Laak Down Under
Everything is better down under. The Crown Casino is my new favorite place to gamble. It used to be the Bellagio, but that has now changed. The poker tables are great. No lines, no “Degree All-In Moment” ads, no beer ads, no Viagra ads, nothing. Just a big piece of blank felt the way poker was meant to be. And the dealer buttons. Ahh... what a pleasure... They say ”Dealer” on them. Once again, not selling out and putting an ad there. I have to admit, not a lot of things make me want to puke, and don’t get me wrong... I love the WPT and all... more than anyone probably... but it makes me want to puke every nine hands when I am in one of their events and the button comes around to me.
How grotesque to see such a simple thing as a dealer button get butchered so mercilessly. The WPT grossly and shamelessly defiled these beautifully simple things into a mini traveling message screaming WPT… bleck. When I play poker I do not want this sort of visual pollution, but then again I am potentially damaged goods; so please take my rantings with a grain of salt. I am just old fashioned and like the felt and the dealer button to be just that and nothing more. I mean, please, can we just play poker without all the white noise?
Anyway, thanks Crown, for having just simple good old-fashioned dealer buttons. But I don’t want to go off on too much of a tangent. I want to get back to
Another very cool thing is that wherever you go in
The currency is great. In fact, if it was all the same size then it would be hands down the greatest currency on the planet. Even as it stands, it pretty much crushes the field. The paper is rubbery so it doesn’t tear (and has a good feel), the bills tell you the amount you are holding – “10 Dollars” – which is cool, the notes are happily colored with a nice range of pastels. And the conversion rate is nearly 1 to 1 so there is not a lot of math to do when you are making a purchase. Always a nice touch for the space cadets out there such as myself.
But getting back to poker. When you wake up in the morning there are a few different cafés that 1) Are near the poker room; 2) Will make fresh to order whatever you fancy... (eggs, French toast, etc... without all the time consumption of having to wait for a table and have the middle man (waitress) involved… I just want a quick something so I can get to the cards, you know!) And to cap it all off… 3) The prices are fair! (Always nice.)
But never mind that… If you are a proper degenerate and you come to the Crown for poker, then you will be stoked to learn that EVERYTHING you could possibly imagine is right here in the complex. This place is huge… They have tons of shopping, loads of great restaurants, loads of whatever you want from movies to casino games… whatever.
And if you want tennis, or the gym or the pool, also no problem. I am sorry, but a place like the Bellagio should take note in this department. Here, the gym closes 10pm and is free, not 8pm and 25 bucks. have always been annoyed by all the hotels in my life that have the audacity to charge me for using the gym. That is just pathetic abuse if you ask me.)
Oh yeah, poker. Back to poker. Did I tell you that there is tons of space between the tables? They are set up like the Venetian. Yup, you can actually walk around in the poker room… always nice. After all, there are times where you want to get from point A to point B in a poker room, and it really helps when you aren’t forced to shimmy between tables, apologizing along the way for all the people you have to jostle by.
And straddles! They just passed a law recently allowing straddles! In previous years, the traveling degenerates would be frustrated by the rule of no straddling. Well kids, those days are long gone now. Let the sickness get underway! Not only is it now allowed, but the Aussies love it and their cash games are great fun. As a random side note, I would like to add that the Aussies are great when it comes to handling themselves at the tables. They get oneouted, and they handle it with more grace than ever. Men are men in
I just finished one of the smaller tournaments (out of the money… arghghgh) and couldn’t help but love the actual poker room. First off, they nailed it as far as getting their tournament chips just right. They are bright, and all of their chips are clearly distinguishable from one another. In the eight hours I lasted I did not see even one warped card in any deck. Not one! Good clean decks with the oversized numbers on the fronts, which are much better than the other types of cards.
The tournament had this cool feature. Make a decision in twenty seconds or your hand is dead! Holy cow, I loved that! Nice!!! I hope to see more of that in my life. And then the dinner break came along… and I was so happy. Fifty minutes. It is like they did a time study and research and discovered that this is better than ninety minutes, and then instead of just shelving the research, they put it into action. I hope all the tournaments have the same fifty-minute dinner break. It is the perfect amount of time, that’s for sure.
And the final thing I want to say is this: If you aren’t killing the pigeons in the games downstairs, you can actually order one cut up and served barbecue style at the restaurant Silk here in the Crown complex.
On behalf of
