so my buddy (known for hu cash games on ftp as manfred zeal) and i recently got home from our 2 week trip to vegas for the 2008 wsop and other events such as the venetian deep stack extravaganza. The trip was overall a pretty good time although grinding away in tournaments filled with donks can take its toll. In total i played 3 1500 wsop events (which are by far filled with the most dead money i have ever seen) and 4 venetian dse events as well as a number of nightly's in the rio and a few mega stack series events in ceasars palace.
The first ten days started out pretty rough as i ran pretty horrible and realized just how fun live poker is when your folding for hours straight listening to your ipod. The only small peice of success i experienced in those 10 days was a FT in the 340 nightly in the rio (which basically runs like a turbo) where i short stacked my way to 8th place for around 2k. The highlights of the trip up to this point were most definetly our out of control visit to the rhino and many different amazing meals we had at various resturants....also throwing the dice and drinking excessive amounts of gin and tonics is always a good time.
With only a few days left in our trip i was preparing myself to fly home in the red on the red but then i remembered there was a PLO event at the venetian (540 buy in). Before the trip i felt like this would be my best tournament as i used to dominate PLO mtt's back when i was getting started on UB. My feelings were justified as i managed to survive all the way to the FT and with 8 left we ended the first day (which was around 14 hours of PLO) I came back the next day at around 4pm coming into the FT 5/8 with around 14bb's...i knew i would have to get lucky to do well. Finally the deck hits me in the face one time and i manage to pick aces up twice for huge pots and win a few flips to become the CL with 5 left. I bust another short stack and then we decide to looks at numbers for a deal. Things look pretty good for a deal as we are sitting with pretty shallow stacks and the variance in PLO with shallow stacks is massive. We chop it 4 ways netting me 25k (my largest score to this point). Then my biggest regret of the whole trip happens as i give the 1st place spot to a young guy who was near the top for the points race in the series...since im such a nice guy and it had no affect on the money i would recieve. What i didnt realize was along with this first place spot comes a nice sexy trophy that i would have loved to start my poker hardwear collection with.
Overall the trip was a success and i am extremely looking forward to next year were we will likely rent a house and play many more wsop donkaments.