Monday 8/10/2020 to Thursday 8/13/2020
I won't do the play by play. It's more fun to just amalgamate the highlight reel of the week.
I get call after call from people looking for 380 and 9mm ammo. One notable dialogue at 8PM
1: You have any 380 ammo?
Me: Yes, I have 7 boxes yet
1: How much?
Me: 20 to a box, 50 each
1: Great we can come pick it up now!
Me: It's 8PM and I've already left for the day. Come in tomorrow
1: But we need it now.
Me: I'm not heading back to work to sell a box of ammo.
1: Oh come on! I called you! You should be able to help me!
Me: I am, during normal business hours. But if you really want 2 boxes - $100 bill and I'll head back in.
1: ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS? YOU JUST TOLD ME IT WAS TWENTY!
Me: Twenty to a box, 50 bucks each box times two boxes
1: That's highway robbery! That's price gouging!
Me: Go look online. Nobody has any 380 ammo. And if they do it is $1 or $2 per round.
1: That's ridiculous! You're not the only guy in town that has 380 ammo!
(Editors note: She calls back the next day asking for 380 ammo. Apparently I am the only guy in town that has 380 ammo. I tell her there's a new policy. No ammo sales to people who have not bought firearms.)
One of my surgeon customers calls me telling me his lead nurse who hates guns wants to buy a gun. I tell them to come on down. Her whole family and the doc come in and I have this dialogue.
1: Can you suggest a gun for someone who hates guns?
Me: That's like a vegan walking into a steakhouse and saying "whats a good steak for a vegan?" - there's no real good way to do it and everything I can suggest you is sold out and then some.
1: Well what do you have here?
Me: That's a Glock 17, here take a look.
(Unload and show clear, hand her a Glock 17)
1: OH MY GOD THIS IS SO HEAVY!
Me: That's one of the lightest full size firearms ever made.
1: Do you have something with a safety? I love safeties. The more the better. If you have a gun with 150 safetys, that's something I would be interested in.
(I glare at the doc)
Me: I've only got three or four different model pistols left in stock. Here try out this springfield XD-S.....
1: I don't like this thing in the grip here the bump....
Me: You mean the grip safety?
1: yes
1: What happened to "I love safties the more the better"
(Doc nearly inhales his surgical mask from laughing)
She hates guns and wants to go rent a bunch of guns before buying any guns but I explain the problem is you can go rent something, fall in love with it and the dealer can't get one for a year. Case in point: Glock 19's, Sig 365's and Springfield Hellcats. She believes she is not ready to buy a gun until she rents one. I tell her go to a range and go rent one and find out what she likes.
She has just taken a "safety course" offered by the local girl and a gun chapter. The local girl and a gun chapter is run by a middle aged woman who has NRA instructor creds that is the WORST FIREARM INSTRUCTOR I HAVE EVER MET IN MY LIFE with the possible exception of James Yaeger. The last time I was at one of her events she was using the "mugger in a hoodie" paper targets and she instructed all the women to shoot him in the balls during one course of fire.
Now, I wasn't wearing my Caltech shirt that day but the fast math and trig is as follows.
Person shooting at a target 10 feet from the bench at a downward angle with a backstop of dirt 50 feet behind the bench...
I was trying to fix someone's gun before I could do anything. I am concentrated on fixing this pistol and the first volley of gunfire breaks my concentration. I then hear the sound of dozens of 9mm projectiles hitting the concrete and skipping off the property. I drop the pistol and shout at the top of my lungs a cease fire and evetyone looks at me funny
Me: KAREN! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?
1: Oh they're just girls, let them have their fun!
Me: ALL THE BULLETS ARE LEAVING THE PROPERTY!
1: What? No! How?
(I point at all the ricochet gouges on the concrete of the gun club)
1: Ohhhhhh
This woman is barely qualified to run a dairy queen much less instruct neophyte gun owners. Holy fucking shit. Why are people going to her? She's open, and she's a woman that has credentials that "can teach".
Yeah.
One day I head to lunch at the local pizza joint for lunch with Megan. Eddie makes a nice pizza and I sit down and have a pie. We rap about business as I eat my antipasato and wait for my freshly prepared clam pie to cool down a bit. It's not on the menu but he makes it special for us.
Me: hey eddie how's business?
ed: It's steady, lots of takeout.
Me: Its a tough economy I'd take it!
ed: Hey now!
Me: You doing okay?
ed: yeah I found that derringer I wanted at the last gun show!
Me: Oh really?
ed: Yeah! Someone ceracoted it tiffany blue and magenta
Me: Whoa whoa whoa! Please! I'm trying to eat here! Disgusting!
(Megan is drinking water and nearly does a spit take)
This is the world we're living in now.
Speaking of the new world... I wind up working a deal with a friend and we split 100k pcs of once fired lake city 5.56 brass. A local military contractor was doing some testing and they had a fucking ton of it and this is what was left. We got it for the cost of manpower to scrape it up and load it, clean it, tumble it and sort it and deprime and resize it.
My friend has two kids that are doing online learning with school, so he made them a deal. He cut the kiddos a deal to help him clean and resize and deprime the brass as labor.
We're into this stuff CHEAP. So we can sell it cheap or whatever the fuck we want in this market. I tell Ray I've got the perfect ad. We get some projectiles, some powder and primers and we run an ad. "5.56 ammo! $275/thousand! Some assembly required!" and Ray laughs his ass off.
The we got it was it was loaded into some wooden ammo crates that were left over at the contractors facility. They're heavy, not cost effective to ship and came with 5000 pcs of brass each. Ray gets an idea. He has discovered that if we portion it out and throw out or sell the wooden crates, we save a ton of money on shipping.
I wonder where he got this idea from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nozIkRy0v-M The kiddos load all the brass into USPS flat rate boxes in no time flat and we've got ourselves loaded ready to roll product that can ship immediately. His kids did the legwork in the loading on account of my bad back and I'm tasked with lining up buyers. No problem. I start working the local gun boards, my customers, myspace, etc. You know the usual spots.
This is where the wheels come off the wagon. I get a guy who comes right out the gate asking for 9k and then he blurts out "How much do you have, I'm interested in all of it"
Little hint for the readers. Anyone that says they're interested in everything you have are interested in nothing you have. They're blowing smoke 99% of the time and the 1% of the time that someone does buy everything you have, you're making a killing off them or they're making a killing off you. You know the old saying in poker - if you sit down at the table and you can't find the sucker in 5 minutes, you're the sucker? It's like that.
Anyhow, my ad reads as follows: $125/thousand 5.56 Brass Lake City cleaned, sorted, resized, trimmed and polished - DILLON 1050 READY!
The guy calling me wanting 9k then asked how much I had left - he lines up 9 of his friends and they want to take ALL of it and divvy it up. Pick up today or when the guys can get off of work and come get it, they're working back asswards logistics as to who's truck is going to haul all of it, who's loading it and unloading and they plan to show up at 630 tonight after work to come get it.
At 445 I get a message - hey can you send me a picture again one of my friends wants to check something and I send it over.
And that's when the entire deal falls apart because this butthead read 5.56 brass lake city NATO headstamp $125/thousand and thought he was getting loaded 5.56 NATO spec ammo for 12.5 cents a round in 2020, told all his friends about it and shot his mouth off like a damn fool. Now he has to explain to every single one of his friends that no you're not getting 10,000 rds of 5.56 NATO ammo for $1250. Wasting my fucking time. That was my Thursday. All these people begging for ammo are driving me nuts. Yes, I have 250,000 rds of ammo. No I am not going to bend over backwards and sell it to you cheap just to be a nice person/earn your business/because your sister gave me a handjob in high school. God damn.
Lady calls me looking for 380 ammo. She needs some for her CCW class that Karen is teaching and I tell her I have some left. She comes in and I tell her it's $50 a box. She leaves without buying anything.
There's other miscellany but you get the gist of it.
NOW here's the meat and potatoes you've wanted! The tale of the gun show!
Friday 8/14/2020
I take inventory. I'm down to about 500 guns in stock and I pack as much as I can and get it ready for the show. I've got some Sigs left, a handful of Glock and a mishmash of everything else. I head to bed early knowing full well the next show will be a total shitshow. I have not done a show in a big city for nearly six months. This will be epic or epic fail.
Saturday 8/15/2020
I pull chocks at 430AM, hit the flying J for diesel and pull into the local grocery store for a sandwich at 7AM right around the corner from the gun show. They fuck up my sandwich. Serves me right for buying morning of. Fuck me to tears. I start loading into the show and the entire front of the building is set up with crowd control barriers and it takes me an extra 40 minutes to thread the needle of my hand truck and loadout. I get the table setup as fast as I can and by 9AM the doors are open and we are off to the races. I will do hour blocks instead of my previous play by play for simplicity.
9AM: Right out the gate I have people asking me for Sig 365's. I have a used one with three mags and a holster I have tagged at $650. The guy asks me if I can do any better. I ask him if he's feeling lucky. I run the 4473 bet with him.
He fills out the form straight on the first shot, no corrections - and he gives me $650, he gets $50 back with his ID.
If there's a correction to be made, I keep half a yard. He says its a bet. He loses.
As I write that up at $650, I have another guy snag a regular 365 for $700. Both their background checks clear quickly.
The morning is not off to a bad start, I think to myself. I'm about to be proven wrong massively.
One of my old friends from high school asked me to liquidate some of his collection and I told him that I would selectively cherry pick some stuff and haul it to the show since I didn't want to commit large amounts of table space for other people's guns. He's got a super clean Century M70 underfolder. It's clean even by century standards but I don't want to buy that gun.
I have it out on the table and an old romanian guy starts checking it out.
1: What country is this from?
FC: I'm not a big AK guy, it's a century so I'm guessing maybe yugoslavia or maybe romania - I don't think that its a bulgarian one, but you're welcome to take a look
1: Does it say cugir?
FC: It does not
1: How do you know it does not say cugir?
FC: I can see the side of it it does not say that
1: Where does it not say?
FC: If you look at the side of the receiver, Century has shitty electropencil that is parkerized over that you can barely read
1: Do you have some oil I can put on there to rub on it so I can read it?
FC: Look, I'll read it. What do you want to know?
1: Does it say cugir?
FC: it does not.
1: What does it say?
FC: Century M70 AB2 7.62 x 39 Georgia Vermont
1: it does not say cugir? I am romanian if it says cugir is romanian
FC: It does not say that
1: Come on then make me a deal!
(1 taps the price tag marked at $850)
FC: It's the first 20 minutes of the show, I'm not making anything on the deal it's a favor for a friend of mine. I think that gun sells down here for top dollar.
1: I give you 600 cash
FC: Come see me at the end of the show maybe I'll be amenable to discounting but not this early
1: You know problem with topcover right?
(FC looks at topcover, it's slightly off from the hole and detent. Why? IT'S A CENTURY! WHAT DID YOU FUCKING EXPECT?!?! The care and attention to detail that only Jim Fuller from Rifle Dynamics or maybe a Bulgarian Arsenal offers? Fuck you.)
FC: This gun is gonna sell this weekend as is where is, even if you think it's not right.
1: Come on make me deal!
FC: I don't negotiate with terrorists or people spending under $10k. This ain't over $10k.
1: I have cash!
FC: Got $850? We'll write it up right now.
(1 walks away and comes back 3 minutes later)
1, while holding a wad of cash: Come on make me a deal!
FC: What's your offer?
1: I will go $700
FC: Come see me at the end of the show on Sunday and I'll see what I can do.
(1 gets yelled at by the county exhibition authority for not wearing a face mask correctly and he adamantly refuses to adjust his mask and starts a full blown screaming match with the poor county employee who VERY politely asked him to wear his face mask properly. As he is engaged in this animated debate, two individuals who I will call 2 and 3 show up. 2 and 3 want the underfolder AK. 2 and 3 are what we would call hip hop/droopy jean enthusiasts, their dialogue is presented word for word without adjustment. They were dropping the hard r, not me so please don't call me names for reporting the truth.)
2: ohhhhh snapppp this is what I came here lookin for!
3: damn nigga thats a straight up choppa right there you should buy that
1: HEY I WAS HERE FIRST I AM MAKING DEAL! BACK OFF!
FC: No, you walked away - these two gentlemen are here and now they're interested in that gun and I'm giving them my time.
1: BUT I WAS HERE FIRST HOLDING CASH!
2: back off nigga I'm here to check out stuff motherfucker i'm gonna mess you up
3: yeah man back the fuck off before my nigga messes you up god damn shieeeeeeit
1: I AM HERE! HOLDING CASH! YOU GOING TO DO BUSINESS WITH ME?
