Fear and Loathing in Locke Vegas 2010: Part 7

This series of blogs first appeared on the PKR Forum in June and July 2010.  I won a WSOP Experience Package worth $4,000 through a PKR Road To Vegas Tournament League that ran for several months.  Most players are referred to by their PKR user names. 

Part 7

'Just another freak in the freak kingdom'

The main reason for selecting the Imperial Palace was location. So I waste no further time and take a walk up the Strip. The heat is utterly relentless but at least you can dive off into air conditioned buildings every few hundred metres. There is the old school Flamingo, the Irish themed O'Sheas, home of Beer Pong, and the spectacular Bellagio fountains. In front of Planet Hollywood is the Miracle Mile. This is a circular mile of shops containing all sorts of outlets, some areas are themed in different styles much like the shops at the Venetian. I walk up as far as City Centre and enjoy the spectacular architecture from another angle. You couldn't talk about a walk up the Strip without mentioning the Mexican 'Pimp Run'. I had heard Jabba making reference to this on the Wednesday night but hadn't really taken it in. Every few hundred metres along you would find 2 or 3 Mexicans in orange or green t-shirts dishing out leaflets to anyone who will take one. The t-shirts promise 'Girls direct to your door.' They make this sort of regular noise by slapping the card leaflets against their hands. Whilst it is a little annoying they are no more in your face than just putting the leaflets under your nose, clearly where they stand and how they behave is subject to some police scrutiny.

The spectacular City Centre

I return to the shade of the Imperial Palace at about 4pm. I am meeting Chivalrous Gent and others for dinner later but have two hours to kill. What better way to fill it than the $1/2 NL Hold'em game in the Palace's poker room. To say the table is soft is an understatement. I get off to a bad start losing $110 in an ugly pot. I am about to reload $100 when I find QQ and jam it in preflop. Unfortunately the spewtard I am jamming on has woken up with pocket aces. A glorious Q on the flop gets me level. I then flop two more sets in the space of ten minutes including cracking aces again. I then pound on the table with the full fury of a big stack. 2 hours later I am almost aggrieved to have to leave, up to the tune of $500 dollars.

The Venetian

Dinner is at the Grand Lux cafe at the Venetian. From the Imperial Palace it is less than five minutes walks so you can see the usefulness of it. I meet up with teh Chivster plus entourage, Elz442, Trymean77, Khaine81 and Discomonkey. I have to say it is always a pleasure to spend dinner with Chiv. He is a fellow foodie and his brother has a seriously amazing knowledge of wines and beers. Both like the refined things in life. We are also probably the only idiots wandering round the Venetian in suit jackets. After dinner several members of the party have a craving for cigars, luckily the Venetian has a kiosk selling some of the finest on the planet. We end up in a fairly flash bar complete with VJ and spend a pleasant few hours before going our separate ways, though a number of us are at the Imperial Palace so can walk back together.

It is about midnight when I settle in for my second session in the poker room. Clearly I have been saving up my luck for today as this session just gets silly. About forty minutes in I flop a straight flush and get paid off by an overpair. When the dealer halts rather than shoving the pot straight over to me I ask what is going on. I am told there is a High Hand Bonus in operation and my hand needs verifying by the floor. For doing nothing other than flopping a monster and getting it to showdown they ship an extra $250 my way. The session turns into small pots gained and small pots lost. I am thinking about leaving at about 2am but decide to play one more round. I'm glad I do as a pot comes up where I flop an open ended straight flush draw. A short stack goes all in on the flop and the original preflop raiser just flats him so I have to call. The turn brings my 2nd straight flush in two hours. I am just thinking about how to get the most value from this when the other guy in the pot shoves all in. I take all of about 0.2 of a second to call announcing 'This is the sickest thing ever...' The short stack had a pair and the other guy made a full house on the turn. I ship the pot... and another $250 bonus!!! Soooo sick. I of course feel it would be rude to leave at this point and keep playing for another hour. I bleed away a few dollars in a couple of coolers but end up leaving $800 to the good and $1,300 on the day.

 Epilogue  

I never finished the blog at the time.  My last day was spent back at the Aria's poker room.  I won a nice little cash session then went out just before the money in the evening tournament.  I got a relatively early nights sleep and the following morning found myself back at Mccarran Airport.  It had been a brilliant eight days that I would never forget, a first taste of poker's biggest stage that had whet my appetite for more.  After a bad start I had turned it around to a nice little profit on the trip. 

Fear and Loathing in Locke Vegas 2010: Parts 4 and 5

This series of blogs first appeared on the PKR Forum in June and July 2010.  I won a WSOP Experience Package worth $4,000 through a PKR Road To Vegas Tournament League that ran for several months.  Most players are referred to by their PKR user names. 

Part 4

'The line between madness and masochism was already hazy'

Six a.m. Friday morning. Somehow I manage my best nights sleep in Las Vegas at a grand five hours. Just enough time to hit the buffet before playing the $150 1pm Aria Deep Stack for the 2nd time. This time there are about 60 runners. I make it to about 20th before the standard bad beat disposes of me. Zero luck at the tables since arriving in the desert and with expenses I am now stuck about $900 on the trip. This was supposed to be a decent working holiday, a cake walk. Damn you Poker Gods. Yet another awkward cash game session follows.

