What Happens in Atlantic City

Stays in this blog...

At around 2 am in the Poker Room at the casino formerly known at the Tropicana Hotel and Casino, a heard a desperate yelp from across the room, a tumultuous cry of victory accompanied by a little dance of joy from a large, disheveled man that frightened all passersby and alerted the security guards, if the Trop still had enough money to actually hire security personnel.  Nobody knew what was happening and why this strange, apparently homeless man, wearing an over-sized T-shirt, a thick, scraggly beard, and a haircut that can best be described as uncombed, was even allowed in the casino, let alone the Poker Room, and why he was screaming in delight at winning a hand of Texas Hold' Em in a cash game against another individual (not the casino) who was sitting across the table from him.  My table turned around and looked, with several players nearby gasping at the display of grossly inappropriate behavior at a poker table among strangers.  I simply dropped my head in shame until Switsky's celebratory dance had ended. 

It was a perfect capstone to a typically painful day spent in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the world's capital for broken dreams and rare diseases from the hookers hanging out on the sidewalks, who are just as willing as the casinos to part you from your money and your last shred of dignity.  I began the day with a simple trip to the post office to mail some important packages that I'd spent the better part of the morning preparing (thereby missing the Hold 'Em tournament at the Showboat that my friends played -- and unceremoniously lost -- in).  Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of bulk mailing requirements and the apparent logistical nightmare of re-routing mail to a post office box, the two customers in front of me on line each took in excess of fifteen minutes to have their needs serviced by the lumbering fucktards assigned to work for my local post office -- two middle-aged and only borderline mentally challenged employees who did not seem to consider for half a second the pained expression of the anxious Nicholas Cage look-a-like standing patiently in line before he could depart for his gambling detour.  When, after a half hour of waiting, one of the two criminally lethargic employees finally decided to open a second window to service me, I stepped up to the line and calmly punched him in the face.  I mean sure, they have video cameras probably taping the office procedures, and my name and address was on the packages I was mailing, but the odds that these unhurried dimwits could possibly finger me remain slim, so I'm not that worried.  It was an inauspicious beginning to a weekend in AC, though.  And things only got worse from there.

The rains came before I left South Brunswick, and the torrential downpour appeared before I reached the Parkway, but only after a dump truck whose top speed approximated the postal employees back in my town cut me off by literally pulling right in front of me near Route 195, and then crawled along the 1-lane road for 20 miles in the pouring rain while I choked on his exhaust fumes and struggled to find a way to pass.  Unfortunately, an attempt to short-circuit this pained experience through a quick detour fell well short and I ended up in a long line of cars slowly trailing the driver of this pollution machine, who apparently was taking his vehicle all the way to the fucking Parkway through the same back roads I take to Atlantic City.  Not good times.  I finally gave up and pulled into Wendy's for a bathroom break and a junior bacon cheeseburger (mmm... bacon) and when I returned to the road, the slow line of cars had finally cleared and I started making good time.  Of course, a few minutes later I encountered a second slow line of cars on the one-lane road, trailing an Indian woman in a "Student Driver" vehicle who had apparently not yet learned the theory of acceleration or the use of a gas pedal to create speed in a moving vehicle.  It took me two hours to get to AC.  I'm still a little bitter.

My friends were meeting me weren't actually on this trip, but some guys I play fantasy football with were meeting me at the Tropicana, where they'd all convened after losing in the Showboat tournament earlier in the day.  Back in the day, the Trop had the best poker room this side of the Taj Mahal, and the newly opened Quarter brought in a steady stream of hot, young patrons enjoying the great restaurants, shopping, and alcoholic refreshments available in the Trop's adjacent nightlife center.  Unfortunately, the Trop has gone to shit in the last year after a new owner plunged the venerable casino onto the brink of bankruptcy by cutting the entire staff and hoping to run a world-class resort on a budget, turning the hotel into an upscale version of a Motel 8.  No wait, I'm sorry, that's not really a fair comparison.  The Motel 8 has much cleaner rooms.

