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Author Topic: Tales from the Tube  (Read 11000 times)
Snatiramas
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« Reply #105 on: November 21, 2010, 09:01:29 PM »

I am still not sure what vast looks or feels like. The word itself almost defies a logical explanation and often is best explained as an emotion. In terms of America I got a real feeling of vast as we flew into Charlotte. Out of nowhere in the middle of a landlocked mass appears what looks like a number of Lego like skyscrapers. To put it into perspective, get a large lump of Blu Tack, stick half a dozen pencils in it and place it in the middle of your lounge. Just look how out of place and incongruous it looks.

That was the feeling as I came into Charlotte. I would have loved to have a walk round but my next flight took off in thirty five minutes so i went towards my next gate. There were quite a number of American Football fans going to all points, and strangely they were all mingling without the need to kick the living shit out of each of other. How strange.

I chat to an American soldier about life the universe and everything. He is a class act and it made me realise yet again how quickly I categorise whole nations without a moment’s thought and always to the lowest common denominator. We land in San Francisco and this time I follow the signs to hire cars and have to get on a monorail to a four storey car park that has all the hire car companies in one building. Boston look and learn.

At this point I make the one wrong, truly wrong, call of the trip. I am offered at a tremendous discount the opportunity to drive a Mustang as my hire car. My heart says YES YES YES in a sort of Harry met Sally orgasmic way, my head says no, you are almost certain to prang it. But think about it for just a few seconds. Cruising down the West Coast highway with the roof down in a Ford Mustang, why on earth did I say no?

Still they did give me a free upgrade. Yes I am driving from San Francisco to San Jose in a brilliant white Ford.......Focus. Not quite the same huh. Get to the hotel. Check in. Shower change and head off to the Garden City Casino. I need to find something to do on Sunday and I know I could go travelling around experiencing the sights and sounds but I need to stop moving for a bit. As I sit here now I think I should have gone exploring but you can only make decisions at the time.

Now I don’t know if you have seen the film 21, and if you haven’t then might I recommend it, or better still the book “bringing down the house “ by Ben Mazrich. Well in the film, our hero as a test of his card counting prowess, has to go into a Chinese Casino. No Caucasians. I walk into the Garden City Casino and I am knocked out of my stride. This is a big version of that casino. There are about 40 poker tables. There are other table games but no roulette. I watch some of the cash action and know instantly that I am not going into that particular bear pit. Knackered and ready for bed I head back to my hotel!
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« Reply #106 on: November 21, 2010, 10:22:43 PM »

have a good trip mate
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Snatiramas
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« Reply #107 on: November 29, 2010, 09:42:57 AM »

So it’s Sunday morning. Bright and sunny and I am here in wonderful West Coast America. The urge to take the car and explore is strong but I have a plan, and the plan was to play some poker at the Garden City Casino. As you know last night I arrived and had a look round and I had some reservations but today at 11am it is a different place entirely.

For a start Sunday morning poker is about as weird a feeling as you can get. I was brought up on tournaments only taking place in the evening and the centre of the poker cosmos was based in Luton. My early days playing the game were a heady mix of, getting it a little bit wrong, all the way through to, misreading my hand and proudly declaring I have a flush only to realise it was king high. As I had turned over my cards they were live and the king high won!!! Even better was that it was against a player I didn’t like very much. Sometime later I didn’t like this player at all, but that is a whole different story.

Now I have only one rule when playing in America. Walk to the table and tell everybody how excited you are to be finally playing live, the great game that you have seen so often on TV. Bless them, but the Yanks do so love to believe my novice Brit nonsense. Anyway I am having a damn good time. Catching cards like Sicilian on any given evening at the G (Stop bleating Phil) and tilting the table nicely with a range of moves.

Of course as you all know I do like a bit of chat at the table. I think poker without chat is best done online, and the beauty of live poker is that the person next to you can’t go anywhere. So I am swapping stories about sport and baseball (please do not confuse the two). The Giants are about to win the World Series, named of course because nobody in the world except Americans gives a toss about rounders, and the fact that that the San Francisco 49’ers are in London. I sit in my seat thinking isn’t it weird that they have sent us their American football team and in a pseudo reciprocal arrangement we have sent them.........me.

