Gawker Stalker Bellagio

[sam h]

Went to Vegas for the weekend with some friends and got a full dose of the much-remarked-upon celebrities gambling it up phenomenon last night at the Bellagio. There was a big party at Light and lots of spillover afterwards into the poker room.

Wild and crazy David Arquette was playing $4-8, the chunky guy from Spin City dropped a rack at my $15-30 table, and I saw Nicky Hilton looking around the room like she might want to lose a bit of the family fortune (though I don't know if she played). But the center of attention was definitely Leonardo DiCaprio, hammered out of his gourd, spreading the wealth in the top section in a $10-20 blind No Limit game. With most big name players in LA, I didn't recognize any of his opponents, although there was an old guy I think might have been O'Neal Longson. Anyway, this huge entourage of hangers-on were sweating him and laughing at his jokes. Tobey McGuire, looking sharp in about seven days of stubble, jeans, and a blue sweatshirt and pretty goddamn short for a superhero, was trying to get into the game as well. I watched the game for a couple hands, partly out of interest and partly because the talent level of the girls in Leo's entourage was so high that I wanted a closer look. Here are two funny incidents that I witnessed.

First, Leo's in an unraised pot with a few other guys. The flop is 456r. He's first, bets the pot, and starts telling everybody to fold. The other players are kind of laughing at him a bit, although they want to make it look like they're laughing with him. Leo keeps claiming he's got the nuts. All of his three opponents do drop. He unsteadily gets up, bracing himself against the table, shouts "I'll show you the f---ing nuts!", and slams down his 42s.

Later, I go to use the bathroom and Leo's smoking a cigarette over by the race book, surrounded by about 10 hot girls, all of whom clearly have only one thing on their minds. But Leo is all about poker. And he's pissed off that he just lost a big hand. He's animatedly slurring, "I'm going to kill that guy. I'm going to send him home. He's got no respect for me at all. I raised preflop and I bet all the way, and he f---ing called me with f---king threes. No respect. I'm going to kill that f---ing guy." I don't think the girls understood anything he said, but they nodded along anyway.

Good times.