Writer’s Note:  I’ll try and write up the final chapter of the Chris Moneymaker “behind the scenes” story in the next day or so.  In the meantime, here’s something from the Binion’s Horseshoe era that happened in August 2003.

Remembering back ten years ago to the days working at Binion’s Horseshoe, I’m reminded of my all too brief career as a reality television “star.”

Seriously.

Fresh off our public relations coup from the 2003 World Series of Poker and the ESPN broadcast which was attracting huge ratings, my cell phone never stopped ringing.  From that instant forward — Las Vegas, gambling, and poker were hot topics.  My philosophy was — anyone with a television camera was allowed to film inside the casino.  We didn’t care who they were.

That policy made us really different.  While the corporate stiffs on the other end of The Strip practically made things impossible (they wanted forms filled out, lawyers’ signatures, proof of insurance, total bullshit), we opened up our doors to the entire world.  We rolled out the red carpet, and let everyone inside.

I had complete power over all of this, my authority granted by “the family.”  Casino boss Nick Behnen green lighted me to do pretty much anything with media, one of the reasons I loved working for him and for the Horseshoe.  He got it, if you know what I mean.  So, true to our wild west heritage where just about anything was permitted, legendary Binion’s Horseshoe developed a reputation as the one casino in Las Vegas where all it took was one phone call to bring cameras in the door and start shooting.  The word spread quickly.  For several months, just about every television show featuring Las Vegas and gambling was filmed at Binions Horseshoe — with our logo and trademark emblazoned on the screen.  You couldn’t buy the kind of publicity we were getting for free.

Perhaps 20 to 30 television shows and a dozen commercials were filmed during that final year, many of them documentaries and gambling features.  There were also a few television shows and movies.  I brought in three episodes of MTV’s Viva La Bam and even choreographed one of the gambling scenes where we cold decked a man in a wheelchair and then dumped him out on the street (seriously).

But the most outrageous occasion was when a reality television show from Holland called up in a panic and informed they wanted to start shooting as quickly as possible.  Somehow a film crew had flown into Las Vegas straight from Amsterdam and then had a falling out with the casino where filming was scheduled to take place.  So, we came to the rescue and said, “come on down.”

The stars were all from Dutch television.  They paraded around the casino while lights and cameras followed them everywhere.  Oddly enough, the distractions in the pit area actually made the gambling scene pretty exciting.  People like to be on TV, so those cameras didn’t hurt business any.  Of course, none of those who were actually caught on camera had any idea the footage would end up somewhere in The Netherlands.

An awful half-written script called for a Dutch couple, who were the stars of the show, to accidentally run into a “professional gambler.”  I’m not exactly sure what happened with their casting.  But the shooting schedule broke down during the second day.  They couldn’t find the ideal American to co-star in a few key scenes.  He was supposed to portray a shady slime ball character who would con the Dutch couple out of all their money.  As I understood it, they simply thought Las Vegas was full of shady characters and they could just pluck someone off the street as a stand in for the paart.  So, they didn’t even bother to pre-cast the role.

I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into.  My duty was to stand around and make sure the filming went smooth.  That’s it.  The director repeatedly buttered me up with praise about being helpful.  One thing led to another and that led to him ask a favor.  The director requested that I play the role as a stand in, which was presumably going to be just one scene and a short take.

I couldn’t exactly follow what in the hell was going on since they were all talking in Dutch language.  But they decided to move the filming location.  Somehow, we ended up moving across town and doing a night shot at The Palms Casino.  The film crew arranged to set up at Alize, the high-dollar penthouse restaurant, which was completely cleared out from 11 at night until 6 am.  It was a night shoot.  The scenes were supposed to be inside the couple’s hotel suite — but with the backdrop of the Las Vegas Strip.  Some additional furniture was brought in, including a bed.

A bed?

What was that all about?

What was going on here, I thought.  I started fearing I might end up with a bit part in a Dutch porn movie.

Filming went for a few hours and I just sat and watched the scenes as they did take after take.  I didn’t understand a word of anything.  The couple was even filmed in bed kissing during one short scene.  But at least it wasn’t porno.

When it was finally my turn to be on camera, I couldn’t believe the lines they wanted me to say.  My scenes were apparently going to run with subtitles over my dialogue.  But everyone in Holland speaks English, so it hardly mattered.  They wanted a someone who was authentic from Las Vegas to teach the couple “how to gamble” and I was supposedly a master of blackjack.  I couldn’t digest the hideous script I’d been given, with improper lingo and phrases about blackjack and gambling.  So, most of my lines were made up on the spot.  No one cared.  When we finished shooting late that night, the director informed me that he needed some “B-Roll” footage of me acting like a gambler.

“Acting like a gambler.”  What does that mean?  Like throwing dice?

I’d soon find out.  The hard way.

The following afternoon, I showed up at a discount car rental place.  It was called something like “Exotic Car Rentals.”  I hoped they’d put me in a fancy sports car.  But instead, the film company rented me a 1959 Cadillac convertible — the model with the giant tail fins.  It was bright yellow and ugly as shit.  Worse, it was banged up and had a loud muffler.  But the biggest embarrassment of all was the license plate:  HI ROLLR

Picture Tony Montana’s car in Scarface.  I was filmed driving up and down the Las Vegas Strip in a yellow 1959 Cadillac with a muffler that backfired, with plates that said HI ROLLR.  The 30 minutes of B-Roll turned into two fucking hours.  And of course, the impossible happened.

Never mind that it was August and like 111 degrees.

It rained.

That’s right, it began raining just as the filming began.  It felt like the inside of a steam bath.

The only thing I was thinking about was — please don’t let anyone I know see me.  Don’t let me run into anyone that can identify me and think this yellow shitbox is really my car and this is how I live.

The filming ended and I was told that my final “scenes” would be shot on Fremont Street that night.

This was the most humiliating moment of all.  I almost refused to do it.  Trouble was, the crew were all so nice and it was explained they were desperate to wrap up the filming.

The crew asked me to put on a bright red silk shirt, which looked like they’d bought off the rack at Goodwill.  Actually, I think it was.  The shirt was something I’d never be caught dead in.  They also made me wear one of those “in-your-fucking-face” twenty-dollar gold pieces, the kind Jimmy “the Greek” used to hang around his neck.  It was ridiculous.  I had the buttons on my shirt open and this faux gold chain with a medallion hanging down to my stomach.  I felt like slime.

The worst thing was — they wanted me to walk beneath the fully-lit Fremont Street Experience canopy, in between the giant neon casino signs.  A camera was placed in front of me down around knee level and shot upward while I cock walked down Fremont Street with the FOUR QUEENS and GOLDEN NUGGET signs flashing in the back.  I was told to act like the biggest jerk-off on the entire block, like some kind of barnyard rooster.

This was supposed to be how a “professional gambler” lives.  Yeah right.

My utter humiliation came from the catcalls of bystanders.  There was no security around , so people got right into the shot which didn’t matter much since it was reality television.  When tourists saw the cameras and giant sound mike on a boom, they thought a major Hollywood movie was being filmed.  Gawkers started gathering around.  Then, when the tourists saw me walking in the spotlight, all I heard for the next 30 minutes were comments like, “let’s go, he’s not anyone famous.“  And, “Who the fuck is that?”

So, I pretty much cock walked Fremont Street that night while the cameras rolled and filmed me as a “professional gambler” who conned the poor Dutch people out of their vacation money.  A few hours later, the crew shot one final scene in the pit at the Horseshoe and that was a wrap.

Months later, I received a rough cut of the show on a CD in the mail from the television company.  Apparently, the show aired once as a pilot in The Netherlands.  But it wasn’t picked up.  It was cancelled after just one showing.  I couldn’t understand any of it, but what I could make out about the story was hideous.  I came across looking like a child molester.

My career as a television star was over.  And I wasn’t nominated for an Emmy.

My Appearance on a Dutch Reality Television Show is a post by: Nolan Dalla All rights reserved.

Writer’s Note:  This is the sixth in an extended series of articles about Chris Moneymaker’s victory at the 2003 World Series of Poker and what went on behind the scenes at the legendary Binion’s Horseshoe — before, during, and after, where I worked as Director of Public Relations. 

I’d also like to note that another great read was released this week at Grantland.com.  Writer Eric Raskin penned an outstanding oral history of the final table, with interviews of many who witnessed poker’s most memorable moment.  I urge readers to check out Raskin’s excellent article here:  “When We Held Kings.”

CLICK HERE — Introduction

CLICK HERE — PART 1 (War of the Binions)

CLICK HERE– PARTS 2 AND 3 (Day One as Director of Public Relations for Binion’s Horseshoe / The Sit Down)

CLICK HERE — PARTS 4 AND 5 (Send in the Clowns / The Decline and Death of the World Series of Poker)

CLICK HERE — PART 6 (Friends of the Family)

CLICK HERE — PARTS 7 AND 8 (“839″ /But What’s His Real Name?)

“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”

                                                                — Oscar Wilde

Part 9:  Championship Day (May 20, 2003)

The 2003 World Series of Poker finale included a bit of everything.

It had intrigue, suspense, surprise, triumph, tragedy, and even a bit of mystery.

Of all the championship final tables over the past quarter century, that year’s cast of characters was right off the pages of a Hollywood script.  Everybody watching the show could pick one of the finalists to root for (or against) among those nine who took seats on Friday at noon inside Benny’s Bullpen.

