My favorite of her albums is Boots 2: The Lost Songs and The Harrow & The Harvest. Easily found on Spotify/YouTube. If you like that stuff, much of Allison Krauss' catalog should be added as well.

Thanks for the mentioning. I'm sure I've listened to that one before but forgot about it. YouTubing now...

This is all the excuse I need to poast my top 5 GW/DR songs. As for albums, Gillian's Time (The Revelator) is my clear #1.

#5

#4

#3

#2

#1

The songs that have made my iPod cut so far:

Orphan Girl
By The Mark
Everything Is Free
I'm Not Afraid To Die

ETA: As much as I hate 99% of the music that is played on the mothercorp radio station up here, I have to give them props to playing stuff I'd otherwise be unlikely to stumble across. They randomly played "Orphan Girl" while I was out driving in a hurry to one place or another and it was a wonderful who-the-****-is-this? moment.

Gthelifeoftheparty,ldoG

September Recap


As you can see, the new Harrahdise chips are in circulation. They're consistent with the renovated design of the new casino: spiffy and serviceable, but uncreative.

A few gambol-related topics as a reminder that this is still, at least in theory, a poker blog.

RIP Archie Karas

Karas is probably best known for his epic "run" when he turned $50 bucks into $50 million, or more, and then lost it all. A few years ago he did an interview that, to my mind, offers a great argument against a gambling-centric life.



and then there are the bots, courtesy of Bloomsberg reporter Kit Chellel.

Old School

Crescent City Connection Bridge Run

Sunbathing in Flopville


Operation (re)Deny marknfw [297/500]

October Recap


Mostly been pleasantly trapped in the teaching vortex, along with some occasional gamboling in the Quarter, where oodles of Swifties ran amok


Didn't go to any of the three shows, but by most accounts they were solid and the locals were thrilled with bizness: the Swifties were polite and tipped well, which is all you can really ask of tourists, right? All told, Empress Tay brought in $500 million to Nola. Enough to fix a pothole or three.

Not For Sale

In New Orleans You'll Never Get Caught

Childless Dog Owners, Unite!

Post-Frolic Glam Shot

Splash Pot


Operation (re)Deny marknfw [338/500]

November Recap


It was only a matter of time...

New deck of cards

Is it a Fish? Is it a Reptile? Scientific Marvel! One of a Kind!

Improving my game

Obligatory sunset pic from the Beau


Operation (re)Deny marknfw [396/500]

Over hundred hours to go with less than a month in the year. This feels familiar...

Nice balance trick with the two quarters and a nickel. And the dog in the casino -do they have to have a service dog label to be there? I've seen some streams where a player had a dog sitting with him (Texas as I recall)

Depends on the casino, I think. At Harrahdise I'm pretty sure you need a service dog label or there's a size limit. The guy who brought the pup above said the service dog vest was bullshit but it usually works.

How are the games at Casino del LOL treating you? Sorry I won't be able to join you over the holidays...

Lol @ dog at poker table. So long as she's playing her own hand and no one is giving her advice, I'm cool with it. ODTAH.

Lol @ fluffball with dinosaur.

Aren't you a TayTay fan? She's ending her tour here this weekend; wife and stepdaughters all managed to get awesome floor tickets and all are super pumped. But I'll have a nice night at home with the puppy.

Gi'vecometotalkwithyouagainG

The "big game" at Del Sol has basically gone dormant since a couple of the "reasons" for the game have gone broke or left town. I'm mostly playing on-line once a week in a private game very low stakes. I'll see what happens at Del Sol when the gem show comes to town. Used to really pick up the action.

yes indeed. she was just in Nola around Halloween and the city transformed into Swiftyville. Despite being a fan, I had little interest in attending the show. Like you, I prefer nights at home with the pup

I remember you talking about the gem show. Hope the action picks up again at some point. I went to Harrahdise yesterday around five and there were only two tables running--on a Monday, but still. The games here are good but there are fewer tables and a lot of the big money has gone underground/migrated to Texas.

Adventures with Gui

I arrive at 2:30 on Saturday afternoon, just as a new $1/$3’s getting started. I follow Floorman Roy to Table 11, right in the middle of the room. Waiting alone in Seat 3, wearing a gray ski jacket and a tan hat, is one of my favorite Harrahdise regs, a legend of the room and a frequent candidate for the Who Loves it More Award. The moment Gui sees me, his eyes crinkle in delight and we warmly greet each other, lightly grasping each other’s arms as I take the 4 Seat.

“Where you been?” I ask him. “I haven’t seen you.”

Gui gestures first at the room and then vaguely at the rest of the casino, as if to say: I’ve been here, there, and everywhere. I know that he likes baccarat.

