Reading the bio's on the Dosal (manufacturer of 305's) sounds like they run a labor camp.

http://www.dosal.com/faces-of-dosal

They're ****ing terrible....I see.people buying cartons of them for 30 bucks, its the worst 30 bucks they'll ever spend. It's like smoking tobacco flavored cardboard.

This is and has been a great read. Hope at some point you take a revenge pot or two off the Asian Icelady.

Had Sally been single would you have?

OP- is there still a thriving home game culture in your area?? I miss solid, well ran home games. There was a big home game scene in Philly before the card rooms opened about 5 years ago, since then everything died down. I'm around your age I think (31) and have been playing live up to 5/T for 11 years, and never have I ran into action at the as good since.

On the other hand, you have no eye in the sky. I recall multiple instances where decks were marked and people were blatantly colluding, Ace being missing from the deck... etc. cards so well marked that you could distinguish every paint card if u knew what to look for. And another incident where I look back and there had to a cold deck. Besides the cold deck incident you described, any major security issues ever come up? Robbery attempts? UC Cops coming in? Crooked dealers offering to cold deck for you?

Looking forward to final chapter(s). Rock on.

Oh hell yeah. She had talked about leaving her husband with her granddaughter but she didn't have anything except disability money. Her husband worked a $12 an hour job, but they had a $250K house thanks to his parents who just gifted them 20K a quarter. He just sat around and bought guns, but he was actually a really nice guy, but did not have much of a personal life. I also was friends with her son who lived there, he is 24 or so, but his life consisted of working and coming home to hardcore gaming - I'm talking like $4000 computer and 3 monitors. He would have been a good online poker player IMO.

I would say that there are sporadic home games in the area. It is not really a mystery to tell you guys where this all takes place - this is in the Sarasota area. This setup was definitely the biggest in the area, and there are about 600,000 people in the metro area. Sarasota is not a huge town, but there is a ****load of money along the coast, I would say besides Naples, Sarasota is the nicest town on the West Coast of FL. There is a huge opportunity for a great home game setup, but having the clientele is key. Sarasota Kennel Club isn't as nice as Hard Rock or Derby Lane, and the action isn't as good. With Tim and Mike at the helm though, both games would never run at their full capacity to make money or be long term. A game is only as good as the host that runs it, like a bar, and if you don't have a good location or nice setup, you aren't bringing in big money.

As far as collusion, there was a ton of softplay amongst friendly people at the table. We allowed people to make any deal they wanted as long as it was heads up. One thing we had to stop was deal making 3-ways, it can be a ****ing nightmare even for a lifelong dealer. We had no problem with this because keeping pots small and people from getting stacks in kept the money on the table and kept the game going.

One person, a well known lawyer from the area (now disbarred) sent a mass text out accusing someone of marking the deck, but we checked it and used glasses, UV lights, etc. and couldn't find anything. He was sort of a luckbox so I think he was just running bad. Cops came over a few times to Tim's, but for unrelated reasons - noise, a neighbor smelled weed, but it's really hard for them to get a warrant for them to search a house without solid evidence. I will get more into it in later stories, but someone did threaten to nark us out, but we took care of it.

I wanted to ask you guys this - I was thinking of doing some "flashback" chapters that would either be poker related or poker people related (i.e. how I met Sally, Tim, getting into live poker, travels). Would you guys be interested in that?

I'm trying to find copies of my old pictures - anything before November of 2015 is gone because that was my last transfer of pictures to my old hard drive.

bring it. good stories. Thanks

I think everyone will be interested in anything you have to write. I can't think of another poster with as high of a value-to-post ratio.

moarrrrrrrrrr


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OP-Thanks for writing. You're completely right about the host aspect. I think a great home host gives games a big leg up over the formality of the casino card room. I have a fam member retiring there in a year or so and maybe one day I can check out one of the games. I think you ran better than average at avoiding cheats/police and again, that re circles back to being a smart, clean host.

And I think I speak for all in this thread when I say we'd be very interested in drowning out the boredom of our existences in your writing. How Harry Met Sally, etc. And some life tales from you. I would be really interested in a old tales of building your roll, getting established in FL, craziest gambling story you have.

I used to play in the Philly underground games from '05 to '08. May have come across each other.

This

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How in the hell do you get in to selling exotic plants (that aren't smoke-able)? That may not be a long story but seems interesting.

