April 20th, Las Vegas: I wake up well before the tournament feeling refreshed, though having eaten the Korean BBQ so late at night is wreaking a little havoc in my stomach. Hopefully it holds over for a full day of poker, lasting for which is a hope in it of itself. I take a shower, throw on a suit, and walk down to the Bellagio convenience store and grab my regular meal replacement bars.

When I make my way to the table there is a Full Tilt advertisement waiting for me. The table contains Jennifer Harman, Erik Seidel, and Phil Ivey, and everyone else is a known competent player except for a woman in roughly her mid 30’s sitting two on my left. My 28,000 in chips is still a totally reasonable starting at the 400/800 blind level.

For the first few rounds I do absolutely nothing. I open a single pot and get three bet by Phil Ivey and fold my KJs. After a few rounds of folding there’s a spot where online player ‘CrazyMarco’ raises in mid position to 2200 and two of the players who flat a bit looser both call. I cram 21,000 and change on the button with T7hh, feeling pretty damn confident about the spot and my image. It folds back to Marco who thinks it over and folds, as do both flat callers.


A few hands later I find 66 in MP and open. Lee Markholt flats next to act and everyone else folds. I get a fairly draw flop with a 6 and lead out. He calls and the turn is a card that puts more draw possibilities out and I fire again, leading to his tank folding. The next hand I raise 67dd and the unknown woman flats. The flop is 636 with a flush draw and I fire out, getting a call from her. The turn is a T and I bet again, leading to a fold. The next hand I raise 87dd and the same woman flats. The flop brings me a gut shot so I bet and she snap folds.

My stack moves up to around 40k, and after roughly another round of play I find myself in a spot against Phil Ivey:
My stack: ~40,000, Ivey’s stack: ~60,000, blinds 400/800 with 100 ante, I hold AKo in the BB
Preflop: Folds to Ivey in MP1, Ivey raises to 2200, folds to me in the BB, I reraise to 7200, Ivey calls.
Flop: T J 5 rainbow
I check, Ivey checks behind.
Turn: Q full rainbow
I bet 10,500, Ivey thinks briefly and calls.
River: 4
I think for a moment then shove the river and without a word or touch of a chip instantly flips AKo up in a style only a true balla could posses.
“Chop it up” I say.
Phil says nothing, he only stares into the distance, disinterested yet fully engaged.

Half an orbit later we all get involved again:
My stack: ~42,000, Phil: ~70,000, CO: ~80,000, blinds 400/800 with 100 ante. I hold As9s in MP2.
Preflop: Folds to me in MP2, I raise to 2200, folds to the loose lady on the CO, she calls, Ivey on the button raises to 8200, both blinds fold, I think that he knows the lady is flatting super wide and I have an image of never putting in a lot of chips pre without a big hand so I shove for 42,000 total, the lady folds, Phil thinks for a while and says “Well I guess I’m calling” and calls with JJ.
Flop: K J 5
Turn: 7
“Good game guys” I say then walk away. Ivey seems like a poor target for fancy play syndrome.

I go to get some food then hang out at Panorama towers with some friends. We chill up in the room for a while getting blazed and discussing our various days of play in the 25k. After a while we decide to hit the community hot tub and meet some other friends down there. There’s about 10 of us perhaps, pretty much everyone is a serious professional player. There’s a couple girls in the hot tub, one of which I’d chatted up the other night when she showed up down here a bit tipsy. After a bit of chat she somehow ends up sitting on my lap, so I put my arm around her. She’s got a glass of wine and I grab it and say
“I’m gonna be needing a drink” then take a large swig of what turns out to be red wine, merlot in fact. She grabs the other girl and drags her onto my lap as well
“Have you met Tony?” she asks her
“Uh yea we met…” I blurt
“We certainly have now” interrupts the other. I don’t quite know how this happened, I am pretty blazed here.

I keep taking swigs of her glass and eventually the other moves off my lap but she remains.
“Oh! Let’s go to lunch or go shopping tomorrow!” She says.
“Yea sure, that’d be cool if I’m not busy or anything. I doubt I will be.”