That final table included an astounding seven players who had won (or would later win) WSOP gold bracelets — a collection of talent unheard of since the very earliest days of the championship during the 1970′s.  Chris Moneymaker, Sammy Farha, Dan Harrington, Jason Lester, Amir Vahedi, David Grey, and David Singer all now have WSOP wins.  But some captivating underdogs also captured our interest — potential stars that millions of viewers would come to know through a bombardment of broadcasts later shown on ESPN.  “The nine” became as famous as any characters on a hit reality TV series.

The finale included the perfect mix of both amateurs and pros.  It included high-stakes cash game players — including Farha, Lester, and Grey.  It included seasoned tournament specialists including Harrington and Vahedi.  It had competitors of different ethnic backgrounds — including North America, Asia, and the Middle East.  It had Harrington, a former world champion aiming for his second win.  It had a wonderfully colorful group of players sure to banter amongst themselves and make the supreme poker game of the year as entertaining as possible for the debut international telecast.  Everyone literally brought something to the table as a personality.

Three players were obvious “good guys,” meaning they’d likely be fan favorites.  These players included the obvious rising star with the magic name “Moneymaker” plus two others — one known, and the other less so.

A true champion of the human spirit, Amir Vahedi was one of the most beloved poker players of the last twenty years.  Always cheerful, smiling, and often telling a funny story, everyone enjoyed being around Vahedi.  He became the life of any poker party when he sat down.  His caricature long associated with his trademark (unlit) cigar, Vahedi was the perfect mixture of player and entertainer.  He was intimately watchable, without ever trying to be.  But Vahedi’s lesser-known back story made him even more intriguing.

Born in Iran, Vahedi overcame obvious personal challenges, even severe hardships, to achieve his success as a bona fide professional poker player.  He witnessed the fall of the Shah of Iran and experienced the Iranian revolution as a teenager.  He later fought on the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War, one of the bloodiest and most obscene military conflicts of the late 20th Century, before eventually becoming a refugee seeking political asylum.  He immigrated to America and eventually found his way to Los Angeles — and into everyone’s hearts.  Vahedi, who died prematurely a few years ago, became an almost Shakespearean tragic hero by the manner in which he got to his first and what would be only Main Event final table, where he ultimately melted down in front of his peers and the entire world.

The other mini-Moneymaker bio belonged to Tomer Benvenisti, a carefree amateur player who worked as a tour guide operator and specialized in white water rafting.  Like most of his rivals, Tomer’s “game” included incessant table chatter and an uncanny natural ability to fit in with the crowd and quickly adapt to the surreal surroundings, even though he’d never been on a stage like this before.

Finally, it was time.  The big moment had arrived.  When I took the microphone at 11:59 am, the first words out of my mouth were dead silence.

Promptly at noon, we were to begin making our final table introductions.  The natural-born Tournament Director Matt Savage performed the task with script in hand.  But I had the honor of introducing Matt and warming up the crowd before we went live.  At least that was “the plan.”

But the plan disintegrated.  It collapsed under the weight of stress, fatigue, and a voice shot to hell.

That 2003 WSOP was the first to a designated as a non-smoking event.  In previous years, many players chain smoked right at the poker table, as did bystanders.  Burnt ash soiled the felts and carpets.  Spilled ashtrays littered the floors.  There wasn’t a single poker table at the Horseshoe that didn’t have black marks on the cushions or cigarette burns on the felt.  The casino smelled like a giant ashtray.

While “non-smoking” signs were clearly posted inside the tournament room, the rest of the casino’s interior resembled a house on fire.  You couldn’t walk anywhere downstairs, including the poker room, without inhaling a stomach-turning whiff of cigarette smoke.  It was enough to make you vomit.  We once considered making the entire poker room a non-smoking facility, but decided against it.  The poker manager Warren Schaeffer, himself a non-smoker, killed the idea.  He insisted that we’d lose about 80 percent of our poker business.

Then, there were the preposterous imaginary battle lines drawn between smoking and non-smoking zones.  Even though smoking wasn’t allowed inside Benny’s Bullpen, the hallway outside became the de facto smoking lounge.  Smokers stepped out into the hallway and lit up immediately.  And so a giant blue cloud of death hung in the air outside the door where poker players pumped themselves full of killer carcinogens.  Given the hopelessly clogged air filters and malfunctioning ventilation system at Binion’s Horseshoe, none of these non-smoking restrictions seemed to do much good.  It was like working in a coal mine.

Very late at night when I’d return home after working 15-hour days, Marieta was utterly repulsed by my smell.  No matter what hour of the day or night, it became mandatory to take a long hot shower to wash away the foul stench.  Even my hair smelled like smoke.  Business suits were so nauseating that she’d hang them outside for days at a time in order to freshen the odor.  It was like I’d been in a fire.

Everyone who worked on the WSOP got sick.  I mean everybody.  Not a single person who worked full time didn’t end up with the flu, or a severe cold, or some other respiratory ailment which sucked whatever energy you had left after the long work days, punctuated with shots of intoxicants over at Las Vegas Club casino bar.  Bloodshot eyes, runny noses, and breathing problems became part of the job description.

Everyone developed what we called the “WSOP cough.”  The human body couldn’t take the abuse anymore.  It would simply break down.  Sometimes, you’d cough so long and with such force that you’d bowl over and get hit with a splitting headache.  There were occasions when I had to step outside, run towards the street, and spit out gooey flem filled with globs of black tar.  Once outside, you’d then run over to the Las Vegas Club, pop a couple of Bendryls, and wash them down with a shot of Johnny Walker chased with Irish coffee.  And then go right back to work.  By the end of the series, I felt like “the Dude” out of The Big Lebowski.

A couple of days before the finale was to start, my throat was worn so raw, I sounded like 70-year-old man.  I did a pretty convincing “Godfather” (post shooting) impression with that scratchy throat.  Shortly thereafter, my voice gave out entirely.  I’d mouth the words, vocalize them, and then nothing would come out.  Or worse, the larynx would connect during part of a phrase and then fade out.  I sounded like an underpowered radio station over a distant mountain range.

I figured there was enough energy and voice left to make one last appearance, what amounted to a simple 45-second intro.  But when I spoke, the words didn’t come.  Nothing happened.

Matt Savage stood there in a tuxedo like the Cheshire Cat, eagerly anticipating his glowing introduction.  I stammered and somehow screeched his name out to the crowd and — completely unable to speak — pretty much abandoned the rest of the intro.  Then, I quickly pushed the microphone over to Matt and scurried away behind some curtains.  The show began.

Cards flew into the air and two New Yorkers were the first to fall as David Singer and David Grey hit the rail early.  Then, Young Pak, probably the least-known of final nine, next went out in seventh place.  That left a dream lineup for television consisting of Vahedi, Benvenisti, Lester, Harrington, Farha, and Moneymaker.

Vahedi had the chip lead for a short time early.  But his aggressive style came back to haunt him with what amounted to train wreck on a global stage.  Since then, Vahedi’s play has been analyzed in some detail with different opinions as to who things went down.  I won’t presume to offer any assessment of his decisions other than to say — as cruel and sick as it sounds — this was yet another great moment for television.

Indeed, poker isn’t really about glory and moments of triumph, as those are rare.  It’s more often about pain and crushing disappointment, which is far more common.  And millions of viewers could plainly see that pain once on the face of a crushed cigar-chomping Vahedi, who bit off more than he could chew against one of the most feared players in the game.  When it was shown a few months later, no one could possibly have scripted the better “swan song” for this popular favorite, blowing off his chips and falling from the lofty perch as chip leader to a painful escalator ride down to valet parking and an exit from the building fearing that was likely the only chance anyone in that spot would ever have to reach the pinnacle of the game.

Next, Tomer went out fifth, which was soon followed by Jason Lester.  With all due respect to these players and those who busted earlier, the three finalists could not have provided a more perfect trio.  David faced not just one, but two Goliaths.  One was a former world champion known for his patience and discipline.  The other was one of the biggest cash game players in the world, as dashing and debonaire as he was intimidating with a look that drew comparisons to Humphrey Bogart as Rick.  But in deference to Farha, there would be no utterances of “Play it again, Sam.”

Chris Moneymaker could have busted right there and he would have still been a “winner.”  Outlasting 836 players and winning $650,000 for third place would have been a mystifying debut for any poker player.  But Moneymaker wasn’t quite finished yet.

His quality of competition could not possibly have been more of a challenge, something poker history seems to have forgotten.  He had the unenviable disadvantage of not facing just one, but playing against two stellar players, who were vastly different in image and style.  They were both independently wealthy, which also provided some advantages in not thinking about the money.  Harrington was well off mostly from his practice of law and guidance as an investor, while Farha was a self-made high-stakes gambler and poker player.  And they were playing against a novice 27-year-old accountant from Tennessee who made $40,000 a year playing in his first live poker tournament.

But at least Moneymaker did enjoy some advantages.  One was, he had most of the chips.  And perhaps the most important edge of all was this — no one expected him to win.

Part 10:  “He Doesn’t Stand a Chance, It’s Over”

I previously alluded to a classic Janis Joplin song which goes, “Freedom’s just another word of nothing left to lose.”

In poker, this is called “freerolling.”

Moneymaker was freerolling the 2003 WSOP.  He had nothing to lose.  Moneymaker was freerolling the moment he boarded a plane and flew to Las Vegas.

A short time after the world’s biggest poker game became a trio, the 1995 world champion Dan Harrington busted out in third place.  That left Farha to face Moneymaker alone.  During a scripted break when television cameras were being calibrated for what would turn out to be an epic heads-up match, the two finalists walked off the floor and stepped into a public restroom, perhaps 40 steps away from the main stage.  Amidst the echoes of flushing toilets the duo discussed a deal, which meant agreeing to some kind of split of the prize money.  I wasn’t privy to that conversation nor to any of the details.  But in retrospect, Farha might have made his worst strategic blunder — not at the poker table — but in that restroom.  Moneymaker and Farha have both filled in the details of their discussion in other accounts of the incident (See:  “When We Held Kings.”).  The bottom line is, Farha proposed a financial arrangement which apparently insulted Moneymaker, which fueled the amateur’s desire in a much greater way than any preconceived ambition to become the new world poker champion.  It was like kicking a pit bull.

