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06-05-2007, 06:58 PM
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OT: WSOP 06 diary/trip report (v. long)
This is a diary I kept at last years WSOP.
I wanted to share this with you guys because it's that time of year again and I hope to meet up with quite a few of you STTF'ers over the next month. I've typed it up from scribbled on bits of paper and filled in the blanks, yes I am so lazy that this has taken me a whole year to get round to. Back in June 2006 I entered a freeroll donkament on Stars' for bloggers. Well, despite being a huge MTT donk I came 1st out of a load of players and my prize was a $12K WSOP package. If you give a damn you can read about it here: meet-daleroxxu-wbcoop-champion So at the end of July 2006 I headed over to Vegas to play my seat. I went by myself but that was no biggie as I'd been to Vegas on my own before and had a good time, I'm not really shy or anything. Ok so here's my diary.... -------------- Day 1 -------------- The journey begins -------------- 27/07/06 -------------- My trip gets off to a totally rigged start when my alarm clock doesn't wake me up. I look at my phone and it's less than an hour before my flight so I phone a cab then rush around and start shoving stuff into my suitcase because I was too lazy to pack properly last night. So the cab picks me up pretty fast and I JUST make it for the 7am BMI flight to Manchester. Result !!! The flight to Manchester is only about 40 minutes and I use that time to think about the stuff that I forgot to pack. These include: Sunglasses - To hide behind like a scared internet fish while playing poker. They also have a secondary use for shading one's eyes from the sun when outdoors. Digital Camera - to take some tight pics in Vegas. A Watch - I need one of these to tell the time. I plan to buy all of the above once I get to Vegas. I could buy it all from the Airport in Manchester but things cost half the price in America as they do in England and I am a huge nit so I choose to wait. So at 10am I get onto my next flight, Manchester to Vegas with BMI. The on-flight entertainment is pretty good. There are loads of British movies and British comedy shows on there. I watch a movie called The Other Half which is a comedy about a guy who takes his bride on honeymoon to Portugal during Euro 2004 and tries to sneak away to see the England matches without his wife knowing. The movie is pretty crap really but I kinda enjoy it as I went to all the England matches at Euro 2004 as well and it brings back some memories. I just pass the rest of the time playing PSP and Nintendo DS. Playing Viewtiful Joe, Lemmings and Mario Kart DS. Getting through the Immigration at McCarren is a total pain in the ass. I fill out some form and wait over 30 minutes in a queue and the dude says to me "where's the other form?" and points to a different coloured form than the one I gave him. I say "Ok, well what is THAT form for?" This son of a bitch immigration officer then snaps back at me "Son, that's to allow you entry into the United States of America" O RLY !!! And he wont even give me a bloody pen to fill this one out so I am forced to beg people in the queue for one. About the 10th person I ask gives me one then have to sit on the floor and fill out this stupid second form before Jobsworth will let me into his country. After that [censored] is over I get a nice limo to take me to The Palms and I get there about 2pm Vegas Time. This pretty latino chick at the check-in is very nice and also fun to flirt with and lets me check-in early (It's supposed to be 3pm or whatever). I've never even visited the Palms before so I check out everything I'm instantly very impressed. Rooms is huge, bed is huge and after browsing through the nice free porn magazines (thank you Palms) I go to the PokerStars suite to pick up my "goody bag". They get me to fill out a form and there is an old guy in his 30s in front of me doing the same...signing his real name and screen name... etc. I point to his screen name on his form and say to him "Hey, dude, you're on my fish-list!!" I'm tired and jet legged as hell but still want to [censored] with people. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] The goody bag that I ordered was one with LARGE clothing (choices were S,M,L,XL,XXL). I am 5ft11/6ft and average build and LARGE sizes tend to fit me. Well everything in the goody bag is way too big for me. Obviously British LARGE and American LARGE are two different things, probably because the Americans are bigger and fatter than the rest of the world. Anyways the bag contains the following: - Ultra cool teddy bear - Ultra crap card capper - Craptacular Pokerstars Cap - Another craptacular Pokerstars cap - Yet another craptacular Pokerstars cap, (So I have about seven of them by now) - A large Hockey Jersey, it's very cool and it fits me a lot better than most of the stuff. - A large, cotton (?????), soccer shirt that is far too big and heavy for me to wear. I guess they've never seen what a real soccer shirt is made of or what it looks like. - A large baseball shirt, way too big - A white pokerstars T-Shirt - Another white pokerstars T-Shirt - A large basketball shirt, way too big - A cool PokerStars baseball in a case - A Team Pokerstars trading card set (wtf?) - A lettermans style jacket that actually fits me  A pokerstars WSOP2006 goodybag. Photo from pokerstarsblog. By 4pm I'm pretty tired but I decide to stay awake in an effort not to get too jet lagged. This isn't a problem coz in the casinos they are cold and pumped full of oxygen. so I grab a shower and change of clothes and head over to Caesars Palace to play video poker and drink lots of vodka. After a while I stagger over to the Flamingo. Almost half of the $12K I made in Vegas when I stayed for a month earlier in the year was at The Flamingo where the live poker games are way, way soft and I always flop quads when I play there so that's pretty neat as well!. I buy into a 1/2 NLHE game for $200 and immediately shout for a cocktail waitress as I want more vodka. My memory is a bit vague about what happens next as I'm pretty drunk but I remember that these idiot morons always want to straddle the blinds or make a blind bet so I just keep shoving my stack in preflop whenever someone does this crap. Well it seems that if you straddle or blind bet that you will always get dealt JJ+ so after a while of getting pwned I am $700 down and leave my stack on the table and to go for a meal and several glasses of orange juice. Well, I come back to the table all sobered up and start kicking some ass. I set-over-set someone with AAA over 888 and tell him to "get it shipped", this guy can't stand the beat or the rubdown so he leaves the table, which is perfect as he's the only good player on the table and 2 to my left so I am glad to get rid of his ass. There is an Irish guy across the table from me that is also going to be playing in the WSOP ME so I chat to him a bit, it turns out that he's a Glasgow Celtic fan but since I'm a nice guy I continue talking to him anyway when all of a sudden this fat Texan guy just butts in to our conversation like "If y'all gone keep speakin' like that, ah aint gonna think am in America y'all". I looked at him and scoffed "y'all, Y'ALL? haha ridiculous.". Then he started talking all this crap about how I was in his country and all this jabbering. By this time I'm about to fall asleep so I just get up and look at Tex and give it "Smell ya later" I leave the game about $200 down overall and get a cab back to The Palms for a nice late sleep at something like 4am (I still don't have a watch at this stage). I fall asleep the very moment my head hits the pillow... ZzZzZzZz *snooze* -------------- Day 2 -------------- Gaming Lief Expo -------------- 28/07/06 -------------- Wow! The beds at The Palms are teh absolute nutz. They have the deepest and most comfiest mattresses in the world.... and soft soft duvet sheets. After 12 hours in heaven (my bed), I get ready to go out and it's like 5pm already. On my way out I buy one of those crappy disposable cameras because I'd feel pretty stupid about buying a new digital camera just because I left my one at home. I head over to The Rio to see what's up and WOW, there are huge kiosks everywhere. It seems that for the first 4 days of the WSOP ME there is this "2006 Gaming Life Expo" thing where every online poker site has a stall promoting themselves. It's just like a big poker convention. My favorite kiosk for sure is The Bodog House. It is built on 2 levels and filled with cool stuff and hot chicks. I enjoy the bedroom where I have a nice pillow fight with these hot broads while some classic looking geek videos us.  Pillow Fight. So that's loads of fun until the huge security dude cuts it short because I get too rough with the girls. So I don't get to have my video, bad bad beat [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] I move through to another room in the Bodog house where there is this pretty, skinny blonde girl (which is my favorite type of girl, actually) who looks pissed off with her job. I chat with her for 15 minutes about how fake Vegas is and how disgusting smoking is but I ultimately fail in my quest to bag her so I'll just leave it there. I find out where the PokerStars stuff is and head on over. There is this bald guy wearing a PokerStars polo shirt so I ask him "Are you Lee Jones?", he wasn't Lee Jones. Anyways it seems that they are running this heads-up battleship tournament thing where you play someone heads-up face to face using laptops, the top prizes are seats to the WPT/PCA. I get drawn against this complete and utter donkey.....  Dale vs Donk The guy is horrible. I manage not to go broke when he rivers a J high flush against my flopped set and even with a 5:1 chiplead he lets me slowly claw back to even... only for me to get brutally 2 outed for my stack, standard rigged donkey BS ;-/ After that rigged garbage I meet this woman poker player called Isabelle Mercier who gives me a hat and signs it, cheers ! I shower her with compliments and she seems to like that.  Dale and Isabelle Then I go over to the Full Contact Poker booth and meet Daniel Negreanu. He goes to shake my hand and i hold out my fist to do the fist handshake thing. He smiles and says "Ahhh so you read the blog?". The thing is that he has this Video blog and the latest entry was that he had some sort of cold virus and was bitching about when you shake people's sweaty hands they transfer their bugs to you. He said that if anyone should see him out and about to just "do the fist thing". So he says to me "So you're from California then?" I was like "No man, I'm British" he looks at me like I'm retarded and says "Yeah,,,, I know" Then I tell him about how cool his stand up comedy routine on the party poker cruise was which he had the video of on his site, he was telling me it was a lot of fun to do. I told him it was so good because bits of it were on the very, very borderline for being racist and he just laughed a lot.  Dale and Daniel So I take a bit of a wander and start talking to this hot chick who tells me that she works for PokerTek and they are here to promote PokerPro which is is a fully automated electronic poker table. The tables look like standard 10 seater poker tables but the middle is a screen and in front of each player is a touch-screen where you place your hands over it to reveal your hole cards and press buttons on the screen to bet and stuff. Anyway they have 2 of them right there and the hot chick gets me to sit down for a quick SNG. She puts he hand on my shoulder and leans over me to log me in on the screen, she has nice perfume! Anyway, the moment I touch the screen to see my cards i get some garbage error on the screen and the chick looks embarrassed and says she'll have to reboot my screen, this takes ages. Five minutes later and some other dude's screen hangs on him and the hot chick reboots the whole table and starts the SNG all over again. This is worse than playing SNGs on the Tribeca network where at least their servers only crash about once during your SNG. Anyway as soon as I manage to bust out of this crap the hot chick grabs me... I think, this looks promising [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] then asks me if I want to come back tomorrow to play a SNG with Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandiari, not what I was hoping she was gonna ask me but I say "sure" and she gives me a card thing with a time on it, 11am, so early it's doubtful I'll make it but whatever. I get a cab to the strip and play some vide games at Gameworx as I still have a card with like $40 credit on it from the last time I was in vegas. I play Crazy Taxi which i pwn for like 30 minutes on 1 credit and top the leaderboard then play some house of the dead / time crisis games. I finally decide to leave after this 13 year old japanese kid kicks my ass at Initial D 3 (a racing game). Japanese kids are so awesome at video games, it's sick :-( I get a cab down to the luxor and buy into their 2/5 NHLE game. The players here are all [censored] and the only person that will talk to me at the table is the dealer. I don't play for very long but I win about $500 and almost all of it is from this fat beardo to my right who I keep pwning over and over as he check-calls me down all the way every time that he makes some sort of middle/bottom pair hand on the flop. He seems like he's going to explode after my AKo beats his K3o on a K high board and he starts screaming screaming "Damn KICKER, always the DAMN KICKER, all week its been the KICKER that's screwing me." Excellent analysis but no boubt that wont stop him playing K3 out of position to a raise at a full table so badly again. What a retarded retard but ship the dough anyway thankyoooooou. So I go back to the Palms and I just play some slots for a bit then get some decent sleep. -------------- Day 3 -------------- More poker and expo [censored]. -------------- 28/07/06 -------------- I start the day with a breakfast buffet and basically just eat loads and loads of sausages and danish pastries. Yum! I ask for some Sprite, which they don't have, so they offered me this stuff called Mountain Dew which is supposed to be the same as Sprite except for the fact that it tastes like cat piss so I wasn't impressed. About 11am and I head over to the Rio again to play this SNG with at the PokerPro tables. Antonio Esfandiari sits down at the table and I introduce myself. He ask's where I'm from and I tell him "Scotland" and he says "ohhh I really want to visit Scotland. I was in London recently and had the choice to go to either Scotland or Ireland but my girlfriend wanted to go to Ireland." He goes on to tell me that Braveheart is his favorite movie and asks me about the Scottish castles and stuff. So yeah he comes across as a pretty decent dude.  