VEGAS 2007 – Day One..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Toward the end of Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Las Vegas", he writes: "After five days in Vegas you feel like you've been here for five years".  Ain't that the truth.

I decided to drive to the airport and leave my car at Pearson.  Of course, I picked up a grande one raw sugar latte on the way…  (the reason you order the one raw sugar IN the latte (instead of adding it yourself) is because if you add it yourself after the drink is made, it creates a hole in the foam, and who wants a hole in their foam?  I strongly suggest that the next time you order yourself a grande latte, you make it a grande one raw sugar latte instead).  I got out of the car and placed the coffee on the roof while I grabbed my suitcase from the trunk.  As I was doing this, I heard the sickening sound of a 10% post-consumer recycled fiber Starbucks cup sliding off the roof of a 2004 Infiniti G35X.  All I could do was jump out of the way, as most of my grande one raw sugar latte spewed itself all over my car.

Bad beat number one: a coffee-covered car will be waiting for me when I return from Vegas.  Ouch.

I hooked up with my brother Jared inside the terminal, and we encountered a downtrodden Englishman.  Of course.  He explained to us that he was stranded at Pearson (how very "The Terminal") because he didn't have enough money to pay for a flight home.  Brightening slightly, he opened his wallet and said: "I do have all this purple money though!" showing us a few Canadian $10 bills, which wouldn't pay for a cab ride to Union Station much less a flight to London.

While waiting for our flight, Jared and I reviewed some of the casino info we'd printed out.  While reading about our host casino (The Orleans) we learned that you can smoke in the poker room between 3am and 9am only.  What a random rule… maybe they're trying to corner the market on low-limit poker-playing insomniac smokers.  Maybe it's working, who knows…  On the plane, I noticed that a guy in the next row was reading "Championship NL and PL HE".  He read it for the entire duration of the flight, and his lips never stopped moving.  The woman next to me asked if my brother and I were on our way to Vegas to go to the luggage show.  I told her that no, we weren't going to the luggage show, and then I politely asked if she was going all the way to Las Vegas to buy luggage.  She was.

The cab driver who took us from the airport in Vegas to the Orleans was the most casually racist person I've ever had the displeasure of meeting.  I won't repeat most of what he said, because it is offensive, but I do remember this priceless bit of conversation:

Him: You have a lot of Asians in Toronto, don't you.

Me: (with pride) Yes, Toronto is a very multicultural city.

Him: That sucks.

ANYWAY, we threw our stuff in our hotel room and headed to Caesar's to play in their $220 NLHE MTT.  We had some dinner there first, and played some blackjack.  We sat down at an empty table and were surprised to discover that the dealer was only using one deck.  We were also surprised to discover that blackjack paid only 6:5 instead of 3:2, and we were also surprised to discover that we couldn't double down on a split.  What kind of crazy city was this, with these terrible blackjack rules?  We were about to hop on a flight back to Toronto when the dealer said: "You guys are counting, right?"  Worried about having our kneecaps broken in a back room, we told him that we were definitely NOT counting cards.  He laughed and told us that we were supposed to be counting cards… that when a casino spreads single-deck blackjack they EXPECT the players to be counting cards, and that's why the rules are slightly different: to try and skew the edge back to the house.

We beat the game (+$200 for me) and quietly resolved never to play this terrifying variant of blackjack again.

Jared and I both made the final table at the Orleans (42 entrants, so no great feat) but neither of us made the money.  He went out 9^th, I went out 8^th, and they paid top 5 IIRC.  I don't have any notes on this tournament, although I do remember that my brother meant to raise my big blind after it was folded to him in LP.  He didn't do it correctly though… maybe it was a string raise or something, and maybe I was the one who pointed that out… so he had to just call instead, letting me see the flop for free, whereupon I hit two pair and checkraised him off his hand.  HA!

I also remember a couple of particularly bad losers in this tournament.  Hands that play themselves (ie: AA vs. QQ all-in preflop on relatively short stacks, QQ spikes a Q and rakes the pot) created much bitterness and open hostility.  I really couldn't believe it.

