fake tan. I could sense the
inner emotional turmoil that drove her to drink. She was the your typical Las
Vegas drunk girl, and the perfect example of someone you want at your poker
table. Rich. Reckless. Drunk.

Drunk Girl was the mark, but we only got involved in a couple of pots
together. She kept trying to buy me a drink. I was only drank gingerale, and she
questioned my manhood. I told her that I was higher than Snoop Dog at 4:20. She
let out a wicked laugh and asked me where she could score any pot. Our dealer
was a grumpy old white guy, and yet that made him crack a smile.

Then I got to tango with Drunk Girl.

Four of us limped. I had As-3s from the small blind. The fop was A-A-8. I
checked. Drunk Girl bet. I check-raised her for half of her stack.

"I don't like you!" Drunk Girl screamed. "I thought we were friends."

"You're from L.A.," I explained. "You're used to having fake friends who
always stab you in the back or fuck you in the ass."

Drunk Girl thought that was the funniest thing she had ever heard. She
repeated the line three times. I got a warning from the dealer for dropping the
f-bomb.

"What? Why he can't say fuck?" Drunk Girl inquired.

That slowed up the hand for about five minutes as she got into a drunken
debate with the dealer over what exactly is bad and what is acceptable.

"That's a stupid fuckin' rule," Drunk Girl said.

She also got a warning. We still had a hand to play. We had to verbally
reconstruct the hand for her to get her up to speed. Drunk Girl eventually
called my bet. The turn was a 6. I bet a stack of red chips. She sighed and
picked up her cards. She showed me an 8. I didn't see the other card. She called
for her last $20. I tabled my trip Aces which held up. Rebuy!

I won another decent sized pot with Kh-Qh. One player from UTG raised. The
button called. I had re-raised from the big blind. They both called. I decided
to check-raise the Ace high flop with two hearts. I checked. UTG bet the pot.
The button folded. I check-raised for his entire stack. He tanked before he
folded his hand face up. I just showed him the Qh and I raked in the pot.

I was running good until I lost a $400 pot when I got rivered by a two
outer. My kings got snapped off by threes. That sucked. I decided to cash out.
The table was not fun anymore. Drunk Girl had left the table an hour earlier and
was probably passed out somewhere.

I was there for much of Drunk Girl's time in seat 8, and clearly remember the "I don't like you anymore" hand. She kind of annoyed me because she was never paying attention (about half the time, a friend from whatever convention she was attending was sitting or standing by her, chatting about whatever (I couldn't really hear them from my end of the table), and she just tuned out the fact that there was a poker game going on that she happened to be involved in. When she first sat down, I licked my chops, because she was clearly an easy mark, but I never got a situation in which I could take advantage.

The only hand I remember playing against Pauly was this: I had Q-Q, raised, he called from one of the blinds. Flop was A-x-x. He checked, I made a standard continuation bet. He check-raised me. I folded the queens face-up. (Note: This isn't the same hand as Pauly describes above, unless we're remembering it very differently. I don't recall getting reraised pre-flop, I don't think there was a third person in the hand, and I didn't take any time at all to fold the queens after the check-raise.)

Not very exciting.

He was running good, but I was having one of those dreadful nights when I couldn't do anything right: I called when I should have folded and vice-versa. Couldn't get a flop to match my hole cards no matter what. Lost $300 in that roughly 90 minutes. Ugh. Fortunately, those nights don't happen too often.

I'm just glad that my lackluster performance didn't become the target of one of Pauly's jibes. It would have been well-deserved, I'm afraid. My inner donkey was showing.

Nice to (sort of) meet you, Dr. P!

(Photo above used without any permission whatsoever, from http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/pokerblog/archives/2006_02.php.)