FC: You walked away. This is what happens when you walk away. It's their turn......
1: BUT I AM HERE WE ARE MAKING DEAL
(FC does an ACTUAL facepalm and presses his forehead and feels a headache beginning. A deep sigh)
FC: You two.....you're killing me here.
1: I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF MAKING DEAL AND YOU DON'T WANT TO DEAL!
FC: You want to see deal? I'll show you deal!
(FC grabs AK from the hip hop enthusiasts and looks right at them while holding an order pad in right hand and rifle in other)
FC: You got $750 cash?
2: nigga I got $750 cash right here (pulls out wad of 100's)
3: oh shit that guy gonna get fuckin SWOOPED
FC: You want me to write this up right now? $750 cash. And I'll throw in 4 mags (I pull out 4 mags loaded with x39 brown bear)
2: I GET THE MAGS AND THE AMMO FOR THAT PRICE? FUCK NIGGA YOU GOT A DEAL! (he counts out $800 in c-notes and drops his ID on the table)
FC: You got yourself a rifle.
(I look back at angry romanian)
FC: That's a deal. You passed. Move faster next time.
1: I AM STANDING HERE! HOLDING CASH!
(1 throws down a stack of cash on the table, some falls behind on my table. I pick it back up and place it on his stack)
FC: You dropped some back here, don't want you thinking I shorted you or stole your money. I've got to write up these gentlemen, we're here until 5 today if you need anything else
1: (shouts at me in angry romanian while gesticulating like George Costanza complaining to Elaine about taking credit for the big salad)
FC: I'm sorry about that guy, he's got some issues. That man needs therapy not another gun
2: all good nigga all good that mofo gonna get his ass beat someday
FC: Today I didn't even have to use my AK, I got to say it was a good day
3: sheeeeeit he knows ice cube! this nigga og!
FC: Catholic school for the win!
(we fist bump)
I piss off at least one person every show. Sometimes it's good to get it out of the way in the first hour, lets you concentrate on the bigger picture things.
Three down.
10AM: Guy points at a green Glock 43 and Glock 19 Gen 4 that I have. They're each tagged at $725. Cash comes out and I write up the sale. Three women in a row snag black Glock 43's from me at $700 each. We are cranking now!
Eight down before lunch. This is getting wild.
11AM: Colt Lightweight Commander - tagged at $1050. Sells for cash. Colt Combat Unit - tagged at $1450 Sells for cash. Glock 19 MOS Gen 4 - tagged at $825. Sells for cash. Two of them back to back. Gen 4 straight 19 tagged at 775 sells on Amex. Background checks begin to start bogging down.
Thirteen down before I can even touch my sammich.
12PM: I write up three ruger LCP's in a row at $300 each. I eat half my sandwich as I sell a Kel Tec Sub 2000 at $825. Springfield Hellcat tagged at $735 goes out on a mastercharge.
Eighteen before I'm done with lunch. Sheeeeit.
1PM: My old buddy Rusty Shackleford sends me some of his collection he does not want the hassle with selling. Three ugly as sin Glock 21's, three semi clean Glock 17's and two super like new 17's. 1PM is profitable as I manage to sell everything except for a 21 and 17. People are paying $650 for PD trade 21's and $700+ on trade in Glock 17's. Why? They're the only ones in the show. Not glocks in general, I mean 21's and 17's.
Twenty four down and I have yet to finish my sandwich.
2PM: I have an immigrant from another country come over and try to buy a gun. He's super patient waiting for me to finish with customers that DO NOT STOP. Springfield XD goes out at $600. That's 25. He hands me the clipboard and I immediately stop everything I'm doing and I look down at the form.
Not only has he forgotten 10A and 12.d.2 but he's put the city in the county box and answered the firearm is not for him and he's been convicted of misdemeanor DV. I sigh and hand the form back to him for corrections.
FC: Okay, what county are we in?
1: (names city)
FC: What COUNTY are we in?
1: oh! USA!
FC: What COUNTY is this city in?
1: (names city)
FC: We're in (names county)
1: Ohhhhh thats right
FC: Who's this gun for? You or someone else?
1: Me
FC: Is there any reason you've indicated you are NOT the actual purchaser?
1: Not good at reading the form I guess
FC: Strike out intiial and date the change
1: Okay
FC: Have you been convicted of a misdemanor crime of domestic violence?
1: No it was just a misdemeanor
FC: Is there a reason why you said "yes I have been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence?"
1: oh man I screwed that up
FC: Initial and date the change
(He fixes the front of the form and signs on 14 and dates on 15. I turn the page. He's written his passport number expiration date in the ID field and indicated that NICS has denied him)
FC: Is there any reason you wrote your passport expiration date and number here?
1: Well I'm supposed to do that, right?
(FC points to line that says SECTION B MUST BE COMPLETED BY SELLER)
1: Oh man
FC: Is there any reason you checked DENIED on the NICS result box?
1: did I do that?
(FC points to the box where he's put a big bold X under DENIED)
1: Was I not supposed to do that?
(FC hands him another form to complete)
3PM: It is now over an hour to get this 4473 done. His wife and child have to help him with the form. I finish my sammich as I look at the front of his form and it is still marked "firearm is being purchased for someone not me" and he has to correct it. I turn the page. The date is marked 9/8/2020.
FC: What day is today?
1: Saturday
FC: No I mean what day is today, what calendar day?
(1 pulls out his phone)
1: Oh. You want me to do another form?
FC: No, strike out using a single line. And using WORDS - write the date.
1: gotcha
(FC looks down at the form. the date is struck out using a single line. It now reads in words SATURDAY 9/8/2020)
FC: What day is it?
1: It's saturday.
FC: Saturday the.........
1: Fifteeenth?
FC: Then explain why this says 9/8/2020?
1: Oh man you want me to do another form?
FC: Just fill it out using WORDS AS THE DATE - MONTH/DAY/YEAR
1: okay I got you
(FC hands the form back for correction)
1: I got it now! Man was that hard!
(FC looks down at the form. SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 8 2020)
FC: Take out your phone
(1 takes out his phone and presses the home button)
FC: Look at the date. What does it say and look at what you wrote.
1: Oh man
FC: Is it possible for us to get the correct date?
1: Yeah man I'm so sorry....
FC: Take out your phone and write out the date in letters and words EXACTLY AS YOUR PHONE DISPLAYS IT
1: Okay I can do that
(FC looks down at the form. 3:23 SATURDAY AUGUST 15. Fuck it, this is as good as it gets.)
FC: Close enough. Give me your ID.
(I write up my last Glock 19. It's tagged at $825. He pays cash without blinking.)
I mean, I've seen some shit but WOWWWW.
That's 26.
4PM: The rest of my glocks fly off the table. NIB Glock 36 - tagged at $725, gone. NIB Glock 30SF, tagged at $700, gone. NIB Glock 30, tagged at $700, gone. The only thing left on the table are 17 Gen 5 MOS's at $875 and 43X's at $775 and 44's at $400. That's 29 by 4PM. One guy does not have current ID so I have him go on the fish and game website on his phone and get a fishing license that gets me his up to date address. After 20 minutes he emails me a screencap and he's on his way home with his Glock 30.
5PM: Time to go home! I drop a stack of guns off at the local dealer for transfer on my way out the door and I make it home just before 7PM after stopping at the grocery to pick up dinner. I have a platter of fried chicken and mac and cheese. It is delicious. I get to bed early, tomorrow is going to be a long fucking day.
Sunday August 16th
737AM. I wake up and get my ass to my desk. I need to replenish some of the table. I grab stacks of more guns and get them loaded up and I swing by the grocery store deli on the way to the show. It's 8AM and they are out of bread. As in the bakery has not baked them any bread for sandwiches. For fucks sake. They make me a wrap instead. And they make it WRONG. I am not happy.
10AM: Get to the show and uncover my tables and get cranking. A millennial wants a Ruger LC380 and her fucking debit card does not work. This is why you bring cash to gun shows. It's fucking useless when technology fails AND YOU HAVE NO BACKUP. She transfers money from wells fargo to her boyfriends account at chase and he tries to use the ATM to get her cash. No dice. I swear to jebus, if you take debit cards away from this generation all of them will starve to death and die alone. Gun number 30 for the weekend is hard fought but it's done.
11AM: Crank off a Sig 1911 for a guy. He sends a stand in to pick it up for him since his son is exempt from waiting period but he isn't. It goes like this.
1: I'm gonna buy this gun instead
FC: why?
1: that's none of your business
FC: Yes it is. Purchase of firearm with intent to resell is unlawful
1: What I do with the gun after I get it, if I want to sell it to my dad is my business not yours
FC: No dice. Take a hike
Dad: Lets just do it his way, he wants to give it to the other dealer that's what we'll do. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I write up 31 for the weekend. My jack sack is full of cash.
12PM: I got a guy come over, former law enforcement wanting to buy his kid a gun. He wants to do the paperwork and pay me and the gun is for his kid. I say if the gun is for the kid, he needs to do it. I shake off the forms and get the kid on the clipboard and everything goes smooth and I rack up a sale for a trade in FN FNS. That's 32.
1PM: Old school NYPD beat cop comes over wanting a deal on a springfield 1911 Long Beach Operator
1: They're 1911's! They're not popular anymore! Make me a deal!
FC: ANYTHING with a barrel and a trigger is popular right now. Best deal you're getting is on the tag, which is 1250 plus tax and call in that puts you right near 1350.
1: Come on, hook a brother up!
FC: That's the rate on everything, we're selling it out as fast as we can get it! Excuse me as I help these other people......
2PM: Lady comes by and says she wants a shield EZ. I ask her why. She says her man and her firearm instructor says she cant rack the slide. I pick up a Sig 220 off the table and tell her to show me. She racks the slide. I ask her how does it feel to rack a slide properly? She spends the rest of the day wondering why they lied to her. Another lady asks me for suggestions for a first gun. I ask her what she's shot before. Answer: Nothing. She cannot rent guns and try them out because every range is booked for firearm rentals for the next 2 months out. Yeah.........
Brooklyn 99 comes back over and taps on the LB operator
1: Come on man, hook a brother up!
FC: That's the price, the LB operators are a sexy gun and they're not coming out of the warehouse very often
1: Come on brother! I'm just looking for a deal! How about 1200 all in?
FC: Cash or card?
1: Card
FC: No dice.
1: Come on brother! (more pleading for a discount)
At this point the crowd at the table has heard this guy trying to get a discount for a few minutes and I've had enough.
FC: Let me ask you a question
1: Sure thing
FC: Do you have pictures of my nephews on your phone?
1: No
FC: Did you spend thanksgiving dinner at my house?
1: No
FC: Are you a named beneficiary on my will?
1: No
FC: Then guess what?
You're not my brother. Hell, without your money you're not even my customer.
You could hear the snickers from the peanut gallery as I gave the guy a dressing down. I wasn't about to let him off the hook. I still had an out in the deck to play and I was going to use it.
FC: Now, if you want this gun - you want it at a discount, I respect that. Here's what I"ll do. You feeling lucky?
1: Always!
FC: Here's the clipboard. Give me a straight form, no strike outs, no errors, no mistakes, NOTHING that needs correction - I'll give it to you for 1200 on a card flat. I hand the pen back to you to fix something, I write it at 1400 all in. $200's the action, you in or you out?
1: getoutttahere
FC: I'm serious. You want the discount, get the form right and you got what you want. If there's even one error, I keep the two bills.
1: It's a bet! Lets go! I've done this hundreds of times without a problem!
I hand him the clipboard and he starts filling out the form. The peanut gallery is now fervently watching for the results as if it were not already a foregone conclusion. The fans had no idea but they were watching a fixed horse race. My dealer neighbor at the next table over chimes in.
Neighbor: hey, are you seriously taking action?
FC: ALWAYS!
Neighbor: What's the money?
FC: two bucks
Neighbor: High stakes!
FC: You haven't seen high stakes yet.
Neighbor: You're a character. I'm glad that romanian guy didn't get that rifle yesterday, he was such a pain in the ass. Like even I was annoyed by it and it wasn't even my stuff.
FC: I know, right? You snooze, you lose.
Neighbor: But really, can I get in on the 4473 bet?
FC: You can take the bookmaker out of the catholic school but.....
NYPD: I'm all done! Lets see my new $1200 gun!
(I pick up the forms and his ID and credit card and look at the forms. 12.d.2. is blank. I hand pen back to him and point at 12.d.2.)
FC: Forgot 12.d.2. That's $1400 on your Amex, sign here.
NYPD: MOTHERFUCKER THAT WASN'T ON THERE LAST TIME!