April 19th, Las Vegas: I’m standing in the room of a friend at ‘Panorama Tower’, wearing casual clothes for once, and feeling very hung over. I woke up at 11am after being out until God knows when and my stomach feels awful. I came over intending to grind the entire Sunday away, but when I arrived he posed a question to me
“Alright Tony, we could grind here, or we could go over to a couple of girls house I know and grind the day away over there and smoke weed.”
“Jesus Christ dude, why do you insult me by asking such an absurd question?”
We depart immediately as valuable grinding time is wasting away.

It is quite a drive out to their house in the suburbs of Vegas and I am increasingly regretting last night. I am doing the driving because my friend is grinding on his laptop and I don’t want him to kill any of us. Luckily we have a GPS, and it is quite accurate and has the voice of a woman I’d like to chat to in real life.

When we finally get there I am introduced to the two girls (whose names will have to remain anonymous considering the following content) and a piece is immediately produced. My friend says that if I smoke weed it will cure my hangover. I tell him “There’s no fucking way treating the after affects of one drug with another can be a good idea.” He assures me that this will indeed be a good idea and that his roommate tried it and it worked beautifully. I decide ‘fuck it’ and take the piece and grab the lighter.

Just 10 minutes later I feel vastly better
“My God dude, what a great idea, even the stomach pain is gone. I feel way better now, thank you sir. What a good decision.”
“I told you dude.”

And so the four of us spend our day registering for every tournament under the sun and passing around the piece, speaking only in short bursts because we are playing a billion tables and have the intense focus of someone who is totally blazed. Both girls seem very cool and one of them is grinding quite a few tournaments and seems to play really well. I spend my time talking to the other about the poker sponsorship game and her experiences in it. At the high point of my multi tabling I have about 18 tables up, all minimized but still seeable thanks to the high resolution on the screen.

I pretty much blank off my tournaments, cashing numerous times but going deep in basically nothing. Obviously my friend mega crushes like he always does and makes me look bad. I swear at him quite a lot about this. After I bust all my tournaments I decide to go for a run. Running high is strange. My throat gets parched.

We leave well past midnight, after the date had crosses over to 4/20. On our drive back we obviously get caught up in strip traffic. I look over to the car next to us, which is a cab full of girls. One of them smiles at me and I smile back. Then her and her friends smile and wave to me and mine. The light changes and we move up again, and again are side by side with them. Now the girl sitting in the front opens her door and vomits on to the street. My friend and I start laughing, but when I look down at the half drank water bottle at my feet I have an idea
“Dude, I should go give this to her. That’d be a sick pick up and she could definitely use it.”
“Yea go for it man.”
I grab the bottle, jump out of the car while the lights still red, then walk over with it in hand and give it to her
“Oh my God that’s so sweet! Thank you sooooo much!” she says excitedly. I smile and wave to the other girls in the cab and say hi, then sprint back to my car because the light has been red on the strip for an awful long time now. It changes over as I’m getting into the car, but at the next light we are obviously side by side again. We roll down the window
“What are you boys doing tonight?” one shouts
“We’re going to eat, what are you girls doing?”
“We’re gonna go to ‘The Bank’ (a club at the Bellagio), you should totally come meet us there honey!”
“Yea maybe we’ll meet you there afterwards okay?”
“K!”

The light changes over and we continue on to our destination, which is Korean BBQ, obviously. We discuss whether we should go to ‘The Bank’, particularly since we need to play tomorrow. I tell him we should stop in briefly and look around to see if they’re there and try to pull a very fast pick up. If they’re not we’ll just bail out and get to sleep.

Back at the Bellagio my friend gets changed into some clothes I lend him to get into the club. We make our way down to ‘The Bank’ which thankfully has no line on Sunday night. When we enter the club we realize thinking we would ever find them here is a retarded idea. We give up after 10 minutes and call it a night. At least I’ll get over eight hours sleep.

April 18th, Las Vegas: I wake up naturally a few minutes before my inevitable wake up call, and by naturally I mean needing to piss horribly. I sprint for the bathroom then come out and check the time. Pretty much everyone has told me the $25,000 will start late, so I take my time getting changed into a suit and checking email. One annoying aspect of traveling with nice clothes is that they get wrinkled and semi dirty just by being in a suitcase so long and sometimes you have to bite the bullet and wear wrinkled up clothing, such as my shirt today. I figure if I just tuck it in very tight it should look snug, plus the suit will cover up most of it.

Before going down to the Fontana room I stop over in the Bellagio convenience store to get a meal replacement bar, which will have to be breakfast. I take it over to the lounge then sit outside in front of the Bellagio fountains eating it at a table with ‘Shaniac’. I talk shit and demand a tennis match, but his wrist is still too messed up for it, so we agree that come WSOP it'll go down.

I move back into the room and find my seat. Our stacks are 100,000 in chips with 90 minute levels and the blinds starting at 50/100. Jesus Christ, 1000 big blinds, how will I possibly spew them all off? I take a glance around at the line up of my starting table, which is as follows: Scott Montgomery in seat 1, then Brandon Cantu, then Paul Wasicka, an empty chair, then Bruno Fitussi, myself, Barney Boatman on my left, then a guy I've seen around but whose name I can't remember, then Jennifer Harman, and then a total unknown older guy who is wearing an expensive dress shirt and I'm fairly sure is a recreational player. It's not a bad table to get in this tournament, and I've got position on Cantu and Wasicka who promise to be the trickiest guys at the table.

When Jennifer sits down Cantu remarks to her "I almost took a dog home last night Jen." I almost bite my tongue off.
"What kind was it?" asks Jennifer.
"A little one, but they're just too much time to take care of and I don't have time for it."
"Yea, they're a lot to handle, gotta be responsible about it" she adds.
"Wow, when you said that to her I took it in a totally different context" I blurt, then add
"I was like, how the fuck is that the first thing you say to her when she sits down? Hahaha"

The early goings are very uneventful for me. A ton of the hands I play are over on the flop, and I don't get into an interesting one until near the end of the first level:
Effective stacks: ~95,000, blinds 50/100, I hold AsJs on the HJ.
Preflop: Folds to Bruno in MP2, Bruno raises to 300, I call on the HJ, it folds to the SB, the SB calls, BB folds.

Flop: Ah Jc 6h
SB checks, Bruno bets 800. I think over my options. Unfortunately I've been incredibly tight and straight forward thus far from being card dead, so I'm fairly sure if I raise him here on the flop and bomb the turn he'll give up all one pair hands. Meanwhile I think if I call and the board doesn't get super scary I often get three decent sized streets from him with most one pair hands. I think if I had a better image I should be raising this flop, and I maybe just should anyway. I elect to call and the SB folds.

Turn: 9h
Bruno thinks for quite a while then bets 1000, I call.

River: 6s
Bruno thinks for quite a while then bets 2800, I call and he tables AhQh. Fair enough.

A few orbits later I witness a rather hilarious hand between Scott, Brandon, and Paul. It olds to Scott and he limps the button, Brandon completes in the SB, and Paul checks in the BB.

The flop comes down AKT with two hearts, and Brandon glances at it then mucks. Paul is considering his action then Scott says "Come on, you fold too" so Paul now open folds, giving Scott the pot before the action ever got to him.
"Wow! I didn't even look at the flop yet!" says Scott.
"That was a sick Jedi mind trick" I add "What'd you say to them exactly? I wanna write this shit down, not often you see someone just order people to fold and they do it."

Not long after the hand Scott and I get involved in our first major pot:
Effective stacks: ~93,000, I hold 8d8h in the SB, blinds 100/200.
Preflop: Folds to Scott on the HJ, Scott raises to 600, CO calls, button folds, I call, BB calls.

Flop: 5s 8s 9s
I lead out 2000, the BB folds, Scott calls, the CO folds.

Turn: 3h
I check (I should be betting here, Scott is loose enough), Scott checks.

River: Qs
I think things over then check, and Scott checks behind.
"Do you have a spade?" I ask.
"Nope"
Then I must be winning. I flip up my set a second before Scott flips up his, a set of nines. Good thing the 5 didn't pair.

