What Would You Do If You Dropped $2k Into A Toilet Of Someone Else's Piss?
Before we get into the story, a few things we should know. The Rio is a hotel/casino in Vegas. Len Ashby is a high stakes poker player. And a "flag" is a 5k chip. Got that? Let's go:
What a story. I've heard stories about people having chips slide out of their pockets before, but never like this. Never $2k right into someone else's piss. Meanwhile he has $15k on the floor in the stall next door and an automatic flusher to worry about to boot. What do you do in that situation? I mean it's just piss...right? Yeah? Like...you can wash that off. You aren't going to just flush $2k down the toilet, literally down the toilet, are you? But at the same time....ummm...maybe? Just staring down at your chips, floating in that dark yellow piss, ughhhhhh. And you can't leave. It's now or never. You can find gloves or anything and risk it flushing or someone else going in after you. It'd do or die, right there. One moment. You fish your chips out with your hand or your flush them away forever. I wouldn't be shocked if a way larger % of people would be like "yep, fuck that". Especially if you're in Len's situation and you know, you can afford to play 50/100 PLO, you can afford to lose $2k. But at the same time, soap and water has cleaned much worse. If you can just put your hand in the bowl for 4 seconds to retrieve your money, that's a $2k upswing.
I bet he still feels that warm piss on his hands. Like phantom piss hands.
Len told another great story on Twitter as well, this one how he got started in gambling on the golf course:
Fucking love that. We all have that first memory of making money gambling, a rush unlike any other. I remember the first time I was at the casino, sitting down playing poker, having no clue what I was really doing, but knowing "yep, this is it" when the first pot was pushed my way. Nothing replicates the feeling of winning at poker, having the dealer push pots your way, watching your chip stack grow. Hopefully I will feel that feeling again soon, this coronavirus is threatening to cancel the WSOP and it suckkkkkssssss. I still have hope though. I booked my flight and hotel for June. I don't expect it to be running to be honest, but I want to believe.
We'll have to get Len on the podcast to get more stories.