Lead me not into Robvegaspokers Temptation

Since I have been married I have gone out and played poker exactly twice.  During these two sessions it is pretty safe to say that I'm riding a hot streak.  That is a huge plus because I really didn't have any type of bankroll to speak of and a hot streak lets me keep playing occasionally.

The second session started out with me deciding to take a trip down to Bally's for the evening and upon arriving I noticed that they had 3 tables going.  Two of them the All In variety and one of them the slow bleeding death and the smell of rotting corpses variety.  I put myself on the wait list for the former, of course. The problem was that the list was about 6 people deep, nobody really wanted to bust out or go home and Bally's wasn't particularly interested in opening another table at the time.  This lead me to taking a walk over to Planet Hollywood where my Bravo poker app told me they had 7 All In games running.

The walk was pretty crowded as foot traffic is increased because of that sweet sweet World Series of Poker action.  About a minute into my walk I hear someone saying "Psst, hey." "Hey You."

I assumed that this was directed elsewhere and kept walking.  However, thirty seconds later I hear "Hey you, yeah you" and I look over because curiosity killed the cat and all that nonsense right?

As I look over I get a smile and a "So, what are you doing tonight?" To which I respond that I'm just going to meet some friends.
She replies "Well, maybe your friends should meet my friends and we can all have a good time."

This is the part where the new grrouch took over and shut out the old grrouch part of his brain.
Instead of inquiring about what a good time would entail.  Instead of continuing the conversation to see where it might lead and then giving the rejection in the end.  Instead of a myriad of different things I could have said or done in order to get a much better story for this blog post....

"Yeah, no.  My friends and I don't like to have fun."

No more words were spoken between us, but I did manage to slow down so that I could get a few "from behind" shots of my would be assailant. Getting any frontal shots would have been too much risk.

As for the poker portion of my tale, it was mostly uneventful.  For most of the nearly 3 hours I was there I ran pretty card dead and when I had something playable I missed.  My stack fluctuated but I won or stole enough hands to keep me in the game.
I moved seats near the end of my session because I didn't want to sit next to the guy who just came to our table with $600 and tried to rat-hole down to the regular buy-in.
At my new seat I won a couple decent hands and then the last playable hand I had (and the last hand I played oddly enough) was this.

I raised to $7 with J9 of spades and got 7 callers.
Flop came out TT7 with two Diamonds.  This ended up getting checked around.
The turn was a non diamond 8 and I bet out $65 getting 2 callers.
The River was the ugliest 7 I have ever seen and I checked, but oddly enough so did everyone else.
I turned over my straight and one guy mucked.  Another guy pretty much cursed himself out and then threw his cards in eventually.  I'm guessing busted flushes with the last guy kicking himself for not trying to steal it on the river scare card.
Either way, I cashed out up over a buy-in on a night where I didn't have anything going for me until right near the end.

I will never get tired of this view

I wasn't willing to part with whatever donation they were looking for in order to get a better, focused, pic with the girls so I just stood back and waited for them to not pay attention and snapped a series of out of focus pics where this was the best of what I had.  Whatever.

New grrouch. Married grrouch.  Took the safe route with the hooker and then took the safe route with the hot bikini cops as well.
Married life has turned me lame!

A Hodge Podge Post

Played another session with Rob when I heard that Stump was out and playing as well.  I figure'd that I had nothing better to do so I headed down and joined their game as soon as a seat was open.

First thing I noticed was that at another table there was a guy playing with his dog in his lap.  That is not a mistake - he had his poodle in his lap the entire time and had evidently been playing a long time as it was no longer a shock to people.

Getting to the table Rob introduced me to Stump (and really, I'm saying Stump because right now names are avoiding me.  I think it's Chris but I'm not 100% sure and I'm really not feeling the whole "go look it up really quick and then come back and keep typing."  I just want to roll with it, yo).  It might be Stumpy, it might be PBnJ - I do know that his avatar is the Houston Texans avatar and that makes him less likely to succeed :)

Upon sitting at the table I played one of the more uneventful sessions I have ever played.  I ended up losing half my stack over the course of 3-4 hours and with the fact that I never really hit a flop I'm pretty happy that I only lost half my stack.
I raised a good amount but the flop was always opposite.  If I raised garbage the flop came out AKT and if I raised KQs the flop came out 9 high.  However, I was able to win enough pots through continuation bets or just randomly stealing them when no one else wanted them to keep myself afloat.

I did lose about 30 or so bucks when I called a guys push with 72 and my middle pair was no match for his top pair.  In my defense I raised that hand and got a caller when the short stack pushed all his chips in. So, I made a big raise to get everyone else out as I figure'd that my two cards were live against his "big cards."  What ended up being amusing, to me, was that he pushed with 85s instead of some random A or K.  Either way, his hand held and I lost a few chips.

Of course, I wanted to use that image to my advantage but I never got any great hands and I never really hit enough of a flop to get paid off.  In fact, over the course of the entire session I didn't even see one single pocket pair.  I had AK once, AQ twice and AJ 33 million times.
Of course, If it has not been written yet you'll all get to look forward to Rob telling the tail of a great hand he played where he went up against Ace Jack.
This same hand, about 40 minutes later, got Rob to utter a phrase so out of character for him that I can't remember it but I thought it was funny as hell (I was sleepy when he said it and I'm now sleepy almost 24 hours later.  Hopefully Rob remembers).