Farha’s lack of respect for Moneymaker was hardly out of the ordinary.  It was pretty much the universal consensus of opinion in that room filled with followers and poker fans.  Even the poker insider whom I respected most, the man who hired me and who was responsible for me having a front row seat to poker history shared Farha’s outlook on the match.

George Fisher, the Horseshoe’s Director of Operations, came down from his hotel room once heads-up play began.  He lived in the hotel penthouse suite and hadn’t been seen much during the series.  Fisher passed away in 2005.  Otherwise I would not be telling this story.

“He doesn’t stand a chance, it’s over,” Fisher whispered to me as the two finalists were taking seats to play heads-up for the 2003 world championship.

“What are  you talking about, George — what do you mean it’s over?” I asked.  “You think Moneymaker’s got this thing wrapped up?”

“Moneymaker doesn’t stand a chance.  It’s ovvvvvvveeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrr.”

That was quite a bold statement coming from someone in the know, especially since Moneymaker had about two-thirds of the chips in play at the time.  Instantly, I thought of the worst.

Binion’s Horseshoe was known for pulling some shenanigans.  One of these days, I’ll add another chapter to this story.  But I don’t fancy waking up tomorrow morning with a decapitated horse’s head in my bed.  So, those “rumors” will have to be addressed another day.

“Oh fuck, George — don’t tell me he’s going to get cold decked.”

“No, no, no.  Nothing like that,” Fisher replied.  “There’s just noooo waaaay Sammy loses to this Moneymaker.  It’s not happening.”

Yes, we were all dealt the joker.  We were all fooled.  Every one of us, except for about three people in that crowd.

If that unforgettably wonderful, and awful, and miraculous, and painful, sparkle in our history called the 2003 World Series of Poker could be eclipsed by a single moment, it would be “the hand.”

“The hand” has since gone down as the greatest bluff in poker history.  I’m not sure about that, since many of the best bluffs are never shown.  But certainly in terms of a key historic moment on a grand stage, it would be difficult to top Moneymaker’s extraordinary all-in move against Farha late in the duel, which probably sealed the final outcome.  Instead, had Farha won that huge pot he’d have swung the chip lead in his favor for the first time.  Moneymaker might have melted down from that moment forward, only to become a poker footnote.  Instead, Moneymaker experienced every poker’s player’s dream come true fantasy.  It was the equivalent of crossing the goal line and scoring the winning touchdown in a Super Bowl with seconds to play or belting a home run in the bottom of the ninth in the other kind of World Series.  Moneymaker swung for the fences and brought it all home, in a suspended moment in time that poker players will likely be talking about a century from now.  If aces and eights is still somehow remembered from the Deadwood days over 150 years ago, “Moneymaker’s bluff” is certain to be etched into the collective consciousness of every future poker player.  Forever, as long as there are cards and chips.

An authority on the subject, Matt Lessinger, who wrote “The Book of Bluffs,” called it the greatest bluff in history, “at least that we know of.”

A few hands later, it all ended.  There were probably 300 people or so who actually witnessed the epic moment of victory.  Like Woodstock, today thousands insist they were there.  But the stage area and tournament room actually held no more than a few hundred bodies.  When an ecstatic Moneymaker raced across the glossy black stage into the arms of his proud father at the instant of victory, those 300 witnesses cheered for a future of 60 to 70 million, the number of poker players worldwide likely to have been created somewhat by that moment in time and in the decade since the game’s great moment of global ignition.

Since then, I’ve been asked many times at what point I realized this was the start of something really big.  It wasn’t then.  It wasn’t even that night.  Worn out by the demands of the recent past, while basking in the celebration of the present, the future seemed all too distant to think about right then as I stood and watched and clapped and cheered and marveled at the moment of glory next to $2.5 million in crisp $100 bills stacked on a side table.  I whisked two Las Vegas showgirls that we’d hired for the all-important winner’s shot into the photo frame as a few dozen photographers snapped away and the non-stop flashes gave Moneymaker the look of a shining new star taking center stage on a Broadway.

Moneymaker was suddenly the new star.  He would instantly come to represent us all — those of us who had worked for years to put poker on the map as well as those who would soon flock to the game by the millions, inspired by his story and triumph.

The 2003 World Series of Poker was officially over.

But my real work was just beginning and I loved every minute of it.

NEXT CHAPTER:  “Our job isn’t over.  It’s just beginning.”

He Doesn’t Stand a Chance, It’s Over (Moneymaker Series Continues — Part 6) is a post by: Nolan Dalla All rights reserved.

Does the imaginary sky daddy known to millions of human beings as “god” have lousy cell phone service?

He must.

Apparently, there’s a massive communications breakdown when natural disasters happen.  I once thought these cataclysmic horrors — rustic tribulations from the skies above and earth below causing so much destruction, pain, and death — occurred when the celestial orchestrator was away on vacation.  Or, taking a day off.  Or sleeping.  Or taking a shower.

But natural disasters happen far too often.  And, too many people are getting hurt.  Even dying.  Sky daddy can’t be on vacation all the time, can he?  He’s not calling in sick that many days.  He isn’t sleeping that much every day, otherwise he’d be a cat.  And he’s certainly not taking showers this frequently unless that how and why droughts happen.

I’ve come to the epiphany that there can be only one possible explanation, which is this:  God is stuck with the lousy AT&T’s multi-year cell phone plan.

“God, can you hear me now?”

Dead silence.

Dropped call.

How else to explain hundreds of millions of prayers spoken, whispered, and cried in the direction of the heavenly sky tower, desperate pleas phoned “his” way — benedictions from believers which are obviously falling on deaf ears?  By the way, forgive my male gender references here to this fictional character called “god.”  I actually have no idea if imaginary sky daddy actually has a penis.

Let’s discuss this irrefutable disconnect between human and deity a bit further.  Take the recent tragedy which occurred in Oklahoma.  That’s right, Oklahoma.  A nice place, to be sure.  Full of good people.  Filled with religious followers.

Sadly, many innocents died in Oklahoma earlier this week — on a Sunday, no less.  That’s the so-called “holy day.”  Perhaps the sky lord was bombarded with too many prayers on that day and his cell phone overloaded.  Like when you get that annoying recording, “All circuits are now busy, please try your call again later.”

Those who phoned in their prayers weren’t guilty.  They weren’t fags or devils deserving eternal punishment and damnation.  These were mostly White Christians.  They were innocent victims of a series of destructive tornadoes which ripped through the Midwest and killed several people.  Many more were injured.

No doubt, those people who lost so much deserve comfort and compassion.  We should do what we can to help them recover and rebuild their homes and their lives.  The same is true for victims suffering severe losses every day due to other disasters — like floods, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, diseases, or other natural manifestations of peril that destroy life and create misery.

My question for “believers” is — does praying for the survivors do any good?  And if so, how?  Please explain.

Why would the grand operator of the universe be any more amicable to prayers today, well after the killer storm took place, than say last Sunday — during the storm?

I suspect that tens of thousands of people living in Oklahoma, very good people in fact, were praying while that storm approached and passed over their heads.  They prayed hard, to be sure.  No doubt those tens of thousands of prayers were accompanied with sincerity and conviction.

Where was the great almighty during all those prayers phoned his way on Sunday?  Where was the master of all creation while little children were being whisked from their mothers arms in terror?  Where was the master of the earth while shards of broken glass were blowing through the skulls of parents?  Where was the master of destiny when terrified victims were being crushed by the weight of collapsing structures?  Please tell me — where was the beastly creation of mankind and the universe then?

Thankfully, the carnage and death have ended — at least for the moment.  But tranquility is always temporary on Planet Jesus.  Another storm is sure to happen somewhere else.  Tomorrow.  And the day after that.  And the next, and the next.  Maybe it’s a heat wave in the Sub-Sahara, or an earthquake in Turkey, or an outbreak of malaria in Indonesia, or a sinking ship off of Greenland.  Cries and screams and prayers — all utterly ignored by someone alleged to be good and holy.

Are prayers really expected to soften the heart of this almighty one?  Are we to expect sky daddy is suddenly going to be swayed into some kind of merciful intervention?  If sky daddy wasn’t willing to stop the indescribable pain of broken glass swirling through the air at 300 miles-per-hour and ripping off the skin of those in its horrifying path, are we to expect “pappa” to finally come to his senses today and start answering prayers?

This expectation isn’t only naive.  It’s lunacy.  And it deserves no respect whatsoever.  Sort of like praying and begging and then finally thanking the sadistic abuser who stops beating the wife.

Here’s the reality.  There are two options:  (1) Either the universal conductor is the meanest, sickest, most evil force imaginable, or  (2) God is a man-made myth, a fictional creation.   I chose the reasonable option.  I chose the one based on science and logic.  I opt for the second explanation.

Some have tried to explain that horrible disasters — in fact all bad things that happen — are “tests” for humanity.  Believers suggest sky daddy is putting each of us though some kind of trial and examination.  Trial by fire and the threat of death.  We’re also told these terrible events are part of what’s frequently bee termed as “God’s plan,” as if the murdering of infants and torturing innocents can somehow be excused in this sick passion play, so long as it’s directed by the old wise man sitting on a white cloud.

Sorry, but I want no part of this twisted grand plan, not do I want to be cast as an extra in some maniacal epic.

If you do chose to pray, then go ahead.  Pray on your own.  Feel free to pray with those who share your convictions.  But don’t expect me to join in the ritual based on idiotic lies and fear.  Do not ask others, those who you do not know, to engage in this global circus of delusion.  And if you do so, then be prepared to get an earful with an entirely different perspective about the value, and I suggest absurdity of prayer.

There’s absolutely nothing moral about lying to people, especially those who are vulnerable and in distress.  They don’t need to believe in sky daddy and encouraging them to do so requires that you also explain how and why the divine one created such destruction in the first place.  They do not need to believe in some imaginary god.  They need to believe in themselves, their families, their neighbors, and people they may not know who can provide tangible means of support — both physical and emotional.

Still convinced that god is good, despite the fact he ignores the pleas from those he presumably created in his own image?

If so, then please make a call for me.  Please give him a message.  Please tell sky daddy to sign up with a new cell phone carrier.  The AT&T unlimited minutes plan simply isn’t working.

Can you hear me now?

Is the Imaginary Sky Daddy Stuck with the AT&T Cellphone Plan? is a post by: Nolan Dalla All rights reserved.

Starbucks makes strong coffee.  I love strong coffee.  So, I love Starbucks.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

But Seattle, we have a problem.

Your pastries suck!

This morning — make that this afternoon, which is when I finally rolled out of bed — I ordered one slice of “cinnamon swirl coffee cake.”  Big mistake!  The cake was so mushy, I couldn’t eat it.  It was like the cake was soaked in milk and then left to stand all day in its miserable sogginess.  Disgusting!

I find this to be an outrage!

Furious at forking over $2.25 for a slice of soggy jizz cake, I immediately demanded to speak to the manager.  A 22-year-old girl ignored the half of dozen people standing in line waiting while she talked to me and my problem.  I’ll give her credit.  She seemed genuinely interested in my culinary critique for about 30 seconds.  But after a minute-plus of instructing her on how the cake should actually be made, she finally informed me that everything is made in a factory and shipped to the store location.  With that, she returned to taking the orders of by-then angry customers.

After some additional discussion, the “manager” offered to replace my soggy jizz cake.  The deal seemed fair.

So the sappy jizz cake was substituted for a slice of blueberry cake instead.  The yellow sponge cake appeared to be yummy.  It was plentifully stocked with blueberries.  She even waived the usual $2.25 cost.

Hoisting the fresh delicacy to my lips in anticipation, I was horrified to chomp into something that had the texture of a dish sponge.

What in the hell is going on with these cakes at Starbucks!

This blueberry cake was more soggy than the coffee cake!

What the fuck!

Here.  Take a look at this monstrosity:

By my math, that’s two shitty jizz cakes that entered my mouth out of two.

Too moist.  Too soggy.  To much jizz.

Cooking lesson:  When you press on the cake, it should “bounce back.”  A fresh cake will indent temporarily and then return back to its original shape.  But the Starbucks’ jizz cakes do not return to form.  The indentation stays on the cake after you press on it.

Through some logical and intellectual willpower, I came to draw some rather astute conclusions about the situation at Starbucks.  I’d like to share these blessings with you now:

1.  Statbucks is a giant evil corporation.  All they care about is making a profit.

2.  Starbucks will do anything they can to maximize their profits.

3.  Starbucks wants the shelf life of its pastries to last as long as possible.  So, they interfere with the natural order of baking and methodically jizz up the cake.

4.  The jizz cakes last longer than the regular dry cakes.  So, Starbucks makes more profit by sacrificing quality.

5.  We should boycott the Starbucks’ jizz cake.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Calling for a Boycott of Starbucks’ Jizz Cake! is a post by: Nolan Dalla All rights reserved.

Writer’s Note:  This is the fifth in an extended series of articles about Chris Moneymaker’s victory at the 2003 World Series of Poker and what went on behind the scenes at Binion’s Horseshoe — before, during, and after.

CLICK HERE — Introduction

CLICK HERE — PART 1 (War of the Binions)

CLICK HERE– PARTS 2 AND 3 (Day One as Director of Public Relations for Binion’s Horseshoe / The Sit Down)

CLICK HERE — PARTS 4 AND 5 (Send in the Clowns / The Decline and Death of the World Series of Poker)

CLICK HERE — PART 6 (Friends of the Family)

Part 7:  “839″

On the eve of the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event, the preliminary numbers weren’t just down.  They were abysmal.  We dropped about 25 percent overall in attendance from the previous year, which had also been a disaster.

But after four weeks, no one was bringing up the ugly numbers.  Instead, everyone was talking about big names.

The very biggest names in poker won gold bracelets — and lots of them.  Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, Huck Seed, Layne Flack, Mickey Appleman, John Juanda, Daniel Negreanu, Men “the Master” Nguyen, Chris Ferguson, Erik Seidel, and Carlos Mortensen were among the illustrious winners.  Imagine a single series with Brunson, Chan, and Hellmuth all winning titles.  In fact, Chan and Hellmuth both won two each!

Those were the headlines and became the talk of poker.  Not declining numbers.

And so, heading into the 36th gold bracelet competition known as the Main Event Championship, we’d pretty much weathered the worst of the storm.  This old relic called Binion’s Horseshoe was still afloat.  Best of all, prospects for the $10,000 buy-in Main Event looked promising because George Fisher had the great vision to establish partnerships with other casinos and cardrooms, including online poker sites.  That would surely boost attendance.  But could it make up for a 25 percent gap?

The previous year’s championship drew 631 entrants.  Given our significant drop in preliminary events, we would have been thrilled to reach the same figure as in 2002.  As things turned out, we would do much better.

It bears noting that these were not merely “numbers” to us.  The success of the WSOP was a matter of tremendous personal pride.  I’d also be lying if I didn’t add there was some bitter resentment towards the big changes that were happening on The Strip — particularly at the Bellagio with their marques attraction called the World Poker Tour.  We felt disrespected by the new kids on the block.  Some of the people down there were quoted in the media as saying they were now the real deal and seemed to be dancing on the grave of poker’s grandest tradition.

Moreover, we were fundamentally different from our rival in every way imaginable.  We had a long tradition dating back nearly four decades.  They had zilch.  The style and design of their tournaments were also vastly different, and frankly repulsive to poker purists like myself.  For instance, the glistening WPT final table set looked more like the television studio for an episode of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” rather than a gritty poker event.  Their big championship was held inside a first-class billion-dollar palace owned by Steve Wynn.  Our championship took place in a crumbling dump that was half a century old owned by a dysfunctional family coming off a murder trial.

So, reaching the magical number number of 631 was paramount to the overall success of failure of the 2003 WSOP.

When I walked into Binion’s Horseshoe on the morning of May 19th, there was an electricity hanging in the air like nothing I’d ever felt before in poker.  I’ve never experienced what some call a “sixth sense” about things.  But that’s as close as I’ve come, as I rode the escalator up to where the tournament was about to take place.

It was a beautiful sight.  Ecstasy.  Players lined up down the second-floor hallway, waiting to register.  An hour before the tournament was scheduled to begin, we crossed the 631 mark.  And so we were free-rolling, possibly an even bigger number.

That didn’t necessarily mean all was good.  With success comes expectation and obligation.  The problem with the growing number was twofold — lack of tables and not enough poker dealers.  We’d prepared for around 600 entrants, which meant 60 tables would be used.  With tables already set up inside Benny’s Bullpen upstairs, plus the tables used for cash games downstairs, we could accommodate as many as 600 players.  But players kept on streaming in.

At one point, the two tournament directors Matt Savage and Jim Miller realized there was no other option but to go to 11-handed tables — at least early in the tournament until players started busting out.  This was an unprecedented move.  But it became clear that even 11-handed play wasn’t going to solve the problem.  This was an “all hands on deck” moment for the staff.  Frantic phone calls were made to neighboring casinos to try and borrow additional poker tables and chairs.  Some casinos agreed to helped us.  Others — still pissed at the Horseshoe for a multitude of very good reasons — slammed down the phone and refused.

As cards were in the air and chip stacks rose, dwindled, rose again and moved around the room in whirlwinds of flops, turns, rivers, lucky breaks and bad beats, maintenance staff were seem hauling poker tables through the room, dragging chairs, and setting up for another 11 fresh bodies.  Some of these tables landed haphazardly in the middle of hallways, oblivious to fire codes and regulations.  Four tables were shoddily thrown together inside the casino sportsbook, where small wooden school-type desks were tossed against the wall in a giant pile in order to make room for what would turn out to be the biggest $10,000 buy-in poker tournament in history.

Some of the tables and chairs were so badly worn out, they wobbled.  Folding metal chairs, the type you might see at a VFW hall, rickety and bent hopelessly out of shape, held the bulging bodies and fanciful dreams of poker players who’d mostly flown to Las Vegas for the premier annual event in the game.

And during all the madness — the wobbly tables with worn-out felts, the mismatched metal chairs teetering on unbalanced legs, furniture dragged down the aisles, errant furniture piled up in corners, shouts and demands for new set ups and chips, dealers plucked from the casino floor and thrown into the fire of dealing Hold’em for the first time, ceaseless announcements over the public address system that couldn’t be understood — miraculously somehow and some way, it all worked.  No one complained.  Everyone seemed to understand.  They got it.  It was like a thousand strangers coming together in some unspoken bond during a national crisis or disaster.