FC: When was the last time you filled out that form?
NYPD: 2012
FC: That's why. Here's your new gun, thank you for your action.
Neighbor: How often does that bet win?
FC: My house edge on that bet is 100%.
Neighbor: Shit. That's fucking hilarious. Now I know how you got that watch. I just picked up a 50th anniversary sub myself (he shows me his sub and we rap about horology for a bit.)
33 down.
3PM: ONE HOUR TO GO! I write up a shield 2.0 9mm for a lady and her hubs for $650. One lady gets unhinged when I tell her she's not going to get her gun today on account of background check volume. She starts terrorizing me with WHY CANT I GET MY GUN TODAY?!?!?!??!?! This isn't dealing with Al-Quaeda, this is Al-Karen. Last minute sale 10 minutes before the show closes cleans me out of Ruger LC9's tagged at $450. 35 down. One guy snags a Glock 43X from me for $775.
36 for the weekend makes me a happy boy. I look at all the sales in cash and credit cards and I've booked quite the fat stack of cash. I've done a month's worth of business in
TWO DAYS.
4PM: Show is closed. I start packing up. The dealer across from me has Gen 5 Glock 34's tagged at $1000, 9mm at $575/thousand and 380 at $750/thousand. We rap about the state of the industry. It's just gonna get worse closer to the election. I pack up and get all my stuff loaded up.
530PM: Homeward bound........I wish I was........HOMEWARD BOUND..............
730PM: I get back to my desk and dump off a fucking STACK of 4473's. I make a bank drop for the cash and I unload and head back home. I'm starving, so I decide to have the deli re-make their culinary abortion of a wrap.
8PM: The deli is out of bread AGAIN. Are you fucking kidding me? The deli is out of bread at 8AM
and 8PM? What is this bullshit..... the deli clerk takes an entire loaf of italian sandwich bread and uses it to make me a single sandwich. My colon is about to hate me. I'm waiting in line to have the cashier comp me as I see a big tall gun guy from the gun club walk in. I yell and wave since I'm wearing a mask and he comes over.
815PM: Tim O'Toole is a big giant irish gun nut criminal defense attorney that I know from the gun club. He is an aggressive and in your face about how wrong you are if you are wrong and at 6'6" he cuts an imposing presence on any courtroom he walks into. He's just bought a house in my neighborhood and we start chatting guns. He asks me if I have a Glock 17 Gen 3 9mm barrel for his latest build and I tell him that I've probably got 3 sitting on my desk. I jump on my phone and check pricing. Wholesale + $5 for him since he helps out a lot out at the gun club and he says it's a deal. He goes and gets groceries and I eat my meat tornado of a sandwich at home.
Monday August 17th
10AM: Tim comes by right on time for his barrel and asks what else I have. I have a Glock 43 come off layaway and go back into rotation and he snaps up that and a 43X and a whole litany of extra parts, glock 17 gen 3 firing pin, channel liner, trigger bars, extra mags, etc. My 1 item sale I set up in line at the grocery store is now a 15 item $2500 sale. And he wants even more stuff that I can't get! We rap about the best legal film ever made, My Cousin Vinny. He gets every judge to approve his demand to videotape depositions and witness statements. Why? "I shot the clerk" - you have to watch the movie to understand this reference. Every time a judge asks him why he wants it on tape he simply says "I shot the clerk" and since we are in the deep south and every judge that's been stuck in the Louisiana mud knows the film My Cousin Vinny, his motion is approved. I laughed my ass off. I told him I was very much looking forward to regaling the federal judge with some witty banter that went along the lines of "the two utes" and he laughed his ass off. I really wanted to pull that stunt.
11AM: Lady comes in to pick up a layway and she can't fill out the 4473 and wear a mask at the same time. She also cannot stop talking. She drives me nuts but I hold it together long enough to get her stuff worked up. She also asks me to get her a Glock 23 Gen 4. I tell her it won't be cheap and it's probably going to set her back $850 by the time I beat the bushes and line one up. She says no problem, Visa okay? Done. I get a Glock 23 Gen 4 off one of my dealer buddies in NC and get it squared away.
12PM: Lunctime. It's Salmon Hollandaise special at this new market just down the road from me and I stop in and say hi. It's like a small version of Eataly. I went to high school with the owners daughters and he's got 5 million bucks into this concept. Wine bar, cafe, grocery, NY bagels delivered daily, ramen bar, raw bar, restaurant, the whole 9 yards. Amazing. The fish is delish and on the way out I run into a guy I went to
ELEMENTARY school with that's now the general manager. He offers me a job managing the seafood department and I am seriously considering it given how screwed up the gun market is.
1PM: Back at my desk, have eaten the salmon and the hollandaise has found a home in my thighs. I am fat and sassy. I sell the remaning 380 I have to a customer picking up a Sig P238 and she's super stoked to get a gun.
2PM: Random walk in. Local restaurant owner that I sold a Sig 227 to a few months ago wants me to put in an SRT kit. He's disassembled the entire frame and wants me to put it togther. I explain that an SRT install is normally 5 minutes. This is easily a 45 minute job to reassemble and that's IF he has all the parts. He says he has all the parts. I begin putting the gun back together. He does not have all the parts. He goes home and says he will look harder for the missing part.
3PM: I look online for the missing part. It's $5 and 4 weeks to ship and in stock at most vendors. This sucks. I call some favors and I know of one in the mid atlantic area I can get here in a week in case he can't find it. As I get off the phone he walks in with the missing part.
Just an FYI for the readers. In ten years, I have had "bag o gun" come through the door on three previous occasions.
First: Sig 229 from local PD. Chief took it apart, couldn't put it back together. Had no backup gun and had to go on duty in a few hours, I was asked to put it together.
Second: My buddy Bruce in PA. He detail stripped his 220 and got it wrong. I put it back together and sent it back to PA.
Third: Rusty and his 226. See above. He missed some parts. I put it back together and sent it back to Texas.
If anyone thinks they see a pattern here it's because there IS a pattern here.
I start work on the 227 and this thing is a bitch and a half. The ejector, which is a 25 cent stamped metal part is not to spec. Sig's QC sucks. Their 3mm hole PRECISELY stamped in one place isn't 3mm and isn't precise. The sear pin that has to go through the left side of the frame, through the ejector, through the left side of the sear, through the sear reset spring, through the other side of the sear, through the safety lever and through the right side of the frame is NOT COOOPERATING because the ejector is too tight. I have to beat on this thing with a drilling hammer to get it to go. 45 minutes of anger and frustration later, 227 is back in action with the garbage one piece E2 grips.
For this pain, I bill $100. He tells me he should have had me do it in the first place. I say he's right but it's a tough job doing Sig classic pistols right. They're a very challenging platform.
4PM: I ship off some more 5.56 brass and pay my buddy Ray. I head home.
5PM: Beef jerky time.
I hope you all enjoyed these stories. They have not been embellished because they need no embellishment. Stay tuned for my next story where I post about the state of the firearm industry!
God bless and have a wonderful Saturday.
PS - and this is how you do a "week in the life" thread, you fucking imposter.
https://www.reddit.com/guns/comments/i759qj/a_week_in_the_life_of_your_favorite_firearm/ Day Two Here Day Three Here Gettysburg is by far my favorite battle of all time.
First, it is an all-American battle in an all-American war, and myself being an old school nationalist it carries significance that other battles simply don’t; I may find Austerlitz or Stalingrad nifty, but nobody there was my people.
More, it was an extraordinarily clean fight. At any point, a soldier on either side could hurl down their rifle and grab some sky and be reasonably assured of having their surrender accepted without reservation, and for that matter their captor could rely on their new POWs to trudge back to the rear under light guard in good faith. Even though much of the fighting took place in an urban environment with embedded civilians, only one civilian died in the fighting. Let me tell you, the more military history you read up on, the clearer it is that massacring civilians before, during, and after a rough fight is par for the course. One might even say that butchering unarmed men, women and children of the enemy tribe is the
de facto military objective more than half the time; it might be some weird, half instinctual, proto-game theory going on: “We told them to surrender or else. They didn’t surrender, we won anyway, and now there’s gotta be an ‘or else’ to persuade the next batch of holdouts that we mean business.” In the long run, butchering the first village usually made it morelikely the next three villages would get the message and surrender without a fight, saving the invaders men, materiel, and time. Or perhaps it’s that killing civilians has always been pure bloody-mindedness. But not at Gettysburg. Gettysburg is where the American platonic ideal of soldiers fighting soldiers and leaving the civilians be actually happened.
Another aspect to the battle that fascinates me is how utterly unplanned it was. Neither army had intended to fight there, and between the scale of the brawl, the rapidity of developments, the intransigence of their subordinates, and the communications lag, neither the Confederate general Lee nor the Union general Meade had a grip on the situation at all until the second day of the battle, and neither could enact their ideal plans until the third day. It was something of a clusterfuck for both sides, and the course of the battle depended on the initiative and guts of small unit commanders with little idea of what the big picture was.
Gettysburg tends to be remembered as the turning point in the war, when it stopped being a gallant passage at arms between roughly equal powers and started being a slow, painful inevitable grind towards Union victory. This is not exactly accurate; only with years of hindsight could anybody construct a narrative that framed this fight as the turning point, for at the time Gettysburg was seen as just another grisly slaughter yard in a long series of them. Still, between this fight and the conquest of Vicksburg out west, this does appear in hindsight to be the high watermark in terms of Confederate progress towards successful seccession. Certainly it was the last time any Confederate army went on the strategic offensive. For diehard secessionists (both during the war and in the years after), this was the last hurrah before the war started being truly hopeless.
It is also, I should mention, a place of spiritual significance for me. Myself being secular humanist with a vaccination against Protestantism from my younger days, I don’t have much in the way of codified religion. But when I was a youngin’ visiting relatives out east, I got to visit the battlefield. I found myself standing in front of a monument on the field on the north end of Herbst Wood (where the right flank of Iron Brigade stood and charged on the first day of the battle). It described how a Michigan regiment of about a thousand men stood on that spot and suffered two thirds casualties over the course of the day. I read the details on the monument, and stared up at the mustachioed rifleman staring defiantly to the west.
Looking left and right, I saw more monuments every fifty yards or so in a straightish line, spreading out to mark where a human line had once stood and bled. And I turned my back on the monuments to face away, and behold, I saw an opposing line of Confederate monuments stretched out horizon to horizon about a hundred yards away. Two lines, violently opposed but unmoving; courage and horror frozen into place forever. And the world there seemed very big, and very grand, and I felt very small and unworthy. The air was at once colder and hotter than any air I’d ever felt. The wind cut through my clothing and reminded me that flesh was mortal but spirit was eternal. This was holy ground, soil consecrated by blood. Shi’ite Muslims have Karbala. Catholics have the Road to Calvary. Australian aboriginals have Uluru. I have Gettysburg.
————————————————————————
BACKGROUND A brief note- I will be including maps periodically to show the progression of the fighting. These maps must be taken with a grain or three of salt. They are intended to show relations between the armies and the terrain, not to mark the exact positions or dispositions of the units, nor to show an exact proportion of numbers involved. This is because I am not an expert mapmaker, and I thank you in advance for your understanding.
First, a map of the northern part of the battlefield. Note how many roads lead there, and note the high ground of Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill to the south of the town.
The Battle of Gettysburg happened because Lee needed to go on the offensive, and Lee needed to go on the offensive because of the big picture. I shall cover the broad outline just so the significance doesn’t pass anybody by.
The Confederacy in the Spring of 1863 was in a terrible dilemma. The leadership had two urgent problems, either one of which could (if unaddressed) destroy their enterprise, and to make things worse they didn’t have the resources to solve either of them alone without a miracle.
One, the Union was fixing to shove yet another army down Richmond’s throat. Two years of failed invasions into Virginia had been brutal to both sides, but the North had immense reserves of cash, food, industrial output, and manpower with which to replenish themselves, and the South simply didn’t. The Army of Northern Virginia on which every invasion thus far had broken was underarmed, underfed, and undermanned, and if these issues were not fixed then they’d be seeing Union soldiers in the Confederate capitol before Autumn. There had already been a push that year, which Lee had staved off at Chancellorsville. There was plenty of time left before winter for a second attack.
And two, Vicksburg, the railway hub that sat on the Mississippi River, was under dire threat. The Union had already grabbed New Orleans at the south end and pushed north up the river, and had been pushing south down the river since day one of the war, but Vicksburg prevented the whole river from falling in to Union hands. Vicksburg alone let the South shift resources and information from its Western half to its Eastern half. Losing it could be a death blow. The garrison of Vicksburg was
also underarmed, underfed, and undermanned.
