Drink, Play, F@#k

by Andrew Gottlieb

  Usually “feel” is a term reserved to describe the indescribable, or to explain the inexplicable. The race car driver doesn’t have the most powerful engine, but he’s got a real feel for the track, and that’s why he wins. The surgeon had never seen a tumor like that before. He couldn’t rely on experience, so he felt his way through the procedure. What is that supposed to mean? Nothing, right? When we don’t know how the driver won, or how the surgeon excised the growth, we chalk it up to feel.

  Well, it doesn’t mean nothing. Having hung out next to Rick for those four months in Vegas (and quite a bit since then), I can personally attest to the existence of feel. Just because we can’t describe or explain it, doesn’t mean it’s not real.

  I don’t want to get all mumbo-jumbo on you here, but Rick had a way of sensing things that most other people can’t sense. Here’s an example.

  That first night at the Bellagio there was a Yankees/Angels game on one of the dozens of TV screens so large you could have played a hockey game on its surface except that the skates would have scratched the glass. The Angels’ ace, John Lackey, was pitching and the Angels were up 5–0. Rick suggested that we place a bet on the Yankees to win. This was ridiculous. The Angels have owned the Yankees for years. The Bronx Bombers were getting bombed by the Angels’ best pitcher and the game was halfway over.

  But Rick had a feeling. And it wasn’t some goofy, new-age vibration that he was picking up out of the ether. He said, “The Angels are finishing a long road trip. Their concentration will start to dip. Xavier Nady’s just getting comfortable in pinstripes. He’s due for a big game. And Girardi’s resting Robbie Cano, so he’ll be fresh in the late innings.” Even with that piercing insight, I still thought he was a little nuts making that wager. But I went along with it. And damned if the Yankees didn’t storm back to take an 8–5 lead (with Nady driving in three of the runs).

  I couldn’t believe it. I told Rick that he was a freaking genius. Everyone around us who had been laughing when we placed the bet (and got eight-to-one odds on our money, thank you very much) suddenly looked at us like gambling gods.

  Then, in the top of the eighth, Mark Teixeira hit a grand slam for the Angels. Just like that the Yankees were losing again, 9–8. It was a gut-wrenching moment for the team. Joe Girardi looked like someone had just kneed him in the solar plexus. Everyone at the sports book started laughing at us again. I could feel Girardi’s pain, as I had the distinct sensation that Mark Teixeira’s grand slam had ricocheted off the top of a passing 4 train, sailed across the continent, and landed right in the middle of my pants. Even Rick looked stunned.

  “Holy shit!” he exclaimed. “Did I not see that coming.”

  Lesser men might have doubted Rick at that point. We hadn’t risked too much money on the tickets—a few hundred each. But this unanticipated turn of events clearly was indicative of a man who had lost his feel. He made a preposterous bet, had gotten lucky enough to almost win, and then had been slapped back down by the inevitability of fate.

  But I had seen Rick in action and I already knew better than to doubt his hunches. Sure enough, in the bottom of the eighth, the Angels started booting the ball all over the park. The Yankees took advantage of their miscues and their bats woke up (Nady and Cano had key hits). And just like that the Yankees went ahead and won the game 14–9.

  We collected our winnings while those around us who had laughed, bowed, and then laughed again gave us one last bow as we walked away. It was more of a sarcastic “We’re not worthy” salute than an actual bow, but I could tell they were impressed. I was impressed too. Rick was right on the money in his statistical analysis of the game. But he also had the indefinable ability to sense when things were going to change. What do I know? Maybe he really could pick up on subtle shifts in biometric readings or energy waves or auras. All I know is that he would rather drink battery acid than talk about biometrics, energy, or auras.

  Rick’s mission is clear. He just wants to play around and have some fun. He believes in being informed, and then setting the information aside so that it doesn’t tie you up while you get a feel for the way things are going. That’s a good way to navigate your way through a sports book—and through life.

