Sunday morning I woke up around 10:30 and wanted to try to make the horse tourney and, since it was at the hotel I was staying at, how could I miss it? After making myself presentable, well, at least getting clean, I headed down to the newly moved poker room at the IP. I was maybe 15 minutes late and I was able to join in the festivities. I sat with Falstaff, Bruce, Mattazuma and a few peeps from the Full Tilt Forums and I believe a few from the Ante Up Nation.

I played pretty solid until the stud 8 round where I failed to complete the multiple outs that I had for at most a straight flush since 5th street and the second hand a flush or boat from 6th. Those two hands cost me most of my stack. I believe I donated all of those chips to Bruce, the eventual co-winner. My final hand came down during the first hand of the Hold’Em round. With less than 3bb I had pocket tens UTG and raised it up with Falstaff being the only caller. When the SB and BB folded Falstaff said he had the Hoy and I showed my hand and told him he would hit and Ace on the flop. Sure enough, the Ace hit and I was second out after a little over and hour and a half. Not nearly near where I would have liked to finish, but what can you do, someone has to be second out.

To drown my sorrows I headed back over to Margaritaville for more Landshark Lager and a Cheeseburger in Paradise. I friggen love that place. You must try the Loaded Landshark Lager, which has some sort of lime liquor in it. Mighty tasty.

After I had properly drowned said sorrows, I went back to the IP to watch the outcome of the horse tourney. After a lot of time passes, Falstaff and I went over to play Piagow Poker. This was a new experience for me and boy is that game fun. Falstaff bought in for $100 and I for $60 and for the next two and a half to three hours we hammed it up at the table. Best $45 I’ve ever spent. I rollercoastered from down to $11 to $85 to $15 to $74 back down to $15. I must admit, I play a mean piagow shortstack.

Unfortunately, I completely missed the Saprano’s finale during the piagow fun. Hopefully I’ll be able to see a re-run this week.

After piagow, Falstaff, T and myself headed to the fifth floor of the IP for some food goodness. We ended up at the Pizza Palace and we all had more food than we could eat, the portions are just that big. After dinner, drinks and shooting the shit, Falstaff and T headed back to the place that has a prick for a tournament director and I headed back up to my room. A little bit of online poker and Team America World Police from Netflix and I was off to lala land.

Monday, I woke up around 9, cleaned up again, packed my bags and checked out from the IP. All of the video poker, video slots and piagow playing comped me a little under $25 from my bill, which paid for my first nights room service. I check my bags and headed over to the MGM Grand to play a little more poker. Or so I thought.

I finally ate at a Vegas buffet for breakfast and then looked through the poker room to see if there were any bloggers left, but I didn’t see any. So I thought to myself, I still haven’t seen the Shark Reef over at Mandalay Bay, so a walk and a tram and I was there. If you haven’t been to the Shark Reef, it’s definitely worth it. I took a lot of phonecam pics and really enjoyed myself watching the sea turtles and various sharks while inside the sunken ship.

Afterwards I spent the next six hours at the Mandalay Bay poker room. I made personal history by getting felted my second hand at the table, my a kicker that was 1 lower than my opponents. REBUY! The table was awesome, some real donks, solid players and inbetweeners, but everyone was super nice, chatting and very personable. When I first sat down at the table, we had an almost-retired software engineer who liked to bet hard at pots and new how to build them. His favorite bet was $75. To my right, one of three salesmen who were in town for the Oracle gathering. Near the end of the table an older gentleman who had built up a rather big stack, a frat boy, a random player and another player who was loose-weak. Only four of the players left during the first four hours of the session, so I got to know the players, some more than others.

At one point, a dealer was trying to explain to a player after he got up and started to leave the table, that house rules state that if you are the third player up walking around a full table that once the blinds reach you, you are eligible to be bounced from the table, if there is a list. The player sat back down and asked, “What?” “It doesn’t matter now.” Said the dealer, bringing laughs to the entire table. I flipped him a $1 chip and said, “That’s for the laugh!” About halfway though my session a player named Sam sat to my immediate left. At first he was rather quiet, but as the hands continued to be dealt, he opened up more and more. I strattled just about every other orbit and one of the Oracle sales guys, who would now be the new UTG+1 would raise my strattle every time with a raise of $19. Every. Time. I didn’t mind, because every time I got a huge hand during the strattle, I got and extra $19, which only happened once. Most of the time I didn’t have crap and the hands were not worth the extra $15.