The fresh crops taken off the farm and the fresh host of new recruits also taken off the farm were middling at best. Even throwing all the resources they had at either problem and letting the other develop as it would might mean losing on both fronts. Splitting the resources in half to prop up both didn’t seem promising either. Lee, being something of a strategist, developed a third option. There was no point (he reasoned) in trying to prop up Vicksburg at this point- it would take weeks to shift reinforcements that far west, and by then it would be midsummer. If the siege lasted that long, either the garrison would fold or disease would rip through the Yankee army and drive it back home, as it had the last two years running. In either scenario, further support would affect nothing. Therefore, he proposed a bold plan- don’t sit around waiting to get hit in the face. Invade north. Take the fight onto
their turf.
The more the Confederate leadership considered it, the better it sounded. Northern land hadn’t been ravaged like Virginia had- it would be easy to live off of the enemy’s food for once, thus lessening the headache of their constant supply problems. It was also an election year, and the anti-war Democrats were raging at the ocean of blood and gold being wasted on bringing States back into the fold who very clearly wanted to go their own way. One good, solid victory on Northern soil could tip the balance, drive home the point that that war was unwinnable. Get the Black Republican warmonger Lincoln kicked out of the White House, get a reasonable Democrat in, and next year they just might get a negotiated peace that would lead in time to true and recognized independence.
To which end-
Lee snaked his newly reinforced army of about 75,000 men up through the Shenandoah Valley, using the mountain range to mask his movements instead of using to well-worn direct route that the Union was camped on. He would end up
north of the bulk of the Army of the Potomac, simultaneously threatening Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, which for a guy trying to score a symbolic victory to discourage the enemy voters put him in a pretty nice spot.
Lincoln freaked out, told Hooker and his Army of the Potomac to go out and beat Lee, to utterly destroy his army, and also not leave any weak point undefended, which are just the kind of orders one enjoys receiving. Hooker, having a bit of an ego and a poor history of getting his ass kicked by Lee, got into a feud with Lincoln’s advisors and impulsively offered his resignation as Commander of the Army of the Potomac following some stupid spat with the bean counters back in Washington. Lincoln called his bluff and fired him three days before the battle, putting General Meade in charge of the whole damn army with almost no prep time.
I should cut the narrative here to cast moral aspersions right quick. The Union were the good guys, and the Confederates were the villains. That said, the North made for really terrible heroes, and the South had more than its fair share of virtues. This was not a grand crusade of freedom-loving Yankees tearing down the moral abomination of human bondage. This was a brutal, no holds barred death struggle between the efficient new urban Industrial Revolution and the rural
Cavalier latifundias. Only a smallish segment of New England Puritans and bleeding heart Quakers hated slavery on moral grounds- the rest of the North either hated it on financial grounds, didn’t give a fuck one way or another, or were actively supporting racial slavery. And on the flip side, most Southerners who fought in the war perceived quite accurately that outsiders were coming into their world to demand submission, and had decided to give these invaders the William Wallace treatment. This is a normal and admirable response that every healthy society should have in its toolbox, and in my not-even-slightly humble opinion it is a damn shame that so many people endured so much agony in support of so un-American a cause.
For you see, when Lee’s army reached Pennsylvania, they kidnapped every black person they could find, free or not, and sent them all south in chains. There was no attempt to ascertain their status by some legal due process, no splitting of hairs. The bare skeleton of Confederate ideology, the great Truth that would have snuffed out by continued political loyalty to the Union, had been that all men were not created equal. To be more precise, men had white skin, and anyone with black skin was not a man and did not have the rights of man. As such, anyone with black skin was to be sold into slavery and threatened with torture and death if they refused to labor in the cotton fields. The army that invaded the North was, in practice, the biggest slave-hunting gang that had ever set foot on American soil.
The side wearing grey were staunch defenders of a country based on the Ideal of Ethnic Supremacy, and the side wearing blue were fighting for a country based on the Ideal of Equality. There were a million nagging features of material reality in the South and the North that challenged both of these Ideals, but there were no Ideals to challenge these Ideals, save only for each other. We know that this is true, because as the war shifted away from a Federal attempt to rein in wayward states to an all out assault on the institution of slavery, more and more Northerners balked at the idea of dying to set niggers free; men who had fought for years to bring the rebels into the fold again threw down their rifles and went home in disgust after they heard of the Emancipation Proclamation. And as it became clearer that poor whites who never owned slaves were expected to die for plantation owners’ right to stay rich, fewer and fewer Southerners were willing to jump into the meat grinder feet first; many of
them deserted to go home and form Unionist bushwhacker gangs instead. Speaking of the draft, a higher percentage of southerners dodged the Confederate draft than in Vietnam, yet Vietnam is remembered as a deeply unpopular war while the Lost Cause has painted the South as a unified bloc striving as one against the Yankee oppressor.
Also, the Confederacy had a draft imposed upon the states by its federal government. So, yeah, State's Rights. Tell me how that worked out.
To reiterate. Both sides are not the same. We are rooting for the Union. Slavery. Etc.
Pushing on-
The two armies surged northward, on parallel tracks with Lee on the west side of the Appalachians and Meade on the east side. Being critically low on recon drones and spy satellites, the only ways to find the enemy army was to send guys out on horseback to physically look at them before riding back, and to talk to locals whether they’d seen anyone wearing the other team’s uniform recently. Clouds of skirmishers, cavalrymen, and small detachments of infantrymen from either side scattered themselves in all directions, straining to catch a glimpse of the other army. The first side to locate the enemy, amass sufficient force, and maneuver against them would probably win, without regard for right or wrong.
————————————————————————
JULY 1st, 1863 Early Morning General John Buford had a 2,500 strong brigade of cavalrymen patrolling southern Pennsylvania, being one of dozens of detachments sent out to find the enemy army. Using human intelligence from locals in Gettysburg, he learned that there was a column of rebel infantry marching down the Chambersburg Pike.
And indeed there was. Advance scouts from Buford’s brigade made visual contact with a column marching south towards Gettysburg. The ball was now rolling.
The story goes that the Confederates were looking for new shoes and heard that there was a stockpile in Gettysburg. As far as I can tell, this is a baseless legend- inspired by the true fact that the rebel army didn’t have enough shoes, but baseless nonetheless. The three Confederate commanders marching towards Gettysburg (Archer and Davis with a brigade apiece and Heth as division commander coordinating them), were simply doing what their counterpart was doing- reconnaissance in force, hoping to develop a lead for the rest of the army to follow. 7,000 infantry under Archer and Davis were about to pick a fight with 2,500 cavalrymen under Buford. The currents of this morning fight would provide the grooves for the next three days to follow.
Buford’s men fought as dragoons; the horse let you scoot around to where you need to go, but you got off it and fought on foot. They Union cavalry broke into tiny little four man teams to bloody the approaching Confederates’ noses. The terrain was a bushwhacker’s paradise- plenty of rocks and trees to hide behind, and plenty of low, rolling hills to speed off behind to break line of sight. One man would hold the horses while the other three crouch-ran forward under cover to pop off rounds into the enemy column from the sides of the road. When the enemy infantry redeployed from a fast moving but harmless column formation into a slow moving but dangerous line, the three shooters would run back to their buddy to mount up and retreat to a new position.
The cavalrymen were outnumbered nearly three to one, and their carbines had less range and power than the rebel rifles; then again, the terrain was working for them and their breechloading carbines could shoot much faster than the enemy’s muzzleloading long rifles.
It was very close to being an fair fight, as long as the cavalry could stay mobile and keep their distance. Buford and Heth both had unclear, contradictory orders- “Push forward aggressively to locate the enemy, but do not enter into a general engagement until we know what we’re up against.” It was an order that must have made sense in the tent when Lee and Meade sent their own versions off. You wouldn’t want to force a battle until you knew the enemy’s location and disposition and the terrain you were going to be standing on, any more than you’d want bet it all on a poker hand before looking at your cards. But to the guys on the front line, it meant “charge forward, but do not charge forward. Attack, but do not engage. Show some initiative, but don’t pick a real fight.” Heth decided they were up against a skeleton crew of skirmishers, and he had orders to check out Gettysburg. He send riders back with a quick report and a request for reinforcements. Buford decided that if the whole damn rebel army was heading his way, he needed to delay their advance for as many hours as he could to give the rest of the Union army time to get to Gettysburg- the high ground south of the town looked like ideal terrain to fight from and he wanted his buddies to get there before the rebels. He too sent riders back with calls for help.
And meanwhile, the murderous, hazardous stalking of the rebel column continued as it trudged towards Gettysburg.
Meanwhile, in the Rear with the Gear Imagine running a marathon- 26 miles and a bit from start to finish. That’s how spread out a Civil War army is, from vanguard to rear guard. You can’t really concentrate 75,000-100,000 people together that closely. Disease starts killing people off really fast, feeding everyone is a headache, and if you have to march out, the lead element will march all day before stopping for the night, while the rear element hasn’t even left camp yet. It’s unwieldy. So they all spread out to grab some real estate and forage easier and not choke on each others’ dust and crap.
The riders from the Chambersburg Pike were spreading the word through the marathon length of the armies. Units were halting, turning around. Captains and colonels and generals were consulting maps to figure out what roads to take to get south or north to Gettysburg from where they were now. Regiments were putting their heads to together to figure out whose company oughtta go in what order.
The movements were slow and and ungainly and awkward, but they were starting up.
Mid Morning to Noon The rolling hills on either side of the Chambersburg Pike stopped at McPherson’s Ridge, a grand place to make a stand- plenty of cover, steep incline. In any case, there wasn’t much further to retreat to. Archer and David pushed the cavalrymen, Archer on the south side of the road and Davis on the north. Thoroughly annoyed infantrymen backed up on the Pike behind them, eager to get at the enemy but without frontage to occupy.
Buford dug in on McPherson’s Ridge, and the full force of Heth’s division slammed into him. Denied their mobility by the necessity of holding territory, the fair fight turned into a meat grinder for the dismounted cavalrymen. When Confederate artillery set up on Herr’s Ridge, it turned into a bloodbath.
Buford, at last, got in contact with somebody who outranked him. General John Reynolds, second in command of the whole Union army, rode ahead of his division to get eyes on the situation.
The two struck a deal in the middle of a firefight. Buford promised to hold to the last man, and Reynolds promised to reinforce him. It was an exercise in trust; if Buford’s men held firm and Reynolds let them down, they’d be swamped and slaughtered to a man, and if Buford’s detachment broke and scattered, Reynolds’ reinforcements would march directly into a line of hills held by an entrenched enemy force of equal size. Failure on either side would be fatal. Reynolds rode south again, leaving Buford and his dwindling cavalrymen to fend off 10% of the Confederate army all alone.
Meanwhile, Buford’s thin line was cracking. Outnumbered, outgunned, and unable to advance or retreat... That which was inevitable to start with was happening now. Davis’ brigade was pressing against Oak Ridge on the Union right, and Archer's was taking Herbst Woods tree by tree. Buford’s men were giving ground they couldn’t afford to lose. Confederate artillery was blasting giant holes in the ranks of the defenders.
That’s when the relief came- two fresh brigades of infantry coming up the Emmitsburg road, under generals Cutler and Meredith. Cutler got there first, taking up positions on Oak Ridge and straddling either side of the Pike with cannons. Their massive volleys disrupted Confederate momentum and silenced some of the rebels’ big guns as everyone scrambled for cover. Grateful and exhausted cavalrymen sidled off to the flanks to safety. Meredith’s brigade is still lagging behind- that’s the problem with columns, only the guys in front can do anything.
If Buford and Reynolds expected everything to be right in the world once reinforcements arrived, they were very much mistaken. Those men out there attacking up Oak Ridge were some of the finest infantrymen in the world- dedicated, disciplined, contemptuous of death. They did not stop being efficient killers just because they now fought peers instead of the hornet-like cavalry skirmishers. Cutler’s brigade was facing a small tidal wave of battle-maddened Southern veterans, and had no time to dig in and situate themselves before the moment of impact. Davis’ men ripped into them like a pack of starving wolves. Cutler’s men fell back to safety on the top of Oak Ridge. In pieces.
Meanwhile, Meredith’s brigade was finally in position to retake Herbst Woods on the south side of the road.
Now, Meredith’s brigade were the absolute elite of the Union army. They were the grizzled veterans, the old crew, the best drilled, the most experienced, the hardest of the hard. They were nicknamed the Iron Brigade, and the Black Hat Brigade, because they were authorized to wear dashing black foraging caps to signify their status as the best of the best. With their comrades north of the road falling back, it was imperative that the Black Hat Brigade protect their left flank. To which end, Reynolds frantically snapped orders for them to line up and charge Archer’s men who were occupying Herbst Wood.
