Thinking of Vegas

So as the summer draws closer, and with the few poker bloggers left who still have major poker media outlets to write for beginning to write about departing for the desert, my thoughts have continued to swirl about this year's World Series of Poker. And although I would never have thought this could happen, the shutdown of online poker in the U.S. actually has me re-thinking whether or not to even head out to Las Vegas this year.

It's weird because, just a few weeks ago, shortly after the April 15 online poker shutdowns in the U.S., I posted here about how Vegas was only a couple of months away, I couldn't wait, etc. But since then a few things have happened. My normal crew that has come out to Vegas with me each of the past few years is leaning towards a camping trip instead this summer, in Jackson Hole or some other appropriately well-known outdoor site where I, frankly, have zero desire to be, whether in the middle of June or any other time of the year. I work too hard every day all day to spend my leisure time pretending I am homeless and at one with nature. But rather than try to convince them to hit up Vegas this summer, I am fine with them not going, I've been to Vegas before by myself, and in a lot of ways a solo trip can provide the kind of focus and clarity of thought that only isolation can bring and which might actually be a benefit in a poker tournament context. It's kind of exciting to me, in fact, when I really sit and think about the possibilities. Plus, I know a lot of people who will be in town when I'm there, and it's not like I will really be "alone" in any event, right? Right.

But then I started thinking about the poker. And about how I would be looking to plunk down $1500 or $2000 on a no-limit holdem tournament, when I literally will not have played no-limit holdem even one time -- not even for play money, not even with my daughters on the family room floor -- in nearly three months. I have always maintained right here on the blog that being even a minimally-successful nlh tournament grinder requires excellent timing and impeccable reads, both of which are much more based on instincts, instincts that unfortunately can only really be developed and maintained through practice. I mean, sure we're all degenerate junkies here, but it's more than addiction that led me to play some form of mtt's most nights of the week when my game was on and I had the time to do so -- it's my survival instinct. Because I know I don't play anywhere approaching my best nlh tournament poker unless I'm out there on the (real or virtual) felt practicing it, living it, every single day. Sure I could take off a day here and a day there and see no retracement whatsoever in my skills -- I did that all the time -- but it would be sheer folly for me to even suggest that I could stop playing poker for 11 or 12 weeks heading up to the WSOP, and then just waltz in to the Amazon Room at the Rio, plunk down a couple large, and play my best.

Quite the opposite -- I would probably play terrible, in relative terms. Relative to my "A game", anwyays. And that's what is really giving me pause here as my expected trip to Vegas marches ever closer and closer, all without me still having any plane reservations, any room selected, anything at all really. Do I really want to fly 6 hours each way, waste my precious little vacation time away from Hammer Wife and my awesome young kids, just to do what essentially amounts to throwing away a couple grand? You won't find anyone with more confidence in their poker tournament abilities than I, but even I have to admit that me not having slung a chip or even seen a playing card in nearly three months is not going to be a good matchup for the skill of the players at the WSOP, this year moreso than in past years as I would expect far fewer donkeys with online poker now no longer possible for U.S. asshats to play.

So what's the thought here? Do I suck it up and head out to the desert anyways, maybe shorten my trip, just stay a night or two, and take a chance at the WSOP? And if my plan would just be to stick to the Venetian DSE and other tournaments with smaller buyins -- ones where I would have an equally small chance of success in, given this forced poker layoff -- then why not instead consider just a trip down to Atlantic City for the Borgata Summer Poker Open which is also in mid-June, and maybe a trip to Foxwoods for their big tournament series that run throughout the summer months? That would enable me to get some poker on, play for smaller buyins which is more befitting of my forced-poker-layoff self, but still to be with my family and not waste a lot of vacation time that I could otherwise be spending with the people I love the most. Throw in a family trip maybe later in the summer with that extra vacation time, and now it starts to become really tempting.

So what is a poker blogger to do?

Venetian Deep Stack Extravanganza -- Summer Schedule

I saw this on cmitch's blog, but the Venetian has finally released the schedule for this summer's much anticipated Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza. This tournament will always be near and dear to my heart, and frankly, although the Day 2's leave a lot to be desired in terms of room to play, thanks to a very favorable Day 1 structure the DSE represents a much better tournament bang for your buck than even most of the lower-buyin WSOP events available during June at the Rio.

Although I am waiting for some contingencies to work themselves out before picking my exact dates for my WSOP trip to Vegas this summer, as I have mentioned previously, the odds are very high that my trip will be somewhere between Saturday, June 11 and Monday, June 20, 2011, so I have naturally been focusing as well on which events the DSE will be running on those days. Well, I am happy to report, there are a great many of them, unsurprisingly, mostly all of them very attractive to me.

For starters, on both Saturday and Sunday, June 11-12, as well as on Thursday the 16th and again on Sunday the 19th, there is a $340 nlh tournament at the DSE on each day. Generally I would prefer a higher buyin event, but it is great to know that there is a favorably-structured tournament in no-limit holdem at my favorite poker room in all of Las Vegas on both days of that weekend as well as the middle of the next week, should I opt not to pursue multiple of the myriad $1000 and $1500 nlh events at the WSOP this year. These $340s are a great option for anyone who is out in the desert and yet who does not want to drop the 2k or more often required to play in that day's WSOP tournaments, but who is looking for a great structure and a great location to wile away the hours playing a no-limit holdem tournament, and I may very well be partaking in such offerings during my stay in Sin City in a few months.

Kicking the buyin level up a notch, on each of Wednesday, June 15 and Saturday, June 18, the Venetian is also hosting their standard larger-sized $550 buyin nlh tournaments, which is the buyin where I had my biggest ever poker tournament score a few years back. All things equal, I tend to prefer the events that are above the minimum DSE buyin of $340 for any of their deep stack events, as the $340s therefore will attract the lowest level of poker player, and as a rule I have had somewhat better success playing against that next-level-up opponent than I have at the cheapest buyin level. This is true both in my live play as well as online, where I have logged numerous big mtt scores, but very few of them at the $10 and $20 level, much more focused instead on the $50 to $200 buyin mark for the most part. There is also a $550 buyin PLO tournament in the afternoon on Wednesday, June 15, which is intriguing to me as PLO has always been one of my favorite poker games to play, especially in a tournament format. The only issue there is that it is a re-entry tournament, which means people who are already donking it up in a chase-happy game like PLO will likely be donking it up even more than usual, which can be frustrating unless I am truly willing to drop a couple of buyins getting chasemonkeyed all over the place for a couple of hours. Still, it's yet another nice option to have at the Venetian while the World Series runs on at the Rio.

But it is the higher buyin level still where most of my focus lies, as I look at the DSE schedule during the time I will likely be in Vegas to participate in this tournament series. For example, on Tuesday, June 14 is an interesting $1070 buyin nlh tournament, which frankly may be the perfect buyin level for what I am looking to play in while in the desert, and not one I have had the opportunity to play before at the Venetian. And meanwhile, on both Monday the 13th and Monday the 20th are fatty $1590 buyin tournaments, also no-limit holdem, which is also a buyin level I would give serious consideration to playing as I imagine the prize pools for those badboys could get pretty large depending on the number of players, which should be significant at this time of year. There is even a $2100 buyin tournament on Friday, June 17th, which is attractive for the reasons I stated above, but which I would probably not be as likely to play as I might opt to take a stab at the more prestigious WSOP if I'm going to be shelling out over 2k to run in a big nlh tournament while I am in town.

And make no mistake, this decision ultimately comes down to prestige, and not a whole lot else, at least not for me. Because, as you've probably seen written about in various other forums such that I don't need to rehash it here, there is no doubt that, all other things being equal, I would probably opt for the beauty and comfort of the Venetian over the Rio, and the more favorable buyins, and the more favorable tournament structures and game choices of the DSE over the WSOP every day of the week without much thought if it weren't for the prestige of the WSOP. In particular the tournament structures are not close between the two tournament series, as the lower-buyin WSOP events provide only three or four hours of what I would call solid, deep-stacked play before the tournaments basically turn into all-in preflop luckfests -- believe me, I've been there several times -- whereas the DSE will offer a full day of pretty great structured poker on Day 1, before they come back and ream like you it's a WSOP donkament on Day 2 to get things over with as quickly as possible. But it's that prestige -- that allure of the gold bracelet -- that keeps me considering playing once again in the World Series of Poker this year. I could chop up another five Venetian DSE events and it simply wouldn't mean as much as even final tabling at the WSOP. I mean, can you imagine, cashing in a televised WSOP tournament some year, and when they put up my picture on tv, it says underneath "This is Hoyazo's fifth WSOP cash and third WSOP final table"? Hah! A final table at the World Series of Poker is itself a resume builder that no one can ever take away from you and that everybody in the world of poker immediately knows to respect. And you win one gold bracelet, and your name is suddenly known all across the poker world, and you will forever be enshrined along with the names of all the greats of the game's history who have ever joined you in claiming one of those elusive gold bracelets. I mean, the last time I checked, nobody really cares that I've made a final table at the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza.

Well, nobody except my bankroll, that is.

Vegas Trips I've Taken

I saw a great meme on Terrence Chan's blog, where he tried to recall every trip he has ever taken to Las Vegas, and I thought I'd take it up myself and see how much I can really remember of all these trips. As I've written about here several times before, I actually started vacationing with my family in Las Vegas earlier than many others out there, frankly very shortly after they started building the place up anew in the early to mid 1990s. The first several trips I took out to Sin City were with my family, when I was still in college and would come home from school during one of those awesome long intra-semester breaks you only seem to get in life when you're a college student. So for the first several trips, it was my parents doing all of the planning and making all of the decisions as far as where we would stay, what we did, when we would go, etc. But for each Vegas trip, to the extent that I can, I will try to recall some kind of a detail about something that happened on that particular trip, in addition to roughly when it was, where I stayed, and who I was out there with.

1995 -- MGM, August, with my entire family. My first trip to Las Vegas was back when the MGM was still pretty new, and it was basically the shiat in Las Vegas. Bellagio? Not yet. Venetian? Nope. Paris? Still the Aladdin. Wynn? Not even close. Mandalay? Nope -- still just a big, empty space up at that corner of the Strip. I don't remember much of the details about this first trip, but I do remember that my entire family had an amazing time, ate some incredible meals, and I played about a million hours of blackjack. But most of all, I remember being moved by the incredible heat in the desert in August, and how funny I thought it was that the big resorts had those funny sprinkler-type of things in front of the buildings to help keep the patrons cool. And the pool at the MGM, still my favorite of all the pools in the big resorts on the Strip. I also remembering my parents taking us to see MGM's musical show EFX, back when Shawn Cassidy (yes, of "Partridge Family" fame) was still the star.