Dale and The Magician So we start to play a sit n' go on this PokerPro table and it's pretty funny as the blinds are going up like every 2 hands because people are so slow and stupid at using this table. After a while Phil Laak turns up and sits at the other table. Antonio shouts over to the other table "Now remember, when the Unabomber donks off all his chips we call him the Cherrybomber". Well eventually I bust when i push AQ preflop and get called and beaten by some silly girl's suited crap. Standard. I go over to the other table to chat to Phil for a bit. I ask him when he's playing and he tells me tomorrow, so i was just like "ah, ok, well hope you're not on my table." he says "well I can donk off my chips as much as anyone else"  Dale and Unabomber After that I decide to go the Bodog house again and hopefully they don't recognise me from yesterday because I'd really enjoy another pillow fight with these chicks. I jump onto the bed and there are 3 chicks instead of 2 this time.  Pillow Fight Chicks Look at this dumb blonde above trying to do the thing with her fingers behind my head but she is so dumb that it just looks like shes saying "PEACE DUDE"! One of these chicks recognises me. "It's him from yesterday" I tell them that was my brother and they are like "ohhhh yeah, so believable" "Watch out for him, he fights hard!!!" So I try to grab one of the huge pillows but they won't let me. Then I pick up a feather and hand it to one of them and say "here, this is your weapon" (that's what she done to me yesterday) she says "Oh my god, you were SO here yesterday" Anyway all I get is one of these stupid tiny pillows to use but I still think I can cause some damage with it so game on beeeeyotch.  A full video of the fight is right here After getting my ass kicked by these skinny girls I go downstairs and find some more skinny girls. I give them loads of compliments on their looks and this earns me a hug from each of them. They have such easy jobs, they just stand around looking pretty, but looking back they weren't all that hot.  Dale and Bodog Chicks After this I headed over to the Pokerstars booth and met Chris Moneymaker. We chat for a good five minutes or so and he comes across as very friendly.  Dale and Chris Moneymaker So then I just wander around finding hot chicks to chat to for the next hour or so.  Dale and chicks  Dale and more chicks After a while I get the urge to play some live poker so I head over to The Imperial Palace where there are always ultra soft games. I buy into a 1/2NL game for $200 and win a few pots here and there. There is this English dude to my right who is very friendly and tells me he is playing the WSOP on day 1D, he is crap at poker though so this is a promising, hopefully there are lots of players like him in the main event. Fast forward 1 hour or so and this total set-up of a rigged hand happens. I am on the button with 7h5h and UTG raises to $6 (standard preflop openraise at the table was to $12). The whole table calls and I decide to join them. Flop comes 6h8h9h so I flop a straight flush. Before I even get a chance to take that in I watch in awe as the small blinds shoves his >$200 stack all in to a $54 pot. So I'm expecting it to get folded round to me so I can insta-call but the English dude next to me is agonising and squirming in his seat and talking to himself. After like 5 minutes of thinking he calls and flips over 99 for top set. I was like "Dude, im still in the hand" But whatever, I announce call and flip of my straight flush. Retardo in the SB flips over QhJh and actually has 1 out to beat me, the 10h. Before the turn or river are dealt some wise ass in a Party Poker Monster T-shirt says "I folded the ten of hearts". Then the English dude to my right starts shouting for the case 9 until the dealer told him that a straight flush beats quads, then insta deals the turn and river and ships me the $700 pot. The cardroom manager then comes over to me and asks me for ID. I get ridiculously defensive and start screaming like "What the hell? ask the dealers here, they know I'm legal!" The guys laughs and says "calm down son, I only want proof of your name so I can complete your certificate" So I ask what the certificate is for and tells me "For making a straight flush we would like to comp you a meal at any of our restaurants". RESULT !!!! So I don't even play another pot, I just say "Sorry guys it's late, I'm in the main event tomorrow and I have a free meal to eat!" I go to their steakhouse and have a very nice free meal before heading back to the Palms. For once, life is starting to seem un-rigged. -------- Day 4 -------- WSOP Day 1 -------- 30/07/06 -------- I wake up after a great night's sleep feeling very positive about how my day is going to go. I look through about 10 different items of PokerStars apparel, deciding which one I'll wear to the Main Event. I decide on the hockey jersey that is about the only item that comes close to fitting me. At The Rio, PokerStars have layed on a breakfast buffet for their players. I fill up a plate with sausages, bacon and danish pastries and get stuck in while chatting with another 2 PokerStars players. One was John Ambrust, who I can tell just from talking to that he's a good player. We discuss how we qualified, some strategy and the blind/ante structure of the tournament. At this point almost everyone I talk to has qualified for the Main Event for like $30. Anyway, I'm a lot more relaxed after the breakfast and head over to the Amazon Room to play some poker. As I walk into the Amazon Room it just hits me how big this thing is. WOW, I've never seen anything like 200 poker tables in the same room before, a totally awesome sight indeed as I wander over to my table and sit down. 10 minutes before the first deal and, surprisingly, I have no feelings of nerves at this stage. I just sit and observe the other players, most of them looked pretty nervous. Penn and Teller arrive to do the "Shuffle Up and Deal" then we get under way. We start with 10,000 chips and 2 hour levels starting at 25/50. Two seats remain empty until about 10 minutes into the game. As one is filled by some kid I say "We've only one more chance to play with Phil Hellmuth". The dealer announces "No, it's not Phil Hellmuth. He was eliminated yesterday." 5 minutes later a big dude in a blue Absolute Poker shirt and cap sits down. I recognise him as 2 time bracelet winner Mark Seif. I'm not so sure that any of the other players at the table know who he is. Anyway here is the rundown on the players at Table 156: Seat 1: Me. Seat 2: Old Costa Rican player. Likes to gambool. Seat 3: 30something year old in a Party Poker shirt. Very weak and playing scared. Barely talks and I hear a tremor in his voice when he does. Seat 4: Dale 'Calamere' Hunter, Canadian player, wearing a Party Poker t-shirt and seems excited. Playing very tight but exploits his tight image now and again with a couple of moves. Seat 5: Stuart, Aussie player, wearing a Sun Poker cap and t-shirt. One of the better players at the table, shows very good post flop skills on numerous occasions. Seat 6: oldish guy in non-sponsored clothing and baseball cap. Seat 7: 30something year old with blue reflective shades. TAG. Seat 8: Some old guy that never plays a hand. Somebody should tell him that it's impossible to fold your way into the money. Seat 9: oldish guy in a Hawaiian Shirt. Doesn't play much. Seat 10: Mark Seif. Supposedly World class player but plays really weak/tight.  Dale trying not to give off tells :-p The first real hand I get is QQ against the 6 Seat. I flop a set on a dangerous flush/straight board, the old guy leads out on the flop, turn and river and decided to just call it down. I win about $2200 with this hand. An hour later I pick up two black Aces while Blue Shades raises for like the first time and I decide to just flat-call with position. I decide not to re-raise here for several reasons. - There hasn't been a re-raise preflop at this table yet and the table has seen me play very tight (the only hand I'd shown down being a set of queens). If I reraise it telegraphs that I have AA or KK and I never want to telegraph my hand. I would only reraise AA or KK here if I have been seen to 3-bet preflop previously. - I want my opponents to consider me as sneaky and dangerous and to think that I could have any 2 cards at any particular time. Everyone is watching this hand, great! - Chances are I'm a better post-flop player than this guy so I welcome seeing a flop with him when I'm in position and with a better starting hand. Otherwise if I reraise and he has a hand that I have dominated such as AQ, it's likely that he will fold and I'll only pick up a small pot. I feel that there's more value in just playing the flop against such a hand when we're so deep. - My chances of getting away from the hand with some chips left are greatly increased if he flops a set on a 10-6-2 rainbow flop or whatever. Stacks are so deep at this stage that a significant reraise preflop would still give him the correct implied odds to call me with pocket deuces if he thought he could stack me on such a flop. The flop comes KsQs9s and my opponent leads out with a full pot sized bet. This is a pretty big bet, more than I'd have expected for a standard continuation bet from a tight player. I'm sure at this point that he's hit the flop pretty good but doesn't have a spade. I consider his possible holdings, I've not seen him open raise yet so I put him on any of these: (AA - 99, AK, AQ, maybe KQ) A flopped set or KQ worry me, but AK is more likely. I have an overpair and a nut flush draw, I have AK crushed and I have outs against a flopped set so I decide to just call and see how the hand develops on the turn. I should have a much better idea where I stand after he acts on the turn. The turn brings another 9 and he checks. Ok so why has he decided to slow down? Well he's either very strong and has just boated up or is very weak. His body language is telling me that he's trying to not look scared. I'm not so great at describing what the physical 'tells' are, but somehow, subconsciously, I just know (most of the time). I check behind to see what he does on the river (ok, ok, so shoot me for my tight-passive play). The river is a blank and he checks to me again. Because of the way that the hand played out and the guy's body language I think that he has somewhat of a hand but that he's scared and want's to show down cheaply. I'm now certain that I have the best hand and need to decide how large a bet he will call. I decide that overbetting the pot is good because it looks like a missed flush draw. So he thinks for a while and say's "I guess I'm just gonna have to pay it off" and throws his chips in. I announce that I have 2 pair and he gives it "well that makes two of us" and he's giving me this cheeky grin while he says it that makes me instantly dislike him so I decide to be a bit of a dick and lethargically turn over my non-spade Ace. He then insta-flips over his cards like he's got the nuts, Ace-King offsuit. I pause and look at him "Wow, you have Ace-King, I had no idea you were that strong". I then flip over my other Ace and say to the dealer "Ship me the pot!". The villain's heart sinks and his face drops. He is saying stuff under his breath and looking pretty mad at me for the dirty slowroll. I sit back and smile knowing that I've just deflated one of my opponents. I made about $4000 from this hand, giving me a stack of $16000 I guess If I had played the hand more aggressively I might have stacked him but I also might have scared him off with it being so early in the tournament (he actually tries to "timebank" his way into Day 2 with 10BBs at the end of the day, more on that later) but i dunno. So anyway I play some Mario Kart on my Nintendo DS for about half an hour (while the tournament continues) and let the fish splash around by themselves for a bit. I check my cards and muck them quickly every round. They think I'm not paying attention to what's going on, but really I am. Mark Seif had just raised his 3rd pot of the round after 2 limpers. I put my Nintendo DS down on the felt and re-raised 3x his bet. The whole table insta-folds, cards are flying into the muck all over the place, I flip over Seven-Four of spades and shake my head, then walk away from the table and out of the Amazon room in quite an arrogant manor. Later on I asked Dale Hunter (the 4-Seat) if anyone said anything about that when I left and he told me that the table was just shocked and silent like they didn't know what to make of it. I thought it was pretty funny anyway. I return 10 minutes later and just start to raise twice per round, taking down the blinds/limps. Nobody wants to play a pot with me but I really don't care because the damn dealer won't give me anything better than an 8 anyway. I notice 2 ESPN cameras and a microphone over the table behind me. Phil 'The Unabomber' Laak, who I met yesterday at the Poker-Pro table booth, was on that table and the camera crew kept running over every time he was playing a hand. I sat for the next 10 minutes playing Mario Kart. I looked up and Dale H in the 4-seat was saying "Dude, dude" under his breath at me. I was like "Yeah?", he said "You've just got your fastest lap on ESPN.". I turn around and 2 ESPN cameras are pointed on me and there's a microphone stick above my head. I smile and give them a thumbs-up before continuing to play. Apparently the cameras were on me for a good few minutes. I guess it'll probably make it on ESPN in one of those collages of people doing stupid stuff. But, yeah, this is the nearest I could find myself on ESPN.  