After coming home last night, i stuffed around on the net for a while and realised i was very tired. I slept from around 11am-6pm and got up and chatted to sara on skype for a while. After that I had another online poker session and then we all headed out to Bally’s Casino for our second live session of the trip.

Ive been getting complaints that no one can understand the poker jargon so ill cut it out as much as I can. Me and Andy were sat at different tables. Once again the games were not as bad as I hoped, but they were soft enough. I bought in for $200 and Andy bought in for $300. I only had 1 big hand during the session, where I was dealt KK and ended up winning around a $200 pot. At one point I had around $340 in front of me, but a lack of patience and a few heinikens lead to a couple of speculative hands and a dumb bluff costing me $70, which saw me leave at 1AM with $220. So not a big win, but im happy to be 2 wins out of 2 live poker sessions this trip. Andy didnt catch many hands and finished with a small loss.

I walked the kilometre or so back to the motel around 2am and had a yarn, Hui went out again to watch the end of a tournament at Binions casino. I played some more online for a few hours and despite taking an absolutely sickening beat in a $400 pot (just ask Andy) I managed to book my 5th straight winning online session.

Hui came home about 6am and we started searching for some accommodation on the net, as we are getting kicked out today. After a bit of searching for a cheapish place that offers wireless, Andy booked us into the Las Vegas Club Hotel and Casino on the other side of town for 2 nights.
Its 7am now and we will be leaving in a few hours. Looking forward to going to our new place to have a snooze.

In the morning me and andy had around a 3 hour online poker session. He played around 16 tables on pokerstars and I averaged somewhere around 10-12 on chanpoker. He finished up with 4000 hands and I played 2500.

In the afternoon we went to the Rio, where the world series is being played. It was hot again and we ended up getting a taxi. We saw a number of famous players in the poker bit of the casino inluding Tony G, Barry G, Juanda, Negreanu, Benyamine, Ferguson, Lederer.

Me, Hui and Andy played a $175 sattelite to the $1500 WSOP event. We all played well, we got down to the last 5 before Andy busted out. I had a lot of chips but then lost 2 quick hands where i was around a 75% favourite and ended up busting in 4th. Hui was next to go in 3rd. So a dissapointing result but the fact that almost all the other players were absolutely terrible was encouraging.

In the Afternoon We played a little more online and then had a short lived gym session. We arrived at the gym about 9:50 and at 10pm a security guy came and told us it was closing. We all went to bed soon after that, me and andy set the alarm for 3am so we could get up and play our first session live. We plan to play in the early hours to hopefully run into lots of tired, drunk players at our table that have been at the casino for hours.

For some reason the alarm didnt go off but I woke up around 3:30am anyway and by 4:30am we were buying in for $300 each at a 1/2NL table at the venetian. The table we were at was not quite as soft as I had expected, but still far far easier than the online equivalent. There were probably 3 people at the table playing every hand and the other players were generally weak. There was probably only 1 or 2 other guys at the table that were actually aggressive. Me and Andy decided to split our winnings losses to reduce a bit of variance.

My first and only big hand came about an hour into the game. I had pocket 4’s in middle position, and I called a $7 raise from a guy who acted before me. Another guy behind me called too. The flop was a lovely J42 with 2 diamonds. The original raiser bet $10, a weak bet which made me think he was on a flush draw or had a J. I raised to $45 and the guy behind me called as well as the guy who bet $10. I was sure one or both of them had a flush draw, so when the 8 of diamonds came on the turn I was a little worried. It was checked through and then the river was another 2 and I made my boat. The early position guy bet $60 and I raised to $200. The guy behind me folded and it was back to the early position guy. I was 99% sure he had a flush so and thought he would pay me off. After thinking about it for ages he called with the nut flush and I raked in a $600 pot, by far my biggest ever pot playing live.

There were no other big hands, just smallish ones that were won on the flop or turn. I got all in preflop with QQ against a shortstacked guy who had KJ (so i was around a 75% favourite) but he got lucky and hit a K on the flop and I lost a $140 pot. I ended up cashing out $540 and Andy did the same, after winning a pretty big pot with KK. It was a nice session so hopefully we can have another good one later today.

Hello welcome to my first blog. Ill try to update this regularly for the duration of the trip.

I met up with Andy and Hui at sydney airport on june 15th (sunday morning aus time). Sara and Mum were with me so I said goodbye to them and we hopped on the plane about 1pmm. The flight was ordinary, we played a bit of poker and blackjack on the plane to pass the time, and I also played chess and stuffed around on my laptop. I think I slept about 2 hrs. I think they maybe gave us 2 or 3 kinda crap meals. All in all it was a long 12 hr flight.

We arrived at LA at 11am local time, got absolutely grilled by the immigration/customs guys about where we were from, what the purpose of our trip was, where we were staying etc. I managed to restrain myself from telling any terrorist jokes.

LA to LV - another crap flight, really bumpy and me and Hui especially felt ordinary by the end of it. Possibly something to do with the food on the previous flight. But we made it….to find they had left half our luggage in LA. Andys showed up on the next flight, but mine and Huis didnt arrive to our hotel until about 8pm.

We checked in to Tuscany hotel and casino around 2pm (i think) and spent the next few hours getting a feed, and walking around the strip. there was a temperature thing on one of the buildings that told us it was 47 degrees..yuck…when we were walking back to our hotel at 7pm we saw it again and it was STILL 47 degrees. Anyway the strip basically consists of casino after casino, the ones we went into included the venetian (sp?), harrahs, cesars palace..and that all i can think of. I have no idea what one was what…all i remember is lots of poker machine noises and flashy things. we didnt play any games or anything, just walked through them all.

I think today we will probably have a online poker session then tonight maybe go and try our luck live. Andy went really well in the live poker games last year so hopefully that is a sign of things to come for both of us. Hui is planning to play blackjack aswell so good luck to him on that. We have another 2 nights here in Tuscany then we have to sort out some other accomodation. Its about 5am now (day 2, 16th july) so I will probably write another blog tonight or tommorow morning and give an update.

p.s when we got here we logged on to the net and saw that the raiders had a win over the broncos. woo hoo!