Once 839 players were registered and seated, with each passing minute things got a little bit easier.  The number of bodies dropped to 800, then 750, and then to 700.  By late afternoon, the field size was down to 500 and falling fast.  The WSOP ship was now sailing full steam ahead.  It was a victory.  A surprising one at that.  It didn’t seem to really matter to any of us what happened after that.  Debatable or not, that year’s WSOP was destined to go down as the most successful in history.

That night, I enjoyed a steak dinner at Hugo’s Cellar at the Four Queens like I had not tasted in a month.  We toasted our success and the long life of the World Series of Poker.

Hours later, surviving players bagged up and tagged after a long 13-hour day.  The poker player’s day was over.  But for some of the staff like me, my job was really just beginning.

Part 8:  But What’s His Real Name?

The poker world thinks the day is over when the dealing’s done.  Bullshit.

For a select few, the most critical part of the day and night gets underway just as players are streaming out of the tournament room.

One of the least enjoyable tasks in tournament poker and reporting as such involves all the data entry on overnight chip counts.  Hundreds of names and numbers and figures.  Players who bag up at the end of the night sign a small piece of paper listing their names and chip counts.  It sounds like a very simple process.  Alas, it would be simple if only players would do as they are asked.  But they don’t.

And so, the final few hours of every day are usually a maddening mind fuck.

That’s right, a mind fuck of illegible handwriting, completely blank forms, missing names, and gibberish that makes it all but impossible to create an accurate scorecard of where everyone stands.  Imagine a golf scorecard where you can’t read the numbers or decipher names.  Then, you have to post that scorecard for the entire world to see.  Blanks, misspellings, and errors make us look incompetent, not to mention harming the decent players who complied and are are eager for reliable information.

Indeed, some overnight reporting slips would be hysterical to inspect if it weren’t already at the tail end of a busy 14-hour day.  So, each slip that’s illegible might require spending five or ten extra minutes comparing it against the original registration list.  Forced to become pseudo-handwriting analysts, it comes down to working the crime lab for CIS.

By the time the overnight chip counts come around, I’m usually exhausted.  Totally spent.  And so at 3:15 am, knowing that I must return to work at 11 am and do it all again — in between then somehow trying to wind down and sleep perhaps 3 to 4 hours — coming across an unreadable reporting slip ignites a moment of angst.

“Fuck!” is a word heard many times at Binion’s Horsehose, and probably ten thousand times since then.  Forget mercy.  I have none.  It shouldn’t be so goddamned difficult for people to write their names.  I mean, how tough a task it that?

But the real ballbusting moment always comes the following morning, when some sniveling poker player from the night before comes up to me and announces, “You got my name wrong.”  It’s just about always a case where the jackass can’t write or was too lazy to fill out the form properly, which takes all of about 40 seconds.  I don’t believe in acts of violence.  But these moments have actually triggered deep feelings of wanting to commit an assault.

As you can tell, this is an ass-frosting royal pet-peeve of mine.  I’ve never psychoanalyzed it, but many jobs that require dealing with the public trigger outlandish over-reactions that seem way out of proportion.  It’s important to realize these tiniest of incidents all add up and can crush even the strong.

Late that night, the reporting slips were stacked high.  Perhaps 350 or so in a giant pile.  Doing some quick math, at 20 seconds per slip on an Excel Sheet (name, hometown, chip count, table, and seat), that represented about two hours if typing non-stop.  Some of the players and their friends actually hung around, hoping to get the first early print-out of those that survived Day One.  Players were eager to find out who they were sitting and playing with on the following day.  An hour or so into data entry, after being badgered for perhaps the dozenth time, you had to abandon all sense of common courtesy and simply yell, “Go away!” — in language that increasingly became more rude as the night went long.

Midway through the process, I came upon one of those annoyingly confusing slips:

CHRISTOPHER B. MONEYMAKER

HOMETOWN:  NASHVILLE, TN

CHIP COUNT:  60,475

TABLE:  57

SEAT:  6

I recognized most of the player names on in the top 20.  They were easy.  I didn’t recognize this one.  This player ranked 11th overall.  For that reason, there would likely be considerable interest in him on Day Two, especially by ESPN which had cameras filming the WSOP that year for the first time.

Who was this joker?

Chris B. MONEYMAKER?

What derailed me was the letter “B,” his middle initial.  It appeared this unknown player had written out CHRIS B. MONEYMAKER, which was obviously a goof.  Either that, or the player used “Moneymaker” as his nickname and had simply forgotten to write out his last name.  Indeed, many players used names like Men “the Master” or Marcel “the Flying Dutchman.”  This rube seemed to be using “Moneymaker” as his moniker.

I’m not sure why we couldn’t cross-check the name.  Perhaps our computers were down again, which happened a lot at the Horseshoe.  But we went ahead and reported the 11th-ranked player to the world as CHRIS B. “MONEYMAKER” ??? with the last name identified with a question mark.

The following day, tournament action resumed at noon.

One of my first tasks was to find the jackass who wrote out “MONEYMAKER” on his slip.  I found him easily.  Chris was a quiet, unassuming young man, about what one might expect when you heard his job was working as an accountant for a restaurant chain.  When I introduced myself to Chris, he seemed to immediately know why I was there.

“Want to see my ID?” he asked.

“Yes, I need to know how to spell your last name,” I replied.  “I think we have it wrong in our database.”

“It’s just like it sounds,” Chris said.

Imagine my shock when confronted with a Tennessee Driver’s License with the last name MONEYMAKER clearly inscribed with a photo of a smiling 27-year-old Southerner.

“I’m sorry, but…..”

Chris cut me off in mid-sentence.

“Don’t worry.  It happens all the time,” he said.

I can only imagine.  And here I was yet another hard ass disbelieving the man simply because he had an unusual last name.

At least in my defense I can justify some skepticism.  Never in my life had I ever heard of anyone named “Moneymaker.”  Not a single person.  The name had to be fake.  But it wasn’t.  What a name for a player who was competing for the biggest cash prize ever in the history of poker.  Too good to be true.

As I walked away from Table 57, I remember having the smug attitude that was so prevalent, even instinctive for those of us who had been around the poker scene for some time.

“That poor kid doesn’t stand a chance,” I thought to myself.

COMING NEXT:  CHAMPIONSHIP DAY

But What’s His Real Name? (Moneymaker Series Continues — Part 5) is a post by: Nolan Dalla All rights reserved.

In response to all the hype about tomorrow’s $500 million jackpot, I have a comment.

Any poker player who buys a lottery ticket is an idiot.

Ooops.  Allow me to revise that.

Anyone who buys a lottery ticket is an idiot.  However, poker players deserve to be singled out as a special class.  They should know better.

What else would you call someone who plays a mindless game where the rake is something like 45 percent?  Not only that, but you might have to wait for hours in line to participate (check out the ridiculous lines at some ticket outlets)?  Then, in the 1 in a gad-zillion chance that your lottery numbers do come up, about half of your winnings get skunked by inflation over 20 years plus taxes.  Even the lump-sum collectors take it in the ass big time.

Really smart.

It’s like ordering a 16-ounce steak and then getting served a hamburger.

But why poker players deserve to be singled out, ridiculed, and ass kicked bears elaboration.  It’s because supporting this ludicrous frenzy of national stupidity is in clear conflict with our own self-interest.  Lottery hacks and the carnival hucksters who promote this sideshow pornography are THE ENEMY.  Lottery pimps now hold state budgets by the balls.  They squeeze and shake until governors and legislators squirm like helpless rabbits.

These thieves aren’t content with merely fucking the public out of 45 percent juice on the gross.  That’s not enough.  They’re not satisfied jerking off a a hundred million morons who buy lottery tickets each year.

No.

Now they’ve become political activists.  They are working to kill online poker and any other form of gambling they view as a threat.  Keep the customers stupid is their game plan.  Give citizens only one option when it comes to games of chance and entertainment.  Kill any other form of gambling.  The lottery wants it all and they’re currently doing everything they can to subvert attempts in many states to expand poker.

Anyone who supports legalizing online poker inside the United States — and I presume that’s most of you reading this right now — needs to take close look at where that money is going.  Even if it’s just a buck.  It’s like pissing inside your own glass.  You’re part of the problem.  In exchange for your naive pipe dream of becoming the next big jackpot winner, you’re financing poker’s strictest gauntlet of opposition.  Well done!

That’s right.  Every buck you blow at the convenience market bolsters the revenues and political power of state lottery boards, fat cat lottery executives, and lecherous companies that have worked and lobbied tirelessly to oppose every single online poker initiative — no matter where it has surfaced.  Do some research.  Look into what the heads of these lotteries have written and said about poker.  It’s all there.  They oppose it all.

Buying a lottery ticket is like feeding the dragon.  It’s giving bonuses to companies and executives who are working against you and your interest, as well as your freedoms.  You’re hurting online poker and live poker and all those who want to play the game.

Fuck the lottery.  Fuck every state lottery executive.  And fuck every poker player who buys a lottery ticket.

Shame on you!

Any Poker Player Who Buys a Lottery Ticket is an Idiot! is a post by: Nolan Dalla All rights reserved.

Sometimes, someone else’s needs are greater than my own.

                                                                  — Mark “Old Bear” Hughes

You probably don’t know Mark Hughes and that’s a shame.  Trust me.  This is a man you want to know.

Mark Hughes, a.k.a. “Old Bear” is one of the rarest of people.  I don’t agree with a thing he says or believes in for the most part, politically or spiritually speaking.  But I enjoy his company immensely and look forward to seeing him each time beyond compare.

A few nights ago, we dined together at world famous Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse, in New Orleans’ French Quarter.

Before I tell you more about that experience, allow me to let you in on how I came to know “Old Bear.”

