Saturday

Needing basically to just get some air after a long session at the V, Grange, Santa and Sahara walked down to slum it at Bally’s for awhile. On the way back, Sahara and Santa drag Grange into Casino Royale for late night Subway. While ordering, Grange notices Sahara on his wee little tiptoes attempting to do something in front of the counter. When he is pressed, Sahara admits that he was trying to get a picture of the woman making his sub because she is missing a front tooth but can’t get a shot because the counter is too high. This sends Grange and Santa into hysterics and short jokes abound. Undeterred, Sahara manages to sneak a picture and is riding high with his score on the scavenger hunt until Santa reminds him he needs a picture of a MAN missing a tooth. Oooh, bad beat!!! More hilarity ensues.

Arriving back at the V, we learn that River Joe has won the 8pm Venetian tourney for a cool $2,500 cash, despite getting a one orbit penalty at the final table for accidentally exposing his cards. Knowing River Joe, it may well have saved him from some sort of strange beat or blow up. Thank goodness for nitty rules. Grange is up to usual antics calling pre flop with trash in hopes of having hilarity ensue. Sure enough, when he snaps off AA with a gutterball straight, he gets the finger when his parting shot to the guy is…”I put you on aces.” Also of note is when Grange rivers a gutterball and guy says, “So that’s how you play in Iowa?” Grange’s retort? “In Iowa we bet the turn to protect our hand.” Dale Carnegie, he ain’t.

Grange moves to a PL Omaha game and is quickly joined by Mr. Chow, still adorned in his KC and the Sunshine Band shirt. After an hour of playing at the same table, no one has yet realized that they are buddies. They get tangled up in a big hand and while Mr. Chow is contemplating a call, Grange pipes up with, “Anyone wearing a gay t-shirt like that should just fold.” The dealer immediately reprimands Grange, followed by Mr. Chow telling him it was ok since they are friends. The dealer then says, “OK, then I have to agree, that shirt is pretty gay.” Priceless!

A few hours later, the group slowly reassembles at Mirage for the 11am tournament. Team Cowbell showed their spirit by all wearing “Cowbell Hero” t shirts of various colors. We ran into Las Vegas Michael from AVP and made our presence known to the tournament staff as well. Lucky and JBDIA made the final table and continued our streak of multiple IMOP cashes.

This was also the team event for “Designated Drinker” where each team had a representative to suck down as many drinks as they could prior to our 9pm dinner reservation (by the way, this one has been taken OFF the board for next year – not a great idea!). Bonnie was the odd on favorite, but Mr. Chow was a strong contender and they ended up agreeing to a chop after 17 cocktails. Despite impressing the group with his penchant for winning big bets on Ivy League basketball, rookie and sacrificial lamb Baby ‘Los was never even really in the conversation for his attempt at the drinking competition. Grange ended up making some money by betting that Mr. Chow couldn’t remember to shout out a “Count from Sesame Street” (2! 2 Heinekens!! AH AH AH AH!!) impersonation announcement for each cocktail he ordered. It was over after the second drink.

As we donked out of the tournament, cash games got rolling. At one point, Bonny and Mr. Chow got seated next to one another to keep count of each other’s drinks. Bonny goes on to win some of the Ironmen some prop points by hitting not one but two high hand jackpots at Mirage in the same sitting by getting quads twice. Not sure he remembers it, but the rest of us sure do.

At another nearby table, Barbie and Santa are working a table over when a new dealer sits down who just so happens to be missing a front tooth. Barbie gets all excited and politely tells him that we are taking pictures of all our dealers and would like one of him as well. As Barbie goes to take his picture, he says, “Give us a BIG smile!”. And the guy will only grin with lips pursed tightly. Barbie gives Santa an irritated look and says, “Oops – didn’t get it. One more time – BIG SMILE!”. And the guy does exactly the same thing, though this time with just enough of a crack to capture the toothless smile.

Meanwhile, back at the V, the other half of the crew is grinding away. We first learn that a guy who Barbie tilted only an hour earlier while he was playing at the Mirage is now in a game with Grange at the V. Not long after learning this news, Grange cracks the guy’s AA with 6/3off and stacks him! Welcome to IMOP- we’re everywhere! But we also don’t limit ourselves to beating up on strangers….