After 4 hours it's the second break and I go to the food garden outside with Dale Hunter from my table. I say to him "Don't you think Mark is playing a little weak/tight?", he says "Which one is Mark?". I tell him "Mark Seif, the 10-seat" He's all like "No way? That's Mark Seif?" I tell him not to worry about it because by the looks of the rest of the table, they wouldn't recognize a pro player even if they slapped them smack bang in the face either. Anyway, after a nice big fruit salad and a RedBull I'm good to go. When we get back to our table the tournament director announces "Here are chip trays everyone. Gather up your belongings as you're headed to the ESPN feature table". Everyone is high-fiving each other and cheering. I'm really, really happy, now I don't even care what happens in the tournament coz I get to play poker on TV and that is awesome :-D Then the oldish guy in the 6-seat is told "Sorry sir but you have been chosen to be moved to another table". It seems that when they move a table to the feature table that they chose one person to be excluded. I guess the feature table must be 9 seats instead of 10 or something? Anyway, I start laughing because I'm a dick and I say to the guy smugly "you're not on the TV table because you have a face for radio!". Muahaha. I then go up to Mark Seif as he's stacking his chips and give him this speech: "Hey man do you know why we're going to the feature table? It's not as if there's anyone good, or famous, or professional at our table is there?" "Oh, oh.... wait a minute, are you Mark Sa.. So... Sa... Seif? Mark Seif right?" "You're a professional right? Oh wait no, that's wrong. Professional Commentator riiiight?" "That's it you're a professional poker commentator!!" He has a good laugh about it and Phil Laak who is just to our right is looking at Mark and grinning. I just think that this is very surreal, standing joking around with guys that I've been watching on TV for years. I then say "Seriously though Mark, your commentary on the PPT is awesome." He's like "Ahh thanks, you like it huh?" I say "Yeah, I like that enthusiastic style of commentary" He went on to say that his biggest influence was Jesse May. I was like "ohh, so you learned from a hobbit?" which got another laugh. Then Dale Hunter shouts across the table, in all seriousness, "Hey Mark, sorry man, I didn't realise that you were famous" Mark just says "hey, it's fine". Muahaha, I was pissing myself laughing. I'm sure he meant to say something along the lines of "I didn't realise that you were Mark Seif" but I just thought that was pretty funny, apologising to someone for not knowing that they're famous. I don't say anything though, just have a good laugh to myself. So, we're on our way up to the feature table table, with our chip-trays in our hands, following the tournament director like he's the pied piper when he does a sharp 180 turn and start's waving his arms. "Back, everyone back. Everyone back to your original table. We've made a mistake, we meant table 166, not 156". This feels like being stabbed in the heart. This idiot TD gets my hopes up, I was going to be playing poker on ESPN at the World Series of Poker, and now he's let me down. Thanks a bunch [censored]. Well we all just go back to our seats and continue playing with the blinds at 100/200. Not much exciting happens between now and the dinner break. I just steal blinds a lot, if the preflop raise doesn't take it down then the continuation bet usually will. I do make a huge bluff though with 6-high against Stuart in the 5-seat. He's in the BB and calls my 3xBB preflop raise. jack high board, checked to me, I make my c-bet and he looks unsure, pauses then calls. He then leads out the turn for the same bet. I'm certain that he's weak and certain that he isn't trying to trick me or trap me so I put in a huge raise. He thinks for a minute then mucked. I then flipped my cards and say "Why are you guys letting me own you? Why? I'm just taking your money!" Stuart says "I knew that I had you but it's too early". Well to be honest he didn't KNOW that he had me and it's NEVER too early in my opinion. I know that its considered bad to show your bluffs but I don't care, I'm having fun, plus one of these guys will give me their stack when I actually have a hand. The dinner break comes at the end of Level 3, about 6:50pm and we were told to return at 8:15pm. At this stage I have 18.5K chips and am feeling pretty happy about how things are going. I go to dinner with Dale H from my table and we walk all around The Rio trying to find somewhere to eat but everywhere has a massive trailing queue. We find this seafood restaurant with no queue but it is "reservations only". We walk up to the desk to see if we can blag a table and there is this ESPN guy with 2 hot babes who is all like "Hey, I work for ESPN. Does that help me get a table here". The woman at the desk pauses and says "No, no it doesn't!" He then acts all arrogant and says "Hey I'm from ESPN, I could shut this whole show down if I wanted to" The woman just stands and stares at him and he goes away. I then ask the woman "Is there any chance you could squeeze us in for a table for two?" "we're fully booked" she says. I point to 2 small tables beside the window "What about those tables" she speaks to another woman and then lets us have the table. Happy Days, I have some pasta dish, other Dale has some soup then we go outside to relax and talk poker. Other Dale only has about 6.5K chips at this stage so we're discussing his strategy and finding the right time to get his chips in. It's kinda weird trying to help someone who's playing on the same table as you but he was a cool guy. He tells me that he thinks I'm an awesome poker player and that I'm controlling the table. He said "man that was awesome when you reraised with 74 and showed the bluff and walked out". Well I agree with him that I was controlling the table. I started off playing tight but turned into a loose-aggressive maniac in response to the rest of the table playing weak/tight/passive. I'm only playing well in that I've been dynamic enough to play a strategy/style that is perfect against weak/tight opponents. The reraise with 74, although I was sure I could take it down, was actually pretty stupid but I just wanted to shake the table up a bit. He does ask me why I raise his big blind every round. The correct answer would be "Because you fold every time" but instead I say "A couple of times were just blatant steals but once I had aces and once I had tens, I was hoping you'd get fed up and raise me back". After dinner we start Level 4 at 100/200 with 25 ante and I get back to playing like a maniac. Well now the table actually starts playing back at me a bit more so my stack is going up and down like a roller coaster. I actually lose my biggest pot so far when the Costa Rican to my left made me fold 2nd pair against his stone cold bluff with 9 high. He bet three fiths of his chips on the river, WOWZA. I have a bit of sparring with Mark Seif, every time he limps I raise behind him and he folds, or limp behind and bet/raise the flop. I was amazed that he was letting me away with this every time and I was sure that he'd try to trap me eventually. One hand that sticks out is where he min-raises UTG+1 and I called behind him with AQ. Blinds fold and Flop comes 552, Mark bets out 1/2 pot. I'd normally be raising him here, or calling to try and take it away from him on the turn but it just doesn't seem right this time. I show him my AQ and say "I've been hitting so many flops, I was bound to miss one eventually". He just burst out laughing as if to ridicule the "I've been hitting so many flops" statement, he showed me pocket 2's, shrugged and slid them to the dealer. "wow" I said, "you let me off easy there, thank god you didn't let me catch up on the turn" "wouldn't it have been better to slowplay that hand, I mean what you scared of on a 552 board?" He's looking a bit worn out and frustrated so I keep talking "If you checked then I'd have bet the pot" He responds "I like the way I played it" "ahhhh riiiight" I say "you must have put me on a 5 then." He says quite firmly "Look, we all know that you could have any two cards" I still don't shut up (I have drank copius amounts of red bull at this stage) "If you let me pair up on the turn you might double your stack through me" at this point some dude, i think it was the 7 seat, lets out a long deliberate sigh "He won the pot and you're giving him a rubdown" "I'm not" I say "I'm just trying to learn from the champ" few giggles round the table then I go for another wander around the amazon room, briefly observing some other tables. There are some tables with absolutely massive stacks on them, my table still hasn't had anyone knocked out so theres still only 100,000 chips on the table, I look around and there are certain people who already have this amount to themselves, scary stuff! One table looks like everyone was from pokerstars, I shouted over "Hey, are all you guys from stars?" and this one dude with a beard says "we've set a record, 8 of us are from stars, they've got us on the blog" This pretty cool but I guess not surprising given that stars had nearly 1/4 of this years field. Oh yeah, Scossett is one of the guys at the table, HOLLA. After I got back to my table not a lot happens, I notice that Mark Seif threws his chips in a different way each time so every time I was calling behind him I'd mimic his action and he'd laugh each time. I get bored very easily and this keeps me a bit entertained. Ok so here is where I get PWNED. I raise UTG, other dale flat calls, 7 seat reraises and I call fairly quickly and smoothly (first time I've called an opponents preflop re-raise), other dale folds. Flop comes J 8 5 rainbow and I take about 1 second before I open shove, seven seat who has slightly more than the pot behind him instacalls me "I CALL". He turns over his pocket jacks. Everyone is looking at me to see my busted pair of queens or kings. "I feel embarassed to show this" I said, the dealer says "I need your cards face up please". I reluctantly turn over......... 97 sooooooted. Ok so I don't improve and my stack is down to about 6.5K or 7K, I'm not feeling like my smug, confident self and then the villain of the hand begins his rubdown "It happens to them all, it's just a matter of time" I shout over the table "HEY MAN" "Nice hand man, very good hand". He looks over to the 6 seat (another donk that I've been pwning all day) and smiles "It comes to them all eventually, they always lose their chips". I stand up and just viciously have a go at him. "Shut up, fish, you're too much of a pussy to call with anything but the nuts". I'm feeling a bit tilty now and I'm probably likely to do something ridiculous like go all in blind on the next hand, plus I can't stand to look at the 7 seat's smug face (He looks a bit like Michael Schumacher, I feel like bitch-slapping him with the back of my hand) so I wander away from the table to calm down. I sit back in my seat and everyone is looking at me, including the people on the rail. I look at the other Dale and he just looks back at me "I told you I'd donk off all my chips" I say. He just stares back at me with a "What can ya do?" kinda look. Fast forward all of about 10 hand and I'm UTG with pocket 9s. I try to limp but the hawaain shirt in the 9 seat has picked up a big hand in the