Tao of Poker

Back to Las Vegas

"It's a world. And I'm just living in it." - Harvey Pekar

In a few hours, I'll be boarding a JetBlue flight at JFK to head back to Las Vegas for 16 sun-filled days. I'll be at the Bellagio tomorrow covering the big Festa al Lago poker tournament with Flip Chip. The main event is a WPT event called The Doyle Brunson North American Classic. Check back here later this week for live updates and some of Flip Chip's pictures. Of course, you can always check Las Vegas and Poker Blog later this week to read my daily recaps or you can stop by today to see who has been winning the other Festa al Lago events. I enjoyed working at the Bellagio last July for the Bellagio Challenge Cup and cannot wait to return. I wonder if the Bellagio hookers missed me?

Speaking of hookers... in case you are wondering, I will not be returning to the Redneck Riviera. Instead I'll be crashing with Grubby for a few days in Henderson/Green Valley. I'm sure we'll get into some hijinks. Bobby Junk-let, Bad Blood, and Jaxia are all supposed to be in Las Vegas at sometime this week too.

The plan for me is to cover the WPT event at the Bellagio all of this week ending up the the final table on Friday. Next Sunday, I rented a hotel room on the Strip so I can play in the Poker Stars Blogger Championship in a decent environment. I recently found out that I'm the leading referral for the Blogger Championship. How the hell did that happen?

Early next week, I'll be working on a new project that will take me all over the city of Las Vegas. I hope to get some great writing material. All of this goes down before Vegoose begins! My buddy Joker is flying in from Colorado for five days and we're gonna raise hell at the end of the month and see a ton of great music. I'm really looking forward to seeing Widespread Panic at Thomas & Mack on Halloween. Oh, and I obtained almost all the elements to my kick ass Halloween costume. We're gonna try to pick up hippie chicks by persuading them to party in our swanky suite. We'll get them jacked up on Malibu rum and canberry juice, while we get the all wet strumming Dave Matthews tunes on the guitar.

I'll also be playing as much poker as I can, flinging around chips with soused tourists and drpping "The Hammer" on local grinders. Before I left Las Vegas in August, I developed a healthy attachment to the Mandalay Bay poker room. Hitting one of their bonus hand jackpots will do that to you. Also on my list is a session in the $10/20 game at the Mirage and the juicy $8/16 game at the Bellagio. I also want to try to play a tournament at Sam's Town or at the Imperial Palace.

My Last Weekend in the City

Over this weekend, I was super busy with my buddy's wedding on a roof top deck here in NYC. It had been raining for like two weeks straight and the weather finally cleared up just in time. I had a wonderful evening even though I had to miss the Notre Dame-USC game. Thanks to BG who kept me on top of the scores. The food was great (dates with melted goat cheese = yummy) and I put a small dent in my liver thanks to a bottle of SoCo in honor of AlCantHang. Plus I got to see some old friends that I've lost touch with over the past few years. I answered a lot of questions about what it's like living in Las Vegas or about my recent travels in Amsterdam and Spain. My friends also reminded me that they think the value of their Pauly Paintings (which they have hanging in their apartments and houses all over the world) have gone up due to my brief 15 seconds of fame thanks to ESPN's WSOP coverage.

There are times in your life when you think you are going to be tight with your current goup of friends forever... however, reality sets in. You discover that you relish those rare moments to catch up with old friends while standing in the buffet line, smiling at pictures of their kids or asking them to email you naked pictures of "the chick in the accounting department with the nice rack."

I've been trying to maximize a great "writing rush" that I had this past ten days or so. Writing is a lot like poker. Some days you can do everything right and nothing clicks. Some days you're on fire. I've been in the zone the last two weeks and I'd really like to ride out this streak before I travel again, but there's nothing I can do.

Thanks to Daddy for a belated birthday present. He hooked me up with a Keller Williams show from last year's All Good fesitval and Lotus from Late Nite at Wakarusa. He also included two kick ass Phish shows from their 1998 Island Tour... 4.3.98 and 4.5.98. I managed to listen to all the shows a lot while I played on Party Poker before the jackpot hit. On Sunday, I played on Poker Stars to help clear my reload bonus. I took 208th out of 1970 in a huge MTT. I doubled up early twice with the Hilton Sisters. Then, I lost the majority of my stack on a bad beat late in the tourney. Go figure.

I'm glad that Titan Poker gets a bad rap. Why? Because it leaves more fish for me to feast on. I've been brutalized by bad beats in their MTTs recently, but those SNGs are so damn soft and the ring game tables are full with donkeyfish. I've been padding my bankroll with winning sessions against awful players with deep pockets and with Titan's generous first time despoist bonus. The poor quality of the players on Titan Poker more than makes up for Titan's shortcomings. The feeding frenzy continues for me as the sharks avoid the waters on Titan Poker. The money that I cashed out on Titan Poker looks, smells, and feels the same as the money I cashed out on Poker Stars and Party Poker.

That's it for now. My next post will be from Las Vegas.

By the way, thanks to Flip Chip for this delicious picture of the day!

Update

12:43pm... My flight was delayed 1.5 hours due to bad weather in Las Vegas and now leaves at 3pm. I will be getting into Las Vegas late. At least Jet Blue's terminal at JFK has wi/fi.

12:45pm... I logged into Party Poker to kill some time.

12:55pm... There's a Larry Kang from Bluff Magazine sighting at the airport! He's on my same flight to Las Vegas.

1:15pm... I did a quick hit and run and won 1/3 of my buy in on one hand when I flopped trips and cracked aces!

1:31pm... Still dleayed. My foot fell asleep. I saw a hot chick who looked a lot like Jessica Alba. I hope she's on my flight. The chances that she's sitting next to me are 3%. The chances that she reads the Tao of Poker are 1 in 8 million.