Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

Would TIKAY

Please clear off line and enjoy yourself

Regards

M

I'm not here anymore.

[tikay]

I'm all behind here, so much to do, so little time, but I can see many blondes are understandably thrilled to see Skalie doing so well in the ME.

We have interviewed him daily, before the start of play each day, & that will all be on Poker Week this week & next week.

And we are doing an in-depth Interview with him tomorrow (Monday) at his house, which should be on the next Edition of Poker Week. If you got any questions you'd like us to ask him, Post them here please.

He's staying at a place with Stu Fox, Nick Gibson, Bullit Pete, J P Kelly, so we may take some chips & cards & have a little SNG. Easy money, eh?

Talking of Interviews, watch out for the Scotty Nguyen stuff we've got, he's been unbelievably good with interviews for us, & hams it up big time. "We gonna win this one Baby, no more tango, no more cha-cha, Scotty Nguyen gonna win........". They will be be on Poker week AND Sky Poker, I believe. (We have recorded 4 with him so far).

[bobby1]

great stuff Tony.....but wheres the poker and lyrics??

[Robert HM]

Had the joy of playing an SnG with skalie a couple of years ago at the Laddies Poker Million party. Fun to see bobby1 sitting in between a WPT winner, Roland, and a WSOP main event casher, Nick P. Skalie was extracting the urine from Roland, talking about his Wycombe Poker Tour win. Fun time.

[bobby1]

Had the joy of playing an SnG with skalie a couple of years ago at the Laddies Poker Million party. Fun to see bobby1 sitting in between a WPT winner, Roland, and a WSOP main event casher, Nick P. Skalie was extracting the urine from Roland, talking about his Wycombe Poker Tour win. Fun time.

That was a great game wasnt it....that Roland still owes me the score for it too.......I will ask him for it when he gets a few quid 

[tikay]

We have been flat out the last few days, hence no Diary, but here's some bits & pieces.

Each morning, we go to the Rio & park ourself in the corridor. I have to "spot" players we think suitable for a Poker Week or Sky Poker Interview, & yesterday we got Willie Tann, Skalie, Scotty Nguyen (who also did a Sky Poker promo for us), Sverre Sundbo &  few others, some good interviews in there.

Then we did some "Potcards from the Strip" for Sky Poker, we did these in front of a huge American semi-artic lorry, well sexy.

Then we went on location......

[tikay]

This is Billy the Cameraman, he's absolutely top-notch, & travels all over the world on TV assignments.

This was taken out in the desert near Red Rock, about 20 miles from LV. It's hell on earth out there, 120f regularly, & the heat takes your breath away. I could not but help think of the old cowboys, trekking cross this place on a horse, it must have been dicing with death, there is no water out here & the heat is a killer.

Not a nice place to die.

[Ironside]

potcards i like it sort of poker postcards did you get a copyright on the term if not i am off to get one

[tikay]

This was Wednesday evening on the balcony of a suite at the MGM. The suite cost $1,000 per night, but was running alive with giant cockroaches, scores of them, huge great things, which squelched sickeningly when you trod on them.

Here Rhow, Compo & me take a break.

[tikay]

Then we got back to work, with 22-take Compo. But then the equipment failed, luckily Compo & I were on hand to "advise"......

[tikay]

This is the world famous famous "Vegas" Sign, which is on the rocky meridian strip on the road into Vegas from the Airport. It was as hot as hell, & the heat soon burned through the soles of our shoes, meaning we had to keep moving around. On the Camera here is Tim the Sound Man, Edit Whizz Kid & Cameraman, another top bloke. Tim edits the stuff, then sends it back to the UK, by, variously, satellite link, e-Mail, & sometimes we are able to utilise the Sky News satellite-feed, which operates & is booked at certain times every day.

[tikay]

Here's the Mustang. The car is an American icon, but is not what it's cracked up to be, it's all wind & huff with very little puff. Makes a nice throaty noise, but that's about all it does. The body is thin & tinny, & it does 0-60 in about 20 minutes. We drove back from the Hoover Dam in it tonight with the roof down, Compo fell asleep in the passenger seat & was looking like a lobster by the time we got back to the Hotel.

[tikay]

Don't even THINK about asking what this was all about......

We were at Lake Mead, 30 miles from LV. Lake Mead is the largest man made lake or reservoiir in North America, & is held back & thus formed by the Hoover Dam, built back in the thirties. The Hoover Dam made the expansion of Los Angeles & the creation of Las Vegas, as we now know it, possible, by providing electro-power & irrigation in this rain-starved area of Nevada. The water comes from the mighty Colorado River, in itself the result of meltwater from the Rockies, & the lake is said to hold 2 years worth of water flow from the Colorado.

When built, the construction workers lived in purpose built accommodation in Boulder City, and it's tough to imagine how difficult it must have been to do manual labour in temperatures which regularly exceeded 120f.

The Lake has a Marina, which we visited, & is teeming with large (20lb+) fish which will almost eat out of your hands. Plenty of mallards & ducks, too, & it's the first time I've seen any birds or wildlife since we got to Vegas.

[xxMAIRxx]

LOL great reporting hun and some gr8 pics too

[tikay]

Not been to Vegas? Well, let me tell you, it's poker heaven, no doubt about it. But leave the poker aside, & it has little else to recommend it.

The Hotels are massive - bigger than you could possibly imagine. The "drop-off" & taxi area at Planet Hollywood, where we are staying, is EIGHT LANES WIDE, & heaves with traffic 24/7. Caesars Palace is even bigger, as is The Bellagio.

These places are stuffed with "slots", which the Americans are totally addicted to. The Bellagio has 2,700 slot machines, Caesars Palace 2,000, Gold Coast 2,200, Luxor 2,100, Mandalay Bay 2,400, MGM 3,700, Mirage 2,200, and the Rio, Planet Hollywood, Monte Carlo, New York New York, Orleans, Paris, Palms, Sahara, Starstosphere, Treasure Island, & The Venetian ALL have 2,000+ slots. The noise these machines make drives me insane, it's non-stop, & wander into the Hotels at 7pm or 7am, & the machines are all in use.

Then there is the "music". It's everywhere, some bright spark thinks we want music wherever we go, & we damn well get it. In the Hotel lobbies, Restaurants, Shops, car parks, lifts, toilets, sidewalks, everywhere, the music is soooo loud & invasive it drives me nuts. I had a meal with Jen & floppy at 6am yesterday, after the 0200 comp ended. 6am and STILL the music was so loud we could not converse. Jeez. But every Hotel is choc-a-bloc with Tourists, so I guess it works. There is not enough money in the world to get me to stay at Planet Hollywood ever again, there is just no escape from the music, & it's so loud & tacky. Not that I'm complaining...but honestly, I'd rather spend a year in solitary confinement (so long as I had quality reading material) then stay at such a Hotel ever again. If I sound ungrateful to those who have paid for my trip, I'm not, quite the opposite, & we've all worked as hard as we can, and had a ball, but that bloody music.......