1996 -- Mirage, in August, again with my family. My next trip to Vegas wasn't until a year later, again with my family, as I was a poor law school student and not quite at the point where I would have had the funds to get out to Vegas on my own and still have any money left to play with. This time we tried out the Mirage -- also one of the "new" resorts in town at the time -- and really got to know the "other" end of the Strip. This, still long before the Venetian or even Bellagio were even a glimmer in some young real estate developer's eye. But Treasure Island was there. And I specifically remember this trip because it was the first time I ever saw Cirque de Soleil -- at Mirage, they showed Mystere for years before any other Cirque shows hit the Strip -- and I'll never forget those two incredible strong men, moving below and above each other super slowly, which to this day remains one of the most amazing feats of strength I can recall.

1997 -- MGM, July, again with my parents and brothers. Still in law school, still no money, still no going to Vegas unless my parents were chipping in on the costs. So we went out again as a family in 1997, this time in July, which for all intents and purposes is the same weather as August -- typically well over a hundred degrees, and usually not a cloud in the sky. This time, my parents got a rental car, and we drove off the strip somewhat for a few meals and to get to know the surrounding area. One thing I remember most about this trip was the first time I ever drove to (and through) Red Rock Canyon. Located less than ten miles from the Strip, it's really amazing what kind of nature you can go and see this close to the middle of the desert, but there are joshua trees galore, and all kinds of rocks and hills, mostly with a red tint (hence the name).

1998 -- MGM, April, with my family. This was kind of a graduation present of sorts for me, as I would be done with law school in just one short month, and I actually had some money for the first time due to a job I had worked during the year in my last year ever as a professional student. Being that it was April, we knew we might not get too much use out of the awesome pool at MGM, but by this time we were kind of old pros at the Vegas thing and spent as much time exploring the city as we did playing at the tables -- Bellagio was about to be finished, and work had already started on Mandalay Bay in the other direction down the Strip. More than anything else from this trip, I remember there was construction going on all over the city, it was really crazy. You couldn't look two feet to the right or left without seeing some half-constructed building, or at least a bulldozer or some other huge machinery sitting around to be used as part of some large-scale building project. I also remember this trip because, after my brother and I each went on nice winning streaks at the tables, we treated our entire family to the first of what has proven to be several helicopter rides to the Grand Canyon. For those of you who have never done this, I highly recommend it -- they know how to do it in style in Las Vegas. They pick you up in a limo right at your resort, whisk you straight to the tarmac at McCarron airport, and you get right into the helicopter there and off you go to one of the nation's finest national treasures.

1999 -- MGM, mid March. And so began my habit of flying out to Vegas sans parents. With me now working at a big law firm and flush with cash, and with my interest in craps and blackjack growing exponentially, I took my first sojourn to the desert with just my brother and a friend of ours, for the first week of March Madness. You really haven't experienced Vegas until you've spent those first four days of the NCAA basketball tournament in a major sportsbook, with all the other degens cheering loudly and basically going crazy over the outcome of every single game of the 48 that occur over that first weekend. Although I've never been back to Vegas for this particular week since that first time, I would not consider my Vegas experience to be complete if I had never been in town for these games.

1999 -- MGM, July, again with my brother and some friends. This is what came to be known during this and the next couple of years as one of my "standard" blackjack and craps trips, which really started to increase in variety once I began going to Vegas without my parents to keep an eye on me and my level of debauchery. My brother and I always did ok on the debauchery front even when my parents were around, but these "boys" trips really saw us step it up a notch or five, and we had an incredible amount of fun and generate copiuous memories to cherish as a result.

1999 -- Bellagio, November, with my brother and our friend, J. Our buddy J, the younger brother of a good friend of ours from Philadelphia, had two free rooms for the weekend at the still fairly new at the time Bellagio resort we had heard so much about, and we definitely want to see what all the hubbub was. We secured an adjoining-room suite for the three of us, and we played more blackjack in two days and three nights than I ever thought possible. After averaging more than 14 hours of blackjack a day for the entire weekend, we headed back to our daily lives, up some 10 grand between the three of us, while having barely slept a wink out in the desert.

2000 -- Harrah's, for Superbowl weekend in late January. This is another very memorable trip to Vegas, for some good and some not so good reasons. I went out with an old college buddy of mine who had never been to Las Vegas at the time even though he and I had probably spent about 5000 hours playing blackjack in Atlantic City and other venues since meeting half a decade earlier, and V and I had a great time. Four years later, this same friend V would be the one to get me into playing online poker on pokerstars, but for now it was me showing him the ropes and just generally going crazy and partying like what we were at the time -- young, rich kids with no children or family to worry about and more money than sense. This made for an incredible first night in the desert, until my friend suffered what can probably best be termed an "overdose", and very nearly died. Some day I'll tell that story here, if I haven't already before. It's a quality story, but at the time, especially given my own level of sobriety, it was without a doubt one of the most terrifying nights of my life. On a happier note, once the guy slept it off and was back (barely) on his feet the next day, we hung out with Charles Barkley in the Mandalay Bay sportsbook and won about 5 grand between us on the Superbowl, with my buddy correctly picking not only the final score of that amazing 23-16 Rams - Titans 2001 Superbowl but also the identity of the first player to score a touchdown in the game (Torry Holt, amazingly not until the 3rd quarter), both at pretty long odds for a nice score.

2000 -- Monte Carlo, April. This would be my first stay at the Monte Carlo, a reasonably new resort at the time that had gone up in the space between the Luxor and the Bellagio. We had a great suite, full or marble and many nice amenities, and on this trip not only had our friends J and J come again, but my parents and both brothers were there as well. This March 2000 trip will always be legendary in our minds because it included "The Roll" -- an 80-minutes-straight roll at the craps table, by me, where I devised for the first time the system I still basically practice when I play craps today -- take the pass line, with max odds, plus make a come bet on every single roll, and take the maximum odds on each inside come bet once they are on the board as well, plus the hard way bet for whatever the point is, when the point is even. It's been tweaked a few times since then of course, but ultimately, those of you who know craps can imagine how great that system worked on an 80-minute craps roll, replete with number after number after number even when I wasn't making one of my ten points during the roll. And the best part was, starting only about 15 minutes in when I'd already hit each number at least once and was bet up on everything on the table already, I began pressing my bets, inching my come bet up from $10 to $15, then $20, and so on -- of course taking max odds on each number when it hit as always. Long story short, 80 minutes, ten points and about a gillion numbers later, I was up to over $350 on the come bets, and 3-4-5 odds on the numbers, such that when I eventually sevened out, I walked away with about 8 grand, losing probably a good 3000 on the table in the process on that last roll of the dice. To this day it's the single greatest craps roll anyone in my family has ever been a part of, and it was nice because my entire family and friends on the trip were all there around the table, making money and just generally being able to participate in what may well have been a once-in-a-lifetime kind of run at the dice.

2000 -- July, New York New York, with my older brother and three college friends, for another standard blackjack and craps weekend trip. As the college guys were all big New Yorkers, we let them pick and decided to spend the weekend at NYNY, where my greatest memory is of us riding the roller coaster at least 25 times consecutively, cutting in line many of the times when we could.

2000 -- November, Monte Carlo again, this time all alone. I don't remember the details at this point, but I recall having received an incredible offer from Monte Carlo in the mail for a completely free suite for the weekend, and I had just recently broken up with a long-term girlfriend, I had a high-paying job but little time to enjoy that money, and on a whim I just decided to call up, book the first flight I could catch on Southwest out of Boston's Logan Airport, and just try to recapture the craps glory from earlier that year. Suffice it to say, I did not in fact recapture the craps glory of "The Roll", and I ended up solidly in the red for this trip, one of my worst ever setbacks for an entire gambling trip to Las Vegas or anywhere else for that matter.

2001 -- MGM, January, with my two brothers and my best friend from growing up in Philly. Ultimately, this was another of the "standard", by this time four-or-five-times yearly trips I was taking out to Vegas back in the 1999 - 2001 timeframe, and we were back at our "home base" at the MGM. Not only was this the trip when I learned how to play baccarrat for the first time, but my brother and I also got in wayyyy too deep at the roulette table, taking essentially a 1-to-1 bet on Red, and making it spin after spin after spin, losing each time but agreeing up front that we would double our bets on the next spin each time we lost, a method designed to ensure that we got back to break-even eventually even if we lost early. Suffice it to say that this of course turned out to be the longest streak of non-Red that anyone in that pit claimed to have ever seen on the roulette wheel, and by the time my brother and I finally hit a Red number to get back to break even and run out of there with our tails tucked between our legs, we had been through more gut-checks than you can shake a stick at, and had to each make separate runs to the ATM to get ourselves the cash to withstand this run of extreme variance. Let's just say there were some sweaty-ass palms going on in the Hoy family that night.

2002 -- Mandalay Bay -- Valentine's Day, with my wife. My wife and I decided on a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate our budding new love back in 2002, and we settled on the Mandalay for what would be the first and only time I would still at this particular resort. I got to show the woman who would eventually turn out to be Hammer Wife all around the city that had become like my second home over the preceding two years, with me going out there seemingly every other month or so for a good long while. I took her to see Mystere. We ate at Renoir, at 3750, and I even took her to the rotating restaurant atop the Stratosphere. I'll never forget getting drunk at dinner and then riding that freefall-style ride at the top of the Stratosphere right afterwards. But most of all, my wife got me really into playing these slot machines in one corner of the Mandalay casino called "Love to Win!" I'll never forget them because it was the first time I really started paying any attention to how much slot machines were not really like the slot machines of old anymore. "Love to Win" was basically a "Dating Game" of sorts, where, yeah you had to pull the handle and spin the reels, but ultimately you weren't trying to win money so much as just to figure out the right combination of look, car and behavior with a number of chicks to have the perfect date and ultimately get your character laid. It was amazing fun and Hammer Wife and I must have spent about 20 hours chasing these slots over our few days in the desert in what was a super fun trip back in 2002. Within less than a year of this trip, that lucky lady would officially become the Hammer Wife.

Late in 2002, some things happened in my personal life that greatly lessened my desire to go to Las Vegas, and my trips out to the desert took a bit of a breather after having become an every-couple-of-months thing in the years leading up to this point. My wife and I got married early in the year and took a big trip to the Caribbean and near South America, and later in the year we also took a super fun trip together to pre-Katrina New Orleans, gambooling it up at the Harrah's there amost every night in the process. But I did not get back out to Las Vegas again for over two years since that last trip with Hammer Wife in early 2002.

2004 -- June, with my older brother and our two friends J and J, this time staying at the Venetian for the first time in my life. I loved it there, as the Venetian continues to this day to be perhaps my favorite resort in town, and it was like old times as we blackjacked and crapsed it up for three straight days without hardly sleeping at all. The highlight of the trip was probably playing $100 blackjack with this nice guy and chatting him up for several hours at the table, only to find out later that he was none other than Dave Burba, formerly a pitcher for the Cincinatti Reds, who was just about done with his major league career after parts of 14 seasons in the majors. Burba was a super nice guy, seemed very down to earth, and although we never took him up on his offer, he gave us an email address and told us to let him know if we were ever in Toronto (where he was playing at the time) and he would get my brother and I tickets to one of his games. Having spent time at the roulette table previously in my day with Tiger Woods at Mandalay, and at the sportsbook with Barkley, this wasn't exactly a major celebrity sighting in Vegas terms, but it's always cool to shmooze with someone for a while and only later find out that they are actually a professional athlete.