Sahara, Colt and Fat Jesus are playing together. While in a hand together, Colt needs Fat Jesus to change a $100 bill into chips for him and throws the bill over to him. Less than a minute later, Fat Jesus goes all in and gets called by Colt, who loses to FJ’s trip aces. Sahara immediately pipes up to Colt, “Let me know if you need another loan with the same interest rate and time commitment.” If you can’t needle your friends…

In a feat nothing short of amazing given the day’s antics, all Ironmen are present and accounted for when the Hummer stretch limo arrives at the V to transport them in style to dinner. We arrive at Rumjungle at Mandalay Bay, complete with our ugly sport jackets, for our second year of “meat on swords”. They take great care of us and no one can keep track of how many swords of meat and platters of sides they bring us. The highlight of the meal comes when a drunken Bonny notices a server walking by with yet another platter and says, “Mmmm, what’s that?” She looks at the tray which has napkins, half eaten cobs of corn and assorted fat on it and says, “Sir, this is trash.” Bonny says, “Oh,” and silently turns back to the table.

After dinner, the group picture is taken in front of Stalin’s headless statue outside of Red Square restaurant. We take turns posing in questionable pictures in our jackets with Stalin. True to form, one of the Ironmen leaves his jacket behind hanging Stalin’s middle finger. It was only then that we noticed the crowd we attracted – as well as the young couple attempting to have dinner about 20 feet away. Probably not the romantic evening they envisioned. By the way, in an upset victory, Barbie walked away with the title this year unseating perennial champ Grange with a tiger-print velvety number. The consolation prize to Grange was that he was third in his room, even following upstart rookie Baby Carlos with a strong effort, sporting something he apparently stole from his grandfather’s closet.

Sunday

After dinner, the Ironmen had broken up into sub-wolf packs with Sahara, Grange, Santa and Barbie heading to the Mandalay poker room, then back to PHo for some button straddle action. At one point, Grange reraises Santa all in. As Santa is counting out his chips to make the call, he looks up to see Grange gnawing on one of the ears of corn from dinner in this year’s version of the IMOP 4 “meat tank” episode. Santa’s AA holds up and Grange wings the corn cob at him in disgust with little bits of corn sticking to Santa’s jacket. In fine PHo fashion, everyone laughs and the next hand is dealt.

Arriving back at the V around 3AM, the whereabouts of the rest of the crew are unknown. At around 7AM, Grange and Fat Jesus are extremely concerned about where a drunken Bonny might be – but not so concerned that they don’t both go and enjoy a delicious breakfast at Café Luxe first. By the time they finish, we learn that Bonny is safe and sound in his bed – though not without some amount of help.

Colt was up in the room sleeping when he awoke to the familiar “beep beep” sound of a key in the door. Only it wouldn’t open. Several more episodes, followed by incoherent mumbling and the occasional “DAMN ROOM KEY” caused Colt to get up and see what was going on. When he opened the door, he saw a tilted Bonny, completely perplexed at why his PLAYERS CARD wouldn’t open his hotel room door!

The packs slowly meet up and begin the long trek over to Aria for the Sunday tournament. We learn that a similar group from Kansas, who also played the Mirage tournament, is in this one as well. They continue taunting JBDIA by calling him “Erik Seidel” claiming that they are twins (which we of course now call him as well). About an hour into it, Colt notices that the nice lady on his left has a card protector of a 10 year old in a soccer jersey with shoulder length hair. Ever the friendly sort, Colt asks, “How old is your daughter?” The woman responds with, “That’s my grandson.” Table bursts into laughter at how a five word question exposes not one but two misperceptions. Damn Vegas.

Turns out they should have named this tournament the Ugly River Open as multiple suck outs happen, often involving Ironmen. Santa rivers a two outer against Lucky to stay alive. Grange rivers Sahara (holding 2-5off) to make trips and knock him out. Grange then gets rivered to be the bubble boy. Good news was that Baby Carlos makes an excellent showing and chops for first for a four figure payout. Not bad, rook!