I remain card dead for quite a while and try to find spots to get involved but considering that it's a fairly loose and active table I'm unable to stop anyone’s aggression without some degree of hand. I get involved again near the end of the level:

Effective stacks: ~90,000, blinds 100/200, I hold KsJh in the BB.
Preflop: Folds to the unknown in MP2, MP2 raises to 600, HJ folds, Cantu calls on the CO, Wasicka calls on the button, SB folds, I call.

Flop: Qd 7c 7h
Everyone checks.

Turn: 8c
I bet 1800, MP2 calls, CO folds, button folds.

River: 4s
I think MP2 might have a decent amount of missed draws and will fold any pocket pair not over a Q he peeled the flop with given my very tight image. I doubt he'll fold a Q, but he's also the type to bet the flop with it a ton, so I'm not overly worried. I bet 4200, MP2 folds.

Yet again I go very card dead and stay out of the action for quite a while. I don't play another serious hand until the next level:

Effective stacks: 95,000, blinds 100/200 with 25 ante, I hold 8s7s on the HJ.
Preflop: UTG folds, Montgomery limps UTG+1, Cantu raises in MP1 to 825, two folds, I call on the HJ, Boatman calls on CO, Harman calls on button, SB folds, BB calls, Montgomery calls.

Flop: 8c 7d 2c
It checks to me, I bet 3500, Boatman calls, Harman goes into the tank for quite a while then raises to 13,500 and it folds back to me. Christ, this sucks. Harman has been incredibly tight in her time at the table, and I've been equally uninvolved. I find it very unlikely that she'd play any draw like this, and there's no worse two pairs in her range, so I fold. Boatman folds as well and her hand remains a mystery.

Just a couple orbits later I get in another big pot with Harman:
Effective stacks: ~90k, blinds 100/200 with 25 ante. I hold 7c7d on the button.
Preflop: Folds to Wasicka on the HJ, Wasicka raises to 700, CO folds, I call on the button, BB folds, Harman calls in the BB.

Flop: A 8 7 rainbow
Harman checks, Wasicka checks, I bet 1700, Harman calls fairly quickly, Wasicka folds.

Turn: K full rainbow
Harman checks, I bet 4100, Harman thinks for a while and checkraises to 15100. Ah fuck, she's probably got a better set cause she's Jennifer Harman. I call with the intention of calling most rivers and hating my life.

River: 5
Harman fairly quickly bets 25000, and I quickly fling my chips into the pot, forgetting to kiss them goodbye first. Harman tables 88 and I glance back at my cards then exhale slightly, an explosion of emotion for me at the table.

Then things go back to being card dead. I am folding hand, after hand, after hand. Occasionally I mix in a random three bet on one of the more aggressive players on my right and mostly take it down preflop, particularly going after Wasicka because he's good enough to both open raise a lot and not make spazzy out of position reraise calls.

At the 200/400 level I see a flop 5 ways with 63o in the BB in a limped pot. The flop is 754 two diamonds and I lead out 1600 which gets a call from Harman and a raise to 5000 from Wasicka. I shove my stack of about 34k. Harman tank folds what she says was Ad5d and Wasicka fairly quickly folds.

Outside of that hand I'm still enormously card dead and mostly unable to play a hand because there's action in front of me. It's not until near the very end of the day that I get involved in another hand:

My stack: ~46,000, Cantu: ~160k, Boatman: ~80,000, blinds 300/600 with 75 ante. I hold 66c on the CO.
Preflop: Folds to Cantu in MP2, Cantu raises to 1900, folds to me on the CO, I call, Boatman raises to 6000 on the button, olds back to Cantu, Cantu calls, and I call despite fairly weak implied odds because it's multi way and Boatman three bets so rarely I think he has a hand that stacks off to a set pretty frequently.

Flop: A 8 3 rainbow
Cantu checks, I check, Boatman checks.

Turn: 8
Cantu checks. I decide that since most of Boatmans range is big pairs and I have an enormously tight image he'll likely fold to a large turn bet from me. Cantu flats reraises quite wide, so God knows what he can have, but with the way I'm playing it's unlikely he tries to bluff me too much. I bet 11,000, Boatman folds, and Cantu check shoves. I drop my cards into the muck.

A few orbits later play ends for the day, and when I count up my remaining chips they total 28,350. An Australian friend suggests we get dinner together so we hit the Bellagio buffet with Ross and Barney Boatman. Everyone has done vastly better than me today.

When we finish we go back to my room and I call an Australian couple, Lisa and Scott, that are visiting for a few days that I set up at the Bellagio. They come up to my room and then roll up a big joint and smoke out my bathroom. I glance around my bedroom, I have trashed it again. Lisa, Scott, and I discuss what to do with the evening. We decide we should get wasted.

The three of us hop in a cab over to the Wynn to try and get into their club. We wait in line for 45 minutes and it stops moving. We decide to just walk down the strip and find somewhere easier to get into. We settle on ‘Margaritaville’ and start dropping jagerbombs and beers. I tell Lisa about the Adelaide hospital situation, then use it to open the girl sitting at the bar and get her opinion, then start arguing with her about it. It doesn’t go anywhere.

We keep drinking then hit the dance floor and take your standard drunken idiot jumping all over each other pictures that everyone takes on a big night out. I approach a table full of woman by insinuating that they left their respective men home for a reason. The interaction does not go well.

Eventually we leave the bar and stumble down the strip towards the Bellagio. As we’re walking through the Bellagio hallways I look a woman in the eye and say “Hi.” She turns around with her friend and we start chatting. Eventually I realize that they are too aggressive in the interaction
“Are you girls working?”
“Are you?”
“Are you asking if I’m a jiggalo?” (several hours later I realized they were asking if I was police)
“Hahaha no.”
“Well I’m not working.”
“Well then maybe we should have some fun tonight.”
“Yea that’d be really cool. I’m staying over at the Bellagio, why don’t you girls stop by about 3:30am? Ask for the room of Christian Harder okay?”
“Okay sweetie we’ll see you at 3:30.”
“Great.”

We walk through the Bellagio and decide to go into ‘Caramel’ despite already being wasted and it being stupid late. We get in quickly and immediately hit the bar and get another drink. I somehow wind up in a conversation with some woman and within a few moments my arm is around her and hers around me. Beer goggles are in full affect. Things start getting blurry, I tell her that we’ll go wine tasting. She tells me she’s 29, I say age you’re only as old as you feel. I don’t have a phone, so I tell her she needs to email me her number using her blackberry. She does it then I add

“Well I should get going, give me a kiss on the cheek for good luck tomorrow.” She leans up and kisses me on the check.
“Better get double coverage, go for the other side.” She does.
“Upon fullest consideration better cover the lips too.”
“I’m not gonna kiss you! I just met you!” she retorts.
I don’t react at all for a moment then shrug and say coldly
“Yea, yea you are.” Then we make out a little. I can’t believe that worked.

I stumble back towards the elevators from the bar. I don’t seem to have my key. I try to make cohesive sense to the guard about why they should let me up. I seem to do a good job of it because they let me up. When I get in the room and fire on the computer I start chatting to Chewy and Charder and tell them I should come downstairs and entertain them. They tell me to stop by.

I take the elevator up to their room and burst into the room in a whirlwind up drunken rambling and nearly falling over. During one such long gesticulating rant I nearly knock their TV over. I apologize to Christian for sending the prostitutes to his room, though it doesn’t matter because security would never send them up to the room. He finds it amusing, it seems. Chewy is playing tomorrow and before I leave I leap into his bed and hug him several times yelling “GOOD LUCK CHEEEEEEWY!!”

After I leave I take the elevator back to my room, order Indian food from room service, then pass out in my bed.

April 17th, Las Vegas: The phone rings loudly, jerking me out of sleep.. I pick up
"Hello?"
"This is your wake up call" responds a womans voice. Ah shit, it's 2:30pm already. I'm still tired as hell but decide I ought to get up in order to maintain a sleep schedule that will allow me to be up for the noon start time of the main event. Besides, I really need to get my phone sorted out so I can actually get ahold of people and attempt to call women.