2005 -- June, with my brother and our childhood friend with whom we had been in Vegas some 5 years earlier. Once again we stayed at the MGM, knowing we would want to be getting our pool on in the desert June air. The standout memory from this trip -- other than every last one of us getting our clocks cleaned at the tables for four straight days -- was playing craps for a good long time next an older guy with a long, gray ponytail who had about 300-400 thou on the table at all times. As amazing as it was to watch this guy slinging chips around the table with chips of colors I had never even seen before, the best part of the story had to be when he left "to go to the restroom", and he asked the craps dealers to just "play his system" with his chips while he was gone, since he did not want to miss out on any of the action while he was dropping trow. So, fast forward about 40 minutes later, and the guy returns from wherever he had gone, at which point the dealers simply slid over to him a pile of chips, explaining that these were his winnings on his system from while he was gone. His total take, while absent from the table? Over 800k. MBN. Also, interesting, this would be my first time sitting down in a poker room in all of Las Vegas, which I did at Caesar's one night as we found ourselves at the far end of the Strip during our travels. Chris Moneymaker had recently won the WSOP ME and started off the poker boom in full force, and I wanted to get back into the swing of things with poker after having grown up playing in the casinos of Atlantic City since I was a boy.

2006 -- April, at the Excalibur. This was not only my first time ever visiting one of the off-Strip casinos in many, many trips to Sin City, but also my first appearance in the World Series of Poker as well as my first WPBT trip. I had excitedly won a Bracelet Race on full tilt (remember those, way back when?), and I spent much of my time at the Rio hanging out in the full tilt and pokerstars hospitality suites, something which was done away with a year or two later when UIGEA went in effect and scared all the online poker sites from being directly associated with the WSOP and helping people win their seats through online poker satellites, and I must have left the desert with more online poker swag that first year than you would ever think possible. Unfortunately, I got donked out of my first WSOP tournament when then-reigning WSOP ME champion Joe Hachem got me allin on the turn with just his pair of 4s and a flush draw, but then hit his 20% shot at the river to dust me off early, far earlier than I had ever conceived of happening in my first WSOP experience. I also stayed at the Excalibur for the first and only time in my life, along with a number of other bloggers at my first WPBT gathering. The live WPBT tournament was at Caesar's in the private poker room, and back then when being a bunch of "poker bloggers" sounded a lot bigger and cooler than it does today, big poker stars Howard Lederer and Phil Gordon actually came to Caesars to talk to us live about the state of the game and their thoughts on the future of poker. Phil Gordon also gave out advance copies of his new book (the Little Blue Book, as I recall), and played a Roshambo tournamet with us (Veneno won, as I recall), and Jay Greenspan also spoke to us live about his new poker book about playing in poker games at venues all across the country as part of a cross-country poker trip. It was pretty awesome. I did very well in the live blogger tournament as well -- I won StB's bounty shirt which I still wear when I play poker in the evenings from time to time, and I busted author and former full tilt pro Michael Craig on the same hand, when we had a 3-way allin with StB's 99 vs my JJ vs Michael Craig's AA, and a Jack flopped. I'll never forget Michael Craig slamming his cards down so hard on the table, he was so furious about the suckout. F-Train eventually won the tournament, and I busted just short of the final table out of 130 runners, after getting no cards for hours after my big suckout with the pocket Jacks. This was also the weekend when I had my first awesome live blogger cash game experience -- sitting as I recall with Iakaris, Chad, Don, Blinders, Smokkee, Columbo, Alan Penner and Brian "StatikKling" for an entire night until the sun came up, where I got tightass Blinders to play the hammer by repeatedly attacking his manhood, we all abused the heck out of smokkee who was playing wayyyy too tight, and we managed to squeeze in tilting a few tourists who came by to fill our table's one empty seat off and on during the night. The highlight at that table, however, had to be me doing a live straddle and then finding KK UTG vs a brand new guy's 99, who eventually pushed allin on me on a TT6 flop for his full stack, a $400 pot that I felt I had to call with. I tipped the dealer a green chip for that deal, and she was still talking about it the next night when I saw her again at the MGM when I hit up the new poker room there for some late-night cash poker action.

2007 -- June, where I spent the first night myself before my WSOP event in the fatty giant suite at the Rio, and then the next three nights in a decadent three-room suite at the Bellagio. This would be my first trip to Las Vegas with my older brother once he had turned into a full-fledged millionaire -- let alone one with a sick degeneracy love for gambling to boot -- and it really changed things for these trips, compared to the way we used to live while in Vegas just ten years earlier as kids with no real money of our own to speak of. We were there with one other college friend of my brother's, and we had a great time as always, including of course my first (and only) WSOP cash, in the $2000 shorthanded nlh event. This was a $2000 buyin event, and it proved to feature the longest bubble in WSOP history -- literally almost exactly three hours of playing hand-for-hand as nobody wanted to bust and be the last guy left without a payout in the field of over 1300 runners. Mercifully, after three hours of super-slow and tense play, the bubble finally burst, and I had cashed in my first WSOP event. For some reason I remember pokerstars blogger Otis coming over and shaking my hand, and that's when I knew I had finally made it in the world of poker blogs.

2008 -- MGM, June, again with my brother and the same college friend from our 2007 trip. This time we had an awesomely spacious and modern full two-room suite at the MGM, with a bathroom that itself was about 400 square feet and a really incredible view of the Strip. I ran fairly deep in $1500 WSOP event I played that year, but I busted in around 150th place out of 1250 runners, with the tournament slated to pay 99 spots. The action just got so fast and furious as we neared the money, and I simply could not get enough going to stay ahead of the escalating blinds and antes. One table change sent me to a table full of almost all ginormous stacks, and eventually one of them snapped me off when I went for a desperately-needed late position steal, and I was out with nothing but a decent run to show for my efforts. Other than this WSOP run, I recall having a couple of nice sessions at the cash poker tables while out in the desert, but otherwise it was all about the decadence -- limos everywhere instead of cabs, the beginning of our now annual tradition of dinner at Prime in the Bellagio, plus I learned for the first time how to bet baseball games in the sportsbooks -- as stupid as that is.

2009 -- June, MGM. Back out to Vegas for a combination of my usual summer WSOP trip as well as my older brother's bachelor party. The MGM gave my brother one of the sickest rooms I've ever seen, just perfect for a place to have a kickass Vegas bachelor party in, with two large bedrooms on either end, each with its own 400-square-foot bathroom, and a massive living room space in the middle, probably the size of three regular MGM rooms. To this day it remains one of the largest single rooms I've ever seen in a hotel, anywhere in the world. Although fun times were had by all, I ended up missing out on most of the festivities on this trip, because I was busy doing a little thing I call winning 50 grand at the Venetian Deep Stack nlh tournament, as I detailed here on the blog. I ended up having to stay an extra day in the desert to pick up my check from the Venetian, and in the process I managed to win another 5k or so just trying my best to lose at craps and blackjack. Everything I touched turned to gold for the last two days of that trip, I'm sure the overall best run of gambling I have had over a 2-day period in my entire life.

2010 -- June, MGM once again. This time my annual summer WSOP trip would double as the bachelor party for my little brother. As I wrote at length about here last year, we stayed in the Skylofts at MGM, which is quite simply a whole different experience from staying in the regular hotel. It was like a massive, modern apartment overlooking the Strip from 30-foot-high floor-to-ceiling windows, with butler service to attend to your every need. Actually, my brother and his new wife stayed in the Skyloft, while I also managed to land a free suite in the same area of the building just a couple of floors below. Although my WSOP performance in 2010 was my worst since my first year -- busting after about 7 hours of play in one of the standard $1500 nlh events so common on today's WSOP schedule -- I did have a very profitable trip, finishing a winner in three separate cash poker sessions, winning the Aria daily tournament on my third afternoon in the desert, plus nabbing over 2k when Drosselmeyer and jockey Mike Smith won the Belmont Stakes, and another grand or so on the Flyers in their 5-3 victory in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals.


So there you have it. My sense is that I might have missed a trip or two in the 1999-2001 range, as my memory is of literally heading out to Vegas almost every other month for a few years there when I was a single guy working in a big law firm. But you get the idea. It's always a great stroll down memory lane when I sit back and really take the time to think back to what amounts to at least 20 trips I have taken out to the sands of Las Vegas over the past fifteen years. And it's a great way to get excited all over again for my 21st trip, which I am planning for mid-June of 2011. More on that as it gets closer and my plans firm up a bit, but you can expect me to be out in the desert once again in a few short months, making a run at that elusive gold bracelet while debauching it up like only a couple of nearly-40 fathers of three can for 3 or 4 days a year.

WSOP 2011 Schedule

As most of you probably know by now, this week Harrah's officially release the schedule of events for the 2011 World Series of Poker, to be held once again at the Rio Suites and Casino in Las Vegas, starting on May 31 of this year. We are up to 58 events in this series, as Harrah's just keeps chasing the extra rake at the expense of whittling away at the value of winning a World Series bracelet a little bit at a time, year after year after year, and once again we've got the one big buyin (25k) heads-up event in the earlygoing of this year's Series, we've got the 50k Poker Players Championship event near the end in early July, and peppered throughout once again are the regular bracelet events, and the "Championship" events, each of which sports a $10,000 buyin, including the well-known no-limit holdem Main Event that will start this year with Day 1A on Tuesday, July 7. Due to some time constraints, I am basically looking at mid to late June as the best time for me to be making my pilgrimage to the desert this coming summer, so I have highlighted in red those events below that I have some interest in playing as I look to plan this year's poker trip:

