Recipe for an all-night poker game

Occasionally your girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse, office colleague, etc. will look at you in amazement and say, “You just sat and played poker for how many hours? How can you possible do that?”

As a public service to the poker community, we present here a single picture that explains how one accidentally finds oneself playing poker all night:

Everything you need for an all-night poker game

• Purple arrow pointing toward 10:00. Yes, that’s four cards, which means we must be playing PLO. Rather that just a single two-card option, the PLO player has six different two-card combinations from which to choose. It’s difficult to find a reason to fold.
• Two yellow arrows. Pointing at very big chip stacks. Those are black chips sitting on top of seat #5′s stack. Big chip stacks mean there’s lots of money to win or lose and, well, it’s hard to leave if you’re deeply stuck. It’s also hard to leave if you feel that you have a fair chance to move those big stacks over in front of you, even if you’re not stuck.
• Red arrows. Three of them, pointing toward big piles of chips already in the middle of the table. Big pots. It’s hard to leave when you feel that yet another four-figure pot might break out at any moment.
• Black arrow pointing to 10:00. Double-vodka cranberry. Motivates the players to move the large stacks (yellow arrows) toward the middle (red arrows). It’s hard to leave when double-vodka cranberries are fueling conversations that go like, “Pot.” “Pot? Pot!” “Pot, pot? Pot!!”

Anyway, the next thing you know, the shift manager is asking you if you want a breakfast comp? Breakfast comp? Uh-oh.

Upon returning to my hotel room as the sun is coming up, I realize I have a breakfast engagement at the very site of the all-nighter. Hoping to extract a silver-lining from this sleep-deprivation cloud, your intrepid blogger dons his walking clothes and hoofs it the 1.7 miles to the Wynn, getting in some all-too-rare aerobic exercise in Las Vegas. You also get some pictures that are rarely seen:

No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you

This is, indeed, the eastern face of the Mirage, just catching the glimpes of the rising sun. The fountains are still shaded behind the buildings on the east side of the Strip. Las Vegas is waking up to a new morning.