Tao of Pauly

Things I Loathe in Las Vegas

By Pauly
Las Vegas, NV

People make or break a situation. I always said that the worst of jobs could be tolerable as long as you had people with you who were entertaining and had a sense of humor. You can be in the most beautiful place in the world, yet it takes just one douchebag to ruin it for you. On the contrary, you can be in a shitty situation, but one person can definitely make the difference.

People. For me it's about the people around you who will determine the vibe of your situation. That's why it is always important to be around with positive emotions, positive energy, and positive intentions. Someone like me feeds off a situation. If everything around me is dark and miserable, I usually sink deep and things get ugly. That's why I always lose my shit in Las Vegas. It's a very ugly place and it transforms even the most sane and well adjusted person into a psychopath. You can only imagine what it does to people who are already fucked in the head.

I have been doing my best to avoid negative things and situations. That includes people. However, sometimes they are unavoidable, especially at a massive event like the World Series of Poker.

Here are a few character profiles of the people I have to deal with on a daily basis...

The Wanna-be Poker Pro: This guy is one of the most annoying in the room. Sure, you have to be confident to succeed in poker, but bragging about your exploits makes me cringe. I don't give a rats ass about who you crushed or how much you won. Showing me your wad won't impress me. What I do care about is how you sound like a fifteen-year old girl when you run into a little bad luck or won't take responsibility for your own actions. Yeah pal, even the top tiered players in the world make mistakes but for some reason, you think that you never make one and the everyone else in poker is inferior to your astute ability. You'll never make it in Las Vegas and especially in poker. I see dozens of douchebags like you who move to Las Vegas every week chasing the dream. They end up humping a shitty casino job because they are too embarrassed to go back home and do some honest work. So please leave me alone and let me do my job. And no, I won't give you any extra special coverage because the last thing I want to do is fluff up another asshole in poker. Just another vulture who wants to exploit me.

The Lazy Worker: There are a bunch of these running around the Rio. The faux journalists don't do any research and they leech off of the hard work of others. They are here to party first and work second. They stay up late, come in hung over, and then steal my shit or stuff my friends wrote. Hey, guess what? I party my ass off and sacrifice sleep to get my work done. That's what professionals do. Yeah, the scensters drive me nuts and are only here for superficial reasons.

One of them blatantly stole from Nicky a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes I feel sorry for the talentless hacks who have zero talent and have to shoot angles just to get paid. They are only in poker because they can't get jobs anywhere else. I should know, because I'm definitely one of those! But then again, I fuck with these retards too, sort of my way of seeking out revenge on the lazy oafs. They constantly ask me for info and then publish what I say (almost verbatim) and I don't get any source credit. Or they simply lift shit I write on Tao of Poker and try to pass it off as their own work. So when they ask me for info on a specific tournament or a bit of gossip, I give them false information. One person called me out on it the other day and I laughed. I told them if they did just three seconds of research themselves they would have known that my info was wrong. Next time give me attribution, punk. Just another vulture who wants to exploit me.

The Trasher: This guy loves to go around and trash the stellar work from my colleagues. He's really jealous and a hack and needs to put down others in order to feel better about himself because he knows he's a fraud. The same guy badmouths me behind my back. You don't think my friends tell me you said the things you said? Be a man and tell it to my face next time. Fuckin' tool. This is the same idiot who rips my friends and then asks for pimpage on the Tao. Just another vulture who wants to exploit me.

The Attention Whore: Did your mommy and daddy not hug you enough? Or we're you their little princess who got too much attention and needs validation every five seconds of the day? I'm sorry, but the pressbox is not a place for you and your friends to hang out and decide which poker pro is cuter, Erick Lindgren or Patrik Antonius. Please leave immediately. Some of us have real work to do.