After a shower I get changed and go downstairs to the poker room to see if anyone I know is around and wants to hang out. Everyone is already caught up in the final satellite for the main event so I walk off to the taxi line alone. I take a cab over to the fashion mall on the strip, grab a quick lunch (breakfast?), and then set out in search of a place to get a SIM card. I'm eventually directed to a cell phone super store, whiere I purchase a short term SIM card. Unfortunately, my phone seems to be having two annoying problems; since recharging it last night the phone keeps restarting itself over and over when I turn it on, and the SIM card apparantly won't work until I get my phone 'unlocked' which I have to go to some shop in the middle of nowhere for.

On my way out to the cab ring I stop by a bar, down a couple vodka redbulls, and make small talk with the bartender and a couple other patrons. I forgot that Vegas bartenders make drinks much stronger than Melbourne ones. Afterwards I catch a cab over to the cell phone shop. Upon entering the cab I start chatting as always, but my conversation with this paritular driver, Bruce, takes a more interesting turn. It begins at the mention of Jacque Fresco, a sort of social engineeer and archeitect who has spent decades redisginging techonology and buildings for future cities and theorizes that the world should function on a resource based economy and not a money driven one. Our conversation ends up leading in all sorts of esoteric directions, and by the time we get to the cell phone store Bruce decides he'd like to stick around to continue it.

When I get into the store the shop assistant says he'll need about half an hour with my phone to solve the problem. I go out and let Bruce know about this but he's happy to wait. I wind up grabbing a sandwich at Subway and Bruce hangs out to chat. Of course, in a place like Vegas you always have to question the motivation of anyone who is particularly nice to you, but Bruce never tries to sell me or ask me of anything except thoughts on various situations.

I finish eating then return to the store. He says the phone has stopped reseting and should now be unlocked. I get a ride back to the Bellagio and take out my phone and try to get it going. Then I realize when I try to access it that it keeps resetting over and over again. At the store he gave me instructions in case this happened, so I take out the SIM card and attempt to reset the phone. Unfortunately the reset code doesn't work, so I call the store back. He tells me to attempt another reset code, which then causes the phone to promp me for a password, which the guy on the phone gives me but doesn't work. After that he says I'll just have to bring it back there, which will no doubt be a huge hassle.

While I'm doing this I'm on my laptop and Ajunglen and Fatalerror invite me over to their apartmanet in 'Panorama Towers', as well as to a BBQ being held at Mr.TimCaum's place. I take a cab over to their apartment, and upon entering am quickly handed a weed filled piece. I take a few hits off it then spend time catching up with them about the trip, how their lives in Vegas are, and what's going in general.

Eventually they pick up their laptops and take them down to the BBQ. I think all and all over a dozen poker players and people within the poker industry show up, though I won't name names because we smoked quite a bit and some of those people have a reputation they actually give a shit about. I even have a few beers with my steak, to which I am most appreciative of Mr.TimCaum for making me. When we finish eating we start up some beer pong games, though unfortunately my female partner makes me look terrible by crushing while I bink it off all the cups (and I can't even remember her name now becuase I was gone the whole time at his place.)

Once we finish eating and passing around the blunts we decide to hit the hot tub. I'm fairly sure the pool area is closed, but it seems everyone is content to just reach under the door to access the handle and let themselves in. Works for me. Naturally, after only spending a few minutes in the tub some guys from a few stories up start throwing ice at us, and profanities are exchanged between Roothlus and them.

After drying off we go inside to smoke some more blunts. It's around this point I find Gobboboy (who is always 100% sober, and I mean always) and I suggest to him that we go for Korean BBQ. Gobbo is down or it and after I dry up and change back into my suit (which people suggest I do with suspecious efficency) we wish everyone goodbye and then Gobbo drives us down past the Wynn to the good stuff.

At some point during dinner I inform Gobbo that "We have made a very good decision here Jimmy."

Authors note: This entry was written while mostly drunk, so the grammar and spelling in it promises to be a disaster.