After the tournament, Jared went to the washroom and dropped his hat on the floor.  A guy in the washroom with him saw this happen, walked up to him, and pointed and went HAHAHAHAHAHA within a few inches of his face.  My brother came out of the washroom in shock, explaining that Vegas was just too weird and that we had to go home. 

Instead of going home, we walked to the Wynn.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: walking anywhere in Vegas takes a looooooooooong time.  The walk took forever.  Don't walk in Las Vegas.

I sat in a $30/$60 LHE game with Marcel Luske and took $630.  I recognized one other guy at the table from some televised tournament somewhere, and generally felt outclassed, so I left fairly quickly.  The dealer and I shared a moment when a player at the other end of the table (clearly a dick, and clearly on tilt) was telling a random MASSAGE THERAPIST a bad beat story: "So, I was 88% to win…"  The dealer looked at me and told me that was a first for him; he'd never seen a player tell a bad beat story to a masseuse before.  I briefly considered waving her over to tell her about the latte on my car in Toronto, but thought better of it.

(The dealer had it in for this guy anyway… the guy was giving him a hard time.  After taking a couple of bad beats, he told the dealer to deal him out until he was out of the box.  Now, maybe you believe in certain people bringing you bad luck, and maybe you don't, but when the cards are coming out of a shuffle machine in the table, it's pretty clear that your bad luck isn't the dealer's fault….)

Sidenote: I'm not staying at the Orleans anymore.  It used to be my favourite place to stay in Vegas, because it is cheap, and the rooms are spacious, and it's a short cab ride to the strip.  However, my bed smelled like ass.  Literally… it smelled like ass.  My brother picked the right bed I guess!  I was exhausted by the time I climbed into it and noticed the foul odour (which was definitely not coming from me; first of all, I don't really sweat that much or that often, and second, I know the smell of my own ass, and this wasn't it.  It was definitely someone else's), so I decided to suck it up and live with it.  By the next night the situation was remedied, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.  (Literally, haha…)  Also, we ran out of hot water on a regular basis.  Two consecutive showers in one room was apparently too much for the Orleans to handle.  Also, the TV remote control really really sucked, for reasons that I won't get into, but were definitely putting me on tilt on a nightly basis, and probably subtly influencing every decision I was making at the poker tables.

Day Two

1K NLHE event at the Wynn.  240 starters, paid 27.  I finished at around 60^th.  My notes tell me that I played well.  Apparently not well enough.

One bizarre hand: I raised preflop with JJ and got one caller.  The flop came 78T with two hearts.  I bet and was called.  The turn came the Jh, giving me a set but putting an easy straight and a possible flush out there.  I checked, and my opponent checked behind.  The river was an offsuit nine, putting a straight on the board.  I checked, my opponent bet a fairly large amount, and I called, hoping that we were both playing the board.  He announced straight, and I said "me too" flipping over my jacks.  The dealer looked at my cards and said: "That's not a straight".  I said that of course it's a straight, there's a straight on the board!  Then I looked at the board, and saw that the flop was 88T, not 78T.  I made the nut full house on the turn. 

While it is obvious that I could have gotten more out of this hand if I had read the board correctly (my opponent did in fact make a straight on the river… he was holding QT…) I was glad that I misread the board in such a way as to make myself believe that it made a straight, allowing for us to possibly chop the pot, which made me call on the river.  If I had misread the board in another way, I might have laid my "set" down.  OOOOOOOOOOOPS!!!!!!!

Also fairly early in the tournament, I raised with 44 after it was folded to me on the button.  Both blinds called.  The flop came 224.  Checked around.  The turn was a ten.  SB bet, BB folded, I raised, SB called.  River seven or something, SB checked, I bet, SB thought and thought and said "do you have ace ten?"  Finally he called, I showed my hand, and he mucked JJ face-up.  He then lectured me for a while about how I could have taken his entire stack on that hand.  I told him that yes, if I'd known he was that strong in the hand, I could have taken his entire stack, but I had no way of knowing that he was holding JJ.