Their charge was met by a storm of musket fire that churned the Iron ranks into blood and guts. But this was the Black Hat Brigade. For them, taking ten percent casualties in a single minute was just another Tuesday. They got in close to the rebel line to return the volleys with a vengeance, and then charged with the bayonet. Archer’s men saw the distinctive black hats come for them through the musket-smoke. For the first time, they realized that these were no mere cavalry skirmishers, no half-assed militia company facing them. The best of the best of the Army of the Potomac was coming at them at terrifyingly close range. Archer’s men cracked and scattered. The ones who stood firm, died. The ones who threw down their rifles and grabbed sky were allowed to live as prisoners. The ones who ran, lived, but found the Iron Brigade hot on their heels. Meredith’s elites carved through Archer’s brigade like it wasn’t even there.
Reynolds was a good leader. A great one, in fact. He was decisive, experienced, competent. Many thought he should have gotten command instead of Meade. As his men retook Herbst Wood, he turned behind him to check on how close reinforcements were, some rebel rifleman did his cause a world of good, and shot Reynolds in the back of the head.
Now the situation got pretty weird- Davis’ brigade had kicked the shit out of Cutler’s brigade and was pursuing them on the north side of the road, and the Iron Brigade had kicked the shit out of Archer’s brigade and was pursuing them on the south side of the road. Neither victor was aware of what had happened across from them, and soon enough they would pass each other by almost touching the edges of their lines. The first one to figure out what was happening would get to win. As it so happened, General Doubleday (in command now that Reynolds was dead) saw the danger and the opportunity first. He broke off an Iron regiment from his reserve to swoop in and protect the flank just in time, setting them up in a defensive stance facing the road. That regiment was joined by another broken off from the Iron assault, and yet another from Cutler’s brigade, who had seen the maneuvering and joined in on its own initiative. It was like a ballet, all three regiments coalescing into a single front facing north across the road, as though they’d spent the last week rehearsing. Under their protection, the rest of the Black Hats gave chase to their prey.
When Davis finally turned and attacked, they were chopped down by a mass of highly accurate fire from the newly entrenched men. Confederates died by the dozens and were maimed by the score. As they reloaded, the Black Hats were astonished to find that the whole Confederate brigade vanish into thin air, like magic. The firing stopped; no more targets. It was bizarre.
The three regiments advanced cautiously. And were gutted by a close range surprise volley by the hidden Confederates as they tried to scale the fences on either side of the Pike.
It turns out that there was a cut in the side of road, deep enough for a man to jump down into with only his head able to peek out. Davis’ men had leapt into it as a source cover when the firefight started and found it was a grand place to shoot out of. But it was also a death trap. Once the Union regiments figured it out, they got in close enough to fire blindly down at point blank range into the milling mass of men.
Davis’ men surrendered, thousands of them all at once. Unable to move, unable shoot back, it was really the only choice. And with that, the first round of Gettysburg was over. Oak Ridge and Herbst Wood had held, and about 150,000 odd soldiers were converging on Gettysburg to shift the tide of war this way and that.
AFTERNOON The rest of the first day was not free of drama, and heroics, and mass suffering. But it was free of surprises. The iron laws of physics had decreed that more Confederate units would be on hand for the fighting in the afternoon, and so it was. Fresh rebel troops swept down from the north and from the west, relieving their exhausted comrades and preparing themselves to assault Oak Ridge and Herbst Woods. Fresh Union troops arrived from the south to reinforce what they had and to extend their line out east, protecting their right flank and screening off the town itself.
Hours passed without a shot being fired. Everybody was reorganizing themselves, resupplying, carting the wounded to the rear to let the surgeons saw their shattered limbs off. Two small things happened that delivered a Confederate victory on day one, and a Union victory on day three. Union General Barlow pushed his brigade out to occupy Blocher's hill, and Union General Steinwehr plopped two of his brigades on top of Cemetery Hill. The first created a huge gap in the Union right, and the second secured the invaluable high ground for the rest of the battle.
Meanwhile, three Confederate divisions set themselves up for a concerted attack- Heth would press into Herbst Wood on the Union left, Rodes would assault Oak Ridge at the center, and Early would swoop down the Harrisburg road to threaten the Union right.
When the big push came at around 2 p.m., it was badly organized and mismanaged. Southern commanders couldn't get it together and attack at the same time. Individual units charged at Oak Ridge alone, like a mob of Hollywood henchmen attacking the hero only to be smacked around one by one. Cutler's men didn't just fight them off; it was closer to mass murder. General O'Neal's brigade swooped down off of Oak Hill only to be cut down by musketry and cannon fire, and they did it without O'Neal, because O'Neal stayed in the rear while his men died. When O'Neal's brigade fell back having suffered heavy losses, Cutler shifted his men to greet the new threat from Iverson's brigade, who also charged without their commander. Iverson's men marched in parade perfect order across open ground, without so much as a molehill for cover. The story goes that during the assault, Iverson looked out from safety and saw half his men lying down on the ground. Iverson was pissed off because he thought his men were surrendering. In fact, he was watching his brigade die in droves.
The issue wasn't morale. The Confederate troops were eager to get at the enemy. The problem was purely organizational in nature. The men in charge of telling people what to do were simply too confused and disoriented to work out the solution in real time. While O’Neal and Iverson were getting bloodied, Barlow’s men on Blocher Hill were getting slaughtered. Barlow’s desire to hold the high ground on the defense was understandable- high ground being a grand place to fight from- but he was about one mile ahead of any friendly units. This meant that it was trivially easy to flank and destroy his brigades.
Georgia men under generals Early and Rodes linked up to flank and destroy Barlow’s isolated brigades. A thick stream of filthy, bloody, and terrified Union men flowed back to the town of Gettysburg, leaving a gaping hole in the Union line and spreading their panic like the plague. Victorious Confederates whooped and hollered. As the men to the north of town trade massacres- the failed assault on Oak Ridge being roughly balanced by the disastrous dissolution of Barlow’s brigades- Heth finally attacked the Iron Brigade still occupying Herbst Wood in the west. He’d been delaying it all afternoon, stymied by the contradictory orders from Lee. Lee, who was several miles away and not at all in touch with the situation, still wanted to avoid a general engagement. But now, Heth has been let off the chain to avenge Archer’s brigade.
Heth’s full division attacked Herbst Wood. It was a slow, hot, gory fight. The attacking rebels are aggressive, but also methodical and well-organized. The Black Hats made them pay for every tree they seized. But there’s only one outcome for a fight like this.
The Iron Brigade has the ghastly honor of having the highest casualty ratio of any Civil War brigade, North or South. Out of the 1,885 men in their ranks that morning, 1,153 (61%) were be dead or maimed by nightfall on the first day. The fates of individual units from within the brigade are even more gruesome- in the 2nd Wisconsin regiment, 397 out of 496 (80%) were killed or wounded. But despite the horrific losses, they didn’t break. They gave ground slowly and in good order, but they gave ground nonetheless. Iron does not break, but it does bend.
By late afternoon, the dominoes fell as they were always going to. With the debacle at Blocher’s Knoll, any hope the Union had to hold the right was lost. The Black Hats were being ground into sawdust on the left. And Rodes has finally gotten his brigades to charge at the same time, overwhelming Cutler’s defense.
Every Union man was running now, some in a blind panic, some withdrawing in good order like professionals.
The open field battle turned into urban warfare as the Confederates chased the Union army through the streets of Gettysburg. Companies blocked the streets to hold off the enemy advance long enough for the comrades to scamper. Marksmen played sniper games in the windows, either shooting men in the back as they ran away or ambushing overly aggressive platoons, depending on the color of their uniform.
The Union men were desperate to reach Cemetery Hill, south of the town. High ground and the reinforcements already stationed there promised safety. The Confederates were just as desperate to catch them first and seize that invaluable terrain for themselves.
Nightfall A great deal of “woulda coulda shoulda” ink has been spilled over the orders that Lee gave to General Ewell, the man in charge of Rodes and Early: “Take Cemetery Hill if practical”. But Ewell saw two brigades with a
lot of artillery standing on top of what appeared to be a natural fortress designed by God to repel infantry, and his men were exhausted to boot. Ewell decided it was not practical, and so did not try. Just one of those things, I expect.
In any case, the day was a Confederate victory. Every spot on the map the Confederate troops wanted to go, they had went. They had crushed all resistance, had even gone toe to toe with the cream of the Army of the Potomac and won. Their enemies were in flight before them.
There was, possibly, a certain amount of disquiet because the enemy had merely been driven from one ridge into another ridge, one even steeper and with more cover than the last. And rumor had it the rest of the Army of the Potomac was coming at them.
But that was a problem for the next day.
submitted by Okay, so I had an addiction. Ever since daddy first got me into Texas Hold ‘Em, I loved poker. The thrill of winning an all in or making a sick bluff pulled me in… As did the sheer euphoria any winning session brought me. Above all, Lily Capra just
loved the game.
I admit I didn’t win every time. No one does. Poker requires a unique skill set, especially to offset the variance. Those horrific battles with Lady Luck.
But daddy taught me well. From childhood to my twenties, dad did his best to preach pot odds, position, and making high percentage plays. And for the most part, his lectures paid off.
I started off a young cocky punk. But like a focused coach, dad got through to me. Soon enough, I started winning.
We started winning.
I hit eighteen and that was when dad started taking me to the Florida card rooms. The house games. All the spots where the action was. He helped me improve my game. Helped kindle my passion.
Now here I was thirty-five and settled down in Albany, Georgia. I was still a pretty young woman. A pretty young mother, that is. My short brown hair matched my dark eyes… Eyes that were considered striking until sunglasses disguised them on the felt. And with an athletic frame, you’d never guess I had three kids.
Sadly, my dad passed a few years back. But his poker legacy lived on in me. In Lucky Lily. The only problem now was finding the time to make that forty minute drive to our local card room on River Road… Not an easy task with the kids.
I’d still go out when I could. My husband Harold knew I wasn’t shopping or out clubbing with the “the girls.” He knew I was playing some fucking cards. And given the money I won, Harold didn’t mind one bit.
Tonight was no different. The exciting urge hit me early in the evening. Harold was watching a ball game with the kids… So I had cover for what would be this week’s journey down River Road. I kissed the fam goodbye and then I took off for my addiction.
Cold November rain ambushed me. My body shivered not from an obvious tell but from the forty degree weather. In my Toyota, the routine route took me down long country roads. Lonely roads by day that were isolated by night.
Just thinking of poker further fueled my buzz. My excitement. I already heard a new player was gonna be there tonight… then again, rainy nights like this usually brought out the easy money. Fresh fish ready to get hooked by us poker regs. Especially at the place I went to. You throw in a pretty girl like me, and I was gonna slaughter them.
Behind the wheel, I stole a glance at the radio clock:
7:30. Not even eight and it was already pitch black outside. Deep woods surrounded me. My car like an isolated boat drifting down a cryptic ocean. Bruce Springsteen on the radio my only company.
River Road ran well over thirty miles. But my heavy foot got me closer and closer to the card room.
The middle of nowhere on the middle of a Wednesday night usually meant no cops. Hell, it usually meant no sign of life save for the fish and whales at the poker game. Particularly the fresh blood that was waiting on me… I just had to get there in time. Winning cash was tough enough against us vets.
We needed those hopeless newbs and shit players. One of many rules daddy taught me long ago.
The steady rain increased. Even with the heat going full blast, I cringed from the cold.
The two-lane blacktop was far from any interstate. There were no gas stations or roadside bar-b-que stands. Not even a house… or at least none that looked inhabitable. Same with the ugly trailer parks and even uglier backwoods churches I kept passing.
“Can’t start a fire!” I sang along with The Boss. “You can’t start a fire without a spark…”
Then a beam of light blinded me. A ferocious flash from behind.
I checked the rearview mirror. Saw the fierce headlights gunning for me. I was doing seventy… and whatever beast was creeping on me looked to be doing well over that...
“What the fuck,” I muttered.
The muscular car glided right in. Inches away from my bumper. They hovered at the same distance… taunting me. Their headlights beaming on me like an unforgiving spotlight.
My glare stayed on the mirror. On that fucking car. The darkness blanketed its make, model, and color. All I saw was speed and size. The car a locomotive hurtling through the country night.
“Pass me, asshole!” I shouted.
But the car didn’t budge. Mile for mile, it followed me. Matching my speed.
All around me, Bruce’s “Dancing In The Dark” kept playing. The bombastic beat joined the raindrops for a hypnotic rhythm.