SB and wants to raise, I call and when the flop comes down 9 high he, his hawaain shirt and his pocket kings get completely....... PWNED. I stand up and shout "SHIIIIP IT, come on, SHIP IT, yes!" Everyone in the room seems to be looking over at me and someone was even shouting back "YEAAAH, send him the pot" which I burst out laughing at. Then the Hawiann Shirt looks at me and scourns "Show some damn class" I feel a little embarassed for celebrating my double up, oops. I count my chips and I have like 15K, I sigh "man, I'm still down on chips, I had over 18K before". I look around the table "Who wants to donate next?" The table is pretty quiet at this point, I'm pretty sure that they all want rid of me. It's then Mark Seif's turn to double up. He limps with his pocket deuces again and on a J82 flop and he stacks the Costa Rican fish to my left who has AJo. After this he seems a lot happier and confident and starts chatting to me about random stuff. He's talking to Phil Laak who is sitting directly behind him. I can here him talking about his trip ducks so I interupt. "Umm, Mark, Could I borrow your luckbox please?". He scoffed "hahaha, YOU're calling me a luckbox?" I turn back to face the table but he says "hey dude, what do you think of American girls... compared to British girls?" I say "I'm not really into british girls to be honest, they always just seem really common and boring to me, I always seem to go for foreign girls" "American girls?" he says "hmm American girls are quite... what's the world... bratty" I tell him. He nods his head in agreement "Yeah I know what you mean" I say "I love european girls, like dutch, oh and scandinavians mmmm scandinavians. I always find the scandinavian girls hot coz I love blondes" He's looking at me smiling and nodding as I speak. I look to the right and Phil Laak is still looking at us listening to our conversation and smiling. I ask Mark "What kind of girls do you go for, blonde?" "yeah" he says, "i like blonde girls" I ask "You got a woman then?" "yeah" he says I ask "Is she hot?" he says "oh yeah dude, she's REAL hot! Have you got a woman?" I respond "No, I was with a south african girl but we split up." and he says "ahh yeah you like foreign girls" I say "yeah, I seem to pull a russian girl every time I go on vacation, they're great!" I love having conversations like this with people but, for fear of sounding like a pro poker player fanboy, it seems so so surreal to be talking about chicks with Mark Seif while Phil Laak listens in on us. The rest of my table are just sitting there saying nothing as usual.  Dale and Mark Seif A big hand crops up when the old fool in the 6 seat limps my big blind and I raise it up with KdJd. The flop comes QT8 with 2 diamonds. I lead, he raises and I push. He thinks for ages while I talk crap at him. The Blue Shades dude says to him "Ignore him, just think it through and make the right decission" So I call for the clock to be put on him and the dealer calls over one of the tournament directors who gives him a countdown. As he's coutning down 10, 9, 8... etc. I am counting out too just to wind this guy up. He shows the table AQ and throws it into the muck. Nice laydown !!! I start to play about 50% of pots after this and I'm gaining chips. Then we get a new player to the table on my left and I start chatting with him and I say "Hey you have an aussie accent and you kinda look like Joe Hachem" He smiles and says "yeah mate" a few seconds later I turn round to him again "are you related to Joe Hachem" and he says "Yeah I'm his brother, Tony, pleased to meet you" and he shakes my hand and tells me a bad beat story from where he 3/4 of his chips before being moved to this table, he's down to about 7K in chips, he also tells me that nobody at his last table realised that he was Joe's brother. Tony is a great guy to have at the table and we were chatting the whole time. When I raise his BB from the SB he thinks for ages before mucking and says "what ya raising me with" and I show an ace and go to muck my cards when he grabs my wrist and makes me show the rag 4. "oh ya dirty mongrel" he says to me and I just start laughing. Yeah I'm having fun. Mark Seif then busts when he limp-pushes preflop with 88 and gets it in super good against A8o only for the A to hit. Then we get a huge stack pro player from Austria at our table called Marcus Golser. He's wearing a bright pink tracksuit. Yeah he basically outplays me any time that he's in a pot with me so I basically just stay out of his way because it's much more profitable to just play pots with the weaker players. Dale Hunter busts when his QQ runs into KK, that sucks [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] It's getting very near the end of Day 1 and the guy in the 7 seat who I doulbed up earlier just sits there when its folded to him. Well it seems that he has 10BB and wants to make Day 2 without having to post more antes on andother blinds. There's still 15 minutes to play! This Marcus guy in the pink tracksuit is going mad and calls for the Tournament Director. To cut a long story short, this dude gets a 60 second clock called on him EVERY SINGLE HAND. So we have to count our chips and put them in a bag and I have $37,475. I take my bag of chips over to my new table and there is a dude I recognise in a Pokerstars top. I go up to him and say "hey, what's your screen name" he says "it's Elky" so I tell him that I knew I recognised him and was just asking him if he was saving up for the Porsche with his FPPs but he says he spent them all on the WSOP side events. So I head for the exit but when I'm passing one of the bars in The Rio I recognise someone, John McGrane, who was 18th in last years WSOP ME. I played with in Glasgow a few months earlier so I went to chat to him and he was with Brian Wilson who won the WSOP PLHE bracelet last year. John just told me that he had about the same stack as me after day 1 last year so he told me to be confident and go far. Solid advice. I go for a cab back to the palms at 4am but there is a HUGE queue so I just decide to walk back and get a Taco Bell on the way. It's amazing what $10 can buy you from that place, so I take my huge bag of food back to the hotel and eat it and reflect on a hard days work. -------------- Day 5 -------------- Poker, 2+2 dinner, ridiculous poker. -------------- 31/07/06 -------------- I wake up after the most amazing night of sleep. The beds at the Palms are incredible and certainly the best of any hotel I've ever stayed in. I look at the clock, 2pm, ok that's standard. Before I go for breakfast I check my email to see that I have loads of people wishing me well and congratulating me on a good Day 1 result which is kinda nice and encouraging to read. I have a buffet lunch as my breakfast. I pretty much just eat plates full of pizza, fried scampi, and cake until I feel sick.... standard. I play about 4 hours of 1/2NL over at Imperial Palace. The game starts off very tight, it's not normally a game I would stay at but the dude sitting to my right is really cool and funny so I just stay for the ev (entertainment value). I ask this dude if he wants to make side bets on the colour of the flop. Chose a colour RED or BLACK and if there are 2 of your colour on the flop I pay you $5 and if there are 3 of your colour on the flop I pay you $10. We're bout 30 minutes into the sidebet thing and this fat, old beardo (the fat guys with beards are always the ones that find me annoying) is looking at me all agitated and eventually tells me that he objects to us making sidebets and that it's "table stakes" so we have to have separate money off the table to make sidebets and not take money from our stacks. I tell him to get a life and the dealer doesn't seem to care so whatever. Anyway obviously I run terrible at neutral ev games such that overall I lose about $100, which was 20 bets. After a while the pots are starting to get bigger and the game is becoming better. I notice where all the action on the table was coming from. There is a middle aged Norwegian guy 2 seats to my right who is playing quite horribly for a 1/2 game, he just bluffed too much against fish. I'm not sure if he is just stupid, on tilt, or is used to playing in a game without calling stations but it's a pretty obvious thing not to bluff off all your money off on the river against villains that will instacall you with 3rd pair. I remember the first time I played 1/2NL in vegas, it took me about 30 minutes to realise that there were a lot of poker weapons that I had to throw out my arsenal for these games. ABC poker strategy against vegas tourists is very profitable. So anyway, the Norwegian is still bluffing it up and donates ~$150 to me and my pocket Js on a Q high board. I make him show his cards and then start using some of my rubdown lines on him. "Ace Rag no good buddy" "Wow I've sat here folding every hand for an hour and you're betting ace high into me" "I'd have had to fold jacks there to anyone else but you seem to be handing out free money today" "Scandinavian players are way too aggressive, I love to play them, it's like free money really" He says nothing at all but does not look happy and goes on mad crazy donkey tilt and seems to be rebuying every other hand now. So this dude donks off his 5th $200 buyin and has no more money left. He's replaced by a younger Norwegian guy called Didrik that plays more solidly. I have a bit of a go at trying to tilt him by slagging of Scandinvian poker style but he just shrugs it off. At this point the whole table is playing the same tight style again which isn't good for me. (I wish I could break down all these little physical tells into something I could describe to other people, but they only make sense to my subconscious. I discussed this with some guys at the 2+2 dinner and they said it was the same for them) At 8pm I take a cab ride further up the strip to New York New York then into the ESPNZone bar for the 2+2 Dinner. I'm looking forward to this because I love meeting new people that have the same kind of interests as me. The cost was $55 for an open berr bar and 3 course meal. I'd already shipped the dough to the organiser (ZBTHorton) over pokerstars before I left for vegas. I walk into the function room and the first guy that I meet is ZBTHorton. I introduce myself and thank him for organising the event. He tells me that the plan is to get drunk, eat, play video games drunk, make drunk prop bets etc. Sounds like fun. I go to get a drink but then remember it is only beer at our bar. I hate beer, it's pretty disgusting. I only started drinking alcohol about 9 months ago and I only really like vodka-coke. I decide to go in and out of the function room to the main bar to get my vodka-cokes, rather than just force myself to drink beer just to 'fit in' with the crowd. I've always gone through life just doing whatever I want rather than trying to 'fit in'. So I just walk around the room chatting to random people. It seemed that everyone that I talk to has won some big online tournament. I recognise a few people from sight (ZeeJustin, Rizen, Ozzy87) and most others from their screen name when they introduce themselves. Anyway. after 30 mins or so the food is ready and I sat down with ScottJF8 to my left and DocMartin to my right. Scott plays multis and has recently come 3rd in the stars million and martin plays cash games on crypto. I didn't take any photos but I stole this one from Nat Arem's blog!  