My Trip to Tunica

I was at the Jack Binion World Poker Open in Tunica, Mississippi, this year, mainly to give my Southern fans the excitement of seeing me in person.

Things there, I learned, are not always what they seem. For example, the Horseshoe, and Gold Strike, and other nearby casinos that are supposed to be in Tunica are not even located in Tunica, but are situated in Robinsonville. I'm not sure why that is – something about casinos starting in the real Tunica, south of Robinsonville, and as more casinos opened to the north, they just used the same geographical designation to keep things simple. OK, whatever.

The next thing I discovered was that a state law requires all casinos to be located on water. But not all casinos there are actually situated on the Mississippi River. So, those that weren't simply dug a ditch from the river to their front door and, presto, the dice were rollin' on the river. Pretty clever. If you can't bring the casino to the river, bring the river to the casino. It's a good thing they don't have a law like that in California. If they did, all the gaming houses in the middle of the Mojave Desert would be digging trenches to the Pacific and calling themselves oceanfront casinos.

My next observation was that the weather in that part of Mississippi, at least in late March and the beginning of April, is remarkably consistent. There are basically three weather conditions: drizzle, rain, and tornadoes. They had a tornado alert while I was here, but it didn't materialize – just as well. Aside from 10 casinos in the area, there is nothing for miles and miles around. So, thery would be no way to tell if a tornado had cut a swath through there because there is nothing for a swath to cut through.

But at least they do warn you about tornadoes. In California we have earthquakes, but nobody ever bothers to warn us. The first we hear about it is when all the television stations break in with an announcement: "We have just had an earthquake." Oh, thanks for telling me. I was wondering how that lamp landed on my head.

My next discovery was that Tunica's isolation also extends to the Internet. I had purchased a laptop to keep up with E-mail from my fans, assuming that Internet service was available anywhere you went. Then I learned that there were no local access Internet phone numbers for Tunica (or is it Robinsonville?), and that the nearest town with such local access was the metropolis of Hernando, some 45 minutes away. Therefore, every minute on the Internet was a toll call, at something like $2.50 per minute. Last year, a number of unwary tournament visitors who brought laptops were shocked when they were hit with Internet phone charges amounting to hundreds of dollars. One fellow Card Player writer (I won't reveal his name, but his initials are the same as mine) got a tab for about $1,800. However, and future visitors should make note of this, I learned that you can use an 800 number and pay $6 an hour to an Internet service provider such as AOL.

I talked to a number of people who said they had moved there from places like Las Vegas, and enjoyed it because things were so much slower. They certainly are. While I was in the gift shop, the mailman brought in new copies of Time magazine. The cover story was about Harry Truman being elected president.

The people in Mississippi are very friendly, and their use of language can be a wondrous thing. In one game I was in, a player announced a straight, and a woman pointlessly added that she had two pair. "Let's put those puppies in the pound and give them gas," the dealer advised her kindly. Another time, a woman at a slot machine complained to a security guard that she was receiving unwelcome attention from two men she didn't know. Later, after talking to the men, the guard walked up to the woman and assured her, "They off the boat, you on the boat."

I took a shot at the Omaha high-low tournament held on April Fools' Day. During the second round, Jack McClelland graciously introduced me and informed the players that this was my seventh event and the first one in which I had managed to last into the second round. Wise guy. Then, early in the tournament, they also announced that they were throwing in an SUV to the winner. When I heard this, I eagerly called the hand in progress with a weak holding, hoping to amass chips, and, of course, lost. A few minutes later they revealed that the car offer was an April Fools' gag. Very funny. When I berated Jack for tricking me into playing a hand I normally wouldn't have played, he replied that there was no such thing as a hand I wouldn't play. Smart aleck.

A table away from me was Bonnie Rattner, Card Player's national sales manager, suffocating because she was trapped in a seat next to a chain smoker who was lighting new cigarettes from old butts. At the first break, she said that as long as she was going to die from secondhand smoke, she might as well go downstairs for a Krispy Kreme donut. Luckily, the WPO will go nonsmoking next year, and that will be a big relief because they sure love to smoke in the South. In fact, the restaurants all have two sections: smoking, and heavy smoking.

Finally, the Southern home cooking there is pretty good, except that everything is breaded and fried – even the Jello. And pork seems to be the main ingredient of every meal. One night we went out to one of their four-star restaurants, and all they had on the menu was pig's feet, pig's ribs, pig's snouts, and pig's rumps. I asked the waitress if they had any tofu.

"Toe foo?" she asked in amazement. "Y'all must be from the Nawth. Pigs don't have no toes."

Then I discovered a real local delicacy: frog's legs. I was loading up on them every day – that is, until I took a side trip to a frog farm and was appalled to see thousands of little legless frogs hobbling around on crutches or sitting in wheelchairs, all of them begging for money. That's when I switched back to fried Jello.

As an extra bonus, here's a classic from the department of answered prayers. Playing in the $300 limit hold'em event, Dan Heimiller was all in on fourth street with a set of nines. "Pair the board," he requested. The dealer obliged … giving his opponent quad fives.