Tue, May 31st, 12:00 PM, 2-Day Event Event #1: Casino Employees NLH $500
Tue, May 31st, 5:00 PM, 4-Day Event Event #2: Heads Up NLH Championship(256 Max)
$25,000
Wed, Jun 1st, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #3: Omaha Hi-Low $1,500
Thu, Jun 2nd, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #4: NLH $5,000
Thu, Jun 2nd, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #5: Seven Card Stud $1,500
Fri, Jun 3rd, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #6: Limit Hold'em $1,500
Fri, Jun 3rd, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #7: PLH Championship $10,000
Sat, Jun 4th, 12:00 PM, 5-Day Event Event #8: NLH $1000 -- This event has 2 starting days. Day 1A on Saturday, June 4 and Day 1B on Sunday June 5, both at 12pm.
Sat, Jun 4th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #9: 2-7 NL Draw Lowball $1,500
Mon, Jun 6th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #10: NLH / 6max $1,500
Mon, Jun 6th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #11: Omaha Hi-Low Championship $10,000
Tue, Jun 7th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #12: Triple Chance NLH $1,500
Wed, Jun 8th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #13: NLH Shootout (2,000 Max) $1,500
Wed, Jun 8th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #14: Limit Hold'em $3,000
Thu, Jun 9th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #15: Pot Limit Hold'em $1,500
Thu, Jun 9th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #16: NL 2-7 Draw Lowball Championship
$10,000
Fri, Jun 10th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #17: H.O.R.S.E. $1,500
Sat, Jun 11th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #18: NLH $1,500
Sat, Jun 11th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #19: Limit Hold'em / 6max $2,500
Sun, Jun 12th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #20: NLH $1,000
Sun, Jun 12th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #21: Seven Card Stud Championship
$10,000
Mon, Jun 13th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #22: Pot-Limit Omaha $1,500
Mon, Jun 13th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #23: Eight Game Mix $2,500
Tue, Jun 14th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #24: NLH Shootout (2,000 Max) $5,000
Tue, Jun 14th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #25: Seven Card Stud Hi-Low $1,500
Wed, Jun 15th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #26: NLH / 6max $2,500
Wed, Jun 15th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #27: Limit Hold'em Championship $10,000
Thu, Jun 16th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #28: NLH $1,500
Thu, Jun 16th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #29: 10-Game Mix / 6max (NLH, Razz, Limit Hold'em, Badugi (Limit), Seven Card Stud, NL 2-7 Draw Lowball, Omaha Hi-Low Split, Pot-Limit Omaha, 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball (Limit), and Seven Card Stud Hi-Low) $2,500
Fri, Jun 17th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #30: Seniors (50 or older) NLH $1000
Fri, Jun 17th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #31: Pot-Limit Omaha $3,000
Sat, Jun 18th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #32: NLH $1,500
Sat, Jun 18th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #33: Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Championship $10,000
Sun, Jun 19th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #34: NLH $1,000
Mon, Jun 20th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #35: Pot-Limit Omaha / 6max $5,000
Tue, Jun 21st, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #36: NLH $2,500
Tue, Jun 21st, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #37: H.O.R.S.E. Championship $10,000
Wed, Jun 22nd, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #38: NLH $1,500
Wed, Jun 22nd 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #39: Pot-Limit Hold'em/Omaha $2,500
Thu, Jun 23rd, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #40: NLH / 6max $5,000
Fri, Jun 24th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #41: Limit Hold’em Shootout $1,500
Fri, Jun 24th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #42: PLO Championship $10,000
Sat, Jun 25th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #43: NLH $1,500
Sat, Jun 25th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #44: Seven Card Razz $2,500
Sun, Jun 26th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #45: NLH $1,000
Mon, Jun 27th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #46: NLH / 6max Championship $10,000
Mon, Jun 27th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #47: Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi-Low $2,500
Tue, Jun 28th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #48: NLH $1,500
Tue, Jun 28th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #49: 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball (Limit)
$2,500
Wed, Jun 29th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #50: Triple Chance NLH $5,000
Thu, Jun 30th, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #51: Pot Limit Omaha Hi-low Split-8 or Better $1,500
Thu, Jun 30th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #52: Mixed Hold'em (Limit/No-Limit)
$2,500
Fri, Jul 1st, 12:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #53: Ladies NLH $1,000
Sat, Jul 2nd, 12:00 PM, 5-Day Event Event #54: NLH $1000 -- This event has 2 starting days. Day 1A on Saturday, July 2 and Day 1B on Sunday July 3, both at 12pm.
Sat, Jul 2nd, 5:00 PM, 5-Day Event Event #55: The Poker Player's Championship (Limit Hold'em, Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better, Seven Card Razz , Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better, NLH, Pot-Limit Omaha, 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball) $50,000
Tue, Jul 5th, 12:00 PM ,3-Day Event Event #56: NLH $1,500
Tue, Jul 5th, 5:00 PM, 3-Day Event Event #57: Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-low $5,000
Thu, Jul 7th, 12:00 PM, 13-Day Event Event #58: NLH Main Event $10,000

So preliminarily it seems like I am looking at a trip out to Vegas sometime between Thursday, June 16 and Sunday June 26 -- which could mean I would need to stay out for another couple of days if all goes perfectly. Based on past experience, I would probably end up being out in the desert for somewhere around half of that window -- four or five days, with the possibility of tacking on an extra day or two at the end if necessary. Now, for the past two years, I have ended up playing just the one WSOP event (two years ago, no WSOP event actually -- long story), and then at least one other tournament elsewhere in town among the many tournament series that now proliferate while the donkey masses swarm into town for the WSOP. The Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza looks like it does not have its summer schedule posted yet, but suffice it to say that I am confident based on past experience that they will have more than enough appropriately-sized buyin nlh events on hand while I am there to make that a realistic option.

For some reason, that Event #34, the Sunday 1k buyin nlh tournament looks like a good option to me -- it is right in the middle of my window, it's a cheap buyin and yet will only give me barely a worse chance than in the $1500 buyin tournaments to get lucky early and make a little run. And the best 1-2 combination of events on successive days is that Saturday and Sunday, June 18-19, with the $1500 nlh event on Saturday at noon, and then the 1k I mentioned above scheduled for Sunday. Both are three day events, and for a total of $2500 I could play if I so choose in two WSOP events for the minimal amount possible on consecutive days. But as I mentioned above, with the Venetian DSE -- a tournament series that will always have a soft spot in my heart for obvious reasons -- as well as various other casinos' tournament series likely in full swing that entire time I am looking at above, playing one WSOP event that I really like is probably just as good as aiming for that one period when I can spend more money than I otherwise would just to buy in to two separate WSOP tournaments.

Anybody else out there reading this planning on being out in Vegas between June 16 and June 25? As always I would love to meet up with readers and especially fellow WSOP participants who read this corner of the Internets.

WSOP 2011

With the WPBT winter gathering now come and gone, it's time for me to start focusing on my own annual poker trip out to the desert, to play in the WSOP and to live it up in sin city for a few days. After recording my biggest ever poker tournament score of just a hair over 50 grand back in 2009, and then following that up with a win of around 8 or 9 grand in 2010 on a mixture of poker tournaments, cash games, sports betting and even some horses thrown in for good measure, it seems like a return to the sands of Las Vegas in the summer of 2011 is all but assured. The WSOP claims to have released the schedule for the 2011 WSOP this week, but in reality they have only so far announced the start date (May 31, 2011) and stop date (the WSOP Main Event will run from July 7 through July 19 when the final table will be determined), and the location, which will be slightly off-strip at the Rio for the seventh consecutive year despite rumblings that Harrah's might be readying for a move back onto the strip to one of its other Harrah's / Caesar's properties. The full list of the actual WSOP events for 2011 is slated for release some time in January.

Once again I have no plans to play in the Main Event itself, due to constraints of timing but also the buyin, as I've played more than enough poker tournaments in my day to know that I don't want to plunk down 10 grand on something as fickle and luck-based as any poker tournament. Probably someday I will take a crack at the Main Event, but frankly it's just not something I have any desire to do these days, and I'm not sure I ever have really. But I definitely would like to make my annual appearance in the Amazon room at the Rio and sit down for one of the preliminary events, most likely no-limit holdem but there are always options on that front. I feel competent enough to play most of the games spread at the WSOP, be it no-limit holdem, pot-limit Omaha or pot-limit O8, any of the shootouts, or heads-up tournaments. Just about the only games I would not really consider playing in the World Series are limit holdem -- I was once a pretty solid limit tournament play but I long since decided that no-limit was more the game for a guy of my temperament and skill set -- as well as 2-7 lowball (no real experience playing this), Razz (I'm not an effing clown with a rainbow wig and a squishy red nose) and any limit Omaha game (again, not a clown). But this leaves most of the preliminary events as options, and although in general I tend to prefer the lower-buyin $1500 events where possible, I am fortunate to have the financial freedom to be flexible with the buyin, easily willing to play a 2k or $2500 buyin tournament if that is what works best, schedule-wise.

So, I'll know more once the official WSOP schedule is released next month (next year!), but suffice it to say that I do plan to make my annual trek again next summer, and I do not expect much resistance from Hammer Wife as I have not had for the past few years. I live in a beautiful new home that was purchased more or less with poker winnings, my wife drives a beautiful new car which is paid for monthly out of poker winnings, and things like that tend to go a long way towards easing the tension about me taking a week off in the sun to party like a rock star and try to win some money while I'm at it. Ultimately, my annual trip to Vegas isn't even about the money though -- it's really about me having a hobby that I love to do but never really get to do in a live setting other than at most three or four nights a year in Atlantic Shitty. So taking my week in the desert each summer has become kind of an anthem for me, my chance to do what I love to do in far and away the best setting in the world to do it, to get a break from a job that I work at probably harder, longer and with more dedication than anybody I know, and most of all, my chance to remember and delight in my (dwindling) youth for a few short days on a somewhat regular basis.

I can already taste that hot, arid air as I emerge from the baggage claim area and into the taxi line at McCarron airport. Is it summer yet?

NFL Midseason Update

Ugh. This week has been a new low for my level of busy-ness and franticness at my job. And speaking of that, I want to extend a special thank-you to the biatch downstairs who was first assigned this horrifying deal that has utterly and completely ruined the last five days of my life, for waiting until the weekend and then responding that she was "too busy" to take on such a short-term assignment with such urgency and such difficult clients. Because of course, me and my five or six times as many deals as her, I was of course less busy than she was to take this monstrosity on, right? Whore. It's unbelievable, really. Anyways, some biatch on the 23rd floor is too lazy to do her effing job, and as a result you don't get any posts for several days. Funny how the chain reaction of things happens.

Anyways, here's the post I tried to start writing over this past weekend, and only now have had the chance to finish.

With every team in the league now having played at least eight games (and four teams having played nine games), here we are officially past the midpoint of the 2010 NFL season, and I thought I would take my usual halfway-point look back at my preseason predictions for the NFL teams. Back in early September, for the first time I made over-under predictions based on the Vegas lines for each of the teams in the NFL, and now I want to look back and see how those predictions are going so far in what is, by far, the most difficult of the major sports to make meaningful predictions in, be it preseason, or even week to week in the individual games. So here are my September predictions for each team in the NFL, along with a short commentary on how close or far off I am looking so far:

Arizona Cardinals: Under 7.5 wins. At 3-5, Arizona is worse than I even thought they would be, and they should end up under here. The quarterback situation in 'Zona following Kurt Warner's retirement has left this team with a total void at qb, and they're going to have a lot of trouble winning most of the games left on their schedule.

Atlanta Falcons: Over 9 wins. Right now Atlanta is one of the six teams in the NFL with just two losses, and at 6-2, nine wins sounds like an easy Over for probably the best team in the NFC so far through the halfway point of the season.

Baltimore Ravens: Over 10 wins. It is really hard to take the Over with a number like 10 wins, but taking the Over I did, and the Ravens are another of the small handful of teams with two losses who are looking like they might be the best team in all of football. As long as the team goes over .500 in their final 8 games, they will best the 10-win line for 2010 and be poised to make a deep run in the AFC postseason.

