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    Official Binion's (Horseshoe) Downtown Las Vegas Stories Thread

    Not sure how I came across it but I enjoyed this episode of the "Heads Up with Remko" podcast in which Chris Moneymaker was interviewed. http://podcast.pokercentral.com/head...ris-moneymaker

    It made me long for the days of the poker boom when it was new and exciting and 90% of the players were terrible. Fast forward to 45:23 for a cool story I've never heard before. Moneymaker talks about getting into a dick measuring contest (figuratively speaking) with Nick Binion at Binion's Horseshoe.

    Binion's is a total shit hole but I love to stay downtown and drop in there to get a free photo in front of the milly and play a tournament or two during the summer. Got any good stories about Binion's?

     
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    Played my first vegas poker tournament there. I'll save you all from the bad beat story that befell me & just say that one of the Binion's tried to pick up my wife while I was playing.

     
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hockey Guy
    I'd say good luck in the freeroll but I'm pretty sure you'll go on a bender to self-sabotage yourself & miss it completely or use it as the excuse of why you didn't cash.

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    I once found a lot of silver in the desert.

     
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    Looks like an interesting interview to listen to, but I'm not paying $$ to listen to a podcast. Is pokerGoNetwork same as the one the evil empire used to charge $$ to watch the live streams at WSOP this summer?

     
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    I first went to Binions in 1999 for my first WSOP. I was the typical hometown poker champ, and like most of them, I had no idea I had so much to learn still. I essentially blew my entire bankroll playing $300 single table satellites against likes Tony Ma and T.J. Cloutier. It wasn’t until 2007 that I went back, but in the meantime I studied up and improved my game, got more experience, and eventually broke through with a second place finish in limit hold’em in 2011.

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    No clue when, likely 2003. The place was on its last leg and lots of the casino had been shutdown by GC when they didn't have enough onsite reserves. The poker room was on its last days under Binion management. (I might have some of this wrong..) This was actually before the poker boom, or in the very early days of it. I was playing what was probably 4/8 killed to 6/12 with white chips, O8. The pot ended up being like 7 ways all-in due to all the shortstacks and a few of us pumping nut hands. I always found chaos funny and remember watching in amazement as the dealer calmly made a sidepot in front of every all-in player. There were probably 4 racks in all the pots, each person have many towers of white chips. It was before cellphone cameras, but I so wanted to take a picture of this. They stacked the chips too, being as it was O8. Dunno, if I saw such a thing now it might not even phase me... but thats sorta what poker is about, sitting around waiting for some rare occurance.

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    Quote Originally Posted by anchordraw View Post
    Looks like an interesting interview to listen to, but I'm not paying $$ to listen to a podcast. Is pokerGoNetwork same as the one the evil empire used to charge $$ to watch the live streams at WSOP this summer?
    You don't have to pay. Just follow the link and stream it for free or download the podcast on your device's podcast app.

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    I like Binion's summer poker series that they put on during the WSOP. I hate the Rio. About 5 years ago I played a few daily deepstack events and had literally the worst time I've ever had at a poker table. That's a story for another day but I've never been back since. Besides, I'm a low roller who doesn't play bracelet events so I have no need for it. Binion's is my scene. Low buy-in tournaments for all variants of poker. Great structures. Super fast cocktail servers. And I don't know why but I love how scummy it is. The Golden Nugget tournament across the street is fine but still feels a little too polished. I like to sidle up next to the dirtbags at Binion's and play some street poker.

    One year I played a PLO8 tourney and a HORSE tournament the next day. I swear there is no other game where you will find worse players than a live PLO8 tournament. Not sure how many times I've seen hands where someone calls a raise in middle position with something like 77J2, flop a set on a 237 board with two to a suit, happily get it all in against someone who is freerolling with something like A456 double-suited and then shrug their shoulders on their way out lamenting, "What could I do?"

    I didn't cash in the PLO8 tournament but final tabled the HORSE tournament the next day despite it being my first time playing HORSE live. One thing about Binion's is that the tournaments are populated by tons of local Old Man Coffees (OMCs). I had a run in with an OMC who I was beating in every Stud pot all day. He kind of looked like Jackie Mason.


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    The early levels of limit tournaments are often inconsequential so I was coming along with very speculative holdings and I seemed to always be calling this one guy's opening raises. I kept smashing straights against this guy and must have announced "Straight!" (somewhat obnoxiously perhaps) several times to beat him. He was losing his mind. At break I could hear him ranting and raving to his pals how this guy kept on sucking out on his rolled up hands in Stud. "Straight! Straight! Straight! This fucking guy!" After break he wouldn't let it go. He's one of these older guys who can never believe his bad luck. One of his buddies also final tabled so he was basically railing me the rest of the tournament and every time I was all in he rooted against me. Seriously. What a dick. His buddy and I busted on the same hand during a Razz hand. I think he had half his buddy's action so he was pretty happy with his cash and didn't seem to notice that I busted.

    Fast forward a year later and I was back at Binion's with my friend The Gooch. We played the HORSE tournament even though Gooch didn't even know the rules of most of the games. That morning at the hotel pool I explained how Razz works. Lo and behold, I get to my starting table and who should be seated next to me? My Jackie-Mason-looking rival from the previous year. I asked him, "Hey do you remember me?" He takes one took at me and shouts...

    "STRAIGHT!!!!"

    Ha, he did remember. He claimed to have nightmares for weeks about me. We buried the hatchet and, in the end, he turned out to be a pretty nice guy. Said his name is Flip. Anyone know him?

    I busted just short of the money but funnily enough, The Gooch made the final table. Lucky fuck.

     
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