View from Top of Eiffel Tour – Paris Casino – Las Vegas
Image by Old Shoe Woman
Six of us from Georgia flew to Las Vegas for a week’s vacation. Jim and I were in Death Valley on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Thursday, Jim, Carl, and I toured some casinos: Paris, Bellagio, and Caesar’s Palace.
Bodog is one of the largest gaming and entertainment operations in the world, and has become an industry icon that has spread into the music and philanthropic areas as well. Founded in 1994 by the Canadian Calvin Ayre – a personality in his own right – Bodog is a billion dollar group and as such affords its online operations – casino, poker and more – the backing of one of the most powerful companies in the world.
Bodog Casino is considered the best Real Time Gaming (RTG) powered casino in the industry and players are dazzled by the standard, selection and service found at this site. The chic, understated and designer-simplicity site makes gaming seem effortless and the Bodog Casino came second in the Easiest Online Casino to Navigate section in the Gambling Online Magazine’s annual award.
Software and Games
Working off Real Time Gaming’s superb software platform, Bodog Casino brings players more choice and more entertainment in one exclusive package. The games are available in download or flash versions, with the full download option offering 75 of the best games from RTG’s graphically superior suite.
The games at Bodog Casino are made up of card and table games, slots and video poker. Card game and table game offerings include blackjack, let‘em ride and pai gow poker, while two kinds of roulettes are also available. Bodog Casino has a wide range of five reel, classic three reel and other slots, and also has an impressive range of progressive jackpots waiting to be won. The award-winning Real Series slots are among the very best in the industry and are presented in all their glory at Bodog Casino.
The video poker offerings include over fifteen types of this exciting game, featuring favorites such as Deuces Wild but also unique options such as 52-hands Jacks or Better and even 100 hand video poker.
There is also Keno and other specialty games for alternative entertainment.
Bonuses and Promotions
Bodog Casino relies so heavily on its excellent industry reputation that it does not need to offer bonuses and promotions to players in order to entice them to try out the site. Nevertheless, new players can take advantage of a welcome bonus on their first deposit, as well as bonus for referring a friend to the site.
There are regular promotions that appear on Bodog and it is worth checking out the website to see what is presently on offer.
Gambling Online Magazine awarded Bodog Casino first place in the Best Casino Promotions or Events category in 2006.
Payment and Payouts
A wide variety of online payment methods are available at Bodog Casino for simple and convenient deposits and withdrawals. Money can be deposited by credit card, eWalletXpress and Moneybookers, to name just a few. Payouts can be requested by check, credit card or other options, depending on the player’s geographic location.
Security
A company that has such a strong industry reputation to uphold and protect will naturally take all the necessary steps to ensure that every single available security option is in place at its sites. Bodog Casino stops at nothing to protect its players’ privacy and financial transactions, using the latest technology and encryption systems.
The site is also committed to responsible gambling and has a number of links in place to assist players if they feel the need to turn to professionals for help in compulsive gambling.
Support
Bodog has won numerous awards for its customer service department. The casino offers players the option of calling toll free from a number of destinations in the world, or through a contact form on their site. Customer support is offered in a number of languages, including English, Spanish, Mandarin or Cantonese.
Bodog Casino
There is no going wrong with Bodog Casino. This site has it spot-on with regards to image, games choice, software platform and customer service. Players are assured a safe and secure gambling environment, excellent payouts and a level of professionalism that is hard to beat in the industry.
This information was accurate when it was written but can change without notice. Please be sure to confirm all information directly with the casino.
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Casino games are played for entertainment and fun. It is a game of gambling where people play with an intention of winning money or certain commodities or objects.
These days there are wide ranges of casino games available. These games can be put in to three main categories: table games, gaming machines, and random number games.
Table games include the use of cards or dice, such as Blackjack or Poker.
Gaming machines are the slot machines, these are sometimes called one armed bandits when they are found in pubs and bars, they are machines which can be played by one player at a time, without the presence of a third party (particularly a casino staff such as a dealer).
Random number games feature the choice of different numbers, such as in the games of Roulette or Keno.
Some of the popular casino games are:
Table games
Asian stud
Asia Poker
Australian Pontoon
Baccarat
Blackjack
Blackjack switch
Casino Hold’em
Casino war
Caribbean Stud Poker
Chinese poker
Faro
Four card poker
Let It Ride
Mambo stud
Pai gow poker
Poker
Red Dog
Spanish 21
Texas Hold’em
Three card poker
Two-up
Penny-up
Random numbers
Roulette
Bingo
Keno
Gaming machines
Pachinko
Slot machine
Video Lottery Terminal
Video poker
With the advancement of Internet, the online casino games have become quite popular. The basic rules for the conventional casino games and online version are almost same. But, the presentation is different. Many of these games like roulette, blackjack, pachinko, baccarat and many others are available online and people enjoy playing these sitting at home.
Blackjack
Blackjack is a table game where skill actually matters, the game is really popular and played by thousands of people worldwide. The basic strategy is to reduce the house edge and increase you chances of winning.
Slots
Slot machines are fast and furious, they can be located in many pubs or bars as well at online casino sites. they are easy to play and a player puts in some money hoping to earn a larger proportion of money invested on chance.
Roulette
This is a true classic casino game where the house edge is smaller than in most other games. It’s a game where anything could happen and with so many bets to choose from you could win or lose at any spin.
