Saturday, May 29, 2010

Miscellaneous sights from the Rio

I did finally get around to playing some actual poker last night after my socializing and gawking. I headed back to the regular poker room rather than joining the cash games in progress in the Pavilion Room for two main reasons. First, it's not nearly so noisy and chaotic there. Second, assuming they run things as in the past, you can't get any comp credits or status points playing in the WSOP rooms. If the games were meaningfully softer or better there, I'd play there and skip the trivial bonuses, but I have no reason to believe that to be the case.

In any event, here's what the newly covered tables in the main poker room look like. The "felt" is a very slick material, even easier to slide cards and chips across than "speedcloth." I liked it a lot. I'm guessing, though, that these were printed up before Harrah's and Everest Poker had their falling out.




For one of the downs in my session, we had celebrity dealer Nelson. I recognized him immediately from his countless appearances on High Stakes Poker, Poker After Dark, NBC Heads Up Championship, etc. Strangely, though, it appeared that not a single other player at my table knew his face. He was, as might be expected, a consummate pro in every respect.




Finally, I was lucky enough to snap the Picture of the Day. I was standing outside the Rio convention area with my friend Shamus when Kara Scott, who had been hanging around a few feet away from us (she can't keep her eyes off of me--and, really, who can blame her?) suddenly jumped onto the back of a scooter with Maridu (Maria Mayrinck).



That's right: This blog now features hot poker-girl-on-poker-girl action!

You're welcome.

9 comments:

Shrike said...

If you are going to post pictures, Kara Scott is a worthy subject.

-PL

Matthew Yauch said...

I started dealing the WSOP yesterday and I actually dislike the felts. While the glide is *very* nice as you mentioned, the busy graphics tend to make me not even see chips. Red chips on the Jack Link's, white chips on the big WSOP chip. Not a big deal (pun intended), but it does cause me to stop every once in a while if I'm moving fast.

One thing I thought was pretty funny was a lady on her phone pretty much my entire down at a NL HE table. One gentleman noted this and mentioned the rule about cell phone use, quickly adding "it's not really a problem since she still acts faster than all these other idiots." (with a smile) True to his words, she managed to make every single bet, raise, re-raise, and shove all-in without a second's hesitation and without skipping a word in her conversation.

voiceofjoe said...

Just as an aside - and honest question - Is it not compulsory in America to wear Helmets on Mopeds/Motor Cycles ?

... or did the have them stashed out of frame ?

Rakewell said...

It varies state by state. But they were just tooling around the Rio parking lot, not out on public roads anyway, so whatever the law is here (and I don't know what it is) wouldn't apply.

gadzooks64 said...

I LOVE that dealer. I have noticed him dealing all the notable TV shows. Clearly he has skills.

I purchased a speed cloth cover for my table at home and everybody who has played on it loves it. Faster than any normal speed cloth. Now if only we could get the powers that be to switch to jumbo index cards I would be in poker heaven.

Conan776 said...

@voiceofjoe States can't receive federal funds for highway construction unless they have a helmet law, but that suits some states, e.g. New Hampshire -- the live free or die state -- just fine.

@rakewell I would have recognized that dealer!

Maridu said...

LOL how the heck did you get this shot of me and Kara? Good job, I truly loled! xx Maria =)

Rakewell said...

It wasn't difficult. Shamus and I had been standing there waiting for his ride to pick him up. Kara was just a few feet away from us. (She doesn't know either me or Shamus, even though Shamus did a phone interview of her just a couple of weeks ago.) I saw you walk off toward the parking lot, then a minute later come back and call out to Kara to hop on. It took her a few seconds to decide to do it, which was enough time to get the camera out. Click!

Everest Pokers said...

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