Tunica -- Natural inhabitants

TUNICA, Miss. -- I woke up at 4 a.m. and after playing on Full Tilt, I decided to see what the Horseshoe looks like in the middle of the night.

I can report to you that the natural inhabitants of the casino on a holiday morning are: Asians.

There were Asians everywhere, likely from both this side and that side of the Mississippi. I wandered over to the poker room, where of the three tables open, the NL$1/3 game was nearly entirely full of Asian players.

I wandered by the pit areas -- the Paigow Poker table was absolutely overflowing with Asian players and railbirds. In the main area, every table had at least one Asian at it.

It was like a convention of my bretheren -- at 4 a.m. lol.

Last night, while returning to my poker table at the Gold Strike, I could hear the pitter-patter of dozens of people playing slots from one of the convention ballrooms. It was a slot tourney, the kind my mom always likes to say my dad plays in when they're in Vegas, and about a few dozen people were mashing those buttons to see who could come up with the most points and a bunch of railbirds seated and standing around them.

A long time ago, way before I started playing poker, I played in a video poker tourney with my dad at the Empress riverboat in Joliet, Ill. It was pretty much all over before it started, though -- some dude hit a royal flush in the first five minutes. It's hard to beat someone who's come up with the one hand that appears every 50,000 hands. lol