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.

Stayed up late last night cuz I was chatting on the internets and the ppl I was chatting to wouldnt let me go (you know who you are). I did get to bed at a reasonable hour though, just as the sun was coming up. I woke up about 10am-ish and half listened to benny scuttle around the room. Ended up getting up about 2pm and we hit wall mart. I bought 2 massive things of Advil cause its the best stuff ever, and a toothbrush. yay. Benny bought some socks and an Ipod and a new mouse. We went to the gun section and played with some of them.

For some reason they dont have taxi’s from whatever suburb wall mart is in, so we had to get the customer service people to ring one for us. We had a good chat to the taxi driver on the way back, he told us they only get paid $2.65 an hour and apart from that all they get is tips! Pretty ordinary.

I headed to the Rio and decided that I will enter event 54 starting tommorow. I lost a bit of enthusiasm for it the other day, but im keen to play in my first WSOP tourney and now im a bit nervous about it. It was at least half an hour in line to register. Benny is also playing, it starts at midday tommorow. First goal is to make it through day 1! GL me. I played some cash games afterwards, didnt have much luck, now back at the room writing blogs before bed. Have to get up early tommorow (11am at latest) to get to the event in time.

Got woken up about 9:30 am by Benny, who was going to see if he could register for event 51, which we had told that there may be more spots available. Turns out they opened up another 30 seats, but Benny was told he needed his passport as ID, and by the time he got back here and picked it up the 30 seats had been sold. Benny registered for a main event satellite instead, and ended up busting out on the bubble…very sick. I got up about 10:30, played a session online and then went to the Rio to attempt to play live. I went into the main poker room and saw that there was 23 people on the waiting list for 2/5…urgh. So I shipped on out to the WSOP bit to see if there were any 2/5 games running up there, and there was. The game was horrible though, no fish at all and everyone knew what they were doing. The worst players at the table were slightly passive pre flop and that’s about it. It was nitty as, and every 3rd hand was being 3bet. Not fun at all. I did manage to catch a few breaks and had a nice win (see specific hands in my previous blog). Also had fun chatting to an older guy from Alabama and a few of the other guys at the table.

I quit that game after an hour or two and checked out how benny was doing in his tourney. I think he was chip leader, or close to it at the time. I Went back to the main poker room to get on the now shorter waiting list, and then went to one of the crappy little shops to get some dinner. It was hell busy, had to line up for about 20 minutes, and ended up with these disgusting chips (fries?) covered in cheese sauce with these things that looked like KFC crispy strips but way worse. It was uneatable. I had about a quarter of it and chucked it. What a fun $15. I sat down at my table at about 9-10pm and played until about 2am. The game was crazy good, there was at least 3 drunk people at my table with over 1200 in front of them, and the other guys were nothing special. It was fantastic and great fun, I have been telling everyone im from Sydney because no one has heard of Canberra. (Earning me the nickname “Sydney” obviously.) So I had a great day playing, saw a couple of TV pro’s around the place (Gus Hansen and Tony G) and it was good stuff. Havnt cleaned my teeth yet, but am definetly going to wall mart to get a toothbrush tommorow. I came home after I finished at the Rio and we got some room service. Benny got a hamburger and I got a fruit platter. It was by far the best thing I have eaten since I have been here.

I drew up a notepad file of the hands I played for some people, and it pretty much turned into a blog. These are the hands I played at the Rio yesterday afternoon and last night.

first hands in the WSOP bit, aka reg/nitfest.

hand 1

open raise J8s from MP to 15, button flats(btn reads - headphones, mid 30’s, looks like a decent/tricky player, have seen him 3bet from the button a few times etc).

flop TT4, i cbet 25, he makes it 60, i make it 110 and he snap folds.

hand 2

A9o in the SB. folds to CO who opens, btn flats. I 3bet to 60, BB flats (passive pre flop asian guy, seems to know what hes doing though). others fold. Flop A92 all spades, I bet 120, he calls, I ship blank turn for about 300 and he tanks and folds and said he folded AK.

hand 3.

