Andrew_Robl. Add me. Will be trying to ‘tweet’ everyday. Not sure how I feel about but have been convinced.
PORN, FLAGS, AND COMPUTER GAMES
01*14*10
Last week, both the Consumer Electronics Show and the AVN Awards (which are basically the Oscars of porn) were in town. Everybody thinks it’s a great time to visit Vegas, because of the all the porno girls running around. But that’s really not the case, since the fans of porn outnumber stars of porn by 20-to-1. Nevertheless, I did manage to squeeze some entertainment out of it, thanks to a call from Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendel, a top PC gamer who happens to be a friend of mine. He was hosting a party for a computer hardware company, and he invited me to stop by.
The party took place in one of the nice suites at Aria, and I figured it would be fun. Then I arrived to see 48 guys and two girls, all standing around and watching Fatal1ty playing Quake. This is not the kind of party that I’m used to attending. But I grew up as a video game fanatic, and Fatal1ty had been a boyhood hero of mine. I remember seeing him on MTV and thinking it was so cool that he could play video games for a living. So I decided to stick around.
Heís a superstar to a certain demographic of guys, and what made this party special was that all those in attendance could get a shot at playing Quake against Fatal1ty. Naturally, I took my turn. And, of course, he completely kicked my ass. But that was fine. I got to play Quake against my PC-game hero, and if he had done anything but annihilate me, well, I’d have been disappointed.
. . .
It can be eye opening to spend time with smart people outside of the poker world. Such was the case when I hung out with Craig Clemens. He’s a really successful online affiliate marketer. He’s written advertising copy to promote dating e-books for David DeAngelo and others.
We were at Tryst, for a party that Fatal1ty was throwing. It was enjoyable, but the girl-to-guy ratio was way worse than usual ñ thanks a lot, AVN Awards
On the upside, the lack of female opportunities gave me a chance to chat undistracted with Craig. He told me that random guys come up to him all the time, seeking dating advice due to his work with David DeAngelo. Then he added, “You and I have the worst jobs. Our fan-base is all 18-year-old dudes.” After that, Craig imparted some of his marketing wisdom on me, and I’m really grateful. It’s gong to be handy for me in the very near future.
. . .
Getting together a bunch of friends for a game of flag football is nothing unusual. Of course, though, when my crowd hits the field, there’s going to be lots of money at stake. Antonio Esfandiari and I each drafted a team and bet $1,000 on the game. Whoever makes five touchdowns first gets the money. We scored right away, and I doubled the stakes to $2,000. Then Antonio (who had All American Dave, his personal trainer and the only real athlete in the game, on his side) called a false start on us. After that, things got pretty intense. There were lots of fakes and lots of penalties. It became more tackle football than touch, and All American Dave flew into in a gravel-pit while attempting to take down one of my guys.
In the end, Antonio’s team won, and he got his money. But it was almost worth it, just to see the looks on some players’ faces. They weren’t from the gambling world and couldn’t wrap their heads around two poker players betting thousands of dollars on a recreational football game.
Conversely, though, Antonio and I can’t see the point of doing ANYTHING and not betting on it.
I just got twitter. ‘Andrew_Robl’ Add me.
HERE’S TO A GREAT 2010!
01*12*10
New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas is always completely wild and decadent. When my dad suggested that he might want to bring in 2010 with me, I warned him that things would get pretty crazy. He didn’t seem particularly concerned, so I figured it would be cool to give him a taste of Vegas at its most outrageous. Nevertheless, I decided to start the night on a fairly upscale, chill note. We’d begin by having dinner at Cut, along with two of my least degenerate friends, both of whom are physicians. I dressed up for the occasion, wearing a nice suit.
On the way down to the lobby of my condo, at around 8:00, we shared the elevator with four guys who were shotgunning beers. A girl stepped in on one of the floors, and, without missing a beat, she took a beer and shotgunned right alongside the guys. My dad seemed unfazed, and I took that to be a good sign. We walked to the restaurant since the Strip closes down to traffic for New Years Eve. En route, I acquired a sparkly gold top hat.
Cut is very good. Very classy, and probably my favorite steakhouse in Vegas. As soon as we sat down, one of the doctors started ordering $1,500 bottles of wine. That shocked my dad and, truth be told, scared me a little. Dinner was clearly going to be even pricier than I had expected. I told my two friends that they better go out with a bang this year, before nationalized healthcare kicks in.
The real shocker came when one of the doctors and his drunken girlfriend started talking about what they did the night before. They went to the Spearmint Rhino and brought home three girls for a five-some. Then the girlfriend started showing iPhone pictures of the festivities. My dad took it all in stride, and I was glad that we got together with my more respectable friends. I can only imagine what would have happened if it was all degenerates!
We played credit card roulette for the bill, and, luckily, I didnít lose this time. After dinner we headed over to Antonio Esfandiari’s condo. He was having his annual New Year’s Eve party, and I knew it would be total debauchery. Antonio had 20 guys, 40 super-hot girls, and a balcony that afforded a perfect view of the fireworks that traditionally take place over the Strip at midnight.
I brought two bottles of Dom and stashed them in the fridge. Things got about as wild as you’d expect them to be with lots of drinking, raucous dancing, and Antonio’s dad commandeering one of my bottles. My friend Keith had an extremely interesting conversation with Mike Matusow (details of which cannot be revealed here ) and my dad was pretty blown away by the quality of the girls. A friend of mine walked up to my Dad and said, “You’re so good looking and Andrew’s so ugly. How can that be?”, I didn’t think that was so funny!
For me, of course, it was just another night in Vegas & though I did get more wasted than usual. By 9 a.m., everybody was pretty much gone except for me, Phil Laak, Brian Rast
, Antonio, and Sander who is the number-one backgammon player in the world.
He gave Antonio a spot and they began playing backgammon. The rest of us took action on the matches. I think I made a little bit of money. Then Antonio went to sleep and things got ramped up a little bit with us shooting dice for $500 a roll. As is usually the case with these things, it got out of control pretty quickly, and I wound up ahead by $15,000. Sander was stuck the money, and tilting pretty badly. So when I told him that I wanted to quit shooting dice, he offered me $200 in juice for every five rolls ñ I calculated that, all things being equal, it was worth about $20,000 per hour & so we kept gambling. But instead of throwing dice, we switched to using cards and played for $1,000 a point. A few hands in, I went from being up $15,000 to down $25,000. Now I was totally tilting, willing to offer all kinds of sweeteners to anyone who’d give me a chance to get even. But suddenly everybody was a pussy and nobody wanted to gamble. So I started the New Year on raging tilt.
This was definitely not the best way to begin my 2010 gambling year. But, as I see it, things can only get better from here.