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MontBleu
While everyone else headed to Vegas for the WSOP, I headed up to South Lake Tahoe with LakeofFire to attend the card room trade association meeting. Since there are no direct flights from Fresno to anywhere, we sparked up the Lexus and headed north. It’s a 5-hour drive that Lake made highly interesting by running at 80 mph approximately one and a half car lengths behind other fast lane travelers and howling about their lack of driving skills and judgment. The entire way.

The card room association meetings are a chance to get some regulatory updates and re-connect with other card room owners and I’m pleased to report I accomplished very little of either. The only really interesting tidbit was the legislation to study the prospect of intra-state online poker in California. It’s an interesting notion, and one, if history is any guide, that will be introduced about 4 years after the poker boom has completely fizzled.

Last year, Lake made the trip a success by running stupid hot and winning 3 of 4 tournaments he entered, including demolishing a Grand Sierra tournament for $5500. Unfortunately, this year there would be no time for a repeat performance. Just roll in, have a steak, sleep, do a little stretching to fight gravity and OLD, attend some meetings, blow back to Fresno in time for the Friday night rush.

We stayed at the MontBleu, formerly Caesar’s Tahoe, which tried to remake itself a few years back as a contemporary resort but only ended up with tacky décor and bad service. That said, the casino’s Ciera Steak House is a good choice if you find yourself in the Lake Tahoe area. Chopped salad, New York steak medium, nice glass of Rodney Strong cabernet. I’d do it again.

When we visited Mont Bleu last year, the poker room was set up opposite to the sportsbook and had several tables running. Since last year, they’ve moved the poker room into the sportsbook area and it’s become a ghost town--there were no tables running at 3p on Friday. It looks like Harvey’s is probably the only reliable NL action in the South Lake Tahoe area, and if you have a choice, always stay at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe in Incline Village. North end of the lake, but much better accommodations, service and view.

Club One
As for Club One, we’re starting to fire up a daily changes and promotions that have kept me busy round-the-clock. Real plants, more flatscreens (including a 65" monster in the bar), baccarat and fortune pai gow (new games for us), a “Win a hybrid” promotion, players’ cards and match play coupons. Add in a mangled opening of an adjacent hotel, failing refrigeration equipment, daily parking snafus, ongoing people management challenges and the lack of a decent office desk and chair and my blogging career has stalled like a '74 AMC Gremlin with sugar in its tank. The sick jukebox LakeofFire dug up is a hit, though. I can confirm that bar traffic and hotties are up 10% year-to-year. We’ll take it. And we've rescheduled another karaoke night, obv...

If anyone’s interested, you can check out some of the things we’ve got going on out here in Fresno. The photos are dated, of course; our bar and restaurant are packed with hotties of types 24/7 and there are no more old school TVs left on premises. Now if I could only solve the parking issue.

Club One Casino's blogspot page provided in lieu of the website we can't seem to get launched.

Edmond