Shielding my eyes, I looked down the road. No driveways greeted me. No side roads. No help.
The monster’s glowing eyes flickered. Headlights from Hell.
“Shit!” I cried.
Then I heard the car’s engine roar to life. It got closer.… a final plunge for its prey.
“Destination on your left!” a demanding voice hurled at me. Her tone agitated as always.
I was never happier to hear my GPS.
Behind me, the headlights careened toward me. The vicious car ready to devour everything in its path.
The rain kept splattering my windshield, hindering my vision. But that didn’t matter. Not when I’d driven this poker road almost half of my life. A path my father and I had pioneered many years ago...
Focused, I swerved the wheel straight into the dirt driveway. A pothole sent me into the air. Puddles exploded all around me. But still, I brought the Toyota to a smooth stop.
I turned to see the black-and-white Dodge Charger cruise past me. Proud, bold letters decorated its doors:
Stanwyck Public Safety Relief soothed my fear. Extinguished the lingering cold I felt.
I watched the cop car disappear down River Road. Right into the storm.
I’d caught a break. No trouble from the law. No interruptions. Now I had a whole night of Texas Hold ‘Em waiting for me.
Grinning, I drove down the rest of the driveway. Right up to a wooden cabin in the very back of a spacious yard. Like an iron-pike gate, tall trees surrounded the house. Privacy for the poker room.
I stopped next to a few other cars. All of them hideous. The vehicles more appropriate for a wrecking yard than a decent cash game.
There were no lights anywhere. Not even in the cabin. But I’d been here so long it didn’t matter. The card room essentially my second home.
I stepped out into the brutal cold. The rising excitement kept me warm from both the chilling wind and rain.
With methodical poise, I walked over to the trunk. Unlocked it.
My smile grew even wider. More wicked.
A young man laid inside. A handsome frat boy I’d found a few days ago. He was muscular in his tight tee shirt and gym shorts. His body bound-and-gagged in duct tape. A head wound leaked blood through his black hair. His horrified blue eyes stayed stuck on me.
Daddy was gonna be happy. I brought just what our game needed: fresh fish.
I led the young man up to the front door. Our steps a cryptic chorus on this creaking porch.
And then inside, I sat him at the poker table. Many chips already on the green felt.
Like a frightened child, I heard the guy whimper. Then again, the first time playing for money was always the scariest.
I played more Bruce Springsteen on my phone. Lit a few candles. There was no furniture but the table and chairs. The wooden walls only decorated by a few bland paintings. In the corner, a mini bar offered cheap beer. A lit fireplace staved off the cold.
Our poker room was ready.
Eager, I sat between daddy and Oliver. Some other regulars filled out the table. There was a rotten smell permeating the air… Then again, most poker players had shit hygiene.
By now, the blood had dried on our deck of cards. The red stains covering the felt no longer sticky.
Smiling, I scanned the scene. Daddy was still in decay. His flesh a crumbling paleness. Mushy skin besides his beautiful eyes.
Oliver’s slit throat remained vivid. Blackened blood soaked through his clothes. He’d only been in this poker hideaway a few weeks now so his body was far from rotten.
The other players also had their flaws. Terrifying tells in the form of dissections, decomposition, or severed limbs.
But still, we had a game. That was the main thing: our poker room was back in business.
I took out the young man’s wallet. Read his driver’s license.
“Alright, Shaun,” I said.
Nervous, the young man kept trembling in his seat. Always the tell-tale signs of a new live player. He didn’t have a chance…
I retrieved his money. All the Benjamins.
I looked over at dad. “He’s in for four-hundred!” I announced as if I were an experienced card dealer.
With glee, I tossed the cash on to the felt. Flashed the fish a cold stare... further making Shaun quiver. He the sacrificial lamb to us south Georgia grinders.
My intense eyes now matched the fireplace’s flames. “Shuffle up and deal!” I yelled.
14 If you haven't had time to listen to seven hours of podcast interviews, or you didn't retain everything you heard, here are some key points. I didn't think to do this until just now, so I'll be posting it as a work in progress and updating it throughout the afternoon. That way more people will have a chance to read up before the premiere.
Karishma Patel, 37, Personal Injury Trial Lawyer, Houston, TX -First generation Indian-American Her mom was as a legal assistant, and got her a filing job at her law firm when she was 14. "I didn't have other options. I was basically told I was going to be a lawyer and I didn't disagree."She has watched every season and regularly listens to RHAP. She sits close to the TV to study the inflections on people's faces when something is said to them, so that she can think about what that means. But, her parents and husband don't share her enthusiasm for the show. Asked if it's her dark pleasure she says, "It is completely bright. It is a beautiful pleasure of mine, but it is mine and mine only. I haven't been able to find people to share it with." -Doing the show has caused her conflict. "Not only is it not expected, it's not allowed. It's kind of like being a disobedient Indian girl. You're not supposed to be doing this. What you're supposed to be doing is having babies. But I don't care. I'm a risk taker. I'm here to prove to myself that I don't need to listen to anybody else. I don't need permission from anybody else. This is my journey and I'm going to take it. I hope that people watching out there can see that an Indian woman's value does not come from doing what she's told." -She doesn't currently have children, and she says she has some decisions to make as she enters a crossroads and the next stage of her life. -Her law firm told her they'll replace her if they're able to find someone, and she can have her job back if they don't. "I didn't flinch." -Her strategy is to be non-threatening and play a social game. She doesn't look 37, and she wants to use that youthfulness to be disarming. She wants to build relationships other people believe in. She defines success by other people vouching for her loyalty when they go off and have private conversations with one another. "That means I got 'em, because it's actually the other way around." Asked if she wants to find someone she can trust, "I'm not going to be capable of it. I'm too skeptical for that. I overthink things, so I'm not going to be able to trust somebody the way I want to be trusted... If I do, that's the end of my game."
My take: Oh my God. Poor Karishma. Her story hurts my heart. She reminds me so much of myself in her isolation, her defiance and her deep feelings. I worry that her fear of trusting people could get in the way of her forming genuine bonds. But, there's nothing she can do. Society has made her the way she is. I hope she gets a lot of screen time so she can be a star of her favorite show.
Missy Byrd, 24, Military Veteran/App Developer, Tacoma, Washington -Originally from Georgia. Her family was 'decently poor.' She played basketball for the Air Force Academy because she thought it was her ticket out. -She had a brain tumor. She stopped menstruating for a year and two quarters. "I'm not dating anyone but I have breast milk. I'm a literal cow... I would look down and my shirt would be wet, and I thought, 'Dang you're clumsy. I knew you were clumsy, but you're clumsier today than you were yesterday. But it was - it was - uhh - milk." She had crying fits. She developed a stutter and couldn't look at people. Doctors told her she was just stressed. When her dad died she couldn't process emotions normally. She was about to go to the French version of the Air Force Academy, École de l'air, after graduation but because of her mental instability she was removed from school. The military shipped her to the same Air Force base as Sandra (Fort Lewis.) "I don't want to be there. Super sad. Check into the post office - fuck this. Check into the dorms - hate that." The doctor there found the tumor. She got an MRI and all weekend she believed she might have cancer. Over the next year and a half she eliminated the tumor and the symptoms using vitamins. She enlisted and worked logistics. -She made a list of the things she wanted to do now that she was going to live. "The first thing was go see Beyonce. Beyonce costs way too much money for a normal person to go see, but if you've just almost had a near death experience you go see Beyonce, bro!" She was feet away. She drove across the country. She tried weed. -She had an idea for an app, but didn't even have the computer literacy to use social media. She found a veteran's association and asked if she could intern. "They said, 'No, you should build this out yourself. We want to work for you.' I said, 'No, the fuck you don't. Okay, lemme call my grandma.'" She wrote a grant proposal and won a $1,500 office space in the center of Seattle. "Just to do whatever I want. It was like a laboratory for a child. I had Play-Dough up there. I had a white board... Just mind blowing shit when I could have been dead." -She'd seen every episode of Survivor at least three times. She started watching because her Air Force Academy basketball team was getting decimated, and she related to Foa Foa getting decimated in Survivor: Samoa. She added the show to her list. Josh suggests, "The bugs are eating you because they want some of that magic." -She isn't going to tell people her story until she's in the Final 3. "That's that Final 3 magic." She doesn't want to overly rely on strategy. She doesn't want to win individual challenges. She to build a social game and find ways to relate to everyone.
My take: She's so full of exuberance. There's not a negative bone in her body right now. She's too young and her life experience is too necessarily limited to talk around three years of her life. If she shares her story, the beauty of her perspective will cause everyone to fall in love with her and want her to do well. If she doesn't, people will sense that she's hiding a lot. I think she'll figure that out and course correct within the first day. Since she was at the same Air Force base as Sandra and she was a massive fan, does that suggest she knows her?
Ronnie Bardah, 35, Professional Poker Player, Henderson, Nevada-Born and raised in Brockton, Massachusetts, 20 minutes south of Boston. They were the only Israeli family in town. 50% of the people in Brockton were from Cape Verde, and he considers himself an "honorary Cape Verdian." A couple of his friends were shot and killed at a young age. -He was a good kid and had a good heart, but he was always hustling. In Junior High he was flipping Oatmeal Cakes and Fudge Rounds for a profit. Slinging baseball cards. Both his parents gambled. They were always at the dog tracks or Mohegan Sun. He had his friend make him a fake ID and got stuck with the name Alaja Jones. He went by Al and started playing the casinos. Quit his job at Sears Automotive to play poker full time.-He played Atlantic City, Vegas, then internationally. He had his first big score in 2010 when he took 24th place in the main event for $320,000. Got to keep $150,000 after taxes. "Poker's a hard way to make an easy living. Lots of people try. We risk every day. You have to get to a point when you can manage your bankroll and I've never gone broke in the 16 years I've played." -In one of the most viewed poker hands of all time, he was bluffed out of a million dollar pot by a supermodel on a poker TV show filmed in Monaco. "She made a sick play. She had no idea what she was doing but all the stars were aligned."-He watched Borneo when it aired and got back into it when fellow poker player Anna Khait was on. He calls Jean-Robert, "kinda a lazy guy...He's really good at befriending multi-millionaires." "Anna Khait... is probably the least poker player out of all of us. She played for a couple years." "And then Garrett - He's a very, very smart, smart kid... Self-made millionaire. One of the very, very few." -He only drank water for 7.5 days and lost 25 pounds for his health and to get an idea of the conditions of the show. He thinks he'll thrive in the survival situation. "People like being around me. I like to fucking bust balls and joke." He thinks old school alliances are a good plan, but you have to adapt. He says that like in poker, Survivor players can have every advantage, but they have to really smell it. -He wants Vince out. "There's an Asian Zeke in there. What value does he bring besides ruining people and getting in people's heads? He's a liability in challenges. He looks like a little corn puff. We gotta get him outta here. Sorry to sound so mean but it's the truth."
My take: Ruuuuude. He has no way of knowing how other people on the cast are talking in their interviews, and may assume the trash talk is standard. If he were playing on some seasons it would be. But, in this particular season it sets him apart in an unflattering way, and it seems a part of the tough persona he's built up to escape a scary situation growing up and enter a fantasy career. We'll see whether his tribe thinks he's a straight talking character or a jerk.
Tom Laidlaw, Former NHL Player, Brampton, Ontario, Canada -He was with the New York Rangers for 7 years and the LA Kings for 4. Now he has his own podcast, True Grit Life (
truegritlife.com). Does it with a friend, Kevin Allen, who writes for USA Today. Does motivational speaking. -Growing up on a dairy farm outside Toronto there was a pond to water the cows. It froze over in the winters and he'd play hockey because there wasn't much else to do. Went to Northern Michigan University - four year hockey captain, ranked #1 team in the country. Drafted as a 20 year old. "My buddy had a horse farm. We were cleaning horse shit out of the stalls. There were no cell phones back then. This is 1978. My father got a call at our farm house from the New York Rangers at the draft. Back then nobody went to the draft - it was just teams. They said I'd been drafted in the sixth round. He calls the farm house where I'm working. They bring me up. He says, 'Son, you've been drafted by the Rangers.' I said, 'Great. What do I do now?' He says, 'Finish cleaning the shit out of the stalls.'" -When he played intimidation and fighting was strategy. There were guys tougher than him, but he could fight and he could also play. Problem was, he fought a guy once, and from then on the guy wanted to fight him over and over. -Jerry Bruckheimer, big hockey fan, called the NHL and wanted to get some players on the Amazing Race. Tom had kept himself in shape, he had his passport. They ended up asking him about Survivor. He'd watched it before but not for a while. He wasn't so sure he wanted to play a game where you hurt other people, but friends helped him get his head around it. He was very impressed by Christian's toughness in the endurance challenge. To prepare for the show he studied how he reacted to different situations, how to control his heart heart, etc. He wants the mental challenge.
