Friends, Romans, Ironmen – Have another beer! – Friday 9AM
We play the Friday 9 AM at Caesar’s and Pledge Barbie and Grange wind up heads up for the title. Grange manages to beat him on the very first hand heads up and the Ironmen have essentially gone three for three in the tournaments! We spend a little time grinding away at Caesar’s when all hell breaks loose at the table next to where Grange, JB and I are sitting. A string of loud expletives erupts and we later find out what happened.

Pledge Bonnie, Dan and a random player wind up getting it all in pre-flop. Pledge Bonnie rolls over aces and is feeling good because Dan has KK and random player has QQ! Of course, Dan spikes the K and rakes a monster, which causes the aforementioned expletives and causes Pledge Bonnie to storm out of the room not to be heard from for a good 5 hours. That would make two trips in a row where Ironmen are involved in a hand like this. I hope I’m not the one with aces next year.

Later that afternoon we wind up back at the V to play cash games. After sitting at a lame table, I get moved to a wild table that involves what else – three other Ironmen. At this point, it’s worth pointing out that my six year old made us all card cappers that have IMOP on them in varying colors, about the size of a small plastic comb. So, we were getting asked about them the entire trip (we heard “you guys are everywhere” more than once) and we would explain what was going on and it served to really make for a fun table. So I sit down and pull out my card cap and the whole table starts cracking up and saying, “ANOTHER one?!?!?” Good times!

This turns out to be an interesting table. A fun obnoxious moppy haired guy (Moppy) is at one end of the table and Grange is at the other. They are making crap out of everyone at the table. A decent, but equally obnoxious guy sits down next to Moppy, we’ll call him Meathead. Not sure if Meathead was getting big cards or what, but he raised literally four hands in a row from $21 to $28 which was twice the norm at the table. After making a couple of sick laydowns, I was shortstacked (about $85). Instead of buying my stack up to $300 and playing normal, I decided to play the "heidi ho" game and pick spots to just shove in and see if I could double up once or twice.

Push #1 - I limp with KJ, he pops to $21, everyone folds to me and I go all in for my last $83. He thinks for awhile then calls with pocket tens. I river a jack and double up. The table has a good laugh and we play on. Meathead is not pleased.

Push #2 - I've been worked down to about $70 again after missed flops and continuation bets and after everyone limps I go "heidi ho" again with pocket 77's and everyone folds. Yee-ha! Meathead tells he almost called but that I’m “probably the luckiest SOB” he’s ever seen.

Push #3 - I still only have about $90 and the guy to my immediate left hasn't played a lot of hands, but every time I speculate and limp he raises and I have to fold. Clearly, I'm sick of this. So, I get 8/9 spades on the button and raise to $12. He re-raises to $30 and everyone else folds. I figure he thinks I'm trying to steal again and is pushing me around so I shove my last $75 or so all in. He thinks for a minute or so and asks, "how much?" and I say, "frankly, not enough to make you go away" hoping he would go away. He calls and tables JJ. Flop is nothing, turn is an 8, river is a 9 - SHIP IT!!! Guy picks up the rest of his money and leaves muttering...classic!!!

By this time the cocktail server has been to our table about 150 times and Grange now has convinced her to call me “Fat Bastard” every time I order a drink. I attempt to bribe her to break a bottle over his head but apparently she has her limits.

“…and then he dumped water on my crotch.” – Friday 9:30PM
It’s now time for the highlight of the IMOP – the dinner at Delmonico’s featuring our Ugly Jacket competition. A few items worthy of mention:
• Pledge Bonnie and Pledge Barbie bought EXACTLY the same ugly green jacket – on the same day – at the same Goodwill store!!! Holy crap!
• Dan needs to try harder next year, although he did pick up points by intentionally leaving it on a slot machine and walking away after dinner.
• JB did himself proud not by his jacket, but by wearing shorts with it like Angus Young of AC/DC. I later commented that he was one tube of eyeliner away from being a member of Green Day as he had a black t-shirt with a picture of a tie on it.
• I gave it my best shot. I had my ugly black and white shoes, a paper thin v-neck sweater with a black dickie capped off with a black Member’s Only jacket. Sadly, I was outdone by Grange again…
• He had a jacket that really can’t be described. I suppose if you took a salmon filet, put it in a blender, put it on puree for 30 seconds, then threw the whole thing at a blackish-green wall, you’ve got his jacket. It even had big belt loops in the back for some unknown reason.

