IMOP VI: Santa's 12ish—Section IV (The Denouement)

Note: The official IMOP trip report will be posted in randomly intermittent installments. Prior entries are: Part I and Part 2, Section 3(A), and Section 3-D (The Jacket Dinner). The author of the report is our cruise director, Santa Claus, with occasional editing by yours truly. Enjoy!

Saturday:

The Ironmen begin to slowly shake off the fog of the Ugly Jacket night and assemble in the Venetian poker room for some Euro-tilting cash game action. Santa gets seated at a table where Barbie and Fat Jesus are already holding court. At one point during their verbal jousting, this hand breaks out: Preflop raise and both are in the hand. Barbie has 64s and flop comes 224. Fat Jesus bets, Barbie calls as Fat Jesus says, “You’re behind”. Barbie’s reply is, “Yes, until I hit my four right here, “and sure enough a four turns. They get it all in and Fat Jesus turns over pocket ducks for quads and takes a big bite out of Barbie. Nothing better than drawing dead and getting there. No mercy!

Grange and River Joe pick up Santa and they get breakfast after standing in the longest line in the world at Bally’s café. As they walk over to Aria to register for the last tournament of the trip, they are passing through Cosmopolitan and they hear giggling. Santa turns and sees Fat Jesus, Colt and Barbie laughing their asses off, drinking cosmopolitans and playing Sex In the City slots. Their waitress is shaking her head as she watches them guzzle the fruity drinks out of martini glasses while shouting, “I hit the shoe shopping jackpot for $300 on pink pumps!” They should definitely have their Man Cards revoked.

Colt and Barbie sip Blood Orange Cosmos and hit up the

Sex & the City slots at the Cosmopolitan.

Everyone makes it to Aria alive. Fat Jesus (who has an uber-generic real name) breaks the computer in the Aria cashier cage when they have to look up his players' club card by name; the computer freezes up and has to be rebooted. This leads to Grange and Fat Jesus prop betting on the over/under for other Ironmen names in the system; Grange is tilted when he takes the under on his and two other uncommon Ironman names and discovers they all have a lot of dopplegangers (perhaps some of whom can actually play poker and/or get better comps). While registering for the tourney, a near fight breaks out in Ivey’s room when Shawn “Sheiky” Sheikhan goes bananas on some guy and Todd Brunson calls security. Great, our closest brush with fame is a world famous douche bag. *sigh*

After nearly bubbling for the third time in four tourneys, Lucky not only cashes but takes home the cash in the largest tourney we entered (over 100 degens). He becomes friends with Yaks as they help him with a timely double up, then his Yaks take out the table bully that refused to chop. The players (including Barbie) finally decide to chop when it is down to four. Lucky has the chip lead, and gets the largest share and is declared the winner of that event.

River Joe had busted earlier and jumped into a cash game. In one hand, he gets heads up with an old short stacked Asian (OSSA) where he flops top two, on an OESD board. OSSA sits there and ponders on what to do. Joe asks, “You have straight draw don’t you.” Finally OSSA answers yes. Joe then says, “You should go all-in, you’re getting the right value.” OSSA tanks, and eventually gets it all-in which Joe calls. You guessed it, OSSA gets there on river. Thank you, lessons are FREE, don’t forget to tip your dealer … rack please.

After having busted out earlier, Bonnie and Fat Jesus headed over to the sports book at the V. At one point Fat Jesus had placed a sports bet along with Bonnie, and had left the VSB to take a nap. Thinking the team he bet on had to win by 3, he watched the end of the game alone in his room rooting for the overtime and cheering when it happened. Then he decided to watch the end of the game at the VSB with the others, still thinking he needed to win by three. Fat Jesus was disappointed when his team and he both “lost” but Bonnie sees his disappointment and says “you know we won, don't you?” laughing at his ignorance.

On their way out of Aria, Mr. Chow, Barbie and Colt decide to see if the blackjack tables are still hot for them. While Colt is sticking to a range of $20-$40 wagers the other two proceed to randomly toss out $100+ while splitting 3’s or 5’s against a dealer 8-10. Gentleman stops by with his wife/girlfriend and asks them to take good care of her while he goes to play poker. (“Dear Penthouse Forum….”). Anyway, they welcome their new friend to the table with a series of “Ca-Caw’s” and random exclamations. After witnessing Barbie go through a series of Benjamins, he stumbles across a pair of 3s against a dealer 9. Colt leans over to their new friend and whispers, “Watch this. You’re about to witness a complete train wreck” as Barbie reaches for more money to split those 3’s and drop $150 total on the hand. Total Ironman net after 45 minutes of BJ = down $850’ish. The cure? Walking over to Planet Hollywood. 

