Arrived at Manchester Airport and upgraded to 1st Class for 600, no queuing, could even smoke in the 1st class lounge, superb, slept all the way which should surely mean that I will be better prepared for playing poker (justifying wasting money as normal). Everything going well until I left my laptop on a bin outside of the Las Vegas Airport, only realised when I got to the Rio, grabbed a taxi back to airport and it was still there 1 hour later - I can sense good luck omens. Tipped taxi driver $100 in a fit of euphoria and arrived back at the Rio, checked in, all rooms are suites but mine is on 13th floor overlooking the car park - I thought they didn't have 13th floors in casinos? Straight to the WSOP arena - it's about a 10 minute walk even though it's attached to the hotel. Slight problem, WSOP have no record of the $50K I wired or the tournaments I pre-registered.
The arena is massive, holding up to 3600 players, but it seems more like a traditional sporting event rather than a casino. Atmosphere a bit strange but staff at Rio are really nice. Cash games are mad, an Irish bloke who I know pretty well, except his name, won $76,000 dollars this morning. I can hear bad beat stories everywhere. Not really anyone here who I know to talk to, maybe seen 10 familiar faces. Everyone seems to playing poker 24 hours a day, tournaments, cash games and satellites, There are 15 tables dedicated to satellites but I don't think I'll play many of them, as I want to be fresh for the events which start at 12pm sharp each day. James Woods (the actor) was playing a $200 single table satellite - the guy out of Deerhunter, Casino and The Generals Daughter. Toby McGuire (Spiderman) is also playing one of the cash games. However, the top poker players are nowhere to be seen, I guess they are staying away from the side poker games to focus on the events - I'm gonna adopt that approach. I've paid $200 dollars for unlimited use of the gym (a nicely negotiated discount of $400 dollars - I need to recoup that 1st class flight upgrade somehow). Apart from a bit of a cold from the air conditioning on the plane I'm feeling focussed and disciplined - that means no blackjack, no boozing, no all night heads-up matches! Nick The Shrew Whiten, Simon Chubby Nowab and John Grumpy Falconer don't arrive for a couple of weeks so no bad influences here either.
