Botched Procedure & IPhone Survival Story

I am back from a 5-day Vegas vacation. I had my kids with me so it was more of a family thing, but I got some time in at the tables at night, and even made a solo run at "The Procedure". This is not something that I would recommend, but we will get to that later. We left Saturday morning, and stayed at Buffalo Bills at Stateline the first night. We had an all inclusive package that included room, unlimited rides at the amusement park, free food, free movie tix, and a gas card for next to nothing. After checking in, we headed over to the Desperado roller coaster. For those unfamiliar with the Desperado, it was the worlds fastest roller coaster with the largest drop when it was built about 15 years ago. A few coasters have passed its records, but it is still up there on my list of top roller coasters. So we strapped in for the first ride of the day and as I was getting off I noticed that my IPhone was missing. I had it wedged in my pocket with my wallet that was still there. I looked around in floorboard area, but it was gone. I did not even bother reporting it to lost and found as I figured I was either 225 feet in the air, going 85 MPH, or some combination of the two when the phone flew out, and there was no way a touchscreen device is going to survive that. With the new IPhone coming out next week with a $199 price tag, I just chalked this one up as a $200 bad beat to start the trip.

A few days later I would find out that they had recovered my IPhone (it did fall from the coaster), and believe it or not other than scratches on the backside of it, it is perfectly fine and everything works. So the only real bad beat was having to live without it for a few days, and not being able to use the contact list to get a hold of Miami Don.

I played a ton of craps on the trip. Mostly $2 when I could find it, and turned a small profit overall from craps. Poker was nicely profitable as well. I was winning every single session that I played. If I was not catching cards, I would get gifted a Flush over Flush situation. When I was catching cards they were holding. That was until what I will call "The Solo Botched Procedure". BadBlood invented "The Procedure", and he and Pauly have written about it. The Procedure is defined as "Booze + Strippers + Poker" in that order. It is not clear under what circumstances one should attempt the procedure. I always thought it was a way to break up a slump or something like that. So Wednesday night, the eve of the WSOP ME, I met up with Dr. Pauly and Otis at the Rio, and Pauly mentioned the Bluff WSOP party at Sapphire. I asked for an invite, and after getting the kids put to bed I headed over to the Bluff Party.

I am not a big strip club guy, but I have been to a fair share of strip clubs. To describe Sapphire you would need to imagine if they converted a BestBuy into a strip club. This place was a 70,000 square foot stripatorium. If it is not the worlds largest, it must be close. The invite got you into the club for free, a bag of DoylesRoom swag, and a free open bar. An open bar at a strip club is a pretty sick thing that I have never experienced. After I got there, Pauly, Change100, MeanGean, and Otis would show up. We would pound a bunch of free drinks at the bar. One interesting thing about the party was that DoylesRoom had hired about 30 spokesmodels to hang out. They were all dresses in jean miniskirts, a small white tank top, and cowboy hat. Now why they thought they needed to bring models to a strip club that already had 100+ barely dressed strippers is beyond me. The funny thing was the models were way hotter than the strippers which created a bit of a competition. The stripper talent in Vegas is world class on the weekends, but this was a Wednesday night when most of the top strippers had already flown home to Texas or wherever they come from. So you are left with a bunch of tier 2 strippers who would be considered top notch in any town but Vegas, but not the normal top notch strippers I am used to seeing on a Vegas Weekend. So you have a bunch of super hot models, barely dressed, but not willing to go any further, and a bunch of even less dressed tier 2 strippers willing to do anything to make some big bucks on a Wednesday night. With the open bar the whole lot of us were getting wasted pretty quick.

I have to say the Dr. Pauly has a pretty cool girlfriend in Change100. Not only does she go to strip clubs with him, she was not even phased when he disappeared with a stripper and did not return for over 1/2 hour. Read Pauly for details, but it had to do with a stripper on Ecstasy who could not keep track of the number of lap dances (BOOM). Shortly after midnight, Pauly and crew had to take off to rest up for the WSOP ME, and I was 2/3s of the way into the procedure. Since this would be my last night in Vegas, I was too drunk to try to sleep, and I had been just crushing the super soft 1/2 NL game at Circus Circus, I figured I might as well go for the solo procedure.

I bought in for $200, and just started spewing chips like mad. I was bluffing big on the river and getting called, folding to massive bluffs, and calling down big value bets. I dropped 1/2 my stack in just a couple orbits. I can play pretty good poker while drinking, but not this drunk that's for sure. Who the F invented this thing anyway. The idea is to get super drunk and play poker smelling of strippers? Anyway, I got gifted AA, and played it pretty well to get back to even, and then got back to my chip spewing ways. The capper was when I flopped 2 pair in an 7-way pot, and built up a pretty massive pot before I lost to a rivered flush. I guess that just happens, and was not "procedure" related, but it still hurt. I ended up giving back about 1/3 of my poker winnings for the trip to the botched procedure, and stumbled my way back to the room.