Where was Sean? I was up early, and packed everything up because today we had to move all of our belongings over to the Gold Coast. It was almost 9:00am and Sean was nowhere to be found.
I started to get worried and went out looking for him. He wasn’t at the Tropicana blackjack tables or the MGM Grand poker room. I go back up to the room and there he is passed out on his bed!
Me: “Where were you man? I was getting worried.”
Sean: “Let’s just say I fell in love. I don’t want to talk about it.” Sean is really drunk this time. He’s slurring his words a bit.
Me: “Are you okay? Did you get into a fight? Robbed? Go home with someone?”
Him: “Yeah, all three, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
Well, I decided to get the information later from him. For now we had to grab a quick breakfast from the Beach Cafe before moving to the Gold Coast.
He's a little green around the gills this morning.
Three things happened to Sean last night.
At the beginning of the night he started playing blackjack at the Tropicana. He says there was a young gay male that started playing with him at the table. This guy didn’t know much about basic strategy and made a few errors that ended up helping the dealer and caused Sean to lose more money...or so he believes anyway.
Sean: “Dude, what the hell are you doing? Here stick with me and I’ll tell you what you’re supposed to do. I don't care if you're gay or not, just don't hit your 15 when the dealer is showing a bust card.”
Well I guess the young fellow picked up something from that. Sean is quite a bit friendlier and more talkative when he’s drunk. He’s not homophobic, so he wouldn’t have ignored the young gay man. Sean gets up to cash out his few remaining chips at the cashier cage. He turns around to walk away and there’s his puppy dog admirer staring straight at him.
Gay Boy: “So what are you doing now for the rest of the night?” The guy had no chips to cash out. He was just taking his shot. Luckily Sean wasn’t that drunk.
Sean: “I’m going up to my room to sleep...by myself!” The other guys takes the hint and moves on. Sean then tells me he went to the Excalibur to play poker.
He got really drunk but says he was doing fine. He noticed 2 groups of guys speaking different languages amongst each other during the poker hands. The dealer wasn’t doing anything about it. The rule is English only can be spoken at the tables if you are involved in a hand. As well during the hands, one of the non-playing friends of the Spanish speaking group kept walking around behind the other players. Sean thinks he was trying to catch a glimpse of their cards, although that seems a bit too obvious to me. He also says there was a father and son team on the table that were working together. All of this suspicious activity finally got to be too much for him.
Sean stands up and points his finger at one group and then the other.
“HEY! I know you’re speaking f**k**g French and you as*-ho**s over there are f**k**g speaking Spanish and you’re a father and son team trying to f**k**g fleece everyone. Well it better f**k**g stop right now! English only at the table!”
French dude with accent points at Sean:
“No F-bomb! No F-bomb!”
Well, Sean didn’t make any friends at the table with an outburst like that, and the floor person comes over and warns him to watch his language.
Sean: “Watch my language? What about all these cheating as*-ho**s? At least f**k is English! How about enforcing your own house rules? I’m never playing here again!”
After storming off from the poker tables, he decided to try blackjack at the Excalibur. Apparently he had recouped all of his losses at this one young lady’s table. The Latino dealer was very nice to Sean and paid out a lot of money to him. He doesn’t remember all of his flirtatious banter, but I can just imagine! He even says the girl was trying to teach him some Spanish inbetween hands or while she was shuffling. Then he says the dealers were switched and he ended up losing everything!
That was quite a bit of drama for 1 night! I need to adjust his drink total for yesterday to 40+ drinks in that 24 hour period.
I drop him off at the Gold Coast and leave him on the couch. He passes out almost immediately. I wrap a note around his glasses telling him to come looking for me at the Rio once he sobers up and wakes up. I’m off to play the WSOP.
For those of you that don’t play Pot-Limit Omaha High/Low 8 or better, just skip to the end of the day.
This year 936 people entered the event, and 117 would be paid out. Since it is pot limit, by the end of the first ten level (day 1) up to 90% of the field is eliminated. I've had some pretty poor luck the last 3 years I've played and my first goal was to make it to day 2.
At the end of the first break, my stack was at 4900. I didn't play many hands. My wife says I should loosen up a bit since I play too tight. She might be right. During the first level, there was a hand where I was faced with a bet for a third of my stack. I had:
A 2 5 8.