I call CO open from bb with 87o (had been card dead, was thinking of c/ring the flop or something). flop 9TJ, i check, he bets, i raise, he ships, i snap. He shows TJ, turn is Q giving him FD and splitting outs, but i hold. ship $900 pot

normal poker room at the rio, fishfest. (first table not so fishy, 3-4 players who were wearing the WSOP bracelets who had busted out of the 1500 earlier that day)

hand 4

AA in MP, btn straddles and 1 limper, i make it 45. Fish on the btn makes it 100 (Fish reads - was telling everyone he was a pro, was probably running 50/20, telling ppl about his macau trips etc, coaching ppl on every hand, basically trying to prove he was better than everyone. Total fish)

I 4bet to 250 and he calls (effective stax 600-ish). Flop QJx no draw, i check and he checks, turn 4, i check he checks, river 2, i check and he ships for about 350, i snap so quick. He shows AK, I show AA and table goes nuts, everyone starts talking about me .

hand 5

about 4 hands after the AA hand

$10 btn straddle, im in BB with QQ, raise to 50. Folded to CO (young internet lookin dude, very loud but plays very tight, phil laak style) who makes it 160. (effective stax 1200). I call OOP. flop 332, i check and he bets 250. i tank for about 2 mins and ask him if he will show me if i fold. He says yes, i say ok i fold, he shows KK and i fold QQ face up, table goes nuts again, table now thinks I am a god.

Hand 6

Standard looking non-fishy guy raises from HJ, i 3bet to 75 from btn with QJo. Flop 764, he checks i cbet 90, he calls. turn blank, he checks and i bet 180, he tanks and folds and said he folded TT.

I move to a more fishy table with drunk guys.

hand 7
2 massive drunk fish in the blinds, I limp behind Q9spades from MP. Non fish on the btn calls and the fish in the BB calls. flop T95 2 spades, fish checks, i check, btn bets 35, BB raises to 120, I raise to 300. Btn folds, BB announces “im here to gamble” and ships for another 250. I call. Turn a red J and river 9, he shows TJ and I show trips, I run good and ship 1.1k-ish pot.

hand 8

In my last orbit, EP raise to 25 from a tight non-fish (effective stax 900-ish), I call with 66. Fish in BB calls. Flop T76ss. fish checks, nit bets 60 and i raise to 150, fish folds, nit calls. Turn Qs, he checks, i bet 200 and he calls. River blank, he checks, I bet 250 and he folds KK face up.

Just while i think of it, i forgot how crap the food here is. You shoulda seen this crap they called “dinner” that was served via room service here tonight. Soggy lettuce, half cooked chicken things and a combination of raw and overcooked chips. I had about a 4th of it before I gave it up. It was actually bearable until Benny said “theres something wrong with it aye” or words to those affect. Couldnt eat any more after that. I could really go for some spagetti right now (cooked in Aus).

Had a weird sleep, was really tired but i kept waking up. Anyway ended up getting up about 10am and got the continental breakfast. The banana muffin was good, then i got caught up playing poker online and forgot to eat my cereal. By the time i noticed the milk had been out way too long and I thought it would be best if i gave it a miss.

After our online sessions, me and benny headed to the Rio to suss it out and make my 2/5 debut. I sat down with $600 and was a bit nervous, but the game was very soft as expected and I had a good time. Talked to the guy on my left who turned out to be a 2+2er (otis_nixon) and an Absolute Poker reg, who I have played against online. We discussed the other online regs, 2+2, poker in general. We have many mutual real life/online friends, which is such a strange feeling as he lives on the other side of the world but yet we personally know many of the same people. He is friends with, and is staying with a couple of the Deucescracked.com coaches (DJ Sensei, WiltonTilt) which is totally awesome as I have watched pretty much all of their videos. It was absolutely bizzare but great, such a small world. They are staying in the suburbs somewhere so hopefully I will get a chance to head round there.

Got a whole pizza for lunch at one of the shops in the Rio, pretty good for 12 bux. I could barely finish it. We headed back to the room for a bit cause i needed to sort out some cash via my neteller card (which i needed to get unlocked). Played some more online until about 1am, then we went back to the Rio to attempt to enter event 51 ($1500 NL Holdem), starting tommorow (well, today now) ran into Gus hansen and another pro that Benny recognised on the way there coming out of the 50k HORSE event. Anyway so we get to the tourney-register bit and just as we were lining up they announced that event 51 has sold out. Unbelieveable. The guy said there is a slight chance that more tickets will be available at 10am tommorow (today). Benny was very dissapointed cause he wanted to play both of the $1500 events, im not too worried because I only want to play one. After that we came back to the Gold Coast and im writing blogs for day 1 and 2. So maybe/hopefully this time tommorow I will be blogging about my first WSOP event experience. No drama if we cant get into it though, im happy to play 2/5 for the next 2 days and then play event 54.

Forgot my toothbrush, so havnt cleaned my teeth in the last 2-3 days. Gotta remember to buy one tommorow. Have to find a shop first, which is a major challenge. Actaully finding a building thats not a casino is pretty much impossible. Sorry teeth. Also forgot razor, comb etc, but that stuffs not really important.