I started out the vacation in a quick panic…my flight landed at 4:30 on Wednesday and I was desperately hoping that I could make it to a tournament that started just 1.5 hours later. By 5:15 I was leaving my room at the Tropicana and beginning the long walk up to Caesars Palace to play in the $100 Omaha Hi-Lo Limit tournament…I was registered with about 10 minutes to spare…just enough time to get mentally prepared.

The tournament only had 19 people registered and I, at 27, appeared to be about half the age of the average player in the tournament. We started off with 6-7 people per table. I won the first hand when all folded to my pocket aces and I never dropped below my starting chip count from that point on. When the first player busted and we went down to 2 tables, a younger player sat down at the table across from my 9 seat and placed a Snoopy card protector on the table. Snoopy, I thought…

The previous night I was playing a $5 Omaha o8 sit n go on Full Tilt poker at about 2am, gearing up for the tournament before my flight left the next day. The game was going well, and after I successfully bluffed a player out of his hand, forcing him to fold on the river, he began berating me for being a "luck box". He continued damning me as a lucky player as I continued to win pots. Eventually I crippled his stack in one scoop and shortly thereafter finished him off, busting him 2 places away from the money. Rather than disappearing quietly into the night, though, he stuck around for the whole game, cheering my opponents when they won pots and asking me to admit what a lucky player I was. I refused to, and instead told him about the large bluff I placed against him as being the critical play in his loss. After I won the game, I looked him up on Shark Scope (steadily downward with a small recent spike) and googled his user name. What showed up was a Face Book page with a picture of Snoopy sitting on a dock…"Who the hell uses Snoopy in their personal picture," I wondered.

Back to the following day, in Vegas, and the live tournament.

"Anyone here play Omaha on Full Tilt?" I ask.

An old man responds in the affirmative. I ask his name and it doesn't sound familiar.

"I've been playing a lot of the sit n goes…mostly the $5-20 range…it's a lot of fun," I say.

The younger player, suddenly interested, turns his head quickly. I can feel him staring at me. The old man asks my handle and I tell him, "Greenisland".

The younger player suddenly blurts out, "Greenisland! Greenisland! Are you kidding me!? I was playing against you last night online!? "

I nod in agreement and smile. I already know who he is from his Snoopy card protector, but I innocently ask him his name.

"I was so pissed off at you! I knew I should have called on that hand you bluffed! I laid down a pair of aces! You were running so hot for that whole game, you were involved in, like, every hand."

"I can get away with calling about 50--60% of my hands online…you just have to play post flop correctly."

He shakes his head in disbelief, "Do you live here or something?"

"No, my flight just got in a couple hours ago."

"How did you…did you know who I was when you started asking about Full Tilt?"

"I googled your name and found a picture of Snoopy."

"You have to be kidding me. You were saying stuff like, "I run this table, get out of here.""

"Well, I don't think I was being THAT obnoxious."

We proceed to talk about online poker and he is unable to let the hand that I bluffed him out of go…he analyzed it over and over, even talking about other hands in the game from the previous night. Both of us end up making it down to the final table, which I enter as the chip leader…when it's down to 5 players, all of us are about even in chip stacks. My new buddy and I finally get involved in a big hand. He raises preflop and I call from the big blind with random, nonsuited cards. It's heads up action to the flop, I check to him and he bets. I reraise and he calls. On the turn I lead out and bet again. He calls to see the river which I bet, once again, and he lays down his hand.

I turn over 9 high, no low hand, no pair. His jaw drops. He is now down to about $2k in chips with $300-$600 blinds. "You know I had to try the bluff once," I say.

"I had a feeling my ace high was good…I knew I should have called."

I, knowing that he couldn't (or shouldn't)have called down that much of his stack chasing a low pot, get up to use the bathroom while trying to hide my intense feelings of self-satisfaction. I come back and see him involved in his last hand. He busts out of the money but decides to stay to watch the game play out. I make it to the final three and we decide to split the prize pool evenly @ $450 per person. It is 12:30 AM and I just played my first live deepstack tournament. I leave the poker room with my cash money and my free Card Player magazine and my online friend is still sitting at the final table wondering, I would guess, what the hell just happened.

I head over to the MGM and play some donk/drunkfest $2/$4 limit, taking down my fare share of Chivas Regal. I decide to get some sleep at dawn, leaving up $50. I have no idea why I just wasted 5 hours playing such a rediculous game, but that doesn't occur to me until later. I wake up at 11:20 the next day to the piercing sound of someone banging on my door…"Still sleeping!" I yell back…I drift of to sleep as the knocking continues. Finally my door is opened and it slams against the slide lock. "No housekeeping, I'm sleeping!."

A latino-accented man replies. "Sir, you asked for a wakeup call and aren't answering your phone. This is why we knock." He closes my door and I look down to see my phone's receiver on the floor.

I groan loudly and go back to sleep, wondering why I bothered playing it cheap and switching to a new hotel on Thursday.

Parte Dos to come…maybe