A young Black guy in a Tennessee jacket takes the 9 Seat, a fifties white guy in a camo hunting jacket and polished black boots takes the 5, an out-of-towner with spiky silver hair and a silver bead necklace takes the 1, a serious-looking youngster in an Aria hat takes the 8. Roy swipes us in and takes our cash, counting out hundos and twenties and sliding us stacks of red. A few minutes pass in silence as we idly check our phones, scan the TVs. The Georgia-Texas game is on the sportsbook’s biggest screen. “Where’s Vu?” Roy asks. He looks at his watch.

From the back of the room, Vu flashes a grin and pretends to hide in the employee closet, then scurries over. “I was about to hide in the closet,” he jokes. Roy says nothing. He’s been going through the same motions for a decade or three, and his actions are unhurried, world-wearied. He signs a printed-out slip of paper having to do with finances, keeping track of the chips or whatever, and gets up. Vu sits down, signs the slip, and hands it to Roy, who returns to his post at the podium. Vu shuffles the cards, fans them out, washes them, pitches us cards.

Gui’s thin, wrinkled left hand is pressed lightly against the baize, waiting for a hand. He checks his cards and flicks them away.

I don’t play a hand for the first orbit, then take out my phone. The last few sessions have gone badly for me, and I’ve decided to set some new rules. Rule number 1: No phone unless I’m UTG+1 or UTG. Rule number 2: Write notes. The notes don’t have to be strategic—in fact they probably won’t be—but it’s more an exercise in mindfulness, in paying attention to small details that would otherwise elude me and be lost forever, as they eventually will be anyway.

I post my big blind and scan the room. In the back right corner is the $500 Gladiator tournament that runs the second Saturday of every month. I spot Wild Bill and Bread Truck 2.0’s younger brother and a dozen or so other donkament regs that I know by sight, if not by name. Behind me, four other $1/$3s are going. I lock eyes with ******* Mark and, on cue, we give each other our usual acknowledgement: theatrical squint and pursed lips and head nod, as if to say, yeah, we in here.

Gui points to the open seat on his right, which has been empty for thirty minutes despite four names on the waitlist. He gets up, walks over to the registration booth, and tugs lightly on Troy’s jacket at the cage. Yi points at the list and Troy nods.

“Long time, man.” He sits down and says again, shaking his head, chuckling to himself, “it’s a long time.”

Our table isn’t talkative. Just nine dudes silently playing cards.

Second orbit, and I finally play a hand. A bunch of limps and I have AJdd and I’m ready to bump it up, but then Gui makes it $7 and I just call, everyone else calls, the flops comes King-high, and Gui wins with AK. I feel smart and stupid at the same time. After stacking his chips and folding a few hands in a row, Gui sits impatiently in his seat, one leg splayed outward so that he can more easily observe the room, and he says, “No service.” He’s dressed in a much more elaborate outfit than I’d realized: beneath his ski jacket is a second one, a bluish one-piece ski suit unzipped to his belly button, and a black Calvin Klein t-shirt. Coiled around his neck is a gray-black scarf that I’ve sometimes seen him use as a face covering. Ratty black sandals, and thick gray socks.

He’s right. I haven’t seen a server since I stepped foot in the room. I shrug sympathetically and Gui says, “No cocktail, man, ****.” He laughs and his eyes twinkle. “Long time,” he says.

A few minutes later Server Terry zooms straight up to Gui and hands him two waters, profusely apologizing for some snafu going on in the back. I tell him not to apologize and ask for a coffee. He confirms cream only, and I nod. He knows my order well.

“I’ll take a French 75,” the young guy in the 2 Seat says.

“You want it on the rocks? Light ice?”

“Light ice.”

“Light ice,” Terry says agreeably. “Yeah, it’s better that way.” Then he diligently scurries to the other tables, his tray expertly balanced by his dependable right hand, saying over and over in a chipper polite voice, “Beverages, water, drinks, beer, cocktails.” His black hair is cut in a tight fade that’s almost a mohawk and he wears two hoop earrings, black Nike sneaks, black Harrahdise employtee shirt and pants.

A few minutes later, Terry drops off my coffee and the 2 Seat’s French 75 and Gui’s drink—coffee with Sweet’n Low. “No sugar,” Gui tells me. “Sugar will kill me.”

I’m writing notes when I look up and see Gui in a pot with the Tennessee jacket guy in the 1 seat. Tennessee has just jammed his last $140 or so into what looks like $100 on an Ace hi board. Gui tank calls.

“You’re good, my friend,” Tennessee announces. “I have nothing.”

Gui chuckles softly and mutters something and shows Ace-Three off. As the kid walks away Gui turns to me and explains, “he bet too much.”