It is a fast paced tournament and after a few hours play and a nice cash I find myself outside in bright sunshine. I go retail visiting, as it is a passion as well as a job, to try and understand what works in retail. I go to Staples and Fry’s and Micro Center and get some good ideas and then at 7pm return for tourney two, return of the Snatty.

The evening crew are a wild bunch and the casino is hopping. There must have been more than a dozen cash games going on but I feel right at home now. Same routine walking to the table. Same result. Lots of humour, a little effort, money at the end of it. Now i could have gone touring but I didn’t. Some will say that was a waste and maybe they are right but as the old saying goes “you pays your money and takes your choice”, and my choice was to play poker and if the quote I need to justify my actions dates back to 1846 so be it.

My trip was almost over but little was I to realise that the scariest moment was heading towards me at a rate of knots.

Please make sure that you carry a bottle of water on the tube in the hot weather.
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« Reply #108 on: November 29, 2010, 10:08:28 AM »

scariest moment was heading towards me at a rate of knots.

 
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« Reply #109 on: November 29, 2010, 11:15:25 AM »

Just caught up the last few posts Phil, just a great read as per usual.

My one complaint is that you didn't manage a slight detour to a retail convention in LV in mid-November.

Don't tell me you got mugged in the car-park 
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« Reply #110 on: November 29, 2010, 01:20:08 PM »

Just caught up the last few posts Phil, just a great read as per usual.

My one complaint is that you didn't manage a slight detour to a retail convention in LV in mid-November.

Don't tell me you got mugged in the car-park 

I came so close to detouring to Vegas on the Saturday I felt quite like Gollum and the ring.....as regards scary you will never guess it!!!!
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« Reply #111 on: November 29, 2010, 11:54:19 PM »

                                      Scary Quiz what happened to Snatty

 1. Did your car breakdown in the middle of nowhere and you had to spend the night in your car

 2. Did you get pulled by the police and get a gun pushed in your ear

 3. Did you run out of Guiness

 4. Did you get mugged

 5. Did you check into a roadside motel , only to discover it was the local Chicken Ranch
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« Reply #112 on: December 07, 2010, 09:26:44 AM »

I had spent a couple of days in San Jose and I liked it. Liked it a lot. Good weather, good food and as always I met nice people all of whom have a story to tell if only one can find time to listen. It is funny how listening has gone out of fashion. In the business world I can think of hundreds of courses on how to get your message across and yet so little time is spent on how to actively listen.

And before you think, oh great Snatty has got his holier than thou head on today, I confess right here and right now that I am the world’s worst for drifting off in a sort of Peep Show type way. Now some would blame their star sign, or their psyche, but in honesty I have a boredom threshold of a second. What is worse is that somehow my brain continues to work in the background and I can replay the last sentence without really taking in what is being said. I wish I could slow my mind down just a little and interact fully with the person in front of me.

So meetings all concluded the little white Ford and I are heading towards San Francisco in the warm afternoon sunshine ready for our trek towards home. It is a long flight and I already know it is full. I check in with the nice people at Virgin who don’t give me a free upgrade which means I need to work on my negotiation techniques. I have some supper and just people watch before heading down to the gate. At this point I get a phone call from one of my customers saying that they would like me to present at the managers conference in Miami.

I phone the guvnor who says come back first and then fly back to Miami five days later. Whilst making all of these phone calls I was sitting at the gate staring into what I thought was the middle distance. Well it turned out that it wasn’t. No I was staring at two lesbians one of whom now took total exception. In fact as I looked round I realised that there were a number of single gender happy couples. Now I have no issues with homosexuality, coming from the religion of “whatever floats your boat”, unfortunately the alpha male of this couple started to shout at me!! Not talk calmly, not ask me what I am looking at? No she lays into me about being a homophobe. Of course I stand my ground and come up with some delightfully witty answer like “you have got to be joking!”

Well things went slightly downhill from there to the extent that within a few moments there seems to be a flash mob of hundreds, well at least five or six, asking me why I am being so anti social. Hang on a second all I did was make a couple of phone calls. Only one way to stop this..........

“Listen bitch I am gay now FUCK OFF!”

The crowd disperses quicker than Gillian McKeith can faint. Great as long as I am gay it seems it is okay to stare at whomever I like. This is a strange world we have created. I mean maybe I should have stood up and shouted “Is it because I is Black?” Well of course that would not work, but apparently I am a believable gay. Good to know!
The flight passes without any further incident and I return to a cold and raining Heathrow. It’s good to be home if only for three days. Miami awaits!