Buffalo Bills: Under 5.5 wins. Going under 5 wins for any team in the NFL can be tough, but the Bills are the league's last winless team in 2010 and have virtually no chance of reaching this number in 2010.

Carolina Panthers: Under 7.5 wins. This is another winner, as Carolina would need to go 7-1 to end the season (with no quarterback whatsoever to speak of, at that) after their 1-7 start. I love the coach, but John Fox will be moving on after season's end to bigger and better pastures as the Panthers will easily finish Under their number this season.

Chicago Bears: Under 8 wins. At 5-3 right now, the Bears are technically on pace to finish over .500 on the season, thanks largely to a surprise 3-0 start. However, if you've been watching the games this season, most people would probably consider this one to be a bit of a crapshoot by season's end, as the Bears have played pretty horrible football for the better part of a month here now, and I would expect a finish right around .500 as the most likely outcome by the end of the year, but right now this one goes down as a loss for my pick.

Cincinnati Bengals: Under 7.5 wins. This was one of my outlier picks in the preseason given all the hype surrounding this Bengals team heading into 2010 after they won the division last year for the first time in years. But here we are at the halfway point, and despite a surprisingly strong output from big baby Terrell Owens, the Bengals are 2-6, alone in last place in the AFC North, and they're highly unlikely to make it back to .500 on the season.

Cleveland Browns: Under 5.5 wins. Here's a team that has surprised pretty much everybody by not playing nearly as horribly as they were expected to play. The team is currently at 3-5 through 8 games, but my guess is that they will come in just over their number by season's end, making this pick another likely loser for me on the year.

Dallas Cowboys: Over 9.5 wins. Boy did I screw this one up. The 'Boys are currently 1-7, the head coach has been fired, and the team that I pegged as the easy winner of the NFC East and probably the NFC's best team is instead making a serious run for the conference's worst. Even if they somehow ran the table with Jon Kitna at quarterback in the second half, they still couldn't come close to the over here, and this team will be my biggest miss in the preseason pretty much no matter what happens with any team in the rest of the season.

Denver Broncos: Under 7.5 wins. A lot of people questioned this pick before the season began, but so far in 2010 we have seen exactly how Josh McDaniel's hubris has harmed his team's chances to play well this year. At 2-6, Denver sits alone in the basement in one of the worst divisions in football, and the scoring differential of -69 points also places the Broncos among the three or four worst teams in the league.

Detroit Lions: Over 5 wins. Here I made a "heart" pick in going over despite not really knowing where 6 wins would come from on this team's schedule, and after starting off 2-6 in the first half, and especially after watching the team's utterly inept coaching in last week's game against the Jets, they're just not going to make it in 2010. Long live the worst streak for the NFL's worst overall franchise.

Green Bay Packers: Over 9.5 wins. The Pack is 6-3 through 9 games this season, putting them on pace for 11-12 wins on the season. Even though I think most people would agree that this team in practice has underperformed many people's expectations on the season, the Over is still looking good at this point, due in no small part to a very, very weak NFC in 2010.

Houston Texans: Over 8 wins. Right now the Texans are sitting at 4-4 at the halfway point of their season, putting them right on pace to hit their number for the year if all stays as planned. The Texans have been a bit on the inconsistent side for my tastes so far in 2010, but looking at their schedule there's no reason not to believe they can muster another .500 performance in their final eight games of the year.

Indianapolis Colts: Over 11 wins. Indy is 5-3 through eight games, and it looks like a stretch for them to string together another 12-win season, so this one is most likely going to be a loss for my preseason prediction, despite the Colts quietly putting together yet another solid season under the watchful eye of quarterback Peyton Manning.

Jacksonville Jaguars: Under 7 wins. The Jags have been a bit of a pleasant surprise for a lot of NFL viewers out there, sitting at .500 here at the halfway point. Even though this is not a particularly strong team, the odds are clear that they will find a way to win three of their last eight games and manage to make the Over, giving me another wrong preseason prediction.

Kansas City Chiefs: Under 6.5 wins. Booom here's another one I really fucked up, along with the rest of the free world. I picked the Chiefs to finish with 6 or fewer wins on the year, and here at the midpoint they have already amassed 5 wins and amazingly sit in first place in the AFC West. As I told you here after Week 2 of the NFL season, there is no reason at this point that this team cannot outright win the division thanks to their horrible competition and their last-place schedule.

Miami Dolphins: Under 8.5 wins. I went off in the preseason about how much I like Tony Sparano and what this Dolphins franchise has done with seemingly very little to work with over the past couple of years, and they have not disappointed in posting some big wins already en route to a 4-4 record at the midpoint. Still, that keeps the team on pace for an 8-win season and an Under, and with the Jets and Cheatriots looking strong once again, it is difficult to imagine the team going 5-3 down the stretch.

Minnesota Vikings: Over 9.5 wins. Here I didn't just pick an Over, I picked an "easy Over" in the preseason, adding to the list of teams I simply utterly flubbed in making my preseason predictions. Although the team is coming on a bit of late and is currently 3-1 at home through 8 games, the team is 3-5 and would need to totally turn things around and run off a 7-1 record in the second half to threaten their number. It's not gonna happen.

New England Cheatriots: Over 9.5 wins. With a healthy Tom Brady and with Bill Bellicheat at the helm, the Cheatriots are an easy Over any time they're predicted to produce single-digit wins. Right now the team sits at 6-2 through eight games, and until last week's drubbing by the Browns were considered by most to be the NFL's best team in 2010.

New Orleans Saints: Over 10.5 wins. Even though the Saints have generally underperformed compared to most people's expectations through the first half of the 2010 NFL season, the team still sits at 6-3 after Week 10, putting it on pace for 11 wins and still barely an Over, for now. How well the defending champs play in the second half seems still fairly up in the air, but for now a win is a win.

New York Giants: Under 8.5 wins. Man did I eff up my predictions for the NFC East this year, which is especially interesting since this is my own hometown division since birth. Although I was very dubious about the Giants in a division with an improved Dallas and Redskins squad, in the end the team has already piled up 6 wins in the first half of the season, and it is very hard to imagine the team not winning another 3 of their final 8, so this one is going to end as an Over.

New York Jets: Under 9.5 wins. Although after just a few weeks into the 2010 season it was very obvious that the Jets were for real, I did not believe in the Jets heading into the season and as a result this is going to be another loss for me. At 6-2, the Jets are among the six NFL teams with six wins at the halfway point, and even though the team has not been playing well lately, again it is a virtual lock that Rex Ryan's squad will amass at least 10 wins for the Over by season's end.

Oakland Raiders: Under 6 wins. At 5-4 through their first 9 games, the Raiders are off to their best start in several years, and the team will make their Vegas number with their next win. This is another one that I just did not see coming by a long shot.

Philadelphia Eagles: Under 8.5 wins. Another NFC East team, another miss for my preseason 2010 predictions. Of course nobody in America could foresee the incredible story of Mike Vick and how well the guy has played so far through the first half of the season, but in at the halfway point, the Eagles are 5-3 and should manage to best their number by at least a game or two.

Pittsburgh Steelers: Over 9 wins. Even with quarterback Ben Roethlisberger missing the first four games of the season, the Steelers have posted an impressive 6-2 record to start the 2010 campaign. With potentially the best team in the NFL working now that Ben Roth has returned, Over 9 wins seems like a virtual certainty for the 2008 superbowl champions.

San Diego Chargers: Under 11 wins. Here is one surprise team that I actually predicted correctly in the preseason, although I certainly did not foresee how underwhelming Norv Turner's team would play in likely his final season in San Diego. At 4-5 through 9 games, the Chargers would have to rattle off seven straight wins to make their number, and that simply isn't going to happen despite Phillip Rivers continuing to kill it at quarterback out in the AFC West.

San Francisco 49ers: Under 8.5 wins. Here's another surprise team that I correctly predicted few months ago, although again I can't take credit for knowing just how much of a goddam idiot head coach Mike Singletary is. Ever since he incorrectly read the score as 20-14 when it was actually 24-10 in the 49ers' Week 5 game, the 9ers' 2-6 start has been no kind of a surprise, and that kind of a raging moron has no shot of leading his team to another 7 wins this year in what has got to be his final year in San Fran.

Seattle Seahawks: Under 7.5 wins. So far this is technically a loss for my pick with the Seahawks sitting at 4-4 through 8 games, but even though the NFC West is incredibly weak, I would still guess this team will end the season below the .500 mark, especially after this past weekend's utter and complete embarrassment and manhandling at the hands of the Giants in Seattle.

St. Louis Rams: Under 5 wins. At 4-4 at the midpoint, the Rams are one of the happiest stories in the NFL in 2010. I'm obviously going to lose this pick as soon as the first-place Rams win their next game, but I'm more than happy to take this loss in honor of Steve Spagnuolo, Sam Bradford et al who have seriously turned things around in St. Louis after a couple of years near the bottom of the heap in the NFL.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Under 5.5 wins. I owe Rahim Morris an apology for calling him the single worst coach in the NFL during my preseason picks. Morris has led his team to a 5-3 record in the first half of the 2010 season, and he's easily getting his team to an Over in 2010.

Tennessee Titans: Over 8.5 wins. Although they've been a bit inconsistent for my tastes so far in the first half, the Titans are off to a 5-3 start in their first eight games in 2010. Unless the addition last week of Randy Moss eats this team away from the inside, they should reach 9 wins and make the Over before season's end.

Washington Redskins: Under 7.5 wins. The Skins currently sit at 4-4 after 8 games, but something tells me that this is going to end the year as an Under and a winner for my preseason prediction. With Donovan McNabb physically breaking down and flirting with benchings weekly by new head coach Mike Shanahan, this is gonna be a close one but we'll see if the Skins have enough to play the second half of the season at .500 like they have so far in the first. Hopefully a loss to the Eagles next Monday night would basically ice the Under in my book for Daniel Snyder's weakass franchise.


So, here I sit at the halfway point, basically with 15 winners and 15 losers so far through the midpoint of the season. Even though that is clearly not the kind of success I am looking for with any of my sports predictions, in the NFL of all leagues, I'll take it. I mean, in all seriousness, I cannot name a single person in the world of which I am aware who I would say is doing a good job making picks of the NFL games on the season when using the Vegas spreads. As I mentioned above, the NFL is just such a crazy league, there is just so much mediocrity and parity, and the system is just so set up to make the bad teams good the next year, and the good teams bad, that going .500 with preseason predictions is not as bad as I would view that in a league like baseball where there really is much more information available from previous seasons about how good a team is going to play the next year, and what kinds of numbers individual players are going to put up. I'm 15-15 with my predictions, and I believe I am a game under .500 in my individual game picks against the spread so far through nine weeks. I hope to improve upon both of these stats over the second half of what is shaping up to be another awesome NFL season.

