My trip to Vegas, Monday Night

I went out on Saturday night with Richard Fox, Stepp, Bankhead, and Nathan Doudney (The T-Tech transfer)– we go to this bar in the Bellagio and they introduce me to a couple of pretty cool guys “Erick” and “Gavin” – who end up taking care of the entire tab at the bar (literally hundreds of dollars of booze) – so I figure these guys are connected/well off. But it was weird cause one guy was pretty loud and not very well dressed (Gavin) and Erick just seemed like one of the guys.

Then, we get a ride from Erick to go to another “club”. The valet pulls up with this pimp Lexus SUV for Erick and a BMW Convertible for Gavin – completely decked out. We are driving around and Erick starts talking about crazy stories about strip clubs, and how he was pissed off (and he thought it was hilarious) that he got bumped from his table by Bob Saget the other day (“We got f-ing bumped by Danny –F-ing Tanner”, he said, laughing). Then he said he was at another club another night and that “the commercial shoot the next day was brutal”.

Now I’m starting to wonder – who the hell are these guys?

We get to the other “club” – which is this nice little “poker and pub” joint – the outside looked like something you’d find in northern Wisconsin, but inside it was a really nice billiard place with leather chairs. It hadn’t hit me until we were all sitting around talking about basketball that I noticed that these guys all had “Full Tilt Poker” Hats on. That’s when I started putting the pieces together. The other cue was one of the guys we were with does great prank calls… and they asked him to prank call Phil Hellmuth… for real... cause they are buddies.

Turns out I was hanging out with some of the best poker players in the world:

Erick Lindgren (2004 WPT Player of the Year, 2 WPT Championships)

Gavin Smith(2006 WPT Player of the Year)

Dan Negreanu (4 World Series of Poker Championships)

These guys were all super nice and down to earth – and here I am kicking it with them having no clue who they were. Fox later told me he thought it was funny watching me figure it out – as I started recognizing these guys from ESPN’s World Series of Poker coverage.

Turns out, Stepp and Doudney played in a big Vegas poker tournament where Erick Lindgren recognized Blake and said he’s a huge fan – while Blake was recognizing him and said he’s a huge Lindgren fan. Small world.

So the next night, we meet up with these guys again – this time at the MGM grand. Gavin rounds up about 6 of us to go to the Poker room. You should have seen the faces of these guys playing poker as Gavin walked in. It would be like if you’re playing hoops and the 2006 player of the year walked in and asked to shoot around.

Gavin basically told the pit boss: Get us a table for 8. The immediately told 3 college aged guys to move. (Gavin just ran the place… getting the dealer to change the rules for our table with betting requirements – etc.)

We sit down with Gavin, Fox, Blake, Doudney (who now lives part time in Vegas playing poker professionally), a Zag grad we know, a big time booster, Ray Giacoletti (GU assistant coach – former Eastern Washington Head Coach), and Mark Few (I sh*t you not… he was a little tipsy since we had just won the conference championship. Don’t worry – I didn’t have words with him).

So Gavin and Doudney start putting in the max bet of 200 dollars – blind. These guys go back and forth – basically playing even with literally about $3000 crossing the table in the course of 10 minutes. Finally, they settle down and we start playing for real.

I end up winning about 500 bucks – including a couple of head-to-head showdowns with both Gavin Smith and the GU assistant coach – meanwhile the GU Coaches are losing money left and right. But the funny line of the night - (and yes, there was far too much build-up and explaining who was who here) but Gavin – being fairly obnoxious (which is his MO) – goes – “Hey Fewy, I’m a huge Gonzaga fan. Why the hell didn’t you put Austin Daye on Stephan Curry last year to stop him from scoring 40” – Few looks back at him, smiles, and says “cause I didn’t want him to score 70”.

Guess that gives you a little insight into Few’s take on Daye’s defensive prowess. Either way – seeing a little sense of humor with him turned me slightly back towards his corner…