Fill Your Hand

258
July 13th, 2018
Back Fill Your Hand
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I share a house in Phoenix, AZ. with two great roommates. One of them is Jeff and he collects guns.

A native of Utah -- he was raised Mormon -- Jeff grew up in the Great Southwest. One of his jobs has been as a security guard. He's an excellent shot and if you ever find yourself in a fight, he's one of the guys you want on your side.

My avocation as a poker player fascinates him and he never seems to tire of my stories. He plies me with questions about my early years as a poker player, including the fact that I carried a gun.

'What kind of gun was it?' Jeff wanted to know.

'Ruger, .22, mini-magnum.'

'Really? That's a pretty good-sized gun. How'd you manage to conceal it when you went into the casino?'

'Either stuck it in my boot or in the small of my back inside my waistband.'

Jeff and I sometimes fancy ourselves as gamblers in the Old West. We imagine what kinds of guns we would carry into a gambling establishment and where we would conceal them.

I wouldn't mind the Ruger, but I might also have a small twin-barrel Derringer that could fit inside my coat pocket. You never know when you might need that extra shot.

'Security is so tight inside today's casinos that nobody needs to carry a gun,' I told Jeff. He raised an eyebrow as if to say 'Really?' I don't think he believed me.

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Outside of the crazed mass killer who shot all those people from a high-rise resort, Las Vegas really hasn't had that many armed robberies or even armed robbery attempts. Their security guards are just too strong to confront and the bad guys with guns stay away from them.

Both Jeff and I have seen the various versions of 'Ocean's 11,' the movie about a group of criminals who hatch a plan to rob a series of Las Vegas casinos. We agree the story made a good plot, but that it could not be worked out in real life.

'I think a lot of those Old West gunmen were made up characters,' Jeff said. I tend to agree with him.

Jeff wants to know when was the last time I felt it necessary to carry a gun into a casino. I say, 'I'll never tell,' and I mean it.

I know Bulldog Sykes, a Las Vegas poker player and gambling columnist, started carrying a gun after a Mexican player drunk on tequila took a couple of shots at him during an afternoon poker game. One bullet pierced his hat, the other buried itself in the wall.

Bulldog told me, 'From that day forth, I was always a lot nicer to the people I played poker against. He kept the hat with the bullet hole to remind him of that truth.'

I keep trying to persuade Jeff to accompany me to a casino poker room and spend the day with me. So far he has resisted, but I think I am getting closer to persuading him.

'What if one of the poker players gets wild and tells me to fill my hand?,' said Jeff. 'What do I do then?'

'You let security handle it,' I said.

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