Friday night...

At this point, I went up to change and go meet up with the All Vegas Poker.com guys at the Sahara (yes, I made more trips to the Sahara than the Bellagio…). It’s a great site that helped me get all of our plans lined up for Vegas and they were having a little get together and then play in the 7pm tournament. Nothing really of note there other than crashing out in about the same position as the prior night.

I got back to the Venetian in time to meet the guys for the highlight of the trip – dinner at Delmonico’s. After temporarily sticking Mock with a $700+ tab, we headed back to the poker room. Dan, Jon and I wound up at the same table again where I was introduced to the “Sherminator”. If you’ve seen American Pie, you will be familiar with this character. A trying-to-be-cool but really a dork with low self esteem type who thought his game was better than it was. Turns out that earlier in the day, he won a pot from Jon by rivering a set and then standing up with hands over head exclaiming, “I am the Highlander!” – wtf? I immediately got a (expletive deleted) for that guy when he clapped his hands and exclaimed, “I play the player, not the cards,” when he sucked out to beat the nice guy next to me. I swore revenge in his honor (more on that later). The most fun thing about this table was that the three of us got the entire table to more or less do bad Borat imitations at the end of each hand – “Very niiiicceeeeaaa” “High Fiiiaavee”. It never stops being funny.

Saturday

We opt out of the Caesar’s tournament and decide to play cash games again. Mock and I take off for MGM with Jon and Dan telling us they would be close behind as they had some shopping to do. First off, this is Jon’s day to try his hand at worst outfit by going as a tourist, complete with bright red Hawaiian shirt and bucket hat from some bank with IOWA on it. Funnier still was that not only did he walk up the strip and play 8 hours of poker in this get up, but walked around the fashion mall in it! Brilliant! This was also the site of his “finger rape” where out of nowhere an Israeli woman from some salon grabs him and puts a coat of fingernail polish on his middle finger.

Jon and Dan finally show up at the MGM with Dan sweating from head to toe and on pseudo-tilt thinking that we had set him up by telling him to walk from the Venetian to the MGM in 90 degree heat wearing a black shirt and jeans. Note to Dan: It’s a desert!

Mock and I are rolling our table and placing side wagers on felting specific targets at the table (he won 2-1). My favorite moment came about 10 seconds after Mock takes down a pot uncontested and says, “Holy, crap – I just won with my signature hand of 7/3 and didn’t table it – so I don’t to count it!!!” (for the record, Mock won with 7/3 a whopping 14 times). Jon and Dan were at a different table and somehow managed to both lose to quads in the first hour. Dan got some measure of revenge later…

"Jon probably remembers more than me because I was caught right smack dab in the middle of what I like to call Live On-Line Poker. First hand of the brand new table and the wild card at the table makes a huge raise at the very first hand and flips over two junk cards after everybody folds. He announces that it is time to 'loosen things up'. The very next hand I get pocket aces and am happy to get the wild card to join my pot w/ a couple others. Flop come 10 3 2 rainbow. I bump it up 40 and the wildcard goes all-in. The other two guys drop out and I gladly call to only find out that the punk flopped a set of deuces that held on to crack my aces. Steam is starting to come from my ears as I rebuy and pick up my cards for hand #3. What do you know I get pocket 3's and join the pot w/ Wildcard and 2 other guys. The flop comes 3d 5h Jh to give me a set. There is some nice betting between Wildcard and I. The turn comes the 3h to give me quads. It just so happens that this joker catches his flush with that same card. While I make a bet at the pot he goes over the top of me and I reraise all-in. He immediately calls and flips over 8h 10h for the flush and the table is all gasping and saying, wow he hit the flush...sorry man. I wait a minute while this kid is jumping up and down thinking wow this is my day. I use a
Tarantino slow-mo and look at the kid and then the other guys at the table and say "he's drawing dead" as I flip over my quads."

After a 12 hour session, Mock and I walked back up the V where Doug had just finished a 9 hour long tournament by chopping for first place and a cool $3,900. The best part was that when he came over to tell me about it, I enthusiastically congratulated him and offered up a hand and DOUG GAVE ME A HIGH FIVE (a major Ironman faux paux)!!! It was the exact same move he put on Jonesy last year when he cashed at the Sahara. Doug went from elated to dejected in 2 milliseconds as I got him with his own move! It was good to know that he did go outside for 5 minutes on one break. That brought him to a total of 5 minutes outside the confines of his comfy Venetian in about 48 hours.

Sunday

After a late dinner, all but Dan decided to get a short nap in before playing through the night and heading to the airport. I couldn’t figure out the alarm clock and accidentally slept an extra two hours before Dan woke us up by calling every cell phone in the room trying to get us to come downstairs to give him a key.

I got down there and again wound up with Jon and Mock at the same table. It’s worth mentioning at this point that our favorite cocktail server, Tiffany, was working. She is the single happiest person we’ve ever seen. “No worries” “Is Grey Goose ok” and “woo-woo” were some of her favorite sayings. At one point, she went to four different bars for Mock to try and find a bar who could make him a mojito. She also kept bringing me her own specially made Tequila Sunrises (which were outstanding). Easily the coolest person we ran into on the trip. Anyhow, back to the action…Mock and I had been playing yo-yo stacks alternately winning and losing large pots without getting a lot of traction when the following hand came down:

I am completely tilted as I’ve got two drunken trust fund babies from LA on either side of me and I had just lost a pot getting caught making a big bluff. I’ve got about $145 left and was prepared to lose it all and rebuy. Mock is in early position and makes his usual table bully raise of $15. Seated next to him at this point is none other than the Sherminator from two days ago. He re-raises to $60 as he would occasionally do to take down pots and remind the table who was boss. I look down to find pocket Q and just push in my whole stack. Mock looks at the Sherminator and then says, “well, I’ll just go ahead and go all in too to keep it simple” and shoves in about $700. Sherminator goes berserk. “What the hell? I can’t believe this. I just had this same thing happen yesterday, blah, blah, blah.” He carries on for another minute or two before both Mock and I start needling him (note also that Mock was wearing sunglasses, that sport coat, a shirt that said “Stop Clubbing Baby Seals” with three seals and some well endowed women at a disco, and he then puts on a hat that was about a foot tall and looked like something out of Alice in Wonderland). I think the breaker for Sherminator might have been when I looked at him and said, “I play the player, not the cards.” He went ahead and called and I rolled over my QQ, he smiles and rolls KK and Mock of course rolls over AA and the Sherminator goes berserk again. “Oh my god! – twice in two days”. Of course the best part of the story is when a Q comes on the river and I rake the main pot. Perhaps just as good is the fact that because the Sherminator had about $350, Mock actually made about $70 on the hand even though he lost to me.

We grabbed some breakfast and tallied the scores and Mr. Mock was our Ironman winner for 2007. Dan was nice enough to present the bling of watch and box as well as bringing along the now official Ironman trophy (a silver fifth grade basketball trophy with “Ironman of Poker” taped to the front). All hail the winner and the ugly ensemble that got him the title.

We’re less than 354 days away from the start of next year’s Ironman 3 – “Poker Learnings of Vegas for Make Benefit Glorious State of Iowa”.

Santa