Las Vegas 2010: Parting Thoughts

As usual, I had an amazing time in my annual visit to the desert, and for the second straight year, quite a profitable one as well. As someone who has made numerous Vegas runs over the past couple of decades, I am well versed in the different types of visits one can have, gambling-wise. Sometimes you come out of the gates and you kill the casino on the first day, and then you spend the rest of the trip playing with the house's money, win or lose. Those trips are always fun, mostly because there's just no stress factor since you never really have to consider risking much or any of your own money over the entire visit. Unfortunately, such trips are also very rare, as it is exceedingly difficult to come out and win money for the entire trip in just your first session or two.

Another type of Vegas trip just sees you slowly bleed away your bankroll more or less from start-to-finish, and sadly these tend to be probably the most common type of Vegas visit, in particular since all of the games on the casino floor (other than poker, really) are mathematically designed to have a negative expectation for the player. Maybe you don't lose everything you were willing to lose when you came out there, or alternatively maybe you end up going into your wallet or your bank account a time or two more than you had intended, but in the end, you bleed it away little by little, maybe have some fun doing it and maybe with some decent positive runs built in along the way, but there have been plenty of Vegas runs in my day that work just like this, and in the end it's still entirely possible to have a great time even if you're losing I find, as long as it's not a total blowout right off the bat that sees you lose way more than you wanted to be willing to when you started out.

What I had on this visit was the third kind of trip, where I started off unable to get out of my own way, doing absolutely nothing but losing for not just one but two full days in all of my gambling pursuits in Las Vegas. I lost a big buyin ($1500) in the World Series, and didn't play particularly well in so doing. I lost at cash poker as well on Wednesday. I lost more cash on Thursday, plus my $340 buyin to the Venetian Deep Stack although at least I managed to play pretty well in that one. I even lost some small sports bets throughout those first couple of days, and the bottom line is that, while I can certainly afford the money and in fact brought it out to Vegas in cash, fully prepared to lose it, I was pretty much disgusted after two full days in the desert at just how much money I had managed to lose with very little to show for it in real terms. I was down easily over $2000 as I went to bed on Thursday night, and more than that, as I mentioned above, I had that nasty feeling that I can only get when I simply do nothing but lose at every single thing I touched for two full days. It's a horrible feeling, and I'd be lying if I said that the thought never entered my mind that I should just pack away the rest of my cash and not gamble on anything else for the rest of the trip.

And oh what a mistake that would've been! As someone who's spent 4 or 5 days or more at a time at gambling resorts like a hundred times in my day, I can't count the number of times my trip has gone like this, where I just lose and lose and lose some more for several sessions, maybe spanning several days, and then at some point, it's like a switch is flipped and suddenly everything is all rosy. On Friday I had that big session at 2-5 nl at the Bellagio, a very nice set of wins on the Flyers in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals -- the only game in the series, it turns out, where the Flyers actually played especially well and failed to give up a single soft goal -- and by the time I got back to the cash tables at the Pavillion in the Rio that night, my entire psyche was totally changed from how it had been just that morning. I was happy, I was feeling lucky, and I was generally psyched to get back out there and play, feeling very confident that I would leave that session a winner. And I did, to the tune of another full buyin on my way to basically erasing all of my losses from the first two days. Throw in Saturday's big win at Aria plus some good coin from the Belmont Stakes, and it's just amazing to think that I actually considered not gambling much anymore after Thursday night because it just didn't feel like I could win anything. So there is a lesson buried in there somewhere, though I am struggling a little bit to express exactly what that lesson is. I guess it's that, when you're playing games that are largely based on luck, it is incredibly easy to run bad for a while and then to run good for another while over a different period of time. Sometimes you're gonna go out to Vegas and get nothing but creamed for 4 days straight and go home a big loser (I've had plenty of trips like that, as I assume most of you have), but hey the next time you're out there you might pretty much win start to finish, and in my mind it's all one big, long session. I think it would have been the wrong response for me to stop playing once I was down after a couple of days, of course because I still had some money to lose, but also because to do that denies me the chance of going on a good run, which especially when it comes to games like poker and sports betting, is entirely possible in particular if I can find some smart spots to get my money in ahead.

One thing I should mention as a lasting impression from this trip is how incredibly slow Las Vegas is right now. Now I know it's hot as hell and summertime is generally the city's slowest time of the year, but to be perfectly honest I've been out there now what, four straight years in the midst of the desert heat? So I can make worthwhile comparisons at least about the level of busy-ness around this time of year over the past four years. And my comparison is that this time was -- by far -- the slowest Vegas has been in the last four years of my visiting in the summertime. I was at the Rio on Tuesday night, where the WSOP itself is held, and even there I was shocked at how totally slow the main casino was, how much availability they had in rooms, how empty the pool seemed, etc. Now you might think this relates only to the Rio due to their less-than-preferable off-the-Strip location, but keep in mind I switched to the MGM starting on Wednesday night, where I stayed for the next four days or so. And even though the MGM is one of the older of the new casinos on the Strip, I spent most of Thursday hanging at the Venetian, and I spent a good deal of time last week at the Bellagio as well as Aria. So I definitely got around, both in terms of geography and in terms of the different "classes" of resort in Las Vegas, and I'm here to tell you: that place is slow right now. None of my party had to wait for a wide open spot at $10 craps or $10 or $15 blackjack the entire week long -- even on Saturday night, for that matter -- and I didn't wait on any list to get a seat at the cash tables in a single poker room in the city, including two visits to the Bellagio's room which as recently as last summer would have between 30 and 50 people on the waiting list at all times. No, business in Vegas in general is just as slow as it's been in years, and you could see it everywhere you looked. Shorter lines to play the table games, more free slot machines, shorter waiting lists in the poker rooms, attendance at the WSOP is down, way fewer slutty chicks walking around looking like ho's on Friday and Saturday night, easier to get reservations at your preferred times in the best restaurants in the city, I could go on and on.

I usually take a paragraph after my trip to review some of the most luxurious or cool things we were offered while out in Vegas, and I imagine that this, too, is directly related to the dearth of big players out at the MGM properties during the time of our stay, but I think in general I already covered this one pretty well in my previous posts this week. Between the Skyloft itself, and the service associated with it, and the rooms that the rest of us were given (nice plus-sized suites just a few floors down from the Skyloft), it was already pretty much worth our while to be there. Throw in the limo rides and the Maybachs, even for travel from one location in Las Vegas to the next (neither of them being the MGM), and then of course there was that incredible dinner on Friday night in the Skyloft room featuring anything and everything that the MGM had to offer. And the best part was -- not sure if I expressly mentioned this already or not -- it was all free. All of it. As in, at the end of the trip, they literally took all four rooms charges off the bill -- including mini-bar charges, wifi internet charges, etc. -- as well as every single meal (breakfast, lunch and dinner) we ate on any MGM property. This included breakfast every day at the MGM or Bellagio buffets, it included a couple of lunches or late-night meals at Studio Cafe in the MGM, and it also included dinners at Prime (in Bellagio), Fiamma (in the MGM), and Japonais (in the Mirage), although I missed a couple of those due to playing in other poker tournaments at the time. And the big dinner on Friday in the MGM Skyloft? Also totally free of charge. In fact, the only thing the MGM asked any of us to pay for were a couples massage that one of the couples with us went and got on the second day of our stay -- and frankly, if those two had actually gambled any reasonable amount (they did not, really), that would have been removed too I am quite sure, as I have definitely been comped a massage or two in my day. Of course some of us lost money on the gambling while we were out there, but as far as expenses go, we lived it up in rich style for several days and didn't have to pay a dime for it. You just can't beat that when it comes to affording a luxurious type of vacation.

What do I regret not doing this trip? Not much. I played as much poker as I could handle during my four days in the desert, and although I would have liked in theory to play that second WSOP event on Friday, when push came to shove and I had the time and the money to go and register, I opted not to because I felt simply tournament'ed out after the previous two days' attempts over some 16 hours of tournament play at both the Rio and the Venetian. So I don't regret that. I had wanted to get out to see the Pawn Stars shop, so I was glad to get that taken off the list, disappointing though that visit was. I feel no need to do the helicopter thing to the Grand Canyon, having done it now three times before -- including just last year -- so that's not something I even thought of this time around, and I got my annual dinner at Prime in, so really I hit all the major things I wanted to do. I guess the two things I would put on the list of things I wish I had done on my trip would be, first and foremost, to go and see the Wynn. I've still never set foot in Wynn or the new building Encore, although I have consistently heard that these are two of the very nicest properties in the whole city. For my past couple of trips, visiting Wynn has been loosely on my schedule, although both times it has taken a back seat due to other things (like winning thousands of dollars at poker, silly me). I was glad to get to see Aria and a little bit of the massive City Center project this time around, but in the end that was my time to see Wynn and I ended up going with City Center instead. Oh well, there's always next year.

One last thing I should mention is my tremendous success at cash game poker during this trip. Several people have asked me will I be playing more cash poker since winning so much dough this past week? And the answer is: maybe. For those of you who have read here for a while, I got pretty into cash play maybe three years ago, and in the end I got pretty good at it and was easily able to play a profitable game at any normal-stakes table online. But you know what I found? I really didn't like it. Playing winning cash -- at least the way I play it -- is boring. It's mechanical, and while of course you have to make consistently good decisions under pressure, that's not something I have a big problem with and as a result I find it generally not all that difficult to play a profitable game at low-stakes no-limit holdem. But tournaments, on the other hand, now tournaments are hard. They are far from mechanical, and ultimately the increasing blinds and antes force you into pots you would never ever ever ever ever play in a cash game context, and even though that itself can be a source of some frustration, in general that to me is what makes poker tournaments so difficult to master, and ultimately so much fun. So, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to play a little more cash after my solid success over my last 7 or 8 sessions in Las Vegas last week, but ultimately, having already been there done that before, gotten pretty good and decided that it just wasn't what I was looking for, I doubt it will take over any significant part of my poker play going forward. Maybe it's something I will dabble in more in live play as I always feel like my reads are 10 times better than when playing online, but online I doubt if you'll be seeing me spending a whole lot more time playing cash poker than in the recent past. That said, I did win nearly a buyin last night at the 1-2 nl tables, so who knows where this may end up. I may be on High Stakes Poker next year, prop betting Phil Ivey that I will win a bracelet
during the 2011 WSOP. Stranger things have happened, huh?

Saturday in Vegas: The Culmination

OK, so when I left off here, Wednesday at the WSOP last week was a confidence-sapping debacle, and Thursday at the Venetian saw me regain my confidence but without anything to show for it in terms of profit for the trip. Friday, however, saw all of that change, as I lived large in luxury at the MGM, won close to two buyins at the Bellagio cash tables and another buyin at 2-5 nl cash courtesy of the Pavillion at the Rio. I had also won another $600 or so on the Flyers stepping up in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals, to get me pretty much back to even for the entire trip, heading into my last day and my last night in the desert in 2010. As midnight passed on Friday night into Saturday morning, I found myself of all things checking out the video poker, one of the few games in the casino that can actually be beat if you play correctly and if you take full advantage of the best payout lines the casino has to offer. Things had been going so well for me in the live poker realm, that I decided it was worth a shot at the $1 buyin video poker machines, where I have had many big hits before in my day. Fortunately for me, my luck continued as over a two-hour span I hit two flushes, three full houses and two four-of-a-kinds. This netted me another $350 or so in profits, and after many many drinks on the night, I awoke bright and early the next morning in my bed, ready to face the world and try to really put a stamp on another profitable trip to Las Vegas by hitting up the poker tables one last time. But first, I had a couple of other items to attend to.

