here it is.

What’s the difference between people who pray at the poker table and people who pray in church??

People who pray at the poker table really mean it.

Great on so many levels!

I was talking to Harald on the internet yesterday afternoon and he invited me and Benny over to the place him and the other guys are staying at. We get a taxi out to the place they are renting, and its pretty balla. really nice inside with a sweet backyard and pool area. At the house I met in person for the first time Harald (Forza_Acroma), John (Zeenith/soapypapoose), Evan (gripsed.com), OJ (How2usechips), Mads (letsmuckem) Ian (?), and Nick. Evan, John, Ian and Nick were all from Toronto (i think) and the rest of the guys are from norway (i think).

I had played against Harald, John, Evan, Mads and OJ very regularly up until a few months ago when I changed networks, they were/are the old ongame regs and they are all extremely good. We had some beers and they put on a BBQ for us. Thank you very much for having us over, it was great to meet you all and hopefully we can do it all again next year. Anyway after dinner we headed into the Rio via another taxi and went to Voodoo, which is the nightclub on the roof. We attempted to get a table, but the only one they had left was like right next to the speakers, and I would have gone deaf in about 2 seconds had we sat there. We go outside and its a super mad view of the strip, there were a couple of fireworks going off cuz it was the 4th of july. We hang outside for a bit and take it all in, the club is packed. I go to the bathroom and there is a guy working in there at a big sink thing with heaps of cologne and stuff, so i put some on and tip him. Head back outside and we stay for a bit, not for too long though cuz it was $45 for 2 drinks.

On the way out of there Mads has this little thing that looks like a box of shoe polish. He explains to me that its chew tobacco, some really strong stuff that can only be bought in norway. So of course I have some and put it up under my lip how he showed me. It tastes pretty ordinary but i keep it there for a bit. About 2 minutes later I get really lightheaded and feel like ive just had about 10 shots. I spit it out. Fun fun.

We ship on out of there and 7 of us jump in a limo. We buy more champagne and drive around the strip. We go to a casino, no idea what one it is but there are beer pong tables. I have more drinks and start feeling pretty ordinary, so get some subway and feel much better. I meet a girl and chat to her and her husband for a bit and we have these weird shots which is guiness combined with some type of milk drink. Pretty bad. I am not very good at beer pong either. We are there for a few hours i spose but i really have no idea.

At some point all the guys get back together and someone suggests that we should go to the spearmint rhino (look it up). Somehow its light outside already..but inside its extremely dark. We sit down in a booth thingy and some girls come and talk to us. One thing leads to another and all of a sudden most of the guys have been kicked out or left, and its just me and i think Mads (i think) left. Then the girl starts saying I owe her $400 because she did a “dance” for me, whatever that means. Im like “nup I told ya before im not paying you anything”, then she gets the bouncers and I get dragged into a back room behind these curtains. Uh-oh. They start talking to me and telling me to pay up in a not very nice way. I have had about 48 drinks so I tell them not so politely that I wont be paying anything. They try and intimidate me, and it would have worked had I not been drunk. Ha. They threaten to get the cops, I say go ahead. The cops rock up, ask me a few questions, chuck me in handcuffs and we walk outside. The bright sun hurts raiderducks eyes. I get searched by the cops a bit and they ask me some other questions, they uncuff me and give me a red bit of paper which is my official life ban from the spearmint rhino.

I jump in a taxi and tell the taxi driver my story on the way home. For some reason I tip him about $70 for the $15 trip. I get home and go up to the room and there are cops in my room, im like WAT IS GOING ON. Benny was home and couldnt find his wallet, somehow it got in my pocket. I think he gave it to me cuz he didnt wanna be able to spend anything. So the cops in our room leave and I go to bed. When I wake up I discover i have lost my license, my bit of paper from the police detailing my life ban, and I have a cut on my head. I think either one of the bouncers punched me or I ran into a door or something. No idea.

I talk to benny and he gives me the details of how he got kicked out of the club just before I did, he forgot he gave his wallet to me and couldnt find it, so he thought either the girls in the club or one of the bouncers stole it. He said he made a big scene out the front of the club, and said to a mexican bouncer “Your type knows all about this stuff” (in regards to stealing). The bouncers chased him on bikes and benny kicked one of them off his bike and damaged the spokes. Somehow he avoided getting beaten to death. Benny outdid my $70 taxi tip by tipping his driver $200. Good form Benny.

Anyway to Harald, Mads etc - thankyou again for a very cool night and hopefully will catch you guys again soon for more epicness. PS my previous 2 blogs were written this morning after I came home, the first one is god knows what and the 2nd is my chat transcript with punchi.

ÌRÕN»MÅN - In Vegas says:
omg
blog coming
punchi says:
haha aiite
onli jus read it today
ÌRÕN»MÅN - In Vegas says:
OMFG
punchi says:
the older stuff
ÌRÕN»MÅN - In Vegas says:
just got home
got locked up
punchi says:
? home canberra?
locked up?
WWTF
mad
ÌRÕN»MÅN - In Vegas says:
HOLY CRAP

i got handcuffed
punchi says:
lol
wtffff
still smashed??
ÌRÕN»MÅN - In Vegas says:
yse

punchi says:
lol
ahahahah
mad shit
ÌRÕN»MÅN - In Vegas says:
gagve taxi $80 tip
punchi says:
lol wtf
balllaaa
whyd u get handcufrffed
lol
ÌRÕN»MÅN - In Vegas says:
cuz i didnt pay the chik at the stip club

ok,
lAST night me and benny go to forzas house. I end up getting locked up and getting bennts wallet. uep

Got up at the usual 4:30 pm and played the usual session online. At about 10pm me and Benny got a taxi into town and explored around the MGM, venetian and a couple of other little places, basically walking down the strip and having some drinks. Ate some pizza at about midnight for lunch at the venetian, it was greasy and slightly sickening. After walking around the maze we found the exit and decided to suss out a limo to take us for a drive.