I'm top right corner with DocMartin and i think its Chrisman886 and Yuv21 bellow us. ZBTHorton in bottom left corner. The food is alright, but nothing to write home about. A decent grilled chicken sandwich thing for the main course. While eating, Martin just twigs that he recognised me. He was railing the Main Event yesterday, specifically my table, as somebody he knew from sun Poker was there. That was Stuart, the Aussie, in the 5 seat. I laugh "Oh my god I bluffed that guy so many times." Martin asks me about Stuarts exit "The guy he made a move on, was he a solid player?" "Hell, yeah he was" I say (He made a move on a guy that was tight and already committed for his stack, with with ace high on a rag board.) "I don't know what happened" I say, "He played tight all day then donks all his chips off with AQ on a rag board." Martin, himself, has been knocked out of the Main Event already after taking a very brutal beat. I tell a few funny poker stories to the table. Everyone thinks it was hilarious that in the UK people want to beat you up for always showing you bluffs, or lying about your holecards. Unfortunately the video games upstairs are switched off at 11pm, this is disappointing for me, I love video games. A few of us go to play some craps in NYNY. There is myself, Martin, a guy called Brunson (I think) and his wife and another dude, I forget his name but he is a kinda familiar looking guy with a PocketFives.com T-Shirt on, and his wife too. As soon as we get to the craps table there is a shooter on a total heater. I think we more than double our buy-ins while he's shooting. It was quite funny, every time we win, the pocketfives.com guy and his wife would yell "SHIP IT" "HOLLA HOLLA". Of course, this is exactly my style, so I join in with the "SHIIIIIP"s as does everyone else. Eventually the shooter rolls craps and I end up with the dice. My first throw is void as I somehow manage to throw one of the dice into a small gap between the dealers chips and the side of the table. A few more throws and I'm done. I'm such a donk at craps. A while later I declare my drunken self "ALL IN" as I put a stack of green and red chips on the pass line. "I'm all in, I'm all in" I yell while everyone was high-fiving me. The roll was good and everyone yells "SHIIIIIIIIIIP IT" and starts high fiving me again. Such fun! After the game breaks up, I'm in profit and Martin has lost his buy-in. Martin says "Lets go over to the MGM and play some poker with the PartyPoker donks" Party Poker have put up all their players in the MGM for the WSOP. I suggest going to the Trop instead as it is my favorite soft game in town and one of the few hotels that don't have rooms taken by any poker site. I just prefer to play poker against tourists rather than other poker players, makes sense. At this stage I'm still drunk. I tend to lose monies when I play drunk, but anyway we cross over from NYNY to the Trop, a 2 minute walk, and there are 3 1/2NLHE games running. Theres a spare seat on two of them so we each buy $200 in chips and sit down. My table has a bunch of random donks and 2 TAG Norwegian guys, both to my left. I'm happy with my table but 30 minutes goes by with no playable cards. I take a wander over to Martin's table and his stack has been pretty much static too. I go back to my table and get delt AKo and make it $15 from MP over a limper, kinda standard to raise that much in these games. On the button is some kinda foreign looking guy, maybe costa rican, who has just rebaught and has a chip tray with $200 placed on the table. He takes a quick look at his cards with one hand and almost simultaneously pushes his chip tray into the pot with the other hand. So I'm all like WTF. What do I make of this? He insta-pushed so fast when looking at his cards that I think he has decided he's going to shove the tray in regardless of his cards. "What the hell do you have to be making such a huge overbet like that?" I asked him. He gives me a sorta disgusted look. "What?" he said sharply. "Why the big bet?" I say He just turns his shoulders in quite an arrogant, couldn't care less, sort of way. I haven't noticed the villain get out of line yet but I'm pretty drunk, but he's obviously lost his whole stack the hand before when I was away from the table, hence the chip tray / rebuy. Of course, given the information I'm not folding. I call and he muttered some garbage "Dealer just hit me a deuce and send me the pot" then flipped over 62o. I didn't flip my cards. The flop comes K89, sweeeeet, I'm waiting for the blank turn so I can shout "SHIP IT" in his donk face. The turn comes T. Ok, he picks up a gutshot. The river comes 7 and he makes a straight with his 6. Ship the $400 pot to the retard. This Costa Rican mad man isn't just satisfied with his win, he calls his friend over to brag about it and he looks at me and laughs. Oh yes, very good, I'm still drunk and I'm likely to kick both of them in their rotten teeth. This is one place I don't want to get banned from, I've made thousands here in the past, so I decide to take my few chips over to Martin's table table and rebuy there. I get a decent seat. Martin is 2 seats to my right. Some far too emotional Asian-American boy is to my right with his GF sitting behind him railing the game. Some weak players to my left and a few rank average players in the middle. This asian-american guy to my right seems really nervous when he's in a pot. When he loses a pot he looks like somebody just told him he has 3 days to live, when he wins a pot he looks releived like somebody just told him he has 3 days to live and then tells him that they were only kidding. The game is going well when all of a sudden this foreign [censored] that beat me 62o > AKo on the last table grabs a seat opposite me and says "I want more of your money" What the [censored], this fish is chasing me. Anyway this hilarious hand develops where CostaRican in the BB calls a raise from Asian-American. The flop is Axx and it goes bet-raise-raise-allin-call. Asian-American has AK and CostaRican has something like 63o for a gutshot and he obv hits it on the river. CostaRican takes down a $500-$600 pot and slaps his cards down on the table and is talking [censored], the Asian-American looks like he is about to cry and his girlfriend is holding his arm trying to console him. Seriously, dudes that play poker with their girlfriend beside them just crack me up hahahaha. Oh yeah, there is this one dude that's at the table that is the spitting image of Todd Brunson (see photo bellow) and I keep calling him Todd because it annoys him, haha. I win a few small pots but then lose my stack with QQ all in pre vs Martins AK so I have to rebuy yet again. Luckily the Asian-American boy to my right is tilting and when I bluff the [censored] out of him and show it he starts gritting his teeth and then kicks over a whole cup of quarters that his girlfriend had from playing slots. So his girlfriend starts picking up the coins and I laugh and he stares at me right in the eyes. I say "dude, chill, don't be mad at me because I outplayed you, be mad at yourself" He actually thumps his fist down on the table. Crazy. It's at this time a new guy, fairly young, comes to teh table and buys in for $40, that is 20 big blinds in a game where the standard preflop raise is 6xBB. On his first hand he limps and the whole table limps behind him and I check my BB, flop is Axx with 2 hearts and I have 2 random hearts, I bet like half the pot and this dude goes all in and everyone else folds. I ask the dealer how much it is for me and they say something like $32, I laugh and through in the chips, he shows AK or AQ i think and I show my flush when I hit it on the turn. This dude berates me so bad "you kidding me? you [censored] kidding me? what kind of idiot are you" I'm not one to put up with that kind of [censored] so I say "I'm the kind of idiot that doesn't buy in for 20 big blinds then bitch about getting outdrawn" I was expecting that to be the end of the conversation but he comes up to my chair. I don't even stand up or look at him. He starts shouting "You little punk, call me an idiot to my face" I'm trying hard not to laugh here, I give Martin a glance and he looks like he's trying hard not to laugh either. I say to this guy "you got [censored] owned you idiot now get the [censored] out of here" at that stage he went for me and the cardroom manager had to restrain him and then get security. I look around the table and smile "It's ok this happens to me every time I play poker, I'm used to it" After this the Asian-American boy started giving me a lecture "No wonder man, you talk so much [censored]. You might be able to do that where ever you come from but here dudes will stab you for talking [censored]" Ooook. So the new guy leaves the table, then CostaRican leaves the table after spreading out the Asian-American biys money tothe rest of t 
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06-05-2007, 07:01 PM
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Re: OT: WSOP 06 diary/trip report (v. long)
Ooook. So the new guy leaves the table, then CostaRican leaves the table after spreading out the Asian-American biys money tothe rest of the table. The Asian-American boy say that he doesn't want to play now that the CostaRican guy is gone so goes to cash in all those dirty quarters with his girlfriend.
So our table gets merged with the table we were originaly at so we are playing full ring again. I see the 2 Norwegian TAGs still there so I sprint to the seat to their left. Just as put my small stack on the table I see an interesting hand develop. It seems that the guy on my left is a huge fish that has been getting lucky and has taken a few buyins from the Norwegians. This one Norwegian is tilting and has gotten it all in preflop vs the fish. Fishy has AJo and Norwegian has 99. I look at the pot and there is about $1200 in there which is pretty huge for a 1/2 game. I take my camera out.........  AJ vs 99 all in pre at 1/2 for 600BBs  BOOM so as you can see above, the Norwegian loses the pot. He starts getting mad and is calling this guy the worst poker player in the world etc. etc. I sit down and ask the dealer what's been going on, she says in broken English "this guy it his first game poker and he take all this guy money" word! so this fish, lets call him Happy Drunk Guy, is sitting on my left and Martin has the amazing privilege of sitting on his left. This guy is hilarious, he never stops smiling and every hand he plays he volunteers information about his hand, no joke. He is in a hand with Martin and it's the river. Happy Drunk guy overbets the pot and turns to look at Martin and says "go on raise me" and Martin is laughing and is about to muck his cards when Happy Drunk guy then picks up his cards and shows them to me and says "shouldn't he raise me?" I start laughing and don't really know what to make of it. He has Jack high. I just sit there and laugh, there's nothing else I can do. Then HDG shows his cards to Martin and says "go on raise me" Martin's face looks like total shock. He takes about a minute and then raises this guy. HDG shakes his head and says "You shouldn't have raised me" then declares all in. Martin calls with 3rd or 4th pair and flips his cards, HDG flips his own cards and shouts..... wait for it..... "FLUSH" ahahaha no he doesn't have a flush, he does have 5 black cards but I don't recall that being any type of hand in Holdem ahahaha. Ok so luckily the HDG still has plenty of chips left and he donks a few pots from other guys at the table, including the todd Brunson lookalike haha, every time HDG is in a hand he shows me his cards and I just have to look down at the felt and laugh because I don't want to give off any tells to the other players, I want the HDG to win all his pots, I want the money to be with the fish at the table. So I just start killing this guy, there is this one pot where he's limped my BB and it's checked all the way to the river and I have bottom pair. There is like $8 in the pot and he throws in one black chip ($100). I say to him "those ones are $100, did you mean to bet that much?" he just looks my right in the eyes and grins "I don't have a pair" I start laughing because he hasn't lied so far but I can't call that bet with this hand. He looks at me again and says "Look I'm not a liar, I don't tell lies ok, I DO NOT have a pair" So I'm thinking ok, there is no flush possible, a straight is unlikely, "do you have a straight?" I ask him "I have nothing" he says [censored] it, I throw in a hundo and he turns up his cards which was like T high or something. HDG pats me on the shoulder and says "I told you I'm not a liar, well done". ahaha this so weird. What is even funnier is that a few hands later HDG does the same [censored] again to some guy across the table and shows me his cards, this time he has a boat and he' saying to this guy "I don't have a pair" Because of what went on before this guy has called a huge overbet and when he sees this guy with a full house he gets mad "jesus, you've got to be freakin kiddin me here" Martin is almost rolling on the floor laughing and im just sitting there shaking my head like I don't know what the hell is going on. I win another few small pots before the last and best hand of the night occurs. I am in the BB with T5o and HDG limps, we both have about $700 behind us, the rest of the table limps and the flop comes 55T. There is $12 in the pot and I check and HDG bets $100. Ding ding ding. Ok so I've flopped a boat and this guy has just chucked in a hundo. He then says "raise me if you want, I'll call" I just sorta act pretty weak and say "nah it's cool, I just want to see the turn" the turn is an 8 and HDG says to me "Go on, bet a hundred" At this stage I know im getting all his money so I just go along with whatever he says and bet $100. He then raises it to $200 and tells me to call it, so I do. The river is a Q and he tells me to bet $100 again, so I do, then he goes all in and I call. he has KTo and I win something like a $1400 pot and I tip the dealer and cocktail waitress $100 each. HDG is still grinning and says to me "Hey, I only bought in for $60, it's not my money you won it's that Scandinavian guys" I ask him if I can have my photo taken with him as I wan't to point to him and photoshop a big speech bubble saying PWNED and he says "yeah sure I like having my picture taken" So here is the guy in question.............  