Todd Witteles (DanDruff) was moved to my table.  We were at a final table together in 2005… WSOP event #4.  I asked him if he recognized me and he said that he did, and named the tournament.  I played two significant pots with him, and bluffed—or at least thought I was bluffing—in both of them.  In one, I had QJ and pretended that it was QT instead because QT would have combined with the board in a much nicer way, and got him to lay his hand down.  In the other, I raised preflop with A5 in MP and he called in the BB.  Flop came 567, check check.  Turn was a jack, he bet, I moved all-in, and he finally laid down whatever it was that he had.  I may have had the best hand here, but I wasn't looking for a call. 

In both cases, he made a big show out of laying down his hand… a bit of a drama queen, that Todd W., but if you saw him at that WSOP final table, you already knew that.

My bust-out hand: Folded to me on the button, I find K9s and raise.  The tight player in the BB calls (BIG stack).  Flop A9x, he bets out, I move in, and he calls with A9.  IGHN.  My thinking in this hand (if you could call it that): "he couldn't possibly have an ace… an ace would checkraise here given our stack sizes, not bet out.  My hand is good."  I guess that's what he thought I would think, and I guess I got spanked!  Good for him. 

Random celebrity sightings: Freddy Deeb at the Wynn, Antonio Esfandiari at the Bellagio.

I played the second chance tournament at the Wynn, and busted in the first level with QQ vs. AA after seeing a 7 high flop.  The stacks aren't deep enough in the 2^nd chance tourneys to be able to get away from this hand IMUO.  (In my unbiased opinion.)

Off I went to the Bellagio to play 30/60 LHE.  Where is my brother in all of this?  I have no idea.  I'm working from random notes scrawled on napkins here, and my brother is nowhere to be found today.  I think he was playing the daily tournament at the Orleans… anyway, the 30/60 LHE game at the Bellagio was filled with LOCALS.  They are all professionals, and they play against each other, and pass the money around.  Which begs the question: how do any of them actually make a living?  Well, every once in a while (but not as often as you might think, or as they might hope….) a tourist sits in the game.  On this night, that tourist was me, but unfortunately, I took $1200 out of their game.  Oops.

The young guy next to me was nice… probably the best LHE player I've played with.  I'm not basing that on this single session… I played against him quite a bit over the course of the week, and his reputation was pretty solid.  He was an online pro for a while, and then the new legislation in the US arrived, so he moved to Vegas. 

Random overheard quote of the day (from another table): "You've been playing with me all day, you know damn well I'm not good enough to fold this hand!".

By the time I left the Bellagio, I was quite drunk.  I thought I was going to go back to the Orleans, but I decided to have the cab driver take me to the Palms instead so I could check out the action.  The action sucked.  Poker is dying a slow and painful death at the Palms, and it ain't pretty. 

So, back to the Orleans for real this time.  I thought I was going to go to bed, but… they… have… blackjack…

Most of the tables at the Orleans are that crazy single-deck, shitty rules, but-we-expect-you-to-be-counting-cards type of blackjack that I'd already banned myself from.  The ubiquitousness (that's right, I said it) of these games leads me to believe that Las Vegas assumes the common man's ability to count cards in a single deck of blackjack is dogshit.  I would tend to agree with this assumption, especially as it pertains to me, and especially on that particular night.  I managed to find a seat open at a regular multi-deck table, and bought in for $400. 

There was an Asian guy at the table who spoke no English whatsoever, and who had absolutely no idea how to play blackjack.  I mean, he would hit on 17.  But nobody could explain the rules to him, and he wasn't going anywhere, so that was the situation.  He was playing a single spot at $5/hand, and I was playing 2 spots to his immediate left at $50 a pop, but this guy's crazy decisions were actually making me a lot of money… plus, the dealer said that she put me on being 24, which is great when you're 32, so I was having a good time. 

I had to leave though, because I heard the sound of live music coming from somewhere on the casino floor, and I'm a sucker for live music, especially when it exists in an environment like the Orleans at 2:00 on a weeknight.  What I found was even better than I could ever have expected: a dynamic, young, giving-it-their-all cover band playing a rockin' version of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" to an audience of eight comatose geriatric people sitting sparse and stone still in the darkness.  I laughed until tears were running down my cheeks and made a beeline for my room before my hysterics attracted any unwanted attention.  Just another normal night at the Orleans I guess, but to me, well, it felt like I was in another era, on another planet.