Upon leaving the poker room to go home I walked by the table games where I watched an amazingly attractive hooker lead a young black gent to a private area where they could talk without interruption.  At that point I was standing about 30 feet away and I leaned up against the wall and started texting Rob about how I actually spotted one.  I watched for about 2 minutes or so hoping to see them strike a deal and wonder off to commit sins and pass around STD's but it was too long of a negotiation for my patience.  I needed sleep and I needed it immediately.

Jump forward 15 hours or so for this next random tale that doesn't fit in with anything else I have said above.
I was driving home from work and stopped at the intersection of Rainbow and Charleston when I saw one of those sign guys doing that spinning thing they do so well.  Some white guy walks up to him and Sign Guy drops his sign to shake his hand and then put something in his pocket.
After about 30 seconds of conversation Sign Guy puts his hand back in his pocket and when it emerges he is palming what looks like a small bag of cocaine, they shake hands again and Random White Guy puts his hand into his pocket quickly and brings it back out empty.  He walks away and Sign Guy picks his sign back up and starts waving it around while walking away from the area to a better location.
Good times.

Now, I'm tired and once again Must Sleep Immediately!
I just got back from some weird kids park that involved sand, water, Dinosaurs, slides and ducks or something.  I dunno - maybe it was the acid.

It feels like Hooker Week

EDIT:  Since posting this last night and working today a few more of the bloggers decided to join in on the Hooker Fun and I thought I'd take the time to point you in their direction as well:
Lightning36 decided to join in the fun with a good old fashioned Hooker Story.
Then From there I followed a comment made by JT88Keys and will be adding him to my blogroll as well.
I received an email that the Chaos Theory blog was updated and noticed it was a hooker story as well and also linked to the Poker Grump doing a hooker story of his own.
I believe that to be 7 different blogs in a matter of a few days!  Suhweet!!
One more that's not technically a Hooker blog - but Lucki Duck said that he will be commando during his trip to Vegas and hopes to bring back a story!  

So it just sort of feels like Hooker week in the blog-o-sphere and I'm going to say we owe all of this to Rob.
Recently (and not so recently too honestly) he has had a post or two about hooker sightings in various casino's and I really must applaud him for the length that he goes to in order to try and get his readers a good story.  It is really inspiring and something I am most likely going to copy in the future so that I can provide good, old fashioned, entertainment for all of my readers.
Robs latest story talks about a particularly nice/chatty one at his favorite casino and there is nothing that I need to expand upon, I just think it's a good read.  Especially the part where he tries to get as close as possible to eaves drop on the conversation for more material.  Bloody Brilliant!!

That brings me to example number two where sevencard2003 talks about how he can't find any hookers where he is at and needs to talk to someone younger than he to get tips on how to spot them.

So, that leaves me and while I do not have any recent stories to tell about Hookers, I really just kinda want to talk about them.

I'm going to start at the worst part of the story and that is me admitting that unless I have been approached, I probably couldn't pick out a hooker from a normal person.  Maybe I just haven't put enough time into studying people and figuring out what is what and maybe it's just because I'm so innocent, but I really can't just talk a walk down a long stretch of a casino and go "There be hookers Thar and thar and thar and oh bloody hell that one is obvious."  I'd probably be wrong 85% of the time and 10% would be lucky guesses.

The first time I was ever approached was before I actually moved to this awesome city that I now call home. I was vacationing with 3 friends and we were staying at the Excalibur.  I had just gotten done with a long session at the MGM Grand poker room and was walking/staggering back to get a much needed nap so I could wake up and start the next day.  Both of my vacationing buddies were already in the room and sleeping and I believe the time to be somewhere between 2 and 5 am.

Walking through the NYNY so that I could take the next bridge to Excalibur I was passed by 2 or 3 ladies of the early morning and one approached me asking me if I wanted to have a good time.  I was a bit shocked at first because I'm not used to complete strangers saying anything to me unless I happen to be wearing something with a Steelers Logo on it (and then it's just the normal stuff sports fans say to people who share the same passion in passing).  I kept walking and she became more persistent.
Hooker: "Hey baby, you down for a good time tonight?"
grouch: "Unfortunately not, headed to my room where my friends are sleeping"
Hooker: "You sure, I'm sure your friends won't mind one bit?"
grouch: "yeah, i'm pretty sure, they are in bed sleeping and probably don't want waken up to get kicked out so I can have a quickie"
Hooker: "well, I can always bring my friends along to entertain them"
grouch: "No thanks, appreciate the offer but not tonight"

And that was the end of the conversation. I continued my walk to get some sleep and they moseyed on looking for someone with a warm room and ample money.   As I was walking back to the room I briefly wondered why I was approached but when I got back to the room and hit up the urinal it was pretty damned obvious.  I look like the type of person that generally doesn't just have vagina thrown at him on a regular basis.  I look like a hillbilly from the mountains who hasn't shaved in multiple months and any attention from the opposite sex is a rarity.  It is with this knowledge that I actually expect to get "hit on" more often over the course of my years living in Vegas.
In the future I am hoping to pick up better stories about being approached though.  Thus far both of my approaches have been pretty much the same thing.  Me saying no because I have a roommate and them saying that my roommate probably won't mind at all.  It makes me wonder how many times guys take a hooker back to their hotel room and gets his rocks off while his buddy sleeps (or tries to sleep) in a bed across the room.  I'm sure it's more often that I'd like to believe.