As the rest of the crowd arrives from Aria, Bonnie, Grange and Santa are already grinding away at a 1/2 NLHE game with a crazy drunk Belgian guy, claiming to be the head chef for some restaurant on the Strip. He would frequently overbet, shove in or just plain play blind on nearly every hand. Grange and Santa had taken big bites out of him when he decided he wanted to play 2/5 NLHE. That was the fastest list I have ever seen come together, and half the table followed him. At the new table Grange, Barbie, and River Joe were able to get seats. All three got fat off the guy as he methodically worked his way through the bustout/ATM/$1000 buy-in cycle five or six times, but the funniest hand wasn’t a part of the winning. Barbie and the Belgian get it all in preflop for about $500 apiece. Belgian guy has not looked at his cards yet. Barbie has AQ and feels good after seeing AQ7 rainbow flop. Problem was that when the Belgian finally looks at his cards after the river comes out, turns out he’s got pocket 7’s for a set to blindly felt Barbie! Fukkaw!

Yo dawg! Chico from Planet Hollywood, winner

of the IMOP Most Entertaining Poker Dealer award.

Sunday:

Santa awakens from a short nap to get an early start on tallying up all of the points, sheets and contests to try and figure out who won. He texts Grange from Mirage to see if anyone is playing. Grange’s response from the Venetian is: "Pot Limit Gamboool!!!!"  Santa rounds up the scoresheets and is looking forward to playing a little Omaha to wind down the trip. However, based on the series of tweets and texts he gets on the walk over, he decides to sit this one out and avoid disaster; every other pot seemed to have multi-way all-ins for over a grand each time…

Grange, Mr. Chow and Barbie are in the 1/2 PLO game with a few sketchy locals and one nasty old lady. She was probably 65+, bearing a strong resemblance to the Wicked Witch of the West, and wearing a jacket that would've walked away with Ugly Jacket honors. She was also sweated by her--sister? mother? lover?--who had her own combo chair/walker. Crabby would buy in for the minimum ($200), wait for Aces, then bitch like a sailor when she was inevitably cracked. One hand, she called Mr. Chow and Barbie all-in on the flop of 9-9-4 with AAxx double-suited, but of course both our boys held a 9, and their hands held up to chop the old lady’s money. Crabby bitched to her partner with a ton of profanity about the suckout. Barbie said something innocuous about a tough beat, and she hissed at him, “Don’t you f-ing talk to me!” Crabby also refused to let any player offer her chips for her bills; she made a point of only letting the dealer make change.

This was the scene of Grange’s best run good of a trip already filled with running good. He won a monsterpotten with QcJcJdTd, flopping the OESFD on a board of 9d-8d-x. He got it all in against one of the local "pros" who was trying to run the game. They agreed to run it twice. First card off: 7d! Yahtzee! Grange is now pissed that he agreed to run it twice. No worries. Second board runs out: Blank, Qd! Donkey Kong! Luckbox hits both ends of the straight flush and makes the dealer hold off raking the muck while asking Fat Jesus (also spectating with Santa) to take a photo of it. His competitors were not pleased. Within the next half hour, he also hit middle set with 6s (666, baby!) on a board of Q-6-5, and hit two full houses running it twice, for another monsterpotten and a bonus of sending Crabby off on mega-tilt to rip the heads off bunnies (sorry, bunnies). That little bit of run good was also run bad, however, as the straight flushes and monsterpotten occurred a couple of hours after the official cutoff for IMOP points (which includes points for high hands and large pots). Grange would up with what he calls his  "Tag Heuer PLG Watch" after converting some of the profits from his best Vegas outing in 2-3 years (Fat Jesus—a Tag Heuer aficianado—should really get a commission for his superb sales work at the City Center Tag Heuer shop).

The board from Grange's double straight flush hand at the Venetian.

Note Grange's Patron-rocks-lime anti-scurvy beverage (left), as well as 

Crabby and her Amazing Technicolor Eyesore (right).

As the guys walked from the poker room over to the Grand Luxe for the traditional IMOP wrap up, they come across Barbie, Fat Jesus and River Joe searching for one last fourball opportunity. They somehow managed to win yet again. Ca-caw!

After the usual voodoo scorekeeping, Barbie and his miracle table game run managed to squeeze out a repeat victory and rare back-to-back IMOP championship. Hopefully he saves some of his winnings to pay for all of breakfast next year…

Bonnie engages in international drinking

diplomacy in this retrospective pic from IMOP-V.

IMOP VI: Santa's 12ish—Section 3-D (The Jacket Dinner)

Note: The official IMOP trip report will be posted in randomly intermittent installments. Prior entries are: Part I and Part 2, and Section 3(A). The author of the report is our cruise director, Santa Claus, with occasional editing by yours truly. Enjoy!