About two hours before I had to leave the table to head to the airport, we got a new player who strattled his first and I said to the table, “Someone else strattled! This is awesome!” He nodded back at me. A little while later, Sam strattled a hand. The three of us randomly started to strattle hands building up pots. Sometimes, the first player would raise it up to $12 and five of the remaining players would call. Talk about and awesome pot builder. One of those hands I was lucky enough to take down, but most of the time I just got out of the way. Near the end of my session, Sam and I tried to get everyone at the table to strattle. We got five players in a row to strattle a hand until the last four players decided that a strattle was not in their game plan. Feh, we tried. Every dealer at the Mandalay Bay poker room was awesome and I will definitely play there again. I cashed out for a small profit of 4.5BB an hour and headed back to the IP to get my bag and head home.

Overall for the trip, pokerwise I finished up $35, paigow down $45, video poker/slots down $110 but up $25 in comps. Considering my first 14 hours there I was down $400 in poker alone and in a funk, coming home down $95 in gambling as a whole, I’m perfectly fine with that!

tags: mandalay bay, paigow, poker, strattle, summer classic 2007

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I’m so awesome.

So AIPS killed very little time for me, so I chilled at the room, talked with my Mom and left for The Orleans for the Summer Classic.

A side note from the previous post, the rest of the Bloggers were around the corner at the Sports Book. HA! I was within mere feet of them and bailed. It’s ok.. I wasn’t in the mood to play and probably would have been a sourpuss.

So I get to The Orleans a few hours early to check out the place, find the poker room and grab a bite to eat. Hunger forced me to call off the search of the poker room and I walked into Fridays as the sushi bar was closed. Then I see a blogger table. I found people I know! I’m sure I’ll forget someone, but from what I remember, there was Columbo, Zeem, Falstaff and friend, BadBlood, IronGirl, S.t.B… I’m missing two people I believe. World Famous Dr. Pauly stopped by for a brief moment as well. We ate, we drank, we were ready to play some poker.

Too bad The Orleans setup the Summer Classic as a friggen Super Turbo. 15 minutes levels, craptastic blinds and ante’s after the first hour of play. We actually got ’shuushed’ by another tournament for congratulating a player who hit runner-runner 4s(?), to which the tournament director also ’shuushed’ us and basically told the players who busted out early to leave the tourney area. We’re all friends/acquaintances, we like to cheer each other on. We’re not a random bunch of people in your standard tournament.

I can’t stand turbos. If I had known that the Summer Classic was a poorly structured ‘sure we will take your money, be a prick about it and kick you out as fast as we can‘ tourney, I would have stayed home and play the online version. I will not be playing any tournaments at The Orleans anytime soon.

I had a last longer bet with Laparka, which he won. Short stacked I called MiamiDon’s all in with AQd vs his AKo and at the turn I had 4 to the flush, but missed on the river. I busted like upper 20’s(?) out if 42. That fucking tourney had me on tilt, but the tilt cure was being around the bloggers once again. Vegas by yourself is ass.

Waffles made me lose another $20 by not taking out grubbette and mrs. spaceman to claim the Summer Classic 2007 title. He was short-stacked and Falstaff gave 3-1 odds against Waffles winning. I figured that many suckouts would come Waffles way and took the bet. Less that 5 minutes later, I was handing Falstaff $20.

Afterwards we headed over to the MGM Grand for more mixed games. IronGirl, Penner3 and myself had dinner at the sushi joint at the grand. Good food. IronGirl brought up the fact that not once though dinner did we talk poker strategy, but filled it with Degenerative Disc Disease, Athesma, Allergies, Cats, Dogs.. but of course after she brought up the fact, we went right into poker strategies. Nice.

