By
Hogan24
Hello again all, whaaaaat’s been happening? I just got back from Las Vegas last Sunday night and absolutely could not have had a better time. I wanted to write down a little bit about what I did while I was out there and this is what I came up with:
Tuesday:
After we checked into our hotel room, my brother and I had the itch to get out on the town and see what was going on. So he and I jumped in a cab and headed over to the Rio where all the action was going on. Once we got there, it took a couple of minutes and a decent walk to find the poker room, but once we found it and stepped foot inside, “Wow” is the only possible description for the size of that room. It was absolutely huge. Much bigger than you could even picture…the pictures and video’s on cardplayer.com don’t even do it justice. I walked around and just took everything in for a while. I saw Nick Frangos playing in a satellite event, Men Nguyen playing some Chinese poker game that I had never seen before for a couple of thousand bucks a person, and went over and watched the final 8 of the $5000 No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball event happening across the room. The final 9 of that event had Johnny “World” Hennigan, Dewey Tomko, Paul Phillips, Jeff Lisandro to name a few. After watching that, I sat and played some $1-$2 NL for a little bit. I won a couple of bucks after my 22 cracked KK, but I had trouble concentrating in a room that big with that much action going on all around the room. I couldn’t help going back and forth between my game and watching the final 8 of that tournament for the bracelet. We ended up leaving the Rio between 4 and 5am and headed back to the Stratosphere where we were staying. My bro went to bed while I managed to stay up until about noon playing more poker.
Wednesday:
Woke up at around 5pm and went to breakfast at the dinner buffet with dad, bro, and grandma who met us there from California. Then headed to the pocketfives.com party where I got the opportunity to meet so many pocketfiver’s that I had been playing with for 2 or so years now. I met Adam, Cal, and Riley who run the site…and Adam was just as ugly as I figured he would be. I met so many people there that I don’t even want to attempt to mention the names because I know I will forget someone. But that party itself was a lot of fun and a very nice atmosphere to be able to sit around and chat with all of the players I had only known online up to this point.
After the P5’s party, jcgoheels, gator93, my bro, and I headed over to the Palms to the Ultimate Bet party which was at ghostbar. At that party I met Phil Hellmuth, Antonio, KrazyKanuck, Devilfish, and several other UBer’s. Hellmuth gave a speech right after he showed up about how everyone there that was playing in the main event was dead money and that if they beat him it was pure luck…typical Hellmuth stuff.
I hung out there for a while and on my way out snagged a UB gift bag. I then headed back down to the lobby of the Palms when the best part of my trip happened. Right when I walked back into the lobby, I had my head down and was checking out what was in my new gift bag when I all of a sudden noticed that I was kind of crowded by a handful of people or so. I then looked up and who was standing two feet right in front of me? It was Brooke Burke. I just stared like the idiot that I am as she walked around me but wow, she was amazing.
Anyway…so after that I got on my cell phone and called Devin, known on UB as TranquilChaos, who was at the bodog party at Rain (the club on the main floor of the Palms). I had yet to meet him but he and I had been chatting strategy, playing styles, and just shooting the shit online for several months and had talked about playing some tournaments together while we were out in Vegas. Devin and his friend Chris came out and we were just standing there being retards for a while when we decided to head downtown to the Plaza casino for their midnight tournament.
On hand #1 of that tournament I get AQ, call a small preflop raise along with another guy and see a KT4 flop with 2 clubs. Minimum bet on the flop was called to get a J on the turn. Its checked to me, so I bet about 300, get called by Mr. Middleman, and the third player, the original preflop raiser, goes all in. So then I go call in, and Senor Middleman Fuckbag goes all in to with T8 of clubs. The river brings the flush and I bust on the very first hand of the tournament. The tournament allowed for 1 optional rebuy which I then took, and on hand #2, I look down and see AA. I made a pretty large preflop raise b/c I was steaming after busting on hand #1 and get called by A6 of spades. The flop brought 2 spades, we both go all-in, he missed, and I was right back where I started after an action packed first two hands.