Video Poker
Video poker combines the thrill of poker with the pace of the slot machine. Runs, flushes, Royal flushes and pairs could all win you a prize depending on the machine you play on.
Craps
Craps is a fast paced dice game and house edge is small, if the right bets are made.
Keno
In this game, the more numbers you hit the more money you win.
Baccarat
Baccarat is an easy full of action with a low house edge.
For learning the games there are may online tutorials with video clips of actual casino shots. You should make yourself conversant on the rules and the casino etiquettes!
Related Casino Game Rules Articles
View from Top of Eiffel Tour – Paris Casino – Las Vegas
Image by Old Shoe Woman
Six of us from Georgia flew to Las Vegas for a week’s vacation. Jim and I were in Death Valley on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Thursday, Jim, Carl, and I toured some casinos: Paris, Bellagio, and Caesar’s Palace. Photo taken by Jim Baxter using Nikon Lite-Touch Zoom 150 film camera.
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This is a documentary on the top 10 casino’s worldwide, part 1 of 8
If you wish to learn how to play poker, it is highly probable that you want to play it online. Certainly, there are many advantages of playing poker online than playing at a brick and mortal casino. Here are few:
• Anonymous playing
• Easy switching from one casino room to another
• Variety of poker bonuses
• Accessibility 24 hours a day and so on.
Learning to play poker online is a step-by-step guide and following are the steps one needs to follow:
Rules and Terminology
Like any other game in the world, poker is also associated with rules and the game has its own terminology. Needless to say, you need to get familiar with the rules and terminology before even visiting an online casino.
Poker Games
A variety of poker games are played at online poker rooms. Texas Holdem, Omaha, 7-Card Stud, 5-Card Stud, Draw and Razz are among the most popular online poker games, each having variations in rules and strategies. Knowledge of each of these games would help you to choose one you find most convenient to play.
Selection of Poker Room
Online poker rooms are criticized for turning fraudsters, but that is not true about every gambling online destination. Select a poker room on the basis of expert recommendations and of course, the bonuses offered by them.
Poker Betting Strategies
Rules are different from strategies and this goes true for online poker playing as well. You have to develop your own player-specific betting strategies to expect some winning hands. Start learning about them from day one and you will get well-versed in them with passage of time.
Poker Odds
Odds in a game are the probabilities of winning in a particular session of the game. Poker odds are of great significance, as their knowledge can make a huge difference in your success and loss. Free poker odd calculator is among the online tools available for understanding the poker odds.
Poker Etiquettes
Poker is made sophisticated by the etiquettes associated with the game. Interacting with other online players, following the right pace of playing, exposing the cards at right time and other things must be learnt to be called a poker player with etiquettes.
Poker Tells
Reading the game of the opponent player is a winning strategy for the poker player. Though, it is difficult to use poker tells at online poker rooms, when you are not face-to-face with other players, still there are some things that an help you get an idea of what other players are up to.
Bankroll Management
An important thing to learn about how to play poker online is to manage the bankroll. Being a novice player, you are at the risk side of losing control on the bankroll in excitement. However, with the passage of time and by learning management techniques, you can learn to use your bankroll wisely.
Time management is another thing you need to learn about online poker playing. Prevent yourself from getting addicted to it and also, consider the fun side of playing poker, rather than having only money-oriented mind.
Find More How To Play Poker Articles
Online casino games often referred as ‘virtual casino games’ are an exhilarating form of entertainment that allow casino gaming lovers to enjoy casino enchantment from the comfort of home. Online casino gaming offers all sorts of games including poker, baccarat, craps, roulette, backgammon, blackjack and more. These games are played by the same rules as the games played in live casinos. Internet casinos offer-different softwares for different casino games, expediency, social experience, chance to make money and fun.
Online casino games can be categorized into three different game types: online table games, online gaming machines and online random ticket games. Gaming machines like online video slots and video poker are generally played by one player and don’t involve casino employees. Online random ticket games like keno and bingo are based upon the selection of random numbers either from a computerized random number generator or from other gaming apparatus. Random number games can also be played at a table, such as Roulette and Baccarat.
When learning to play online casinos it is essential to bear in mind the fact that casino games are designed to take your money. Due to this fact it becomes very essential for the beginners to practice free online casino games before playing online for money. The benefits from free online casino gambling include the likelihood of learning different gambling methods, chance to work on your strategy, improve your casino gaming ability, familiarity with odds and learning the skills required to win. To begin with the free online casino gambling you are just required to search the internet and pick up the best website that offers the games you want.
Many online casinos require software download that matches with the website to account for the wins, losses, and credits. The most frequently used gambling software include: Realtime gaming, Microgaming and Playtech etc. It is essential to be cautious when downloading software due to the presence of frauds and scams online. Here are some other tips that can help you to begin successfully with the online casinos:
- Choose the website that offers a variety of games.
- Make sure that the site you choose for online casino gambling is authentic.
- Make sure that you choose the site in which there is no deposit, sign up funds and monthly charges.
- It is recommended to choose the site that provides good customer care for users.
- Register with the site whose terms and conditions are understandable. If the information given on the site regarding the real money is not agreeable then it’s better to look for another site.
- Some of the websites offer bonuses and these bonuses differ from site to site. So it is recommended to choose the website that offers the best bonus.
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Gift Certificate (1st Place)
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I’ve been going to Claredon Grill since Feburary, almost every other Tues at 7 pm. Played solid, tight/aggressive poker for 1-2 hours only to lose out on bad beats or unlucky flops..
