EdmondDantes says

Sounds like a great trip, but no pics for the guys stuck back in LA? Come on, man! Where is your sense of decency?

10/09/07

BadgerPro says

Ugh, I had my camera the whole trip and kept saying that I needed to take more pictures but I never did. I love looking back at the pictures but I hate stopping whatever I'm doing at the time to take them. There is a good one in that UB blog and I'll try to put some up after I get more from other people who were there and took pictures.

10/10/07

Anonymous says

Sounds like a great time. Especially the parties. Funny, I was just catching up and read your latest first. I see where you say here that you are going to try and win a seat to the PCA through a satellite and now you did. In your next blog entry you should try and predict something even more meaningful. How about a date with Jessica Biel?

10/15/07

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I won't get into too many of the boring details of the trip. Most of my time was spent at the beach drinking, swimming, getting a tan and the rest was spent partying on the island or gambling in the Radisson Casino.

I barely played any poker while down there (which was my plan from the start) and I was really happy I took that route as it was a great break. The little poker I did play was at the $1/2nl tables usually late at night after I'd had a few too many drinks. It was fun donking around in the lower stakes and not caring too much about winning or losing any pots. I did play a bunch of blackjack and craps while down there and finished up a little bit overall on the trip as far as gambling was concerned.

The first two nights were a blast and I spent the first one meeting a bunch of the Madison poker players who I didn't already know. There was a huge Madison group down there since apparently Ultimate Bet (the poker site running the tournament) is the place to play if you live in Madison. I think I've played on UB twice in the past year and once was trying to qualify for the Aruba tourney. I may start to spend some more time on it now though since the cash games are rumored to be really soft.

The second night I hung out with all of the guys who run the pocketfives.com website. They do a lot of coverage of live poker events on their site. They usually try to cover a lot of the bigger internet names that are playing in any given live tourney which is nice since most other sites covering tournaments focus on only the big name live players.

Both nights I had a blast and will probably hang out with the Madison group more now that I know them and will be sure to keep in touch with the P5s guys also.

The middle of the week Eric and I spent a lot of time hanging out with Shannon Shorr, who Eric is good buddies with, and his girlfriend, Stephanie. Mostly just chilling at the beach during the day and then going somewhere to drink and watch the playoff baseball games at night.

The night before the final table of the main event down there Phil Helmuth threw a big party at his penthouse sweet in the Radisson. Poker Ho (one of the Madison players) wrote a great write up about the party in his Aruba recap so I'll just link to that to fill you in on the party. The party write up is the last entry at the bottom of the page. Phil's Annual Party

I'll also give a quick link to the UB Blog that covered a lot of the tournament action. If you click the 'Madison Bragging Rights' entry you'll see a picture of a bunch of the Madison players (I'm in the back row in the red polo and Eric is right next to me). The link is about halfway down the page. Also, the videos at the top of the page are decent if you want to get a tiny feel for what goes on down in Aruba. UB Blog

The other two highlights were the opening and closing parties that UB threw. Both of the parties lasted 3 hours with great food and an open bar the entire time. It was definitely a well run event by UB blowing away the job Stars did last year at the PCA. Not that Stars did a bad job but UB definitely did an amazing job at this tournament.

Speaking of the PCA, Stars has just started to run it's satellites to this year's event so I will probably be trying to win a seat over the next few months. The Aussie Millions runs immediately after the PCA and I've heard that's an amazing time also so I will probably be trying to qualify for that one too. Hopefully I'll get a seat to one of them.