Needless to say, the place was dead at 6 o'clock on a Friday night, with vast swaths of empty gaming tables and the death rattle of the few decrepit senior citizens who had made their way down the Black Horse Pike and decided not to drive further downtown to a real casino.  The energy in the room was palpable, the volume rising to a low hush at the craps table, but on the bright side, there was plenty of room to stretch and relax, unlike those annoying overcrowded venues like the Borgata or the Taj or the local Denny's in downtown Pleasantville.  Of course, if we wanted to go somewhere pleasant, we might have had to actually pay for our rooms, but since those at the Trop were comped, and since I was staying with six Jews, that's where we stayed, and a fun time was had by all.  And by "all" I mean the poor Jewish couple sitting at Wellington's at the table behind us after I'd had six sixteen rum and Cokes and several glasses of wine and started spewing loudly about how the Jews were too cheap to stay at a real hotel.  Good times.

There were some bright spots, though.  I got to witness a world record at a blackjack table, when Rudnick lost his first eleven straight hands and Jan's bankroll lasted less than half a shoe.  That was very impressive.  I also saw Jan actually ingest a green vegetable at dinner, which was probably more shocking than anything I saw all weekend, other than when the dealer at my poker table later that night (which had several African-Americans sitting around it) shouted out to the pit boss, "We need more whites at this table!"  I'm pretty sure he was referring to the white chips, but it was a still a bit unsettling.  Luckily, some large insane man started screaming after winning a hand at a nearby table, so everyone was distracted.  My head hung low in shame.

Other highlights of the weekend are as follows: 

• Dan napping both before and during dinner
• Discussions of the location of Lenny's upcoming bachelor party (hi Jill!) -- I still vote for the Borgata, but we need to get Rud's brother to join us so the whole thing will be free
• The over/under on the number of oxygen tanks Jan encountered at the race book
• The over/under on the number of oxygen tanks Rud found in the room he shared with Dan
• Howie's impressive streak of winning at joker poker continuing this weekend, but sadly not covering his losses at other games (and still being a much larger amount than the rest of us had brought to spend combined)
• Switsky drinking wine to kiss up to Rud
• Switsky drinking vodka to kiss up to me
• Switsky drinking a second glass of wine to erase the memory of this weekend and his job and his bad poker beats and his life
• Switsky being too drunk to eat the half of my steak that I couldn't finish -- he couldn't have been too full, so that's the only explanation
• No Gotcha! references at dinner
• Limited BBM references at dinner
• Rudnick being tall
• Lenny bringing less to the table than Jan
• Dan bringing less to the table than Lenny, although admittedly he was passed out during half of the meal
• Jan spending the entire weekend debating the merits of burnt orange vs. silver for the Rounders team colors
• All the Jews (and me) selecting the $4.99 breakfast special at Corky's since we couldn't use any comps there
• Lenny going through a laborious explanation of the rules of craps to me before the stranger next to us got so annoyed that he had to jump in and give a much quicker (and more understandable) summary of the goals of the game, even though he was half-drunk and staggering
• Switsky and Lenny throwing sevens on their second dice rolls, which I don't think was a good thing due to the amount of money that got cleared off the table immediately
• The guy at Hooters asking me if I had money on the Syracuse/Villanova game, since I was - let's just say - probably a little more excited about a college basketball game on February 1st than most people are likely to see
• The Marine at my poker table asking if I went to Syracuse, since he was from upstate New York and I was wearing the Cuse hat, and me admitting in shame that I did not, but went to Rutgers instead, and then having three fellow players jumping in with the news that they were either Rutgers graduates or currently attending, leading to a lengthy discussion of the grease trucks and Cluck-U and the late night $1 pizzas at whatever the hell that place is next to the Knight Club at 3 in the morning
• The silent black man sitting next to me at the same table listening to the friendly young Marine talk all about the service - and everything else - for two drunken hours, before finally speaking up when the Marine failed to bluff him out of a hand.  He showed the Marine his Army ID of Staff Sergeant, followed by a third man at the table reaching into his pocket and producing a Master Chief Sergeant Army ID.  I don't know how it works between the Armed Forces, but I'm pretty sure the young Marine was outranked.  He kept quiet after that.
• My run of bad luck and bad play on Saturday eliminating all my winnings from Friday until a simple little hand between me, the Staff Sergeant, and a guy named Marc who said his friends call him Bill (?) turned my day around.  I was in with an 8-7, not suited, because I had been chasing all day and why stop now, and the flop was something like J-10-3, with a couple spades on the board.  There had been a pre-flop raise of $12, which I called, so there was almost $40 in the pot counting the blinds.  I was first to act, and checked, and there were checks behind me.  The next card to come out was a 6 of spades - I still didn't have the straight (or anything) but my 8 was of spades and no one else seemed to have anything yet, so I took a stab of $15 at the pot.  Both of my opponents called.  The final card came out -- 7 of spades.  I'd hit the flush, but only with an 8.  I checked.  The Staff Sergeant checked.  Marc/Bill considered for a few seconds and pushed in a $50 bet.  I looked at him, trying to read him, but he was staring straight down at the pot and giving nothing away.  But something in either the way that he bet -- or most likely, the size of the bet -- why $50 when we both had checked if he wasn't just trying to scare us out?  If he had the flush with a high spade, wouldn't he bet lower to try to suck us in?  I called, the Sergeant folded, and Marc/Bill immediately said, "Good call" and weakly threw his nothing hand into the pile as I showed him I had the flush.  He complimented me on my read, especially with only the 8, and that $200 pot made up for a lot of my losses earlier in the day.  I ended up about even for the week, down if you count the $50 I spent on beer and wings at Hooters.
• And the last highlight of the weekend was Switsky calling at 7 pm that night and asking where I was -- the Trop Poker Room -- and informing me that not only had he and Lenny already gotten cracked out of another Showboat tournament, but the two of them, along with Dan and Rud, had already driven home.  I don't know what's more pathetic, the fact that the least into gambling among us had stayed there the longest, or that I had been sitting at that particular poker table for four hours longer than I intended and was actually jealous that Switsky was already home.  On the bright side, I did get to see the Tropicana in a condition much closer to what I remember.  By the time I left that night, the place was packed with young, hip - and at least in the Quarter - well-dressed people, gathering for a night of excessive drunken partying.  I walked through the crowd unshaven, unshowered, wearing my ratty Syracuse hat and a crappy pullover from a TV series on my way to the car.  The girls were definitely checking me out.  I choose to believe their looks of horror were closer to looks of "Hey, is that Nicholas Cage in the midst of a really bad bender?"