For those of you who want a circle line train please go to Edgware road and change trains.
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« Reply #113 on: December 07, 2010, 11:21:04 AM »

does your wife know?
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« Reply #114 on: December 07, 2010, 11:42:22 AM »

Face it Snatty, you are pretty camp.
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« Reply #115 on: December 07, 2010, 11:50:08 AM »

lol great stuff

I reckon most Americans probably think most Brits are gay anway. It's the accent for starters
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« Reply #116 on: December 07, 2010, 03:41:23 PM »

So a few days later I find myself back at Heathrow catching a flight to Miami for a quick in and out visit. I will be training a room of over 100 people which way back in my youth would have worried me silly, but as a famous poker player once said “once you can bluff Sicilian everything else pales by comparison”.

I land after a tremendously cramped flight and check into the hotel. I eat well and have an early night. My presentation is in the snooze slot, that first point after lunch. Luckily they are having Chinese for lunch which means they are all pumped up on MSG. I have to tell you, because no-one else will listen, I gave the best training session I have ever given. Truly, no word of a lie. People came up to me and shook me by the hand once I had finished. I spent the rest of the afternoon answering questions and talking to sales people. It was good.

I got back to the hotel at 6p.m. and feel like partying. Now I noticed online that fairly near to the hotel there is a dog track and at the dog track there is a casino and you guessed it folks, at the casino there happens to be a poker room. It doesn’t look too far on the old Google map so I decide to walk in the early evening heat. The weather is lovely but as I am walking I notice that I am starting to walk through an area that is somewhere that Dog the Bounty Hunter might call work.

 Quite a number of the properties are boarded and all of them have railings over the windows. I get to a major road junction and a car with darkened windows slows down next to me. The window slowly winds down (strange how we still use wind when there is no winding on electric windows) and I start soiling my rather pleasant beige Chino’s. I stand transfixed waiting for the out stretched arm with a gun attached, when this woman asks me if I am interested in a little fun. Great in my last two visits to America I have been mistaken for a gay and a male prostitute. I can only presume the poor lady is blind and in charge of a motor car. I politely decline and at that moment spot the Magic City Casino.

This is one rough looking place but in honesty is probably about the same as driving up to the old Grosvenor Luton. As all regular followers of this thread will know Spanish is the order of the day including the police officers who are on duty in the cardroom.  Unfortunately there are no tournaments only cash tables. I hate cash poker. It leaves me cold and I only ever play at Luton very occasionally. So I play the smallest table stakes and over about two hours manage to turn my $100 to nothing. Marvellous. The people aren’t as friendly either. I get the distinct impression that for a number of them if they do not win they will not be eating. Their priorities might be slightly wrong! I take my leave and wait the standard twenty minutes for a taxi in Miami.

On my way back I get the Taxi driver to give me a little tour of the area. Well I have never seen so many police cars patrolling an area; the taxi driver says the airport area is really rough. Great move Snatty. Note to self, go to America for a month and walk through various cities without doing any research and see if I come out alive. If I do, write about it, if I don’t, I won’t need to worry.

The following day I fly home with a sense of anti climax for some reason. I can’t totally put my finger on it other than I know that this dream I had about how this job would go is not the reality I am facing. It happens, and after a few weeks the company and I decide to move in different directions. I wish them all the best. In the eight months I was there I learned a tremendous amount and after a lifetime of working for large multi nationals it gave me an opportunity of seeing things from a totally different perspective. So to pastures new which I am unsure of right now though I do as always have a few ideas.

Ladies and Gentlemen this is Edgware station. This train terminates here. All change please.
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« Reply #117 on: December 07, 2010, 03:48:33 PM »

really enjoy this thread!

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« Reply #118 on: December 08, 2010, 03:02:18 PM »

Ideas for a new job for Snatty

Please become a trainer to make poker presenters more interesting.

Stop them talking about percentages and fold equity.

 Get them to all talk about trains and holidays
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« Reply #119 on: December 12, 2010, 02:12:57 PM »

I can hardly keep up Phil, first you've "come out" and then you're appearing live in Miami Vice.

Top writing as is your wont.

Here's wishing you all the best in the future.
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