Campfire Stories

Bellagio Five Diamond, Day 5, 6, & 7

Torture, random donkfest tournament, and girlfriend in town. This one will last a while I'm sure. It's gonna start off with a frustrated rant, continue with a fun story from tonight, and finish with an outlook on the upcoming days.

Today was frustrating from the moment I crawled out of bed. First, I was waken up by an alarm clock which I hate. Then, eagerly anticipating a shower I discover that the Aladdin is out of hot water. Arrrg. Upon further investigation I find out that nine resorts on the strip are out of hot water due to a main gas line break. How the hell does that happen? Oh well... maybe I can put somebody on BO tilt. Walk over to the Bellagio, discover a line for registration. I hate lines. Good news is that I only recognized one person in the entire line. I'm so curious where these people with no clue how to play poker come up with the money to enter these high stakes tournaments. $2k is a month's wages to many americans! Truly boggles my mind... but I don't mind that much for obvious reasons! So, stinky and sultry I stand in line and get assigned a seat in the main room. I hate the main room (remember for a moment that I'm ranting here, ok?). Tourney starts, I immediately blow 10% of my stack on the first hand, and by minute twenty I'm down to 2k. Top pair second kicker runs into overpair (KQ v. AA)... fortunately I managed to only lose 1900 on the hand. I hovered around the 2k level for a couple more hours and my final hand came up. 100-200 level, CO limps, Barry Greenstein on the button folds, I limp in the SB with Q 9 , BB knuckles, and we see a flop. It comes J T 3 . I check, BB checks, CO bets 500, I move all-in for 2250 total. He calls within five seconds. I say, "please tell me I have eleven outs??" He rolls over A K (are you kidding me?). Turns out I instead have ten outs. I'll take it... but start folding ace high you donkey! Turn comes perfect and gives me a King for the 2nd nuts. I say, "That'll work!" and think, "It's about effing time that I get some chips to do some dancing with." My emotions are squashed like the prom queen shooting down the captian of the chess team on the dance floor when the Q shows up on the river giving AK guy broadway. For Pete's sake! Just let me go brick brick one time so I'm not pissed for the next hour. I don't want to do anything but hide in my room and order room service. Make it back to the room, and they're all out of hot food too (no gas for the stoves.) DAMNIT!!! Use electric! So I ordered a cold sandwich and a cold bud light and now I'm sitting next to the cold window overlooking the cold fountains of Bellagio.

OK. Rant officially over.

Last night however was more fun than a barrel of monkeys and a bag of peanuts. It all started like this. Danny (roomie) won a freeroll at the Sunset Station Wednesday morning. I said, "Bet you're all fired up to play some goofy tournament tonight, eh?" Jared and Danny were in. Lara and Dan were arriving that night, and I knew they'd be in. Steve Snezek was in town too and wanted to do some playing. On the way to the airport to pick up Lara, I sent a text to Brandon, Jen, Zach, Topher, Jim, John, Poff, and a few other of the locals here to see if they wanted to join. Lotsa people in. Lara arrived and started talking to everybody she knew to get them to join. At one point Scotty Nguyen even said he was going to play. When the cards got in the air at 11pm there were 19 of us in the room, 17 in a last longer, five named pros and a bunch of unnamed pros. Check out these pics:









Lara and I... random seating.









Brandon Cantu and Jennicide... random.









Kenna James... thinking....?









John Turner - Dude I was HU with in Comm









Dutch Boyd and David Plastik









Adam Goldberg and Lara









Zach moved... Randomly.


It was indeed quite the fun night. Cantu ended up taking 1st (that kid wins everything) and Jen took 3rd. Here's how good Brandon runs. Him and Chris "mohawk" Ordonez end up all-in pre-flop, Chris has A K , Brandon has A K . Brandon wins. It was a great night, the energy in the room was awesome, and I know the regulars were pretty shocked about what was happening to their regular nightly tournament. On the way back Lara and I hung out with Joe Sebok, Danny and Rich from Card Player, and Tiffany Michelle and her roomie Gloria. More good times.

As of right now I have zero desire to play any more tournaments. My last chance will be tomorrow or the next day as I'm not going to plunk down $5k or $15k for a tourney, but since that win in Nov I've just been tortured in EVERY single tournament I've played. It's getting old. Also the 100-200 game is just sick juicy right now and I really feel that I could crush that game for 20k in the next week. So, we'll see how I feel tomorrow, but as of now no more tourneys for me.

Thanks for letting me vent!

Peace and good luck,

Devo

posted by Devo @ 5:44 PM |