We finally made it over to the poker room and I watched a few players play a few orbits, thinking about sitting at the $1/$2 NL table. I thought about it a little bit longer, then they broke the table. I believe it was brdweb got moved to a different table which had a Norwegian with $1300 in front of him, max buy in was $200, so he was doing rather well. There was an open seat and tempting fate, I sat down. Bought in for $100. I slowly started to build up a stack. I started to gamboool. I forget a lot of what happened, but Columbo had informed me that we had a fully functional blogger table, of 1/2, that had an open seat. I was already dealt into the current hand, so I called in the dark, and continued to talk to the staff about a table change. I checked the flop in the dark. Continue to talk to the staff. I had the player to my extreme right bet out $15 into a pot of $5. Ok.. time to look at my cards. Q5o. The board shows X5X5 and I raise it up another $15, to which my he re-raises another $15. The river brings a Q, I check, he pushes and I insta-call. He asks if I can beat a set of fives, to which I reply, ‘Yup. Gotta boat.’ As I’m gathering my chips to leave I get dealt into the next hand. I peek and I spy KK. I raise it to $15 and get 3 callers.. I can’t remember much from that point forward.. a lot has blurred, but I think it went to a showdown and the kings held up and I took in another large pot. When I moved to the blogger 1/2 NL table, I had a little over $350.

Now the fun begins. Columbo, Penner, Hoy, MiamiDon, IAK, smokee and a few others which names escape me start it up blogger style. I slowly start building my stack up and get into a massive pot with Don and Penner. I played in the dark until the turn, which I look and see that I have A9o on a board of 8T89.. I forget how the betting goes, but I think I called penner’s call in and Don pushes all in. I have both of them covered and figure I’m still good. So I call. The river escapes me, but I think Penner had 8J? and Don had 78o. The stack I worked so hard on was now a little bit more than my original buy in. Inside I was devastated, outside I’m sure I looked a bit down. Again, things get a bit fuzzy, but I got some chips from smokee once with AQ vs KQ and later I sucked out against him with KJ vs his flopped straight when I rivered a boat. Eventually I hit my high mark for my poker career when I had $634 in front of me.

I told Penner that once I hit above $666 in chips or it was 2:30 am, or I was down to $550, that I would be leaving. I was starting to fade and I didn’t want to donk off all that I had. For now, I wasn’t stuck and I had made a very small profit. I tried to limp in here and there, tried to make a few steals, but ultimately, the time limit hit and I cashed out with $545. Gambling-wise, I’m still stuck, but not by much and I’m in a much better mood, now that I’m with people I know.

During the 1/2 blogger table, Penner and I tried to chop the blinds, but not once in 4 hours were we able to. Props go out to Penner for bluffing a nice sized pot with the hammer, taking it down, and showing the hammer bluff. Bravo.

Now, I sleep. I can has night night.

tags: hammer, mgm grand, poker, summer classic, travel, wpbt

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After being a good boy and not playing a single hand of anything, I enjoyed Vegas the way non-gamblers do, taking in the sights. I believe I walked half the strip yesterday going in and out of the casinos/hotels. It’s really interesting seeing the different groups of people walking around Vegas. You can always tell the bachelorette parties as one girl has on a tierra and or a feather boa. Then there’s the group of ladies all in white, not really sure what that means, but it really doesn’t matter. While walking across the street from NYNY to Excalibur I noticed that there were about 5 people with what seemed to be controls for the traffic lights. If I was in their shoes, I’d have a little fun every once and a while and only let one car though at a time, but then again, I’m evil like that.

The lions at the MGM Grand look like they have a lot of fun, chasing after each other, playing keep-away with the snacks that they are given.. it really makes me miss my cats and dogs.

Anyhoo.. it seems like the Mixed Games at the MGM were a bust. I didn’t see anyone there and bailed around 9:30. I’m sure there was a few bloggers there, but sometimes it’s hard to spot the blogger in the crowd. It’s not like I saw anyone in the ‘I’m blogging this’ shirt. Heh.

So I headed back to the IP and ….. went to bed. Walking around Vegas is hard work.

In a few hours the Summer Classic begins… and in a few minutes AIPS Event #6. Yes.. I’m in sin city and I’m playing online poker.

tags: aips, summer classic, travel, vegas, wpbt

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I know there are a few bloggers that are going to try and hit up the HORSE Tourney at Binions and I’d like to give it a shot. So, I’m going to head down to the local card room, which is in the lobby of the IP, so convenient, and try to win my buyin. I’ll check back in a few hours with, hopefully, good news.

tags: poker, summer classic, travel

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The last few Vegas trips that I’ve taken, I leave at night. That way I still work a full day and party all night. This morning I check my flight time and my flight leaves at 10:15am. AM!! I have a little more than a hour to get to the airport.

Luckily I packed the night before, so I was able to leave the house quickly. One problem, I do not have any cash on me. I hit up the nearest ATM only to find out that my card was locked. I cannot start out my trip cashless, so I fly to the bank. I get some loot and the number to call to get my card unlocked.