For starters, we called and got a Maybach to drive us out to the pawn shop in North Las Vegas that is featured on the new History Channel show "Pawn Stars". This is not a show that I watch a whole lot, but I've seen it on the tube before, and my sister in law and her daughter are major fans, and I have to say it was fun to see all the guys in the flesh after watching them on tv. That said, the Pawn Shop is definitely a bit underwhelming when you actually get there and take a walk around the store. It's not at all big, and to be honest the majority of the merchandise available to be purchased is jewelry, none of it especially beautiful or nice. I guess that is just reflective of the type of stuff people come by these stores to try to pawn in the first place, but I suppose I was expecting to see more of the interesting stuff that is featured on the tv show every week. I guess that stuff just sells quickly or something, because other than a few old-fashioned radios, cash registers and guns, there really isn't much of interest available for purchase in the shop. And I know I mentioned it's not a big store as it is, but these days, with the success of the tv show, a good 30-40% of the store is actually dedicated to selling Pawn Stars merchandise -- hats, t-shirts, mugs, shot glasses, etc. -- which leaves even less room for the stuff I had come to buy. So I was glad I went, but I was just as glad when I saw our gray Maybach turn the corner into the parking lot and I eased back from the 115-degrees-in-the-morning heat into the luxury of my fully reclining seat behind my chauffeur, and back to the MGM we headed.

In my desire to get to see some of the casinos I have wanted to visit but never yet had the chance, and knowing that we had reservations for dinner at Prime at the Bellagio that night, I decided I wanted to go and check out the poker room at Aria on Saturday afternoon, so after a quick jaunt to the lazy river in the MGM pool area to round out a very hot morning, I prepared for my first visit to Aria. But first, I made another quick stop at the MGM sports book, this time to place a couple of wagers on the Belmont Stakes that was set to run at 3:32pm local time on Saturday afternoon. Do I know anything about horse racing, you may be asking, and the answer would be a resounding No. But, my sister in law is hugely bigtime into horses. She and her daughter have been grooming and riding horses for years, they've been to riding camp, on riding trips, and they are currently looking into buying a horse of their own. On one of their many horse-related trips, they had the pleasure of meeting one of these leprechaunesque professional jockeys, a guy they said was super nice and sweet named Mike Smith. Well, as my sister in law informed us on Saturday morning at the Pawn Shop, it turns out that Mike Smith was running one of the horse's in that afternoon's Belmont Stakes, in the big one, Race #11. She and her daughter both love Mike Smith and told me he is a prime candidate to win his first triple crown race as a jockey. So, long story short, on my way out to Aria, I stopped by the MGM sports book and placed two bets: $100 on horse #3 to win, because I liked the name "Uptowncharlybrown" and I liked his odds at roughly 10 to 1. I mean, who wants to bet on a 2 to 1 favorite, where you're only going to get paid the amount you bet, and that's if your horse somehow happens to hold on and capture the race? The 50 to 1 horses are usually dogs, I figured, and the reward from the 2 to 1's and 5 to 2's is usually not worth the risk IMO, so I like to focus on the mid-range dogs like the 8 to 1's and 12 to 1's. In this case, horse #3 in the Belmont fit my criteria. And, of course, I placed another $100 of my new-found winnings on horse #7, Drosselmeyer, jockeyed by the one and only nice guy himself, Mike Smith, to win, who was also in my sweet spot of around 12 to 1 when I placed the bet. And with that, I left for Aria.

Aria is a very nice casino, although a bit dark and maybe a bit stiff for my tastes. The poker room is nice -- it does not quite have the panache of a place like Bellagio's poker room nor the expanse of the Venetian's, but it's comfortable, the drink service was timely, and the dealers did a good job unlike the Venetian where I once again saw multiple examples of major dealer gaffes in what was just half a day of hanging out there on Thursday. Aria's daily afternoon no-limit tournament was slated to start at 1pm, so I bought in for the $150 price using my MGM Players Club card, and almost immediately the tournament was ready to begin. We had in the end 74 runners in this mid-afternoon tournament, and with 20 minute blind rounds (less than the 30 minutes I had been told, but in the end easy enough to adjust to) I figured we would be looking at a good 5 or 6 hours until this thing was done.

Early on in the Aria tournament, within the first hour of play, with my stack only down marginally from its starting level of 10,000 but far from the table chip lead after two early eliminations in what proved to be a very aggressive tournament on the day, I called a preflop raise from the small blind with pocket 7s, and the flop came down 972 with two clubs. I checked since I was not the preflop aggressor here, my opponent led out, and I immediately got the vibe from his super-confident action that this guy wanted to get called. I mean, I didn't think for a half a second that I was behind top set, but rather I read this guy for a big pair, and someone who was not even conceiving that his overpair could possibly be behind. Thus, I did what I would not normally do when flopping a set, and I actually raised the flop. Blinds at the time were 50-100, the preflop raise had been to 400, and my opponent had led out for 650 into an 850-chip pot, so I bumped it up on the flop but only to 1800. I wanted to get some good chippage into the middle, but at the same time when raising the flop with a set, you definitely don't want to push it too hard that you scare away your opponent with the overcard, so I made my raise only about 1.5x the size of my opponent's flop bet, and he smooth called. The turn came a Queen of clubs, a card I did not love for fear of running into pocket Queens -- squarely within the range I had my opponent on already -- or the filled club flush on the turn. But ultimately, my read said big pair, and the way he checked to me on the turn eliminated all possibility in my mind that he had nailed his pocket pair with the turned Queen. No, his confident demeanor still said he thought he was ahead, and with that I had him on either Kings or Aces, so I led out on the turn, just enough to be representing strength but little enough that it would leave my opponent with a large enough raise to think he has fold equity. And that's exactly what happened -- he reraised me on the turn for most of the remainder of his stack, I pushed for a few chips more, and he called, flipping up pocket Kings, and just like that I had secured the early double that is so crucial in these quick casino tournaments.

I managed to slowly chip up from 20k in chips for most of the next hour or so, using my big stack to my advantage and stealing, re-stealing and c-betting with abandon where I could, and before I knew it we were a couple of hours in, more than half the field was gone, and I was still around double the average with close to 40k in my stack. From a quick look around the remaining 4 tables, I appeared to be one of the chip leaders, which gave me the enviable ability heading into Hour 3 to look up some of the tightass Harringbots who would predictably begin pushing on short stacks as we move to the latter half of this field.

Unfortunately, these things did not work out quite as planned. Every single time I raised any pot before the flop, pretty much all during the third hour of play (meaning for three consecutive blind rounds), I got reraised. I mean, every single time. I absolutely cannot stand when this happens, but it does seem to be a fairly common occurrence if you play enough poker tournaments, in particular if you bully-raise as often as I tend to do. Invariably, because I know how to effing fold, I end up laying down to these reraises, which is what I did on Saturday at Aria, over and over and over and over again. I literally wasted away more than half of my stack from its highs over maybe 4 blind rounds, and by the time 5 o'clock rolled around, we were down to the final two tables, but I was getting short, down to just over 25k with an average of just over 40k in chips. I was extremely frustrated, both at myself for pushing so aggressively for such a long period of time, and at my cards for not allowing me to push back or call any of the action I was seeing seemingly every time I made any kind of a move. I know there is seriously no way to possibly survive in a short, quick tournament like this without pressing the action quite a bit more than one's cards would dictate, so I knew what I was doing in raising and trying to steal as much as I was through the middle rounds of this thing, but the fact is that I probably laid down to reraises at least 7 or 8 times in a row over the preceding couple of hours, my image had to be completely and totally shot after raise-folding so, so many times recently, and I was extremely frustrated and was starting to accept that my image was so destroyed that the others at the table were probably reraising me light at this point, knowing that I still could not profitably call and that I was clearly someone who was willing and able to lay down a hand.

My frustration and lack of cards came to a boiling point early at the last two tables, when down to 16 players left (the top 7 finishers would be paid), I open-raised again on the button, this time with a semi-playable Q8s, and the big blind took one look at me and quickly raised me big with a stack size a bit larger than my own. When I saw the look on his face and then him reaching for his chips, something just flipped in my head, and I figured eff it, this time I'm going with it if these guys think they're going to reraise me allin light over and over and over again. I instantly pushed allin, and he instacalled, showing pocket 8s with a toothy grin as I flipped up my sooted Q8. The flop was clean, but then a miracle Queen on the turn lifted me back into safe territory and slightly above the average chip stack, while my opponent in the big blind flipped out, yelled out the F word as loud as he could, slammed his hand on the table, and started demanding to know what I thought he was reraising with. #1, just like it is important always to be cognizant of your own image at the poker table, it is equally important to be cognizant of everyone else's. If this guy could not figure out that I would be fixing to push allin with almost any two the next time someone reraised me preflop, then he simply was not paying attention, so to ask derisively what I thought he had there just misses the point entirely. And #2, next time perhaps you can take at least 2 seconds before you instacall allin with a hand like pocket 8s. I folded hands at least that good probably four times during the middle stages of the Aria tournament, laying down middle pairs to raises on the flop twice as well as twice folding AT or AJ on an Ace-high board against a guy who had raised from early position before the flop, so I'm sorry if I can't feel bad for a guy who instacalls allin with pocket 9s and then flips out when he loses to an overcard. Obviously it was a gross suckout for me, but at the same time I think an observant opponent would have known that I am likely to push in that spot with many hands that could at least be just 2-to-1 dogs if not basically races against a middle pocket pair like that. Not saying I would have folded the 9s if I were him, but you certainly wouldn't hear me ask an asinine question afterwards like what he thought I had when he pushed on me with his Q8s. Obviously, I was desperate, I was frustrated, and my image was shot, and he should have known that I would be looking to get it in there with any reasonable hand, which is exactly what I did.

Oh, I should as an aside mention that during those difficult couple of hours in the middle of this tournament, I did get a nice emotional boost when they showed the Belmont Stakes, and after not making an appearance in front all through the race, suddenly on the last turn here comes Drosselmeyer and Mike Smith around the outside making his move. "And down the stretch they come!" yelled the announcer as Smith whacked and whacked and whacked his horse some more, climbing ever closer to the front of the pack as the final straightaway loomed ahead. Just seconds before reaching the finish line, Drosselmeyer pulled ahead by a nose, and in the final several gallops that lead grew as Mike Smith ran to victory, grabbing his first triple crown win and making my sister in law and niece extremely happy in the process. And, as Smith's horse ended up going in as a 14-to-1 favorite by post time, I also scored a tidy $1400 profit on my bet on Horse #7 to win, while my brother managed to nail the exacta with his ticket on horses #7 and 5, which paid him a sickening $3600 and change on a $50 bet. Watching a big horse race in a casino is always fun, and having money on the eventual winner despite not knowing jack crap about the sport was a big bonus emotional up in what was otherwise not an enjoyable few hours for me in the Aria tournament.

