Unfinished final blog post

The following is an unfinished final blog posting. I worked on this on the plane on the way home, but never finished it.

I am currently 30,000 feet above the ground as I am typing this. The last month has been an incredible experience and I’ve had a blast. Although I have no huge tournament success to write about, I’ve proven to myself I could easily play professional poker live (I crushed the Bellagio limit games,) I wanted out of Vegas more than words could describe after the limit hold em tournament I discussed in my last post. I hated the town, I was tired, I was in bad physical health, I was running bad, and Vegas just seemed like a gilded town (which I truly believe -- everyone in that town is miserable.) Anyways, the last 10-12 days of this trip has been incredible, I’ve made some awesome new friends and had amazing conversations. Somewhere in the hazy, drunken glutton that is Las Vegas I found clarity and a new sense of purpose and enthusiasm for life. As is often the case after a new experience the individual involved romanticizes about the events and tries to find some deeper meaning. That is clearly what I am doing now, but the talks I had with a couple of recreational players at the Bellagio have reinvigorated my ambition and drive for greatness, which has admittedly gone stale in the last year or two.

This is going to be a ridiculously long post as it has to sum up about 12 days worth of shit. First, I am going to cover some cool nights I had, then I am gonna discusss where my live changing epiphany happened J. I am not even going to type up anything about the Main Event other than this blurb. I couldn’t get anything going. The field is incredibly bad, so bad I am considering making this an annual tradition as I am hugely +ev (meaning in the long run I will make money.) You start with 20k in chips, The entire day 1 I was between 13k and 25k in chips. I made it to the dinner break with about 18k in chips. Shortly after dinner I raised AK of hearts, I guy called with position on me. The flop comes AQ5 with 2 hearts. I bet, dude raises it to about 4,000, I stick it all in the middle, he insta-calls (rightfully), and tables AQ for top 2. We are off to the races as I have 12 outs 2 times (essentially a coin flip), no luck for me and I am sent to the rail.

The first cool night that got the ball rolling for my rebound in Vegas was the night of the Bodog Party. We had to go to the Bodog Suite at the Rio to pick up our Bodog Gear and get our passes for the party. The package Bodog gave me was pretty fuckin sweet. I got 3 t-shirts, a polo, a zip up sweatshirt, and 2 hats (1is kind of whack). Also, chapstick, mints, and a water bottle. But the coolest thing they gave me was an 8.3 mega pixel Samsung digital camera, pretty baller especially considering I’ve never had a digital camera before. The best part is it says Bodog right on the camera. Anyways, the party was held at the Palms, in the Hardwood Suite. It’s a 50,000 square foot suite, with a private bar making up one half of the suite, and a basketball court on the other side (The owners of the Palms also own the Sacremento Kings). The party was tight, they had a basketball shoot off with the winner winning 10k (I had no chance), they had hired models to walk around and talk to all the degens online geeks, and they had poker tables set up for those morons that can’t let go for even one night. All in all, I was surprised how normal the majority of the online poker players were. I always envision a group of freaks and weirdos making up the vast population of my opponents, but I guess in reality you need to be relatively bright to be successful at the higher levels, therefore smart people are not generally that weird, or at least better at hiding it. Clearly me, Mahoney, his girlfriend, and crazy Jenna took advantage of the free booze. The highlight of the night had to be when Charles Barkley made an appearance. The funny thing is Bodog had a bet on whether Charlest would be spotted in a casino before 2009. Obviously, he’s been spotted. Ali Nenad the host of Poker after Dark was standing in a group with Charles and John Robert Bellande. JRB asked Nenad for like 3k or something, and Nenad pulled it out of his pocket and gave it to JRB. Charles then jokingly? Asked for a 2k loan. Nenad asked Charles if he needed it. Chuck made some comment about not having any liquid funds at the moment. For those that don’t know, he was recently hti with a lawsuit by the Wynn for owing around 200k, he quickly paid it off after it became public. Anyways, all in all I give this night a 6 out of 10.

