Well it looks like I'll be joining everybody in vegas. This week I'll be purchasing my tickets from lovely DC to Las Vegas on Virgin America. I've been looking forward to trying this airline out and I'm even willing to sacrifice a longer trip with a layover in San Francisco to do it! As far as accomodations, they haven't been finalized yet. I do plan on being towards the north end of the strip with the rest of the degenerates so that it won't be far to stagger back from the Geisha Bar, et al. I'm really looking forward to the tourney at the Venetian as I enjoyed playing in their Deep Stack Extravaganza last time I was in town.Looking forward to seeing everybody there!
UPDATE: Well after taking a long look at the finances, what with a wedding to plan, Vegas is not going to happen this time around. Especially since I really should be taking some of my free time to go visit family. So that's what I'm going to do. See you all next summer instead!
[posted with ecto]
Not much news as I haven't been playing any poker at all lately. In retrospect, it will probably do wonders for my game and allow me to be more patient and zen-like about my bad beats, donkeys, and suckouts. However,
Falstaff has announced the initial planning of the next
WPBT event in Las Vegas. That at least has me excited about poker, bloggers, and large amounts of liquor.
It looks like the 'official' dates are Dec 6-10th and the block of rooms and tournament shall be at the Imperial Palace since they seem to treat us degenerates so well. I've already submitted my vacation time although I'm not sure if I'll show up the 6th or 7th as the better half might be a wee bit upset if I were to fly to Vegas on my birthday just to hang out
I'm already looking forward to the flight itself as I've decided to not even attempt to shop for a bargain flight.
Virgin Atlantic will have their service from Dulles (DCA) to Vegas up and running by then. I've already gotten a price quote and it's actually not bad anyway, especially considering the expected comfort and level of service. As far as accomodations, I'm expecting to stay at one of three locations: Mirage, Treasure Island, or the IP. The prices for Mirage and TI are both much cheaper than other of the bigger strip casinos for that time period and not bad at all. It just depends on how much I'm planning to gamble instead of just drinking with the group.
If you are also going stag and want to share a room at either the Mirage or TI, let me know.
Speaking of which, I plan on doing a lot more just hanging out with everybody. I didn't take complete advantage this summer and plan to make up for that. So yes, I'll donk with everybody else at the cash games, pai gow, and anything else that comes up.
Bayne, we need to roll the dice again!
So on Saturday I decided to take a shot at the $500 deepstack tourney at the Venetian since by this point I had made some of my money back but not really enough to hit the WSOP event that I was originally slated to play in. I was doing pretty well, having hit the nut flush against somebody with the 2nd nuts and not getting too crazy. So right at the end of level 4 I decided to give all my chips to the worst player at our table. He played almost every pot, bluffed constantly, etc.... I had top pair, middle kicker on a board that was double suited. He had limped in EP as he did basically every hand and then had called my raise out of the BB. So I fire out a pot sized bet, not really minding if he calls as I knew I could milk some chips out of him. Of course the flush came on the turn and for the life of me I don't know why I did this, but I overbet the pot by a large amount. My mind had frozen as I KNEW he would have called me on the flop with even a 3 high flush draw. Of course he came back over the top for only like $1k more and I had to call just in case he was attempting another stupid bluff. He had Q4 s000ted and crippled me. Right after the break I pushed trying to triple up with 57s, hit a pair on the flop, only to lose to A5 that was also in the hand. So not a good tournament for me really.
That night it was back to MGM for some of the lovely 1/2NL competition on hand. I had proceeded to run over my table almost exactly like the day before, getting my stack up to about the $800 mark. At this point, the other bloggers were ganging up on the tourists with big stacks at a table opposite mine. I thought about sitting down but with the stack sizes over there and me having to take my entire stack over with a move, I decided against it. I should have just gotten up from my game and put my name on the list again. I know that some folks out there weren't thrilled that I was staying at my table trying to make money. But after the start of my trip I didn't really want to sit with 4x the buyin against a bunch of people I knew to be good players especially when I didn't have much more than they did. Next time I will not err on the side of caution and just try to have fun!
Sunday was just a nice lazy day lounging by the pool with the better half. That night though I decided to show her my newfound craps skill and play a little blackjack too. Who'd have guessed that there would be a monster roll about 15mins after I show up to the table and I walk away up more than $300 thanks to learning the art of 'pressing' from
Bayne. Thanks dude!
So in summary, the trip ended up being fun in the end and I got some great gamb00ling karma after Wednesday night, winning at every damn thing I did (other than $20 in slots). For the winter WPBT event, I plan on doing less poker, more drinking, and more hanging out with everybody.
So after my stunning run Friday morning at MGM I was able to have a smile on my face when I got back to Hooters to wait for my girlfriend to fly in by the bar. I of course decided to play some video poker and get my free drinks in. Rarely have I played this game but at least it's more interesting than slots! Over the course of the next 30 minutes or so I proceed to hit a number of decent hands, order two drinks, and cash out with a $27 profit when she walks through the door. More good karma! I'm very happy she's in town and we proceed to chill out for a few hours at the hotel.
That night she gets all gussied up in a skimpy little dress and we hop a cab over to the Palms to meet up with her friend Melissa, who happens to be an independant VIP hostess with contacts at many of the major resorts. We also are introduced to her whale of the evening who was a major league pitcher for 7 seasons with the A's and Orioles. Next thing you know we are wisked past the long line of people waiting to pay their $40/pp for entrance and enter an elevator with a dude wearing a dark suit and earpiece. The elevator shoots up 53 floors in the blink of an eye and we are deposited into the promised-land, the Playboy Club.
Now let me be the first to admit that I was more than a little excited at the prospect of going there. Visions of bunnies, boobs, and fur dancing in my head. However, in all reality, the Playboy Club is just a few high roller tables, some VIP bottle service seating, and a bar. Other than the dealers wearing bunny outfits it was a complete letdown. I was in for a pleasent surprise though when we headed upstairs to Moon. This part of the club was hopping! The DJ knew how to lay down the tracks, the roof over the dance floor opens up to the sky, and our whale got a table OUTSIDE and ordered 5 bottles of booze for everybody. With the weather mild and a fantastic view of the entire strip we were able to party our asses off and had a great time.
That was my Friday in Vegas.
To be continued......
The trip was fun and ended up being just long enough to both see the majority of what we wanted to as well as start longing for home. Today was my first day back at work and it just dragged on. There was just so much in the way of email and voice mail to catch up on! And of course this weekend is moving day so it will be very very hectic. It will be nice to finally get settled in fully. I'll take pics of the new place and get them uploaded. For now, you can head over to Flickr by clicking on one of the pictures on the right and check out shots from Las Vegas. Oh and if you're using the Internet Explorer browser on windows, it craps out on the code on this page and puts the right hand menu at the bottom. Maybe someday I'll fix it, but instead I suggest that you just
get Firefox.