April 16th, Somewhere over the Pacific: I have no idea what time it is, but I’d guess in the area of 3am. I guess to figure out that you’d have to define a time zone first. I spent some time attempting to sleep but again it didn’t work. I decide to take out ‘The Wolf on Wall Street’ and keep reading as Jordan Belforts increasingly excessive drug addiction has his already absurd life spinning wildly out of control.

I read until the plane lands in Los Angeles at LAX. The local time is roughly 6am and my next flight doesn’t leave until 10:10am. I go over to the ‘Admirals Club’ lounge and find out again that just because I have a first class ticket I will not be receiving a free entrance. However, I do have the option of paying $50 for a one time entry, and considering I have four hours to kill I figure I can get some writing done and grind poker, so in theory it’s +EV.

I find a spot in the lounge that has me sitting upright so I don’t fall asleep. I fire up the computer and start writing and toying around on facebook. Eventually I fire up Full Tilt and play some heads up, but unfortunately get stacked when I run top two into bottom set and never really regain any momentum in the match. Fuck it, all that matters was the equity involved in playing, plus the action and music cranking in my head phones has managed to keep me up quite easily. I order some dry cereal with milk. I debate hitting on the blonde girl sitting a table over from me, but she’s talking on her cell phone and I haven’t slept so I’d be talking like a maniac.

After my four hour internet vacation in the lounge I walk over to the gate for my flight and get in line. As anyone who has flown LA to Vegas before knows it’s a very easy less than hour long flight, and today is no different. We touch down a bit past 11am and I book it for the baggage claim. I collect my things, get in the giant Vegas airport taxi line, and after a 15 minute process of weaving through the queue I finally hop into a cab and spend the ride chatting to the lady cab driver about how quiet Vegas has been lately. She asks me quite a bit about the poker tournament I’m about to play then wishes me luck when she drops me off at the Bellagio. I wonder how many times a cabbie in Vegas says good luck a day?

When I arrive at the Bellagio I check into my room, throw my stuff down, take a shower and get changed. I walk down to the poker room at about 1pm and find that the $5000 pre lim event (the last of the series) is going off. I haven’t slept yet, but the atmosphere is intoxicating. I find LuckyChewy and Charder30 sitting next to each other on a table and start chatting. One of them asks if I’m going to play. I say I kind of want to, and ask if they have $5000 I can borrow. Chewy says ‘sure’ then gives me his room card, tells me where to find it, and I run up to his room. I tear thorugh the contents of the location he recommended, find over $5,000 in cash, then run back downstairs into it and bu yin. It’s about 1:30pm, and I haven’t slept.

Ironically, I wind up being seated on the table of Chewy and Charder. My moderate sleep deprivation causes me to hit some kind of strange second wind and when I sit down at the table I am a stream of constant and totally nonsensical table talk.

The tournament itself is incredibly boring. I’ve never played a donkament where my decisions were so incredibly straight forward and simplistic, where I have basically nothing to consider and there is basically nothing worth a proper write up (let’s be honest here, that tournament was dull but I wrote down a few hands, I’m simply way too drunk and high right now to bother actually rewriting them.)

By 12 hours later we’ve grinded a field of 120 down below 18, which was the amount of players that cashed. After that I engage in a three hand sequence that gets interesting:

First we’re seven handed a player UTG raises to 11k and I shove 90k next to act with TT. He and everyone else folds and I move up in the world. The next hand I find 33 UTG 7 handed and with an incredibly tight image open raise. It folds to the BB who call on a short stakc, and when the flop comes 257 he checks and I get nearly enough to put him in. He folds and I move up to about 130k. The very next hand it folds to the MP2 player who is local Las Vegas player ‘Prince’ who nobody can quite figure out, but he’s really aggressive and doesn’t seem overly stack size aware. He makes it 11k like he does many hands, and it folds to me in the BB with 99. I think over my options then decide shoving is best because if I normally 3 bet he won’t four bet light, I have an image for all in bets right now, and he open raises a ton. He snap calls AA and I busto when the board blanks off for me. I finish 15th for a slightly over $1,500 profit.

Afterwards I stumble off to my hotel room and order some food because I haven’t eaten in for fucking ever. Then I pass out.