Not posting … or cashing

Where the heck have I been? Busy. And in Vegas, where I received a fine poker education at the cost of $550. More on that later.

The cast of characters in Vegas was bizarre, as usual. There was the guy from Milan (Italy, not Michigan) who kept pulling chips off the table during a cash game and giving them to his handler.

The guy in the same game who had so little clue about how to play poker that he kept asking the dealer if he could check after others had bet. (Interesting strategy.)

The guy in the same game (what kind of a game did we walk into) who pushed me out of a hand by betting into a dry sidepot (the previous guy, who a fellow poker rate has since dubbed "Check-oslavakia was already all-in) with 4-3 suited (he was playing the board).

The guy in the same game who asked where we were from and responded with an excited "Really?!" only to tell us he was from Utah. When I said, "I've never seen anyone so excited to hear we were from Michigan who had no connection to Michigan," he just sat there and smiled, oblivious to anything I was saying.

Then there was the "Gentleman Assassin," who deserves his own blog post.

The poker didn't go so well. After cashing in an $80 shovefest at Planet Hollywood, I went 0-for-4 the rest of the week. Three of the games had great structures, and I flamed out of all of them stupidly. I also managed to roll through $100 or so online in the first couple nights back.