Excitement at Bill's

Last night was my fourth time playing at Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon. As I've mentioned, the little two-table poker room is just inside the doors that lead out onto the sidewalk along Las Vegas Boulevard, between Flamingo Road and the Flamingo Hotel. Maybe 20 feet from these doors is an elevator and escalator that go up to the elevated pedestrian walkway over the Strip. (If you think traffic along the Strip is bad now, you should have seen it before they moved all the foot traffic overhead. Total gridlock. You could sit through 10 green lights without moving one car length.)

At some point, there were sirens nearby, and then a police car, an ambulance, and a fire truck all pulled into the little driveway between Bill's and the Flamingo. One of the other players stepped outside to see what all the commotion was. When he returned, he told us that a bunch of people were stuck in the elevator. The elevator has glass walls, so it was easy to see them, he said. He estimated it was a dozen folks in there.

Didn't sound too exciting to me. But after playing another couple of hands, it dawned on me that letting this event go by was neglecting my sworn duty to my readership. So I walked outside and snapped the above photo of the end of excitement, after the rescue had been effected. Then, because of my devotion to bringing you breaking news as it happens, I waited a mere 12 hours after getting home to write this up.

Hey, it was late and I was tired last night!

This is undoubtedly the same elevator that was involved in the shenanigans described by Flamingo poker dealer "S" in his post a couple of weeks ago. It's a story well worth reading for general amusement, and to remind yourself how stupid people can be.

Las Vegas has had its share of problems with elevators recently. See here for a story about the new, unmarked thrill ride at Paris (and here for a slightly more accurate recitation of the relevant facts, though not nearly as funny as VegasRex makes it), and here for another casino stuck-elevator story. I notice that all of these incidents occurred at or adjacent to Harrah's properties. Hmmmm.

If you're coming to Vegas in the near future, I highly recommend using some of our excellent escalators. They break down at least as often as the elevators, but at least you can usually extract yourself from the situation with a little effort. Well, unless you're these people.

For a fascinating (well, I thought it was, anyway) peek inside the world of elevators--how they work, how they're designed, what people do in them, what breaks about them, their history, their future, what that "close doors" button really does, and much more--see this excellent article from the New Yorker magazine.

By the way, last night was my first losing session at Bill's, down $58. About half of the table consisted of decent players, as opposed to the other times I've been there, when there was only one or two people I had to watch out for. I don't know if this is a trend or just a coincidence, or perhaps because the World Series is in town. But, as "S" notes in another recent post, it's one of the natural laws of the poker world that good players learn where the bad players are and go there. A shark doesn't get to keep juicy little pools of fishies to himself for very long. Still, even with the small loss last night, my average profit per session at Bill's remains at about $200, so it's far from time to cross it off of the list of places to hit.