  22

  Over the next couple of months, I fell into a very pleasant pattern. I’d gamble for a while. If I was up big and wanted to celebrate, I’d head off to explore one of Vegas’s numerous, immaculately manicured golf courses. If my gambling spree went in the crapper and I needed to take a break, I’d head off to explore one of Vegas’s numerous, immaculately manicured golf courses. It was a pretty great pattern.

  When golf went well, I was happy and rested. When golf went poorly, I was a tiny bit less happy but still rested. I’d say that I’d hook up with Rick for about half of the gambling forays and for almost all of the trips around the track. He was off doing his own thing a lot too. His own thing consisted of acting as a personal trainer to some of the biggest celebrities to pass through town. He also claimed to be working on a novel, so he spent a lot of time at the library. Really. There are around fifteen extremely pleasant libraries in Vegas, and Rick went to them all. I visited him there a few times and was astounded to witness the normalcy of the library community. I assumed that they’d all be reading books about poker and chaos theory as it applies to gambling. But it was mostly school groups learning about American Indians and UNLV students researching term papers.

  Aside from being an excellent golfer, a fearless gambler, an engaging storyteller, and, apparently, a great personal trainer, Rick is also the most well-read person I have ever met. I have always had a stack of books that I wish I could be reading, but I don’t have time because I have to . . . whatever. I have to pick up my wife’s dry cleaning. I have to wash my car. I have to clean out the rain gutters. Well, instead of doing all those things, Rick went ahead and read that stack of books. Looking back, I should have read my stack too. When you think about it, my wife dumped me, it always rained right after I washed the car, and the rain would have cleaned out the gutters anyway. Nowadays I try not to let that stack of unread books get too high.

  The best thing about the pattern that I fell into was that I really was learning to pace myself. I didn’t feel that desperate need to pump up the action every second of every day like I did when I first got to town. I realized that the real reason I came to Las Vegas was to play—not necessarily gamble, or hit golf balls—but to play. Ultimately, that’s the most appealing thing about the city. The whole place is a temple to leisure. Some people might say that’s a silly reason for a city to exist. But I disagree. Life has too many serious moments as it is. Every day we’re faced with a dozen choices that tie us up in knots. Should I send my kids to public school? Or should I take a second job and send them to private school? Should I put my mother in a nursing home? Or should I invite her to live with me?

  Those are big decisions that have to be made. They’re important—and I’m not diminishing their significance. But in Vegas, my toughest choices were things like, “Should I play from the blue tees or the white tees?” “Should I hit the Hard Rock or Mandalay Bay first?” Those decisions are unimportant—but I’m also not diminishing their significance. Because not everything has to be such a big deal all the time. If you don’t unwind and just veg out with a beer and a swim-up blackjack table now and then, you’ll make yourself nuts. And if you’re nuts, you’ll make the wrong decisions about the big stuff. And that’s how you end up with three kids in private school and your senile mother living in your basement.

  One element of my Vegas routine that I particularly enjoyed was living up to my reputation as a big-stakes gambler. As it turned out, my friend who had the connections at Bellagio had indeed told the management there that I was a high roller from the East Coast. Thanks to my continued run of casino wins—due in no small part to Rick’s guidance coupled with a stretch of truly good fortune—I was actually able to put quite a bit of money into play on a regular basis. I won enough to get rated
as a high-limit player in all the casinos in town. I lost enough to make them feel like I was the kind of guy they all wanted around. And then I usually won enough back again to fund the whole enterprise and keep the circle of life rolling along.

  Because of my slightly deceptive introduction to the casino world, and thanks to my consistent winning, I was quickly receiving the VIP treatment at every casino I went to. Rick was already a known and welcome commodity everywhere in Vegas. Together we were like visiting royalty. Well, maybe royalty is a stretch. Let’s say we were treated like visiting nobility who occasionally spend a week at the royal hunting lodge and could get the king on their cell phones if they really had to.

  I received free massages at the Mirage, saw free shows at the Paris, and ate free buffets everywhere. The Vegas buffet is often scoffed at in popular culture. And I will acknowledge that the quality of food pales in comparison to the many fine restaurants one finds at all the best casinos. But there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a quality buffet, completely overstuffed with a cornucopia of culinary options.