left to right. Todd lookalike, DocMartin, Dale, HDG. by this time it is midday and Martin and I get a cab back to our hotels, we just laugh the whole way back in the cab about this Happy Drunk Guy. -------------- Day 6 -------------- Boring, Lazy Day -------------- 01/08/06 -------------- After only getting to sleep at 1pm I wake up at around 5:30pm, then head to the Rio for a bit. Well they aren't allowing spectators into the Amazon Room so I try to slip the guy on the door a twenty but he just tells me that if he lets me in I'll only be asked to leave by one of the floor persons. So he tells me to come back in 2 hours, screw that. I have some fish and chips at the Sao Paulo Cafe, which is mediocre, then I jump a cab to the strip coz I don't see anyone that I know at the Rio and can't be bothered to hang around just to rail the Main Event. I play some 50-Hand Deuces Wild video poker in the Flamingo for about an hour, winning about $80. I just play video poker when I have nothing better to do and want to get drunk (drinks are free when playing, obviously). While playing I get ID-ed a grand total of 3 times. Once each by two over aged cocktail waitresses (look if you are over 30 you REALLY should not be cocktail waitressing !!!) and once by a security fatass. The cocktail waitresses accept my ID but the security fatass asks me if I have any other ID. "No. The ID that I've given you is sufficient" He takes another look at my card, hands it back to me and walks away. I think he just doesn't know how to tell a fake foreign drivers license from a real one and was trying to bluff me into thinking that he thought it was fake. Whatever, I'm not stupid. I walk up the strip for a bit and start chatting to two different groups of girls (amazing how confident I can get after a few drinks). Suffice to say that they love my sex Scottish accent, pretty standard. The ballagio fountains are on and this one girl stands watching them with me with her arm round my waist, unfortunately for me that's as far as it goes with this chick [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] So a while later I go to Gameworks. Gameworks is just a place that is owned by Sega and is full of arcade video games. There's loads of machines (300 is my guess), all the latest stuff, and split into sections. My Gameworks card still has about $40 of credit on it from when I was last in Vegas a few months ago so I spend a good few hours there. Games I play: House of the Dead 3, Initial D 3, Derby Owners Club, Mario Kart Arcade, Crazy Taxi (I pwn at this game), 2 Fast 2 Furious, Jurassic Park, Time Crisis 3, Hydro Thunder.... and more that I forget. So yeah that's as exciting as my day gets. -------------- Day 7 -------------- I donk out of the WSOP. -------------- 02/08/06 -------------- I wake up not feeling too great. I don't know if I feel sick or am just hungry. I leave my room about 09:45am and perhaps have the worst possible start to the day by going to McDonalds for my breakfast. eww. I get a cab to The Rio and as I get out I meet John Ambrust from Day 1. John has $95,325 in chips and is seated on table 32. He seems pretty relaxed but so would I if I had his chipstack. I'm not really feeling positive about the day but John reminds me that my stack is above average and to just go and play my game. We go hang out at the Pokerstars Player lounge where there are drinks, pastries and comfy sofas. Greg Raymer is there beside us pouring himself a drink. It's amazing how fat he is but I guess this is almost standard in the USA. You'd think that if you were rich and had plenty of free time that you'd want to get in shape so that you'll live long and stay healthy enough to enjoy your money. Oh well! John and I just sit on a sofa discussing some of the plays we made on Day 1 and how we're going to play today. We're both the chipleaders on our respective tables for Day 2 and the plan is to be aggressive and gain more chips rather than aimlessly floating along hoping to limp into the money. I certainly have enough chips, 37.5K, to play a very TAG game and ensure a cash here but two things are stopping me from playing this way. For one, limping into a $12K cash... big deal... that's really not that much money (especially when converted into real money, pounds sterling £). I'm greedy and I want millions. I want life-changing money and fame and notoriety rather than an amount of money I could spend on a new plasma and some hookers. For two, my natural style in a MTT is as a LAG maniac. Playing as a TAG for 12 hours+ is impossible for me. I like to be unpredictable and aggressive and have the weak tight players at the table being scared, thinking that any hand they play against me will be for their whole stack, it worked for may on Day 1 so surely it'll work today too... right? I walk into the amazon room and casually sit at the table, in the 4 seat. I'm trying to act cool, like playing in a $10K event is standard for me or something. I have a look around the table and still the only person I recognise is Elky in the 2 seat. This is how my table lines up: Seat 1 : Charles Lee $13,750 Seat 2 : Bertrand 'ElKY' Grospelier $4,775 Seat 3 : Gerald Martello $6,700 Seat 4 : Dale Philip $37,425 Seat 5 : Jameson Reagan $3,925 Seat 6 : Raphael Doromal $25,725 Seat 7 : Charles "Skip" Richardson $9,425 Seat 8 : Michael L Stephens $18,950 Seat 9 : Robin Edlund $2,550 Seat 10: Ray Klapka $14,650 Total of $128450 chips at the table. I have 29% of the chips on the table, sweeeeeeet. Blinds start today at $250/$500 with a $50 ante so I have 75 Big Blinds and an M of 30 which is really comfortable! There is a bit of time to kill before the "Shuffle Up and Deal" and the table is pretty quiet. There is a dealer push and this butch, scary, middle-aged, female dealer sits down and starts chatting to us. I recognise her as she dealt to me at Binions a few months ago. She has a flick through the player cards and asks "Is there anyone famous at my table?" as she looks around. I point to ElKY and tell her "Yeah, him, he's famous" Do she looks at ElKy and is like "Oh really? What's your name?" ElKY starts to blush and looks uncomfortable "I'm not famous" he says quitely in a french accent. The dealer looks at his player card. "Ber... Ber... I can't even pronounce that name" she says ElkY blushes again "It's french". He looks really embarrassed. I'm just laughing. So the "Shuffle up and deal" is called out. This time by the Tournament Director Bob Daily, who is far less cooler than Penn and Teller! My table starts off pretty tight. Good stuff. I can see myself pwning the table. Within 30 minutes I have built my stack up to $41K without being dealt any good cards, just stealing blinds/antes once or twice per round. Eventually one of my preflop raises gets call by the guy two to my left, Raphael Doromal, who has position. I have something like King-Rag on a Kxx board. He calls my continuation bet and then folds to a big bet on the turn which brought a 3rd heart. One round later and I get into another hand with this guy. I open raise from the cutoff to $1500 with 96o. Raphael flat calls me from the button. So heads-up, the flop comes 8c9hQh. I lead out for $2200 Raphael calls slightly hesitantly. Turn is 7c. There is about $8500 in the pot and Raphael has about $12000 behind him, it may even be more... I suck at counting chips. At this point I feel that he has some sort of hand but not one that's strong enough to call all of his chips on so I push fairly quickly, obviously knowing that I'm behind in the hand most of the time but with a huge amount of fold equity and I could have as many as 13 outs to win over something like top pair. It's a big overbet but on a scary board with three connecting cards, two hearts and two clubs there's a lot of hands that I would open from CO-1, that I could possibly have here to lead the flop then make this move on the turn. Think 2-pair hands 78, 89, Q9. Think set hands, 77, 88, 99, QQ. Think top pair hands AQ, KQ, QJ, QT. Raphael thinks for a good few minutes. He's shaking his head and counting his chips. Counting the pot. Counting his chips again. At this point I'm feeling pretty good about my bet and am sitting fairly relaxed. I know that I've put a lot of chips at risk here but the longer he takes to think about calling the more I like my bet. Then someone at the table calls for the clock. The dealer calls over a floor person who starts counting, after about 40 seconds my opponent sighs..... "I call" This felt like someone slowly pushing a dagger through my heart! "Good call" I say, "You have me beat" I turn over my cards and he looks, then he turns over his and lets out a bit of emotion. He shows me KQo for top pair with K kicker. Obviously I don't improve so I'm now down to about $24000 or so, which sucks. Everyone at the table was staring at me. I'm shaking my head and turn to Jamie "Why did I do that?" He says "It was a great move, it was just an even better call". Yeah, nice call, top pair = nuts! Guess I must have mad tells [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] I guess when most people read about this hand that they will think I am pretty dumb for getting involved in a hand like this when I have such a comfortable stack. All I can say is that I don't play "ABC poker" and for the 2 seconds that I thought about it, it seemed like a good move, even if I could see that he had KQo I would have still made that move on him. So anyway I go a couple of rounds without playing a hand as the whole table now has me tagged as a maniac. Then I opened for 1400 from CO-2 with KQs and the button reraises, committing his stack. I just fire my cards in the muck. So at this stage I have $22K in chips. Ekly has been nursing his short stack but now that he has over 10 big blinds ($7K) he is open-raising to steal blinds rather than pushing. The guys at this table aren't stupid and after they put a couple of (what I suspect were) re-steals on him he's back down to $5K. Then this happens: I'm in the BB with pocket tens. All fold round to Elky who pushes, well there's a surprise... not. Rather than insta-call I decide to be a bit of a dick. I get him to take his headphones out and count his stack. He is physically shaking a bit and has a tremor in his voice when he says "about five thousand". "ok, I call" I tell him. "oh no, you call? ohhh" he says. He looks absolutely gutted when he sees my cards. He turns over 6d3d and stands up. The flop comes down 996 with no diamonds. So he makes a pair but only has 2 outs as I already have the better 2-pair. "SIX" I shout as the turn is dealt... a K. "SIX SIX SIX" I shout as the river is dealt.... a F****N SIX !!!! The french boy wins the pot with sixes full. What a F****N disgusting beat. I stare at him and shake my head. "why you ask for a six?" He says while smiling and stacking his chips. I lean over the table and physically put my hands around his neck in an obviously joking manner. He looks at me and says "I'm sorry, i'm lucky, i am sorry" I sit back down and slam the table and shake my head while smiling. I look back at ElkY and he says "I'm sorry" again which I is pretty funny coz personally I've never said sorry to anyone at a poker table and meant it, ever. About 2 hands later and I'm still shaking my head, muttering under my voice like a mad-man "damn six, friggin six". The female dealer says "Well you were asking for the six. That card was the seven of spades until you called for the six". I stared at her to let her know that I was unimpressed with her quip, just shut up and deal darling FFS. I am now down to $17K and I'm steaming a bit. Almost a round later I raise to $1250 with 44 from early position. Folded to the BB who calls. flop comes AT7, all diamonds. The villain leads out for $1000. He has another $5000 behind him. I have an underpair to the board and a low flush draw. He has.... well his range is massive here. I try to think about what his small lead out on the flop means. Perhaps he is trying to induce a raise and he's flopped a set or a flush or maybe he has a weak hand and thinks a small bet on a very scary board might take it down. Since I've seen him lead flops then fold to aggression I decided to push, So I count my chips and his then tell him that I'm all in. He INSTACALLS and I slam the table knowing that he's flopped a flush and suckered me in. Only, he has KQ with one diamond on a AdTd7d board. Any K, any Q, any J, any diamond are good for him. I have one of the diamonds but that still gives him 17 outs and he's certainly the favorite. He tells the dealer to put a diamond down and she obliges on the turncard. Ship Nuts to him. I am now down to $10K in chips. I've lost about 3/4 of my stack in less than an hour and I'm back to my starting stack from day 1. I'm feeling pretty low right now. I'm beating myself up over the plays I've made. The hand before the break, I am dealt some garbage Q6o type of hand but I look to my left and everyone either has their cards in their hand ready to muck or has already stood up so when it's folded to me I shove in $1250 thinking that I'll probably take down the $1250 in blinds and antes. Raphael decides to be a bitch and pop it up to $4000. He's obviously seen that everyone is folding too, some people have already mucked out of position in fact after I raised. I obviously instantly put him on a resteal and totally out of turn I say "nice f***ing move son" as I fire my cards across the table bouncing off the dealer's chest and into the chip tray. I storm out before I get a 10-minute penalty for being the abusive moron that I am and I kick 2 chairs out of the way on my way out. So... I grab a fruit salad and a redbull then find a spot in the shade outside and try to calm down a bit. I think about things... I have $9000 in chips. Blinds are $300/$600 with a $75 ante. I have about 15BBs and an M of >5 so I'm in a lot worse shape than I was 2 hours ago but I can still do something with that stack. I go back into the amazon room to my seat. I'm the first person back to my table and the dealer (who I threw my cards