Rio, WSOP and Neil Strauss

Posted by Nat

July 29, 2006

After waking up and showering, we went over to the Rio to check out Day 1A WSOP action.

This is the entrance to the gaming expo part of the WSOP

Ozzy got ID’ed almost immediately upon entering the expo, so we went up to gandi9’s room to say hi. I personally think he’s one of the 5 best cash game players online — he uses the name gandi9 on Stars, FTP and UB, so watch him for a bit the next time you see him online. We left pretty soon though to head back downstairs… he was busy playing a session online and there wasn’t much point to staying. I don’t know him at all so I didn’t really feel comfortable asking for a picture of him and Ozzy or whatever.

Anyway, we went back downstairs to find Justin. On a sidenote, Justin is obsessed with this book called “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists” by Neil Strauss. It’s a wildly popular book… this is the quote from wikipedia:

After leaving the New York Times to ghostwrite the memoir of porn star Jenna Jameson, Strauss authored The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, a book about a sub-culture of pick-up artists known as the seduction community. The book has made a month-long appearance in the New York Times Best Seller list in September-October 2005 and reached the #1 position on Amazon.com, immediately after its release in the United States.

So anyway, we found Justin talking to this guy Craig who he knew from myspace or something like that. It turns out that Craig works with Neil Strauss and on top of that, Neil Strauss was on his way over to the Rio. Needless to say, Justin was very excited. Ozzy is also reading the book and he was excited too. I’d never heard of the book before Justin showed up in Vegas talking about it 24/7 so I wasn’t all that excited, but it sounded cool to meet him. Neil eventually showed up with a bunch of people who work with/for him. I took a bunch of pictures:

Justin talking to some of Neil’s people

Neil in the pink shirt, Craig on the right

Ozzy and Justin talking to Neil and crew

After talking to Neil and crew, we went over to the tournament area to take a look around. It could only be described as a zoo. We also made the mistake of trying to talk in the hallway right as players were going to dinner break. Horrible idea. We soon moved out of the way. But anyway, I got a few pictures: