The mornings come early in Vegas. Maybe it’s just because I’m still on St. Louis time and 630 in the morning is still 830 to my body. I don’t know, but three days here and I’m starting to look and feel a bit on the ragged side. (Late hours staying up with friends and free flowing booze will do that I suppose.) Thankfully, I have brought a bottle of Advil with me.
Worn out and wandering about the Riviera in the morning sunlight is a bit of an odd experience. Other than the DCC, I haven’t been to a casino in a few years and it was somewhat surprising to me to see virtual dealers in one of the gaming pits. For the two or three other people out there that don’t know about this: basically, it’s a pit of half a dozen 40” TV screens with “dealers” who are actual real people and who have been put on film. Depending upon what the appropriate response is for any given situation dealing out an electronic hand of Three Card Poker or Blackjack, the appropriate splice of video comes up. These "dealers" are almost all very attractive, buxom females, alluringly dressed. I can’t actually recall ever seeing a real life pit, staffed by actual dealers, that looked this good.
Wandering outside the casino to walk next door to The Peppermill for some breakfast, I come across the life-sized bronze statue of “The Crazy Girls,” the long-running topless revue at The Riviera. You know, it’s the “cast-from-life” statue of the seven girls, shot from the rear, so to speak. Big hair, thongs, nice butts. Supposedly, it is the most photographed sculpture in Las Vegas, and indeed there are shutter bugs taking pictures, usually with a member of the party placing their hand on a well sculpted derriere. I am disappointed to discover that it’s only half a real-life cast - there’s no, ummm, front end -- no faces or other features you’d normally expect to find on women proportioned like this. It’s actually hollow.
Breakfast at The Peppermill is uneventful -- eggs Benedict. The food is good and the service prompt and friendly.
And now a word about my room: my streak of bad luck with hotel rooms at pool tournaments is finally broken! I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but my room at The Riv is new, modern, nicely furnished, has a very comfortable king bed, does not smell of smoke, and, blessedly, is very quiet. I’m a happy camper.
Today, I’m trying to familiarize myself with what’s going on with the BCAPL 8-Ball Tournaments (Mark has informed me that, “It’s not all about the pros”) so, dutifully, I wade out into the land of 7 footers and I learn some amazing things. First off, a few stats: as I’ve already mentioned in a previous post, there are some 250 7’ Diamond tables, mit lights, spread around in various configurations all over the convention center. There are approximately 6,750 players, competing in 22 different events. They are supervised by a team of 48 referees. And CSI/BCAPL is paying out a total prize purse of $639,400! I’m not sure that includes the little bit of human error that cost the promoter $9,000 in over-payments to some players in the early events. It was interesting to hear how different players handled being overpaid: from the gracious player who turned in his check, took the right (lesser) payout and was rewarded with an extra monetary "thank you," to the num-nuts who immediately cashed his $7,000 check and couldn’t/wouldn’t understand it was an honest mistake. By the way, I want to thank Bonnie Jones, who with her husband, Ric, and family, run Bad Boys Billiard Productions, and who are running the operation of the event. She graciously opened up spread sheets and did some advanced math to come up with the numbers for me.
I spend some time with Mark and he delights in showing me the four computer terminals, setup to help the pool players here to find their matches. By scanning in their BCAPL membership card their name, table number, and start time come up for display. If you’d like, you can have the computer text or email you the information. Or, if you want to search for information on yourself or another player, you enter their name (just the first few letters will usually suffice), and the highlighted name comes up on the brackets. Even cooler is that it can also display every CSI event you’ve played in the last few years, complete with how you did, what you won, and if you’d like, show you the brackets that got you there. All this comes out directly from the draw where they pour all the names into the computer and it works through all the filters or parameters that have been established for a given event. One of those parameters is to preclude individuals or teams from the same geographic area from playing each other in the opening rounds of a tournament. Depending on the size of the event, or league, or zip code you’re from, the software can keep local friends, teams, (or enemies) from meeting up in the first two to three rounds of play.
