Live Poker Prelminaries

The Good Doctor Mondo and I are headed up to Black Hawk today. She for some $2/5 action at the Lodge, with their tantalizingly tasty $175,000 Bad Beat semi-sorta up for grabs, and myself at the Golden Gates for their noon $100 tourney, starting with 15,000 in chips, but with a first level of 100/100. Definitely not deep, but not bad for us low rollers in Colorado.

Hoping for a deep run and a nice trip report, but if I bust early, I'm told there's often an Omatard table running at the Gates. No fold'em Omatard8 can't be any worse than No fold'em Hold'em, right?

Of course, this is all just practice for the unofficial WPBT, Part One, which for moi starts Thursday.

But before all of that, we're off to a bit of brekkie on the way, at one of the most exquisite places that we've always wanted to go, but haven't -- the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. The Dushanbe Teahouse, while not exactly historical, will be one day.

From their website,

In 1987, during his first visit to Boulder, Mayor Maksud Ikramov announced that Dushanbe planned to present our city with a Teahouse to celebrate the establishment of sister city ties. From 1987 -1990, more than 40 artisans in several cities of Tajikistan created the decorative elements our Teahouse, including its hand-carved and hand-painted ceiling, tables, stools, columns, and exterior ceramic panels. Often these skills are handed down from generation to generation within families. Lado Shanidze served as chief architect.

Tajikistan gives us an exquisite tea room, and we give them a cyber cafe in exchange. At least you can probably play Party Poker in Tajikistan, so they may have come out ahead, in the end.

Anyway, that paragraph hardly does the Dushanbe Teahouse justice, so here's a few pics:







Of course, none of that means that Sunday brekkie will be any good, and breakfast is truly my favorite meal of the day. I mean, it's possibly no better than a Denny's Grand Slam, but the place was once featured on Road Tasted, hosted by the Deen brothers, on the Food Network, so it probably won't be quite like a Waffle House. I may wish it were, but I think I'm going to have the Indian Curry Omelette (Green chile and herb omelette, cut into strips and stewed with tomatoes and Indian curry, served with pita)

Good luck on the felt, and don't forget, tonight is your final chance to pick up a BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat and Miami Don's Big Game -- get your Tier 2 tokens ready.