Pirates to Pyramids: Las Vegas Taxi Tales (10 page)

He got into the business by mistake after UCLA film school graduation gave him high hopes
for a job in Hollywood. His hopes were dashed eventually by the amount of competition in that industry. His mistake began by answering an ad in the classifieds for a director/ film student. When he found out what it was, he made his second mistake. He accepted the job shooting a porno movie for one week.

The mistake, he told me, was that the legitimate film industry cannot risk using you once you have done porno. You are branded for life, just like the tattoos he wore. I asked him how his career was doing now that the decision had been made.

He said, "I am trapped in a thankless job. It never stops. I do four pornos per month, which means non-stop. I am so tired I could scream but nobody cares. You produce or you are out."

He went on to say he couldn’t wait to retire. Good luck.

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Another film maker was in my car with even greater angst. He didn't give his name but said he "had a movie coming out in two weeks." Which movie? According to him it was the sequel to a famous horror flick he had produced and it would soon be all over America and he would be rich. But would he be happy? Not so much.

According to him he was miserable because he was losing his wife. Apparently this was killing him because he put an incredible numbers of hours for years to get this film property, get it made and get it distributed.

Now he was finally done with the hard part he could see the finish line. But he had exhausted
his wife's patience and now she was leaving him. He started crying as he finished the story.

Open, loud crying was coming from my back seat from a grown man in pain. I never felt so clueless so I quietly wished him well and kept on driving.

The movie later came out like he said, and it did very well at the box office so he was obviously blessed about that. God knows the rest of the story.

WHAT WAS THAT AGAIN?

My friend RJ just entered a hotel elevator to go up and see some friends who'd come to town.

But he got much more than that. He got the quintessential Vegas gambler story.

RJ was in the elevator by himself and its doors were almost closed when this arm reached in and yanked it back open and in stepped a lady, followed by a man. They were so chilly with each other that the whole enclosure frosted up immediately, with my friend trapped inside.
 

“
Oh, great, please don't start in on each other until I am out of here,” RJ said to himself. He wasn't due to get off until the 15th floor. His chances were slim but they were not talking so he could hope. Every floor went by in stony silence until the elevator stopped at the 10th floor
.
 

“
Good, this is working out,” RJ thought, but no. God has such a sense of humor.

The man spoke out, loudly.

"I cannot believe you lost five hundred dollars on the slot machines," and then stormed off, theatrically.

RJ hoped she was going, too. “Go, please, go,” RJ prayed. But, no such luck.

She held the door open and didn't move, and didn't speak.

“
Ma'am, could I have my door back, please?” RJ silently thought but not reacting.

Instead she yelled at the man, "Are you just going to leave it like that?

RJ thought, “Yes, please just leave it like that. I don't need to know anything more, thank you.”

"He lost ten thousand dollars on the tables, yesterday." she said, and continued to stand there in the door, with her arms folded. Tick tock tick tock. She stood there, staring up the hallway at him.

Finally, after almost an eternity, he returned to the elevator to have the last word.

"Yeah, but I know how to gamble."

After his theatrical exit, she turned slowly to RJ and gave him that look. You know "that look."

RJ had never uttered a word and he didn’t start now, thank God
.

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Now this all reminds me of a story that did not involve me but is now famous. A woman in a Nevada casino had won some money. It was little money but more than she ever thought she would win. She was so nervous about getting back to her room that she tried to choose an empty elevator. But after diving into one she looked up in horror to see three black guys enter and stand beside her. She was shaking in her boots when the doors closed and then one man spoke.

"Hit the floor, Lady. Hit the floor." She froze and again the voice said,” Hit the floor, lady."

She slowly got down on all fours, totally terrified at what was next. Gentle hands reached down and quietly lifted her to her feet. The voice now said,

"Lady, I wanted you to hit the button for the floor you wanted."

The story goes the next day the woman could not wait to check out of the hotel hoping no one would ever find out about her embarrassing mistake. But the clerk stopped her and said,

"Your room charges are taken care of already, ma'am." "But how can that be true?" she asked.

"I don't know but Mr. Eddie Murphy, the comedy movie star, insisted he pay your bill in total."

POKER GOES ALL IN

When I moved to Las Vegas in 1990, I would see busy casinos taking people's money as fast
as they could make a bet, everywhere except the poker rooms. Those rooms were sleepy and eerily quiet, like a morgue. I kept wondering why casinos had that game at all, since so few players showed up. Years and years and years went by and so did the poker players, too. Until it got so bad some casinos shut down their poker rooms. Nobody complained much, they just went somewhere else. I thought poker was a goner.

Then a little old man in his 80's suggested to the right people that they put tiny cameras in the bumper of the poker table. Some people wanted to televise the World Series of Poker and other tournaments too, if it went well. But it was so boring to watch players stare at each because we
could not tell who was winning until they showed their cards, if they ever did. What an idea.

Poker pros hated cameras. It was going to telegraph their cards to someone else. They started
to band together to fight the change until they saw the money. Talk about money. Before the cameras made the games suspenseful, a big game might have tens of thousands of dollars at
stake. Amarillo Slim, a famous old-time poker pro, won the WSOP title by beating the 16 players he faced. A $5,000 buy-in earned the winner $80,000 thousand.