I find akaTrigger’s team, “What the Heck,” based out of Fort Worth, already in action. Ashley Nandrasy, Connie Gallego, Julie Comitini, and of course AZ’s own Melinda Bailey, are fighting tooth and well-manicured nail against a team from JOB Billiards, out of Nashville. The match is close with What the Heck holding on to a slim lead. The ladies from Forth Worth eventually close it out with a beautifully played three-ball-out by Julie, with a jacked up draw cut shot off the rail that pulls the cue ball cross table for perfect position on the last ball and immediately thereafter the eight. What the Heck wins 9-7.
On the next table, “A Coach’s Dream” from San Antonio is playing. A couple of things about this team: Maria Rodriguez, Yvette Reyes, Barbara Wisdom, Pauline Plata, Helen Hayes, Maxine Flores, and their sponsors, Michelle and John Vargas have all made sure that their team mate, Stacey Linerode, could make the trek to Vegas despite ongoing chemo treatments for her breast cancer. One of their fund-raisers is to sell bumper stickers that read, “I believe for Stacey,” for $5. In a show of support for their sister team from Texas, Melinda’s team has added pink ribbons to their team shirts and Ashley went so far as to wear one of the bumper stickers on her, well, umm, rear- bumper, so to speak. It looked lovely.
A couple of other things I learned about the 8-Ball tournaments. They have a "Best Dressed" team category (who knew?)! A Coach’s Dream, wins for the women, with their gray Polos and coordinated scarves, while Shop the Dolphin (you can’t make this stuff up) from Denver, win for the men, with their black caps and black and white argyles. In the Scotch Doubles, Henry Carr and Amanda Murray, win with matching silk Hawaiian-style shirts with spade straight flushes emblazoned across the fronts.
I have learned more about the 8-ball events than I originally intended and my head is about to explode from all the alien data.
When I last check, Melinda’s team, What the Heck, has gone deep into the winner’s side, lost one, and is now on the loser’s side and among the final 8 teams. They play tomorrow at 9 frippin’ A.M. They don’t make coffee strong enough for me to be awake tomorrow morning at that hour.
Lou Figueroa
Worn out and wandering about the Riviera in the morning sunlight is a bit of an odd experience. Other than the DCC, I haven’t been to a casino in a few years and it was somewhat surprising to me to see virtual dealers in one of the gaming pits. For the two or three other people out there that don’t know about this: basically, it’s a pit of half a dozen 40” TV screens with “dealers” who are actual real people and who have been put on film. Depending upon what the appropriate response is for any given situation dealing out an electronic hand of Three Card Poker or Blackjack, the appropriate splice of video comes up. These "dealers" are almost all very attractive, buxom females, alluringly dressed. I can’t actually recall ever seeing a real life pit, staffed by actual dealers, that looked this good.
Wandering outside the casino to walk next door to The Peppermill for some breakfast, I come across the life-sized bronze statue of “The Crazy Girls,” the long-running topless revue at The Riviera. You know, it’s the “cast-from-life” statue of the seven girls, shot from the rear, so to speak. Big hair, thongs, nice butts. Supposedly, it is the most photographed sculpture in Las Vegas, and indeed there are shutter bugs taking pictures, usually with a member of the party placing their hand on a well sculpted derriere. I am disappointed to discover that it’s only half a real-life cast - there’s no, ummm, front end -- no faces or other features you’d normally expect to find on women proportioned like this. It’s actually hollow.
Breakfast at The Peppermill is uneventful -- eggs Benedict. The food is good and the service prompt and friendly.
And now a word about my room: my streak of bad luck with hotel rooms at pool tournaments is finally broken! I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but my room at The Riv is new, modern, nicely furnished, has a very comfortable king bed, does not smell of smoke, and, blessedly, is very quiet. I’m a happy camper.
