First Stop: New Orleans

I have just returned from my first assignment for PokerNews, covering the Bayou Poker Challenge live from Harrah's New Orleans. The series of tournaments ran from May 9th through May 21st, and is part of the World Series of Poker Circuit. Events ranged from the $200 Ladies Only tournament all the way up to the $5,000 Circuit Championship event that took place over the last three days. The final event saw a field of 249 players and was won by a demolition contractor from Georgia, Nick Ceci, who took home $382,928 for his efforts. Not bad for three days of work. If you're interested, you can check out the three days of reports that we wrote live from the tournament floor here. Anything that says "FerricRamsium" was written by yours truly.

I had an absolute blast in New Orleans. Don't interpret that statement as meaning that I liked it there. I didn't. Before I rip into the city, I should include a disclaimer that I didn't get to see an awful lot of it; we were confined to about a six block radius around Harrah's. But the parts I did see were quite, quite dirty. It appears that the restaurants and businesses in the downtown area put their garbage on the street at night for pickup, so the whole city has a bit of a funk to it. Like a marriage of food, saltwater, and garbage. I can just imagine how much worse it gets in the dead, wet heat of midsummer. And then there are the homeless people, the druggies, and the hookers, who seem to be all over the place. I would walk by a world-class restaurant, and half a block away is a homeless guy sitting on a piece of newspaper, and a drugged-out hooker handing her makeshift business card out to anyone passing by. Pretty seedy.

And then there's the people. First impressions were actually positive. As I walked from the jetway down to the baggage claim, there was a group of musicians playing some excellent Dixieland, New Orleans style jazz music. It's hard not to smile broadly and move your feet a little bit when you're entertained like that in your first moments in a new city. Sadly though, the novelty wore off about the time I climbed into a cab and set out towards downtown. My cab driver, I swear, spoke some incomprehensible bastardization of English, French, and Spanish. I think I am generally pretty good at understanding and communicating with people, but literally -- literally -- I did not understand one single solitary word that he said to me in the 15-minute cab ride to the hotel. And quite the cab ride it was. Never have I actually felt that I might realistically die in a cab before that little excursion from hell. Our poor-speaking friend was about as adept at driving as he was at forming coherent sentences. We were going over 90 MPH, changing lanes and cutting people off as if the lines on the road don't apply to us. It's really hard to put into words how frightful a ride it was.

Finally, we made it to the spot. Harrah's seemed almost out of place amidst all the grunge surrounding it. The casino is well-designed and full of friendly, hard-working people. The staff involved in running the tournament were extremely accommodating and professional. As the days went on, I began to realize what a large production they were running there, and they pulled it off as smoothly as I could imagine. Thoroughly impressed.