Monday, June 11, 2007

The Plan

We have a plan… a good one, it’s a two-man mission to win it all or go down fighting with our very last cent. Anthony amazed me tonight. We both pretty much avoided telling each other what had been going on – “look, why go over old ground when we’ve got the rest of the trip to plan?” was Anthony’s opening statement (I don’t know exactly what he got up to but it sure opened his eyes to something, he’s a changed man).

We headed to the Bellagio for the buffet, waited 45 minutes in the queue and in that time saw Doyle Brunson and Gus Hansen (not together) brisk through. I hit the shrimp hard, it was on plate 3 that we carried on the meaningful conversation. Two things I did mention In my heavily edited re-telling of the previous 72 hours – 1: my success in the el Cortez game and 2: my great form in the satellite at the Rio. Anthony was genuinely impressed, dare I say pleased for me even. He paused, he was building up to somehting and then he went into this speech which completely flawed me, about how “we have waited our whole lives for this moment”, about how “this is our chance to take them all on”, about how “the money we brought was to play with, not covet like some precious child, this was our shot, and if we went home broke then fine, because the business is doing great and this is our gambling money, we saved for this, played for this, we’re going to form the best plan we can”.

And then he went back to his rib of beef, I think he may have surprised himself, I nearly laughed. I’ve never heard him sound so passionate about things, so, I don’t know, up for it. And of course I loved the sound of every one of his “ours”, not “mine, or me, or I, but our, us, he’s including me too, the Flicker Brothers… The Flying Flicker Brothers”.

Our plan was formed over dinner and then after at the bar near the poker room. Anthony bought drinks, I went for a Long Island Iced Tea (always wondered what that was) Anthony, in a very classy move, went for a White Russian – is this really my brother? So, the plan is this, we’re here for the World Series, so let’s hit the World Series, we’re playing satellites, lots of them and only with enough tournament buy in chips will we enter the WSOP tournaments – no direct buy-ins. Anthony will be in charge of the bankroll and will make all decisions relating to buying-in, however he agrees to listen to me if I have a hunch. (I find myself readily agreeing to these things, it’s just great to have it all a bit more normal). And then he leans over to me – “And you will never play in the El Cortez again” – something about the way he said, I knew it had to do with his previous 72 hours, I said okay and wondered what the hell he knew.

So we sat at the bar and I was feeling great about things, my hang-over all but gone, we saw Greenstein and Seed, Brenes and Boatman wandering through the Bellagio on their way to and from the game and the bar and we both spoke jokingly about how we would destroy them at the WSOP. If they knew what we had planned for them they’d be a little scared right now I’m sure… especially Seed, we decided the only way through him was to repeatedly kick him under the table, I hope he has shin pads.

Anthony went to bed and I’m heading back there now for an early night, it’s been a great night, but try as I might, I still have one nagging hang over – I can’t fill in the gap from being in the Rhino to arriving at the California, maybe I might bump into those guys again and they can put me right.

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