The IMOP Jacket Dinner has had great influence in Hollywood.

Friday Night:

The highlight of the trip had arrived the annual—the Ugly Jacket Dinner. Grange and River Joe meet up for a pre-Ugly Jacket Dinner martini at Japonais in Mirage. They are standing at the crowded bar talking and River Joe gets tapped by a guy behind him who proceeds to rather brusquely ask if Joe would move, "because I'm trying to eat." In the very next sentence, the yahoo proceeds to say "Don’t get me wrong, I’m not that guy, I just don't like having someone so close"… fukkaw! Honestly, it might have been the smell of the jacket that offended him.

Samba was the venue for this year’s dinner, and we obnoxious our way into the place in full-on ugly regalia. We attract so much attention that we actually had a woman from another table ask us what we were doing, and then insist on being our judge for the worst three jackets. Despite strong entries from Barbie, River Joe (complete with light up glasses and electronic belt buckle) and Baby Los with his “Grandma’s Couch” entry, it is Sahara who pulls the longshot upset and walks away with the Ugly Jacket title. Rumor has it the judge felt sorry for him because he is so short, but this hasn’t been confirmed (actually overheard from the judge's table: "How about the short guy in the red jacket?").

Sahara models his championship Ugly Jacket entry,

with the aid of a pitcher of caipirinhas.

During the course of our outstanding meal of meat on swords and a cornucopia of caipirinhas by the pitcher, Barbie decides he needs a smoke and gets up to have one and play some blackjack. Immediately the prop bets start flying about how much he will win/lose during one cigarette. Sahara, River Joe and Bonnie get their wagers down and Barbie blows away the +$150 line with a $475 win in just under four minutes! At the conclusion of the meal, we attempt to get a redux of the infamous “meat tank” prop from a couple years prior by getting Bonnie to put a gigantic ball of fat in his jacket to bring out to eat during an all-in at a poker table. Sadly, Bonnie was either too drunk or not drunk enough to try to ingest a tennis ball-sized blob of fat, so no hilarity ensued.

The "fat ball" prop bet went unclaimed.

The dinner also was the scene of the single largest wagering sweat of the trip. Thanks to a false sense of confidence in Bonnie’s hot basketball betting streak, everyone was heavy on Notre Dame to beat Louisville. We toasted each other when they were up 12 at one point (and getting points), only to start swearing at our phones as watched the lead dwindle to nothing. The Golden Domers eventually choke, costing the Ironmen somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,000 combined. As they watch it come to a painful end at the Mirage sports book with several hundred other angry losers, Santa laments, “I haven’t seen this many people pissed off at Catholics since the last Mel Gibson outburst.” Time for a change of venue and a mojo-jumpstart, and we begin the walk to PHo for loose action. Fukkaw!

On the way, we make a refreshment pit stop at Grange’s favorite mojito/caipirinha stand outside Caesars, and Grange springs for a round of drinks to ward off scurvy. Baby Carlos decides he is going to sacrifice his jacket to Caesar. He drops it off, but it must have angered fair Caesar, because he makes Los step off a curb into a pothole, where he damn near breaks his ankle. The pain is searing, so he detours to the room to ice it. By Saturday night, it is bruised from heel to toe. Vegas is emotionally, and now physically dominating Baby Los.

We arrive at PHo and get seated at various tables. After losing $225 in the first hand, JeBeDIA gets in a groove with Bonnie at his table and makes a nice comeback. After a day where Bonnie drank 20 Goose & Juices, he starts the night on a Corona binge and never stops rolling. At one point, two drunk clubbers that they nicknamed Garth Brooks (cowboy hat and clothes) and Spiderwoman (fake boobs and a spiderweb tatoo on her shoulder) sit down and promptly begin textbook collusion (showing each other their hands, betting and raising others off hands, then checking it down, etc.) The dealer inexplicably lets this happen, but fortunately they are so bad, even collusion couldn't help them. Bonny felts Garth in one hand and gets verbally berated by Spiderwoman which sets of a table argument—you're awesome, dude, when your girlfriend has to do your trash talking.

Barbie had been playing for a while and decides it’s time to hit the rest of the Strip with Mr. Chow and Lucky. On his way by Santa’s table, a guy pipes up that he wants to buy Barbie’s ugly jacket. A short negotiation occurs and the guy pays Barbie $30 for the thing. However, in true Caribbean flea market style pushiness, Barbie insists on making it $35 and throwing in the tie he’s wearing. Guy does not want the tie but by then Barbie has removed both items and handed them over, now expecting the $35. The guy sheepishly hands over the money and Barbie gets an extra $5 for a tie which was wastebasket bound anyway.