We get seated and immediately realize that Dan, who serves as our host for this event, is more than a little hammered, which might be the first time any of us can remember him in this condition. Pledge Barbie tells us that while they were at Caesar’s, the table started ordering rounds of shots called “Liquid Cocaine”. EEE-yikes! As usual we laugh our way through dinner and amazingly do not get thrown out. Our drunken host orders a cognac for dessert and continues his death spiral into hell. We are nearly ready to leave when the best moment of the trip occurs. As one of the busboys is clearing a plate, he doesn’t quite clear a very tall, very full glass of very cold ice water and dumps the entire thing directly into Dan’s crotch! We completely lose it and everyone pulls out their camera and starts snapping away laughing hysterically because on top of everything else he was wearing khaki pants. The patrons around us are puzzled and the maitre d is absolutely horrified that his employee dumped water on a guy at a table that just spent about $1,000 with them. We work hard to assure him that it is no big deal, and that frankly, we loved it (since it was spilled on Dan). We made a new rule that from that moment on, any story we told had to end with, “and then he spilled water on my crotch”. As we were leaving the now empty restaurant (they gave us free dessert while we waited for Dan’s pants to dry off enough so that he didn’t look like he peed himself), we made them go and get the guy that dumped the water so we could take pictures of he and Dan standing together. We snapped a couple more group photos in front of this humpty dumpty statue and left one of the jackets there and headed for TI to play more poker.

“I’m all in? What?” – Saturday 12:30AM
We arrive at TI in our get ups and get seated. Pledge Barbie is in the 2 seat, I’m in the 4 seat, JB is in the 7 seat and Grange is in the 9 seat in a 1/3NL game. It’s only about 10 hands or so in when the really big stacked Annoying Canadian (AC) in the 8 seat raises yet again. Pledge Barbie is the only caller and the flop comes out some odd board. Pledge Barbie checks and AC is not paying attention and talking to his buddy. Out of nowhere, and later alleged to be said to his buddy, we hear “I’m all in”. Pledge Barbie pulls a Phil Hellmuth call/push his chips into the pot lightning fast and tables a flopped set of 9’s as AC turns his attention back to the game to see the big “All In” button TI uses in front of him and Pledge Barbie’s mess of chips shoved wildly to the middle. He begins to yell, “Hey, I was talking to my buddy what the hell is going on here, eh!!?!???!!” Dealer has none of it and rolls the turn and river and tells the guy to cut out $400 chips to pay Pledge Barbie with. He’s still complaining and they call the floor over who verifies that others at the table heard the words “All In” and the ruling stands. As AC is still muttering and cutting chips, Pledge Barbie says loudly to no one in particular, “Darn, I should have bought in for the full $500.” Whoa boy!

“I’ll bet this crowd can’t even spell AVP” – Saturday 6PM
The next day we decide to grind away our hours at the V to make sure we cover our room rate for hours played before heading back over to TI for the big AVP private tournament. They allow rebuys and Pledge Barbie manages to be the first one out of the tournament – twice! Pledge Bonnie donates another rebuy as well. Grange makes the final table but gacks off his stack and makes the TI tournament the only one we didn’t have someone cash and chop. The guys are all seated and trying to grab some cash from the 1/3 tables at TI when Grange and I take off to do the poker room version of bar hopping.

We walk back down to Paris as neither of us had played this room. It’s basically right in the middle of their sports book. We get seated in a pretty bad game, but long enough for Grange to have both his AA sawed off by a bad call as well as hitting ANOTHER freakin’ high hand jackpot when he hits quad Jacks (that’s two for the trip and five in two trips – unreal). After about an hour we walk through Bally’s and head down to Flamingo for a 90 minute session. Grange again gets sawed off and I again nearly double up – good times!

Tough to ‘p’ at the IP – SUNDAY 3AM
Grange and I get seated at a donktastic game at the IP. I am on fumes by this point with only 7.5 hours of sleep in the past 4 days. The table is a typically great IP table. Our end has two decent guys to watch out for (aside from ourselves, of course) and the other end of the table has a calling station, a maniac who might have thought he was playing with wild cards and a woman who actually made a river call for $95 with less than A high. Woo-hoo! I’m home. However, poker playing was not the highlight of this stop.

