If you’ve never been to the Playboy Mansion, it’s pretty much exactly what you think the Playboy Mansion is like, times 10. I was lucky enough to visit for the second time recently after qualifying for the FanDuel MLB Championship. Big shout out to my lineup, which finished 78th out of 80 in the tournament. When you have the chance to finish in the bottom 4% of a championship event, you take it.
This time around was different than last because 1) it was my friend Peter Jennings’ bachelor party and 2) I was being shadowed by a writer for SUCCESS Magazine (Michael Mooney). We had 10 total guys come out for Peter’s funeral, and the best man – Beckmann – suggested we stay at Chateau Marmont. If you’re unfamiliar with the hotel, here’s a rundown. Basically, a lot of celebrities stay there and misbehave and/or die.
Per Beckmann when we arrived at Chateau on Friday afternoon: “This place makes good girls go bad.”
Chateau Marmont looks like an old castle. We stayed in Bungalow 1, which is separated from the main hotel. There are four bungalows – Britney Spears was in another one while we were there, apparently – and they’re very private, with a pool, bar, and ping pong table right out the backdoor. Here’s a look at some pictures, all six of which are from Google because I didn’t actually take any photos.
The bungalow itself is very old. I think Peter was a bit tilted when we first arrived because you aren’t paying $5k/night for luxury; it’s all about the history, privacy, and charm. When we first walked into the bungalow, we saw a bunch of alcohol that we naively thought was complimentary. You know, because we paid $5k/night. Then I saw a $12 small bag of chips and realized maybe, just maybe, the liquor wasn’t on the house. We ended up just hiding that so no one could drink it.
We played a bunch of ping pong the first afternoon, and I’d stack our group of guys up against anyone (who is moderately good at ping pong). One of the guys – Steve Bass – was a professional tennis player, which is relevant because he was part of a bet with poker player Brandon Adams on Tuesday in Vegas. Peter was able to travel out to watch Stephen and Brandon play a match of tennis, and the bet was that Bass had to beat Brandon 6-0, 6-0 to win – and he was around (-145) to do it. I think there was some big money on this thing, and Bass indeed won.
One thing that was really cool, though, was learning how Brandon set up the match to try to tilt the odds in his favor. He was able to choose the court, which was at the top of Cosmopolitan. It’s a really shitty court, apparently, at elevation somewhat (Bass said this matters). They also played at 11am – a time when the shadow of the building was moving across the court. It was just really sharp thinking from BA – who is a really smart guy in general – as he knew he was a dog and wanted to embrace variance as much as possible. Bass is also a sharp guy, so he played a super low-variance strategy in which he simply tried to make shots and force Brandon to continually beat him. I originally thought the line of (-145) was probably about right given that BA plays tennis quite a bit – he’s had some big prop bets with Patrik Antonius in the past – but after watching the match, I think he was probably close to drawing dead.
On Friday night we stopped by the FanDuel opening party at the W in Westwood, which is right next to UCLA. That’s where I first met Michael. I thought it might be awkward having someone shadow me for the weekend, but it wasn’t at all; Michael pretty much just became an honorary member of the bachelor party right away.
He immediately met a lot of guys in daily fantasy sports – Dan Back, beepimajeep (Jay Raynor), Tommy G (no idea what the ‘G’ stands for), Cal Spears, and so on. Michael has a poker background, which was definitely a huge plus for me when I first found out he would be writing the story, i.e. since poker and DFS are similar games in a lot of ways, he “gets it” when it comes to daily fantasy.
We ate some food at the W and then headed back to Chateau, where we hung out at the bar for a bit. I think I went back to the room at like 2 or 3am, which I’d love to say contributed to the poor performance of my lineup, but it really didn’t. I could do a breakdown of my team and why I liked it, but who really gives a shit?
So I woke up Saturday, did a little research and set my lineup, and then we all headed to the Playboy Mansion. The best way to describe the Playboy Mansion is through pictures. Once again, I took none of these and just found most on Instagram by searching for the event.
Until you’re there, you really can’t appreciate how many girls are shipped into this thing. It’s kind of insane. I’m not really sure where they come from – I heard something about an app that the Mansion or FanDuel uses to find them – but the place is just crawling with models taking selfies.
If taking selfies is an art, these girls are the Michelangelos and Picassos and da Vincis of our time. I think being in the presence of such incredible artists is what had me so flustered and nervous to converse with them; talking to a hot girl is one thing, but trying to do it while she’s creating an Instagram video of her bending over and twerking in a bikini on the Playboy Mansion driveway – her canvas – is another. You have to respect their craft.
I did take one photo at the Mansion – of a parrot – which is either because I didn’t want to look like a creep on my phone or because I’m a giant fucking pussy, or both. While searching for photos to add to this blog, I did find this video, though…
Noteworthy because if you were to set odds on which guy would be talking to her, I would take even money on Tommy G, and it’s indeed him. If you’ve ever seen a lion creeping around searching for prey in the wild, that’s kind of like what it’s like to party with Tommy G (if the lion failed on 90% of its targets, but was just so fucking relentless that it always got something to eat because it just keeps going and going and going until it happens upon a wounded animal or an emotionally unstable underage girl). Tommy is the man and does always get girls, so I’m just playing of course.
There are a variety of different areas around the Mansion – the pool/grotto, zoo, basketball/tennis courts, game room, and so on – and it’s really just a lot more expansive than you might think. There’s also an area to sweat the games, although I can’t stress enough how few people actually watch. I think I watched maybe five pitches the whole day, which worked out in my favor given that I scored roughly the same number of points.
I mostly hung out in the zoo looking at birds and monkeys and stuff – there are like 300 monkeys, no lie – but I also lost a lot of money in beer pong and lost to Condia playing pool. Big day for me. Really big day. I feel like Condia is still a mystery to a lot of people, but I’ve been able to hang out with him a bit in San Diego and now LA, and I really like him and think he’s a great guy.
If you’re wondering if Hef ever comes out, the answer is no, but I can tell you it’s weird af knowing the guy is just chilling inside. What’s he doing in there? Does he just nap a lot? Is he still having sex? I swear I saw him look out once, but it was probably just another 90-year-old man in a robe.
After the event, we had an afterparty back at our bungalow. Beckmann asked every girl at the Mansion if they wanted to come back for a pizza party, which he said would work because “it’s innocent and fun.” Girls did indeed come back to the bungalow, although I’m not sure if it was because they were really hungry for pizza or because other people invited them to Chateau Marmont. We didn’t even have any fucking pizza, although someone ordered 100 tacos. I ate roughly half of them.
tl;dr The Playboy Mansion is fun. I highly recommend it.