Calistri's Corner

Tunica Bliss

As I walked into the GoldStrike ballroom, I felt like Norm on the old television show Cheers. After making the trek to the World Poker Open all these years, Tunica is the venue where everyone knows my name and I know theirs.Â Â Â

I immediately bump into both Kenny Lambert and Johnny Grooms. While Wednesday was just “satellite” day, they were already full tournament mode, choreographing tables and staff with Busby Berkeley precision. The ever charming and efficient Beverly Cheney was running the sats, which were going off with machine gun frequency. And all my favorite regional players were fondling cards and pushing chips; drawn once again to the WPO’s great schedule and well deserved player friendly reputation.

After my ten+ hour drive in the green monster, my butt and stamina weren’t quite up for poker, so it was dinner and drunken pai gow with wildbill. I am officially “down” on pai gow. You know you’re in trouble when you’re ordering more drinks just to get unstuck. We did have an Animal House moment, when at the GoldStrike bar a large black guy approached our table. “Is this your wife,” he asked wildbill. Wildbill shook his head no. “Do you mind if I try to pick her up?” he asked. I nearly spewed my drink out my nose as wildbill whispered, “Do you mind if we dance with your dates?” It somehow ended on a friendly note when wildbill later offered to pick up his date. I think this just have been some southern exchange of pleasantries.

If Tunica has one drawback, it is internet connection. The only available wifi right now is in the foodcourt. It would seem silly to come all the way to Tunica to play poker online, but I did harbor hopes of getting in at least one of Mansion’s great overlay tournaments this week. They’re promoting $100K a day in guaranteed events. And for my like minded frugal friends are also sporting $10 rebuy and $20 freezeout qualifiers.

Debonair came into town yesterday. Unfortunately by the time they were in poker mode, I was already in pre-game for my radio show. But I will catch up on the poker front today. Today I will be hitting the sats hard in the hopes of score. And while the boyz and I have always readily exchanged action, I noticed that the infamous Brandi 2+2 thread has changed the tenor of our negotiations. Needless to say I will not be offering up Brandi-esque terms for being “backed” in a satellite.Â

As blissful as I am in Tunica, I am a tad jealous of Pauly and Tim Lavalli; both down under covering the Aussie Millions. Make sure you check out PokerNews for the poker thunder down under.

OK. It was a quickie, but I’ll find my way back to the food court soon…

This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.