Barbie scams a tourist at Planet Hollywood.

The three Ironmen hit the strip and use Lucky as their canary in a coalmine to find “hot” carnival tables and go on a massive run over the next couple hours. Between yells of “Ca-Caw!” and “ship it, bitch!”, the group won over $3,000 and tipped Lucky $130 for finding the hot tables. They even got so degenerate they pushed their luck and played baccarat at Harrah’s, despite having no idea how to play. "Ca-Caw!" for the profit!

Back at PHo, the last combatants were racking up their profits and heading out. Both groups seemingly walked around the casino twice trying to find the escalator to the taxi stand. Once Bonnie arrived back at the Venetian, he avoided a drunken repeat of last year where he couldn’t get his hotel room door open. He did, however, manage to wake his roommates again by flipping on every light in the room and jabbering away incoherently about his $1400+ victory, causing Colt to tweet: “Drunk Bonnie arrives to room @ 5:30am, says many words”.

Barbie (runner-up) and Sahara (champion) display

some sartorial splendor at Samba.

Grange (left) was shut out of the Ugly Jacket competition for

the first time ever, despite his classic pink Miami Vice brand jacket.

Colt (right) classed up his jacket with a baseball cap.

Baby Los (left) yucks it up prior to having his leg broken 

(well, ankle twisted). River Joe (center) with his glittery green felted 

tuxedo eyesore takes a competition bad beat with a distant third.

Lucky (right), just wanted meat on swords.

Stayed tuned, true believers! We still have Saturday and Sunday to cover!

IMOP VI: Santa's 12ish—Section 3(A)

Note: The official IMOP trip report will be posted in randomly intermittent installments. Parts I & II of the report can be found here and here. The author of the report is our cruise director, Santa Claus, with occasional editing by yours truly. Enjoy!

Friday:

Santa wakes up from his nap and catches up with Fat Jesus and JeBeDIA at the Venetian for an early morning session, the highlight of which was Fat Jesus coining the phrase "Poker Porn"—when you fold a hand either preflop (or worse, postflop) only to see your cards play out to be the nuts for a huge pot. Poker Porn—all the visual but no satisfaction.

Barbie came stumbling into the V a little while later loudly announcing “Good morning, bitches!” still not having slept but managing to roll a poker table pretty well at PHo. This was also about the time Barbie started his “Epic” table game streak. He started the “fourball” blackjack strategy at the Venetian, turning $50 into $870 in three minutes by essentially just letting his first bet ride four times before pulling back the entire stack.  It would prove to be a good thing he came up with this strategy because it made up for some seriously bad poker losses early on. After what amounted to being awake for about two and half days, Barbie finally decides to take a short nap before the 11:00 a.m. Mirage tourney.

River Joe gets to the Mirage early (since he had accidentally checked in and all) and actually plays 3/6 limit of all games; he ends up hitting a few sets and inside straights on his way to a tournament free roll as the rest of the Ironmen make their way in. Early on, River Joe lives up to his nickname and gets it all in with QQ against AA and hits his one-outer on the river for nice double up. Another fun moment occurs on the last hand before the 2nd break. Barbie is put to the decision of calling an all-in bet for roughly 40% of his chips. Foreigner is playing over sound system. A large man in wife beater and straw hat sitting at Barbie's table begins “bouncing” (jiggling?) to the music. Either way, the only part of him moving is his gut. As Barbie is contemplating the call, he sees the guy out of the corner of his eye. Barbie looks up and says to Colt, “I’m distracted” and nods towards the guy. Colt bust out with laughter and has to leave the table as guy continues his belly-dance oblivious to the distraction it is causing. Mirage again turns out to be good to the Ironmen, with three at the final table and Barbie and River Joe both cashing.

Mr. Chow had busted out early on and hopped in a cash game to bide the time. He is doing usual "a-hole maniac with a smile on his face" routine when Sahara joins him. A prime example of why it is best to avoid the Ironmen happens next. Chow straddles and 8 players call the $4. Chow bumps it up another $10 w AsJh and predictably gets five callers. Flop is Js Xs Xh and a nice Canadian who Chow had been chatting up bets $40. Sahara and Chow both call. Turn card is a third spade. Canadian bets $200, leaving $250 behind. Chow pops it to $400 and gets Sahara out. Canadian squirms, thinks, closes eyes, squirms some more, stands up, sits down, rolls over 6s4s and asks Chow, “Do you have the Ace of spades”. After the initial answer of “$200 more will tell you for sure," Mr. Chow rolls over the Ace of spades. Canadian then does the whole routine again before mucking the winner. Sahara tweets, “Mr. Chow has wrecked poker”. Very true.