Anyway, the real highlight of the weekend was the Syracuse upset victory at Villanova on Saturday.  The Wildcats had handled us at home just two weeks earlier, by ten points, and we were playing our third straight game with only 6 scholarship players.  Scoop Jardine's suspension actually got lifted before the game and he made the trip to Philly, but he only played three minutes, possibly as part of his punishment.  Arinze Onuaku - who dominated DePaul for 22 points in the win on Tuesday - was in foul trouble and double-teamed excessively, so he only played 24 minutes.  The other four starters -- well let's just say Jonny Flynn has played 165 minutes in the last four games (including the overtime in Georgetown).  He's about as well rested as me after a weekend in AC right now.

But Jonny was the man against Nova, slicing through the lane at will and putting up 24 huge points.  His backcourt mate (and Niagara Falls High School teammate) Paul Harris was even better, driving into the lane repeatedly and posting up the smaller guards covering him to score easy baskets and get to the foul line, enabling him to score a career-high 28 points in the victory.  Nova actually started out on fire on offense, making 11 of their first 12 shots, most on easy layups, and they jumped out to a 10 point lead.  But then they inexplicably began launching three-pointers as Boeheim got his zone to tighten around the lane and those misses led to a bunch of fast break opportunities to turn the game around.  Donte Green banged home 3 three-pointers, Jonny added another one, and all of the sudden, the Orange were on a 25-3 run to take control of the contest.  Nova cut it to 5 at the half, but Syracuse extended the lead in the opening moments of the second half, with Harris taking over the game, and it was never really in doubt after that.  The closest was 66-60 after 7 straight Wildcat points, but Kristof Ongenaat, who is definitely making the most of his massive playing time increase, deposited his second three-pointer of the year (2 for 13 on the season) with 1 second left on the shot clock.  The rest was history.  Syracuse is now a shocking 16-7 on the season, 6-4 in the Big East, and #33 in the RPI, despite - have I mentioned this - only having 6 scholarship players left after the injuries to Devendorf and Rautins, the suspension of Jardine, and Josh Wright leaving the team.  It's amazing that they're even in games, let alone winning a Big East contest at Villanova.  Well done guys.  Best game of the year by far.

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