A couple nights later Chris Copejand was in town. He’s one of Furgals friends, that was out in Vegas last time I was out here. He seemed like a cool guy when I met him, and mention he ran a handicapping service and counted cards in blackjack, so we had a pretty good gambling conversation. Anyways, he hit me up when he got in town and mentioned he knew 10 girls from MSU and Western that were in town. I met them around 11 at the Palms. Apparently, the girls had met some promoter that could get them into all the different Palms clubs for free. The cool part about this night has pretty much nothing to do with the clubs or the girls. It has to do with a conversation me and Chris had. Our first stop was Moon, and the girls instantly disappeared as is pretty standard for cute girls in clubs. On a side note, it was some girls 21st birthday, and said birthday girls brother had also made the trip for the celebration. Dude graduated from Michigan, but was a total weirdo. Apparently, at whatever club they were at previously some girl slipped him a tab of acid on the dance floor, so this kid was sweating profusely and acting like a total weirdo. Anyways, me and Chris get talking about our shared passions of business and gambling. Since I met him I really had my doubts if he was a successful gambler or not, while he can speak intelligently about card counting, something just kind of struck me as off (more on this later.) Nonetheless, he is a great guy and we have many shared interests. We get talking about entrepreneurship, and he tells me about his handicapping site and how it got started. Apparently he signed up for some contest 2 years ago for College Football, against other handicappers all over the world. This was done on a mediator site that is an independent third party that tracks picks of handicappers, essentially to substantiate their records. Anyways, dude ran like God and hit something like 67% of his picks and one the contest. Pretty cool to have variance on your side! He said today he’s up to 110 clients, and a survey of them shows they have a median income of under $40,000. LOL, got to love making money off of tards. Chris is definitely passionate about starting a business and had a really cool idea that I am interested in investing in (he said he needs start up money). We both agree online gambling is going to be legal in the United States in the next 5 years. He’s looked into these third party monitoring sites, and apparently there are about 7 right now. He says they all look like shit, none advertise on Google or anything, and none are user friendly. His idea is to create a user friendly version. I think this is a great idea. If you make a site that is easier on the handicappers to input data of course they are going to use it. Revenue will come from 2 places. First, you charge the handicappers a small fee for tracking their picks ($50 a month or something like that). The second source is getting sponsored by an online casino. I.E. they put their adds all over your site and you either get paid directly or get money for every client that is referred through your ads. I guarantee when gambling becomes regulated stateside, this is going to be a very profitable venture as every Tom, Dick and Hairy is gonna be looking for a good handicapper. I told Chris I was interested and he said he’d send me a business plan by Christmas time. Cool!
The rest of the night was your run of the mill Vegas shitshow. We went to Ghost bar, where I was macking on some girl from Western. She was very cute and was diggin wat 2tyme was feedin her. Unfornutately, I never run good and bad luck took it’s toll again. We went with the girls to Moon, of course the bouncer was a dick and wouldn’t let us in without paying cover. So the while we went to pay cover the girls headed up. When we got in there we couldn’t find them anywhere. Chris only had 2 of the girls numbers, one had already went home and the other’s phone died. It turns out the Playboy Club and Moon are connected and by the time we figured this out it was too late and they wouldn’t let us into Playboy. Oh well, I’m kind of over random drunken hook ups (kind of……).

Anyways, the funniest part of the night ensued when the degeneracy began. We were trying to go home, but the cab line at the Palms at 4 am on a Friday night is like at least an hour long. So we walked across the street to the Gold Coast Casino to catch a cab. You need to walk through the Casino to get to the cab pick up and of course being blacked out degenerates we take this opportunity to play blackjack. I’ve got $300 on me and Copemoney has his last $180 (apparently he has been getting crushed this weekend). This is right about the time I realize Cope is more of a degenerate then blackjack pro. The next thing that tells me this is when he claims he is going to turn the $180 into $2,000. I tell him I am only playing for 5 minutes and I want to get the fuck out of there. This is the most rinky dink casino ever, and we are playing a 2 deck shoe. I put out $50 on the first hand and Cope puts out $80. I am laughing on the inside because no professional BJ player would ever risk >40% of their bankroll on one hand, especially the first. Anyways, Cope goes on what is the most incredible run I have ever witnessed. He does not lose a hand in the first 4 shoes. If he didn’t start randomly betting $15 a hand in the 2nd shoe, he’d have had his 2k. It was unbelievable. The pit boss was hulking over the dealer to see what was going on. Chris kept dropping casual F bombs and the pitboss started yelling at him. This was some of the best LOL 30 minutes of my life. I also did pretty well winning $500 and coloring up my chips. I told Cope lets get the hell out of here, I know how this story ends as I’ve given it all back many of times. He assures me he is only playing one more hand (he is currently sitting at $1100). He makes a $100 bet and loses, I take his chips from him and push them forward for the dealer to color them up (he’s degenning hard at this point). He pulls them back and says one more hand. He bets $200 and hits blackjack. LOL, he colors up his chips and is sitting on $1300. A booked win. We go to the cage to cash out and the lady asks us what game we were playing and actually needs to call somebody for us to get paid. Very interesting stuff. Anyways, we drunkenly board a cab together and bond over a blacked out winning session. As fun as the drunken blackjack night was, it makes it less likely I’d give him my money for his company. I’ve seen degeneracy like that before, and it’s not a good thing. Overall I give this night a 6 out of 10.