Finally…on May 2nd, 2006; I finally won first place – about 8 tables, 10 people each…about 70-80 people.
The trick was sitting in the Smoking section to start with for a change…it was by accident, but I discovered that the smokers are much looser and filled up on booze than the non-smoking section players =). I had several great hands, trip 6′s twice, even a "6-pack" (2 trips on the turn) = full house, and played super aggressive with the chip lead going into the 3rd and 4th tables.
The game of poker is a fascinating one. You will find that many people have their own favorite game. One of the more well known and popular game versions is that of 3 card poker. This interesting game of poker allows you to play two completely different card games either at the same time or separately. These games which you will find in 3 card poker are known as Ante and Pairplus.
Each of these card games in 3 card poker has different combinations of hands – which by the way consists of only 3 cards – and the amount of times that you are likely to encounter these hands. To better understand the game of 3 card poker we will look at these separate games a little more closely. This means the type and amount of hands will be noted. The combination times and the probability of these combinations occurring will also be noted down.
So we will look at Pairplus first. To play this 3 card poker game does not require any type of poker skills on your part at all. You will not have to perform any of the poker tricks and skills such as raising and discarding your cards. In short all that you need to play this game is a good combination of cards.
There are certain card hands which can be used to give you a good hand of poker. These hands are Straight flush, Three of a kind, Straight, Flush, Pair, Queen to ace high and Jack high or less. While these are the card combinations that you can get there are variations of these cards. In this game of 3 card poker you will be paid according to the value of the cards that you hold.
For the 3 card poker game of Ante there is general a wager that is placed on the game. the game will start only after this bet has been placed. In this game you have the choice of raising your card or folding them. When you fold your hand however you will lose the wager. Since you can also play Pairplus with this game, by folding the game you stand to lose out in the Pairplus game to.
You may choose on the other hand to raise your stakes in the game of Ante in which case you will need to play against the dealer. There are four possible routes that you can take by playing with the dealer. these combinations will allow you the chance of winning against the house but you must be prepared to lose everything that you have placed as a wager.
Like all of the poker games this 3 card poker game is fun to watch as it is to play. The really great thing about playing 3 card poker is that you have the ability of playing two different poker games at the same time and a chance of winning a wager.
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View from Top of Eiffel Tour – Paris Casino – Las Vegas
Image by Old Shoe Woman
Six of us from Georgia flew to Las Vegas for a week’s vacation. Jim and I were in Death Valley on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Thursday, Jim, Carl, and I toured some casinos: Paris, Bellagio, and Caesar’s Palace. Photo taken by Jim Baxter using Nikon Lite-Touch Zoom 150 film camera.
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The 2004 Utica Tornado Story – Part 1 of 3
Image by guano
(photo: Crosses for those who died in the Milestone Tap. A ragged tree survived the tornado)
Utica Tornado of April 20, 2004
Story by Julia Keller
First printed December 5, 6, and7 in the Chicago Tribune.
——————————————————————————
Part 1: A wicked wind takes aim
How do you outrun the sky?
On a fateful day in April, the people of Utica bore the brunt of the awesome power of a tornado.
By Julia Keller
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 5, 2004
Ten seconds. Count it: One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Ten seconds was roughly how long it lasted. Nobody had a stopwatch, nothing can be proven definitively, but that’s the consensus. The tornado that swooped through Utica at 6:09 p.m. April 20 took some 10 seconds to do what it did. Ten seconds is barely a flicker. It’s a long, deep breath. It’s no time at all. It’s an eternity.
If the sky could hold a grudge, it would look the way the sky looked over northern Illinois that day. Low, gray clouds stretched to the edges in a thin veneer of menace. Rain came and went, came and went, came and went.
The technical name for what gathered up there was stratiform cloud cover, but Albert Pietrycha had a better way to describe it: "murk." It was a Gothic-sounding word for a Gothic-looking sky. A sky that, in its own oblique way, was sending a message.
Pietrycha is a meteorologist in the Chicago forecast office of the National Weather Service, a tidy, buttoned-down building in Romeoville, about 25 miles southwest of Chicago. It’s a setting that seems a bit too ordinary for its role, too bland for the place where the first act of a tragedy already was being recorded. Where the sky’s bad intentions were just becoming visible, simmering in the low-slung clouds.
Where a short distance away, disparate elements–air, water and old sandstone blocks–soon would slam into each other like cars in a freeway pileup, ending eight lives and changing other lives forever.
The survivors would henceforth be haunted by the oldest, most vexing question of all: whether there is a destiny that shapes our fates or whether it is simply a matter of chance, of luck, of the way the wind blows.
It was a busy day for Pietrycha and his colleagues. The classic ingredients for a tornado–warm air to the south, cooler air north and a hint of wind shear–had seemed imminent most of the morning. Spring and early summer are boom times for tornadoes, the most violent storms on Earth.
What bothered Pietrycha was a warm front that loitered ominously across southern Illinois. If the front’s moist, humid air moved north too quickly in the daylight hours, clashing with cooler air, the instability could create thunderstorms liable to split off into tornadoes.
But by early afternoon, it seemed that maybe, just maybe, northern Illinois would escape. If the front waited until after sunset to arrive, its impact would be negligible because the air near the ground–with no sunshine to warm it–would cool off. Nope, a relieved Pietrycha said to himself. Probably not today.
