April 28th, Las Vegas: I awake feeling well rested and feeling ready to grind my 20 BB stack into something meaningful. I take a shower, throw on a suit, and run down to the convenience store for my standard breakfast; protein bar, meal replacement bar, and vitamin water. I make the quick walk over to the Caesars poker room and arrive comfortably early.

At my table I find ‘Mlagoo’, ‘Bkice’, and ‘Allin@420’ waiting for me
“How the fuck did this happen?” I ask when I see the lineup. Oh well, at least I have some aggressive players to shove over. Play begins at the 600/1200 with 100 ante level, and the table is playing pretty aggressively.

I blind off for an orbit, and then take down the blinds by open shoving mid pairs a couple times. Then I find KK and ‘Allin@420’ raises in front of me. I shove over the top and he folds, then says it’d be cool if I could show a deuce but he knows I’m actually a nit and can’t. Damn him and his psychic accuracy. My stack has increased comfortably over 30,000 when I get involved in a big hand against Mlagoo:
My stack: ~33,000, Mlagoo: ~90,000, blinds 600/1200 with 100 ante. I hold Qd Qh UTG+2.
Preflop: UTG limps for 1200, UTG+1 folds, I raise to 4500 next to act, it folds to Mlagoo on the button who thinks for a bit then reraises to 11,500, it folds back to me, I go all in and Mlagoo calls instantly
“Yea, I was not happy about this spot” I say as I turn over my cards, as I know that given positions, stack sizes, and the UTG limp Matt knows I have a pretty tight range. He turns over his hand and reveals AA. Ah shit.
Flop: J 7 5 rainbow
I get up from the table and start walking towards Mlagoo to shake his hand.
Turn: Q
I start laughing and walking backwards towards my chair.
River: A
I start laughing and spin around, walk over to Mlagoo to shake his hand and wish him luck. If I’m going to bust I’m glad my chips can go to someone I like as much as Matt.

I walk back to my hotel room and start looking at flights to Milwaukee. I find one that leaves in about five hours that is direct and only costs $100. I book it and start packing my stuff. I’m chatting to the girl I met in the hot tub online and she kindly offers to give me a ride to the airport. I’m also chatting to Gobbo and suggest the two of us get lunch so I can give him the $64,000 in Bellagio chips sitting in my safe Shaundeeb wanted me to deliver to him. We decide to meet up with Augie at a Japanese place near his place for a mellow birthday celebration for Augie.

I check out of the hotel and meet the girl outside at the Bellagio. The car is parked behind Scotty Nguyen’s sick ride, which I think is a Jaguar. The license plate reads ‘NL Baby’. I don’t think I want to be that close to him in traffic. We drive over to the Japanese place which it turns out offers a vast array of Asian options, including Korean BBQ, which I obviously snap call order. I tell Gobbo I have the chips for him and ask whether he has a bag he’d like me to put them in. He tells me he’ll just put them in his pocket so I hand them over and he does.

After lunch we drive to the airport, park the car, and then find a restaurant to hang out in while we wait for my flight. I get a coffee, she gets a margarita. We discuss the upcoming WSOP and how I’ll make her dinner next time I’m around town.
“Are you going to miss me?” she asks suggestively
“No” I deadpan
She’s hung out with me long enough to know I’m messing with her and she laughs at me for about a solid minute
“Oh really?” she challenges
“Well, I might miss your presence a bit, but it won’t be staying up at night crying into a pillow kinda missing you”
“Well obviously you fool” she teases back.

Eventually it reaches the point that my flight will be boarding soon so I kiss her goodbye and walk to the security check. It’s an American airport, so off go the shoes, belt, and suit jacket. I board the plane and take out the ‘Wolf on Wall Street’. I read it for about 20 minutes until I reach the end. That book was awesome. I set it down in my bag, lay my head back, and fall asleep almost instantly.
~
“Alright there folks, we are beginning our descent into Milwaukee” announces the pilot, jerking me out of my sleep. Damn did that nap work out well.

