Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

Strictly for the Sky Poker guys...

Our package winners get to play an MTT at Venetian, which has 2 x Day 1's (yesterday & today) with the final day tomorrow (Thursday).

Each of the opening days plays down until 12.5% of the entries remain, they are then guaranteed a cash & go through to Thursday's final day.

Yesterday, there were 69 entries, so 9 have made the money & will return tomorrow. Unforch, as I noted yesterday, I could not really interact with the players or take photos.

5 of our players elected to play Day 1a yesterday, being Alvez11, "Josh Manley Poker", bigfatfish, loololollo, & Nigel M (sorry, forgot alias).

Of those five, four fell by the wayside, with loololollo the lone survivor, so he's guaranteed at least a min cash. Decent shape too, just below average with 258,000. Blinds will resume at 6,000-12,000/12,000. (BB Ante), so I suppose that's in the region of 20 Bigs, though I'm not sure how to calculate it to allow for BB ante. Hopefully he'll wear a different hat tomorrow, a multi-coloured  bucket hat is not something I'd be seen dead in, and as is well-known, I am an arbiter of fine taste in the clothery department.

I should perhaps add that our players (& only our players) also have a $200 per head Last Longer, with, I think, 3 places paid.

Click to see full-size image.

 

Any more updates I can post on the other place Tikay? 

Hi David,

Thanks for passing that on.

I do have a bit more info, but the days & nights are a blur, so I'm a bit short on detail.

By way of a recap, 69 played Day 1A & with 12.5% going through, 9 made it into Day 2. Of our 5 runners, just loololollol survived.

On Day 1B the rest of our package winners played, and this was a much bigger field, some 153 entries, making 222 in all & a prize pool of $112,110. I believe 19 players progressed to Day 2.

We had a few more survivors this time, including gez_bear, NickD, & DaleBoss. 

The field thinned out rapidly on Day 2, with gez_bear an early casualty. However, loolollol finished 9th & NickD 6th.

For our private (Sky Poker) $200 per head Last Longer, NickD finished 1st, loololollol 2nd & DaleBoss 3rd.


In the evening, we all convened at a place called "Flight Club" in the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes.

"Flight Club" is a sort of range-merge between Darts, electronic wizardry, & copious amounts of alcohol. Sort of Darts answer to "Top Golf". It's a franchise based business & is becoming immensely popular, with new venues opening all over the USA & Australia.

In the UK they are at;

Bloomsbury, London
Brewery Qtr, Cheltenham
Corn St, Bristol
Islington, London
King St, Manchester
Park Row, Leeds
Shoreditch, London
St Mary St, Cardiff
Temple St, Birmingham
Victoria, London
George St, Glasgow (OPENING 6TH OCTOBER)
St James Qtr, Edinburgh
 


https://flightclubdarts.com/


I made a quiet exit after around 3 hours, by which time it was clear a lot of our players would be a little unwell this morning.

Today (Friday) some of our party flew home, while 3 or 4 of the boys are heading down to Doug Polk's place "The Lodge", in Austin Texas where they'll be hanging out for a week or so.

Most of our party fly home on Saturday (5th August) & that'll be that for another year.

I've got another week though, & don't fly home until Sunday 13th, arriving UK Monday 14th.

[tikay]

Worth it just to use the ketchup sauce dispenser...proper plastic tomato

Morning Trevor.


Oh yes, I'd completely forgotten about those.

[tikay]

Lifted this from another forum, but I don't think the guy will mind.

He had the manager take if off the bill on the basis that it cannot possibly be okay to charge $10 for an orange juice.

Hope you have a great time out there as you always do! I've only been back 6 weeks since the last visit and I am longing to go back already!

Morning Stuart.

How is Matthew these days? Not seen or heard of him in ages. Don't get me wrong, I don't miss him, not at all, I was just curious.

Back on topic, we visited The Rio last night for old times sake & paid a visit to my old favourite, the Sports Deli.

A slice of pizza for Gill, plain cheeseburger & fries for me, plus one soda each = $42.

The Rio was quite sad in a way, it's dying a painful death.

Here's the very odd opening hours at the once thriving Sports Deli;

Click to see full-size image.

[tikay]

I've been busy the last few days, so a few updates will follow later this morning once I've got myself organised. I mean, don't hold your breath, nothing exciting, just poker & general holiday waffle.

Bet you are all dying to know what arouses my interest when I'm on my hollibobs.