  The buffet is Vegas in a microcosm. It’s a truly ecumenical melting pot. When you’re cruising the different food sections, you’ll come across every class, race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, and shoe size. One time I even saw Howie Mandel!

  The casino floors are the same way. If you’re at the sports book or the Pai Gow tables, you might be sitting next to a homeless guy or you might be sitting next to the pope. Okay, it’s unlikely that the pope would be playing Pai Gow. But maybe you’d see him somewhere classier—like the baccarat table. My point is that all are welcome equally. Everyone gets pumped when they win and bummed when they lose. Everyone berates a dealer who’s killing them, and laughs with a dealer who is treating them kindly.

  Maybe I loved my time in Vegas so much because in a lot of ways it reminded me of the pubs of Ireland. There’s a shared spirit in both places, a common and unique vocabulary that we all speak to each other while playing or drinking. Both cultures are built around activities that some people frown upon (drinking and gambling). And I realize that both can be abused and both can be harmful. But when approached the right way—the way I feel that I approached them during my time in Dublin and Vegas—then there’s nothing more heartwarming and human than sharing a beer and a bet with fellow strangers.

  23

  I had an unbelievable time in that shimmering jewel set in the baking desert sands. The fact that at one point I was up over 100K is completely beside the point. Rick loved to talk about gambling, but he rarely talked about money. He really didn’t care about it all that much. His attitude was that you worry about money only when you clearly don’t have enough of it to do what you want. As long as his basic needs were met, he didn’t sweat it. Obviously, a lot of his basic needs (and beyond) were met for free because he has the most impressive list of friends and contacts that I’ve ever seen. Maybe Jay-Z has a more star-studded Rolodex, but I’ve never seen Jay-Z’s Rolodex. I have, however, scrolled through Rick’s address book—and it reads like a who’s who of business, finance, politics, and the arts. I guess it pays to be a supremely personable personal trainer.

  As soon as I embraced Rick’s laissez-faire approach to finance, my finances began to improve dramatically. That $100,000 number really is just an estimate because I stopped keeping track of my wins and losses. I knew that I was consistently up. And I knew that I would have to establish a rough tally of my profits by the end of the year—if only to give Uncle Sam his April rake. But the numbers weren’t the goal. Having fun, getting my heart pumping by goosing the action, meeting new people, hitting golf shots I’d never tried before, seeing how long I could hold my breath underwater at the Palms rooftop pool—those became my new goals. The eight hundred dollars I won when I was able to hold my breath for over a minute was purely incidental. I think I blew it all buying everyone there shots anyway.

  I was committed to searching out fun in all of its forms. The only thing that I consciously avoided doing while there was playing poker. I love poker. And I knew that I would love the poker scene in Vegas. My concern was that I would love it so much I would allow it to take over all my time. It’s kind of like golf that way. If I could play golf twenty-four hours a day while being fed intravenously, I might spend the rest of my days smacking that pill around. But I can’t play golf twenty-four hours a day. It’s technically impossible, thank God. Poker, however, is extremely easy to play nonstop. And you don’t even need the intravenous feeding tubes because they’ll bring food right to your table (if the stakes are high enough).

  Early on in my trip to Vegas I decided that I would save poker for the next time I checked out of my life in search of new thrills. And I wouldn’t just play in Vegas. The poker scene has exploded to such a degree that I could follow the pro circuit around the globe all year long. Someday I’m going to take a stab at testing myself against the greatest players in the world. But that would have to wait for another time. For now, I was focusing on the simpler Vegas pleasures—table games, sports betting, and golf, with the occasional workout session with Rick thrown in just to keep my body from atrophying completely.

  Just like in Ireland, when I stopped trying to force the fun, the fun came right to me all by itself. I had friends in every casino and clubhouse in town. I usually insisted upon interacting with the employees of the different establishments according to the theme of that establishment. Therefore, at the Paris, they called me Monsieur Sullivan. At the Venetian, they called me Roberto. At Treasure Island, I’d adopt a pirate’s brogue and threaten to keelhaul the dealer if he didn’t bust. It sounds kind of stupid, but we had a good time with it. The bottom line is—sure, people go to Vegas and hope to break the bank, but basically all they’re really looking for is a good time. And, if you help them achieve their goals, they’ll provide you with a good time too.

  I had more amazing experiences there than I could possibly recount. But my ultimate twenty-four-hour stretch in Las Vegas occurred somewhere toward the end of my sojourn there—I think it was in late August.

  I woke up really early, around 5 am, because Rick and I were trying a new course and we wanted to get out there before it got to be so hot that my seven iron would melt in my hands. We got to the Royal Links Golf Club and they let us out before they were even open. Apparently Rick had helped Pete Dye lose thirty pounds and he was hooked up at all his golf courses. So we played the entire round without ever seeing another living soul.

  Royal Links is the apotheosis of everything that’s wonderful about Las Vegas. It’s a completely preposterous concept—they re-created eighteen of the greatest links holes from England, Scotland, and Ireland and laid them out in succession in the middle of the Nevada desert. It sounds like a truly tacky, kitschy, Vegas-y idea. And it is. I mean, why would there be a links course in Las Vegas? Links courses occur naturally in blustery seaside conditions. There was nothing blustery or seaside-y about the sun-blasted heat flats of Nevada. But—like so many other tacky, kitschy ideas in Vegas—this one worked beautifully. The course was in perfect condition. The holes were breathtaking. And, let’s face it, I had been in Ireland for four months and never dragged my ass out to a single links course. In one fell swoop in Vegas, I got to play eighteen of them.

  Beyond the majesty of the surroundings, my game was on that morning. I don’t know what happened exactly, because I’ve never been able to recapture that kind of swing magic since. Maybe I was just too tired from lack of sleep and too overwhelmed by the gorgeous scenery to worry too much about mechanics. But I was on fire from the first tee. As breaking eighty shifted from a remote possibility to a real chance, I didn’t even tense up or get flustered. Rick was awesome. He kept me loose with a steady stream of humorous bullshit. As I stood at the eighteenth tee, I realized that I could par the hole for a seventy-nine. Instead of immediately regretting this realization as an inevitable jinx, I offered to bet Rick that I was breaking eighty today. Rick was up for the action.

/>   He said, “You’re on. One hundred bucks if you break eighty. But let’s pump up the action. Let’s add another one hundred dollars for each stroke over or under eighty. So, let’s just say you were to yank this tee shot into the gorse and then take a quadruple here. You’d shoot an eighty-three and you’d owe me four hundred dollars—one hundred for not breaking eighty, and three hundred more because you’d be three over. What do you say?”

  I didn’t even hesitate. I told him that he was on. I believe my actual words were, “You’re on, sucka.”

  I bombed a drive right down the middle. Crushed a three wood onto the green for my second. Just missed a curling forty-footer for eagle and tapped in for birdie. Seventy-eight! I couldn’t believe it. It had been almost effortless. And the best part was that Rick was even happier for me than I was. I think he knew that his raising the stakes would help me buckle down and focus. He could tell that I was ready to rise to the occasion.

  I gladly accepted his cash and told him I knew just what to do with it.

  An hour later Rick, the pretty waitress from Prime, one of her equally pretty girlfriends, and I were in a helicopter heading out for a tour of the Grand Canyon. I will not waste your time or my meager brainpower trying to describe how insanely amazing the Grand Canyon is. All I can say is that swooping into the mouth of the canyon and descending all the way to land on the canyon floor is one of the most jaw-droppingly wonderful experiences that I have ever had. The four of us enjoyed a picnic lunch on the canyon floor while we stared all around us in stunned silence. The food was delicious, the ladies were lovely, and the setting was unbelievable in the truest sense of the word. Even though I was there looking right at it, I really had a hard time believing it was true.