Also anything that includes poker, travel, degening, scumbaggery or sex would be fine for us I think.

yes, just yes

What up Sam. I'll be vague about locations but you'll know if you were ever there. The 3 that stand out the most from that specific era are Arch St. in Old City, On Castor Ave. in the warehouse, and a smaller Ucity set up near Penn which was run by a Borgata HS reg.

Also, if u play at Parx we definitely have seen each other.

Was the Old City game run by a guy named Mike from Long Island? That was my game for sure, spent a lot of time there. No Parx for me, I left Philly in '08 and haven't lived there since.

As a resident of a city nearby, it's fun AF to imagine the roads/sites visited in these stories - great stuff OP!

Sam- The arch St. game was definitely run by Mike! heavier set Asian dude (Korean I think?). He had the glass walled smoking room in the corner and would sit in the game if a seat opened. Very nice guy. Many Sunday's I would play there until 6A and it's hard to believe that was almost a decade ago.

Haha that's awesome, that's definitely Mike. He had a spot on Chestnut that got raided, a metal detector place in a ****ty neighborhood north of the Art Museum and then finally settled on that Arch St. place. I played at Mike's until the sun came up a bunch of times too, we probably crossed paths at some point. Still remember some of those guys. I even hopped in the box and dealt late at night a few times.

Good times man.

Flashbacks - The Texas Trip

In June of 2011 I was a little bit shell shocked from Black Friday, but because I didn't trust the internet much, I only had about 3k sitting on Pokerstars/Full Tilt. I was spending more of my time on my business with plants, and my friend Ken in Miami had a business proposition. We were to go from Miami to Brownsville, Texas in his truck on a road trip and deliver plants along the way. We could deliver 30k worth of rare plants in just his Chevy 2500, the problem was we couldn't get an Agricultural Permit to move the stuff to Texas. I had known Ken since 2004 - he was never one to back down from the prospect of making money even if there was a grey area involved, and that's what I loved about him. In 2006/2007, I had brokered about 100k in plants all over the state for a California client, it was the biggest deal I had made at the time. The problem is - and those of you who drive in/out of CA know about this, is there are Ag inspection checkpoints, also known as Fruit Nazis. I was able to get around this inspection in a rental truck and trailer, and Ken wanted my expertise on it, as he had a lot of material he wanted to move to a high end client in South Texas. It was the agricultural version of a big whale at the poker table. He wanted this 30k delivery first, and he would take more as he saw things were successful.

We left Miami around noon in Ken's truck - a 2003 Chevy 2500 with a supercharged 6.2? and other mods that was dynoed in at 637 at the rear wheels. It was a beast and we had already smoked an SRT-10 in it the year before on I-95 on our way to a Dolphins game. The key to getting this load to Texas was getting it out of the Florida. FL Department of Agriculture had waystops on every road going out of the peninsula. I had found a smaller road that had a subdivision built around it in such a way that you could go through the subdivision and come out the other end past the station. As we approached it around sunset, we approached it and found it was a gated community. ****! As with most gated communities, there was an entrance for guests, and people who lived there could just go on in. We waited for a guest, and waited, and waited. WTF, did no one go out past sunset? Finally after 45 minutes, a car comes in and the gate opens, and we blast through the open gate while it was still up. We get through the neighborhood, past the Ag station, and head another 4 hours near the Florida/Alabama line. I know there is another Ag inspection on I-10, so I got off the road a few exits early and took some back roads into Alabama. Presto, we were good for the time being, as long as we didn't get pulled over.

We hit Louisiana about 345am, and I had a stop with a client for some of my goods. We were at a truck stop north of Lake Pontchartrain, and I had never met this guy in person before. A lot of our business relies on trust and referrals, and I was selling him $2000 worth of perishable merchandise. He came to us in the dark and as Ken was filling up the gas tank, I was loading this guy's truck. By 830, we had hit Houston and we were both so tired we didn't know if we could go any further. Ken had stopped at some store on the side of the road for fresh fried catfish with cajun mayo and was ****ting his brains out. We didn't have to be at the client's house until tomorrow afternoon, so we had some time to work with. We ended up making it to Corpus Christi, and spent $150 on a "beachfront" hotel with some muddy water that people were swimming in in the back. People from Oklahoma and Kansas were there, probably had saved up the whole year to take their kids to the beach. I realized how much I took living next to a beautiful beach for granted as I laid in bed and passed out for 4-5 hours.