“You knew,” I say.

He nods soberly and says again, “Bet too much.”

Fourth or fifth orbit, I finally play a few hands. Ace-Jack, Ace-Ten, King-Nine. Win some, lose some. From the big blind I chop with Gui, he tosses his dollar small blind to Dealer Mike.

A few limps, the button makes it $15, the small blind makes it $45 and action folds back around. Gui shows me A8cc, which he’d limped. “Good call,” I tell him, as usual: I love pretending to goad him into playing more hands, which he loves to do.

He folds and tells me about a hand he played a few weeks earlier, in which he called one-fiddy preflop with those very cards, the Ace-Eight of clubs. “Four player call, I call. I flop flush.”

“Big pot?” I ask, and he nods.

Right after I type up the details of the Ace-Eight hand, Gui points at my phone and asks if I’m talking to someone. I shake my head. “I write,” I tell him. “I write about different things. You never know what you’ll see, or the stories you’ll hear.”

Once, years earlier, I had tried to talk to Gui about poker—to really talk to him. I remember that we were standing outside the glass partition that separated the old cardroom from the rest of the casino. We were both waiting for seats, and we stood for a few minutes in silence, watching the players fiddle with their chips and stare at their cards. I turned to him and asked him why: why did he play poker? He frowned at me and shook his head and turned back to the action, staring stoically into the room. Maybe it was the language barrier, but I think that Gui understood what I was trying to get at perfectly well. I think he understood, as I didn’t, that sometimes explaining kills the magic.

Now, sitting beside me, Gui nods and points at his own phone, its blank screen with a few apps. I look at the lettering beneath a few apps and ask him what language that is.

“Chinese.”

I go to the only bathroom in the casino that has a water fountain, fill up my bottle, and take a quick dump. I’m out of the cardroom for less than ten minutes. When I get back Table 11 is completely empty; the only remaining trace is my maroon hoodie, hanging from the back of seat 4. Yi calls to me from table 6 and gestures at the last open seat, the 8. At the cage Chip Runner Monica hands me my rack with a small slip wedged between the chips.

UNCLAIMED FUNDS
Table 711, Seat 4

Type of game: 1-3 holdem no limit
Amount: $717

I sit in Table 6 next to Gerald, another candidate for the Who Loves it More Award, and a young gun I’ve never seen before with four bracelets on his left wrist, one of which reads NO ONE CARES, WORK HARDER.

I rack up around 7, nodding buh-bye to Gui on my way out, and hustle out of the Poydras exit into the muggy evening air. As I’m making my way up the parking garage stairwell I bump into Bread Truck on his way down. “Good session?” he asks.

I tell him that it was uneventful. “But Gui was at my table,” I add, “and we were laughing a bit.”

Operation (re)Deny marknfw [411/500]

Amazing read Ben God I am looking forward to when that book of yours will be released... ETA on it??? And are you going to be in Vegas during the WSOP this summer?

As one who has been sitting in a live 1/3 NL game week-in week-out without fail for 15 years, I find the minutiae and goings on of the characters in your stories very relatable / enjoyable.

Ghadtolookuptheword"baize"thoG

good writing

preciate the popin Dubn and glad you enjoyed! More verbal spew incoming over the next month or two.

Highly unlikely I'll be in Vegas next summer, as I've been migrated to the northeast to spend time with family in June-July...I'll be following your progress for sure, and hopefully we can find time to grab that beer


Thanks for the kind words GG

#allwordsmatter

not at the level of your homoerotic vlogger fan fiction, but I appreciate the compliment, esp coming from you!

Grateful to Be Alive

In at 315 on Wednesday afternoon, three games going. I immediately break my phone rule when the guy on my right in Seat 6 starts telling a story about running it up at Boomtown. “I sat in the game for thirty minutes, and I had all the chips in play,” he tells me. “And i wasn’t even having to bet. They were putting me all in.”

“How long ago was this?” I ask. “I can’t remember the last time they had no-limit at Boomtown."

“This would have probably been in 2007 or 8."

"Before I lived here," I say.

We keep talking, and he points at the table next to us. "Everyone sitting over there was sitting here."

I look over, and it's the day crew: Casey, Dale, Hugo, Anthony (who just racked up from our table to join them), the contractor who always complains about tables not being enough action, Steve the Cop, all the usual suspects. "The only guy who wasn't at this table that I can remember is the guy in the 3 seat."

"That's Darren. That's her husband," Dealer Jackie says, nodding at the blond-haired woman in the 5.

"Yeah. And he did not sit at this table," she says. "He normally sits and play with me, but since my son's playing"—she glances to her right—"it's too hard to have three of us."