My take: Tom really ticked me off when he spoiled a couple of outcomes of this season. That's a betrayal of the producers, his cast and the viewers. But, if that hadn't happened I would like him. He's an easy-going, charming guy. His life experiences are a bit different than anyone else who's been on the show, which is what you want.
Vince Moua, 27, Admissions Counselor, Merced, CA -His family is Hmong. His parents lived in Vietnam in the destruction left by the war - dead bodies, guns, people who wanted to kill them. They went to refugee camps in Thailand. Then his dad became a Montana farm hand. He met Vince's mom in the US, but she came from the same place. -Vince is from small town Merced, California - the 209. Few people he knew went anywhere but the UC system and community college. He went to Stanford, one of only 7-10 Hmong. He realized the significance someone can bring to people from the same community. He tried to be pre-med but realized "no, not today." The issues of access he cared about came well before people got to the hospital. He ended up going with education. His mom was a teacher, "But when I was growing up she said, 'Yo, if you become a teacher Imma disown yo ass.' To all of us. But, that's always kinda been my jam." -He lived in South Korea for five years. He taught English in a town. Then in Seoul ahed worked with low and middle income students who wanted to study outside of Korea. -He's a Survivor superfan, who even mentions on his Tinder account that he plans to be on Survivor. His parents were worried about him doing TV because he's not out as gay to his extended family. He comes from a clan where his dad is the "top dog" and Vince is "the next top dog." In the Asian American/Pacific Islander community when you come out, it's your family who faces - in a sense - dishonor. For a long time he distanced himself from his family, hoping they'd all be less hurt if they found out and disowned him. He always tried to find friends who would be there for him should his parents not be. A year ago his mom asked him rhetorically if he was gay. "I was try'n to go around it. I was like, 'Gurl, you don't wanna know! Yo ass keeps asking!' But she kept asking, asking. So finally I told her 'Yeah, I am!' and she was crying. My dad was like, 'Oh, my son!'" But, Vince is fine with who he is and wants to show kids like him that "let's hope that it gets better." Now his parents just want him to win. -He'd like to play an old school strategy but "I'm not afraid to cut a bitch." With the tribe he's going to be Homeboy Vince from the 209, but when he talks to the camera he's going to tell people "Don't underestimate your narratives." This past year with Crazy Rich Asians, he wants people to know that there are some Crazy Hood Ass Asians.
My take: What a character. Vince has a clear point of view - Hmong, blue collar, gay - which is unique to him in Survivor lore. Even though double minorities have sometimes had trouble fitting in socially on Survivor I think somehow he's going to pull it off. As unlikely as this sounds I could even see him being a Cochran-esque winner.
Aaron Meredith, 36, Personal Trainer, Warwick, Rhode Island -He's very keyed up at Ponderosa. Rambling so fast it sounds like you're listening to 1.5x. He's read four books so far - Relentless by Tim Grover, Can't Hurt Me by Dave Goggins, Iron Cowboy by James Lawrence, Harry Potter. -He was an engineer at a building insulation plant. He was miserable, too antsy sitting at a desk. Couldn't focus. So, he drove up and down the East Coast popping kettle corn - from Maine to Florida - traveling with carnies. Bartended for a while. He'd played college football and baseball, lifted since high school, and he and his friends wanted to get "huge and jacked and ripped." The owner of the gym suggested he become a personal trainer. He ended up working mostly with middle aged women and it taught him empathy. Now he owns two women's-only fitness studios. He puts supportive women around one another and offers them the positivity to seek self-growth. -He's also a party boat emcee. Lights, DJ, bar, drinks. He's an extremely social person. -He'd first applied at 23 - 6 or 7 times over the years. He was in the mix for Cook Islands and David vs. Goliath. -He's been married 7 years and has a 5 year old son. His son is a huge fan of Survivor. Libby Vincek is his favorite player. Kara Kay was his next favorite. Aaron is already sure Molly will be his son's favorite. "He has a type. He He likes the attractive blondes. He says, 'I like them because they have a nice face.' I like mommy because she has a nice face too." The boy was very concerned about his dad going on the show. He said, "Dad, I don't want anyone to laugh at you and make fun of you." Aaron said he wanted to win. His son said, "But you might not win." When they watch the show he'll always ask, "Do they like him? Do they like her?" If Aaron is portrayed in a negative light he'll have to sit down with his son and talk. He doesn't want to play a deceitful game, but he will, because he doesn't care how he's portrayed.
My take: His story about his son is one of my favorites from all these interviews. I hope he gets to work with Molly. His adrenaline is too high. I hope he calms down a lot when the game starts. But, someone so social and sweet hearted who can win challenges and take themselves to the end has got to be a contender to win.
Chelsea Walker, 27, Digital Content Editor, Los Angeles, CA -Chelsea just took the cast photo and they put her in the third spot from the bottom, a good omen because a weird number of winners have been in that position. "Your girl's number three. I got this!" -She's a Jersey girl. She went to the University of Maryland. "I didn't do Survivor: Maryland or anything." She studied Broadcast Journalism. She knew the generic emails for NBC Universal and emailed random people until someone replied. Now she's been in LA a year. She did coverage of award shows. Now she works at IMDB, where she helps Kevin Smith with his show. She just interviewed people at SXSW. -She's been watching Survivor since she was 8. She's cried in every interview because this means so much to her. She's trying to explain that at the point she starts crying again. "It's been such a dream of mine and To be told no year after year after year - these past six years have been a total mindfuck. I've basically been called every single year. I've been to finals three times. Survivor is my one true love, but the one year they didn't call me I got really pissed off so I tried out for Big Brother. I ended up becoming the alternate and got my key being filmed and all of that crap. But I don't like that show anyway." -In September 2017 she was at a WeHo bar for her friend's birthday when, "Oh shit that's Jeff Probst." Her girlfriends all know she's obsessed, so she pulled the waiter over and asked what that guy was drinking. So, Chelsea sent another one over. "I told my friends, 'Take my credit card. Split the bill, because I can't come back after I do this. As soon as the waiter drops off the drink I'm like, 'Jeff, this one's on me. You can buy me the next one at finals.' And I just walked out of the restaurant... That was a big move!" They didn't call her again that year, but Jeff still remembered when they talked this year. -She's been working out at four different gyms - weights, pilates, yoga. Push ups. Memorized puzzles. Reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, which she keeps in.a Bible sleeve so people will think she's religious. She also carries Harry Potter because she would trust someone who read HP. She wants to keep it cool. Make one on one connections. Eventually find idols - and not tell anyone she has one - and make calculated moves. "I don't want to be a Jacob. No offense."
My take: Hearing this girl cry from joy because she's so happy to be on the show makes me emotional. She's a real go getter. I wish I were that damn fearless. Truly, I wish I were more like her. I hope her pure zest for life comes across on TV and she doesn't get stuck with a purple edit just because of her age and gender. I also hope no one decides to get threatened by her as a competitive girl and vote her off premerge. I think she'll go far. Hope so.
Dean Kowalski, 28, Account Executive, New York, New York -Referring to himself in the third person, "Dean is 28 years old. As we mentioned, he lives in New York and he prides himself on being a well rounded person when it comes to interests, abilities, personalities... If I'm listening to Drake and Lil Wayne, I gotta go home and cry to This Is Us.. I can play basketball but also think about our place in the universe." He likes to tag basketball courts with a peace symbol with a ball on it which he makes using a stencil. -He structures most of his interview with Josh around an Outwit, Outplay, Outlast format, explaining why he excels at each. -He grew up in an affluent suburb. His dream was to play in the NBA. He was 5"9 3/4, so he set his eyes on college basketball as a realistic alternative. In order to get looks from colleges he went to a school 30 minutes away - top five in the country, Nike would fly them around for games and give them free Jordan sneakers. He was one of only 4 white guys in the whole school and the only one on the team. He played with Kyrie Irving, the #1 overall draft pick. "My friend said you look like the Make a Wish Kid who just wants to be on the team for a day." He played at Colombia University, where he was co-captain his senior year despite averaging two minutes a game. He became a teacher, then did sales for a tech startup in New York. He now sells ads for Google. -He's a fan, but far from a superfan. He started watching Brenda's season. (He thinks it was Nicaragua, but it was actually Carmoan.) He works with a superfan who freaked out when they had a meeting at H&R Block with Carolyn Rivera and they went out to Bourbon Street with her. He kept watching for five years and thought he could do well. He hates when people are all talk, so he sent in a tape. For the video he interviewed random strangers on the street, who had never met him or seen the show, and asked them, "Why am I going to win it?" A barber, a construction worker. He's going to tell people he's in marketing, not sales - people have sales.
My take: I'm just not that into him.
Elaine Stott, 41, Factory Worker, Rockholds, NY -When Josh asks her not to touch the table she asks him, "You seen that Bart Simpson commercial, right? Don't touch my Butterfinger? I'm already hungry thinking about it." -"I had a pretty rough way to go growing up." Her single dad raised her and her three brothers. She was the youngest. "I was raised like one of the boys. Know what I mean? Daddy didn't know how to raise no little girl." He worked 16-17 hour days. The kids raised themselves. "When little children make their own decisions, they make poor ones." She was a hellion. -She's originally from Woodbine, Kentucky, Nick Wilson's hometown. Her god sister went to school with him and she knows him through the grapevine. "We rode on different sides of the track. 20 years ago he coulda been my lawyer, because I was on the other side of the law. I'm not bad. I've just done some things." Public intoxication several times. "I come from a dry county. It's like Footloose. We cross the state line to get a beer and when you come back you're in trouble." She stole a newspaper stand once and had to do community service. "I was a little bit mean." -She went to live with her grandpa and cleaned her act up, by which she means that she started smoking a little weed and playing sports - basketball, softball, track. She played softball and judo in college. "I couldn't do nothing real technical. We had Brazilians on the team who could do flying arm bars. But if I got these claws on you and got ya on the ground I'd waller you to death." In casting she put this guy Will in an armbar. She was gonna choke him but didn't know if she should. -When she graduated, her girlfriend was a college Freshman so she went to all the same parties and ballgames for four years. Then she realized she needed a job. Now she drives a Ford truck for a factory. She's been there 15 years. She works 12 hours, 7 days a week. -Growing up her mom "was always in my life in some sense. She'd never miss a birthday. She'd be homeless, but she'd still call." Elaine and her brothers bought her cars, and places to live, and got her jobs. "In a sense I've been mourning the loss of my mom my whole life." Once Elaine was homeless herself and there was snow on the ground. It was cold, and her teacher took her in. Gave her Christmas presents. Made her go to prom. Survivor was a thing they shared, and the teacher was gonna be Elaine's loved one. But within a one year period the woman lost her daughter, her husband, her dog and then had a stroke. Now "she walks like Frankenstein" and can't go. Elaine got Probst to talk to her, and she can't wait to watch. In October Elaine's biological mom went into a coma. She was on life support, but Elaine wouldn't unplug her. Her mom came out of it and seemed to be doing a lot better only to die very suddenly of a heart attack. -Her girlfriend and her girlfriend's two sons are gonna be watching. The 18 year old doesn't know because he can't keep a secret. The 13 year old helped her lose 20 pounds doing crossfit to come out here. She wants the money, but she really wants "some of that soul searching, that life adventure, that life changing - some of that. You know what I mean? Gimme some of that soup! Lemme eat some of that up! I want this show to build me up, because I feel like it can. I sure hope to hell it don't tear me down."
My take: About 12 sobbing emojis in a row. She's my favorite. If she gets voted out premerge I'm going to go into mourning. And how can you not sort of expect that? I am going to be so upset if they just dismiss her because she's older and looks out of shape and sounds country. If that happens, I want another Second Chance season next year.