Post-tourney, it was finally time for another new IMOP event we’ve been trying to pull off for a few years: The Third World Poker Tour. Our gang pretends like we are degenerate, but we always seem to wind up in the cushy confines of the high end poker rooms. Well, we put a temporary halt to the snobbery with this event. If you recall, we all gathered ‘round the Binion’s roulette wheel to let fate both pick our heads up (of sorts) IMOP opponent and the venue where each duo had to play. Rules were simple. Both participants go to the venue together, sit in a 1/2 NHEL game with $200, and play for 90 minutes. First one to bust out loses, otherwise the player with more money at the end of 90 minutes wins. IMOP points are awarded to the winner, with negative IMOP points for the loser. A few in the group were not excited about heading to such exotic locales as Riviera or Sahara, but the tweets were well worth it.

In the first match, Baby Los heads to Luxor with Bonnie but it doesn’t last long as Los plays nearly every hand and busts out in short order as they try to spend the absolute minimum time slumming it away from the Venetian. Bonnie gets in the cab line as Los trams back over toward Monte Carlo. Bonnie hears people yelling "taxicab confessions" as he gets in and he asks Rita-the-cabbie what that was and she proceeds to tell him she has worked for HBO for 14 years and he’s being filmed! Pansy that he is, he discloses nothing interesting, but does tell her his name is Barbie from Cedar Rapids. After the interview, she informs him that he has no shot at all at making it on TV. Kind of sad when our craziest competitor can't make the big time.

In another match, Lucky and Fat Jesus wind up heading to Excalibur, describing the competition as similar to “blowing goats”. After walking half way across Camelot they finally made it to the poker room and after 90 minutes and no seats nearly went medieval on the poker room staff. They finally get seated and see the table bully alternating between going all in or making huge over-bets pre-flop, so Lucky limps from under the gun with AK. Bully pushes all in for about 120 and it folds back around to Lucky who insta-callsl. Bully flips over 34o and manages to turn a 3. Lucky decides that AK stands for "A Kick in nards". However, he works his way up to about even and finds a way to outlast Fat Jesus in the painful heads up match.

Colt and Grange end up next door at Monte Carlo with nothing of note happening, except perhaps applying for their AARP cards and being accepted into the coffee klatch of the 90-somethings who thought they were “cute”. Colt does win the match, but gets disapproving glares from the regulars whenever he bets over $15.

Sahara and River Joe proceed to slum it to the north end for their Third World Poker Tour options of Circus Circus or Riviera. So, after a flyby at CC where they have one limit game going, they proceed over to the purgatory of Riviera. With no air conditioning and no money on the table, Joe took one for the team so they could get out of there, pushing with top pair, weak kicker into three other callers, and loses to top pair. better kicker. The whiny tweets from our resident blue blood, Sahara, were priceless. We may have to declare the Riviera the official venue for next year just to see if his head literally explodes. Highlight of the event was on the return trip, before making their way into the Venetian, the oppressed duo stops to gawk at the Express Runway Models who are having some sort of outdoor event. All they seem to remember are legs, legs, and more legs.

Santa and JeBeDIA head to the Stratosphere for their match, despite having the option to play one very last session at the actual Sahara before it shuts down permanently. (Note from Grange: “Raise a glass of Keystone and a stale cigarette to the grand old home of the kickoff tourney, sadly lacking in tortillas even today.”). Upon arriving at the Strat, they are pleasantly surprised at how (comparatively) nice the place turns out to be. A brand new game starts up and they get seated. On the very first hand Santa raises pre-flop to $17, gets a couple callers and bets $30 on a board of Jx 4x 6x. He gets min-raised by a very large meathead at the end of the table and snap calls. Turn is a 4x and he calls a $40 bet. River is another 6x and he then bets $100 on the river. Meathead asks, “Will you show if I fold” and Santa replies, “The rules of our competition require me to show my hand," and JeBeDIA audibly groans knowing that Santa has luckboxed the Grump into a full house. The guy eventually folds, and after tabling the Grump, Santa successfully tilts not only the muscle head, but also his buddy who was still waiting for chips. JeBeDIA is now significantly behind after one hand, but catches up on the second. He calls a button straddle from early position with Ace-Deuce (that crazy nit!), flops two pair, and check raises to $40, getting three callers. He bets $100 on the turn to chase draws and scoop the pot, so after two hands Santa and JeBeDIA are both up over $100 and have the two buddies at the end of the table gunning for the two "loose aggressive" guys. They end up felting muscle head's buddy at least three times between them, before he leaves the table down $800. Despite posting his best session of the trip, JeBeDIA still loses to Santa and they head back to the Strip.