A few minutes later, Floorman Binh calls out to me and gestures at the very table we were just talking about, as if to usher me over. I lock eyes with him, confused; I hadn't asked for a table change. "I'm good here," I say.

"They want you," Seat 5 says with a smile.

"If they want me that bad, they can come to me," I say. That gets a chuckle from half the table.

Always the same song and dance—coming or going, staying put or switching it up. About thirty minutes into my session Dumpstaphunk Ivan changes tables to my direct left, bringing with him two stacks of red, a baby bottled water, and a shiny gold-black card protector with a skull in the middle and the words, in gold lettering, GRATEFUL I'M NOT DEAD. Not a cardroom legend—a Nola legend. He's dressed in black: hoodie, flat-brimmed 504 hat, jeans, sneaks. Cool brownish shades. White wireless earbud in his right ear. We don’t know each other. He’s quiet, on his phone. Pleasant and chill but not, it seems, in the mood for chitchat. He scrolls social media and pulls up a crossword. He plays passively and predictably: exactly how you’d expect a rec in his position in life to play. He wins a tiny pot and tosses a white to Dealer Mike, who thanks him. Brief pause, and Ivan tosses another white.

“Thank you,” Mike says again.

The guy to Ivan’s right is a young Asian punter wearing a comfy looking lavender fleece and a pink man purse slung snugly around his chest. A few weeks ago, at the Beau, someone wondered why so many young male cardroom regs are wearing manbags. It struck me as a good question. I'm seeing way more fanny packs and purses than backpacks these days.

The punter commits $350 on the turn drawing dead against the only grinder at the table, a youngish southern bro. “I’ll be right back,” the punter says.

“Sorry to see him go,” the guy on my right says.

“He said he’ll be back,” I say. Which is never a sure thing, to be sure, but the punter does indeed return with a fresh $400, two stacks of red and two of green.

Action folds to me in the small, and I put out my left hand in the form of a questioning karate chop.

“Let’s play,” Ivan says, and I know he must have a jackpot hand. I tell him I don’t have one, showing him K6o, and toss him my small. He shows me pocket Sevens, and I mention that they just hit a big one at the L’Aberge. He launches into a story about the one time he got a piece. “$189K,” he tells me. “Two people were walking, the table share was $7700.”

“Two people were walking? Did y’all give ‘em anything?”

“One of ‘em was a reg. You know Joe—hoarse Joe? I gave him a few hundred bucks. Other people that weren’t from here, they didn’t give him ****."

I tell him about the one time that I hit the jackpot—also a good table share—and then I ask if he remembers the hand.

“Yeah. It was quad Tens and a straight flush. It was late at night. I was at Jazzfest. I was playing some late-night show and I had played an earlier show, and I had like 2.5 hours to kill. And I came and sat in here at ****in midnight or some ****. I only had like 160 bucks in front of me. I was sittin here ****in around. Wasn’t a bad little come-up.”

No Neville's on the iPod but cool story.

I didn't think I'd ever be a manbag guy. But due to a ~temporary injury this year I couldn't really operate my wallet (my one and only wallet I've had since high school days). So I did some manbag shopping (my wife was so jelly) and eventually settled on a quite small one, with a few holders for credit cards / id / etc. and just enough room for some cash plus one stack of backup red chips. And so now I'm a manbag guy. I absolutely look like an old guy who's trying way too hard, but **** it, it is quite practical and works for situation.

GcluelessmanbagguyG

Not a manbag sort of guy, but I definitely built up a hat collection over the past couple of years, which strays from youngster baseball caps, to fedoras, to cowboy hats, to European hats, so good to work the table image, you know

I recall sitting next to Ivan many years ago in Harradise. I'm a longtime admirer of The Meters (none better, in fact) and got a genuine thrill seeing their original bass player, George Porter Jnr, with his band on Frenchman St; unfortunately Zigaboo Modeliste wasn't on drums, who's playing always brings me back to life (like many drummers I spent hour upon hour trying to play like him---many would regard him as the GOAT of New Orleans if not for Earl Palmer).

I need to level up my nonexistent manbag game. I have a baby backpack that I'll occasionally use, but usually my hoodie's pockets are enough to carry what I need.

Hope you're still on the mend, and glad you're back in action.

I suspect you'd be quite the fun—and tough—player to tangle with a the cardtable

not surprised to hear that you crossed paths with Ivan, Dr.. Not sure if I mentioned this itt, but I've been co-hosting a poker podcast, and one of the episodes is with Eric Vogel, an accomplished bassist + grinder. You might enjoy our convo—I remember talking a good bit about the Nola music scene.

Hope your own grind is going well! Still waiting on a new PGC