Today, I’m trying to familiarize myself with what’s going on with the BCAPL 8-Ball Tournaments (Mark has informed me that, “It’s not all about the pros”) so, dutifully, I wade out into the land of 7 footers and I learn some amazing things. First off, a few stats: as I’ve already mentioned in a previous post, there are some 250 7’ Diamond tables, mit lights, spread around in various configurations all over the convention center. There are approximately 6,750 players, competing in 22 different events. They are supervised by a team of 48 referees. And CSI/BCAPL is paying out a total prize purse of $639,400! I’m not sure that includes the little bit of human error that cost the promoter $9,000 in over-payments to some players in the early events. It was interesting to hear how different players handled being overpaid: from the gracious player who turned in his check, took the right (lesser) payout and was rewarded with an extra monetary "thank you," to the num-nuts who immediately cashed his $7,000 check and couldn’t/wouldn’t understand it was an honest mistake. By the way, I want to thank Bonnie Jones, who with her husband, Ric, and family, run Bad Boys Billiard Productions, and who are running the operation of the event. She graciously opened up spread sheets and did some advanced math to come up with the numbers for me.
I spend some time with Mark and he delights in showing me the four computer terminals, setup to help the pool players here to find their matches. By scanning in their BCAPL membership card their name, table number, and start time come up for display. If you’d like, you can have the computer text or email you the information. Or, if you want to search for information on yourself or another player, you enter their name (just the first few letters will usually suffice), and the highlighted name comes up on the brackets. Even cooler is that it can also display every CSI event you’ve played in the last few years, complete with how you did, what you won, and if you’d like, show you the brackets that got you there. All this comes out directly from the draw where they pour all the names into the computer and it works through all the filters or parameters that have been established for a given event. One of those parameters is to preclude individuals or teams from the same geographic area from playing each other in the opening rounds of a tournament. Depending on the size of the event, or league, or zip code you’re from, the software can keep local friends, teams, (or enemies) from meeting up in the first two to three rounds of play.
I find akaTrigger’s team, “What the Heck,” based out of Fort Worth, already in action. Ashley Nandrasy, Connie Gallego, Julie Comitini, and of course AZ’s own Melinda Bailey, are fighting tooth and well-manicured nail against a team from JOB Billiards, out of Nashville. The match is close with What the Heck holding on to a slim lead. The ladies from Forth Worth eventually close it out with a beautifully played three-ball-out by Julie, with a jacked up draw cut shot off the rail that pulls the cue ball cross table for perfect position on the last ball and immediately thereafter the eight. What the Heck wins 9-7.
On the next table, “A Coach’s Dream” from San Antonio is playing. A couple of things about this team: Maria Rodriguez, Yvette Reyes, Barbara Wisdom, Pauline Plata, Helen Hayes, Maxine Flores, and their sponsors, Michelle and John Vargas have all made sure that their team mate, Stacey Linerode, could make the trek to Vegas despite ongoing chemo treatments for her breast cancer. One of their fund-raisers is to sell bumper stickers that read, “I believe for Stacey,” for $5. In a show of support for their sister team from Texas, Melinda’s team has added pink ribbons to their team shirts and Ashley went so far as to wear one of the bumper stickers on her, well, umm, rear- bumper, so to speak. It looked lovely.
A couple of other things I learned about the 8-Ball tournaments. They have a "Best Dressed" team category (who knew?)! A Coach’s Dream, wins for the women, with their gray Polos and coordinated scarves, while Shop the Dolphin (you can’t make this stuff up) from Denver, win for the men, with their black caps and black and white argyles. In the Scotch Doubles, Henry Carr and Amanda Murray, win with matching silk Hawaiian-style shirts with spade straight flushes emblazoned across the fronts.
I have learned more about the 8-ball events than I originally intended and my head is about to explode from all the alien data.
When I last check, Melinda’s team, What the Heck, has gone deep into the winner’s side, lost one, and is now on the loser’s side and among the final 8 teams. They play tomorrow at 9 frippin’ A.M. They don’t make coffee strong enough for me to be awake tomorrow morning at that hour.
Lou Figueroa
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