My best friend scored some free tickets to see Bill Cosby in concert at Buffalo Bill's in Primm, Nevada, near the California state line, about 40 miles southwest of Vegas. So that's where we went last night.
Cosby was funny, of course, and well worth the trip, though I don't think that the ad lib, conversational style he has adopted as he's gotten older is as funny as when he delivered set, carefully rehearsed, stand-up pieces like in the old days. Still, if anybody can get more comedy mileage out of his first colonoscopy, how male urination changes with age, or the absurdity of "turkey bacon," I don't know who it would be.
I snuck off to the poker room for a quickie session before the show started. It's just four tables roped off in a corner of the main casino floor, so is accompanied by the expected barrage of noise and cigarette smoke. The tables are covered in Speed Cloth, which I think I've only seen in Vegas at Fitzgerald's downtown. I like the stuff, because cards and chips slide over it almost as easily as the puck on an air hockey table. I don't know why it isn't used more commonly around town.
(Let me just stop to reflect on what my life has become. I have spent so much time in Las Vegas poker rooms that some days I feel like a walking encyclopedia of them. Want to know which casinos use what kind of felt on their tables? Ask me. Want to know who has built-in cupholders and who uses those awful tuck-in plastic things? Ask me. Want to know which rooms carry which poker magazines? Ask me. A few months ago I was playing at the Rio, and a tourist asked the dealer if there was anyplace in town that had spread-limit games. The dealer had no idea. I spouted off: El Cortez, the Plaza, and O'Shea's. This is the kind of stuff that I know. This is my strange little field of expertise. This is what my life has become.)
They had three tables going, all $2-$6 spread-limit hold'em, which I thought was kind of odd. (But hey, now I know a fourth place to send the next tourist that asks for spread-limit!) I played for 50 minutes before running off to see the Coz. Every player at my table clearly knew each other except for me, so apparently this is more of a locals place than I had realized. There was great excitement afoot about the fact that the bad-beat jackpot was up to over $11,000. It was one of the chief areas of table talk.
The standard of play was predictably appalling. It was getting close to time to leave, and I was pleased to see that I was up by about $20. Then I lost a big pot with top two pair (kings and queens) when an opponent rivered a flush on me, leaving me down about $20 instead of up. Dang. I didn't want to have to admit to my blog readers that I couldn't beat a lousy $2-6 spread-limit horrible locals game in effin' Primm, Nevada! I had time for one more hand, and decided, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and, when in Primm, do as the Primmians do. I resolved to play as badly as the rest of the table, and see what came of it.
You'll think I'm making this up, but it's the God's-honest truth. I chased a gutshot straight draw all the way to the river, paying the max for it on every street, and hit the damn thing with the last card--a 9, giving me the nuts with my J-Q on a board of 6-8-10-3-9. When I led out betting instead of checking on the river, the last opponent left in the hand said, "You have a 7, don't you?" I usually ignore such questions, but this time what I had done was so preposterous that I couldn't help telling him the truth: "I assure you I do not have a 7." He called, and then was mercifully silent about how I won, when he saw it.
It was nearly showtime, so I racked up my chips. I apologized for the hit-and-run, but lots of people were all getting up at about the same time to head into the arena, so I wasn't looking too rude or conspicuous. I finished up $27 for my 50 minutes of Primm-style poker.
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