When I woke up Ken was in his boxers rolling a joint on the desk in the room, licking the paper with his lips. He was a 24/7 smoker, but it didn't affect his life functions at all, he chose it over drinking because his doctor said his liver was shot a few years back. He was around 50, was on the outs of his second marriage, and he wanted to hit up some Texas strip clubs tonight. As tired as I was I did want to see what Texas was all about - I had never been here. We look up strip clubs in the area and after a shower, we show up to the first one. Ken was just looking for a good handjob, and I was just along for the ride. We roll into the first one all dressed up, and felt like the area was not that nice. It was fairly dicey inside, but clean, and we pay the cover and there is no one on stage. I go to the bar and order a gin and tonic, and Ken is doing his little strut towards the main stage. Ken is a good looking guy for his age and I have seen him get girls half his age hot and bothered - he had charisma that just couldn't be matched. I couldn't hear him talking, but I knew he was chatting up the girls about how he was from Miami, was recently separated, and wanted to find out who was willing to have fun.

I started talking to the bartender, she was born and raised in Corpus Christi.

"I'm from South Florida, what do you guys do for fun around here?"

"Smoke and ****." A little more blunt than I was expecting. "You looking for anything?"

"Well I'm always up for a good time." I was trying to make conversation because I was honestly bored, but never was into the hooker scene. I talked about Florida, how big everything in Texas was, and I think she genuinely liked talking to me. I wasn't a drunk pervert looking to get laid, get drugs, and I could tell she wanted out of this place.

"I'm sorry I asked you if you were looking for something. You seem like a really nice guy."

"Thanks, I'm just here for my friend, he's a little older, and he's over there....", pointing to the stage area, but he was gone. I assumed he went to a private room for a lap dance, and just sipped on my drink and checked my phone for food in the area. Whataburger....never heard of it. I saw the menu and had to try a new fast food joint out. I looked up and Ken was sitting there with a smile on his face. All was good and I said goodbye to the bartender, gave her my business card, and headed out, because Ken was high as a kite.

"So for 50 bucks she took my cock in my t-shirt and jerked me off with her tits in my face. I gotta change my shirt."

I looked over and see he has an undershirt on, which I assume was the jerk shirt. I was getting a little bit grossed out knowing his load was like 3 feet from me and the picture of some stripper jerking him off was burned in my brain. I went to the closest Whataburger and ordered the chicken fingers with cheese sauce, ate it, got really sick and was on the toilet the rest of the night. It tasted great, maybe I was just sick from the no sleep all drive day. ****ing Whataburger, I still will go there but there are none here in the area. Ken is snoring and farting up a storm and the stench was burning my nostrils. He didn't change his shirt and it was making me a little nauseous. I ended up taking a Soma to knock myself out.

We woke up just before check out time, and Ken paid the housekeeper a 20 to come clean our place last. We had a 3 hour trip from Corpus Christi to Brownsville, and we needed to check the load (on the truck) to make sure that all was secure. There was a 20K plant on board, one of a kind, and the client was a surgeon that owned a hospital in town. If we ****ed it up we would be out 5 figures. We get on the road around 1, and get a text from the surgeon, Oliver, that he will be home around 5. We have a few hours to spare, so we head down to Weslaco, West of Brownsville, and wanted to look at the big fence that was on the US side. We took a dirt road through a farm, and next to the river where there was no fence, we immediately get pulled over by Border Patrol.

"What are you guys doing around here?" He asked in a Spanish accent.

"We're from Florida, we were just curious what the border looked like." I noted, basically saying we were tourists.

"You shouldn't be here." It wasn't a command, more of a word of caution that this was a dangerous area. "Can I inspect your cargo?"

We had a longbed pickup with a topper and plants inside, it did look a little shady. He was not concerned with what he saw, so we got the **** out of there, and headed to Oliver's house. After going through a gate, we are in a McMansion area, and his house was by far the biggest. We have the gate code, and pull in to see a house empty with all 4 garage doors open. There was a Lexus RX570, Aston Martin DB8, a Toyota Tundra, and some boat. What car did he take to work? We were sitting for over an hour in the hot Texas sun wondering when he was going to get home.