I escape the tables in decent time to get ready for the PKR Party. The party is at the side building of Mandalay Bay called, creatively enough, The Hotel. A group of us grab a taxi. I feel a word is in order about Vegas taxi drivers, on the whole they are an incredibly amiable bunch. The rare one does not speak much English but most are very chatty and very likeable. They also have lots of great tips on where to go and what to do. My favourite turned out to be the son of a prolific TV scriptwriter and his two brothers were both published authors. Whilst the writing bug had passed him by he was a keen thriller reader and we had a good chat about his favourite writers, a number of whom I had met. Vegas is a strange place but an oddly friendly one.

At The Hotel we wonder round lost for a bit before running into PKR_Paul and Ashley Hames with their video camera. They lead us to the private elevator to The Mix Lounge, the venue for tonights party. At the queue outside it are loads of old friends. Not just qualifiers but other members of the PKR Massive including JJBird22 and Chivalrousgent. We are finally let through and find ourselves in a glass elevator going up and up with an awesome view of the Vegas skyline by night. The lounge is on the top floor of the building and with an outside balcony area offered an awesome view all night long. Loads of the PKR gang turned up throughout the night. Apparently other guests including Kara Scott and some of the Cardrunners crew were there too. Clearly I was talking too much to notice, oops. Drink was free all evening including champagne and anything else you could think of. I met Scardey77 from Canada, the only Canadian qualifier for the WSOP package  . He was having a great time but felt a bit guilty being away from home as he was away from his three month old baby for the first time.

The View from The Mix Lounge

The evening went far too quickly. At 2:30am we were getting bundled out by the bouncers when it felt like we could have stayed for hours longer. At this point Zlatan35 was in a particularly amusing state of free bar drunkenness that saw him wrestling with Ashley Hames on the Casino floor. He was also falling over quite a bit and got stopped by a casino floorman after attempting to climb onto a dancing podium occupied by a scantily clad gyrating woman so that he too could express himself through dance. We were eventually able to bundle him into a taxi. A few more drinks at the Aria and it is yet another 5am finish to the day. Vegas is part holiday, part endurance test.

Ashley Hames wrestled by Zlatan35

Part 5

'Against that heinous background, my crimes were pale and meaningless.'

As had become routine I awoke midday Saturday and sought out the buffet. The moment I got off on the promenade level it was obvious just how much busier the Aria was. 4th of July weekend was bringing the people in big time. I had to queue for a buffet table for 20 minutes (/OMG) when I had previously just walked in every time. I also had to smile at the American capitalist machine at work. On previous days you could get breakfast from 7 -11am, then brunch up until 7pm at which point dinner kicked in. Though saying that you could pretty much get dinner at any time of the day, it just cost the different prices. As I reached the front of the queue I could see today had no breakfast option (I was too late anyway) and only a 'Holiday Brunch' was advertised. This cost me $33 dollars rather than the $22 I had paid for brunch the day before. What extra delights did I get for my hard earned 10 bucks? Sod all... exactly the same as yesterday but a $10 hike just to milk the weekend 4th of July trade that little bit harder.

I hit the $150 Aria Deep Stack again but this time there was a strong PKR presence and a lot of uber-donks in for the weekend. The tournament had about 74 runners. At the first table is some of the most retarded poker play in the history of the universe, I mean worse than the dumb nonsense you see in the PKR Open on a daily basis. My favourite guy is a massive overbettor. Blinds are 25/50 with a 10k starting stack. 3 times in two rounds he open raises to 1,300... then con bets on the flop for more than half his stack...for the love of God just give me a hand!. LeRouli stacks two players on about the 3rd round... overshoving his full house on the river and gets called by not one idiot, but two, with a straight. A couple of rounds later he makes another full house and sucks in Mr Overbet who calls with trips. The table doesn't get any harder and myself and LeRouli just carve it up between us. We redraw from 3 tables to 2 with 18 left about after 5 hours of play. Suddenly I feel like I'm sat at the final table of a PKR Primetime as I have old adversaries Trymean77 and Azurecoil to compete against. The whole dynamic of the game just shifts. There are a couple of other okay players at the able so what had been a cakewalk took on some higher level dynamics with some more intricate play going down. On the other table are 3 more PKR players, 1BlackMamba3, LeRouli and a guy whos name I don't know.

