An Amazing Opportunity with the Syndicate Pt. 1

In all the craziness of the recent times of my life, I once again found the perfect three-day escape. Every time I leave Vegas it seems as though the only thing I want to do is go straight back. I realize that I'm not the only one with this feeling, nor am I even one of a select few, but I can't help but love that place.

Three weeks ago I was given the amazing chance to be part of an age-old crew that has come together for decades to form outstanding feats of gambling glory: the Syndicate. The Syndicate that I'm referring to consists of my father and a large group of rotating friends, who, in their younger years, went to Vegas almost every weekend to take on the casinos and have the time of their lives. Some still go pretty regularly, but as the older generation dies out the tradition is being taught and handed down to the next in line.

The object of the Syndicate is very simple: everyone puts in the same amount of money on a certain gambling venture, and if there's overall profit then everyone splits what comes of it. If everyone loses, then it's on to the next game. A lot of the time this consists of everyone putting in a certain amount of money into a single machine, whether it be slot or video slot, while one person takes the chair and tries to dominate that specific game with his fellow members cheering on in rally. This isn't to say that table games are not on the ballot, because they are, but the exception is that craps is rarely , if ever, played for the Syndicate. While most of the time the group will lose, if you use the extended currencies to hit a hot machine the big payouts tend to even everyone out.

This latest adventure pitted two old-timers and a first-timer (myself) against the wonders of the City of Lights. The father and I headed out on a Friday noon to meet up with the other, Ben, who would likely be in full swing. Ben is still a Vegas junkie. He's a monthly visitor and, luckily for us, he and his brother play enough and high enough that they get comped wherever they need to. This weekend it at the Palazzo. I was excited to check it out, as I was staying next door at the Venetian during the Palazzo's soft opening but failed to go in.

While we would be staying at the "new definition of luxury", we needed to head to the Orleans first so we could hit up the daily 7PM tourney. The two of us got there barely before the tourney started, so we said a quick hello to our third member and quickly bought in for $105. Before we started the tournament I learned a few rules about the Syndicate.

Rule #1: There must always be either 3 or 5 people in the Syndicate. The odd man must have final say over a tied vote.

Rule #2: Always have faith, the Syndicate will prevail!

Rule #3: Drink a lot.

Rule #4: "Details". (This'll be more clear later in the story.)

So we all grabbed a couple drinks and headed to take our seats. After a few hours of play I was pretty standard stacked, but doubled up right before the first break. The three of us found out that I was the biggest stack of the Syndicate's three horses, yet in my mind Ben was the favorite to pull through the weekend's first victory.

Eventually I ended up blinding down and found myself with about 11k with the blinds at 1000/2000/300. There was a break and blind increase in a few minutes so I was hoping to double up again like I did before the first break. A few hands later UTG raised to 6.5k while I looked down at AKo in the hijack. I obviously snap shoved for the rest of my short stack and got called 3 ways behind. I was up against AKo in the SB, 1010 UTG, and for some reason the 40k stack BB called my RR and then called the UTG's 35k reshove AI with...KJo. So I was drawing to chop with a case K or one of two Aces, but neither fell and the 1010 picked up a healthy pot.

I was out before the second break with no cash, but looked over to see Ben, the group favorite, on the rail. We scouted out Father-man to check his status as the tourney went into the second break, and it looked like his stack would be in trouble after the break was over. The Syndicate's first investment looked weak.

The two of us found a drink girl and a Texas Tea machine, and decided to play some two-way action as we each plugged a $20 into the famed machine. Now this is where I caught my first glimpse of the beauty of a function like the Syndicate. Even on a low budget you can play and drink for a long time and still have a ton of fun. You triple your play-time on any machine, and when the play hits you get fun money given back to you. There are a few times in my first trip with the group that we ended up hitting big payouts when were down to our last 1/3 of the buyin. Without buying in for triple or split action from the Syndicate, one would more than likely walk away after the first $20 or $100 without success. The Syndicate, my friends, is a group founded on the idea of success.

While this was not true action in the sense of our ring, we both played and hit the bonus, for which I picked three spots that were the lowest payouts on the board. Mark one for Chris being horrible at gambling this weekend. We bottomed out and hit the bar and then the rail again to watch our third player play on. He eventually broke before the cash and we hit our first loss of the weekend.

It was time for some more drinks so the three of us grabbed 'em and took off running. The casino was about to be our bitch for the night, we were convinced of it!

We munched up a Chinese food dinner before we roamed the casino floor for a while. Unfortunately, hours of drinking and pumping machines full of twenties at the Orleans resulted in nothing more than lighter pockets. At the tail end of our session we landed on another Texas Tea machine that took us up to almost even with a four-spot bonus that hit pretty big right off the bat. We cashed out, shipped the split profit from the game, and decided to head back to the poker room to take advantage of their 11PM $80 tourney.

After the drinks that were in me, and facing a small field of four short-handed tables, my brain almost considered this tourney a locked win in favor of me. My fingers had different plans though. I lost about half my stack in the first two orbits, and got into a couple quarrels with a kid who thought he was God's gift to poker. There he was at an hour-to-midnight wearing a beanie, sunglasses, and a pair of headphones, playing the best poker of his life.

Ben was again knocked out before me, and I lasted about half an hour before I pushed my stack with 27hh UTG. The kid called with 38o and, as fate would have it, 8-high held across the board. Obviously the Gift made sure that the table heard that he KNEW 8-high was good, he knew it! So...my plans for this tournament didn't pan out.

I was fearless in my defeat, however, because I knew that the video poker bar was feet away! After watching some nub falling over as he walked away from the same bar, I sauntered up and pounded some $20 drinks while I played free video poker. Right at the end of my third drink I hit a couple full houses and shipped back a double-profit. My losses were shrinking, this was good news.

This is where things got a bit hazy. The drinks didn't stop, the gambling didn't stop, but somewhere along the way my memory began to cower away. The Syndicate fought hard throughout the night and from the evidence of the morning after we were only down $160 from gambling, and only around $100 each from tipping. We loaded our bags from our car into a cab and took off to the Palazzo to top off the night.

Part 2 is going to be a mix of story-telling and "fill-in-the-black" memory, but I'll do the best I can to recall it all in my next post.

I know that I have yet to continue on the other Pt. 1 I started about my birthday trip in December, but I feel like writing this one now while it's fresh. Bear with me here, I just started writing again ;)

And be sure to check out Splendid Simplism for daily updates on my life that aren't gambling related.

There's a Place to Gamble, and There's a Place to Complain About Life

I feel like I created this blog to tell stories of degeneracy and (a now recognized failure of) gambling domination, but lately all that's come from Sitting the Apple is a bunch of self-loathing and gray matter that's more accurately described as mental excrement than ingenious brainiacal amazement. Therefore, I created a new place to put my daily whines so I can keep this blog for its intended purpose: the GAMBOL!

I'd like to lead you now to: Splendid Simplism. I can only hope that the title exorbitantly explains the confusion I seem to currently be in. Whereas here I will hopefully eventually sit the apple, there I will freely sit in a corner of my mind and unleash the hells that I face outside of the gambling world.

Never stay gone from Sitting the Apple too long, though, I have many unwritten tales of Vegas that I see coming to life in the near future...

Time to Clear My Head

After a painfully empty-handed release day on Tuesday, I received the controversial Grand Theft Auto IV yesterday. The game was kept on a "hush-hush" level throughout it's production and all the way up to its release date. While there was obviously a lot to be expected of this masterpiece, I wasn't really sure what I could want out of a next generation console.

I decided to preorder it merely days before it was released since I had barely paid any attention to it at all. I had to pop in GTA: San Adreas when I first thought about buying the latest installation, and within an hour of replaying one of the funnest games I played on the XBOX, I knew I'd have to have to have its 360 cousin. Now, after putting in a night's worth of playing time, I'm glad I kept in the family.

This is a huge game. The physics, the game engine itself, the graphics, the gameplay, the storyline...all top notch. Adding in the online multiplayer function and it's variety of MP game modes really puts the double icing on this cake. This is going to end up being one of the most sold games out there, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a bunch of younguns putting their entirety into this game, regardless of the fact that it's marked for mature audiences only.

Once I got the game and plugged into it my mind seemed to get put on hold, which is a welcome treat. When I start thinking about things I tend to way overthink. Whenever I'm faced with a decision that pertains to a change in my life, it 1)is usually an unnecessary, self-imposed conundrum, and 2)something to take my mind off of my continual boredom both in the working world and at home.

It's an oddity in my life that's been occurring for a couple years now that I can't really explain. Prior to my advancement into a salary position I was a happy-go-lucky guy. Things were different before I was a fully employed dream child for a small company, and somewhere along the way a switch was flipped that turned the lights out over my general contentment. I don't remember a distinct thing that happened to make me feel the way I feel now and have been feeling for 2 years, but I've been fighting to find a way to get back to that state of mind since the day it changed.

I don't think I'm as troubled as I've come off in Sitting the Apple lately, but I'm sure it seems like it. My worries come in spurts, and I'd rather them not come at all. I'm a happy guy, I don't normally stress about much, and I try to live a care-free life because it's easier and less troublesome that way. Something's holding me back.

While it's true there have been times in the recent past where I've felt better and happier than I had in a long while, I still haven't really reached the point where I'm not worrying about things anymore. I recently found out that I'm in more financial distress than I thought, and I'm facing a decision in the near future of either keeping part of my life the same or starting all over in a new place.

As previously stated in this blog, I'm thinking heavily of Option #1: moving to Vegas for a temporary period of time. While many around me are telling me that I won't like living there, and that I simply like vacationing there, I understand their concerns but completely disagree. There are very few people who know me down to the bone and who I have shared many dark times with, and even in the gray period of my life right now they tell me I'd survive out there because of who I am. I believe that.

On the other hand, do I really want to leave the security of a paycheck? The fact that I finally owe a substantial amount of money to my credit cards is making me a hermit in the ocean of freedom. I obviously don't want to move to a new place with accumulated credit riding my coat tails, and relatively while I try in vain to pay down in full my current debts I don't want to move to a new place with no set job while I have no cash in my pockets.

Another option is to hump the job for the paychecks, move to a better place and, dare I say it once more, go back to school. The reason I've been in this state is that I made a bold move to leave my comfort zone and move to Santa Barbara three years ago. It was a new place, a new job, and a fresh start. I didn't know anybody out here, had no friends at first, and spent the better part of my first years here inside or in a casino. Downtown Santa Barbara's entertainment is defined as drinking. Unfortunately for me when I arrived in SB I still had years left before I was legal to drink in public. The one thing I could do is go to the local Indian casino, which allowed gamblers as young as 18. So as any reader of my blog can imagine, that's exactly what I did, and I did it often.

By the time I was able to go out and socialize downtown I was already too miserable to go out and bullshit with random people. I did take a more solid stance in hanging out with my friends in the town over a half an hour away, and thankfully I met Steph. She's definitely changed my life and although we're a drive away from each other, I'm glad we're JUST a drive away from each other.

So that leads to Option #2: move to Ventura and get a place with Steph. This would be a great decision for me mentally outside of work, but I would still face a financial dilemma. I will have my debts paid off by the time it's time to leave my current apartment, but I'll be left on the short end of the money stick and will WANT to get into a full-time job ASAP. So the question at that point is do I stay with my job and make the drive daily twice a day? What's supposed to be a 25 minute drive either way turns into an hour-long trudge northbound in the morning, and the same Hellish drive southbound at 5. And wouldn't you know it, those are exactly the directions I need to go at those times coming and going to Ventura.

The benefits of living in Ventura again would be tenfold. All of my high school friends are there, my best friends are there (with the exception of that lucky bastard who's living in Hawaii right now), and my girlfriend's there. There's stuff to do, the cost of living is acceptable and not completely retarded, there's still a beach if I want to go it (LOL SoCal), and I'm familiar with the area. The reasons I'm unhappy where I am now is basically because I'm living in the exact opposite scene of what I just described.

I don't really want to go through the hassle of getting another job if I'm moving close enough to stay in this office. For as much as I complain about this job, it seems in my mind that if I settle myself in a better living scenario most of my mental troubles will fade away. Of course only time will tell that.

So for this coming weekend, as the thoughts pile up and become trapped, I'll do what any sensible person in my situation would do: go to Vegas.