Lucky and JBDIA had donked out early and headed back down the strip when they accidentally stumbled across the NBC Heads Up Championship between Annie Duke and, who else – Erik Seidel. They wind up getting front row seats and with free beer flowing, start making comments including a $20 prop for JBDIA to yell, “Damn you, Erik Seidel” like he had been taunted with earlier by the guys from Kansas.

Sahara had gone to get a mojito to try and heal the pain of getting rivered by Grange. He then entered the 8pm Venetian tourney and ended up chopping that one for first as well before hustling off to his early flight. Not bad for two Ironmen to take that particular tournament down 2 out of 3 nights!

Monday

As the Ironmen slowly started appearing in the poker room at the V before lunch the last day, several wound up at the same table to pass the time. Colt, Barbie, Santa, Bonnie, Fat Jesus, Grange and River Joe all made appearances at one point or another. Santa was busy tallying up all the hand scrawled scoresheets and working on his laptop in between folding most hands. Barbie even got one last futile shot at donktastic play of the trip by calling a pre flop shove by the most annoying human EVER holding…23off! A fine investment of $300 if I’ve ever seen it but sadly he couldn’t snap the guy. As he and Colt were getting up to leave, annoying man was giggling while still stacking chips. Colt says loudly, “As if he wasn’t already irritating enough.” But the clueless wonder wasn’t even smart enough to be insulted.

After painfully tallying everything up, Barbie was our newest champion, thanks largely to (among other things) winning a bunch of money, winning a $1,000+ pot holding king high, felting more than 30 different players in four days and leaving a trail of massively tilted players in his wake. Also, for the record, Lucky’s Charms won the first edition of the team event when they somehow managed to have more photos for the scavenger hunt than anyone else. Lucky continues to be the “first winner” of all new events – which makes him even more irritating to be around…

Bonus Coverage

This year featured a very unique ending to our story. As most of the Cedar Rapids contingent headed to the airport to catch the direct Allegiant flight back home, Barbie and Grange ground out a few more hours at the V. Since Barbie now had to deal with the IMOP trophy and box holding the commemorative watch, he attempted to sit them on the table next to his chips and immediately was told to remove them. Clearly the V does not realize how highly they should regard all things Ironman if they expect us back…

Meanwhile, back on the plane to Cedar Rapids, our hung-over and sleep deprived crew were in for a surprise. A mere 30 minutes from home, we are informed that visibility is poor enough to prevent us from landing. We are instead redirected to Peoria, IL where we land and sit on the tarmac for nearly 90 minutes while they figured out what to do. They finally let us off the plane to stretch our legs, when we then find out that we are stuck in Peoria for the night. We groan and begin the process of explaining things to the wives. Another announcement tells us that they have an “emergency rate” at the Baymont for us. Mr. Chow says, “No way in hell are we staying at the Baymont,” and promptly gets us adjoining rooms at the new Embassy Suites down town. We decide to play another round of “bag claim roulette” and – as usual – Santa wins AGAIN! Many of the already unhappy passengers become even unhappier as his endless taunts of “Ship it, holla!” don’t go over well.

In true Ironman fashion, we have not been in the Embassy Suites for 30 minutes before we have procured the following: $70 worth of pizza, 2 cases of beer and a poker chip set from the Wal-Mart across the street and we’ve got a cash game up and running. At one time or another, 4 of the 8 players actually fell asleep at the table before we finally called it a night at 3am. The bonus joy was that Barbie for some reason decided against flying with us and got stranded all on his own in Denver and had to watch as we tweeted our game to him, alone in a flea bag hotel.

We ended up sleeping through breakfast and were sitting around drinking coffee in the lobby when Bonny finally appeared – wearing a shirt that in big letters said “Things that get my D*#k hard”, which then included said list of things like “poker” “my hand” “your mom” etc. So, he doesn’t pull that shirt out at all in Vegas and decides to do so in Peoria with normal working folk hanging around? Oh boy.

See you next year for IMOP 6: There Will Be Blood