[tikay]

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

Played my 2nd MTT of the trip, a $300 PLO8 affair at Venetian. Short version, I made the Final Table & finished 8th though I suppose I should add that there were only 29 entries & just 4 got paid. In my previous Tourney at Orleans, a $150 affair, think I was 11th of 63 with 8 paid. Decent enough, but not decent enough. I never needed to use any extra bullets in either case, so I’m $450 down (so far) in MTT’s balanced by around $220 of profit from cash games. Considering the starting hands I was dealt yesterday, 8th was a miracle, & I was quite pleased with myself. You all know that feeling, when everyone else is showing up with proper hands time after time & you simply can’t find a hand. Thought I held myself together pretty well all things considered, especially as we played short-handed the whole day. In my exit hand I had a good combi-hand & a deep-stacked fella (God bless him) raised to isolate me. He had spanners but they did the job, his 3-3 in the hole (A-3-3-9) enough to scoop. It was that sort of day.

It had a $7,500 guarantee & a $300 entry so needed 25 entries & got 29. We began with 5 players (FIVE), & almost never more than 9 at any time but one by one as players exited they either re-entered or new players arrived. For around 4 hours we played 9 handed, 4 on my table, 5 on the other, which seemed a little unfair, but they could not consolidate the two tables as new entries might show up at any time. Every bustee seemed to be on the 5 handed table. Fresh entries/re-entries drew a “blind” card to determine what seat/table they were allocated, & 6 times in a row they drew the other Table, so we ended up 4 handed for hour after hour. So as it panned out, the first time we played 9 handed all day was at the Final Table. At the very start of the FT I made a horrendous mistake & butchered a hand. If I’d played that properly I’d have been close to Chippie. But I didn’t. I had 3 bet & attracted two callers & the flop fell Q-8-8. One of those flops it’s likely nobody hit, but inexplicably I failed to C-Bet & a wide-awake Asian lad (last to act) spotted the error & helped himself. I KNEW I had to C-bet but I just lost my nerve. You'd think I'd have learned by now... As I had nothing anyway, I could not call. A bet would have got the job done though.

[tikay]

There’s always at least one fascinating character at the tables, & this was no exception. Young lady showed up late, said she’s been tipped off by her backer that overlay was likely. She was around 40 years old I suppose but had seen a whole lot of life. She made it known she had a backer who took 50% of any profits. Can’t help but think if you are paying reg fees which average 23% & paying half your profits to a backer, you’d do well to get by…

Anyway, she appeared  to have some sort of chest ailment, & was coughing repeatedly (& never once covered her mouth or used a hankie, but that’s another story). So every now & then she had to, how can I say this, “clear her throat”. Once she had done so, she appeared to roll it around her mouth as you would a boiled sweet & then without leaving her chair expectorate it into the waste bin which was some 2 yards distant. To be fair, she never missed once, & you could hear the "splat". The sort of thing you’d expect a wizened 60 year old geezer with a cowboy hat to do, but a petite young lady, not so much. Anyway, after running up a huge stack she blew it off in spectacular style & finished 11th. I was not displeased to see her depart tbh.

[tikay]

Good fun though. The Venetian is SUCH a lovely room to play in. As almost always, Mr & Mrs Shulman were in attendance.

Any of you that have played at The Venetian will be familiar with Mrs Shulman, aka Allyn, wife of Barry, the Cardplayer.com owner. She was/is co-owner of Cardplayer, & is their Attorney. Decent player, won a WSOP Bracelet in the Seniors around 12 years ago for ~$600,000, & won a big Deepstack Extravaganza affair for over $300,000, so knows her way round the table. I happen to like her very much, a view not widely shared, but she does strike quite an imposing image with her posh shades, long blonde hair, menacing cleavage & opinionated views.

It did quite amuse me though the way she casually slung her $700 Versace scarf over her chair in such a way that everyone could see it. To be fair, I do the same with my Tesco scarf.  

Click to see full-size image.

 

Click to see full-size image.

[tikay]

Sunday I decided to head over to The Orleans & play some $4-$8 & $8-$16 Limit 08 cash. It’s not the most exciting game, especially as most of the players are old & grumpy, but I do love the fact we all sit there with huge great piles of chips in front of us. (There’s only $290 here but it looks a fortune as we play $4-$8 in 1$ chips).

Click to see full-size image.