At the final table of 10, with 7 places paid, I am still in along with Trymean77, Azurecoil, 1BlackMamba3 and the unkwown PKR player. We should have had Paul down with his camera as this was clearly just a PKR event in disguise. Az busts in 10th to a bad beat. Our nameless guy then shoves all in for about 4 big blinds. I have a decent stack and look down to find pocket 8s. I call. I then wish I hadn't as an old American uber-nit jams over the top of me for another 20,000 chips. It is a horrid spot. I'm convinced he has AA or KK but even if he does I am still priced in to call. This is a snap call in a cash game but here it is a stop and think moment. I factor that if it is even remotely possible he could have AK in his range here then I would be making a hideous fold and bite the bullet. Shortstack turns over pocket 10s (oops), Nit turns over KK. First card out is an 8 (fist pump on standby) and the 2nd card is a king (FML). We are down to 8 players, I need some chips fast and Old Man Nit is now the chip leader by a decent margin. I manage to double through with A J against K J and the bubble bursts just after. I am still short at this point. I raise up with a pair of 5s and 1BlackBamba3 jams over the top. I know he is an aggressive player and will do this with a lot of high card combos so I have no choice but to make a reluctant call and hope I am flipping. He shows jacks and I am gone in 7th for $330 dollars. 1st prize was $3.5K so I wasn't particularly happy, especially as the 4 non-PKR players were all awful. I believe a 5 way deal was struck which Trymean77 was a part of. Maybe I was a little too aggressive in this one but meh, that's my game.

Mclash 80, Jabba, Danski, PKR_Simon at Pure

Another evening another VIP Party to attend (God, isn't life just hideous). This time we are at the VIP area of Pure over at Caesars Palace. The taxi ride over takes forever as traffic on this busy weekend seems to have jammed up the entire centre of Vegas. Eventually we make it. Pure is a nightclub. A nice one but still... just a night club. There is a large main room then a VIP lounge area and a small room off of that. We had the 'Owners Room' to ourselves and a couple of lounges in the area outside. I hate to think how much it cost overall, a lot. There was also an upstairs area which lead out onto a rooftop terrace that looked out onto part of the strip. There was a lot of talking, laughing and drinking. Kelly Rowland appeared in the main area and performed 2 songs. Must be nice to be paid a small fortune to turn up and do less than 10 minutes work...

KingKai and Waswini

It was day 2 of event 54 today and about 7 players had made it through from the 2 day 1s. At the club we heard about the varying stories of people who had been playing but none was crazier than that of Beyne. Beyne played on the Day 1b on Friday and after the 2 day ones had finished there were about 700 left in and Beyne had the 39th biggest stack. Now some time after this and the PKR party at the Mix Lounge several of our crew had found themselves sat at 5am in the morning playing Black Jack. Day 2 of the tournament started at midday. Apparently a dealer took offence to a comment Beyne made and asked him to leave. Beyne didn't think he had done anything wrong (and probably hadn't!) so refused. Unfortunately he also decided to refuse to leave once the Cardroom Manager asked him to. So the police were called and although he wasn't charged with anything they held him for about 12 hours. Beyne finally made it to Day 2 of the tournament very, very late. So late that when he got there all that was left of his 39th biggest chipstack was 4 big blinds. The crazy part, although some might say this is just standard on Planet Beyne, is that he was able to bounce back and turn that 4k back into 200k and put in a deep cash finish... MBN as they say.

At about 2:45am myself and PirateNation decided to head back to the Aria, or at least that was the plan. As we exited the club area into the main floor of Caeser's Palace we were confronted by a worried looking Jake who asked for some help. Slightly to one side being stood over by a large bouncer and Ovnis was our very own Waswini, slumped in a wheelchair. He was just about responsive if you tapped his shoulder but only to the extent of a small twitch. He couldn't hold his head up and certainly couldn't talk. The bouncer was saying an EMT (paramedic) was on the way and that if we couldn't walk him out then he would have to go to hospital in an ambulance. We try standing him up but it just isn't happening. The EMT arrives and has a look at him. He breaks out the smelling salts which induces the biggest reaction yet. Waswini twitches up about ten centimetres then slumps down again. Despite this the EMT is not overly worried about him but confirms we need to get him out or he has to go to the hospital. We wheel him down to the taxi rank. Quite wisely the taxi drivers take one look at him and tell us nooooo way. Jake, ever the thinking man in an alcohol based crisis, grabs a limo instead. The driver is quite happy to charge through the teeth to take a drunken Fronk home. Myself and PirateNation have to grab an arm each and manouver him into the back of the thing, no small task. At the other end We have to repeat the same feat and carry him towards the door of the Aria. The doorman quickly grabs another collapsable wheelchair and we put him back in, head slumped. We wait with him whilst Jake goes to find out what room he is staying in. I comment to the Doorman 'Another quiet night in Vegas.' He gives me a look before saying 'This is the tenth one like this tonight.' Fourth of July weekend...

Eventually Jake returns with the room number. We wheel him up in the lift. Jake is looking at himself in the mirror and questioning where the spots on his face have come from. I suggest that getting more than 30 minutes sleep a night might help. Jake leaves us once satisfied the door key works. We wheel Waswini into his room inadvertently waking up the friend who is staying with him. There is a good selection of spirits on the table and a large amount of empty pizza boxes. Pirate rolls Waswini into bed at which point he decides to roll back towards the wall and start vomiting. Satisfied that our public service remit has been filled for the evening we leave, safe in the knowledge that at least some one is there to keep an eye on him.