By the turn the board read:
10 4 6 K
The guy first to act bets the pot and I was faced with a decision to either call off 1350 of my starting 4500, or fold with nothing but a low draw and a double gut shot straight draw. I fold but the third guy in the hand calls. The river:
7
I would have made the nut straight and nut low. These 2 jokers split the pot with one guy just having a pair of aces and the other guy having an A 3 low. If I had been in the hand I would have tripled up.
At the end of break number 2, my stack had grown to 6600. I can't believe some of the idiots that were at my table. There was a young Russian guy there that had grown his stack to 45000. That is a huge stack when the blinds are still 75-150. He gets involved with the second biggest stack at the table, another idiot with about 35000 in chips. The end result is that they both commit their entire stacks before the flop! The Russian loses the pot and idiot number 2 goes up to 70000 in chips. That could be an average stack at the final 7 tables! It was 4 hours into a 3 day tournament!
Sean comes by at the end of level 5. He is in awe at the size of the poker tournament rooms and all the poker celebrities playing in this tournament. Barry Greenstein, Eric Seidel, Scotty Ngyuen, Mike Matusow, Joe Hachem, David Williams, Perry Green and many others. Many of those names I mentioned are world champions and all have multiple WSOP bracelets. It was certainly a pro filled field this year. He tells me he slept until 3:30pm, then took a bath and fell asleep in the tub for another 2 hours!
Sean @ the WSOP
Sean with Barry Greenstein. Barry eventually went on to finish third in this event for $99,091.
We make plans for dinner at TGIF in the Gold Coast. Since I only have 90 minutes, I tell him to go to the restaurant and order the steak and lobster special in advance since I have to eat quick, drive over to the LVH to check in and then get back to the Rio. The big hand before the dinner break went like this:
I am in the big blind with:
A J 2 3
The flop comes:
Qh Kh 7s
A medium side bet comes around to me and I call. I have a broadway straight draw and a backdoor low draw.
The turn is:
10d
Bingo! I just made the nut straight! I need to bet the pot to get all the flush draws to fold. The thing is, a pot sized bet is my entire stack. Well if I go out with the current nut hand I'll just file that under the bad beat files. What happens next catches me completely by surprise.
After I move all my chips into the pot, the next guy does the same thing, and then the guy on the button does as well! Uh-oh... I have a bad feeling I'm being "free-rolled". That means someone has the same hand as me, with “outs” to a better hand. Here`s what they had:
Villain 1: Ah 3d 7h 7c He has a set of 7’s and the nut flush draw.
Villain 2: As Js Kd 10c He too has the nut Broadway straight, but could hit a K or 10 for a full house.
That just shows the advantage of position. If I had been last to act, I would have folded if the 2 guys went all in first in front of me. In this game you absolutely need to avoid getting free-rolled by hands that tie yours, and could improve. Luckily the river is an off-suit 3 and I'm still in in the tournament.
I make it to the dinner break with 6950 in chips. There are 396 people left.
I meet Sean at TGIF’s but he hasn`t even ordered yet. We had a real b!tch for a waitress. She was very slow and rude.
I eat quickly and have just 40 minutes to check into the LVH. The offer here included 2 free nights, $100 in free slot play and 2 tickets to see “Raiding the Rock Vault”. I didn`t have time to refuse the housekeeping and get an extra $10 comp in the interest of saving the environment.
The LVH room that we never used.
I make a poor decision and turn right from Paradise Road onto Flamingo to try get back to the Rio. I get stuck in traffic and arrive 15 minutes late, losing a set of blinds.
At the end of the 4th break I had 5700 in chips, and there were 227 people left.
It`s now level 10 and we are just ½ hour away from quitting for the day. The blinds are 500-1000 and I just have 3000 in chips left. I am on the button with Ah 2h Kc Qc and move all in. Unfortunately, both blinds call and I am eliminated in the 144st spot.
Yeah, I was disappointed, but happy with the way I played. My stack never grew past 9000. I was just grinding it out for the 9 and ½ hours trying to survive. There were a few hands when I flopped the nut high or nut low hands and people just called all the way to the end to river half the pot away from me.
Well, I had to go drown my sorrows and another $400 in a Russian Treasure machine I found in the Rio. I got a cheeseburger from Sonic and went to bed at around 1:30am.
My Bankroll = -$4500 (I’m including losing my WSOP buy-in as a gambling loss)
Sean’s Bankroll = -$1100
# of drinks Sean had = 5
Day 7 to follow.
I started to get worried and went out looking for him. He wasn’t at the Tropicana blackjack tables or the MGM Grand poker room. I go back up to the room and there he is passed out on his bed!
Me: “Where were you man? I was getting worried.”
Sean: “Let’s just say I fell in love. I don’t want to talk about it.” Sean is really drunk this time. He’s slurring his words a bit.
Me: “Are you okay? Did you get into a fight? Robbed? Go home with someone?”
Him: “Yeah, all three, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
Well, I decided to get the information later from him. For now we had to grab a quick breakfast from the Beach Cafe before moving to the Gold Coast.
He's a little green around the gills this morning.
Three things happened to Sean last night.
At the beginning of the night he started playing blackjack at the Tropicana. He says there was a young gay male that started playing with him at the table. This guy didn’t know much about basic strategy and made a few errors that ended up helping the dealer and caused Sean to lose more money...or so he believes anyway.
Sean: “Dude, what the hell are you doing? Here stick with me and I’ll tell you what you’re supposed to do. I don't care if you're gay or not, just don't hit your 15 when the dealer is showing a bust card.”
Well I guess the young fellow picked up something from that. Sean is quite a bit friendlier and more talkative when he’s drunk. He’s not homophobic, so he wouldn’t have ignored the young gay man. Sean gets up to cash out his few remaining chips at the cashier cage. He turns around to walk away and there’s his puppy dog admirer staring straight at him.
Gay Boy: “So what are you doing now for the rest of the night?” The guy had no chips to cash out. He was just taking his shot. Luckily Sean wasn’t that drunk.
Sean: “I’m going up to my room to sleep...by myself!” The other guys takes the hint and moves on. Sean then tells me he went to the Excalibur to play poker.
He got really drunk but says he was doing fine. He noticed 2 groups of guys speaking different languages amongst each other during the poker hands. The dealer wasn’t doing anything about it. The rule is English only can be spoken at the tables if you are involved in a hand. As well during the hands, one of the non-playing friends of the Spanish speaking group kept walking around behind the other players. Sean thinks he was trying to catch a glimpse of their cards, although that seems a bit too obvious to me. He also says there was a father and son team on the table that were working together. All of this suspicious activity finally got to be too much for him.
Sean stands up and points his finger at one group and then the other.
“HEY! I know you’re speaking f**k**g French and you as*-ho**s over there are f**k**g speaking Spanish and you’re a father and son team trying to f**k**g fleece everyone. Well it better f**k**g stop right now! English only at the table!”
French dude with accent points at Sean:
“No F-bomb! No F-bomb!”
Well, Sean didn’t make any friends at the table with an outburst like that, and the floor person comes over and warns him to watch his language.
Sean: “Watch my language? What about all these cheating as*-ho**s? At least f**k is English! How about enforcing your own house rules? I’m never playing here again!”
After storming off from the poker tables, he decided to try blackjack at the Excalibur. Apparently he had recouped all of his losses at this one young lady’s table. The Latino dealer was very nice to Sean and paid out a lot of money to him. He doesn’t remember all of his flirtatious banter, but I can just imagine! He even says the girl was trying to teach him some Spanish inbetween hands or while she was shuffling. Then he says the dealers were switched and he ended up losing everything!
That was quite a bit of drama for 1 night! I need to adjust his drink total for yesterday to 40+ drinks in that 24 hour period.
I drop him off at the Gold Coast and leave him on the couch. He passes out almost immediately. I wrap a note around his glasses telling him to come looking for me at the Rio once he sobers up and wakes up. I’m off to play the WSOP.
For those of you that don’t play Pot-Limit Omaha High/Low 8 or better, just skip to the end of the day.
This year 936 people entered the event, and 117 would be paid out. Since it is pot limit, by the end of the first ten level (day 1) up to 90% of the field is eliminated. I've had some pretty poor luck the last 3 years I've played and my first goal was to make it to day 2.
At the end of the first break, my stack was at 4900. I didn't play many hands. My wife says I should loosen up a bit since I play too tight. She might be right. During the first level, there was a hand where I was faced with a bet for a third of my stack. I had:
A 2 5 8.