Grange went to the can and he walks back into the poker room nearly in tears from laughing. And proceeds to tell me the following story…

A drunk trust fund baby type comes up to the urinal next to me, smoking a cigarette which is in his right hand. He seems to have trouble getting things taken care of left-handed, so he starts to use his right hand to help out … with cig still in his hand. He suddenly jumps back and lets out a loud and fairly incomprehensible yelp as he burns himself in a rather sensitive area. Let it also be known that Grange finished the story with, “and then he threw water on his crotch”.

Watch for falling Carona – SUNDAY 5AM
After Grange and I both hit big hands to double up at the IP, we walked back to the V. Pledge Barbie and Pledge Bonnie were both grinding away (I had received a very agitated voicemail from JB that he was going to nap after having a horrific run of luck – I haven’t had messages that long or that angry from ex-girlfriends!). I only had a few hours before our final breakfast and I still had to tally up all the tournament sheets and score all the prop bets. I wound up falling asleep for an hour, then grabbed all the stuff and decided I’d do the paperwork in the poker room. What I returned to was quite a sight. Grange had gotten a seat at Pledge Bonnie’s table who apparently was attempting to apply for Mexican citizenship by drinking their nation out of Corona. There were five bottles on the floor around him, one in his hand and one in his drink holder. Somehow, he also had well over $500 in chips in front of him. Grange called me over to tell me this story that happened while I was upstairs…

Another classic Bonnie moment—Playing drunk cash games at the Venetian, he is in a big multiway pot on the river. He makes a big bet, one guy folds, and Bonnie proudly yells to me look at his hand—and shows his signature hand of 7-4. Unfortunately, there is still a live hand left in play, who promptly makes a huge bet, forcing Bonnie to muck and tilt off in search of more booze.

Pledge Bonnie cashes out and comes over and sits down at the table where I’m doing paperwork. He asks me three times in 90 seconds what time it was. I send him off to bed and keep doing my thing. About 30 minutes later, Grange and I head back up to the room and find a passed out Pledge Bonnie snoring away – shirt on, pants off. As we try to roll him over to end the snoring, he sort of wakes up and gets out of bed but isn’t completely sure where he is, we guide him to bed and he attempts to get under the sheets but can only manage to get one leg in the army-like bed making job the V maid-staff has done. As he struggles to get his other leg and the rest of his torso under the covers he keeps muttering, “…TIGHT…too…TIGHT…tight” before finally giving up and passing out again.

Breakfast time comes and we decide to let Pledge Bonnie sleep it off, so the pledge misses graduation. We eat and tally the points and somehow, some way Grange has won for the second consecutive year. We all sigh as we know we are in for another year of taunting.

“I feel like dogsh!t” – SUNDAY 10:45AM
We get checked out of the V and for good measure, Dan gets tilted when he has to argue for 15 minutes with the front desk to get his poker room rate applied correctly to his bill. Getting Pledge Bonnie up and out of bed to pack was no small feat. He was gradually coming to his senses as we waited for Dan to get things squared away, so when he wanted to go outside in the massive throng of people to look for Big Rick, Pledge Barbie and I let him go. Mistake. As Pledge Barbie, Dan and I walked out, found Big Rick who greeted us with a hearty “IOWA IN THE HOUSE!!!!” and loaded our stuff up, Pledge Bonnie was nowhere to be found. Oh boy! I ran back to the entrance and looked around. I finally spotted him standing next to the curb staring blankly off into space. Apparently looking for Big Rick proved tiring. We get loaded up and we’re on our way to the airport.

Now, given that Big Rick hangs out with Flava Flav, making him laugh should prove to be a challenge. Well we were up for it because we had him almost in tears after a few stories. It also helped that about every 2 minutes, Pledge Bonnie would belt out “I feel like dogsh!t” to which we would all callously laugh uncontrollably.

After waiting over two hours for our flight, we were on our way back to Cedar Rapids. While waiting for our bags, we decided to play one more game of Luggage Carousel Roulette. Any guesses as to who won? That’s right! SHIP IT – HOLLA!!! At least I am champion of that game.

We are already looking forward to next year’s edition:
Ironman of Poker 4: Vegas Nights, The Ballad of Mikey Bonnie