The plane lands in Milwaukee a few moments later and we disembark. I collect my luggage and grab a taxi over to the apartment of my friend Jenson, who is letting me stay at his place during the time I spend in Milwaukee. I drag my bags up the front steps then get in the elevator. It takes about eight minutes to go up three flights. I knock on his door and greet my we greet each other with mutual enormous enthusiasm.

We go have waffles at an all night food place near his apartment and do our best to catch each other up. Sometimes I really miss Milwaukee.

We walk back to the apartment and Jenson leaves me at the door to go sleep at his girlfriends place. He has essentially given me his place and room for however long I want during my stay since he spends every night at hers. Inside the apartment I fire up my computer and do some writing. It’s not until 5:30am that I feel tired enough to try to get to bed. There is light coming in from the window over the bed. It makes it very hard to sleep.

April 27th, Las Vegas: In order to buy into the Caesar’s $5,000 I’ve had to take one of the 5k Bellagio chips that Shaundeeb gave me via Charder to the cage. He gave me $69,000 in chips in total, $5,000 to use towards the event and $64,000 to give to Gobbo to hang on to. Naturally at the cage they give me some trouble about where I got the chip and who in the hell Christian Harder is (you people don’t know who the fuck Charder30 is!?) They tell me to take it over to the poker room cage instead, where they wind up giving me far less trouble and quickly peel off a stack of $5,000 in cash and hand it over to me.

I walk over to the Caesar’s poker room after having been delayed over 20 minutes by the chip exchange, making me 10 minutes late for the tournament. I buy in with my wad of Bellagio wrapped hundreds then find a seat on a table that appears to be a very soft line up. After watching a couple orbits I realize the French guy in seat four does not fold for any reason. No pair? No draw? No problem! Call! My first hand of relevance is against the French guy and another random old guy who is a huge aggression nit:
Effective stacks: ~25,000, blinds 25/50, I hold 8s6s in the SB.
Preflop: UTG folds, UTG+1 calls 25, the French guy in MP1 raises to 175, MP2 calls, folds to me in the SB, I call, BB calls, UTG calls.
Flop: Jc 7s 4d
Everyone checks.
Turn: 5s
I like that card only slightly. I bet out 625, the BB folds, UTG folds, MP1 calls, MP2 calls.
River: Td
I bet 1600, MP1 folds, MP2 min raises to 3200. I know I’m going to reraise, I’m just trying to think what to and what I do if he instantly crams or thinks for a bit and crams. I feel like with this guy I should be more worried about an instant cram, but really I think I should call anyway because he may be the type to over value his hand. I reraise to 7500 and he thinks for a bit and calls with a set of tens. Kind of wish I’d raised bigger now.

A single orbit later I get involved in another large pot, this time directly against the French station:
My stack: ~33,000, French guy: ~25,000, blinds 25/50, I hold 5c5d on the button.
Preflop: UTG folds, French guy raises to 200 UTG+1, MP1 folds, MP2 calls, folds to me on the button, I call, BB folds.
Flop: 8s 8c 5s
French guy bets 200, MP1 folds, I raise to 1000, French guy calls.
Turn: 2d
French guy checks, I bet 2500, French guy calls.
River: Kd
French guy checks, I bet 6000, and now the French guy sort of slaps the table is annoyance and makes a frustrated call. QQ I guess? I table my 55 and he shows his pair of aces and mucks. I can’t believe he didn’t stack off with the way he’s playing; even if we are 500 BB’s deep.

I find a small card rush and do quite a bit of preflop raising. The guy on my immediate left three bets me a number of times, but every time he does and we get to showdown or I fold he shows me some monstrous hand, so it seems he’s just running hot. With this history we wind up getting involved:
My stack: ~40,000, UTG+1: ~40,000, blinds 50/100, I hold AsKd UTG.
Preflop: I raise to 300, UTG+1 reraises to 800, it folds back to me, I call. I think folding isn’t absurd here, because his reraise range his like TT+/AK, but we’re also 40,000 deep and I have AK which last I checked is the nizzles, so we’re seeing the flop.
Flop: Kc 4c Js
I check, UTG+1 bets 1000, I call.
Turn: 7h
I check, UTG+1 bets 2000. I call, but when I think about his range that double barrels here with the preflop 3-bet I’m pretty confident I should actually be folding.
River: Ah
I check, UTG+1 quickly bets 5000. Now I go into the tank, and when I think about it I’m really just calling for a chop here. QQ and TT don’t triple barrel here from a guy like this, and I’m losing to AA/KK/JJ and in a tie with AK. He didn’t even have to think about his river bet, and he’s had it every time. I groan a bit and fold, then he flashes me AKo and I feel dumb for not just folding the turn.