Now I race to the airport and the freeway is oddly clear. I have a shot to make my flight! Three miles before my exit, there is a sea of red lights. My flight leaves in 40 minutes. It seems like hours pass, but I arrive at the parking lot and get into the airport with 15 minutes to spare.

The airport security check in is usually very quick, so I get my boarding pass and it says that it isn’t a boarding pass. Then I spy the security line. I’m going to miss my flight.

Ultimately, I missed the flight by less than 5 minutes. At least I now have time to get my ATM card taken care of and my cell phone charged.

The lesson of the day: Pay Attention!

tags: summer classic, travel

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Where? The Mookie. When? Level 2. Boy did I donk it up in the mookie. I played pretty solid until I really misplayed a hand and lost most of my stack with middle pair, no kicker. I really wonder why I do that sometimes. I. not really sure why I put the other player on two high cards, we all limped into the flop. The only thing I can fall back on is that I was not 100% ‘there’ last night, but it’s not much of an excuse. Feh.

I think I may hit up a local casino before the Summer Classic so I can get in some real life experience before the trip. I still find it extremely funny that 99.99999% of my live poker experience is WPBT events. The one time I played a live ring game out of the WPBT was my trip to CT for a friends wedding and somehow I managed to sit down at a table at Foxwoods. Started off good, but walked away busted. Which is what I was expecting to do. Sad. I know.

tags: live, mookie, summer classic

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Ripped from Columbo

From the desk of Falstaff…

The dates are locked in, the room block is made, all that awaits is you, baby!

When - June 6 - 11

Where - The Orleans Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas

Who - Poker Bloggers, significant others, insignificant others and random degenerates

Why - Because it’s been months since we’ve all ambushed the hapless tourists at a poker table and drank ourselves into insensibility

How - however you can get there, planes, trains and automobiles!

Anyway, all that bullshit aside, the Orleans has a block of rooms for us held until May 6th. There are 50 rooms as part of the block and the rates are as follows.

Wednesday - $60
Thursday - $60
Friday - $110
Saturday - $110
Sunday - $65

There is the typical $5 resort fee on top of this, plus taxes and probably a disclaimer fee that the hotel it not responsible to any damage you may do to yourself or your liver if you try to go shot-for-shot with Al (that last bit’s a joke, they won’t charge extra
for drunkenness).

It will be a couple of days before they are ready to accept reservations as part of the block, but should be good to go by Friday. Annette in group sales was my rep and she was very helpful. I’ll be playing a bit of the cruise director as we go along and plan a few informal get-togethers for later in the weekend, and of course, there will be mixed games at the MGM on Friday night.

See you this summer!

Falstaff

For the record, the IP is even cheaper than the block from The Orleans. Just sayin.

tags: poker, summer classic, wpbt

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Hotel Booked.

tags: poker, summer classic, wpbt

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Flight Booked.

tags: poker, summer classic, wpbt

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After the Binions Experiment and playing online poker while still in Vegas I was able to sneak in a few hours of sleep. Three to be exact, but it was enough to recharge a little and head out to the MGM Grand for a little HORSE. We actually had two tables rolling, HORSE was the name of the game at the table I was at, the other was HORSP, at least that was what I was told. The first orbit was very kind to me, the next two or eight billion were not. I haven’t played much Stud, but both times I had a set, someone had a straight. At least I didn’t let myself get into self destruct mode and donk off my buyin. Still a bit low on energy, I get up from the table, say my good nights and head back to the IP for a few more hours of sleep before the big WPBT Summer Classic. And before the Monorail closes for four hours.

The morning of the Summer Classic I head over to Caesar’s Palace and meet up with the Heathers, my friend from work Luis and a few other WPBT members and wait in line to get my players card so I can register for the Summer Classic. Why I needed a players card to register for a private tournament is beyond me, but that was the rules and this was the reason I was in Vegas, so I follow.

Before the Big Show, there were a few guest speakers, Jay Greenspan, Micheal Craig, Howard Lederer and Phil Gordon. I just want to say Thank You to all of the speakers that took time out of their busy schedules to talk to our group.

I wanted to do an experiment for the first hand of the Summer Classic, no matter what I had, if I were to make the standard raise of 3xBB would someone call it. That’s exactly what I did. I had no callers. The cards? K3o.

Continue to part 5

tags: poker, summer classic ii, trip report, wpbt

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