Like me, Mark is a member of the BARGE poker community.  BARGE is an eclectic group of a few hundred individuals from all over the country who gather annually in Las Vegas (and elsewhere) in order to play some poker together.  But the real mission is really to drink, dine, socialize, and reconnect with old friends — and make some new ones.  CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BARGE

There’s a BARGE discussion list and as you might imagine, I post things from time to time.  My radical politics are well known.  As it turns out, Mark takes the opposite side on just about every issue.  A few things about his background — Mark works as an engineer for NASA.  He also owns a Gold Wing motorcycle which he rides 2,000 miles every summer to Las Vegas and back.

A few years ago, Mark learned I was visiting Mississippi, his home state.  He invited me to get together.  I accepted the invitation not knowing what to expect.  I’m glad I did.

Mark drove many miles out of his way to pick me up and then spent an entire day giving me a personal guided tour of a NASA test site, the Stennis Space Center.  This is the base where all the big rockets get tested.  I’m not much of a science person, but the tour was fascinating.  I got to see things no civilian usually witnesses, at a federal test site.  Pretty cool.  Last year, when I visited the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first time, I was the only person in our group who could actually say he’d seen where they make and test all the rockets.

Thanks, Mark!

And so, when Mark learned once again that I was in his part of the country, he made the extraordinary gesture to come and meet me.  This time, we agreed on a dinner in the French Quarter.

We picked out Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse as our destination.  But I think we could have gone just about anywhere and I would have enjoyed the experience.  For me, the bonus of having a great dinner is even better company.  Dining provides the rare opportunity to exchange ideas, hear new perspectives, and perhaps even come away with a different way of looking at things.  To me that’s what makes dinners like this so special.  Okay, and the food too.

Just as he had done before with the visit to Stennis, once again Mark gave me a new perspective about things.  Please allow me to share just a bit of this with you.

Mark’s been married for many years to a lovely woman.  He has two children and several grandchildren.  But he’s also come to believe that his community family is much larger.  Mark probably doesn’t give an enormous amount of money to to charity.  But he contributes so much more in a very different — some might say more important — way.

Mark could certainly cut his own grass or do his own chores.  But he believes in giving young people opportunities.  He also believes in creating a strong work ethic, which is so important.  And so, Mark’s charity is not so much monetary but human.  It’s more personal than just money.

There’s a Black teenager who hangs out in the neighborhood.  Mark has already seen some of this teen’s relatives get into trouble and do some bad things.  He decided to take the initiative and try and become a part-time father figure, or at least a mentor to this very impressionable young man who can use a helping hand during a time of growth and development.  And so, over the last few years, Mark has gone out of his way to let the youngster perform certain tasks around the house.  He’s even allowed the young man to use his lawn mower to earn money cutting the grass for other people.

Mark could easily do this all by himself.  He doesn’t have to pay the teen as much as he does.  But this relationship is positive on so many levels.  Teenagers, and especially underprivileged Black teens who statistics show do not have as many strong family influences, need people like Mark.  Indeed, we need a hundred – if not a thousand – if not ten thousands “Marks.”  Question — how many middle-class White people take the time to befriend and work with a Black teen at a critical stage of his development?

Answer — not enough.

“I don’t need to hire anyone to do my work,” Mark told me.  “I don’t have to pay someone to do the things I could do myself.  But sometimes, someone else’s needs are greater than my own.”

I love that line.

How profound.

Mark wasn’t telling me this story either to impress me or gain personality points.  It was just a normal part of our conversation about the direction of society and prospective ways to make it better.  I often speak in macro-levels.  The unintended lesson for me on this special evening was realizing that really making a difference is often a micro-step.

Please.  Stop.  Let that sink in for just a second.  Change doesn’t happen a country at a time, or a year at a time.  It happens one person at a time.  And Mark’s actions not only help a young man, his sharing of this story helps me and give me hope, and the inspiration to do more.  Alas, perhaps Mark’s noble effort will create a domino effect we collectively shall never see nor know, but which is immensely rewarding to those we reach out to.

Food and wine and desert and ideas and friends don’t mix any better than this.  Mind and matter can sometimes combine for a culinary colossus.  Food tastes better and wine is more infinitely more enjoyable when we’re in good company.

Thank you, “Old Bear” — for a terrific evening of great steak, fine wine, and even richer conversation not to mention a valuable lesson.

Dinner With Old Bear at Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse is a post by: Nolan Dalla All rights reserved.

Maid’s carts outside my hotel room door at the New Orleans Sheraton

I sympathize.  I really do.

Working as a hotel maid must be a brutal job.  It doesn’t pay shit.  You’re forced to clean up other people’s filth.  I can’t even begin to imagine the nasty things you see every day.

That said, I do have one simple request.

QUIT WAKING ME UP EVERY FUCKING MORNING AT 7:20 AM!

Really, is that too much to ask?

I know.  Such an asshole.  I fork over $235 per night and expect a good night’s sleep.  How dare I.

Well, I’ve had it.

I’m fed up with reckless maids stomping down hallways like wild mares, banging into walls, ignoring DO NOT DISTURB signs, hollering through closed doors, and making it impossible to get any rest.  When you’re slumbering in that restful comfort zone early in the morning, a maid’s cart rolling down the hallway shouldn’t sound like a battalion of U.S. Marines landing on Iwo Jima.

I’m currently staying in New Orleans for 18 days and more important – 18 nights.  That’s eighteen unwanted wake up disturbances, usually at about a quarter past seven.  Seriously.  They can’t even wait until noon when people like me get up.  I mean, who lays out two bills and change for half a night’s stay in a first-class hotel in order to wake up at 7 am and dart out the door?  Isn’t everyone in the hotel still hibernating at 7 am?  Why disturb them?  Why torture innocent people?

Every morning like clockwork, my maid crash lands at my floor about three hours after my head has hit the pillow, usually in the middle of my blissful REM sleep.  The invasion approaches.

“HOUSEKEEPING!”

She belts out her announcement at least three times before finally busting in the door like a battering ram making a drug bust.  Since most hotels are designed with several doors grouped together, I hear the maid screaming “HOUSEKEEPING” a dozen times.  Worse, if you count the rooms down the hall on each side, and the maid has a really powerful set of lungs.

But what drives me bat shit crazy is hearing the maid bang every fucking thing in the room around like she’s a junkie searching for a bag of coke.  Here’s a typical audio re-creation:

7:15 am — Shouts of HOUSEKEEPING!….HOUSEKEEPING! 

7:16 am — HOUSEKEEPING! shouted as she bursts in the door.  Door slams against a metal hook.  Door fails to connect.  Maid slams it four times before the hook finally engages and the door remains open.

7:17 am — Maid opens the cart doors, removes cleaning material, then slams the doors shut again.  This obnoxious procedure will be repeated at least five more times.

7:18 am — Maid flushes the toilet, an unpleasant sound amplified against a tile floor.  Sounds blasts out into the hallway with the door wide open.  Everyone on the entire hotel floor is serenaded by a flushing toilet.  Tank has to refill with a stream of water, which takes like two minutes.

7:20 am – Maid turns on shower head and lets water run full-blast for 90 seconds.

7:22 am — Maid changes the bed linens.  This is three minutes of quiet time.  But the peaceful moment is fleeting.  It’s the eye of the hurricane.  The worst is yet to come.

This sets up the most obnoxious stage of the hotel room cleaning experience.  I’m talking about the dreaded vacuum cleaner.  Any sleeper who has somehow managed to successfully tune out the previous seven minutes is about get a rude wake up call.  It’s impossible to ignore.

The machine of doom is turned on.  The vacuuming begins.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…..BANG!

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa……BANG!  BANG

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa….BANG!

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…..BANG!  BANG!

What the fuck is going on?  Is she now doing carpentry work?  What’s with all the banging?

It turns out the maid keeps slamming into the baseboards!  That’s it.  Do you know what a vacuum cleaner slamming into a wooden baseboard sounds like at 7:23 in the morning?  It sounds like you’re sitting in front row seats at a Philadelphia Flyers game.

Finally, the vacuuming is done.  It’s quiet for about 30 seconds.

Then, off to the next hotel room.  The cycle continues.

“HOUSEKEEPING!”

Here and now, I’m making a list of demands for maids.  Here are my TEN COMMANDMENTS:

(1)  Try opening and closing doors like normal people.  Quit slamming all the doors!

(2)  If you see stains in my room, do your job and clean it up.  And don’t ask any questions.  If you see my face do not associate me with those stains.  They were probably left there by the previous guest.

(3)  Quite disturbing my pillows.  When I yank four pillows off the other bed and pile them up on mine, that means I want eight pillows on my bed.  So, don’t separate my pillows.  I’ve probably cradled the best one for my head.  Change the linens and then leave them where they are.  I usually make a sleeping nest that might take me 4 or 5 nights to get it just right.  Don’t fuck with it.

(4)  If I re-arrange the furniture, leave it alone.  Don’t move it back.  I move furniture around because I prefer it that way.  I wouldn’t go to your house and start pushing around your furniture.  Why must you do that to my room?

(5)  Leave the drapes alone!  If I pull them tightly shut, that means I prefer total darkness.  I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THE SUN.  Why do you insist on opening the drapes every time?  If I closed them previously, it’s for a reason.

(6)  Don’t touch the thermostat!  Hands off!  I have it set on 68 for a reason.  I want it cool.  I want it cold enough to hang meat.  Like a refrigerator if I can get it that way.  It frosts my ass to return to my hotel room at 4 am and see the thermostat set at 76 degrees and the place feels like a fucking oven.  I’m the guest.  Not you.  I get to select the temperature.  Not you.  If you don’t like it, then put on a sweater when you clean my room.

