COCKTAILS PLEASE

    I went back to The Wynn yesterday afternoon, quitting after I won exactly $100.  Either my old pal Georges de Frayville was out shopping or trying his luck at another casino.  I left him a voice message, but I doubt if he will call me back.  I really don’t know why he contacted me in the first place. We had never been particularly friendly in Paris.  Suffice it to say, I was glad he was the catalyst in breaking my jinx at the newest - and flashiest - mega resort in town. 

 

    On my way home I had a sudden hankering for a Pisco sour.  I stopped off at the Rio.  If anyplace in Las Vegas were to serve this exotic Peruvian/Chilean white brandy, I figured it would be a casino with a South American theme.  No dice.  “Sorry, Senhor, we don't carry Pisco,” I was informed.  Oh well, putting my thirst aside, I walked over to the poker room where a no limit Texas hold ‘em tournament was getting underway.  Since that made for immediate seating at a $2- $5 cash game, I sat down to try my luck.  Fixed between $100 and $500, the required buy-in was right up my alley. 

 

  Often I wonder why casinos other than Binions and the Wynn place a ceiling on buy-ins.  I guess it’s because they don’t want a couple of smart alecks plunking down a few thousand  dollars apiece and scaring other players away.  It’s the house’s business to fill up as many seats as possible (generally nine or ten at a poker table), not to cater to the whims of a few nouveaux-riches showoffs.  As it is, no space pays less per square foot than poker rooms.  The manager of a popular card room told me whereas other table games bring in $150 an hour per player, and each slot machine generates a profit of $75 an hour, poker, with it’s small rake and no house participation is only worth $5 an hour per player.  The casinos offer the game because of its huge following, and because it brings people inside who might end up at blackjack, craps or the slots.

 

  A word to the wise: do not sit down to play poker when a tournament is beginning.   Within ten minutes of my arrival, five of nine seated players quit our table in favor of the tourney.  So here were the rest of us: losing the same amount when our cards didn’t hold up while winning peanuts when they did.  With fewer than five players, a game tends to deteriorate into an attempt to steal the  blinds.  I quit when sixty of my hundred bucks were depleted. True, if you stick around long enough players knocked out of the tournament will probably return to the cash games, but that could take an hour or more. 

 

 A few blocks away, I turned off Flamingo Road onto Jones Street where I knew a Peruvian-Mexican Restaurant.  Due to the traffic, it took me a while to arrive at the seedy driveway that housed the eatery.  Only one customer was inside, a drunk half asleep at a cafeteria style table.  I asked the proprietor for a Pisco sour.

 

 “Sorry,” he said.   “I ran out of Pisco last night.”