Meeting a Legend
December 19, 2007
The first day in Vegas is always a horrible time for my body. My liver specifically. It’s always a whirlwind of booze and lack of sleep for the first 24 hours and rarely a wonderful sight. This time around I cabbed it straight over to the Bellagio to meet up with the Brothers McGrupp, Gracie, Pablo, and Maudie. We formulated our plans for a mini-Vegas pub crawl down the strip eventually ending up at the hallowed halls of the glorious Imperial Palace.
The first stop was Caesars to meet up with the G-Vegas contingent who were busy busting drunk tourists in the poker room. As usual it’s pretty tough to pull those guys away from a juicy table when the ATMs are spewing chips. We settled into one of the bars for our only quiet moment of the weekend. Once we realized that a single round was equal to the GNP of Angola we made the command decision to cross the street to the Geisha bar. Pauly, Derek, and I made the slow crawl to the land of broke cowboys and 60 year old Polish hookers.
Pre-gaming a poker tournament is one thing. A handful of shots before sitting down at the table to get in the proper frame of mind is my way to go. Preparing for the onslaught of degenerate bloggers for a drink fest involves a whole lot more. It takes quite a few shots to get me from shy-town to chatty cathy. The shots were queueing up faster than I could get them down my gullet and soon there would be a three tiered stack of 15 empty shot glasses for the effort. That was before the majority showed up and 4 hours before the scheduled meetup.
While things were still pretty low key we were sitting at the bar and Pauly was thumbing through the latest issue of Bluff Magazine (hey look, that guy in the magazine looks just like Dr. Pauly). My phone buzzed with a missed call so I cursed the IP once again. Anyone hanging that the Geisha Bar will attest that the cell phone signal was somewhere between shit and zero. My boys were hanging out the home bar and wanted a dial-a-shot. I walked away from the bar holding my cell phone out like some high-tech divining rod looking for the a signal when a gentleman stopped dead in front of me.
My poker senses tingled. He asked the question no one really wants to ask in public.
“Are you here with the poker bloggers?”
“Yessir, my name is Al.”
“Al Can’t Hang?”
Ah fuck me. I’m not Pauly, I don’t get recognized in public.
“Nice it meet you, I’m Johnny Hughes.”
Ah well fuck me twice running.
I should have been the one to recognize him. Of course I knew who the heck he was. I’ve been reading his stuff posted by Iggy and his book was on order from Amazon stuck somewhere between Albuquerque and Dover Delaware. An old school Texas poker player who has played in places where the new kids today would find themselves on the ass end of a beating if they pulled some of their shit at the table.
After a few minutes of chatting I realized there were bigger and badder people for him to meet. Pauly, Derek, Change100, and Scott (another OG Texas player) were 5 feet away and I was wasting time instead of making introductions. That’s when the drinking and bullshitting sessions began in earnest. I would find myself throughout the weekend listening to his tales while sitting at the bar or sitting in the suite. While sitting in a room full of smoke with some of the best young guns in the poker writing business, he could hold the entire room with his stories. And he was playing to a tough crowd.
In these days of the young loud mouths, poor sports, angle shooters, and raging douche bags it was a pleasure to meet someone who truly understands that poker is one long session. Everyone talks like they know it but I’d love to see where some of these players will be in 20 years and take an account of what they’ve seen and done.
Johnny, you are a classic and a true legend amongst a bunch of posers. Thanks.
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