It was only a hunch. Meteorologists know a lot about tornadoes, but with all they know, they still can’t say why some thunderstorms generate tornadoes and some don’t. Or why tornadoes, once unleashed, do what they do and go where they go.
That’s why forecasting is as much art as science. Too many warnings not followed by actual tornadoes make people skeptical and careless. Too many warnings can be as dangerous as too few. And while meteorologists can spot an approaching hurricane days in advance, the average warning time for a tornado is 11 minutes.
What she was thinking was, Gotta beat that rain.
Frowning up at a sky as flat and gray as a cookie sheet, Shelba Bimm, 65, figured she just might be able to outrun the next downpour. Worth a try, anyway.
Bimm was standing in the driveway of her house at 238 W. Church St. in Utica, population 977, just outside Starved Rock State Park.
It was precisely 5:15 p.m. She had her schedule figured down to the minute. Busy people do that. But this ornery rain–will it or won’t it, and if it starts up again, how long will it last?–was irksome.
She was due in Oglesby at 6 p.m. for the weekly class she was taking for her certification as an EMT Intermediate, the next level up from EMT, a rank Bimm had held since 1980, answering the frequent summons from the Utica volunteer fire department. Folks in town were accustomed to the sight of the white-haired Bimm in the driver’s seat of her black Honda CRV, yanking on the wheel with one hand and gripping her dispatch radio with the other.
Shelba Bimm had been a 1st-grade teacher for 42 years. She was retired now–if that’s what you want to call it, even though she was at least as busy these days as she’d ever been when running a classroom, what with her EMT work and the dollhouse business she operated out of the front room of her home. And now she and Dave Edgcomb, Utica’s fire chief, were taking classes to upgrade their credentials.
Oglesby is a 15-minute drive from Utica, so normally Bimm didn’t hit the road until 5:30 p.m. But then again, she thought, just look at that sky.
If she left now, she might be able to get there and dash from the parking lot at Illinois Valley Community College and into class without getting soaked. It’s gonna be, she thought, one hell of a storm.
So she scooted into her car–the one with the can’t-miss-it license plate BIMM 2–and took off, backing out of her driveway and heading east on Church Street.
At the four-way stop a few yards from her house she turned south on Mill Street. Near the corner was a bar called Milestone. A block later, at the corner of Mill and Canal Street, she passed Duffy’s Tavern.
Bimm turned west on Illinois Highway 71 and then headed on into Oglesby, pulling into the campus parking lot at 5:30 p.m. The western sky was getting blacker and blacker, as if something had been spilled on the other side of it and was seeping through.
All told, it took her less than a minute to cross Utica. Had she happened to lift her pale blue eyes to the rear view mirror as she left the city limits, she would have seen, poised there like a tableau in a snow globe just before it’s shaken up, her last intact view of the little town she loved.
Pietrycha and his colleagues work in a big square room with a central ring of linked desks and a computer monitor perched on just about every flat surface.
Across Pietrycha’s work station, six computer screens glowed with radar information that told him, through tiny pixels of perky green and hot red and bold yellow, about hail and rain, about wind rotation and velocity.
To check the screens, Pietrycha, a slender man with short sandy hair and the preoccupied air of someone who’s always working out a math problem in his head, quickly rolled his chair back and forth, back and forth, screen to screen to screen, taking frequent swigs from a Coke can.
As 4 p.m. approached, the end of his shift, the warm front was still dawdling in southern Illinois. Looking good. So Pietrycha got ready to go. He lives in Oswego, some 13 miles northwest of Romeoville.
To Mark Ratzer, a fellow meteorologist with a neat blond crew cut who was in charge of the office that day, Pietrycha said, "Hey, if things get out of hand, call me."
The specials at Duffy’s Tavern that night, according to the green felt-tip lettering on the white board above the bar, were: "All You Can Eat Spaghetti w/garlic breadsticks, .99" and "Cajun NY Strip w/onions and peppers and potato salad, .99" and "2 stuffed walleye, .99." The soup was cheesy broccoli.
Lisle Elsbury, 56, had bought Duffy’s a year ago. Buying it meant leaving behind the life he knew as a heating and air conditioning repairman in Lyons, and slapping down all his chips right here in Utica.
Elsbury was a compact man with a nervous energy that seemed to oscillate just beneath his skin. His small gray mustache dipped at either end, curling around his upper lip like a parenthesis.
He liked to stand behind the long bar, its rich brown wood so ancient and polished by innumerable elbows that it looked sumptuous, almost liquid. It shimmered in the light.
If he’d glanced out the big front window just then, he might have seen Bimm’s black Honda going south on Mill as she headed to class. But Elsbury was too busy to be gazing out windows. When you owned a bar and grill, there was always something to do. Always a ledger to balance, a glass to rinse, a burger to turn.
After a rocky start–Utica is a tough town to break into, with friendships stretching back decades–Elsbury was feeling pretty good. Things were looking up, even though there were four other taverns in town–Skoog’s Pub, Joy & Ed’s, Canal Port and Milestone–all within a stone’s throw.
Duffy’s and Milestone were the new kids on the block. Not literally–the buildings were each more than a century old, two-story structures that anchored either end of Utica’s roughly one-block business district. The proprietors, not the properties, were new. Elsbury and his wife, Pat, had bought Duffy’s; Larry Ventrice and his wife, Marian, were running Milestone.