I continue to beat up my table for a bit throughout the level, but unfortunately for me the table is broken and I’m moved to a much worse seat. The table has Danny Wong on my right, Scott ‘Mastr’ Seiver on my left, and Todd Terry a few seats over on my left, plus another young online guy across the table. I’m hopeful that at least Scott will spend his time entertaining me with his hilarious Seth Roganesqueness. Unfortunately he soon pops in his Ipod headphones and starts owning fools instead.

Not long after I arrive I find myself in a large pot with Todd Terry:
My stack: ~35,000, Todd Terry: ~30,000, blinds 100/200, I hold JdJh on the button.
Preflop: Todd raises to 500 UTG, folds to me on the button, I call, SB folds, BB calls.
Flop: 2s Ts Jc
BB checks, Todd checks, I bet 1125, BB folds, Todd calls.
Turn: Kd
Todd checks, I bet 2900, Todd thinks briefly and calls.
River: 5c
Todd checks, I think about my bet size for a while then fire 7000, Todd goes into the tank and folds. He says he had AsKs.

Then for a very, very long time nothing happens. I go massively card dead and with a slew of good players on my left rarely bother to get particularly out of line. Level after level passes without the slightest eventful hand, and after several hours of play on my table of boredom I finally get moved to one with a softer line up, though there is still ‘BKice’ and ‘Sketchy1’ on my left, but not immediate. Near the end of the day I get involved in a hand with a straight forward middle aged Asian guy:
My stack: ~33,000, Asian guy: ~50,000, blinds 400/800 with 100 ante. I hold 9s9d in the BB.
Preflop: Folds around to the HJ, HJ raises to 3500, folds to me in the BB, I flat call because 3 betting against this type of player with nines here is definitely a bluff, though a go and go isn’t crazy, but I prefer that with unpaired hands and I expect this guy to play pretty straight forward post flop so I like the call.
Flop: T 6 3 rainbow
I check, the HJ bets 5000, I call.
Turn: J
I check, the HJ checks.
River: K
Bleeeeegh. I check, the HJ thinks briefly and bets 8000. I smirk at Sketchy and say “Perfect turn/river for 99 huh?” and fold
“That’s exactly what I thought you had” he says.

After that I spend the rest of my day folding, and when things draw to a close I find myself with 25,700 in chips, meaning over the course of my 10 hour day I’ve managed to increase my stack at less than 100 chips per hour.

After the tournament finishes a friend and I go over to Panorama and meet up with some other friends. Naturally we smoke up and take a dip in the hot tub and discuss our respective days of poker. Then we go to order food, but it turns out in Vegas your delivery options after midnight are surprisingly few. I always figured Vegas and New York City would be the two places that you’d have an infinite amount of options when it comes to late night delivery, but apparently that’s only true of one of them. How annoying.

April 26th, Las Vegas: I’ve gotten way behind in my writing so I’ve decided to sit out by the Bellagio pool all day to simultaneously work on my blog and my tan. On my way down from the room I stop off at the convenience store and purchase a tin of small cigars and a vitamin water, just the resources needed to be a proper man of leisure.

I grab two towels, find a chair in the sun, then lay out and fire up my computer. The sun is so bright that it’s practically impossible to see the cursor on the screen, so once I fire up Microsoft Word I try and not click off the program because I know it’ll take me forever to find the arrow again. Naturally I am also spending a fair amount of time scoping the hot chicks at the pool, but given that I have dinner plans and am leaving immediately after I bust (or win) the Caesars $5,000 I won’t bother talking to any.

I take a break between my writing to go for a swim then lounge around in the hot tub for a while. I feel slightly out of place being alone, but really it’s too nice a day to not get in the water. That and I want to give myself an excuse to stop working for a while.