(7)  When I leave a note for you requesting extra towels, it means I want MORE TOWELS.  Why is this always so difficult to understand?  And if you only speak Spanish, then the first word in the English language you need to learn is “T-O-W-E-L-S.”

(8)  If I have wild animals inside my room — like birds mostly — leave them alone!  Work around my animals when you are cleaning.

(9)  If you see my wet clothes hanging up in the bathtub and left out to dry, don’t touch them.  I’m not paying your overpriced dry cleaners $6.50 for one shirt when I can stomp it clean while taking a shower and then air dry it for free.

(10)  If you do your job property and allow me to get a full night’s rest, you will get tipped a couple of bucks.  If you ever ignore the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door — and this happens all the time — you will get stiffed.

With this, I bid you all goodnight.  At least until 7:15 am tomorrow morning.

Nolan Dalla Rant: Maid to Drive Me Crazy is a post by: Nolan Dalla All rights reserved.

Benny’s Bullpen at Binion’s Horseshoe — site of the WSOP 1998-2004

Writer’s Note:  This is the fourth in an extended series of articles about Chris Moneymaker’s victory at the 2003 World Series of Poker and what went on behind the scenes at Binion’s Horseshoe — before, during, and after. 

CLICK HERE — Introduction

CLICK HERE — PART 1 (War of the Binions)

CLICK HERE– PARTS 2 AND 3 (Day One as Director of Public Relations for Binion’s Horseshoe / The Sit Down)

CLICK HERE — PARTS 4 AND 5 (Send in the Clowns / The Decline and Death f the World Series of Poker)

Part 6:  Friends of the Family

Hidden within the shadows were the shadiest of characters.

Personalities seemingly fit for a Martin Scorcese movie dotted the landscape, seemingly without purpose.  No one — not even full-time staff — knew who they were nor what they did.  Flocked in cheap suits, they often appeared half-shaven and wore dark glasses.  You’d see these creeps around the casino at any time, day or night.  Just standing.  Just watching.

Once the WSOP began, we began seeing these shadowy types around the tournament area and poker room with much greater frequency.

They hung out for hours at a time, then disappeared.  Then, they came back again, or were replaced by someone else.  They never spoke to anyone.  Once, I managed to get a name.  He curtly identified himself as “Slimer” providing no additional comment.  That’s right, his name was Slimer — as in “slime-er.”

You couldn’t make up that name.

At some point, Nick informed me that he liked to use “spotters” inside the casino.  They were supposedly hired to spot known cheaters.  It was made rather obvious that I wasn’t to ask any more questions.  We were given explicit instructions to simply leave them alone and let them conduct their business.

In retrospect, I think Nick really enjoyed the cat and mouse chase game between casino and cheats.  He made it a mission to apply a full-court press on the cheaters (or card counters, which were viewed once and the same), and probably had good reason to remain perpetually suspicious.  His view seemed to be that everyone was out to cheat the casino and would certainly do so if given the right opportunity.  Nick spent enormous amounts of time, energy, and resources trying to catch those suspected of cheating.  Extreme measures were taken to identify them.  He also perceived the poker scene to be a rat’s nest filled with cheaters and cheating.  In fairness, I suppose history proved him at least partially right.

Unfortunately, the spotters were never subtle about their ways.  They sulked around, conspicuously making everyone in the room aware of their presence and implied power.  Inevitably, this caused some problems.

For instance, late at the WSOP when ESPN’s television cameras were rolling full steam, an exasperated Matt Maranz, executive producer of the broadcast finally got so fed up with the same unidentified bystander blocking every shot, he rushed over to me and demanded, “Who’s that guy in the suit?  He’s in every frame!  He’s killing the show!”

Trouble was, no one could tell him to move.  Those were our instructions.

“Friend of the family,” we would say.  And then walk away.

Maranz rolled his eyes.  But he certainly got the message.

Nobody fucked with friends of the family.

*     *     *

Of all the absurd ideas related to the WSOP, perhaps the most ridiculous of all was an episode that materialized around the final table area that year.

We were days and a few gold bracelet events into the new series when just prior to the start of another final table one of the Horseshoe’s maintenance workers carted an enormous lazy-boy recliner into the middle of the tournament room.  He shoved it off the cart and plopped the chair down right next to the final table.  The husky beast of a chair was covered in ugly brown vinyl.  It might have came out of someone’s living room during the 1970′s.  The hideous eyesore would have fetched perhaps $10 at a garage sale — if the seller was lucky.

“What the fuck is that?” I asked.

“We got an urgent phone call from the family today.  They told us to bring a comfortable chair up here and set it next to the final table,” the worker replied.

“A Lazy-Boy?  Seriously?  A Lazy-Boy?”

“It’s the only comfortable chair we could find,” the worker said.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and seeing.  This was the World Series of Poker — not someone’s den.  After a serious investigation, I found out that Nick wanted a special VIP chair set up inside the roped-off area next to the final table.  His reasonining was that “Doyle Brunson or somebody important might want to come by and watch the poker action.”  [SEE FOOTNOTE BELOW]

I was speechless.

“So, you mean we’re stuck with that giant brown piece of shit the next three weeks?” I asked.

“Yep.  That’s what the boss says.”

There was no way in hell Doyle or anyone with a conscious would dare cross the ropes and plop down in a recliner and watch poker.  It wouldn’t happen in a million years.  No self-respecting person would dare sit in that chair while just a few feet away the most important poker game in the world at the moment was going on.  Nobody.

Well, except one person.

Remember “Jabber?”

He was the worthless “sportsbook manager” who leeched a free paycheck and hung out at the Horseshoe.  In his way, Jabber was a “friend of the family.”

One night, WSOP photographer Eric Harkins stormed over to me and could hardly contain himself.  Apparently, the temptation of that cozy brown chair was way too strong for Jabber.  During the middle of final table play, he ducked under the ropes, climbed up into the chair, and proceeded to doze off for several hours completely oblivious to the gold bracelet at stake just an arm’s reach away.  Jabber snoozed there and dozed off peacefully, his mouth hanging wide open, drooling over himself while the Seven-Card Stud World Championship went on — totally without interruption.

And most remarkable of all — no one seemed to care.  Such lunacy had become normal at the Horseshoe.  From a pawnbroker stationed next to the hotel front desk to a senile old man dozing like a baby next to a final table, nothing — and I mean nothing at all — fazed the players.

*     *     *

Binion’s Horseshoe tried a new experiment that year.  The idea caught on and has been a staple of coverage every year since then.  But at the time, a genuinely good idea was doomed to fail from the start simply due to lack of planning.

Given the growing interest in final table action and quicker reporting of results, a pay-per-view simulcast of every gold bracelet event final table was set up.  Remember, this was long before all the great live coverage provided by Poker News, Poker Listings, Card Player and the rest that we’re used to today.  No one had ever heard of Twitter.  Back in those days, unless you were physically at the final table watching the action, the only way to get updates was waiting for someone who had come from the tournament to later got to a computer and post results at a community forum — such as rec.gambling.poker.  Most of the time, that person posting the results many would see for the first time was me.  We’re talking stone age here.

And so the live coverage idea had some merit.  Trouble was, the concept wasn’t marketed at all.  No one knew about it.  I walked in the first day of the tournament and was stunned to see tech people setting up microphones and wires.  I figured some ESPN crew were testing equipment.  I quickly came to find out the family has partnered with a local video company in order to set up coverage, stream it live over the Internet, and charge for the service.

Packages ranged from $15 for one final table to $30 for a package plan.  And to my surprise I eventually came to learn that I’d be in charge of it.

The concept was burdened with problems that were insurmountable.  First, the video cameras were in a fixed position.  They didn’t move.  One camera was suspended above the final table.  Then, another camera to the side provided a panoramic view of the table and some of the players, provided they remained with the frame.  The cameras were of such poor quality, viewers couldn’t identify cards or see any of the faces.  Of course, hole card cams weren’t part of the broadcast.

Even worse, there were no commentary.  Just the whispers of players barely audible over the muffled sounds of shuffling cards and chips.

It was like watching the 24-hour-a day camera affixed to the NASA space station.  Or, a television test pattern.  Mind-blowing dull.  You wouldn;t watch it for free, let alone pay $15.

The subscribers consisted of family members and perhaps a few friends.  One week into our coverage, the subscription numbers rolled in and Nick went through the roof.  The simulcast was becoming a total disaster.  And so Nick instructed me to go into the booth and do final table broadcasts myself.  At the very least, if I couldn’t call the action (which was the case most of the time), I was instructed to have someone — anyone — commentating at all times.  Perhaps that might keep the audience awake.

Over the next three weeks I pulled anyone who could speak English onto the broadcast — and even some who could not.

The caliber of commentators ranged from hysterically funny to so awfully bad, they were actually pretty damn good.  It was like watching and listening to train wreck theater.  The commentary you heard was often far more entertaining than the actual final table.  Sometimes we had people on the air who had no reservations about sharing their opinions and openly ridiculing players when they saw questionable plays.

The awkwardness of the experience was made considerably worse by the close quarters and there being no sound barrier.  Commentators were stationed on a wooden platform behind a carpeted wall, perhaps 15-20 feet from the final table.  But they couldn’t see much because of the wall.  So, they relied on the shitty monitors.  Worse, many of the voices and commentary carried to the table and could be heard by the players.

T.J. Cloutier was commentating once, and he openly hollered into the microphone — “There’s no way he can make this call….he’d be a complete idiot to call here.”  Everybody at the final table plus the audience heard T.J. in his unmistakable voice.  The player facing an all-in decision mucked his hand prompting Eli Balas  to shout back, “Shut up, T.J.!”  A few commentators were yanked off the air nearly in mid-sentence because at least one of the final table participants raised objections.