They were alike in a lot of ways, the Elsburys and the Ventrices. They were two couples trying to make a go of it in a new business in a new town. Money was tight. Hours were long. You worked as hard as you could work, and you still weren’t sure sometimes if you were going to survive.
At this time of day, though, with the sun going down and the room filling up, Elsbury was reminded of the reasons he loved running a bar. Toughest work he’d ever done, but Lord, he just loved the feel of the place. The laughter. The talk. The scrape of chair legs on the red-painted plywood floor. A kind of benign, peppy chaos.
Two TV sets were angled on small platforms extending from the wall at both ends of the bar, their screens busy with maps sprouting wavy lines and harsh-looking arrows. Bartender Chris Rochelle, 23, a skinny, good-looking kid with spiky black hair, had changed both sets from ESPN to the Weather Channel.
The sky, he told anybody who asked, just didn’t look right to him. Didn’t look right at all.
By the time Pietrycha walked back into the weather service office at about 5:45 p.m., everything had changed. It was as if an orchestra conductor, with a simple flick of the baton, had abruptly altered the room’s tempo. What had been casual was suddenly intense. Phones rang, people scurried back and forth, frowning meteorologists hunched over computer screens.
That lackadaisical warm front suddenly had come to life, moving north much faster than any of the forecasters thought it would, initiating the fatal tangle of warm and cold air. Tornadoes darted across the Midwest, making jailbreaks from the thunderstorms.
At 5:32 p.m., Pietrycha’s colleague, radar operator Rich Brumer, had issued a tornado warning for north-central Illinois. Typically, a watch–which alerts people to be on their guard–precedes a warning, but the warm front had risen so fast that Brumer went straight to the warning.
Now it was a matter of what meteorologists call interrogating the storm: keeping an eye on the screens as the data pours in, supplied by the Doppler radar tower that rises just behind the Romeoville office. In one sense, Pietrycha and his colleagues are immensely powerful as they compile fact after fact after fact about the atmosphere. They know just about everything there is to know about the air, the clouds, the wind, the rain.
But in another sense, they’re utterly helpless. They don’t know the "ground truth": the meteorological term for what’s actually happening to real people, people who don’t just record and measure the weather but must live through it.
That night, the weather service would tally 53 tornadoes in the Midwest. Fourteen whipsawed across north-central and northeastern Illinois.
One of those–born about 2 miles southwest of Granville and cutting a 15 1/2-mile, 200-yard-wide notch from Granville to Utica–seemed to make a beeline for a venerable two-story tavern. It would arrive at 6:09 p.m.
At 5:55 p.m. the phone rang in Beverly Wood’s mobile home in Utica. It was her daughter, Dena Mallie, a vivacious 44-year-old who lives in Peru, just west of Utica.
"We’re having really bad hail," Mallie told her mother.
Wood, 67, was in the middle of dinner with Wayne Ball, 63, whom she’d dated for years and who lived in a mobile home right across the road, and Helen Studebaker Mahnke, 81, another friend who lived in the same trailer park just east of the downtown business district.
Wood and Ball were an easy, comfortable couple, with an affection that ran deep and true. When Ball’s hands were severely frostbitten during his work with the railroad several years ago, and had to be bandaged and immobile for many months, it was Wood who fed him, who lit and held his cigarettes for him.
Wood had heated up a frozen pizza and mixed a few drinks. Mallie could hear music in the background; the three old friends had settled in for the evening. But Wood deeply feared storms.
"We’re going to scoot," she told Mallie. "We’re going uptown."
Trailers, as everybody knew, were notoriously vulnerable in bad weather. It made sense for Wood, Mahnke and Ball to hunker down in one of the Utica taverns, one of those big, reliable old buildings that could shrug off a storm like it had been shrugging them off for decades.
Leaving the pizza–minus the three slices they’d just eaten–on the table with the drinks, because they’d be back in a jiffy, Wood, Mahnke and Ball hurried outside and climbed into Wood’s car, a taupe Buick Century.
It couldn’t have taken Wood more than a minute to drive them to the bar, even pausing for the single stop sign on East Church, even heeding the posted speed limit of 20 m.p.h.
She parked across the street, and they quickly walked in through Milestone’s double doors. Wood was in such a hurry she didn’t lock the car; for her, an unheard-of lapse. It was just after 6 p.m.
Relief. They were, they thought, safe now.
For several minutes before the three arrived, Milestone’s lights flickered.
Larry Ventrice, 49, was getting irritated. On or off, he didn’t care. Just wished they’d make up their mind, on or off, on or off. It climbed a person’s nerves, real quick.
He was a restless, impatient man, a man with a finger-snap temper but a good heart. He hailed from Bridgeport, a South Side Chicago neighborhood, and was proud of it, and he was proud as well of what he’d done with the tavern: filled it with funky antiques such as a roulette wheel and fake "WANTED" posters that gave the place a toe-tapping, down-home feel. The atmosphere started at the threshold, where a couple of horseshoes served as door pulls, and continued on around to the building’s southern exterior, where a big, colorful mural, a rollicking pioneer scene with wagon trains and sod-busters, had been painted on the sandstone blocks.
Larry Ventrice knew about the bad weather heading their way. On the big TV set over the bar he’d heard the stations yakking about tornadoes and seeking shelter and all the rest of it, but he wasn’t worried. Why should he be? Milestone, with its thick sandstone walls, flat concrete roof and slate foundation, was as solid as a vault. It was 117 years old, but just as hard times strengthened a person’s character, surely rough weather over the years toughened up a building, didn’t it? Showed its true mettle. Milestone was a survivor. You’d bet your life on it.
