Nat Arem's Blog

Ozzy and I stopped by the Rio for few minutes on Friday night during the WSOP dinner break just so we could say hello to people, wish Martine23 luck and just hang out. We had dinner with hazards21 and I also got a few pictures:

In the cab line at the Bellagio… I got a picture of the Bellagio fountain show

TheWacoKidd holding the worst $15K he’s ever cashed for… Cal is along for the pic

strassa2 looking pretty goofy as he tells Ozzy a story about some hand. He’s in great shape, I hope he can take it down (or Rizen or Martine23). Long way to go though.

Ozzy talking to Gigabet, who busted before play concluded last night.

Ozzy also met Prahlad for the first time in person, but I wasn’t fast enough to get a picture of it — Prahlad was in a rush to get back to his table after the dinner break.

We went back to the Bellagio, then went to Bushman’s house for a bit. I got some good pics/video from that, but I’m pretty tired (it’s 6:25 AM) so I’ll just make a new blog tomorrow.

The USA Basketball team is in town, so 10 of us went to go see them play against Puerto Rico at the UNLV arena.

There isn’t much to type about, but I did take a lot of pictures:

Before the game started

USA team warming up

Ozzy

The Puerto Rican team

National anthem

Tip off

Puerto Rico inbounding the ball

Ozzy, Brandon and Bushman

A Puerto Rican player driving the lane. Lebron is on his right (our left) and he’s about to block the shit out of this dude’s layup.

Conclusive evidence that Carmelo Anthony cheats! He’s a full step into the lane (on our side) and the Puerto Rican player hasn’t even released the ball yet.

They brought these trampoline guys out during a break… some of the stuff they did was pretty sick. And yes, that guy is upside down and he’s about to dunk the ball.

They honored former Olympic team members during another break. Lenny Wilkens on the left in the tan suit. From left to right after him: Spencer Haywood, Chuck Daly, Clyde Drexler and Scottie Pippen.

Blue Man Group during another break. They have a popular show at the Venetian.

Blue Men shooting streamers into the crowd.

A USA free throw

The score at the end of the 3rd. Verdict: not close.

I took this picture holding my arm out to the right… from left: me, Ozzy, Brandon falling asleep and Bushman talking to Gavin (Boykee) in the red sweatshirt

You might have noticed that I said that a bunch of us went to the game, but I only showed like 4 other people. That’s because we were forced to split up. On the other side of the arena, from left to right: MrSmokey1 (I pointed him out with the arrow), schaefer, ackbleh and ackbleh’s friend. I’m not sure what the point of this picture is, but I took it so I might as well post it.

I didn’t do much during the day today.

I saw the 7:30 PM show of “O” at Bellagio with Ozzy. It’s a pretty spectacular show and I recommend it to anyone who visits Vegas. I’ve enjoyed all of the Cirque du Soleil shows that I’ve been to.

After that, GambleAB got in contact with me on AIM and we decided to meet up for some bar action. I got in a cab and went over to his apartment where he lives with veeRob. We headed out soon after to meet up with gbmantis. However, I didn’t leave without getting some pictures of Aaron in his “office”:

Aaron

Again…

Then we went to some bar across the street from the Rio for some drinking and Golden Tee.

gbmantis in the forward facing hat, Aaron playing Golden Tee and gbmantis’ friend in the white shirt

Similar shot

Aaron and gbmantis

So then we ordered some nachos and ate them, but no one really ate any of our salsa. Naturally, we’re all well-off poker players and we felt like blowing $100 each on some fun. So we put up a bounty of $300 for anyone who wanted to drink both of the bowls of spicy salsa. It wouldn’t be all that difficult for the average guy, so I made the demand that I would only contribute $100 if a girl drank them. So the search was on. Here are some views of the bounty/salsa:

Salsa + $300

Aaron and Rob with the prize

So we found a willing participant pretty quickly. Her name is Jodi and she was there with her (boyfriend?) Kevin, a military guy. She didn’t do so well, but I got a bunch of pictures:

Kevin on the left

Jodi

Not doing too well, but getting encouragement

The spectators enjoying the show

I eventually offered a $100 consolation prize if she got down even one bowl. It didn’t happen.

Once Jodi failed, Kevin went for it even though it didn’t count for the purposes of the challenge

He did give some effort, so I gave him a bit of cash to help offset his dinner costs. Overall it was very entertaining.

