I've spent the last couple weekends doing activities at the Mandalay Bay casino. Last weekend, I was invited up to a skybox private party to see the boxing matches including the main event of Pacquiao vs. Diaz. The skybox is a distance from the action but that disadvantage is quickly made up for by the ability to move around, get a drink at the open bar, and eat the finger foods.

Here's what it looks like from the skybox:

We arrived in time to watch the three final fights all of which were very exciting. In the third-to-last event an enormous guy from Vegas got knocked out in the ST round. His opponent connected solidly to the guys left jaw and this Goliath went down.

The second to last match pitted Humberto Soto against Francisco Lorenzo. Soto was beating Lorenzo to a pulp. At one point in the Th round however, while Lorenzo was down on one knee in the corner and the referee was standing in front of him to see how fit he was to continue, Soto runs around the referee and hits Lorenzo on the top of the head. Lorenzo goes down on the mat flat on his back with his arms spread wide. It appears that if he's not actually dead, he's not really much better off.

We watched for at least 10 minutes as he lay motionless. Eventually he did stand up and everyone applauded. Then something odd happened. The referee lifted Lorenzo's arm up in the air. Even though he had gotten his clock cleaned and was on the ground about as often as he was on his feet, the referee gave him a win by disqualification. The ref disqualified Soto because of the head shot while Lorenzo was on one knee.

It was mind-boggling and perhaps the soap opera that is boxing at its finest but for us newbies to boxing it was pretty cool.

I've now read in the aftermath that the referee got in trouble for his ruling and the boxing commission as now ruled it a no-contest. They are saying that Lorenzo did an acting job and was not hurt nearly as much as he pretended to be. More fun. For more on that here's a news article.

The final bout was Pacquiao and Diaz. Here's a pic:

Pacquiao beat the snot out of Diaz. He just ran circles around him and landed some doozies while Diaz just spun around in circles. You have to imagine that from Diaz's perspective it was like one of those weird shots in a movie where the screen is blurry and the camera does a 360. He did last until the 8th or 9th round. I can't remember, but he also went down by knockout.

So in the three matches we saw three knockouts although one was reversed due to disqualification. Fun stuff.

Now this past weekend, the Mandalay Bay invited me to a poker tournament for their casino guests. I have to admit that I like these types of events because I generally have a lot more poker experience that the other players. There were three recognized pros in the event: Johnny Chan, Richard Brodie, and Minh Ly. Other than those, the majority of players were slot gamblers and table games players. Not poker players.

This was by the far the fastest structure of any live poker tournament I've ever played and it was even faster than most online tournaments! For the first four levels we did 15-minute rounds and after that we went to 10-minute rounds! This was some serious speed poker because the blinds increased so rapidly that before long the only things you could do was to go all in and hope to get lucky.

I did get lucky.

I placed 6th, which paid $10,000 which was nice. 1st place was $100,000 -- which was what I really had my sights set on, of course, but 10K ain't bad for a day's work. Richard Brodie is a friend and witnessed the final table. I went all in with Q7 suited and was called by AK. He disagrees with my play. I don't kno. I had $500,000 in chips and the blinds were 75K/150K. In hindsight though, I sure wish I had folded and waited for a better hand. Still I got a nice prize out of it.

After I busted out of the tournament we went to the Burger Bar to eat. (Once I bust out I don't like staying around to see who won. I want to get away from there fast.)

The Burger Bar is a fantastic place for lunch and has delicious burgers. They also have five different types of buns like plain, onion, sesame, wheat, and ciabatta. Also, they have many toppings ranging from various cheeses to three different types of mushrooms, to a friend egg or jalapeños.

Five of us had lunch. Richard had a buffalo burger. I had a black angus burger. We also had the sweet potato fries and the zucchini fries. It was one of the best lunches I've had in a while. Delish!

p.s. For those of you who don't know, Richard Brodie was employee #77 at Microsoft and worked directly for Bill Gates for a while. He also was integral in the creation of Microsoft Word. He likely has a few bucks I'd say. Nice guy.