After an hour, we see the solid gates open, and a Smart car roll up the driveway. You've got to be kidding me. He has 250k worth of cars in the garage, but drives a 20k deathmobile to work? We introduce ourselves and all is good, we get to unloading the goods, and he pays Ken in 100s, a couple stacks, and gives me a handful of 100s for my smaller load. I was happy to make 5k for two days of driving. His soon to be ex-wife is off in Europe, and the house is ridiculous. 7 bedrooms, 15,000 square feet of all marble, a 200k kitchen and one of those ceramic slow cookers where the two Mexican maids have been cooking since noon. We go into the kitchen and he pulls out a case of Coors light from the garage. He proceeds to put it in the fridge, goes to the bar, and pours a pint glass of gin with some soda water to top it off. This was going to be interesting.

He drove us over in the Tundra to look at another garden we could deliver to, have some wine and cheese, then head back to his place, meanwhile he is sitting there sippin on gin and soda while driving. We get home and he is totally bombed by the time we walked in the door. He clearly didn't have company often and wanted to have some fun. He asked me what I was doing besides plants, and I told him I also managed a gun shop.

"No ****! I have to show you some things." He ran off into his bedroom where I heard a bunch of clanking and a door open. He came out holding a Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle, identical to the ones the US Army uses to take out targets from long distance. He places it on the kitchen counter on a bipod and its pointed right at Ken. Ken was not the gun loving type and he wandered off to check on the car, or so he says. I take a look through the scope and it is set up on a 1000 yard shot.

"Jesus ****ing Christ, you could hit Mexico with this thing man!" I exclaimed.

"Well that's what I am going for, maybe some incendiary rounds."

This guy was ready for all out war. I go to check the 10 round box mag that was loaded onto it, pulled it out and it was heavy. This thing was fully loaded! I check the chamber and pull the bolt back to see a massive .50BMG round fly onto the floor. For those of you that know gun safety, this was a big no-no. You don't just keep loaded guns lying on your kitchen counter. He then proceeded to come out with the following guns, in no particular order.

3 fully decked out Danger Close AR-15s
2 Russian AK-47s, the real good ones with 75 round drums
7 or 8 Glocks in all calibers with 28-33 round hi-cap mags, some with silencers
2 Desert Eagles - one in Nickel plate, one in gold plate.
HK MP5 Full Auto with paperwork
Salvo 12 silenced Mossberg shortbarrel
Countless 1911s

Meanwhile, as I was in awe of an arsenal good enough for a small army, he said he had a surprise. I'm not sure what could surprise me at this point, but I was busy de-chambering the bullets out of these things. Bullets of all calibers were flying everywhere from being ejected. He comes around the corner with an HK UMP .45 in full auto with 2 mags attached to it so you could drop one and load the other instantly. At first I couldn't believe it because it was 100% illegal to own an automatic firearm made after 1986 in the US, but it had a demo stamp on it. Apparently he had a Federal Firearms License, and with that license you are allowed to have these guns as demos in a shop. It still shouldn't be there, but whatever, I wiped my prints off the thing once I held it. It had 200 bucks worth of ammo strapped to it alone, and was probably a $40,000 gun just to get in the shop.

"I keep this around for when **** hits the fan." He said in a very drunk but serious tone."

I was thinking to myself that **** was already hitting the fan, and it was a miracle that he hadn't shot me, himself, or his house already. It took me over an hour to make all the guns safe, take them back to the safe, which was a walk in closet, and hang all the stuff up properly. There were over 100 guns in there, I would say the collection was about a million alone. Dan Bilzerian himself would have been impressed. It was getting late, sometime past midnight.

"I have a 8am elbow surgery tomorrow," he said in a drunken slur, "but if you guys want to go to my place on South Padre, we can go out fishing in the boat." I told him I would talk to Ken, who was already up in one of the bedrooms a little freaked out. I found where Ken was staying, and he told me he wanted to get the **** out of there as soon as possible, and we would probably leave at 530am. That was fine with me, I knew that New Orleans and Biloxi was on our way back, and I had over 5k on me that was ready to be put in play.

Got dang, that's a hell of a gun collection!! that was right up my red blooded American alley. The last weapon you described is right out of an action movie and something most only will ever have have gun dreams about my man.

.. knowing full well that a .50cal round would literally tear a human body in half, I would of **** a brick if I was Ken and had that monstrosity pointed at me! Good call on getting away from the drunk surgeon and rolling to Biloxi.

I'm dying over here Hahaha.

