Sunday, July 13, 2008

Shark Reef

UPDATE: I think I combined two different trips to make this story. The animal chips/shots at the table/Rahman-Lewis trip was from a trip in early 2002. The Hopkins/Taylor fight trip was in 2005.
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In 2005, Hop and I were in Las Vegas for the second Bernard Hopkins-Jermaine Taylor fight. A spectacularly crappy fight that was notable for 3 reasons:

1. An extreme level of drunkenness (more on this later)
2. Both of us losing big bets on B-Hop
3. Before the main event, they filmed some scenes for Rocky VI. We got to see both Stallone's and Tarver's entrances and their intro's. Plus it gave me a good opportunity to ask Hop how old he thought Stallone was. Good stuff.

Back to the drunkenness and the original point of this post, getting the Mandalay Bay's Shark Reef chip. Throughout this trip, we played a handful of sessions of blackjack at the Mandalay. And we repeatedly did shots at the table... and tried to get others at the table to do them with us. Most declined. Probably because it was always ridiculously early in the afternoon... and they probably didn't want to wind up "the drunk asshats," like we were. Well, the Mandalay has a handful of animal-themed chips. The Shark Reef being one of them. They also have a bunch of "Year of the ____" chips. Goat, Monkey, Snake and Dragon that I can remember. There might be more. Through the course of play, we'd both accumulate a few of these animal chips, and whenever we'd lose a couple hands, we'd make it a point to bet with an animal chip and say something like, "I better set the dragon lose here, I need a win." Got to be a pretty fun endeavor that I think a few people at the table did start to follow. I think Hop even collected a $25 Rahman/Lewis chip that he kept. Don't ask me why. I didn't want the "Year of" chips, but I did keep one of the Shark Reef chips. I'm sure sending a Shark out to get a blackjack win was always a profitable endeavor.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I sincerely hope that the reason I pocketed a $25 Rahman/Lewis chip was because we were drunk and doing shots at the table, and not that I thought that one would become a collector's item.