This is my single favorite day in the history of Las Vegas (with the possible exception of the LAX night when Floyd was there). Anyways, a quick rundown of the major players involved. Anthony Venturinni (known as the Poker Donkey for some of the ridiculous poker claims he made to me when I met him), a kid I met at MSU this year after I cashed big in the Stars tourney. He reminds me a lot of Joey Baratta, completely full of shit, funny kid, loud, tells outlandish stories, but generally harmless. His best friend from MSU Chad something or another. A cool kid who I’ve hung out a few times with at State. Adam Hourani, the dude that won the $500k in the Omaha tourney, and is all around a super solid guy. Brian Rast, he’s made millions playing online and is a regular in the 200-400 PLO Omaha game on Full Tilt. Adam’s staying at his condo in my complex. Anthony and Chad made a game time decision to fly in for the main event the day before it started (I later found out Adam was staking them). I wasn’t sure if Adam was back in town or not, or if I’d hear from him if he was. The only time I’d really hung out with him was the night he finished 2nd in the tourney and I didn’t know if he remembered me or would call me or whatever. Anyways, he texted me at like 4 to see if I wanted to meet up with the Poker Donkey and Chad at the Palms. I said sure, through on a T-shirt and some jeans and headed down to his room. I fully intended on coming back to change before we went out.

We got to the Palms and everyone was hungry, so we tried to go to this steakhouse called “9”. It didn’t open for an hour so we hit the bar. I think we had 3 drinks each before we took our seats for dinner. The great thign about hanging out with gamblers is we are constantly gambling. We play a game called credit card roulette (CCR) to see who has to pay for stuff. Everyone throws a credit card in and someone shuffles them up behind their back. Then the shuffler takes turns telling people to pick a number between one and however many cards there are. So if I say 3, he counts down to the third card. He then gives that card to whoever it belongs to and they don’t have to pay. You do this until there are only 2 cards left. At this poin the puts one in each hand and hides the card. Whichever card is picked is the one that pays the bill. Luckily, I dodged a bullet and Chad had to pick up the drinks. The funny part about Credit card roulette is the side effects it causes. People order wayyyy more shit than they would if they were paying for their own food. It makes sense though, if you get a free meal 5 out of 6 times you might as well tack on that extra food. You got to get your money’s worth. Anyways, we rack up a huge bill. We each get a 12 oz. Filet minion (sp?), the table gets some $100 bottle of wine, and we get like 4 different appatizers and a couple odd ball drinks. I am scared for my life I am gonna get hit with this bill as we’ve already determined we are playing CCR for it. SHIP IT!! Somehow for the second game in a row my card is the first one selected and I dodge the major bullet. Unfortunately for Chad he got chosen again and this time it was no $100. I think our bill was around $600 after tip. Chad essentially got stuck with buying us all drinks and dinner at a nice restaurant and he’s not exactly rolling in the dough/ The male ego is a funny thing, when you are hanging out with new people and becoming friends. This will be an on going theme for the night. On a side note, Brady Quinn and Paris Hilton were both at 9 while we were there.

After Chad took care of the bill, we met up with Brian who had just lost $330,000 playing online that day (his biggest loss ever) and was justifiably a little on edge and ready to drink. With no real plans on what to do, we do what we do best and created a gambling contest. We decided to play a timed blackjack tournament. We would each buy in for $500 (there were 5 of us) and then we’d each throw $300 into a side pot, whoever had the most money at the end of 30 minutes would get the side pot. Of course the only real winner here was Palms. The major losers were me, Hourani, and our 5 livers. I think between us we donated around $1800 to the Palms in that half an hour, but it sure was fun. Luckily, Chad won so I didn’t feel so bad about him losing in CCR twice. Of course we had 2 shots and a drink during this half an hour. I was thinking to myself during this time, man these guys drink a lot, I wonder if they do this all the time. As I said, the male ego is a powerful thing, I wasn’t about to be the one to suggest slowing down. This was macho, 5 guys mano-e-mano (sp?). After the raping the Palms put on us, we headed over to some standard bar at the casino. This is where the night gets real hazy. We must have sat there for 2 hours. Every 15 minutes or so, someone would bring up that we hadn’t had a shot in 15 minutes, and we’d all agree it was about time for another. In all honesty, we had to 8 shot over the course of 2 hours, while sipping drinks on the side. We played CCR for every tab, miraculously I only got selected once, man do I run good! Anyways, ripping tons of shots and seeing how people react and hold their booze is always fun. I can say for certain after losing $350k and taking >10 shots Brian Rast does not hold his liquor well. He graduated from Stanford with a degree in Mathematics, but clearly is a little off in social situations. Not like really off, but just like a tad bit. Some people get the brains, some get the gift of gab, and some get a good combo of both, he got the brains.

Next, it was off to the Palms for some blacked out poker. The Palms poker room is a complete joke. It consists of 4 tables of NL Hold ‘em, blinds are 1-2. Well only 2 games were running, so we requested