The phone went off first, I fumbled around and picked it up, it was Junglecat.
“Hey man, it's Rod, it's six o'clock, we should probably get up.”
We had drinks at 6.30pm with the rest of the Pokerlistings staff.
“Dude, it's 6am not pm," I explained.
“It is? Oh... Sorry, I'll catch you later.”
To be fair to Rod, Vegas is a place where between the hours of 6am to about 8am, the city looks exactly the same as its evening equivalent, a kind of semi-dusk tone which verges on the creepy. Indeed, later that evening, Art (short for Arthur) told us about his misadventure last year, where he'd worked a late shift, saw the time was eight o'clock and dashed to the Rio cardroom, only to realise half-way through what is ostensibly a twenty minute walk to the Convention centre, that he had actually got up at 8am and not 8pm.
I slept for a couple more hours before getting up and deciding to hit the FT PLO $1/$2 tables, a bit of a disaster as it turned out. My wrap and pair lost to top set, I then had J-J-9-8 on a J-T-5 two spade board only to lose to As-Ks-K-x, he turned top set and the river paired the ten ensuring I wasn't escaping anyway. Finally, I called a re-raise with Qd-Jx-Td-8x, the flop came Jd-7c-3d, and I check-raised the other guy all in, he eventually called with Q-J-T-9 (no diamonds) and hit his two-card scooper (offsuit eight). At this point I was down three buy-ins and decided simply to give up. Omaha is a stupid game.
Rod and I then head over to the Orleans where the blonde team stayed last year. Relatively, it's probably one of the most quiet casinos, away from all the buzz and action, it also has an excellent 24-hour cafe that sell $3 steak after 2am which is awesome. There, we met up with Dana and Snoops, who are here with Pokernews, Snoops' highlights have now totally disappeared and he looks very different. The three of them had a quick Keno game over lounge, where Snoops' proclamations that he could make it as a professional Keno player took a severe beating when Rod hit 12 of his 20 numbers easily winning.
After this, Rod and I went over and watched Indiana Jones and the Reboot of the Franchise. I give it a seven, but that's on the 'Meh' scale. There are some great moments in it, but the script seems very weak and the plot is much too far fetched, Ray Winstone's character doesn't even really seem to fit in properly. Shia LeBeouf is good though, the goofy sidekick role is one that always seems to be a thankless task because so many characters become just eminently punchable and you really don't care about them, (see Hud in Cloverfield a recently example). But here, the Transformers (another tough role to play as he's the protagonist and the comic relief) star did a pretty credible job. Rod liked it more than me, I guess I'm just becoming too much of a film snob.
In the evening, we went to the iBar in the Rio to meet the rest of the Listings' staff, there are eight of us reporting, aside from Rod and myself, there was the stoic Owen, the Barry White-sounding Matt, the fresh-faced and always enthusiastic Arthur, Euro-donk hating Marty, Southerner Jason and LV native Ed. And if you think those descriptions are brief, remember that it's still more characterisation than you'd see in a standard horror flick. All of them, however are great reporters and we've already got a nice little rapport going along, so I've to feel we're gonna have one of the best teams around for the WSOP.
After a healthy meal and drinks, we ended up playing a sit 'n' go in Sunny's (one of tech guys) suite for $10 a head, whilst drinking more beer with everyone slowly getting quite drunk. Naturally, I busted out first after Sunny's girlfriend limp-called my A-K raise with K-T and proceeded to crush me on a K-Q-T board. Rod went out soon after when his A-5 failed to outdraw Q-8, but at this point I became too tired to continue to watch the tournament and fell asleep on the couch for half an hour before going to bed, whilst the other guys stayed around and chatted.
Song of the day for today – The Pirate Song by Go Betty Go, simply because it's the first punk song I've ever heard that uses an accordion.