Larry knew just about everybody who was there that night, and they knew him. His cousin Jim Ventrice, 70, was sitting at a table finishing up a bowl of chicken noodle soup while waiting for his second course, a pork chop sandwich he’d ordered from Marian Ventrice, 50, Larry’s wife. Everybody called Jim Ventrice "Cousin Junior" or just Junior.
Junior, a slight man who wore his shirt tucked in and his hair combed neatly back from his forehead, had gotten to Milestone at about 5:40 p.m. that night. He stopped in at least once a day because he liked the bar’s cozy, nobody’s-a-stranger ambience.
He’d taken a seat, spotted Jay Vezain at the bar and called out, "Hey, Jay, how’re you?"
Vezain, 47, who worked at the Utica grain elevator just south of Duffy’s, was nursing a bottle of beer. "I’m OK, Junior, how’re you?"
He had a good sense of humor, Vezain did, and the kind of smile to go with it: quick, mischievous-looking. A lot of folks saved their best jokes for Vezain, just to see that smile.
Over in the corner, Carol Schultheis, 40–Wayne Ball’s daughter–was playing the video poker game, shoving in coins and waiting for luck, and taking occasional drags on a Marlboro Light. She’d been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a few years ago, but so far it hadn’t slowed her down; she was a day-shift cook at Joy & Ed’s, and everybody in Utica knew her and she knew everybody right back, and if you passed her on the street you’d get a smile and a wave and maybe a naughty joke or two.
Rich Little, 37, a truck driver from nearby Troy Grove, was sitting at the bar, drinking a bottle of Bud Light. He was supposed to meet his girlfriend here at 6:30 p.m.
Back in the kitchen, Debbie Miller, 44, pushed a pork chop around on the grill for Junior’s sandwich.
The lights flickered again. The door opened, and Wood, Mahnke and Ball came in.
Just after that, Debbie Miller’s family spilled in through the back door, a pinwheeling mass of kids that must have quickly overwhelmed the small hallway and kitchen, a living scribble of elbows and long legs and sneakers and stick-thin arms, talking and pushing.
There was Debbie’s husband, Mike, 49, lanky and bushy-haired; sons Mike Jr., 18, Gregg, 14, and Christopher, 8; and daughters Ashley, 16, and Jennifer, 12, along with Gregg’s best friend Jarad Stillwell, 13.
Mike Miller’s lean, lined, mournful face seemed to carry all the family’s woes in its crevices. They’d had a lot of hard luck over the years. Money was tight, and Mike’s salary from the Illinois Central Railroad never seemed quite able to stretch from one payday to the next, not with all those skinny tow-headed kids to take care of. Debbie Miller had signed on as a cook at Milestone about a year and a half ago, and Ashley and Mike Jr. sometimes came along, too, to wait tables or sweep up, netting a few bucks from Larry.
So when Mike Miller, back in the family’s little blue house a half-mile south on Washington Street, had gotten spooked by those increasingly agitated TV weather reports, he thought of Milestone. Milestone was a second home. And Milestone, he figured, would be safer. It was big and thick-walled and had a stone-floored basement that was reassuring just to think about.
Milestone, anybody would tell you, was as sturdy as a preacher’s promise.
Mike had just pulled a frozen pizza out of the oven for the kids’ dinner, but to heck with it: They could eat when they got back home in a few minutes, after the storm passed.
So Mike ran down the crumbling steps with his children right behind him, and everybody scrambled into the family’s Ford LTD.
By the time he and the kids got to the bar–two minutes later, tops–Debbie Miller was shutting down the grill, just like Larry had told her to.
"Everybody in the basement," Marian Ventrice said. "Kids first. Get the kids." She was a nervous, fretful, excitable woman, and you could hear the anxiety spiking in her voice.
The basement door was toward the front of the bar, under the stairs leading to the second floor. It was an old-fashioned cellar door, flush with the wooden floor, and you pulled up on a metal handle then flipped the door over.
Jarad and Gregg trooped down the wooden stairs, followed by Jennifer, Christopher, Ashley and Mike Jr., and then the adults. They moved quickly, efficiently, but without panic, because they were heading to safety; the basement was a haven, the basement was exactly where you’d want to be at that moment. Thick stone floor, low ceiling. Like a cave.
"Stick together, everybody stick together," Marian said, and she and Larry went to the center of the basement. So did the older people–Wood, Ball and Mahnke–and the Miller family piled up against the north wall, just beyond the bottom of the stairs. Gregg and Jarad headed to the south wall, next to the walk-in cooler.
Everybody was still talking, still speculating about the storm, and Mahnke asked Ashley and Jennifer their names. Marian was agitated, jittery, but everybody else was relaxed and casual, so casual, in fact, that Junior and Little had brought their beers with them. They set them on top of the chest-high freezer against which they stood, waiting for somebody to tell them it was OK to go back upstairs. No big deal.
At 5:58 p.m., Dena Mallie saw it from her driveway in Peru.
As it blossomed darkly, a huge batwing erasing the sky around it, a Utica contractor named Buck Bierbom saw it from his back yard.
Rona Burrows saw it. She leaned out the front door at Mill Street Market, where she worked as a cashier, and looked up at the sky.