We get in the Limo and turns out its only $65 per hour which is pretty sweet, we get the driver to take us to buy some champagne and pringles and eat them in the back seat. The driver offers to take us to sapphires which apparently is the biggest strip club in the world. We say we are not interested but the driver keeps pestering us. We say no again, then he says he will pay our cover charge for us and all we have to do is go in there for 10 mins. Apparently he gets $60 per person he brings there which I thought was pretty good. We go in there and there are lots of naked ppl. Hang about for a bit, some girls talk to us for a bit and there seems to be some kind of mysterious force that is about to cause money to magically float out of my wallet, so I grab benny and we bail out of there quick smart. drive around in the limo a bit more and then head home.

Yesterday we did pretty much our first non poker activity and hit the stratosphere for
the rides.

We had the buffet first which was pretty good. We headed up to the top and
got our tickets, unfortunately the ride called “the insanity” that was closed for me and Andy last year, was closed again for me and Benny. Anyway we went on the other 2 rides which were scarier than I remembered. Was good. After the rides we grabbed a drink and checked out the view of the strip and the rest of vegas. We briefly sussed out the poker room which brought back some bad memories of me wrongly folding a set (see vegas 08 blogs). They didnt have any 2/5 running so we decided to go downtown to fremont street to check out the golden nugget poker room. We got there about 10pm, had a quick walk around the shark/pool thing and the Actual golden nugget, then went into the poker room. They didnt have any 2/5 tables but the 1/2 game was uncapped so I bought in for my $600 I planned to use in the 2/5 game.

I ended up sitting next to Erin from new york, and we had a yarn about music and vegas etc while playing. Before I know it its 6:30am and we had been playing for almost 10 hours. Gawd. We go for a walk outside and the natural light hurts my eyes. We rock into a gift shop and i buy a las vegas brew mug and 2 las vegas pillows, and 2 see through hat thingys. We go back into the golden nugget for the breakfast buffet which was great. We go home and go to bed about 8:30am.

Get up at about 4:30pm or so, play a sess online then go to the bellagio. See Patrick antonius, Freddy Deeb and David Benyamine playing in Bobby’s room which was pretty sweet. The poker room is good, kinda cramped though. They have squished probably 30 tables in there when there is really only room for 25. Anyway the standard of the poker is rediculously good, which I discovered shortly into my session there. Yuck. Finished down a little bit and came back to the Gold Coast to write blogs.

1/2 NL Live at the Golden Nugget. its about 4am and I must have had at minimum 10 vodka and red bulls.

I had about 4 interesting hands in the session, first was a top 2 vs set, 2nd was AA vs AA All in pre flop for a $1600 pot, 3rd was where I folded QQ to a raise on the flop on an 8 high board. 4th hand was a set vs top trips. In amongst it somewhere was this hand -

So im having a great time, had been playing for about 4 hours and was up a couple hundred. A guy raises UTG to $7, gets one caller, and a middle aged asian lady raises to $15 (Reads on her - super tight, in the couple hours I had been playing with her she had shipped in twice, both with sets. She has probably raised pre flop 5 times, and this is the first time she had 3bet Pre flop, has a stack around $600 or more). Its folded to me and I have KK, I cold 4bet to $50. Original raiser folds and the action is back on her, she instantly makes it $200 to go. I say to the table that they should see what im about to fold, and I throw the Kings face up into the middle of the table. The Asian lady looks at me kinda confused and says “you called right?!”, and I said back to her “No…im folding”. She slaps the table with her hands in frustration and flips over her AA. Yay. Half of the guys at the table come and shake my hand and congratulate me and say it was the best fold they have ever seen, ha!

Well I made my WSOP debut in event 54. I was a little nervous before play started, but once I had played a few hands the nerves dissapeared and it just felt like another game. I didnt have many hands for the first 2 or so hours, in the 3rd level I sucked out on a hand for my tournament life with AQ vs KJ on a AK7J7 board. A few hands later i had another lucky hand, winning an all in with AQ vs KK when I rivered an Ace. All of a sudden I was up to 12k from my starting stack of 4.5k.

After the next break I went totally card dead, the hands I raised got 3bet, and my cbets failed and before I knew it I was down to about 5k with blinds 150/300. I picked up QQ and lost to AT, next hand shipped all in with 63s for my last few chips and busted out about 1100th out of 2800. It was a very gruelling 5 hours, and I think my lack of patience cost me a little. The standard of the field was decent, especially a few hours in. There were a few notables in the tournament, Phil hellmuth, Men Nguen, JC Tran, Antonio Esfandiari to name a few. Anyway I am glad to have played and now I can say I have officially been in the WSOP. I will probably enter the same event next year for a bit of fun too.