Rented Rooms (A History of Budget Accomodation)

As a poker player travelling the live tournament circuit, it is important to keep expenses low. If you aren't sponsored or don't satellite into the event and win a package with accommodation - then every cent you spend on lodgings comes directly out of your potential profits. When travelling alone, I generally try to find the cheapest and most convenient place to stay, which has unfortunately led to me staying in a few what might be described as 'absolute shitholes'. 

Am I cheapstake? Probably. But I have found a few diamonds in the rough over the years and I take a perverse pride in finding the best value place to stay.

In the following posts I will write about some of the worst places I have frequented over the past 15 years travelling and playing poker. I should point out that I am highly privileged to have been able to travel around the world playing cards and I don't take that for granted.

We will begin with an honorary mention of staying with a nudist in Austria. I already wrote about this experience and it was great apart from my host sometimes being naked, so it doesn't make the list.

5. The Cecil Hotel - Downtown Los Angeles

In 2008, I went on a three month trip around the US west coast. Before this trip I made the ludicrous decision that I was going to become a professional poker player and planned to test my mettle. I didn't have a lot of spare cash and mostly used a combination of hostels and Couchsurfing on my trip. My Couchsurfing experiences were fantastic and I met some amazing people. However, my time in LA was a little different.

In Los Angeles I wanted to go and play poker every day, all day. Therefore in a theme that recurs to this very day, I decided keep costs down and stay somewhere very cheap.

 A 'hotbed for death'

The Cecil Hotel in Skid Row has a notorious history - none of which I knew about as it was calling itself something different at the time. In typically understated fashion, Buzzfeed called the Cecil Hotel a hotbed for death. It has played host to several serial killers and Wikipedia lists 16 sudden or unexplained deaths at the establishment.

When I stayed there they had turned several floors in the middle of the hotel into a hostel with a different name - clearly to trick unsuspecting backpackers into staying. Downstairs was long term residents and at the top was the old hotel. Basically though this was all labelling and it was all the same place. I found the whole experience a little unsettling and dodgy.

My two weeks there as a fledgling poker pro mostly consisted of waking up at lunchtime, grabbing some food and getting the bus to Commerce to go and play at the biggest poker room in the world. There I cashed in my first ever live tournament in the California State Poker Championships. Every day I played the beautiful game of Limit Holdem against some of the most angry men in the world until the early hours of the morning, before getting a taxi back to the Cecil. I wrote about some of the poker games here and here and boy were they amazing tables to play at.

Staying in Skid Row

Downtown LA was (then at least), an often sketchy place. My taxi drivers always insisted on dropping me off directly outside the door and several asked me if I was sure I wanted to stay there. Some would view this as a red flag, but I pressed on regardless or oblivious. It was cheap and nothing bad had happened to me so far.

The corridors and lobby sometimes featured a variety of odd characters and strange noises. The mission each night was to go directly to my room and lock the door behind me. I was reminded quite a bit of this scene in my all time favourite movie Big - I don't remember breaking down in tears like Tom Hanks, but I guess after a bad day at the tables it would have been possible.

Recently the Cecil went viral after a documentary popped up on Netflix entitled Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel. The series examines a particularly grizzly tale that happened a few years after I stayed there, along with the chequered history of the establishment. They really lay it on in the documentary with the murky history, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the hotel is no longer operating. It recently reopened as an affordable housing centre.

Even though nothing bad actually happened to me while staying at the Cecil, it still makes the list of the worst places I ever stayed. I enjoyed the grittiness of downtown LA in the daytime and at night I tried not to get mugged. The poker went really well and I carried on south to San Diego and later to Vegas to continue my crazy plan of playing poker for a living.

Shithole rating 7/10

Would I stay there again if it still existed? Probably.