By the turn the board read:
10 4 6 K
The guy first to act bets the pot and I was faced with a decision to either call off 1350 of my starting 4500, or fold with nothing but a low draw and a double gut shot straight draw. I fold but the third guy in the hand calls. The river:
7
I would have made the nut straight and nut low. These 2 jokers split the pot with one guy just having a pair of aces and the other guy having an A 3 low. If I had been in the hand I would have tripled up.
At the end of break number 2, my stack had grown to 6600. I can't believe some of the idiots that were at my table. There was a young Russian guy there that had grown his stack to 45000. That is a huge stack when the blinds are still 75-150. He gets involved with the second biggest stack at the table, another idiot with about 35000 in chips. The end result is that they both commit their entire stacks before the flop! The Russian loses the pot and idiot number 2 goes up to 70000 in chips. That could be an average stack at the final 7 tables! It was 4 hours into a 3 day tournament!
Sean comes by at the end of level 5. He is in awe at the size of the poker tournament rooms and all the poker celebrities playing in this tournament. Barry Greenstein, Eric Seidel, Scotty Ngyuen, Mike Matusow, Joe Hachem, David Williams, Perry Green and many others. Many of those names I mentioned are world champions and all have multiple WSOP bracelets. It was certainly a pro filled field this year. He tells me he slept until 3:30pm, then took a bath and fell asleep in the tub for another 2 hours!
Sean @ the WSOP
Sean with Barry Greenstein. Barry eventually went on to finish third in this event for $99,091.
We make plans for dinner at TGIF in the Gold Coast. Since I only have 90 minutes, I tell him to go to the restaurant and order the steak and lobster special in advance since I have to eat quick, drive over to the LVH to check in and then get back to the Rio. The big hand before the dinner break went like this:
I am in the big blind with:
A J 2 3
The flop comes:
Qh Kh 7s
A medium side bet comes around to me and I call. I have a broadway straight draw and a backdoor low draw.
The turn is:
10d
Bingo! I just made the nut straight! I need to bet the pot to get all the flush draws to fold. The thing is, a pot sized bet is my entire stack. Well if I go out with the current nut hand I'll just file that under the bad beat files. What happens next catches me completely by surprise.
After I move all my chips into the pot, the next guy does the same thing, and then the guy on the button does as well! Uh-oh... I have a bad feeling I'm being "free-rolled". That means someone has the same hand as me, with “outs” to a better hand. Here`s what they had:
Villain 1: Ah 3d 7h 7c He has a set of 7’s and the nut flush draw.
Villain 2: As Js Kd 10c He too has the nut Broadway straight, but could hit a K or 10 for a full house.
That just shows the advantage of position. If I had been last to act, I would have folded if the 2 guys went all in first in front of me. In this game you absolutely need to avoid getting free-rolled by hands that tie yours, and could improve. Luckily the river is an off-suit 3 and I'm still in in the tournament.
I make it to the dinner break with 6950 in chips. There are 396 people left.
I meet Sean at TGIF’s but he hasn`t even ordered yet. We had a real b!tch for a waitress. She was very slow and rude.
I eat quickly and have just 40 minutes to check into the LVH. The offer here included 2 free nights, $100 in free slot play and 2 tickets to see “Raiding the Rock Vault”. I didn`t have time to refuse the housekeeping and get an extra $10 comp in the interest of saving the environment.
The LVH room that we never used.
I make a poor decision and turn right from Paradise Road onto Flamingo to try get back to the Rio. I get stuck in traffic and arrive 15 minutes late, losing a set of blinds.
At the end of the 4th break I had 5700 in chips, and there were 227 people left.
It`s now level 10 and we are just ½ hour away from quitting for the day. The blinds are 500-1000 and I just have 3000 in chips left. I am on the button with Ah 2h Kc Qc and move all in. Unfortunately, both blinds call and I am eliminated in the 144st spot.
Yeah, I was disappointed, but happy with the way I played. My stack never grew past 9000. I was just grinding it out for the 9 and ½ hours trying to survive. There were a few hands when I flopped the nut high or nut low hands and people just called all the way to the end to river half the pot away from me.
Well, I had to go drown my sorrows and another $400 in a Russian Treasure machine I found in the Rio. I got a cheeseburger from Sonic and went to bed at around 1:30am.
My Bankroll = -$4500 (I’m including losing my WSOP buy-in as a gambling loss)
Sean’s Bankroll = -$1100
# of drinks Sean had = 5
Day 7 to follow.