Gold Coast poker room and the rodeo

I'm trying eventually to get around to every poker room in town. After finally trying the Gold Coast yesterday, I'm up to 46 out of (as close as I can tell) 54 currently open rooms. (Yet to go: O'Shea's, Plaza, Hacienda, Rampart, Rio, and Poker Palace).

The Gold Coast is a crummy little room with little going for it. It's just an area in the middle of the casino, with full penetration of the noise and cigarette smoke from the surrounding slot machines. I've called there a few times hoping to catch a no-limit game, and they have never had one going. Yesterday there was one $4-8 table and two $2-4 tables. It's no worse than a lot of other places (e.g., Bally's, Tuscany, Texas Station), but no better, either. I just can't think of much reason I'd go back again.

The big annual rodeo is in town this week. Cowboy hats are everywhere. As I was leaving Gold Coast, I passed the bar and saw this group of six black hats standing together. They weren't very cooperative in arranging themselves so that they'd all fit in a cell-phone photo, so the blurry one above was the best I could manage. I'm not sure I'll ever understand the point of wearing cowboy hat and cowboy boots indoors. If you're going out on a cattle roundup, OK. But in a bar? What's the point?

Ugly poker clothes

There's not much you can do to brand yourself as an amateur/tourist/wannabe than to wear stupid poker-themed clothing. This is really more of an amusement than a gripe, because it's so funny to see how oblivious people are to how ridiculous they look.

Take the guy in this picture, for instance, who was at my table last night at the Flamingo. (I apologize for the grainy picture; my cell phone camera has pretty low resolution, and my hands were shaking trying not to laugh.) When I asked him about the shirt, he boasted that it was custom-made--a bull-rider's shirt, he said. (He's in town for the big rodeo competition.) He was very proud of the thing. I had to obscure his face out of a sense of mercy. Might as well wear a rhinestone-studded white jumpsuit, like the dork in the Milwaukee's Best Light commercial.

A wise piece of advice, attributed variously to Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi: "When you get into the end zone, act like you've been there before." Nobody who plays poker on a regular basis wears silly clothes to do so. Special poker-themed shirts say to the world, "Woo hoo! I finally get to play POKER, in a real casino, in VEGAS, baby!"

It's perfectly understandable that one might feel that way, particularly if visiting from a state or nation where there are no legal places in which to play. But a poker table is not a place to wear your feelings on your sleeve, literally or figuratively. If you don't present yourself as a newcomer, you're less likely to be perceived as one--and "newcomer" is strongly associated with "weak player," which is not exactly the image you want to project.

So save the silly shirts for your Wednesday night home games, OK?