Hard to believe, but there's still more to come!  Check back soon for the Jacket Dinner report (with pictures), as well as the Saturday and Sunday hijinks.

IMOP VI: Santa's 12ish—Part Deux, Duh

Note: The official IMOP trip report will be posted in randomly intermittent installments. Part I of the report can be found here. The author of the report is our cruise director, Santa Claus, with occasional editing by yours truly. Enjoy!

Thursday:

Eventually the early bust outs from the Nugget midnight tournament cab it back to the Strip, followed by the rest of the crew around 6:00 a.m.. Baby Los finds an Omaha HL game going at the Venetian. The big stack is the drunkest 90 year old he’s ever seen. The old guy is unable to speak or stand and finally security has to remove this "alive-coma" guy, and the game breaks. But this would not be the last IMOP run in with Omaha insanity…

Perhaps the odd ball story of the first night goes to River Joe. We’ll let him tell it:

Mr. Chow and I cab it back in record time with this crazy black lady behind the wheel of Dodge Charger. I do think I got taken as the trip from TI to Bally’s took me back down the expressway resulting in a toll about the same as the ride from downtown to TI. Finally arriving at the hotel about 4:15 a.m. completely spent, I get on the elevator and was joined by an Asian woman that I’d just passed who was talking to guy in hallway. I didn’t think much of it at first, however she proceeds to put out her cigarette on the elevator floor and then pick up the $100 poker chip that falls out of her blouse. She casually starts to make her way across the elevator and on her way across she makes the comment, "So I see you're married," and eventually positions herself between me and the button panel. She proceeds to start groping my upper body and eventually I get what would be my biggest FELTING of IMOP-VI. Fortunately the door opens to my floor and I quickly exit, repeatedly saying, "No, Thank you!”

The gang gets back together at 8:00 a.m. for the annual “Breakfast O' Champions”. Grange started this tradition where the prior year’s IMOP champion takes anyone who is still awake the first morning to breakfast. Being the class guy he is, Grange’s choice of venue was the St. Louis Cafe in Paris. Santa’s choice was Denny’s. So, this year was Barbie’s turn as reigning champion. He made an excellent choice of the Peppermill. One small problem though—he didn’t realize he was on the hook for buying. So, as the group all orders more food than they could eat and multiple cocktails, Barbie gets slightly panicked as he had been getting killed at the tables to that point and wasn’t excited about shelling out for this breakfast. However, the gang decided to pitch in for cocktails and before we knew it, we were enjoying a walk back to the Venetian to figure out what to do next.

After struggling with his various cash game grinding, Bonnie puts together an EPIC streak of basketball wagering wins, at one point hitting 10 in a row on the conference tournament games. A few others climbed on his bandwagon and the money was rolling in (for the time being). Among them were Colt and Fat Jesus, who hung around the Venetian sportsbook (Bonnie's headquarters) for a few cold ones and some hoop-watching—and Colt got more than he bargained for:

Fat Jesus & I are hanging in the Venetian sportsbook. All within 5 minutes of each other, I get up for a drink and witness a chick-fight with punches thrown and chairs tossed. Apparently “Kim” is a bitch and treats crazy woman like sh*t (she repeated it 4-5 times). While the catfight was going on, a guy playing video poker a few feet away hits four aces for $2000. I love Vegas.

At 2:00 p.m., we entered the TI tournament, which doubled as the IMOP “Mad Hatter” event where the best hats would get IMOP points. The winner this year was self-effacing Lucky the Leprechaun, who in addition to his green shirt which read “Feeling Lucky?” had a tiny little bowler hat to go with (complete with elastic band to keep it on his not quite-as-tiny head). JeBeDIA and Bonnie manage to cash, keeping intact their six year streak of cashing in an IMOP tournament. Sadly, Fat Jesus might have joined them as well, had he not gotten caught shoving with the Grump just before the bubble!

 Lucky, Colt, and JeBeDIA model their hats at TI.

Baby Los and Barbie crash the hat party.

Hats play at the TI tourney.

Then it was time for the first ever “IMOP Ca-Caw! Golf Classic”. Santa, JeBeDIA, Colt, and Barbie cab it over to Callaway for their 7:00 p.m. tee time under the lights. The format was simple—buy three golf balls each, rent one bag of golf clubs total, auction to get your single club out of the bag (had to putt with it too) and play nine holes. Oh, and if you lose all three balls you’re done. Oh, and short of not physically touching another player—no etiquette or rules.