It’s quite hard to win or lose a lot at Limit 08 unless you get really stupid or lucky, but I just enjoy playing live poker, riffling chips, “snapping” the corners of the cards, tossing discards in the muck in a cool fashion & generally chilling with like-minded folk.

I somehow won a big Half-Kill pot at the very start, when I flopped the world, played it slow, & everyone else was drawing, & I ended up with nut-nut, then won two more pots straight after. So I had pulled up $200 & had $450 within an orbit. Not much point playing any longer, I can only dribble it off. And an annoying little fella was playing a lot of hands “blind” & winning pot after pot after pot. I was fine with that, good luck to him, but he was claiming it was skill & it was starting to irritate me somewhat, so I decided to quit early & walk away with a nice profit.

It’s always the greed that buggers us you know so it was quite satisfying to do the right (?) thing for once.

Oh, Mr Farking I'm So Great was also one of those guys who repeatedly wheeled out the line "if I'd played that hand I'da won it."

Course you would mate, course you would.

God, he was annoying.

[Karabiner]

Loving your waffles.

Those half kill games can be great fun.

When you say the other players were old and grumpy does that mean you were the young upstart?

[booder]

Loving your waffles.

Ditto

[Tal]

Those O8 games at the Orleans...

Eight people limp.

We see a flop.

One bet. Six callers

Turn

One bet. Five callers.

River.

Check it down.

Everyone turns their cards over.

Everyone looks at all the other cards. Stand up, obviously, squint and raise glasses.

Everyone sits down.

Now, either one of two things happens, depending entirely on the dealer:
1) the dealer informs the table that seat 2 has won the high with a flush and seats 4 and 7 split the low.
2) the dealer lets the players sort it out for themselves and distributes the chips as instructed, irrespective of whether it's correct.

It's the best poker game to watch when learning the game. Working out the two sides of the pot with 20 cards to choose from is a skill worth learning.

[typhoon13]

Keep em coming, great work

[celtic]

Whilst it is enjoyable as described above. Would be good to hear of some arse ripping or whatever it is you specialize in when you’re in Vegas please x

[the sicilian]

Good fun though. The Venetian is SUCH a lovely room to play in. As almost always, Mr & Mrs Shulman were in attendance.

Any of you that have played at The Venetian will be familiar with Mrs Shulman, aka Allyn, wife of Barry, the Cardplayer.com owner. She was/is co-owner of Cardplayer, & is their Attorney. Decent player, won a WSOP Bracelet in the Seniors around 12 years ago for ~$600,000, & won a big Deepstack Extravaganza affair for over $300,000, so knows her way round the table. I happen to like her very much, a view not widely shared, but she does strike quite an imposing image with her posh shades, long blonde hair, menacing cleavage & opinionated views.

It did quite amuse me though the way she casually slung her $700 Versace scarf over her chair in such a way that everyone could see it. To be fair, I do the same with my Tesco scarf.  

Click to see full-size image.

 

Click to see full-size image.

'Menacing clevage' I have to admit I lolled

[tikay]

Loving your waffles.

Those half kill games can be great fun.

When you say the other players were old and grumpy does that mean you were the young upstart?

First up, thank you to everyone who commented, both on here & WhatsApp. When time permits, I enjoy trying to write, but there's no doubt a bit of feedback adds that feelgood factor, & at least I know someone is reading.

Starting with young Ralph, pretty sure I was the youngest at the table, & by some distance. There was a huge argument yesterday, started by a typically aggravating octogenarian. One of his cards flipped over as it was dealt. We all saw it - 6 of diamonds. A little Vietnamese chap, completely inoffensive sort, was first to holla - "exposed card!", Dealer nods, no problem. But now the recipient of the exposed card kicks off because he thinks it's none of the Vietnamese guy's business. A typically meaningless argument about nothing. Floor are called & everyone was shouting at each other for 15 minutes solid. Pretty ridic really. Old people, huh? It was like 8 Red Dog's at the same table, nobody would yield an inch.

And yes, Half Kill games are enormous fun. I've never seen Kill or Half Kill games in the UK, and have no idea what games they apply to - is it only 08 & the other split pot games? And  - sheer guess this - but did you first encounter Kill games during your Canadian odyssey? I'm guessing Limit poker is or was the norm in the USA & Canada at the time. It's pretty big now if the Orleans is any guide, there are always 15 or 20 Limit cash games on the go.