When I return to my chair I lit up a cigar. I realize now that this makes writing difficult, because either I have the cigar in one of my hands and it’s no longer available to type, or it’s in my mouth and the smoke trickles up to my eyes, messing with my concentration. None of this stops me from smoking.

When I finish my work I head over to the apartment of the girl I’ve been hanging out with an hour before I said I’d show up. I ask her if it’s cool if I use the gym and she suggests we play racquetball, which I am all the fuck about. We go downstairs and I thrash her for a few games despite trying to take it easy on her. She eventually tires of losing and decides to go upstairs to start working on the food. I tell her I’ll meet her up there because I want to practice for a while and run around. I play against myself until I feel appropriately drenched in sweat, then return to the apartment and ask to use the shower.

After drying off and getting changed I chill out on the couch and watch ‘How I Met Your Mother’ while she finishes making the food. She offers me a drink, I go with beer. She sets dinner out on a table with two scented candles on it. I feel like those are the kind of things that’d you’d never think would give you cancer but do. She’s made a spicy Salmon with vegetables dish, and it is fucking awesome. I tell her that the biggest compliment I can give her about the cooking is being too busy shoveling it in my mouth to give a compliment. Then I keep shoveling.

I help her put the dishes away after dinner. Then we hang out on the couch with a bottle of wine watching the drunken, suit wearing antics of Barney for a while. I dig his style.

April 25th, Las Vegas: About 50 feet away from the Caesars poker room I realize I’m $200 short to buy into their $2,000 event today. When I walk into the room I see Matt Stout and ask him if he doesn’t mind loaning me $200 for a day or so and that I’ll happily send him online collateral money. He’s very cool about it and just says to give it back to him in cash whenever I see him next. I head up to the cage and buy in to the event that starts us with 15,000 in chips and begins with 25/50 blinds and hour long levels, a very good structure for a 2k.

My table is mostly unknowns with the exceptions of the always polite Harry Demetriou and gregarious Will ‘The Thrill’. I spend the 25/50 level trying to see cheap flops while we’re 300 BB’s deep with hands that can flop well, but mostly blank off and only win a few small pots. It’s not until the 50/100 level that I get involved in my first considerable pot, which is against Harry who has a fairly tight image:
Effective stacks: ~15,000, blinds 50/100, I hold AKo on the CO.
Preflop: Folds to Harry in MP1, Harry raises to 300, folds to me on the CO, I call, the rest fold.
Flop: Kc Jc Ts
Harry bets 500, I call.
Turn: 4d
Harry bets 1000, I call.
River: 8s
Harry checks, I check. Harry tables Q9o and I muck. His check looks strange, but when I think it over it may very well be the best play against me. None of my one pair hands call a bet, my two pair hands value bet for him anyway, and he gives me a chance to bluff if I have a missed draw.

As the level goes on Will ‘The Thrill’ loses a major pot then starts getting bored and announces to the table “I’m going all in blind next hand! No matta what!”
“You serious over there Will?” I ask
“You know me kid, whattya think?”
“Heh, I think you’ll do it.”
Will is sitting a few seats on my left and is in the BB this hand. He stacks up his chips and sets them right behind the betting line, waiting to cram on anyone who dares raise. When I get my cards I peek down at KTo on the cutoff and when it folds to me I raise it up to 300. The button and SB fold and just as promised Will crams his stack in without looking. I instantly call and he flips his cards over one at a time to reveal Q6o.
Flop: A J A
Turn: 4
River: 2
“Good luck everyone!” he says smiling then walks away from the table with a laugh. That’s pretty fucking balla move if you ask me.

I stay quiet for the rest of the 50/100 level and don’t find myself involved again until after the break:
My stack: ~17,000, HJ: ~16,000, Button: ~20,000, blinds 100/200. I hold As6s in the SB.
Preflop: Folds to the HJ, HJ min raises to 400 and from what I’ve seen he’s been doing this with weaker holdings, the CO folds, the button calls, I call (I don’t call unless it’s a min raise or if it’s a known professional), the BB folds.
Flop: 9s 7h 2s
I check, the HJ bets 750, button folds, I call.
Turn: 5d
I lead out 1600, the HJ calls.
River: Ad
I think it over then bet 2200 and the HJ makes a very frustrated looking call. I table my hand and he shakes his head then mucks.