The cameras raised so much interest in poker to the point that the World Series of Poker Tournament in 2008 had 6,840 players and the winner took home 12 million dollars. Eight other top finalists became millionaires also, which was a huge jump.

Because TV was let into the game, viewers could now see the hands of the leading players and millions of dollars in chips. The outside audience was now in the drama of the poker game.

Many people became players for the first time after learning about the game‘s best moves and skills. This was no longer a scene from a cowboy movie.

Then Internet Poker was born and took off like a rocket, allowing anyone in the whole world to play in the comfort of their pajamas at home. Soon millions of players were betting so much money that one of the British companies offering internet poker got very concerned. What they observed was tremendous abuse by addicted players some of whom could be underage..

They based this concern on specific player volumes and frequency. Some people never stopped.

Can you imagine? What new company making gobs of money ever told on themselves? These guys were such good citizens of the world that they reported this concern to the U.S.government. Congress reacted by making internet gambling illegal in the U.S.

Why did they do that? I met college kids who told me they had found themselves with accounts of $30,000 to $40,000 dollars that they played between classes if they even remembered to go class at all. One such student poker player told me his mom was starting internet poker and he was coaching her to play until he caught her borrowing from his account. He became alarmed about her abusing his account.

What happened to the tournament poker professionals who were bitching and moaning about the cameras?
They never mentioned it again, since they are all millionaires now who are embarrassed to be reminded how they resisted. Now they get paid mega money for product endorsements. These poker pros used to play for mere thousands, now they never have to play for total pots of less
than millions and they get appearance fees, too.

You will never see happier non-winners at poker than these guys because they are probably the only gamblers in the whole world who cannot lose anymore.

This makes these guys the rarest of animals: gamblers who have happy wives.

MORE POKER STORIES

These mega poker tournaments have spawned some interesting stories of their own. For example, a blind man played in the 2008 World Series of Poker. The tournament tried to keep him out because a blind man must have a partner stand behind him and read the cards. This upset some other players: having someone who isn't playing, reading cards. Tournament officials agreed with them and said, no. The blind man said, “Discrimination lawsuit,” and then the officials said, “upon second thought, you can play, too"

Players dismissed the new guy as a non-threat since he could not see the faces of the others at his table. The study of other players faces and every single movement to see if opponents have "tells" that give away their hand is a skill. Since poker players put great stock in this poker skill they assumed the blind player was easy prey.

The tournament started with 6,840 players. This meant a winner had to survive a gargantuan number of games. After one week and hundreds of games the blind player was eliminated. It was said there were only 142 players left playing when he got up. He had outlasted roughly 6,700 players.

As a courtesy, the announcers usually broadcast goodbye to well-known players when they are eliminated. Something very rare occurred when the sightless player was beaten. Every person in the room, even players still playing, stopped what they were doing, rose to their feet and gave him a standing ovation.

This happened for a guy that they didn’t even want to play and, incidentally, he won something like $42,000.

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In 2006 a streak of good cards brought fame and fortune to a new name, Jamie Gold. What a name and what a streak he enjoyed. Excellent cards went again and again to the man with the rich name. Days later there was only one person left, Jamie Gold, and the $20 million was all his, or was it?

"Not so fast", someone said. "That money is not his, at least not all of it."

No, it wasn't the IRS. Turns out Mr. Gold had a silent partner who wasn't silent any more. He was a poker professional who had schooled Jamie as recently as during the tournament. He wanted his fee, half. Half of what Jamie won was common with many partners in big poker tournaments because the chances are so great that you will get knocked out early. Only the fortunate won any money at all, much less millions.

No wonder Jamie was eager to leave town. I would be too. But that was the agreement and that was what the partner told the tournament officials, so the Rio Hotel put all the winnings, $20,000,000 in the safe and locked it away. Payment was frozen until a judge could decide what the abiding law was.

Jamie Gold presumably freaked out because the next thing we heard from the media was that Jamie’s new lawyer petitioned the court that his client have at least half of the money until the other half gets a decision. The judge allowed this and several weeks later we heard that he had gathered the legal precedents for these agreements in the poker world. He ruled that the agreement does not get renegotiated just because it now involved more money than either partner could have ever imagined.

The fact that Jamie Gold had one of the greatest and highest payouts in the history of gambling made him delightfully happy. And there was someone happier than him: his partner.

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None of that excitement compared to the events in the life of another World Series of Poker champion.

Prior to Jamie's year a newcomer to Vegas and table poker won the whole thing. Ironically, he had been schooled in poker on the Internet only. Looking at real people across the table who were trying to eliminate him was a new thing to him.

He won more than ten million and is now famous as the chunky guy with dime store goofy glasses that hid his eyes. Looking at him you would have never guessed he would make it to the final table and then win the whole tournament. He needed the glasses desperately to hide his own shock that he was even there. It also hid his "tells" those nasty physicals signals that accidentally give away a person's hand to experienced observers.