Quote:
Originally Posted by DOG IS HEAD
Can the person who said he met Jose at Aria give more details? Where was he in Aria, was he playing poker, and did he speak to you/anyone?
Since it seems mildly important now and like I'm heading this theory, here's my somewhat long version of everything that I saw for full context and to clarify myself. I just checked text messages to get the date and times.
On the evening of July 1 I was playing 1/3 at one of the front tables of the Aria room (near the poker room entrance). At about 5am a group of 6ish really, really drunk Portuguese people come in the room straight out of a club and want to play lowstakes while hammered. My table had 3 open spots so the guy just put the ones that wanted to play at my table while the rest of the group watched and laughed/commented from 4 feet off the table.
These guys were all being obnoxiously rude (even by really, really drunk standards) and condescending towards the table. After 20 minutes it becomes obvious that they're highstakes players (they made it very well known).
After about 60 minutes of playing with these drunk guys and their crew hanging around my table a new, somewhat short guy joins and is standing there talking to them just in a plain tee shirt (they were all wearing button-downs). I notice because one of the guys at my table nods toward the other basically saying "Hey, look who showed up." toward Jose. The Portuguese Prodigy thread had already been going on for a while so I knew what he looked like and I recognized him right away and just thought that he must have came out to Vegas to meet up with some of the people he knew from HS and possibly to play some underage poker. (I did not come up with this connect-the-dots theory given the current situation just because it seems to fit. I legitimately had thought that it was him that I saw at the Aria since then.)
The only times I saw him he was either chatting with the group of Portuguese people or walking around on a cell phone. I did not see him play any poker. I did not speak with him.
Some people are saying some stuff conflicting with what I'm writing:
Quote:
Originally Posted by morello
not sure if related at all, but I spent several hours in the 10-20 games at aria/bellagio this summer. there was a group of 3, maybe 4 portuguese players who were around for at least a week, maybe two, and played most/every day. I googled to see girah's picture, and I don't think he was one of them. I can only get 1 or 2 pictures from google images and I might be wrong but I don't think he was one of them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MooreMoney19
None of them were Girah. In fact, I talked to them a few times about the subject and they were skeptical as to whether Girah actually existed or not.
This may be true, and the guys who were at my table that I chatted with talked like they had been staying there for at least a short while playing the 10/20 and 25/50 cash games. One of the guys told me his name and I still remember if it's needed.
If you add together a) him showing up late while being sober and in a tee when everyone else was hammered and dressed nicely (I think it's hard to get into clubs even with a fake) with b) him associating with a large group of Portuguese people and c) me recognizing him quickly, I think it's very, very likely it was him and still stand by what I saw.