We get ourselves checked in to play and begin our auction. Santa starts off the auction with a $5 bid, which Colt immediately bumps to $10 to win his pick of the pitching wedge, Barbie wins the 9 iron with a $5 bid, then JeBeDIA bid $1 to win the 8 iron and Santa gets the 7 iron for free (winner then gets the pot). Colt is miffed as he realizes he is already $10 behind Santa in the competition by being overzealous during the auction. At this point, Barbie and Santa still have not been to bed (vying for last to sleep points), and have consumed their weight in cocktails.

The orignal Ca-Caw! crew.

From left: Colt, Barbie, & JeBeDIA.

(Not pictured—Photographer Santa Claus)

The best part of the game turns out to be the heckling during the swings. Since we are playing at night under bright lights, the shadows allowed for some fun. At one point, Barbie stands behind Santa flapping his arms like a bird to make shadows on Santa's tee shot. Colt adds the “Ca-Caw!” sound effect and the catch-phrase of the trip was born, along with name of the event: The Ca-Caw Classic. Unfortunately, Santa and JeBeDIA regret not paying more for their clubs as they finish a distant 3rd and 4th in the event. Amazingly, Barbie shoots 3 over to win the “Classic”. Also of note was that after bringing back the calls of “Ca-CAW” to the poker tables, we modified it to “Fukkaw!” for tweet purposes to clean up Bonnie’s drunken, profane Tweeting (#fuckoff being his favorite hashtag).

Barbie (top) and Colt display their golf skillz. Ca-Caw!

Arriving back at the Strip, Santa decides he finally needs a nap while everyone else heads to a reportedly interesting game at Aria. The Pokerati hold ‘em/Omaha mixed game is going and Mr. Chow, Colt, River Joe, and Grange get seated. An older guy at the table is getting a backrub from an older woman. He says, “She’s my mom, not my wife. Just thought I’d say that because I get that a lot.” After an uncomfortable pause, River Joe replies, “That’s just wrong…” But, the game is wild and lucrative, with Grange and Mr. Chow each cashing out for four-figure profits. Mr. Chow also made several enemies by calling down in Omaha with top pair or two pair hands ... and being correct. Grange was sitting next to the three "pros" who were Mr. Chow's victims, and commiserated with them about Mr. Chow's horrid donkey plays, before felting two of them with flopped sets of Kings and Aces.

After a few orbits, Colt realizes the Pokerati mixer is not the game for him. He switches places with Barbie and gets in a $1/2 NL game. Asian Phil Hellmuth (APH) is to his right when it is folded around to them in the blinds. Colt looks down at A-K and offers to chop. APH looks down at his cards and puts in a $10 raise. Colt instructs him on the etiquette of chopping. APH’s reply: “It depends on what my hole cards are”. After informing him it doesn’t work that way, Colt promptly shoves all-in. Bewildered, APH calls with pocket 10s. The turn is an Ace. Colt smiles. APH goes on tilt. Hilarity ensues.

Meanwhile, back at the Venetian, Lucky proves to be not living up to his nickname. He gets in a four handed pot with Jd5d. Flop comes 10d Qd Kd to give him the flush with the open-ended royal flush draw. He and another guy end up getting it all in on the flop. His opponent turns over the 6d9d. Naturally $350 should be going Lucky's way ... only to instead have the cooling system fall from the ceiling on his head as the turn of 7d and river of 8d gives his opponent the runner-runner straight flush!

After a good run at Aria, River Joe had gotten a text that Santa was heading back to the room he and Grange were sharing to get some sleep, and was going to leave the door cracked open for Joe to get into the room for a key as Joe was switching hotels as his conference was done. River Joe arrives at Mirage and spends 30 minutes trying to find a room that didn’t exist. He comes to find out his error was that Grange had booked the first two nights at TI and was not checking into Mirage until Friday. This explained why River Joe couldn't locate either the 26th floor or room 89. Frustrated, dragging too much luggage, and after walking around for half an hour, River Joe said #fukkaw and just checked into Mirage, then headed to the Venetian for more poker. Yes, this also means that Santa had been dead asleep in Las Vegas with his hotel room door propped open at TI for three hours .... and lived to tell about it.

Stayed tuned, true believers! Two—errr, three—more episodes remain!

What Is Bank Fraud? Inquiring Poker Minds Want to Know!

As debate continues to rage in the poker community about the legal issues raised by the recent DOJ indictments of the Big Three online poker sites (PokerStars, Full Tilt, and UltimateBet / Absolute Poker), it might be helpful to the poker community to have a general idea of what the serious "bank fraud" charges encompass.

