So it begins again

I arrived in Las Vegas last night on my first ever Westjet flight. Not too bad, with leather seats and live satellite TV. It arrived about 20 mins early, but traffic at 10pm on a Friday night in Vegas was terrible and it probably took atleast 30 mins to make the short trek from the airport. Oh, I ran into Steve Paul-Ambrose at the airport who was waiting there for his family to arrive on the same flight I took. Steve was the winner of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure this year and hails from Waterloo. Other than him, I haven't seen any well-known poker personalities so far.

I'm staying at Treasure Island this year - tried to slip the front desk clerk $20 to upgrade, but either she didn't see it (I'm just too smooth) or they actually were full. Ended up with a corner room overlooking the strip on the 34th floor anyway which is just fine.


One neat thing about the poker room here is they actually have the waiting list available on TV. At 6:30am there wasn't much of a wait but I thought that was useful.. and signs poker is quite popular, if you hadn't noticed.



I picked up my goody bag of stuff, shown below. Shirts, hats, jerseys, a nice jacket, bag teddy bear, a baseball and trading cards. Not too shabby. The strange thing this year is that Harrah's decided not to allow .com advertising, so all players sporting shirts from poker sites have either had to wear .net (play money) gear or tape over the .com portion of the logo. So there are plenty of people walking around with duct tape on their clothes.



I went to the Rio to finalize my registration which went fine. I was a bit worried because I heard people were getting their days changed without notice but everything is fine and I'm playing tomorrow as expected.

They had a "poker lifestyle" exhibition which was a small trade show. All the major sites had booths with girls handing out free stuff. I managed to accumulate about 10 lbs of hats, shirts, bags. The biggest score was a 1GB flash drive.

PokerStars had a booth where you could play "Battleship Poker" for prizes. It's basically laptops set up face to face and you play a heads-up match. I was out pretty quickly with AQ vs 74s on a Q72 flop (7) turn and the guy who beat me draw a video ipod for a prize. That would have been sweet.





Some more pics from the trade show

PokerStars Aston Martin (they're a sponsor)

A view of a poker table with built in screens - no dealer required!

The Bodog poker bachelor pad - complete with lingerie clad girls upstairs. You could line up for a pillow fight with them.


A case with all the bracelet from members of the Full Tilt team in their hospitality suite

It is a happy Canada Day indeed

I just qualified for the 2006 WSOP Main Event, after weeks of trying. The tournament I won was a $33 rebuy (same as last year) where I beat out 198 other players for the single prize. Near the end of the rebuy period, I was allin preflop twice within 4 hands when I hit a set vs an over pair (TT vs QQ and JJ vs KK) to emerge from the rebuy period with the chip lead. From there I maintained the lead almost wire to wire, never dropping below 15th spot and winning 4 huge coinflips vs other top 10 players including the last hand.

Total investment in this tournament, $93. Total investment trying to qualify this year - too scary to add up.

The tournament starts July 28th in Las Vegas.

I'm out

Blinded down to about 2500.  Utg limps, sb completes, I push with 33 in the BB.  UTG calls with QQ and I'm out.

Third break

4525.  Card dead.  AK twice once losing 2000 to a short stack allin with TT and once had to fold on 789 flop.  Bled off the rest with some bluffs and steals gone wrong. Blinds 100/200+25 ante when I return.  Need to gamble for a double up soon.

Second break

9375. I am a folding machine for the first hour back. Finally a get a monster after two limpers and I raise in late with ATo. One caller. Flop comes JTx. He checks I bet he calls. Turn another rag. Check I bet almost half my stack he folds  phew.  Thanks ultra tight image.

I get 88 utg and make my standard 3xBB raise. Ultra tight Utg+1 starts to think. I know I am toast if he calls. He looks over at me so I look away and try to feel disinterested. He immediately folds.  That's about all the interesting hands I've been involved in.

We lose the other stars qualifer when he check raises allin with the board 679T and of course gets called by 88.  He's replaced with a short stack who plays 2 hands, overbetting with pushed each time. The good agg maniac is up to over 15k and dangerous now.

Lost about 25 tables so far. One guy still hasn't shown up yet and is pretty close to me in chips

First break

7775.  Playing mostly small pairs and KK which lost about a 1000 pot to A5o who limped and called my raise preflop. Aand 2 clubs on the flop and I fire two bets before giving up and checking down the river hoping he had a busted flush draw.

Another loose maniac playing about 75% of hands folded to him had been raising my BB 4 orbits on a row. I finally got sick of it and defended his 3xBB raise with 62o. Flop comes K53 and I bet out. He calls. Turn another K. I think a bit and bet again. He calls after thinking. I am 90% sure he doesn't have a king. River 8. I fire my third shot and after about 1 min he calls with QQ. Geez maybe he does get good cards on my BB.

Table is fairly aggressive with few unraised flops. We lost one player after 40 mins.  Raised and reraised preflop. Flop rags.  Bet call. Turn K. Big 2000 bet. Other person thinks awhile and pushes. Orginally raiser calls with AKs (two spades on board) and pushes has KK for a set.  River comes 7 of spades making the flush but also a full house and we lose a doyles room qualifier. 

One person to my right hasn't shown up yet.

Gotten 33 44 66 KK and the rest of my hands I've played have been steals.

No pros. One other PS qualifier. One full tilt one doyles room.

Table 170, seat 4

10 mins to go until it starts and so far its heads up between me and another pokerstars guy. Easy money.

Shuffle up and deal!

I managed to get over to the Rio for the opening hand of the world series main event. It was a madhouse there, you literally could not move through the aisles that divided up the 200 poker tables.  There was a constant background hum of chips being riffled and you could feel the tension in the airspace over each poker table as everyone had their gameface on.

I hung around for a few minutes after they started, half expecting to hear a dealer yell out “seat open!” Indicating that someone had busted out in the first hand, but it didn't happen.

I headed back to our room at the Venetian, if you could call it that. More like an apartment!  I had heard some people (dave caputo I think) mention to tip the front desk clerk when checking in. So I did that, nervously flashing a $20 bill while asking what the best room available was. Turned out that for my $99 priceline.com reservation, she was willing to upgrade me to a 1500 sq ft suite overloooking the strip. 2 washrooms, 3 TVs, living and dining room, jacuzzi tub and a great view.  I'll have to try that one again soon.

Once I get internet access I will post some pictures.  The other down side of being too cheap to pay 10/day is that I have no idea how the first day went.  You readers probably know more about what happened than I do!

The dreams...

... have begun. Most of them involve Allen Cunningham and two queens. You can interpret that one however you like. Coincidently, Allen is currently the biggest money winner at the WSOP this year - so I was knocked out by the best at the Bahamas. The other weird one started out with me sitting down to play on the first day, but it had turned into CFA writing tournament. That wasn't fun.

My first day of play will be on the third "first" day - Saturday July 9. I'm flying out tonight, so at least I'll have a chance to relax and get over the jet lag. If I make it deep into the tourney it's going to be a long grueling few days. Dan Harrington, whose books I have been studying, noted that last year at the WSOP main event, he was the only person at the final table that played on the second out of two starting days. Players on the first day would have had a day off before the marathon began. So if I don't do well, I'll know exactly what to blame. That and the weird dreams.