After my previous post, where I gave news of my good fortune in securing an upgrade, I thought I may have to follow it with news of a "bad seat beat".
As I sat in the lounge, I received a call from the check-in supervisor. A mistake had been made, and there was in fact no Upper Class seat available for me. They could fit me into Premium Economy, and would refund all my miles. Having thought I was in Upper Class, it felt like a downgrade of course.
Still, I was philosophical - net/net it was a free upgrade to Premium.
It was a bit like I flopped the nuts, and got out-drawn on the turn. However, there is always the river, and my redraw came in - there was a no-show and they gave me back my Upper Class boarding pass. I'd started in 7K, gone back to 75K and now moved up to 6K.
Result!
I boarded the plane and found that 6K was right at the very, very front of the plane. I started to get settled in when I became aware that two passengers travelling together had arrived and seemed to have been given 6A and 7K - not too convenient for being sociable during the flight.
Naturally I turned to offer Mr 7K the chance to swap. Well, who should it be but the Great Dane himself - Gus Hansen. His travelling partner turned out to be fellow Scandi pro Erik Sagstrom.
Gus declared himself very tired, but this did not stop him flirting constantly with the cabin staff. Eschewing sleep, he and Erik embarked on a non-stop game of Chinese Poker. When their tables had to be used for serving their meals, they carried on with the hands squeezed into the remaining space. The plane was practically on the ground before they would put the table away at the third time of asking.
Whilst I was too polite to remark on their celebrity, Gus's presence was certainly clocked by others in the cabin.
One such was Glen Chorny in seat 12K. Just yesterday, Glen won the EPT Monte Carlo main event and took down a cool €2.02 Million. I know this because in the plane he opened every conversation by saying "I've just won the EPT Monte Carlo and made 2 million Euros".
He also started every other sentence with the words "I swear to God....".
He was a nice chap, though, and he must be on one helluva high ... he was dashing over to make the same $25K Bellagio tournament that Gus and Erik were travelling to. I think we can forgive him a little effusiveness.
Still, between just winning the EPT and just starting the Bellagio, he obviously did not have his fill of poker and I had to lend him a pack of cards so he could play heads-up with a fellow passenger. After that (he won), he was going to give them back but I didn't put the cards away and lo-and-behold he borrowed them back shortly afterwards to play with the crew !
I felt I was being suitably abstemious in not trying to get in a game. This, in fact, was a good start on the road to proper game selection: playing world-class proven million+ winners is probably not a good expected value trade for me.
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