WPBT Summer Classic Trip Report

The first WPBT event that I attended was the Winter Classic of 2005. I didn’t really talk to a lot of the people there and kept to myself. That was the old me. I only stayed for two days, arriving early Saturday morning and left Sunday afternoon. After coming back and reading a lot of trip reports, I found out that I missed a lot. I was not going to miss out again.

This time I arrived Thursday evening made my way from McCarren airport to the Imperial Palace. After checking in and dropping my bags off at the room, I bought a 10 ride monorail pass, since I knew that there would be daily trips to the Excalibur and the wheel of cracked aces, and quickly made use of my new monorail pass. After arriving at the Excalibur I made my way to the poker room and noticed that the Excalibur had moved the poker room to a bigger location, but only feet away from it’s previous location. I only remembered a few faces from last time and as my eyes surveyed the poker room, I noticed a familiar logo on a baseball hat. I had found my first WPBT member.

After talking with Weak Player, who was the first blogger I spoke with during the previous WPBT gathering, who strolls up to the poker room? Oh just Mr. AlCantHang himself. Al and I then walked over to the Sherwood Forest bar and walked up to a slew of Poker Bloggers. If my memory is correct, The Heathers, Byron, Bill Rini, Bill’s Dad, Iggy, Spaceman, Mrs. Spaceman, S.t.B, SoxLover, Kat, Pauly, Derek, Garth, Columbo, Human Head, Mrs Head and a few that I cannot remember. After a few hours of drinks and a few rounds of Donkey Poker, it was getting a bit late, 4:10am, so I decided to take the monorail back to the IP and get some shut eye. So I say good night to everyone, Including Bill Rini who calls me, and I quote, â€œa pussyâ€, and make my way to the MGM Grand monorail station.

I walked from the Excalibur over the road to New York New York then over another road to the MGM Grand. I pass by the lion’s habitat, which was empty, through the casino floor. Then I go through a strangely quiet mini mall that is also in the belly of the MGM beast. I walk past the doors that lead to the automated half-doors to the monorail and they all say ‘Out of Order’. â€œHmm. That’s strange… oh shit.â€ I thought to myself. For whatever reason, the monorail is closed from 3am to 7am. I found out later that they have signs made that say something along the lines of, “Hey dumbass.. the Monorail is close for a bit. The beasts need sleep.” But they were not posted this morning. Now it’s 4:30am and I have 2 and a half hours before the monorail opens and I REALLY do not feel like walking 2+ miles (or what seems like it) from the MGM Grand to the IP, so I make my way back to the Excalibur’s poker room. Twenty minutes later, I’m back with the bloggers, drinking. What else are you going to do at 4:30am in Vegas? Oh yeah, poker!

I sit down at a $1/$2 limit table to try and recoup my losses from playing Donkey Poker with my fellow bloggers. Why the hell three people would max out every round of betting and not look at the cards until the betting was maxed out on the river is beyond me, but it sure as hell was fun! (If memory serves me right, I think it was Spaceman, F-Train and myself that donked it up.) After I had killed the hopes and dreams of one particular player at the table on the river, for the first time, with 89 suited, knucklehead asks me if spades will flush it up on the board this hand after I had folded. I tell him â€œI’m not sure.â€ which he replies with, â€œThat’s not good enoughâ€ and bitterly mucks his hand. Two hands later, I kick him in the junk again when I river a flush against him again. This time his actions are a little bit intimidating and with him having friends at the table didn’t help much. I was the only blogger at the table and after looking around a bit I saw AlCantHang, Garth and Byron (?) talking in between a row of sluts, err slot machines. Rini can call me a pussy for what I did next, but I don’t care. I left the table. Cashed out and cleared my Donkey Poker losses and made a nice profit. I was uncomfortable, tired and didn’t want to get my ass kicked within my first 12 hours in Vegas. I’m sure I was overreacting due to being up for just about 24 hours. But it would be a bit longer before I would be able to catch a few Z’s.

Updated: One thing I forgot to mention about the knucklehead. The tip’s from the Pro’s on Full Tilt, Lederer says poker is like real estate, location, location, location. As soon as I sat down at the table in seat 7, knucklehead moves from seat 3 to seat 8, taking position on me. After the second time I made a flush against him, taking 15 BB away from him, he moved back to seat 3.