This is fairly long... ain't putting a gun to your head. :)

Went to Vegas Jan 18th - Jan 21st. First of all props to Allvegaspoker.com and the contact from MGM. I was picked for a review I made on the AVP almost 2 years ago and won a free night at the MGM for their monthly giveaway here. I finally got the chance to redeem it and wow it was fun!

Small world item... I checked into the hotel at the airport while my friends waited to pick up thier luggage. (Word of advice: DON'T CHECK ANY BAGS! It's a pain in the ass when get there and all you wanted to do it get to the casino and get down to business!) Anyway, the girl checking me in a looked at my ID and asked if I knew a person that goes by this certain name. Ends up this girl is the step daughter to my father's Aunt, (If you can follow that) so I asked her to put us in the Grand Tower near the elevators and she hooked us up good. MGM is huge and it would have sucked to have to walk all the way down the hall to your room. Our room was literally the first room down the hall so that was ultra-cool. But weird how small this world is.

Went to In-Out-Burger in the limo straight from the the airport. Me and another buddy been there before but the other three guys haven't so they go the taste what they have been missing out on. Probably the best burger I have ever had. Either that I was drunk already... Got to the hotel around 8 or so and played 2/4 all night at the MGM. Nothing really notable. The players there were just awful and had one guysdrop 100 and reload 4 times in the span of about an hour. At 2/4 you gotta be doing SOMETHING wrong to have to do that. I on the other hand was drinking and then drinking and then drinking so it affected my play but I didn't really care. I was just breaking the ice getting warmed up. I played until 3 that morning. Losing $40.

Only reason I quit at 3 is because I really wanted to get rested up to play in the Fri noon Caesar's tourney that I heard/read so many good things about. Unfortunately I couldn't sleep and only got around 3 hours of sleep. Here I was in Vegas drunk and tired ready to drop $130 on this tourney that I have been looking forward to for about a year now. (A $80 + 50 rebuy tourney is a lot for a guy like me) I was slightly annoyed at myself but what are you going to do? I got there a little earlier than I thought I was (walking from MGM) so I played dueces wild penny video poker.. Of course being the genius I am, I should have played the 25 cent machine at max credit because in the span of about 20 minutes I hit 5 of a kind and 4 of a kind natural! But no since I was just wasting time, I was playing penny at 1 credit....... Me = moron. As far the tourney, I loved it. I am much more of a tourney player than cash player. There was 167 players in the tourney and the prize pool was over $17k. Structure was good. It DID seems to get really stiff towards the end but I guess that's expected. It lasted longer than usual with the large number of players. The top 9 chopped according to how much chips you had. I was 3rd in chips so that equaled to around $2500. At the time I was all in favor of the chop. We had been playing for 7 hours and running on 3 hours sleep and too much alcohol, I was a little scared of the thought of me doing something stupid and only winning $800 or so if we played it out. I think 1st = $5200, 2nd = $3100 and 3rd = $2200 then it really dropped to like $1200, $900, $600, etc.... but looking back on it now... I really don't think I should have chopped. I had around 136k in chips with blinds of 3000-6000 and 500 ante. I had enough chips to either pound on the people with 2-5 BB left or wait until they eliminated each other. Ironically, the people with 2-5 BB left were the ones against the chop. Go figure. I don't think they really understood what was at stake but couple of the people who were in comfortable chip count had planes to catch and I don't know... I didn't want to be the jerk. I seriously thought I could easily place in the top 4. Looking back... I shouldn't have chopped even if I was going to I should have waited to chop until the 3 or 4 who had such short stacks got eliminated and then chopped...(bigger chop) Lesson learned.

As for the actual tourney, it was actually pretty easy in the early going. Some people who played obviously never played before. Numberous times I watch players, out of turn, try and fold their BB AND THEN call a preflop raise!!! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. These players were calling down bets to the river with K high. Luckily I was able to pick some of that dead money off the table. I played a couple of hands poorly that hurt me that I should have let go sooner. Around the 4th level I was down to around 7 or 8 BBs left so I was going to find a hand and go. I went all in under the gun with KJo and the BB called with A8o. I spiked a K on the river. Two hands later I pushed again with AJ only to run into AQ and I turned a J. Next hand I pick up 88 and reraised a guy who I barely had covered who pushed all in. I was priced in to call because it wasn't that much more. He flipped up QQ..... Yikes. I was so pissed at myself for working that hard, getting lucky enough to double up twice only to donk it off here. Anyway, I rivered a straight on him. That's poker I guess. So in the span of 10 hands or so I went from having 6 BBs to having about 40 BBs. I cruised along the next 2 levels playing in my mind pretty good poker, raising the short stacks and reraising some medium stacks to win some pretty good pots. I busted some short stacks with hands like A3 and A8.. Some more observant players see this and label me a loose aggressive player. (this will come in handy later on) Got down to 11 players left and I am average chips stack. We were playing 5 handed on our table and under the gun raises 4x BB. This guy is a fairly tight player. Actually too tight in my eyes, previously I reraised him with AK against his JJ and he folded and showed. It was late in the tourney and I don't see how you can fold that to a reraise but different strokes I guess... Anyway, I look down and see AA and I push immediately trying to give the impression that I had it. Everyone else folds to original raiser who thinks long. He was the one watching me push with A3 and A8 and relatively weak all in hands. He calls and flips up AK. He was just digusted, he had me covered by about 12 bbs. I won that hand and put him on tilt bemoaning my play... IMO he just got unlucky... AA and KK are the worst hands he's up against and from what he saw he could easily have me dominiated. Just unlucky to run into a hand like that. I didn't really need to do much else after that as we chopped soon after. The tourney was well run. Brandon (I think that was his name) the tourney director did a good job of keeping things in order and listening to players sometimes stupid requests. Most of the dealers were pretty good and friendly. Drinks were also good. Odd that when I had about 6 bbs left. I started drinking because I thought, "O well... may as well get full value out of this..." I started winning. :)

After we got all the paperwork done, I splurged and actually took a taxi back to MGM instead of walking cause that's how roll. :) The rest of the trip I played some 2/4, roulette and BJ, losing in all of them except BJ which I broke even. I watched Andy Bloch's BJ DVD before going.... it's amazing... when you play BJ sober his system works... :)

All in all, good trip with some fun guys... Hopefully we'll do it again some time soon.