They don't **** around do they? Oh wait, that's all they do.

Also, I would absolutely die for an AK-47 with a drum mag.

Surprised the drunk surgeon didn't get angry at you for safely dropping the rounds from all the chambers.

Here is the UMP .45. It kills me that I have to search other forums' archives for the few photos I can find, I need to find a place that can extract the data from my broken hard drive.



Here is one of the few pictures of Marcy I can find. She loved dogs and we were visiting a dog farm out near the Everglades.

The Texas Trip - Part 2

I wake up at 5am to Ken coming in saying he wants to go, and I hop in the shower, get what few things I had brought it, and we quietly pulled out of Oliver's house. He was a really nice guy, was clearly lost in a sea of gin from his divorce, but we had come for business, and wanted to start the 24 hour trip back home. I was still beat but Ken had already smoked a joint and was all fired up. I passed out in the back seat of the truck and got woken up by Border Patrol near Corpus Christi asking us where we were from. My door swings open and some agent asks me where I was born. I was pissed I was woken up by these guys.

"New York City. Do I look Mexican to you?"

I just realized that Ken had weed in the car and I might have ****ed things up. Then again, these stops are just revenue generators, and I was tired of the Border Patrol bothering us. I just don't like these stops, they are borderline unconstitutional, and I was woken from sleep I really needed. They had a dog sniff the car and it came up clean, and we were on our way. I woke up again in the Houston area, and we switched drivers. I went to fill up the tank, and realized we were in a shady part of town just East of downtown. I took advantage of the situation and got myself a case of 40s of Old English. In Florida, there is some stupid law that beer cannot be sold in bottles over 32 ounces, so most Floridians had never seen 40s, they had only heard of them. We aimed at getting to New Orleans by 6pm and spending the evening there. We pulled into the Hampton Inn one street off Bourbon, got dressed up, and hit the streets looking for the French Quarter experience.

We roll down and it is a Sunday evening, and it is drizzling, humid, in the middle of the summer. It was actually fairly quiet on Bourbon, just your normal crowd, but you could walk freely. We get dinner at a local restaurant, and Ken has been texting this girl who was in the plant business. She was recently divorced and he wanted to meet up with her for something better than what he had a few nights before. She came in to the city and I figured I would leave them alone. I know that Harrah's is down by the river, and not knowing my way around, I get directions from a local. I take a left on Canal and stroll down, remembering that I didn't have a gun on me, but I did have 5k in cash and money orders, and I knew NO was not the safest place to be, regardless, I had fun walking the city, thinking of the history, and I see the lights at the end of the street.

Rolling into Harrah's was like going to Disney as a kid. I took in all the nice French architecture, and went down to the poker room. I look for PLO on their board and see nothing. I ask them if PLO runs in the room and the brush did not know what I was talking about. Damn, maybe I should just gamble it up then. I look around and the place was packed - I guess all the would be Bourbon Streeters were here for the party. Looking at my watch, I realize its almost 11 and I really counted on going to Biloxi for my casino fix AND make it back to South Florida tomorrow evening. I ended up walking out of the place, thinking this is where I will have to play poker from now on - in a casino. I could handle that.

I walked back down Canal and hit up a late night food joint that had a killer chocolate mousse. I was eating it on my way back to the hotel and the rain was gone, and Bourbon was packed. I was so beat from the trip already I really needed to rest, so I turned the block to the Hampton Inn on Royal. After almost running head on into a cop on horseback, I jumped up the stairs and onto the 4th floor. I had leftovers in the fridge from dinner and figured I would eat that and watch TV. I put the key in the door, and open it to see a darkish room with a mass of blankets and two bodies moving around, it looked like Ken was pounding Kathryn, our plant friend. It actually looked pretty violent but from the sounds I was assuming they were both having fun. I am pretty unfazed by that sort of thing, so I went to the fridge, pulled out my sandwich, and turned on the TV. I was too tired to leave, and I didn't even know where to go if I did. I had known Ken enough to know he didn't care, and I just paid attention to the TV and let them continue. I figured after 10-15 minutes they would be done, but an hour later, when I was in bed trying to sleep, there was still plenty going on.

Thank God I was so tired because as I was dozing off after taking a Soma, the last thing I could hear was "I'm gonna cum on your face!" and after the shirt incident, I didn't want any of that in proximity to my body. I passed out shortly thereafter.