The GF and I went on a trip to Northen California last week. I really wanted to stop by Club One in Fresno but I just didn't have time to make it down there with other obligations. We did make a quick run through Yosmite National Park and I was very impressed once we got away from the crowds. A few highlights:

Yosemite:





Travertine Hot Springs in Bridgeport, CA:


Bodie, CA, a ghost town:




So, on to Harvey's Lake Tahoe. Harrahs' comped 2 nights but Saturday night was $400 because there was a KISS concert that night. I only go to play 4 donkaments because Harvey's only has 2 a day. On Thursday night the $80+15 field was all locals who seemed to know each other. I ended up shoving KJ into 66 and flop comes 66X. GG me. On Friday morning I won their turbo-esque $30+10 for $250 over a super weak field. On Friday night I chopped the $100+$20 for $600 in a 5-way even chop. The final table included two members of the rock band ZO2, who were opening for KISS on Saturday. I busted one of them 6 handed when he limped QQ on my 3 5 BB and the flop came 5 2 6 with two diamonds. He shoved his remaining 6 BB and I call and hit a 3 on the river to bust him, immediately after which we chop the remaining $3k prizepool. On Saturday morning I played another $30+$10 turbo with no success. Still pretty solid results for my small amount of playing time.

Harvey's seems to be full of hand-me-down Harrah's equipment. We had an "updated" upgrade room and it still had out of date furniture and even had a scary tube TV in the bathroom that was no less than 12" deep for a 10" screen. The room was still nice and I have no real complaints. The poker room is pretty standard and only the cash tables had auto shufflers. There are no poker comps of any kind and time is not tracked.

We walked across the street to the Mont Bleu on our last day, and it is by far the nicest/newest casino on the small Tahoe strip. The poker room is right at the entrance and seems to offer an identical tournament schedule/structure as Harvey's. If I return I'll play there as play is probably softer and Harvey's doesn't offer any poker comps.

Today I took second out of around 5900 runners in the stars $10 30k guaranteed tournament for my biggest online score ever, $5k. First paid $7300, so I can now say the most I ever lost on a coin flip is $2300.

PokerStars Game #18800361103: Tournament #94712572, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level XXXII (60000/120000) - 2025/07/13 - 19:48:08 (ET)
Table '94712572 485' 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 3: brad2002tj (3388172 in chips)
Seat 5: MilanRabsz (8383828 in chips)
brad2002tj: posts the ante 12000
MilanRabsz: posts the ante 12000
brad2002tj: posts small blind 60000
MilanRabsz: posts big blind 120000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to brad2002tj [Qh Ah]
brad2002tj: raises 240000 to 360000
MilanRabsz: raises 720000 to 1080000
brad2002tj: raises 2296172 to 3376172 and is all-in
MilanRabsz: calls 2296172
limbi8888 [observer] said, "NO DEAL ??"
*** FLOP *** [6c Ad 3d]
Dantes_11 [observer] said, "AAAAAA"
*** TURN *** [6c Ad 3d] [7h]
*** RIVER *** [6c Ad 3d 7h] [5h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
MilanRabsz: shows [4h 4c] (a straight, Three to Seven)
brad2002tj: shows [Qh Ah] (a pair of Aces)
Floppus [observer] said, "haha"
Floppus [observer] said, "lol"
MilanRabsz collected 6776344 from pot
limbi8888 [observer] said, "WTF"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 6776344 | Rake 0
Board [6c Ad 3d 7h 5h]
Seat 3: brad2002tj (button) (small blind) showed [Qh Ah] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 5: MilanRabsz (big blind) showed [4h 4c] and won (6776344) with a straight, Three to Seven

It was my girlfriend and my third anniversary so we spent last weekend at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, MS. We flew into New Orleans and drove a rental car (~1.5 hour drive) to Biloxi. Checking in was a bit of a mess. At the front desk the clerk said they don't have any ocean view rooms (even though we booked one) and verified we want a non-smoking room. We make the trek up to the room and walk into what is clearly a smoking room. We go back down to the front desk and the manager gets us into a non-smoking room, and guess what now there is an ocean view available. So they set us up again and we go up to a really nice non-smoking ocean view room on the 15th floor. As I am going through the check-in documents I notice they have someone else's name on it. Back to the front desk for them to straighten it out, which only takes a few minutes.