Anyways, so with 15 players remaining (my big blind guy busted on the next hand with just a very short stack remaining, glaring at me the whole time while he gathered his things and left the table), I was in around 5th place in chips, and from here it was like the dam burst a little bit and I started finding myself in a number of decent situations. One shorty pushed into me from late position when I held AQ and I made the call and held up against A5s. As the shorties continued to drop out, and the action was mostly allin preflop at this point in the tournament, I got lucky and caught a second one to get to the final table when a medium stack in front of me made a largeish allin raise preflop and I looked down to find pocket Queens. I put him in, he called with KJs, and he proceeded to hit a King on the flop before I turned a Queen to put him out of misery and arrive at the final table with the #2 chip stack of 10 players remaining.

In keeping with my usual early final table style, I generally stayed away from confrontations as we neared the 6pm hour, allowing a couple of the short stacks at the final table to consolidate as they beat each other up, and within maybe 10 minutes of starting the final table action, we were down the final 7 spots who would make the cash. The bottom few ITM players would receive smallish payouts relative to the $150 buyin for this tournament -- $500, $700, $900 and $1100 -- but as usual it was the top few spots where most of the payout cash was concentrated, in this case paying out $4200 to first place and $2400 to second, so I was focused on doing whatever I had to do to make it to heads-up play and really get a good start on what I hoped would be a very profitable Saturday in Las Vegas. Seven players left quickly turned to five as we had a three-way allin on the flop with a set of 5s against AK and a flush draw with J7 of clubs on a KT5 board with two clubs on it, with the flopset amazingly holding up to create the new chip leader, and then five quickly became four as the new short stack at the table quickly pushed allin with KQs preflop and got called by AQ, which also miraculously held. With four players left and around 190k in chips, I was still in good position to make a run at the top spots, and I had already secured at least an $1100 payout in what would prove to be my best nlh tournament performance of the week, but I wanted more. I played tighter than I normally might for a few orbits, folding A9s at one point to an allin reraise from one of the large stacks at the table, and before long the shortest stack got it allin with top pair on the flop against the chip leader who had flopped a hidden two pairs, and then there were 3. The stacks were around 400k to my 160k to 140k for the guy to my right, and we went back and forth, exchanging each other's blinds and
antes, for a good 15 or 20 minutes before I finally found pocket Jacks and faced yet another preflop raise to 30k from my opponent. I opted to just push allin, a move I had made twice already recently at this final table against suspected stealers who I knew did not want to bust from this thing without holding strong cards, and the player called me with AT, leaving me in good shape and somehow holding for a near-double. We were down to two players left, with me around 350k to his 400k or so, but this player simply did not have much experience at all in heads-up play, that was very clear. As soon as we got to heads-up, this player raised every single hand without even barely looking at his cards -- almost as if he read somewhere that he is supposed to play that way, without really understanding the thinking behind it, and I went through a 3-hand run of AJ, A8s and pocket 7s and all three times I raised him strongly and he folded, leaving me with the chip lead for the first time in the tournament. We played maybe another 5 minutes or so, and then eventually we both limped preflop, me with K7o, and when the flop came K64 rainbow I bet out as I had so many times at this final table. My opponent raised me, and try as I might, I just did not think he had the final table tournament wherewithal to only raise here when he was strong, or to fold if he was not. After having made a few decent folds late at the final table, I just didn't think he had me beat here, and I opted to push him to the limit with a large raise right here and now. My opponent thought but only for a couple of seconds before calling allin with 76, for second pair and a backdoor straight draw. Of course the 5 on the turn had to give him an open-ended straight draw to go with his two-pair and trips outs, but somehow I dodged them all with a harmless 2, and I had won the tournament!

We stuck around a little while longer to secure our payouts, and with 42 fresh, crisp $100 bills stuffing up my wallet, I quickly jumped on the tram from Aria directly over to Bellagio, where my friends were waiting to head over to Prime for our 7pm dinner reservation. And dammit if that place does not get better and better every single year! This year it was our usual Prime order -- the seafood platter for 5 as an appetizer, plus the onion soup that is so good there, and then of course for me the 12-ounce filet mignon. I swear that is the most flavorful, most tender steak I have ever eaten, and like I said, year in and year out Prime continues to deliver with a fabulous ambience, excellent, attentive service, and just the top quality food that I have come to expect from what is pretty much my favorite restaurant in the world today.

After Prime, it was off to see the new Elvis-themed Cirque de Soleil show back at Aria, which I have to say I thought was only ok at best. I mean, the acrobatics are cool and all, but I continue to feel like the first Cirque show in Vegas -- Mystere, over at the Mirage since at least 15 or 16 years ago when I first saw it -- has always been the best in that it already included what the Cirque folks thought was their best material. All of these other Cirque shows that have come out over the past several years -- O at Bellagio, Ka, Love (the Beatles-themed show) and at least two or three others spread around Las Vegas Boulevard, all seem to me to pale in comparison to the first. It's like they are all just thinned-out versions of Mystere, showing some but not all of the great acrobatics and feats of strength and balance that Cirque de Soleil is famous for, and I must admit I am no kind of an Elvis fan which did not help matter either. Still, it was a nice period to relax a bit after a stress-filled afternoon at the Aria poker room and then a massive dinner at Prime.

After the show we headed back to our home base in the MGM Skylofts, and from there it was downstairs for my now-patented stay-up-all-night move until my early morning flight back to the real world. And other than a brief trip for the ladies in our party to get some ice cream around 3am, I hung out in the MGM poker room for the following 4 hours or so, managing to win yet another $800 at 2-5 in the process. This one mostly came in one big hand, when I held AK and raised preflop from late position, got reraised by the button (and I just called), and then he led out on a K88 flop after I checked the action to him. I debated raising right here, but #1 these paired flops are far less scary than three-card flops since there is no straight or flush possibility and since there were basically only two cards (the two remaining 8s) I had to fear my opponent possibly having in this spot, which I was not ultimately remotely concerned about since he had reraised me preflop. And #2, raising him here would just put him on notice that I could have AK, which is a message I did not want to send just yet since I knew this guy probably put me on air with my late position steal-raise preflop. So I made like I was unhappy but like I felt compelled to make the crying call here. When the turn brought a harmless Ten, I pretended to think a bit before checking, a move I love to do in live play because, if executed perfectly, it gives the impression that I am trying to deter my opponent from betting out a second time, and he took the bait by betting out again, this time about 90% of the pot and giving the impression to me that he really did not want me to call. I opted to just call, leaving only about $150 behind in my stack into a pot with probably around $750 in it after my turn call, but I was hoping he might check the river in which case I could check it down as well and save myself from putting everything in with just top pair top kicker. Instead, my opponent instabet the last of his chips, more or less enough to cover me, after a raggy river, and I knew as soon as he shot his chips out there lightning quick that he was suddenly afraid he was losing this pot. I called at the end, and I waited for him to show his cards, which he tried to claim he did not have to do even though he was wrong, I called him down at the river and he had to show. I didn't have to show if I had the losing hand -- this guy would later claim that I would have been required to show my hand anyways even if I mucked it, which was also idiotic since they don't ever make you show the losing hand unless there is collusion or some other similar reason for the house to enforce such a requirement. In any event, he showed pocket Queens and I scooped about $500 on that one hand. Otherwise, I barely lost any big pots in my final session of poker in Las Vegas for 2010, and I managed to win a couple of nice pots on the flop with raises, and one allin preflop with my AQs vs 88 where I won a nice race for good measure as well.

I left the table shortly before 4:30am to head up to pack my things in advance of my 7am flight, and that was the first time on the trip that I really had the chance to take stock of my total winnings. On Wednesday I lost $1500 in the WSOP, and probably another $400 or so at the cash tables throughout the afternoon and evening hours at both the Rio and the MGM. On Thursday I lost $340 in the Venetian DSE, and another $400 or so donking around at poker for a few hours late in the day when I really was too pokered-out to be playing a solid game after two straight days of high-pressure mtt play. On Friday, however, I busted out with an $880 win at 2-5 no-limit at the Bellagio, followed by winning another $880 in the Flyers Game 4 win in the Stanley Cup Finals, and ending the night with yet another winning session at 2-5 nl, this time at the Rio while the WSOP was going on all around me, plus booking a $350 profit over a couple hours of Jacks-or-Better double bonus vide poker. This $2500+ win on Friday basically made up for all of my losses from Wednesday and Thursday and then some, and set me up just slightly ahead as we headed into my final day in the desert on Saturday, which saw me win $1300 net on the Belmont Stakes, plus a whopping $4200 score in winning the daily afternoon tournament in the new Aria poker room. I then rounded out the trip by cashing out with another $800 profit at 2-5 cash as I waited for my plane to leave, meaning that I managed to win well over 6 grand on Saturday alone after winning nothing in my first couple of days and managing just to scratch myself back to near break-even on Friday. That Saturday, with its broad wins in both horse racing, tournament poker and 2-5 no-limit cash, will go down as one of the most fun and most exciting days of gambling I have ever experienced. In the end, as I packed up my bags to head to McCarron and close the books on another fun and successful poker trip to Las Vegas, I stashed away 70 hundred-dollar bills deep in my carry-on, easily more cash than I have ever won in one place before, and probably ever even seen before in one place. I mean, last year when I chopped for 51 grand in the Venetian DSE tournament, they offered me cash but I was insistent on a check, so I've seen that amount of money before but just not in cash, right in front of me. All those hundies really would not even fit into the money envelope I had brought my first WSOP buyin out to Vegas in, so I had to find an overflow spot for the rest of my cash that would not fit where I wanted it to go, all along well aware that this is a great problem for me or anyone else to have.

I had little trouble getting to the airport, and although getting through security was its usual painful endeavor on a Sunday morning in Vegas, I got to my gate in plenty of time to enjoy some breakfast and try to reflect on the past few days' events. As usual I was asleep in my seat even before takeoff, and I slept most of the way home after depriving myself of sleep pretty much non-stop for the preceding several days in the desert. Unusually, we arrived more than half an hour early at JFK, and I got to surprise my daughters by showing up way earlier than expected and getting back to see the family that is the whole reason I exist these days.

I will be back tomorrow with some closing thoughts on this trip to Vegas, where it fits in with the best poker trips I have taken, and other notions that occurred to me during my time in the desert last week. For now it's already fading to just a happy memory, although my sense is that I will have that pile of hundies in my hamper to remind me of my success this week for a long, long time to come.