One unfortunate part of the structure at both Caesars and the Bellagio is that there’s no 150/300 level despite there being two levels of 100/200, one with ante and one without. The 100/200 level with ante is very quiet for me, and I don’t get involved again until it’s 200/400. The opponent in the hand is an older guy of perhaps 70, who seems very weak and straight forward:
My stack: ~19,000, UTG: ~17,000, blinds 200/400 with a 50 ante. I hold QdTd on the CO. We are seven handed.
Preflop: UTG calls 400, folds to me on the CO, I raise to 1600, folds back to UTG, UTG calls.
Flop: 8s 5d 2d
UTG checks, I bet 2200, UTG check raises to 5000. With his showing aggression I think there’s basically no chance I get him to fold anything, and even though he limps a fair bit his line of limp/calling UTG then check tiny raising the flop seems like it could contain big pairs not to mention sets. I elect to just call.
Turn: 9s
UTG fires out 4000, and given that I have 12 clean outs and am getting over 4 to 1 immediate plus the implied I’m stuck calling.
River: As
UTG looks absolutely terrified of this card and immediately checks. He has 11,000 of a 17,000 starting stack in the pot. He couldn’t possibly fold could he? Christ he looked scared of that card though. I want to find out the hard way. I quickly cram my stack into the middle and UTG looks terrified and thinks for a while before folding.
“I had pocket queens” he says
An aggressive Russian kid two on my right glances over at me and gives a knowing look. I smile ever so slightly back at him. Spazzy internet kids have no language barrier.

A couple orbits later I raise AA in late position to 1050 and a woman with 5500 on the CO shoves pre. The button and blinds fold and I naturally snap call and hold up against her KJo when the board runs out 6 T J A 7.

I stay quiet for the rest of the level outside the occasional blind steal and don’t get involved again until the 300/600 level:
My stack: ~45,000, UTG: ~20,000, MP1: ~15,000, BB: ~35,000, blinds 300/600 with a 75 ante. I hold 6h4h on the button.
Preflop: UTG raises to 1500, folds to MP1, MP1 calls, folds to me on the button, I notice the BB has already grabbed chips with which to make the call so I call as well, the SB folds, the BB calls.
Flop: 2d 8d 5s
Everyone checks to me and the BB and UTG are very straight forward players so I fire out 3600. The BB and UTG quickly fold but then MP1 shoves for 13,500 total. There’s nearly 7000 in the pot preflop, plus my 3600, plus his 13,500 which makes for roughly 24,000 in the pot and less than 10,000 to call, so I make the call and he tables 4s4d giving me a sort of clean 12 outs to win, assuming the turn isn’t a diamond.
Turn: Jd
Man fuck you turn card.
River: Ad
My stack slips slightly below 30,000 and we go on dinner break shortly afterwards.

‘Charder’ is at the final table of the WPT $25,000 event today so after quickly grabbing a sandwich I walk all the way down the Bellagio to see how it’s going for him. When I arrive I find out he’s just busted out in fourth place and my friend ‘Atimos’ is now heads up against some random fish that folded KK to ‘Charder’ preflop 25 BB’s effective (for those of you who aren’t big on poker; this basically means the guy has absofuckinglutely zero idea of what he’s doing.) ‘Atimos’ is wearing a very slick looking dark suit, which I pay him a compliment on, though I make sure to barrage him with an avalanche of profanities first for having stolen my moves, but mostly I’m just jealous that his suit is nicer than mine. I find ‘Luckychewy’ in the stands and he is quite drunk and cracking me up.

Eventually I run back over to Caesars and make it back 30 seconds before play starts up again. We restart at the 400/800 level and I wind up being incredibly card dead for the entire level. I have zero legitimate hands, and when I try to make a position open some nit comes alive with a huge reraise and blows me out. My stack slowly but consistently dwindles down, and by the time the blinds go up to 600/1200 my stack has bled into the teens.

