Quest of a Closet Poker Player

We had an adventurous ending to our trip, including sickness and almost being arrested by Airport Security in Atlanta.

No problems boarding the plane in Gatwick, but it was a packed flight in coach which led to some interesting times.  Sweetie and The Big Guy were in 35 J and K while The Little Guy, All-In, and I were in 36 H, J, and K.  The poor guy in 35H had his hands full with the Little Guy jumping back and forth over the seats every twenty minutes and all the bathroom trips.  He finally fell asleep for a couple hours in Sweetie’s lap, and I did the same.  Probably due to an equal part dehydration and a stomach genetically designed by Sweetie (legendary Queen of Car Sickness as a child), The Big Guy sprinted back to the lavatory after the plane had taxied to the gate.  He got sick a couple more times after we got in.

Atlanta’s airport probably has the worst designed international arrival of any airport in the US; possibly the world.  You arrive and go through customs, then claim your luggage and clear customs, then take your luggage back to a baggage handler who puts it on a belt to go to the main Baggage Claim area.  You then go through an X-Ray security station, where if you have water or any fluids that you might have purchased at the airport (e.g., Harrod’s lotions), then you have to either dump it or check the bag.  We had ten checked bags plus four carry-on’s, and it took four carts/trolleys to get everything through.  When we got to the baggage handlers, it looked like a there had been some sort of baggage wrestling match with luggage everywhere.  I stayed with our bags to make sure they were put on the right belt, and that started my dialogue with security.  The baggage handler told me to leave, I told him I was watching my bags until they got on the belt, I grabbed one bag that had fallen off as they had handled it, they asked me to leave, I told them I was watching my bags, they called a security guy, he asked me to step over to the line where you go through security to watch from there, I went to the line, another baggage handler came back five minutes later and told me to leave, I told her this was where the security guy had told me to stand, she got the same security guy to come back, I told him I was standing where he told me to, and he gave me a sort of shrugging please just go ahead and go through security look.  By then, my bags were being loaded on the belt, so I went through.  I then had to check one of the carry on’s that Sweetie had stashed water in.  I think it took around 2-2 1/2 hours to get from the gate to our car when it was all said and done.

US airports are pretty horrible to international travellers.  Figure someone has travelled eight or nine hours to the US, they then go through all that luggage and customs process, then they have to come up with $3 to get a luggage cart in the Baggage Claim area.  Welcome to America!

A few final things to catch up with today.  You may have missed an article I did on 2-7 Triple Draw which included an interview with Lee Jones from PokerStars.   I was interested in how they rolled the game into production as I stumbled upon it (first on Play Money tables then gradually it went live).  Lee had some interesting insight into how Stars went about it.  It seems that HORSE has dried up a bit at Stars while Triple Draw and 5-card Draw has been building a niche following.

I’ll have a busy day working to catch up from the week, so that’s it for now.  Thanks for the emails while I was gone, and I hope to catch you at the felt soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 8:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized.