Five Dozen Hot Dogs and the World Series of Poker
Happy Fourth of July. I’m here in Las Vegas, but today’s big news comes from Coney Island, in the heart of Brooklyn, where I grew up, and the site of Nathan’s annual hot dog eating contest. Earlier today Joey Chestnut (pictured right) defeated six-time former champion Takeru Kobayashi. Both consumed 59 hot dogs during the ten-minute regulation time period, but Chestnut prevailed in an overtime eat-off.
I’m not sure why this is important to me. Maybe it’s because I used to think I was really scarfing down the dogs when I ate three or four Nathan’s hot dogs at one sitting. But 59 in ten minutes? How does he do it? Quien sabe? But it's comforting to know that on America's birthday, an American proved he can eat more hot dogs than anyone else with a cast iron stomach.
Here in Las Vegas the main event at the World Series of Poker is in full swing. Today is the second Day One, with more Day Ones to come in an event that won’t be fully decided until November. The Gaming Life Expo is also in full swing for the next few days, right across from the tournament area at the Rio. It’s a lot better than last year’s show, which was pathetically embarrassing. With it’s sleazy strippers and fortunetellers, the 2007 expo looked more like a mitt-camp at a midway sideshow than something that brands itself based on the putatively glamorous life style of poker players. Kudos to Harrah's for upping the quality of the expo for 2008.
I’m not playing at the WSOP this year. But I am playing in some of the very lucrative side games. It’s really hard to believe that some of the players are really as bad as they are. I played in a $20-$40 hold’em game that had at least four players who did not have a clue.
And some of the players were beyond weird too. A guy to my right, who was a good player, said to me, “You look familiar. Do you write for one of the magazines?”
“I did,” I said, “and my name is Lou Krieger.”
After the inevitable, “Oh, yeah … I read some of your books,” a guy two seats to my left who had been listening in to the conversation stands up and says, “Ehhhhh, we got Lou Krieger at the table. He writes books … lotsa books, yeah … lots of books.” The tone of his voice was a cross between a poor imitation of the Fonz, and a good imitation of a complete moron.
He kept repeating that mantra for the next half hour. He also had no clue about playing. Once he called my preflop raise, then called my raise on the flop when the A-K I was holding was rewarded with a flop if A-K-3 of mixed suits. He called the turn and the river too, finally showing down a pocket pair of queens that he was unable to get away from, even with two overcards on board. He stayed to the bitter end hoping for a two-outer.
When I finally got up to leave, he looked up form the sort of mumbling stupor he seemed to have lapsed into and said, “Yeah, that’s Lou Krieger … the guy that writes books. Books … he writes books!”
I smiled at him and said, "I wrote 11 of them, and you can go to my web site at http://www.loukrieger.com/ and check them out, or go to the Gamblers Book Shop right here in Las Vegas and buy an autographed copy." He looked up at me incomprehensibly as I walked toward the cashier’s cage.
For me the WSOP is more like a business convention than it is about poker. After all, the WSOP is a chance to meet anyone you want to in the poker business, and it’s always been an opportunity for me to renew friendships and talk to people I’d been emailing during the year, who have some sort of business deal in mind that they want me to be involved in.
The majority of these deals are never going to get off the ground, and many of them are just ideas floated on air, with no substance behind them. But some of them have panned out into real opportunities for me over the years, and I would not have had a chance to make them a reality unless I was at the WSOP where I could separate the bullshit from reality, and made the best of the good opportunities.
I’m also working here. The job as editor of Poker Player Newspaper doesn’t vanish when I leave home, so I’ve been getting up early to work on the paper, then playing poker and meeting people in the afternoon and evening.
I’m off to the Gaming Life Expo this afternoon to sign books at the Gamblers Book Shop exhibit at 3 p.m. Then at 4 p.m. I’m off to the Rounders Radio Booth to hang out with the guys who provide me with an hour of airtime every week and produce the show. After that it’ll be time for some more poker, and hopefully a few more players as ridiculously inept as the one who couldn’t get over the fact that he was seated at a poker table with someone who wrote books.
I’m not sure why this is important to me. Maybe it’s because I used to think I was really scarfing down the dogs when I ate three or four Nathan’s hot dogs at one sitting. But 59 in ten minutes? How does he do it? Quien sabe? But it's comforting to know that on America's birthday, an American proved he can eat more hot dogs than anyone else with a cast iron stomach.
Here in Las Vegas the main event at the World Series of Poker is in full swing. Today is the second Day One, with more Day Ones to come in an event that won’t be fully decided until November. The Gaming Life Expo is also in full swing for the next few days, right across from the tournament area at the Rio. It’s a lot better than last year’s show, which was pathetically embarrassing. With it’s sleazy strippers and fortunetellers, the 2007 expo looked more like a mitt-camp at a midway sideshow than something that brands itself based on the putatively glamorous life style of poker players. Kudos to Harrah's for upping the quality of the expo for 2008.
I’m not playing at the WSOP this year. But I am playing in some of the very lucrative side games. It’s really hard to believe that some of the players are really as bad as they are. I played in a $20-$40 hold’em game that had at least four players who did not have a clue.
And some of the players were beyond weird too. A guy to my right, who was a good player, said to me, “You look familiar. Do you write for one of the magazines?”
“I did,” I said, “and my name is Lou Krieger.”
After the inevitable, “Oh, yeah … I read some of your books,” a guy two seats to my left who had been listening in to the conversation stands up and says, “Ehhhhh, we got Lou Krieger at the table. He writes books … lotsa books, yeah … lots of books.” The tone of his voice was a cross between a poor imitation of the Fonz, and a good imitation of a complete moron.
He kept repeating that mantra for the next half hour. He also had no clue about playing. Once he called my preflop raise, then called my raise on the flop when the A-K I was holding was rewarded with a flop if A-K-3 of mixed suits. He called the turn and the river too, finally showing down a pocket pair of queens that he was unable to get away from, even with two overcards on board. He stayed to the bitter end hoping for a two-outer.
When I finally got up to leave, he looked up form the sort of mumbling stupor he seemed to have lapsed into and said, “Yeah, that’s Lou Krieger … the guy that writes books. Books … he writes books!”
I smiled at him and said, "I wrote 11 of them, and you can go to my web site at http://www.loukrieger.com/ and check them out, or go to the Gamblers Book Shop right here in Las Vegas and buy an autographed copy." He looked up at me incomprehensibly as I walked toward the cashier’s cage.
For me the WSOP is more like a business convention than it is about poker. After all, the WSOP is a chance to meet anyone you want to in the poker business, and it’s always been an opportunity for me to renew friendships and talk to people I’d been emailing during the year, who have some sort of business deal in mind that they want me to be involved in.
The majority of these deals are never going to get off the ground, and many of them are just ideas floated on air, with no substance behind them. But some of them have panned out into real opportunities for me over the years, and I would not have had a chance to make them a reality unless I was at the WSOP where I could separate the bullshit from reality, and made the best of the good opportunities.
I’m also working here. The job as editor of Poker Player Newspaper doesn’t vanish when I leave home, so I’ve been getting up early to work on the paper, then playing poker and meeting people in the afternoon and evening.
I’m off to the Gaming Life Expo this afternoon to sign books at the Gamblers Book Shop exhibit at 3 p.m. Then at 4 p.m. I’m off to the Rounders Radio Booth to hang out with the guys who provide me with an hour of airtime every week and produce the show. After that it’ll be time for some more poker, and hopefully a few more players as ridiculously inept as the one who couldn’t get over the fact that he was seated at a poker table with someone who wrote books.
posted by Lou Krieger @ 12:48 PM
1 Comments:
Man woow 59 hotdogs in 10 minutes.
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