at 10 minutes ago) smiles at me and says "You certainly didn't want to get involved in THAT hand". I ask him "Why? Did the dude show his cards". Dealer says "Bro, after you left the table the guy in the 7 seat went all in. He had aces." He gets excited and says "Then the guy who raised you, he called the all-in and showed QUEEN THREE and the guy's Aces won for more than $20K in the pot". I just laugh. I take some sick pleasure in knowing that the guy who pwned me got pwned. The dealer is still smiling at me and says "I can't believe he called him, that's unbelievable". I just say "Yeah, he likes to call" So Raphael returns to the table and he looks like he is steaming. I start telling the guy to my right abut the hand loud enough so that Raphael can here me going on and on about it. Once we are all sat down the dealer warns us all not to fold out of turn because it caused confusion on the last hand when there was 2 raises and an all-in. Anyway it isn't too long after the first break that my fate is sealed: ElKy is the button and open raises for 1700, the foreign guy in the SB calls. I am in the BB with 77. So yeah, obviously I push for about $9500 toal. Elky shakes his head and says "I think I have the best hand" I tell him "Call me then, I want my chips back that you owe me. Double me up." He's smiling at me and shaking his head, after a minute he just mucks. The small blind then insta-calls, he has me covered by 1K or 2K. He flips over TT. I feel physically ill. The flop comes down. 4-5-8. So I pick up another 4 outs. I stare at the board as the turn and river come out blank. ElKy is the first one to shake my hand so yeah he's a decent guy, I tell him that at least now I can go chat up girls at the Palms pool and he laughs. I pick up my belongings and everyone else at the table wants to shake my hand before I go which was pretty weird. I look at ElKY like I'm pretending to be mad and push his shoulder with my fist. I smile and say "Laters bro". I look over at John's table, he looks to be in the zone but I catch his eyes and lift my arms up and shrug. He looks worried, takes his earphones out and shouts "what happened?" "I donked all my chips off" I say "You donked out?" I go over to his table and he seems to feel genuinely bad for me, which is nice.... coz I can't think of anyone else that really gives a damn. John's chipcount is over 100K now and he seems relaxed. I tell him that he has my support and that I'll be back to rail him. I shake his hand and head for the exit. So I go back to my hotel and I just stay in my room for a bit just thinking about the way I played. At first I'm just blaming myself but then I realise a few things......... I played my game, the game I set out to play. I was in my first $10K buy-in event and I played absolutely fearlessly. I didn't just sit back waiting for premium cards. Nobody wins tournaments by just waiting for premium cards. I wasn't afraid to fail or look stupid when my moves went wrong, because when they go right I am putting myself in a position to win. I think back to how I qualifed for the main event. I beat a field of 2247 players that included complete donks all the way to some of the very best online players. I beat this field by playing the same fearless and aggressive style that I used today. So after a while I phone up Dale Hunter at the MGM. It's his last night in town and we arrange to meet outside NYNY later. In the meantime I change into swimming trunks and head down to the Palms Pool. I just laze around in the sun for a bit, swim for a bit and start talking to this black chick in the pool then we go sit on the sun loungers. So I'm lying on one of the sun loungers by the pool when I see a towel flying towards me... and it hits me. I'm all like WTF? but then I recognise the guy that threw it as Merrit Teague, the dude I met yesterday morning just before he went to play his Day 2. He tells me he made it to day 3 with $29K and they are going to be fairly close to the bubble when they start. We chill for a bit but then it gets cold and I go shower and head to the Palms buffet where I eat 2 plates of chicken, scampi and pizza followed by a ridiculous number (maybe as many as 8) of cakes. As I'm finishing my meal, Snoopy from BlondePoker walks past and sees me so sits down to speak to me. I tell him about me donking off all my chips earlier and about the crazy cash game the other night. He also speaks of crazy cash games over at the Orleans. After I have my dinner I head over to NYNY to meet Dale and his girlfriend. Me, Dale and his girlfriend go to Dale's hire car in the car park of the MGM and drive to Hard Rock Cafe. We find a quiet spot in the Hard Rock car park and smoke some really nice weed. Nice, this is the most relaxed I'd felt all week. We float over to one of the bars inside and then float over to one of the restaurants because they haven't eaten yet. So I wish I knew that and I'd have skipped the buffet, but f**k it I have some more food at Hard Rock anyway :-D Have I mentioned yet how much I love food? We have a look round some of the shops in Hard Rock and I find this kickass bike:  Me on the bike. Dale's girlfriend in the background. We drive back to the MGM and smoke some more weed in the car park then float up the moving stairs and over to NYNY. Me and dale decide to play some table games while his girlfriend plays some slots. We go to the craps tables first. Now I am crap at craps, it's true. Throwing dice in a straight line after drinking (I get drunk waaaay easily) and smoking weed isn't the easiest and on my first throw one of the dice bounces off the table and hits this HUGE black guy right in the chest. Oops. The dealer looks at me and says "That's one guy you dont want to be throwing stuff at" eeeek !!! Anyway me and Dale lose a few hundo each playing craps, BJ and slots. By about midnight they head back to their hotel as they are leaving first thing in the morning and I cross the walkway to The Trop. It's just the usual at the trop, I play a loose 1/2 NLHE game. When I arrived the female floor person and dealer remember me from the other night and looked pleased to see me, I think to myself "I hope they aren't expecting $100 tips when I win pots tonight". They tell me that the happy drunk guy, James, from the other night came back to the table with more money and 3 of his friends after I left that day! Oh nooooo. I'm gutted, I hate passing up on free money. I just double my buy-in within 30mins and leave, hotel, bed, zzzzzzzzz, horrible day over! I found out that John Ambrust ended the day on $175K in chips. Smashing !!! I don't know how he got on after that though. Oh yeah, I later found out that the guy Raphael (who I doubled up with my crap semi bluff), he came in 47th place in the Main Event for a very nice $164,932. Well done to him. -------------- Day 8 -------------- Another stupid cash game. -------------- 03/08/06 -------------- Well after waking up and realising that I really have donked out of the biggest tournament of my life I just feel like I want to go home. Never the less I decide to pick myself up and try to go have some fun. I go to The Fashion Show Mall on the strip to spend a lot on clothes and video games. I then go to the buffet at TI (Treasure Island), This is one of the better buffets on the strip. They have several distinct sections, Chinese, Seafood, BBQ Meat, Pizza, Vegetarian, some other stuff, and CAKES !!!!. Each section has their own specialist chefs and all the food is the best of gear. I load a plate with strips of pork and beef, barbeque sauce and some cranberry. Ship it to my belly. I then load another plate with pizza, chicken and spring rolls. Mmmm ship it to my belly. That's when I notice the cake section. Beautiful chocolate pastries with cream and fresh fruit, chocolate eclairs, fresh made cookies, strawberries covered in chocolate. I loaded 2 small plates with chocolate strawberries and several cakes. Ship it to my belly and ship me to an early grave! If I keep eating like this I might turn into an American. With a belly full of delicious food I'm feeling a bit better and take a cab to The Luxor. I was gonna play some poker but I just don't feel like it so I try to get a ticket for tonight's Carrot Top show. I get THE very last ticket to the show, so at least I get some luck today. The warm up guy is pretty funny and Carrot Top is hilarious. For anyone that doesn't know Carrot Top, he is a comedian with big mad red hair that uses lots of props. His funniest prop is this invention for keeping flies away from your food while you eat outdoors. It was a long stick with 2 plates glued to it. One plate holds your food and the other plate holds a pile of dog [censored].... so the flies go to that and not your food. Pure genius !!. I play some video games in the Luxor Arcade. Mostly oldskool stuff like ms pacman and tetris, but it's fun. Then I go up to the Flamingo to watch The Second City, it's an improv comedy but it turns out to be total garbage. As I leave there was an old woman selling dvds of the show and she asks "Did you enjoy the show" "No, it was garbage" I laugh as I walked past her. I then try to get a seat in the poker room but there was a waiting list so I just head up to the Imperial Palace which is another easy game. I notice Didrik, this Norwegian guy, who seems to be playing here a lot and I grab a seat 2 to his left. I buy in for $200 and within 10 minutes I stack some stupid girl. I limped PF with 77, she limps behind me. Flop K7x. I check-call. Turn Q. I check-call. River 8. I check-shooooooooove. she calls me with K8. So there is this silly boy and his 2 friends at the other end of the table that are basically just slagging me off during the hand and he burst out laughing when I push the river, wtf. Anyway it seems they are pretty drunk and are donking off a lot of chips around the table. I move seats to the left of these 3 guys. This means that I have the only other good player, Didrik, on my left now but I still like my seat to the left of these 3 drunks. These stupid boys continued to talk [censored] and act the fool. One of them looks like Cory from Boy meets world and the one in the middle looks like Randy (the brother) from My Name is Earl. I get a bit fed up with these wankers and started ragging on the fat fool in the middle "gee Earl, duuuh do you think we should bluff at the pot? duuuh do you Earl?" I say to him after he makes a ridiculous play. His friends are laughing at him and he gets a bit mad and shoves $300 into my $2 big blind from the button on the very next hand. I call him with AKo. Flop, turn, river and I've still got Ace high. He doesn't turn over his cards but I've called him so I'm seeing his damn cards and he's only seeing mine if I've got him beat. I leave my card protector on my cards and wait, the dealer tells him to reveal his hand or muck. He turns over a K and then I turn over my K. He turns over an 8 (no pair) then I turn over an A and holla "SHIP IT RANDY" The boy is on crazy tilt now and donks off another 3 buyins, but most of it to his friends. Then I pwn his friend pretty hard. I flop a nut flushdraw and call a sizable bet from him on the flop, purely because we were both very deep stacked, I hit the flush on the turn and get paid off big time for a ~$800 pot. About an hour later the fat guy is out of money and the other 2 guys don't have much on the table, they talk about just cutting their losses and leave. I play on til like 6am or something when the game brakes up. I cash out like $1300 or something and on the way out I go to talk to Didrik but we see that someone on the limit table just passed out in his seat in the middle of a hand and it's pretty funny to watch everyone's reactions, some people really concerned for him and others shouting at the dealer to muck his cards.. lol pwned. -------------- Day 9 -------------- Food and poker. Happy days !! -------------- 04/08/06 -------------- So I wake up in the middle of the afternoon again and have another huge lunch buffet for my breakfast, I look around at the size of the fat people walking around and just hope that I don't become one of them. I go over to the Rio because stars had arranged a small Q and A session with David Sklansky. Well there are only like 10 people there and they are all fools and David is trying hard not to get annoyed with them. He get s a couple of brainless questions and then its just silence with nobody asking anything and he just seems annoyed "well then is there anything you'd like me to talk about, let me know an aspect of poker that you're interested in and I'll talk about it" This is when some stupid girl puts her hand up and says "When you're playing, well, how, umm.. do you know the odds of things?" So david looks a bit taken aback and says "Yes, ofcourse I know the odds for making a hand, that's quite fundamental." The girl says nothing and Sklansky looks at her and says "Ok to prove a point, If somebody goes all in with 77 and is called by Ace King offsuit, which hand do you think will win the most times and by how big a margin is it a favorite?" The girl says "Well Ace King obviously... by about twice as much" I start laughing and looking around but nobody else is laughing with me. I look at sklansy and he's looking annoyed but then talks for a few minutes about the odds of different hands going all in preflop. Then I ask him what he thinks is the difference between a good poker player and an excellent poker player. His answer is that he would classify a good poker player as somebody that's is good at extracting money from mediocre players and an excellent player would be somebody like Daniel Negreanu who can extract money from very good players.  