The hotel and casino design seems to have borrowed from many of the Vegas casinos, and a lot of the design was similar to the Bellagio, albeit a slightly cheaper and more brightly colored version. One interesting tidbit of note, as we were walking by the front desk a security guy with earpiece in ear grabs me by the shoulder and says "you can't wear your hat backwards while on the property." Uh, OK. Never seen or heard of that in a Vegas casino, but whatever.

They only had one donkament going for the weekend, a $200 + 25 + $10 add on Saturday. The field of 125 was quite weak. I had 3 people totally hand me their stack, one when I had a set of 10's vs top pair no kicker and once with aces against AJ and another with AK v. A6 sooted AIPF. With the tables break down to 50 players the following hand takes place (cross posted from 2+2):

Hero has about 21k at 200/400 a50 and is probably around top 10/50 in chips and 2nd in chips at the table. Tables just consolidated and both villians in hand are new and unknown. Villian 1 is utg+1 and is CL at the table and covers by a few k. He opens to 1200 and hijack, a middle aged woman with a "WSOP Academy" visor on, shoves her 4k stack. Folds to Hero in the big blind who peels back AKo. Nothing else to do here but isolate, right?

Anyhow I don't see what else I can do but isolate the short stack so I shove and am suprised and a bit scared when the original raiser calls. Original raiser has QQ short stack has JJ and we are off to the races. The board completely blanks and I am out once again with AK vs. QQ. The almost same exact scenario happened 2 weeks ago at the Caesar's Megastack in Vegas - AK has not been good to me lately. Back to the online grind for a few months.

So I'm driving down I-45 today from Dallas to Houston and decide to stop at McD's in Madisonville to try one of their new "Southern Style" chicken sandwiches. I snack on fries for a while and take a bite of the sandwich about 10 miles down the road. I didn't notice something was very wrong until the second bite, which I spit out. One full bite was swallowed. Salmonella and e-coli ftw.

I sent an e-mail to McD's with teh pics. I bet I get a free southern style chicken sandwich out of it.

I spent a day at Winstar casino this week and although it wasn't a terribly profitable trip I was really impressed by the poker room. First of all the poker room is absolutely huge and has a nice players' lounge for players to chill out while taking breaks or whatever, along with a grill and self service refreshment center. I have played live poker at a lot of places around the country but I must say the dealers at Winstar were among the best I have seen. They were extremely quick and accurate and seemed to do everything automatically. Combined with auto shufflers at the cash tables, the pace is pretty good.

I played $1/$2 NL for a few hours and hit a nice $600 pot when our table hit the "splash pot," where a randomly selected table gets $100 dropped into a hand. When the average stack is around $200, this obviously creates crazy play. Anyway I am UTG+1 and peel up A4o and jam my $180 stack in and get 3 callers. Only 2 of the callers showed, one with 44 and one with 45(???) so 44 is drawing dead when I flop an ace and collect the pot. I chip down to about $415 by the time the tournament starts, mainly with losing what I consider a cooler with a queen high flush where villian had an ace high flush. It could have been worse as villian didn't get full value from the hand.

The tournament is a $115 freezeout with a rapidly escalating blind structure typical of low buyin tourneys. You start with 3,000 chips at 25/50 and 20 minute levels. Around 80 played. I am pretty happy with my overall tournament play but got knocked out with a close decision. At the start of the third hour at 500/1000 I had 7500 chips in the big blind where shortstack for 2000 shoves, another shortstack for 2500 shoves, and SB reshoves, who covers. It's only 6500 for me to call for 20,000 so I need 32% equity in the pot. I look down at AQ and think for a minute before calling. Initial shortstack didn't show but first reshover had 55 and sb had KK. Damn. I don't suckout and am out. In the end I'm not sure about the call but at the time I felt I had a hand with 7.5 BB, 1BB already in the pot, and a lot of dead money. I havn't taken the time to crunch the numbers but I'm fairly sure this is a call 100% of the time.


Anyway, I finished up $100 for the day, which after my fuel driving up there left me with a whopping profit of $60.