Lisle Elsbury saw it from the alley behind Duffy’s.
It was a great black mass, a swirling coil some 200 yards wide at the ground–it was wider in the sky–heading northeast at about 30 m.p.h. They looked up and saw it but they thought: No. Couldn’t be. Could it?
There was a wild beauty to it, a fiercely knotted loveliness that was like nothing they’d ever seen. They could see debris swirling in it, pulled in and out and sucked up and around, frenzied sticks of wood, trees, dirt, other things, everything.
The ones who watched it come, watched it fill more and more of the blue-green sky like the canvas of a finicky painter who decides to slather the whole thing in black and start over, felt almost hypnotized at first, rooted to the earth but looking up, up, up. "Awesome" is the word that came instantly to Mallie. And not the way teenagers meant it. Awesome as in something that fills you up with awe.
Steve Maltas, 23, a Utica volunteer firefighter with a trim goatee and a distinct aversion to small talk, was at the car wash in Utica’s south end. He heard the report from the LaSalle Fire Department on his dispatch radio: A tornado was bearing down on them.
Maltas gunned his pickup toward the fire station, just up on Mill across from Milestone. He knew where the switch was to activate the tornado siren, the mechanical wail that would give his friends and neighbors a fighting chance.
He braked in front of the yellow-brick firehouse, cut the engine, raced inside and ran smack into a dilemma: He had no authority. Only the chief was supposed to give the OK to sound the warning. Another firefighter, quiet, blond Shane Burrows, 23–Rona Burrows’ son–was there too. He had tried to reach Edgcomb, but the chief’s cell phone was turned off–a requirement for the EMT class.
The two men had seconds to decide and what they decided was:
Screw the rules.
Flip the switch.
A moment later they were joined in the firehouse by Steve Maltas’ mother, Gloria, who’d hustled there when she heard about the storm. She, too, worked at the firehouse in her spare time.
But even with the siren, the townspeople weren’t paying attention. When Gloria Maltas looked outside, she saw them standing in the street, watching the sky. Maybe they thought the siren was just a precaution, or maybe they were trusting old Utican wisdom: A tornado won’t go in a valley. A tornado won’t cross water. Both were false.
So Gloria, ordinarily a shy, reticent woman who deeply disliked anything that could be remotely construed as making a spectacle of herself, who usually spoke in a soft, whispery voice that made listeners lean in a little to catch her words, did something wholly uncharacteristic: She directed Steve to one side of Mill Street and she took the other, and they began running and yelling at people who stood in the doorways, telling them to get inside, take cover, for God’s sake go back in.
Gloria kept running. She ran faster than she’d ever run before, and she didn’t realize how fast she was running. A day or so later, her legs ached and she couldn’t figure out why, and then she remembered the running, running up and down Mill Street, screaming at people who must’ve wondered what on earth had gotten into sweet little Gloria Maltas.
Steve Maltas made it back to the fire station, where his last warning was issued to a few folks who stood in the doorway of the bar across the street. "Get in! Get back in!" he hollered, and he saw that one of them was Jay Vezain, who did as he was told, and then the others who’d been standing behind Vezain went back in too.
Because the fire station didn’t have a basement, Maltas and Burrows and the other firefighters who had gathered there headed for the boiler room. They heaved the door shut behind them, and then they waited, having done all they could do, for whatever the next flurry of seconds would bring.
Gloria Maltas, whose last warning was to the people standing outside Duffy’s, wasn’t going to make it back to the fire station. It was only a block away, and she had started back, thinking she could do it, but then she glanced over her shoulder and Oh my God saw the tornado gaining on her, spreading out behind her.
She was running toward the station, running and running, but there wasn’t time, there wasn’t time. The big black triangle was rising right behind her, capturing more and more of the sky.
At Mill Street Market, the tiny grocery store in the middle of the block, Gloria halted at the glass door–the one with the "We appreciate our customers" sign–and pounded on it. Closed, locked. Nobody stirred inside. Gloria had done her job too well. They were all in the back, she guessed, having fled into the big walk-in freezer.
Still Gloria pounded and hollered, because there was nothing else to do, no other option. She had to get inside somewhere, anywhere, and then she saw Rona Burrows running toward the door, jiggling the key in the lock, twisting it, that lock was always stubborn.
"Hurry up!" cried Burrows, pulling her inside. "If I have to see you flying through the air, I’ll kill you!" she added, half-laughing, half-sobbing, and then they got to the back of the store, past the meat display case and into the freezer where the others–Mary Jo and Bruce Conner, the couple who managed the market, and a woman Gloria didn’t know–were huddled.
They waited that final minute, not knowing if they were really safe, not knowing if the walls would hold, not knowing if these were the last seconds of their lives, and they embraced, and then–at 6:09 p.m.–there was a sound like hundreds of cars being dumped on the roof, and they knew that it was, unmistakably, upon them..
It’s annoying when you lose money playing Holdem. That’s why these NL Holdem Poker tips are going to teach you how to stop losing, guaranteed. And after you realize how fundamentally important these two points are for your poker game you, like me, will always make sure you do them 100% of the time.
Once you have read this whole article you will have two key points of information that you will always use to stop yourself needlessly losing cash at the poker table.