Then we left to go to The Orleans (a complete piece of crap, I’m glad I’m staying at the Bellagio) to play some craps — it’s -EV from a $ perspective, but not from a fun perspective.

Walking in to The Orleans

gbmantis bought in for $300 and promptly ran it up to like $2.5K. The blacks are $100 chips and there’s a huge row of green/yellow $25 in front of them. The red chips are $5 chips and there are $1 brown chips next to those.

Soon after I split a cab with gbmantis and his friend back to Monte Carlo/Bellagio. I’m now watching V for Vendetta in the hotel room, about to sleep.

I woke up and went to the pool with Ozzy, Justin, Bushman, Jackie (Bushman’s wife), Bushman’s sister (Daniele I think) and Bushman’s sister’s friend (name unknown). I really love spending time by the Bellagio pool, it’s so nice. I will continue to try to make it out there for at least an hour or so every day for the rest of the trip. We made plans for an 8:30 PM dinner at Shintaro, a Japanese Hibachi place at the Bellagio. It overlooks the fountains and is a great place to eat.

On a sidenote, USA Basketball is in town for some random game/practicing and I almost bumped into Jermaine O’Neal in the lobby today when walking to the restaurant. It obviously would have gone his way in the case of a collision, he’s freaking huge. I also saw Emeka Okafor in the elevator bank the other day, but I didn’t bother mentioning it. I saw LeBron yesterday and forgot to mention it in my 2+2 blog. I’m not sure if anyone I know played with him, but Antoine Walker was sitting with $100k+ in the 100/200 NL game. I think he went bust pretty fast. Anyway, it’s an NBA player-fest out here. Just sit in the Bellagio lobby and you’ll see them walking by all day.

Moving on, we all went out to the Japanese place. I grabbed a few pics:

The back of Ozzy’s head and the Hibachi dude starting up the grill

Justin and thorladen talking about something…

From left to right: Bushman’s sister’s unidentified friend, Bushman’s sister (theoretically named Daniele), Bushman and Jackie

Bushman, Jackie, Justin and thorladen — standing outside the restaurant after we were done

Tomorrow I’m going to see the Cirque du Soleil show “O” at the Bellagio with Ozzy. I’ve heard great things about it, so I’m excited to see it.

Justin, Ozzy and I went over to the 2+2 dinner at ESPNZone around 8 PM. There’s not much to say about it except it was a lot of fun and I met/talked to a bunch of great guys/players. I took a ton of pics (pretty typical of me at this point):

On the walk over, Justin and Ozzy with the camera looking south on the strip

colson10, tyler durden (not looking all that intelligent in this pic) and durron597

colson10, tyler durden and schaefer facing away from the camera

Justin, Rizen and Ozzy

Ozzy, durron597 and tyler durden

schaefer, dmk and adanthar

uclabruinz and nath (aka Cap’nJackpot)

woodguy55 talking to colson10

grafyx (aka redeye3030), foucault, jurollo and tyler durden

Mrs. Rizen, Rizen and sirio11

schaefer double-fisting it

Yuv21 and gobboboy

mlagoo and scottjf08

ZBTHorton1 in the PokerStars jersey, mman_status in the blue-ish shirt on the right, Yuv21 to his right and chrisman to his right

Ozzy, Justin, durron587 and schaefer talking strategy… I think some main event hands were being discussed

Ozzy and MrTimCaum

Anyway, that was it for the party. We decided to go back to the house with colson, dmk and schaefer. Ozzy and Justin took Justin’s car while I got a ride with schaefer. I managed to snap this gem of a picture on the way…

On the back to the Bushman & Co. house, schaefer points out his favorite radio station of all-time: “the beat”

Also, here are a few good pics from back at the house…

schaefer and MrSmokey1 had some sort of football bet/challenge that involved one of them getting across the room before the other one could tackle him… anyway, it ended up with MrSmokey1 driving schaefer’s head into (and partially through) the wall. Needless to say, ackbleh (somehow designated the head tenant) wasn’t happy about the damage.

I know TheReader23 (Martine23′s mom) will be happy about this one… I finally got a picture of your son on the blog!

Johnster watching some TV

Now I’m back at the Bellagio about to go to sleep. Nothing important planned for tomorrow.