Dealer's Choice

I am setting off on a cross-country trip. I plan to visit and gamble in some of my favorite cities -- Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Reno, Yerington, Albuquerque and several others in the Southwest.

If the trip goes the way I have mapped it out, I will be spending a couple of months on the road. I'd like to swing down through my beloved South and visit Biloxi and New Orleans if they're still around after the hurricane and the flooding.

Poker playing in the Southwest is fun because of the food, the fun and the action. Despite the presence of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed 'toughest sheriff in America,' Phoenicians like having a glass of beer or a cocktail while they're bucking the tiger. They know their paths are fraught with danger -- Maricopa County Sheriff's Deputies and Phoenix Police are sneaky in targeting cars parked outside of bars or casinos. They have been known to place luminescent stickers on the back of cars so that other officers wearing special glasses can pick up the illumination and pull the motorist over on the pretext that their taillight was out.

Then there is the food. When my commercial jet touches down at Sky Harbor International Airport Sunday, the first thing I'm going to do is swing by the last remaining Bill Johnson's Big Apple Restaurant on East Van Buren Street in Phoenix. I'll probably order one of his incredible beef or barbecue sandwiches and follow it up with a deep dish apple pie. Nobody makes deep dish apple pie like Bill Johnson's Restaurants. Unfortunately, the chain of restaurants that his family built after Johnson died have now gone Chapter 11 and the bankruptcy judge has shut them down.

Phoenix and Tucson are also famous for their hot spicy Mexican food. I have eaten Mexican food in many places, from Florida to Costa Rica. Nobody serves Mexican food like some of my favorite Southwestern restaurants. These include Los Olivos, a charming authentic Mexican restaurant in Scottsdale. It is family owned and the chefs are the best the owners can hire. They recruit their chefs and even their wait help in Guadalajara or Mexico City.

Woody's Macayo is also known for its spicy Mexican food. The restaurant on North Central Avenue was built by a copper miner from Globe, AZ. who loved his Mexican food. Woody figured nobody was making it the way he wanted, so he opened his own restaurant and the people made him a millionaire. Woody passed away a few years ago and is now part of the old rock. His family runs it same as the Bill Johnson family operates their restaurant.

I hope the people who run the poker rooms at the Arizona Casino Talking Stick Casino, Ft. McDowell and Gila Pass have a variety of poker games to offer. I have said this before and will repeat it for emphasis: it should be illegal for a poker room to offer only no-limit poker to its players. There should be a minimum of one limit game for every no-limit game that is being spread. This protects the more social players from losing their entire bankrolls in a single pot.

After a couple of weeks in sunny Arizona where I lived eight years and had some exciting journalistic experiences, I will drive through Wickenburg and head for Las Vegas. That city never tires me.

I will be staying at The Orleans Resort on Tropicana Blvd. The Orleans has a nice large poker room that offers the best variety of games in pokerdom. You can play cash games and tournaments in Omaha High-Low, H.O.R.S.E., Omaha High, seven-card stud high-low and other games.

The poker room hosts two tournaments daily at noon and 7 p.m. with various-sized buy-ins in the low to medium range. Tournaments always start on-time, something that makes the poker room dealers and staff proud. And you can pick up some nice prize money in return for your solid play.

While in Las Vegas, I want to visited Hoover Dam, Caesar's Palace, the Treasure Island and some of the other themed casinos that are always fun. One starry night, I met Nicki Minaj when she was taking a photo of her mother and grand-mother on a tram high above Las Vegas Boulevard. She was more beautiful than her pictures and her mother and grandma were charming. They even asked me to take a picture of the three of them. I gave the talented singer-actress my card and asked her to call me when she was ready to write her book. She smiled and promised she would think about it, but you know those actresses and their promises.

Reno and Yerington, where Nevada Copper has opened a new open pit operation to mine gold, copper and other minerals, are two more must stops before I hop off for Florida. In Reno, I never miss dining at one off the world's great restaurants, La Strada, in the El Dorado Resort and Casino. La Strada is the finest kind of Italian restaurant with decor, style, service and recipes that will make you return again...and again...and again.

Good luck, good health and good gambling.

Author: Geno Lawrenzi Jr.

(Geno Lawrenzi Jr. is an international journalist, magazine author and ghostwriter. If you have a unique gambling story to share with him, you may qualify for a cash award. Send your story with all the details to glawrenzi@gmail.com ).