There’s been a lot of them. I made my first journey to Vegas in mid 80’s. Two of my girlfriends and I flew into town, from Montana, for three days. My trip was totally unplanned, theirs had been in the works for about a month when they tagged me and coaxed me into getting a ticket. We stayed at the Castaways, and now the Mirage covers the whole area. It was a bizarre trip. I was having an issue with the guy that I lived with – he was having a long distance affair, up close and personal though when he could bring her around or go to her (poker trips are a wonderful excuse to drop off the radar for a few days). His being unfaithful – and lying about it – and my own hurt feelings and lack of being able to walk away from him – helped me decide it was time to just get the hell out of Dodge..er…ahh…Missoula.So off we went, Moi, Kim, and Gwen. Talk about an odd assortment of personality and lifestyle. Kim is Korean, tall and beautiful, barely spoke any English, she dealt poker with me in Missoula at the Oxford. She met her husband, Don, when he was in the service, they came back to the states together where Don practiced law. Gwen was the widowed mother of two, short and always wanting to shed some pounds, wildly fun, smart and bored enough with life to be dangerous to herself and everyone around her. Moi? I have no idea. I was sad, very sad. I had no idea where to go with my life or even any kind of design that would help me think up a plan.
We didn’t do anything crazy, at least I didn’t. Perhaps they did when I wasn’t with them, our main plan was to play poker, and play poker we did, mixed with a few machines here and there. I hit 7 out of 8 on a 25c keno machine and won $800. Don’t even think I was smart enough to tuck it away, I gave almost all of it back before I left the machine because I KNEW IT WAS GOING TO HIT! I don’t know that now so I save a lot of money.

We played at the Castaways to get our room rate. What a room! It was more like a shoe box with two king size beds shoved together with barely enough space to walk past them. The whole interior, color scheme, and furniture was dark – I now believe places do that so you can’t see the ground in sludge and the cockroaches blend right in. We didn’t spend a lot of time in the room anyway. I think I might have slept four hours out of that three day trip. We took a cab downtown and hit the Golden Nugget, even spotting Ernie dealing a game there – we used to deal to Ernie in Montana. Kim and I played $10-20H (I think Gwen deserted us for a machine – she was a machine junkie), and honestly the $10-20 game was out of my league but it didn’t slow me down. I played anyway.

I won a huge pot (huge by my standards) when I called a raise with middle cards and flopped trips. I distinctly remember the woman that raised the hand pre-flop, raised every bet and raise I made, and lost to me. She gave me an extremely pained look and said something retarded like, “you’ll be the end of me,” or “I can’t beat you,” something implying that I had been beating her all day. Guess all of us from Montana look alike. I managed to leave the game with a win.

When I ventured back the next day, I got the shit beat out of me, flopping a full when I held 5-5 and the board came 10-10-5 and losing a monster pot on the river. Ain’t that the way poker is? I still played on, like a zombie with chips in my hand, I played myself off of everything I won and everything I had in my pocket. That was my first real shock about the world in Vegas. I couldn’t cash a check. I’d never heard of such a thing. Now I’m shocked when I go through a town and they do take checks…hahahahaaa!

We ate at the Riviera coffee shop and saw Robert Goulet a few tables away. I would never have known who he was, except one of my table mates pointed him out. I thought that was pretty kewl…that we had a celebrity spotting. That was about 25 years ago when he was on the ‘star’ list.

I managed to leave town with -0- in my pocket. I’d heard the names Doyle Brunson and Stu Ungar but they were a shadow that wasn’t real and nothing was star studded and glitzy about being broke in Vegas. I was pretty new to poker even though I dealt it six days a week and played it seven days a week, I still didn’t know jack about odds-schmods, position-schmosition, hand selection, bankroll, or anything else. I was intoxicated and obsessed with poker.

One thing I experienced was the desert heat. I came out of the Nugget around 6 a.m. and took a bus out close to the Castaways. I couldn’t believe the sun was a glaring, eye ripping, mind numbing, horrible thing at that hour of the morning and how freaking hot it was out. At that time, I thought the desert was the ugliest piece of real estate I’d ever looked at and wondered how anyone could ever live there. HAW HAW HAW!