However, some of those who sat in as guests were wildly entertaining.  One of the very best was the late John Bonetti, a no-nonsense barrel of opinion who resembled a comedy act.  The most entertaining of all was Irishman Padraig Parkinson, who was wildly funny even though hardly anyone could understand him much of the time  We stuck Padraig on the air late one night when we were desperate for anyone to take over the duty, which I recall was some dreadful event to cover like Seven-Card Stud High-Low Split.  Padraig warned me that he’d had about ten pints of Guinness beforehand, plus one in his hand and another on the way.  We didn’t care.  He was better than way.  Even though no one could make out what a sober Padraig often said, a boozy Parkinson was a firecracker.  Someone posted something in a chat room over in Ireland about Padraig being on the air, subscriptions went through the roof.  The show was a riot.

But our cavalcade of uncompensated talent hit a few snags along the way.  One guest commentator went0 on air.  He should have caused no problem.  But a few minutes into the live coverage I received a frantic call from Nick.  In the interest of protecting this well-known player’s identity, I’ll simply call him “John Smith.”

“Get that fucking deadbeat off the air right now!” Nick shouted.

“What?  What are you talking about, Nick?”

“You’ve got John Smith on the broadcast right now.  Get him off the fucking stage!  In fact, I want to it down face to face with him in the coffee shop in 15 minutes.  Get him down here!  Now!”

“But what should I do?  I can’t just yank him out of the broadcast booth and leave dead air.”

“I don’t fucking care what you do.  He’s not going to stand there and do an official broadcast from the Horseshoe when that deadbeat owes me $100,000.  Take him off the air, now!”

“But Nick, we”re not paying him anything.  He’s working for free.”

“Coffee shop.  Fifteen minutes.”

Click.

The next few moments were uncomfortable to say the least.  I had the unenviable task of not only telling John Smith he was about to be plucked off the air.  His willingness to help us out with the broadcast had actually triggered a sit down meeting with Nick Behnen.  Of course, I added my appreciation for helping us out.

Partially to act as a buffer and also to provide some assurances that he’d come back alive in one piece, I escorted John Smith to the same type of sit down encounter I’d once been through.  Let’s just say there was some shouting.  Some argument about the actual figure owed.  It wasn’t pretty.

We burned though anyone and everyone we could find.  A few times, we were so desperate for any voice, I’d announce to subscribers:  “And now as a special treat to all of our loyal listeners in Estonia, for the first time in history we’re going to do the next hour of the broadcast in the Estonian language (Note:  There were no Estonian players at the final table).  Some poor schmuck who spoken broken English who’d never attended the WSOP before was asked to do an hour of poker commentary in his native language — which a few foreign visitors were absolutely thrilled to do.  We did it in Estonian, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and a few other languages.

This didn’t sit well with the actual listeners, who were paying $15-30 to follow to a WSOP final table.  Some of these customers were relatives of the players.  Imagine the shock of getting down to the last few players of a WSOP gold bracelet event, only to have the coverage interrupted by a change of commentators, and the language suddenly shifting from English to Estonian.

 *     *     *

The term is “a perfect storm.”

It’s come to mean more than a weather reference.  A perfect storm has to with everything lining up just right and creating ideal conditions for a colossal event.

That’s precisely what happened at the 2003 World Series of Poker.

We ended up with the perfect winner, with the perfect personality, with the perfect back story, with the perfect last name — all in front of the watchful eye of ESPN cameras recording the moment for tens of millions of viewers in prime time television during the slowest sports time of the year.

How perfect is that?

But no one could possibly have sensed this approaching storm of perfection on the night before the Main Event Championship was to begin.

We were scurrying around doing our prep work for the series when I ran into the poker office for something.  Problem was, I couldn’t get inside the door.  The office was jammed with people signing up.  There were poker players lined up out the door.  Many were wearing black shirts and hats with the same logo.  There were about 40 of them.

They were from an online site called PokerStars.com.

It’s almost inconceivable to contemplate this today, in the modern poker era when many of the most skilled players in the world are 23-years-old.  But ten years ago, online poker players were openly ridiculed.  They weren’t even thought of as “real” poker players.  They were pretenders.  Crusty live action poker players who had grown up at real poker tables with real dealers and cards and chips and money — players who had mastered their craft on the green felt over decades — had little regard for this new generation of players starting to come into the game.  They were pretty much held in contempt.  A common line was, spoken openly, “he’s an Internet player,” which had the taint of calling out the target as an idiot.

That was the prevailing attitude back in 2003.  The real poker players — mostly players in the 50′s and 60′s — were presumed to enjoy enormous advantages over these untested newcomers.  They didn’t stand a chance.  And so, they were welcome.  At least their entry fees were welcome.

The revolution that was about to come was even more pronounced since these new players were so easy to identify.  PokerStars.com required all of their qualifiers to wear golf shirts and hats with the company logo.  Some players protested and didn’t want to wear the gear, since showing up dressed that way pretty much identified the newbie as something less of a “real poker player.

They were mocked, disrespected, and ridiculed.  Sometimes right at the tables.

Perhaps all the angst was really self-doubt, a collective undercurrent of fear that the game was about to change in a very big way.  And some people were about to get left behind.  There might have been only 40 or so of them in 2003.  But a year later, there were would ten times as many.  A few years later, there would be 30 times as many.  And the day would eventually come when poker websites had 100,000 players linked together at poker tables at once, while the very largest land-based cardroom in the world had perhaps 3 percent of that total number.

The storm that was coming was more of a typhoon.  And the early raindrops were a three dozen or so, mostly young, completely anonymous, amateur poker players who were lined up early that night on the second floor at Binion’s Horseshoe preparing to buy-in to their first-ever WSOP Main Event.

One of those players dressed in the black golf shirt was a restaurant accountant from Nashville, Tennessee.  He didn’t know anyone else.  And no one knew him.

He was about to play the first live poker tournament of his life.

Of course, he didn’t stand a chance.

COMING NEXT:  I Know It Says ‘Moneymaker,’ but What’s His Real Name?

[FOOTNOTE:  Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Billy Baxter, and others finally decided to end their boycott of Binion's Horseshoe.  This was largely thanks to Linda Johnson, who persuaded Nick Behnen to lift the ban on Paul Phillips, Richard Tatalovich, and others who had been barred during 2002.] 

The 2003 World Series of Poker (Moneymaker Series Continues — Part 4) is a post by: Nolan Dalla All rights reserved.

We pass by strangers every day.

Most of the time, like ships in the night, we don’t even know they’re there or who they are.

I wonder how many times we’ve stood beside truly remarkable people, extraordinary individuals among us — those who have witnessed incredible events in history and may have even shaped the world in some way  — and didn’t even know it.

It probably happens more often than you think.

I’d like to tell you a brief story about someone special I met today.  But the surprise isn’t so much in the identity of the person.  It was the immense personal reward I gained by reaching out, taking the initiative, and simply being curious.  That’s the real blessing of today’s story.  I think we need more of that.

It all began with a simple elevator ride at the Sheraton on Canal Street, in New Orleans.

As I stepped onto the elevator from the 16th floor, I observed a tall man inside wearing a dark blue suit.  The man didn’t stand out in any way, except that he wore one of those convention badges commonly seen around big hotels, inscribed with his name and hometown.

His badge read — KIRK LIPPOLD.  Beneath his name, was the word – COMMANDER.

The elevator seemed to take a bit longer than expected.  Standing on elevators can be awkward.  They aren’t usually conducive to conversation, other than small talk.  However, something caught my eye and I had to satisfy my curiosity about it.

The man’s name sounded familiar.  I couldn’t place it exactly.  But I knew this name had been in the news.  As I turned my head, I notice a tag affixed to the man’s badge.  It read – SPEAKER.

So, the man was a speaker at some convention.  This was the perfect sedge-way for a question.

“Are you speaking at a convention here today?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m with a leadership conference on the second floor,” the man replied politely.

“What are you speaking about?” I asked.

“I’m giving a talk about leadership when faced with a crisis.” the man said.

“That sounds interesting.  Did you have to go through something like that?” I asked — realizing how nosy and naive I must have sounded.

“I guess you could say that,” the man replied.  “I was the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Cole when it was attacked by Al-Quaeda.”

What an encounter.

We talked a bit longer, even after stepping off the elevator and into the lobby.  Despite his obviously busy schedule, Commander Lippold spent considerably more time with me than this moment deserved.  I consider myself fortunate to have met him and enjoyed hearing a few of this thoughts.  I even got invited to the speech, which unfortunately I had to decline.

Aside from Commander Lippold’s association with a terrorist attack that predated 9-11, there was yet another reason why his name sounded so familiar.

As it turns out, Lippold resides in the state of Nevada.  It’s been reported that he’s now seriously considering a run against Sen. Harry Reid next time he’s up for re-election for the U.S. Senate.  Currently active in the Nevada Republican Party, Lippold appears to be moving towards a comfortable transition to politics after a long and distinguished career as a U.S. Naval Officer.

The great irony here is that –despite my far left of center politics — I’d love to see Harry Reid kicked out of office.  He’s arguably the worst Senate Majority Leader in U.S history.  Who knows?  I may very well have met the man who will replace him.

Alas, if spending a few minutes with a stranger means anything — and I believe it does — perhaps he’s someone we’ll be seeing a lot more of in the near future.  Whatever he decides to do, I hope so.

You never know who you might run into — even on an elevator.

The Strangers Beside Us is a post by: Nolan Dalla All rights reserved.