Hand after hand I peek down at garbage and there is a raise in front of me. I find one spot to cram over an aggressive player and he folds, but other than that I am so dead I’m basically useless. My stack has dropped to 12,000 when I peek down at K6o on the button and shove when it folds to me. The SB fairly quickly calls and the BB folds. The SB tables A6o
“Awwwww crap, that’s not good” I say.
Flop: Q J 2
Turn: 5
River: 4
“Good hand, best of luck guys.” I tap the table, button my jacket (top button on a two button only people), and walk away. I take out my phone and call ‘Luckychewy’ to see where he’s at and he says I should come over to ‘McFaddens’ at the Rio. I call the girl I’ve been hanging out with and she says she’s tired and going to just relax with some room service at the Bellagio.

I arrive at McFaddens and find a group that includes Shaundeeb, Mlagoo, Lacey Jones, Maria Ho, Maria’s friend, Etay, Deebs brother Billy, Billy’s friend, Luckychewy, and Joy Miller (there was probably others, but I got drunk enough that it’s blurry.)

Chewy and I start slamming screwdrivers and scoping the place. There are numerous bridal parties in the room, so I tell Chewy to come with me and I walk up to one of them and say to the bride
“Oh congratulations! How did he propose?”
I ask her a number of questions about it all while Chewy starts chatting to the bridesmaids. After I get in good with the bride I ask her to identify which of the girls in the party are single for us to chat up. She lets us know and we hang out for a bit then return to our table for drinks. When doing bar scene stuff I do this kind of thing a lot, I chat up groups without blatantly hitting on anyone and just be fun and social, then perhaps come back to them later in the night, sort of like planting seeds all over the bar.

After we drink for a bit Chewy claims that he can dance at least 10 times better than me. He goes out onto the dance floor and starts tearing that shit up. Naturally I join him and together do our best not to look like two drunken white idiots (pretty confident we failed.) After we finish and return to our table a group of girls from another bridal party all hit the dance floor and start going nuts. Etay starts giving us shit about how the second we leave the girls all go out there. When the song finishes the girls go back to their table so I go up and ask them
“Okay quick question, was it just a coincidence you guys all hit the floor when me and my friend left or are we just the worst dancers ever?”
“No not at all, we just love that song!” says one of them
“Come on let’s go right now!” says another and three girls take me out onto the floor and we all start dancing together, including the roughly 50 year old mother of the bride, who can really grind her ass off for a woman of her age (back me up Mlagoo.)

When the song finishes I thank the girls for the dance and tell them I’ll come to chat a bit later. I go back to Chewy and we keep drinking. As I’m walking off to the bathroom the mother of the bride runs up to me and asks
“Where are you going?!”
“Um…the bathroom?”
“OK well when you get back I need you to do me a favor. You need to get on stage with the bride to be and search her body for a coupon.”
“I can assure you I’m the right man for this job.”

When we get back from the bathroom the bride’s mother comes and grabs me and brings me on stage with the bride and a few of the other girls. The DJ starts announcing what’s going on and I lean into the bride and say
“Just tell me what’s appropriate here.”
“K, just peel up clothing and look around a bit, the coupon is in my bra.”
“Gotchya.”

When it starts I immediately drop to the floor and pretend to look up her skirt, then I stand back up and start looking her up and down and slightly peeling up bits of clothing in my search. Eventually I turn my attention to the front of her dress and peek down towards her cleavage, making sure to not actually grope her. She directs my hand to the coupon and I rip it out and yell “YEEEEEEEEEA!!” and start fist pumping. Then the DJ turns on the music and a bunch of the guys come over and we all tear up the dance floor together. Chewy wasn’t lying, he’s a good ass dancer.

At some point I realize I’m starting to get too drunk so Chewy and I go back to Panorama towers. Eventually other members of the group trickle in and we meet up with other residents of the building to all go out to the hot tub and pass around a large blunt while discussing the amusing evening we’ve had. I tell them they should make sure to enjoy shit like this, that one day we’ll all be looking back with envy at the days we were in our 20’s and could get torn up in a hot tub with no consequences, that it won’t be like this in our 70’s. They tell me this is exactly what they plan to do in their 70’s, that there isn’t much else to do.
“Good fucking point.”