I ended up making it to the final table of this tournament with Mr. Middleman being right there with me. The first two players busted out pretty quick and then we played a while after that. During play at the final table, Senor Dbag raised all in with AK off when I looked down and saw pocket tens. I thought for a minute, called his all in, and the board brought AK7 all spades. Well wouldn’t you know that I had the ten of spades and picked up a flush draw. The turn brought the 4th spade and with the river bringing nothing, it was really sweet to send that f’ing ass goblin to the rail. We played for probably around an hour and got down to the final 4 players with my stack going down to almost nothing when I made a pretty decent comeback. Once we were all moderately close in stacks, and with the blinds raising to a level that made it a craps shoot, we decided to split the final $2660 bucks four ways, each receiving $665.
That was pretty much the excitement of that tournament with one final thing that I must mention. My dad (KCBowler857) also played in this tournament and we were seated at the same table in the early rounds. On one hand in particular when I held 99, the flop brought T96 all spades. I bet out pretty hard because of all of the drawing possibilities and when it gets to KCBowler, he raises all in. It was just over double my bet and when I called, he showed 66. He had already re-bought by this time…so in our first ever live tournament together, I got to send my old man to the rail!!!
Thursday:
I don’t really know what happened on Thursday to tell the truth. I know I slept until about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, then went over and checked out day 1 of the WSOP main event, which was an absolute circus. I played in a $1/$2 NL game with Adam….we were playing for a while and doing ok until Cal and Riley showed up. The second they got there I had to split a $750 cash pot holding AA with a dbag that held Q9 off when the dealer put a 9 high straight on the board…that was fun. F Cal & Riley, I’m convinced it was their fault, lol, j/k.
Thursday overall was pretty uneventful…I played in another tournament at the Sahara with Devin and my brother. I hung on for as long as I could but busted out shortly after the first break. I think that was a good thing thought because I then went and played a cash game and won about $250 bucks in an hour. But yea, that was the excitement for Thursday, nothing overly special.
Friday:
The only thing I can remember about Friday is the Binions tournament which will be an entire separate blog in itself. A very quick overview of what happened: hottotrot, wayde, susieque, and myself all made the final table. Not too bad having 4 of the 9 final table participants out of a 99 person field from pocketfives.com.
Saturday:
The week was starting to come to a close for me by Saturday. This was day 3 of the main event which was still technically day 1 for the tournament. I went over and spent a lot of my day at the Rio watching the WSOP and seeing how Devin was doing. He eventually got up to around 30k in chips, then after dropping a little bit busted when his AK couldn’t get past pocket 3’s. After hanging out there for a while, my dad, bro, hottotrot, and myself headed back over to the Sahara to try out that tournament again. Nothing special happened in this one, but after I busted out I did play in a $1/$2 NL game with David Williams mother for a little bit. She sat down with $300 bucks and gave it all away on about her 3rd hand in. She said she was going to go to the ATM and would be right back. We joked that hopefully she would be back because there was probably a lot more money where that came from. After the other 3 busted out of that tournament, we went over and played the 2am tournament at Binions with nothing special happening there either.
Sunday was pretty much it for me. We woke up, had some breakfast and headed for the airport. The one last thing that I want to mention about this past week is this: As much fun as I had throughout my entire trip, the best thing I got to take away from this week was getting the chance to meet all of the people that I have been playing online with for so long now. Hanging out with everyone, playing in tournaments, running around town like idiots was by far the most fun of the entire trip and I wanted to thank everyone I met for an absolute kick ass week. I would highly recommend to anyone that hasn’t been to a major event like this to try to make it to one of them. It was an absolute blast!
I’m still trying off and on to qualify for Aruba and hope to meet up with everyone again in a couple of months down on the beach!! Thanks for reading and GL to all!