Sklansky and Dale After this it's early evening and I go back to IP to play some poker. Didrik is there and asks me if I want to go out with his friends tomorrow night for food and a nightclub so I agree. This game of poker is realllly tight and as I hear people talk I figuire that at least half the table were playing in the main event. So I start talking to this one guy from Denmark, I forget his name and just call him Denmark, and it seems he is staying in Vegas for a month just grinding these live games. He agrees that this game is too nitty and we both get a cab down to the Trop. We get to the Trop and unfortunately there is only one table running but at least we get to sit at opposite sides from each other. The tables is like only one guy appart from us and the rest are girls and their boyfriends keep coming over to check how they are getting on. These girls are super hot and horrible at poker, so yeah I just love having them at the table. There is one not so hot girl and I overhear her story, in short... that she decided if she made $10K at online poker last year she would buy herself into the main event, she did, it was hard for her to hand over that kinda dough and that she pretty much bubbled. So this bitch looks steaming mad. Anyway back to the HOT girls and I stack 2 of them within 5 minutes. I have AJ on a KQT flop and stack a girl with QQ and I have AA and stack a girl with KK all in pre. I look over at Denmark and shrug "Easy money" and laugh. I'm trying to be a dick, I'm just saying what a cardrack I am, that I'm lucky. Anyway BubbleBitch on my right starts having a go at me and saying that I have no class. Well.... I'm not one to take that kind of [censored] so I say. "Listen here WOMAN" then I put my hand close to her face "Do not speak to me unless spoken too" This sends the table wild, the other girls at the table are obv on BubbleBitch's side and are giving it all this high pitched screaming and calling me sexist. Floorperson and security rush over to see whats up and Denmark gets up and walks away for a cigarette. I kinda feel sorry for him coz he's just met me and they've seen me arrive with him and assume that he's my buddy and if I look bad then so does he kinda thing. About an hour later this is this hilarious hand where Denmark has bet the river and the guy to his right is sitting there for ages thinking. It feels like 5 minutes has gone past and I have a go at him "Look the bet is only $30, call or fold, damn what's the problem" This moron thinks some more and then raises all in. He has absolutely nothing and Denmark had rivered a boat. This moron starts having a go at me accusing me of goading him into calling and actually says "You think I don't know you're playing footsie under the table with your buddy". Well by saying this either he is accusing me of collusion or of being gay but either way I don't like it and another big argument develops. This time Vincent, the floorperson takes me aside for a quiet word and basically tells me that he likes having me here but that I try to avoid these arguments and just be happy that these guys are giving their money away. So the game continues peacefully for a few hours until this really old, nitty, grumpy man comes to the table and sits down 2 to my right. I hear him talk about how he is a local and that he has read every poker book ever written and all this nonsense so I make it my job to outplay him on every hand. This you guy comes and sits in the seat to my immediate right. I ask him why he's bought in for the minimum and he tells me that he's just learning poker. Since I'm a nice guy I start giving him a few tips and he ends up doubling up though the old nit. The old nit is staring at me with a dirty evil look on his face. Then there is a hand where the old nit raises preflop, I call behind with some suited crap and I float his c-bet, he checks the turn and I put in a big bet and he folds. I show my cards to the guy to my right and start telling him about how I played the hand. The old nit shouts at the dealer "I want to see his cards, show one, show all" So I fire my cards straight into the muck and this old bastard starts moaning and grumping. Then I continue to tell the young guy about the hand "So I knew he'd bet any flop so I...." then the old nit interrupts "I really object to this, can you stop giving advice after every hand" I was like "Listen mate, I'm having a conversation with this guy, it's nothing to do with you" So I keep taking money off this old bastard and he tops up his stack to the max buyin after every hand and is down about $400. Then a seat opens to my immediate left and this old bastard picks up his chips and sits down right there. "You've got to be kidding me?" I say to him He just sits there and stacks his chips. So I stand up and start moving all my chips to the seat 2 to his left and walk round and sit down. He then moves all his chips back to his original seat so that hes 2 or 3 seats to my left. I go to sit back at my original seat. What a carry on ! So a couple of hours later this old bastard is down $700 or so and looks pretty angry. Then these 3 guys come to the table who are brothers from Alabama who have literally just arrived in Vegas for a wedding. Only one of them is decent at poker and the other 2 lose a couple of buyins each. One of them looks pretty upset and his older brother says "Don't worry, if you need money over the next couple of days I've got your back" So it's like 10am and I go to cash out and that one Alabama brother with no money left is still just sitting at the table with no chips watching his brothers play. So I tap him on the shoulder and say "Hey I'm just going to the breakfast buffet here, if you're hungry then come with me, my shout" What a nice guy I am. He seems really happy and keeps thanking me. The buffet is pretty decent and comes with champagne, he is a big dude and I still mange to eat more than him. Holla. So when we finish eating we go back to the poker room and I just talk to his brothers for a while then go back to my hotel. People from Alabama are really cool! -------------- Day 10 -------------- Shopping, food and strippers. -------------- 05/08/06 -------------- Since everything here is about half the price that it is in the UK I decide that I'll spend my last full day here shopping. The trouble with my plan is that I'm a lazy mofo and alas I don't get out of bet til about 4pm... which would be fine as most of the shops are open late but I have plans to meet up with Didrik and his friends later. So I take a mad dash over to Caesars Mall then Dessert Passage at Aladdin and pick up a load of nice clothes and stuff. I give Didrik a call and he says to come over to his hotel room at the Imperial Palace where he and his friends are. My impressions of the IP hotel are pretty bad. The rooms are very, very small and very, very basic by Vegas standards and as I walk down the corridor I can hear everything that's going on in any room that I pass, which is interesting. Didrik's friend Are shows me some pics of him playing in the WSOP ME. He was on Jen Harmans's table which is pretty neat! So we start the night off in a bar playing minimum credits of Deuces Wild video poker in order to get "free" drinks which was my idea but then we start playing max credits and totally pwn the machines.... me and Didrik both win the jackpot on the machines right next to each other, we celebrate in style each time. Then we head over to the Harley Davidson cafe on the strip to get loaded up on food. I love food, not sure if I've mentioned that yet. For starters we try to order a portion of "Macho Nachos" each and I also try to order some Onion Rings too as I like to eat more than everyone else. The waiter looks at us like we're crazy and says that one plate of "Macho Nachos" will be ok for sharing between the 3 of us so we just order 1 plate of them and some onion rings. When he brings over the starters the "plate" of nachos takes up like a full table and the onion rings are in a huge "basket". Just the hugest portions I can imagine. America, I hear, is the fattest country in the world, wonder why???? hmmm. So after that I eat a chicken burger the size of my head and just sit back rubbing my belly and burping. By now I'm also pretty drunk. So we have a vote on what to do next and decide unanimously to go to a strip club for the rest of the night. The Norwegian guys suggest a place called Little Darlings so we get into a limo outside Aladdin and head off there. As it's a fully nude strip club there is that stupid "no alcohol" rule but we meet some dudes inside that have plenty of vodka to put in our soft drinks, result! So we just hang out beside the stage for an hour or so which actually isn't so bad. I'm drunk but feeling pretty chilled. Then Didrik's friend disappears for quite a while with an above average looking stripper and comes back with a big smile on his face... so I decide I better get some dances in... "VIP" dances of course so that I can get rid of some of these hundos in my wallet. I actually have trouble finding a stripper that is above my standards and eventually settle on a reasonable attractive blonde girl with large but fake looking breasts. So We go to a VIP room and after about 10 minutes I was thinking it would be both cheeky and funny squeeze hard the nipples on her fake looking titties. So I do it and she yelps and sits back and looks like shes about to cry. I almost feel sorry for her. "oops, umm sorry" I say. so she is like... "its ok you just got a bit excited sweety, you can touch me but don't squeeze". so I try hard not to laugh as we finish off our dance. By this time Didrik still hasn't had a dance because he is such a nit and wont spend over a hundred bucks on a stripper but finally changes his mind when we constantly make jokes questioning his sexuality. Just as we're thinking about leaving a group of strippers come up to us, one sits on my lap and asks me if I want a dance but she's not that hot and a nice one catches my eye so I push her out of the way and point to the hot chick and shout "I want her". Now Didrik and Are are practically on the floor laughing at me, they find this hilarious. So this stripper is amazing, very petite and very pretty and she keeps asking me how old I am and saying stuff like "you're so cute". Anyway we're lying on this beanbag thing in a VIP room with her on top of me and she basically lets me throw her around on top of me like a rag doll. Yeah, then things go pretty intense. Word! So after this me and the Norwegian dudes get limo back to the strip and I go back to the palms soon after. -------------- Day 11 -------------- Hometime. !! -------------- 06/08/06 -------------- I checked out from the Palms pretty late. It's after midday, because I wanted as much sleep as possible before my journey. The beds at the Palms are the comfiest in the world and I will miss them dearly! I have some time to kill and McCarran's International Departure Lounge is very small with like 3 cafe/shops and some garbage slot machines, so I decide to just hang around at the Palms for a while. I notice a few nice (non hookers) girls at the slots so this makes me want to play slots. I get chatting to them and they are very pleasant and cuter than I thought but the slot machine is pwning me hard. I'm down about $80 on a 5c machine when chingching I win $160+ which is nice. So I keep playing so that I can get drunk and talk to these girls then I head for my flight. Hope you enjoyed reading my WSOP diary. Holla.
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#3
06-05-2007, 07:12 PM
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Re: OT: WSOP 06 diary/trip report (v. long)
i didnt read it yet. can u post cliff notes on how the balls you got into pillow fights with super cute girls like numerous times?
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#5
06-05-2007, 07:18 PM
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Re: OT: WSOP 06 diary/trip report (v. long)
[ QUOTE ]
i didnt read it yet. can u post cliff notes on how the balls you got into pillow fights with super cute girls like numerous times? [/ QUOTE ] 1. Have pillow fight with bodog girls 2. Get thrown out for being too rough 3. Come back 2 days later 4. Deny I was ever there before 5. Profit [ QUOTE ] A full video of the fight is right here [/ QUOTE ]
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#6
06-05-2007, 07:36 PM
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Re: OT: WSOP 06 diary/trip report (v. long)
take it your not going this year then?
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#9
06-05-2007, 07:50 PM
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Re: OT: WSOP 06 diary/trip report (v. long)
[ QUOTE ]
tl;DIDr, no idea how I finished that but nice entertaining post. [/ QUOTE ] oh i just looked at the pics, there were words also? tl;dr;L.A.P
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