NL Holdem Poker Tips To Stop Losing #1
All the good players have a squeaky clean game. They don’t make any stupid errors, they don’t make costly mistakes. They have cleaned up their game and that is why they succeed. Every single player who starts playing Holdem will make mistakes, it’s just a fact of life. The players that start learning these, preventing these, stopping these… they are the ones that succeed.
NL Holdem Poker Tips To Stop Losing #2
Tighten up vs hyper-aggressive bullies. The best way to beat a bully is to just wait for really great cards. Try to get to the flop as cheap as possible and make sure your pockets really connect, and then go for it. It’s better to play tighter then the bully if you are at a chip/stack advantage. A bully wins by forcing people to fold, his weakness is losing at the showdown. But don’t fall into the trap of waiting forever – if you get good pockets go for it.
Before you go on and learn more NL Holdem Poker tips right now think about how valuable these tips have been for you. How would it feel to have a squeaky clean game and never make a mistake? Imagine always making money every night when you played poker. Realize these tips and the ones your about to learn will take you far to achieving this.
More Poker Tips Articles
Blackjack is the oldest card game recorded by history and that it is considered to be a highly profitable game. Blackjack is one of the several online casino games available. Blackjack is a game of math. To win a game of Blackjack, guesses have no role to play. While, to win a game of Blackjack, you need to utilize a few strategies. Few of the basic tips or blackjack strategies which should be considered while playing Blackjack are stated below:-
In case you are a beginner to blackjack, then you need to initially play online, casinos offer a practice mode with autoplay to help you. You need to play here till you have excelled in it so that you fail to lose money foolishly. Before playing, you always need to predetermine your Bankroll so that you fail to spend plenty of money.
You should always play at a table which has doubling down features which is offered by most of the casinos online. The feature of doubling down provides you the chance of doubling your winnings by doubling your bet and by getting an extra card when you are confident that you have a strong hand. You need to find an enjoyable and fast-paced table where there is minimal interference and interruption. Slow players restrict the amount of money you can win per hour. You should always think of 21 as the aim of blackjack is to get as close as possible to 21. Refrain from trying to copy or beat the dealer. You need to split pairs of Aces and 8’s, but avoid doing this on any face cards or 10’s.
Your one stop to play a game on online BlackJack is at www.redmooncasino.com which provides you with several Online Casino games for your enjoyment. The casino online games offered by www.redmooncasino.com are with state-of-the-art 3D graphics and the latest digital sound effects and music.
While playing online Blackjack, you always need to keep your bet varying. Your betting amount should vary as per your results, in case you are wining then you are suppose to increase them else decrease them if you are losing. Avoid taking any insurance, except maybe for the cases when you are counting your cards. You can take the help of the blackjack strategy chart which provides you with the best advice from the top blackjack experts regarding how to play your blackjack hand in any given situation.
It should always be borne in mind that the game of blackjack requires a great deal of practice, and the more you play the better you will excel. It is a casino game which requires a mixture of luck and skills to win. Hence, the above mentioned strategies shall be of great help to anyone who would like to transform their hobby of playing online casino into a profitable activity apart from enjoying playing them. By following these general online blackjack tips you can become a better blackjack player.
The world of gambling can never be complete without the worthy mention of casino games. In fact, many people consider casinos as the best gambling games you can ever enjoy playing. If you know the rules of the particular casino type you’re involved in, you’re sure to make huge bucks in the long run. Online casino games have really come to stay on the internet today. Let’s find out more about them.
The Casinos and their Structures
Online casinos also known as “Virtual Casinos” are simply the online versions of the traditional ‘Brick and Mortar” casinos which have always been there right from time. The invention of the internet saw the introduction of the online version of the games. With the internet today, casino players can now wager on various casino games and make their money. Most online casinos do offer odds and payback percentages just like the traditional casinos. A good number of online casinos also publish payouts percentages audits on their websites.
Online Casino Types
Online casinos abound on the internet today. The most popular types include Roulette, Blackjack, Baccarat, and Craps and so on. Again, online casinos could be categorized based on their various interface. Generally there are two main interface namely; Web-based and Download-Only Casinos. While some casinos offer both interface, others offer only one. Some casinos offer “live gaming” exclusively or in part. For instance, Roulette and Blackjack are known for their live gaming structures.
Web-Based Online Casinos
These are unique online casinos where users are allowed to play the games without downloading any software on their computers. The games are mainly hosted by the browser plugins, Java, Macromedia Shockwave and Macromedia Flash. Strong bandwidth is also needed to make the graphics, animations and sounds to be very clear and precise. Some casinos also allow game play through normal plain HTML interface.
Download-Only Online Casinos
These are casinos that require you to download the software client on your computer before you can play and wager the games involved. The software you download connects you to the casino service provider online and also handles your communication with the provider. Generally, casinos downloaded on the system usually run faster than web based online casinos. This is mainly because the graphics and sounds programs are part and parcel of the software client you download on your system. You don’t need to load them from the internet. In most cases, the casino software does not take time to download. The installation is also very fast and easy.
Free online Casino Games
Free casino games abound on the internet today. These are casinos that require no deposit casino bonuses. Ordinarily, in the normal paid casinos, most online casinos usually offer sign-up bonuses to new players making their first deposits. These casino bonuses are simply strategies for proper marketing. However, in free online casino games, you’re not required to deposit any money for you to play the game.
In all, online casino games are becoming popular by the day. Bear in mind that there are risks involved. You can win big and at the same time lose big. It’s always advisable to begin your casino career with the free online casinos games versions.