Elizabeth Biesel, 26, Olympic swimmer, South Kingstown, Rhode Island -Josh says that Elizabeth was outright identified by one of the other contestants because they'd been watching YouTube videos about how to be a better swimmer. Others guessed she was an Olympian based on her rings tattoo. -She's from the Ocean State. They lived a block away from the beach, so they wanted her to take swimming lessons. She was a rambunctious child and swimming was the only way they could calm her energy. She started breaking records when she was 7 or 8. When she was 13 she made her first national team. At 15 she went to the Olympics. She got good early. Women peak around 22-23, and she ended her career at 24. You couldn't make much money doing it. She swam one of the longer, more grueling races, and her body said "no more." She listened to her body and retired. Some athletes lose their love for swimming because they're embittered by losing by 1/100th of a second, or they leave injured. She left on a good note. Still, if she could swim competitively for the rest of her life, she would. Now she doesn't know who she is or what she's going to do with the rest of her life. Every hour of the day used to have a purpose. Now her days are wide open. She can't keep eating 5,000 calories a day. "It's sort of like I'm mourning the death of Elizabeth Biesel the swimmer." -She was a Survivor fan as a kid because Richard Hatch was from Rhode Island. In her area "Every single household that had a television set was watching Survivor." When they asked her if she'd do the show, she felt pure joy. She said absolutely right away. She's excited about the competition of Survivor. No heated Olympic pools. You're stripped down to your core. She's amazed by the scope of the production apparatus. She's not a schemer. She wants to be a challenge beast - not the best woman but the best overall. She'd love to have a Wendell and Dom relationship with another woman. But, she wants to avoid the drama as long as she can.
My take: Could Chelsea be Wendell to her Dom? She's so wholesome. She's just so "Olympics." I love her and everything she represents. I'd love to see her rocket through the swimming competitions, lapping everyone else. Go Elizabeth.
Okay, so I had an addiction. Ever since daddy first got me into Texas Hold ‘Em, I loved poker. The thrill of winning an all in or making a sick bluff pulled me in… As did the sheer euphoria any winning session brought me. Above all, Lily Capra just
loved the game.
I admit I didn’t win every time. No one does. Poker requires a unique skill set, especially to offset the variance. Those horrific battles with Lady Luck.
But daddy taught me well. From childhood to my twenties, dad did his best to preach pot odds, position, and making high percentage plays. And for the most part, his lectures paid off.
I started off a young cocky punk. But like a focused coach, dad got through to me. Soon enough, I started winning.
We started winning.
I hit eighteen and that was when dad started taking me to the Florida card rooms. The house games. All the spots where the action was. He helped me improve my game. Helped kindle my passion.
Now here I was thirty-five and settled down in Albany, Georgia. I was still a pretty young woman. A pretty young mother, that is. My short brown hair matched my dark eyes… Eyes that were considered striking until sunglasses disguised them on the felt. And with an athletic frame, you’d never guess I had three kids.
Sadly, my dad passed a few years back. But his poker legacy lived on in me. In Lucky Lily. The only problem now was finding the time to make that forty minute drive to our local card room on River Road… Not an easy task with the kids.
I’d still go out when I could. My husband Harold knew I wasn’t shopping or out clubbing with the “the girls.” He knew I was playing some fucking cards. And given the money I won, Harold didn’t mind one bit.
Tonight was no different. The exciting urge hit me early in the evening. Harold was watching a ball game with the kids… So I had cover for what would be this week’s journey down River Road. I kissed the fam goodbye and then I took off for my addiction.
Cold November rain ambushed me. My body shivered not from an obvious tell but from the forty degree weather. In my Toyota, the routine route took me down long country roads. Lonely roads by day that were isolated by night.
Just thinking of poker further fueled my buzz. My excitement. I already heard a new player was gonna be there tonight… then again, rainy nights like this usually brought out the easy money. Fresh fish ready to get hooked by us poker regs. Especially at the place I went to. You throw in a pretty girl like me, and I was gonna slaughter them.
Behind the wheel, I stole a glance at the radio clock:
7:30. Not even eight and it was already pitch black outside. Deep woods surrounded me. My car like an isolated boat drifting down a cryptic ocean. Bruce Springsteen on the radio my only company.
River Road ran well over thirty miles. But my heavy foot got me closer and closer to the card room.
The middle of nowhere on the middle of a Wednesday night usually meant no cops. Hell, it usually meant no sign of life save for the fish and whales at the poker game. Particularly the fresh blood that was waiting on me… I just had to get there in time. Winning cash was tough enough against us vets.
We needed those hopeless newbs and shit players. One of many rules daddy taught me long ago.
The steady rain increased. Even with the heat going full blast, I cringed from the cold.
The two-lane blacktop was far from any interstate. There were no gas stations or roadside bar-b-que stands. Not even a house… or at least none that looked inhabitable. Same with the ugly trailer parks and even uglier backwoods churches I kept passing.
“Can’t start a fire!” I sang along with The Boss. “You can’t start a fire without a spark…”
Then a beam of light blinded me. A ferocious flash from behind.
I checked the rearview mirror. Saw the fierce headlights gunning for me. I was doing seventy… and whatever beast was creeping on me looked to be doing well over that...
“What the fuck,” I muttered.
The muscular car glided right in. Inches away from my bumper. They hovered at the same distance… taunting me. Their headlights beaming on me like an unforgiving spotlight.
My glare stayed on the mirror. On that fucking car. The darkness blanketed its make, model, and color. All I saw was speed and size. The car a locomotive hurtling through the country night.
“Pass me, asshole!” I shouted.
But the car didn’t budge. Mile for mile, it followed me. Matching my speed.
All around me, Bruce’s “Dancing In The Dark” kept playing. The bombastic beat joined the raindrops for a hypnotic rhythm.
Shielding my eyes, I looked down the road. No driveways greeted me. No side roads. No help.
The monster’s glowing eyes flickered. Headlights from Hell.
“Shit!” I cried.
Then I heard the car’s engine roar to life. It got closer.… a final plunge for its prey.
“Destination on your left!” a demanding voice hurled at me. Her tone agitated as always.
I was never happier to hear my GPS.
Behind me, the headlights careened toward me. The vicious car ready to devour everything in its path.
The rain kept splattering my windshield, hindering my vision. But that didn’t matter. Not when I’d driven this poker road almost half of my life. A path my father and I had pioneered many years ago...
Focused, I swerved the wheel straight into the dirt driveway. A pothole sent me into the air. Puddles exploded all around me. But still, I brought the Toyota to a smooth stop.
I turned to see the black-and-white Dodge Charger cruise past me. Proud, bold letters decorated its doors:
Stanwyck Public Safety Relief soothed my fear. Extinguished the lingering cold I felt.
I watched the cop car disappear down River Road. Right into the storm.
I’d caught a break. No trouble from the law. No interruptions. Now I had a whole night of Texas Hold ‘Em waiting for me.
Grinning, I drove down the rest of the driveway. Right up to a wooden cabin in the very back of a spacious yard. Like an iron-pike gate, tall trees surrounded the house. Privacy for the poker room.
I stopped next to a few other cars. All of them hideous. The vehicles more appropriate for a wrecking yard than a decent cash game.
There were no lights anywhere. Not even in the cabin. But I’d been here so long it didn’t matter. The card room essentially my second home.
I stepped out into the brutal cold. The rising excitement kept me warm from both the chilling wind and rain.
With methodical poise, I walked over to the trunk. Unlocked it.
My smile grew even wider. More wicked.
A young man laid inside. A handsome frat boy I’d found a few days ago. He was muscular in his tight tee shirt and gym shorts. His body bound-and-gagged in duct tape. A head wound leaked blood through his black hair. His horrified blue eyes stayed stuck on me.
Daddy was gonna be happy. I brought just what our game needed: fresh fish.
I led the young man up to the front door. Our steps a cryptic chorus on this creaking porch.
And then inside, I sat him at the poker table. Many chips already on the green felt.
Like a frightened child, I heard the guy whimper. Then again, the first time playing for money was always the scariest.
I played more Bruce Springsteen on my phone. Lit a few candles. There was no furniture but the table and chairs. The wooden walls only decorated by a few bland paintings. In the corner, a mini bar offered cheap beer. A lit fireplace staved off the cold.
Our poker room was ready.
Eager, I sat between daddy and Oliver. Some other regulars filled out the table. There was a rotten smell permeating the air… Then again, most poker players had shit hygiene.
By now, the blood had dried on our deck of cards. The red stains covering the felt no longer sticky.
Smiling, I scanned the scene. Daddy was still in decay. His flesh a crumbling paleness. Mushy skin besides his beautiful eyes.
Oliver’s slit throat remained vivid. Blackened blood soaked through his clothes. He’d only been in this poker hideaway a few weeks now so his body was far from rotten.
The other players also had their flaws. Terrifying tells in the form of dissections, decomposition, or severed limbs.
But still, we had a game. That was the main thing: our poker room was back in business.
I took out the young man’s wallet. Read his driver’s license.
“Alright, Shaun,” I said.
Nervous, the young man kept trembling in his seat. Always the tell-tale signs of a new live player. He didn’t have a chance…
I retrieved his money. All the Benjamins.
I looked over at dad. “He’s in for four-hundred!” I announced as if I were an experienced card dealer.
With glee, I tossed the cash on to the felt. Flashed the fish a cold stare... further making Shaun quiver. He the sacrificial lamb to us south Georgia grinders.
My intense eyes now matched the fireplace’s flames. “Shuffle up and deal!” I yelled.
14 Playing Poker In Georgia. Unlike some states, which may have laws against playing poker for money but does allow it to be played at licensed establishments or at Indian casinos, there is no legal poker whatsoever that can be played in the State of Georgia. Playing poker for money here is illegal, period, as is all forms of gambling other than In fact, Georgia seems to be one of the only states still arresting poker players, as well as the more commonly charged operators of the game. People must remember, despite being home to one of the premiere metropolitan areas in the country — Atlanta — it is a southern state with an extremely heavy religious yoke. Legality of Home Poker Games in Georgia According to the state of Georgia, all forms of poker played for profit are illegal, and unlike in other states, the penal code makes no exceptions for a home game whatsoever. No, there is no way to legally play the game of poker in Georgia. According to Georgia’s Penal Code (16-12-21), “A person commits the offense of gambling when he plays and bets for money or other thing of value at any game played with cards…” Any violation of this law may result in a misdemeanor charge. Home » US Poker Laws » State Laws » Georgia Poker Laws. Relevant state code: 16-12-20 et seq. Georgia trails behind only states such as Utah when it comes to draconian gambling regulations. The state takes what can only be called a very strict approach to regulating gambling that is based on a very broad definition of what constitutes an act of illegal gambling: Georgia has some of the strictest gambling laws in the United States. An example of this is Georgia Code Section 16-12-21(a)(3) which makes it illegal both to bet and play for money in any game Georgia & The Game of Poker. Georgia & The Game of Poker (change to “Famous Georgia Poker Players” and replace all text with the following) With no casinos – no live poker rooms – in Georgia, people have traditionally become poker players through home games and online poker. The latter was much more prevalent before Black Friday. Georgia Laws Pertinent to Online Poker. All gambling-related laws are listed in the Georgia Code under Title 16, which is for crimes and offenses. Gambling is handled under Chapter 12 – offenses An Overview of Gambling Laws in the State Of Georgia. Georgia is not a gambling-friendly State – in fact on a scale of restrictions and punishments for those organizing the games, this State sits just behind Utah and Hawaii in the ‘Least Gambling-Friendly State’ league. Residents do have a lottery, and can gamble on charity bingo games or even enter poker leagues with no player buy-ins. — Delaware: There is no law governing home games of poker. However, the state legislature says, “All forms of gambling are prohibited in this State.” — Georgia — Idaho — Illinois — Indiana: Games of chance are illegal, games of skill or not. The state does not deem poker a skill game, so home games are illegal. — Iowa — Kansas
His wife is not home but his sister-in-law is...SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/CinehouseYTWATCH FREE ON:Get it on iTunes: http://bit.ly/yuyuiOSOther app stores: ht... Richie Aprile gets angry when he sees David Scatino at Tony's poker game. Scatino owes Richie money. Poker is a game that is typically played in good spirits with a keen sense of fairness and etiquette. However, sometimes things don't go to plan and voices a... MOLLY’S GAME is based on the true story of Molly Bloom, an Olympic-class skier who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game for a decade before ... They call it the Big One for a reason. This WSOP One Drop has a staggering $1,000,000 buy-in, and features some of the most feared players in the game. Today... Help us to 100K Subscribers - http://goo.gl/BvsafoIf you are reading this, comment... Watch other Videos: Bluffs Gone Wrong - https://youtu.be/ffawyLHW4fY ... Melinda Herman's husband calls his wife a hero, says, "she protected her kids." Running the perfect home game is truly an art form. Fear not - as I have the complete guide to help you host your next big event! Jaime vlogs his everyday li... As a celebration of Daniel Negreanu's time with PokerStars, we showcase 10 of the greatest poker hands he has played on PokerStars shows.Subscribe here to ou... Learn to Play Poker in no time: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLALQuK1NDrh8fn1zxL3e8i_fjYi0e_0_Our poker tutorial is a great way to learn the card g...