A case with some interesting parallels to the Big Three indictment is United States v. Brown, 31 F.3d 484 (7th Cir. 1994). In Brown, the defendant was convicted of bank fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme related to credit card processing (sound familiar?). Essentially, the scheme revolved around the fact that the Visa/Mastercard network of banks would either not accept credit card transactions from telemarketers (because of the increased risk of fraudulent charges) or would impose higher fees for such transactions. The defendant implemented a scheme where he recruited legitimate businesses with credit card processing accounts to front telemarketing credit card charges, thereby avoiding the banks' bans / limitations on those types of transactions. The defendant was eventually convicted of bank fraud and money laundering leading to his appeal.

On appeal, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals first noted that bank fraud "is also one of the predicate offenses specified under the money laundering statute, which prohibits the use in certain financial transactions of the proceeds of certain predicate offenses affecting interstate or foreign commerce". Thus, if the defendant were guilty of bank fraud, he also was guilty of money laundering based on the same set of financial transactions. Next, the court examined the requirements for sustaining a conviction for bank fraud. The court noted that "Section 1344 proscribes any scheme to defraud or obtain money or property from a financial institution by means of false and fraudulent pretenses, representations or promises." The court continued its analysis by stating:

“Whether a scheme to defraud exists is determined by examining ‘whether the scheme demonstrated a departure from fundamental honesty, moral uprightness, or fair play and candid dealings in the general life of the community. The bank fraud statute condemns schemes designed to deceive in order to obtain something of value.’ This broad definition suggests that each individual component of the scheme need not be specifically illegal, so long as the scheme as a whole constitutes fraudulent conduct.

There is ample support in the record for the jury’s conclusion that Brown and Clague agreed to defraud the banks. There is evidence that they knew that banks would not allow third-party processing because of its potential for increased risk. In addition, the defendants encouraged the recruitment of new merchants, they did not reveal their own activities to the banks and they encouraged other alleged participants not to reveal their activities to the banks. In short, neither appellant’s role was limited merely to buying or selling third-party processing services without accompanying fraudulent purposes. While the appellants argue that they did not know that their activities were illegal and that they consulted attorneys, their purported intent only to “bypass” Visa and Mastercard regulations indicates a departure from notions of fundamental honesty and forthright dealings as required under Hammen. Given the wealth of evidence against the appellants, it was perfectly reasonable for the jury to find that Brown and Clague had agreed to defraud the bank.

—United States v. Brown, 31 F.3d 484, 489 (7th Cir. 1994) (citations omitted).

Now many commentators (including my friend, the very astute Poker Grump) have indicated some unease or even outright disagreement with charging the Big Three poker sites with bank fraud. The allegations in the indictment against the Big Three include accusations that the poker sites conspired with various payment processors to intentionally miscode credit card transactions to disguise gambling transactions as ordinary commercial sales, to create fictitious non-gaming businesses to provide cover for gambling transactions, as well as efforts to bribe bank officers or even to outright purchase shares of small banks to process gambling transactions barred by the UIGEA. The allegations include accusations that the poker sites trained customer service representatives to cover up the fraudulent transactions when dealing with customers confused by their credit card statements reflecting transactions with fictitious companies.

In looking at the allegations raised in the Big Three indictment, the parallels to the Brown case are striking. In neither case is there any claim that any bank actually lost money. Rather, the fraud occurred because the deception of the defendants tricked the banks into processing payments they otherwise would have denied; the mere attempt to "bypass" federal banking regulations was sufficient deception to support bank fraud charges. Of course, it should be remembered that banks processing gambling transactions have a real risk of liability for violating federal law in the post-UIGEA world. In any event, the Brown case suggests that the Big Three have some significant exposure to bank fraud charges if the allegations of attempts to circumvent federal bank transaction restrictions are in fact true.

Now, it should be noted that the area of bank fraud and money laundering is subject to a great deal of case law, with different standards imposed depending upon the federal circuit where a defendant is tried. The mere existence of the Brown case is no guarantee that a federal court in New York (part of the Second Circuit) will apply the same legal analysis of the relevant statutes. Nonetheless, Brown is an interesting application of the bank fraud and money laundering statutes that is uncomfortably close enough to the Big Three's alleged misconduct that those charges should be regarded with a certain degree of gravity many poker commentators have thus far eschewed. Still, the Big Three's defense attorneys will certainly have a number of defenses to these charges.

Of course, as I like to say, "There's always a better place to get it in bad."

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ADDENDUM (23 April 2011):  Jacob Sullum, a regular writer on the excellent libertarian blog "Reason.com Hit & Run", linked to this post recently in his post, "Online Poker Update". Reason.com and the Hit & Run blog are must-reads for anyone who enjoys smart, informative, and accessible opinions on a variety of personal liberty topics.