Kee-rist! Food everywhere and the supply never seemed to end. Why is it that we have a tendency to go back and keep munching when we are hanging out with friends and gabbing/playing cards? When I was leaving, much later, Marie threatened me with, “Take some of that food with you. If you don’t, I’ll throw it out!”HA! I said, “Those starving kids in China won’t get it either way. Throw it out!” Nothing against the starving children or people of the world, but I learned a long time ago that eating food on your plate because others are starving elsewhere doesn’t do a damn thing for you – or them.

So here we are:

Wayne is figuring out the chips each player is going to get, since we play for really high limit, it’s a mathematical issue every time we get together. HA! Wayne is a mega chip collector. But these chips are an odd combination of mayhem, some of them were even used during Bellagio’s play days back in 1998. He’s kind enough to cart them to our group games when the host doesn’t have any play chips available. He’s also kind enough to figure out who gets what. In the picture, Wayne in purple, Marie in white, Carole in pink, Mark AKA Kram in white, Gordon – with his back to us – silver hair.

Mark hadn’t been to one of our gatherings in a long, long time…but then really none of us do, the gatherins are few and far between anymore. He lives between here, Florida, and Pennsylvania now (I think those are the different places anyway). We met because of Table Tango and have maintained a great friendship ever since, even though the first time I dealt to him at Bellagio he had a bad session during my down. I won’t take the credit or the blame for that…it’s just poker kids.

Suzanne, Melody, and Gordon. Suzanne isn’t always around either, she works out of town part of the time. Of course she’s going to kill me when she sees this picture. Melody has been in hiding for awhile. Her husband, Mike, died at the end of 2004 and she’s just flat stayed out of sight and action – she has been raising two sons and that should just about say it all. And here’s another great aspect of poker: with Melody dropping out of sight, I had a nagging thought now and then that I needed to see if I could get in touch with her, of course. Like all things in life, I get totally over ran by things on my plate and I simply run out of time.

I checked the ‘comment’ section here in Tango and found one from someone that claimed to have gone to college with Melody and really wanted to get in touch with her. Umnhhh! Did I even have her contact details??? I went back through my old address books that I’d imported into Thunderbird and found a #. Long and short of it, we are back in touch and I was able to send Melody’s info to her old college chum and they have reacquainted. Nice! I love poker!!

Gary hung out (that’s a great term since it’s his place) with us but we couldn’t coax him in to the game with us. I took the Wii over to show Marie and Gary the boxing, bowling, and some of the capabilities of the console. Hell…I even took my Guitar Hero III Gibson guitar with me. Suzanne and I both played guitar (nah…I’m a far cry from being a hero) and we boxed against each other for a mini lesson on how it works. Gary and I managed a little sparring in the boxing also before most of the people got there…I went early.

This is the view from their balcony as it looks towards the Strip: The first is taken with a regular setting, the other two are taken with a special light setting on the camera which makes it appear to be daylight (kinda-sorta). And I seriously need to use a tripod, but used the balcony rail instead.

We played all kinds of lunatic games. High spade gets half the pot, roll your own donkey 7 card stud, one-eyed jacks and something else is wild, and everything that Mark and his friends dreamed up when they were high and drinking back in Florida some years ago. Anyway that’s how it seemed…you would have to be on something to come up with some of these games. And Wayne had one that he said his grandpa use to play and I believe he called it “Montana”. Gordon and I were chiding him that it couldn’t have come from Montana because we’d never heard of it.

I’m not a tremendous fan of card games where the game changes every deal and different wild cards are used to make a hand – with different requirements/restrictions on how they are used. But this was a game of friends – and we were playing for such big stakes – that I fell right into the flow with everyone else. At one point Mark wanted to throw in the joker. Nothing wrong with that except we were using a red deck and the joker was blue. We were doing a ‘what the hell????’ and he was explaining it was no big deal, you just knew when someone had it. Like NO SHIT, Dick Tracy. We did put two jokers in the deck but changed them out to red.

Thanks to Mark, we got to meet Tamara, she was a great addition to our group and just learning to play poker. Good job, Mark. Game plan: get new girl friend, teach her how to play poker, bring another victim player to the table. Mark is a blogger and an online player and a live player and a crazy kid that I just love to death. He multi tables 14 at a time online. Hey…don’t ask me how, I can barely manage four with any sense of sanity. And he had his account closed at one time (open now) because he was accused of being a bot. And now he’s the proud owner of a WSOP event. I’m so damn happy for him. WTG Mark!

Look at these faces! You have to know we are playing for seriously high stakes when there’s that much concern over what’s in the pot and the action. I wouldn’t trade this group for anything in the world, not even a WSOP Main Event Champion bracelet (which I would really, really, really, love to win).

As usual, life goes on. Gary and Marie are leaving town tomorrow afternoon for Iowa for the next four months or so. I feel as if I barely spent any time with Marie during the last six months and she’s leaving already. I’m on my way out the door shortly to meet her for lunch and a possibly afternoon of live poker play. Bon Voyage.