BADGERS IN VEGAS

The trip to Vegas

It was great, but I'll address the bad thing first.

For those not in the know, I was in Vegas to play in a WPT (World Poker Tour) Satellite event sponsored by Badger Poker. That was a complete waste of time.  The gent in charge did a horrible job of coordinating, and the whole tournament was pointless.  I am not going to explicitly explain this for those who may not understand, but the structure was for a 55 person tourney to be over in 2 hours?  That's not poker, that's a crap shoot.

But life goes on.  And so does poker.

(Note: all the names in these stories are fellow Badger Poker players. Our relationships above and beyond that may or may not change because of this trip. One girl confided to me that she wish that she hadn't gone because now there's some people she doesn't like after seeing their behavior away from the poker table. Since she was confiding in me, I'll assume I wasn't one of them. : )  Point being is to make no assumptions about these people and their place in my world.)  : )

The first afternoon some of us did more of a touristy stroll up and down the strip since one of us had never been to Vegas before. I saw Rosa at the Monte Carlo (she's the bestest blackjack dealer in the world) so we played some blackjack. Melissa soon found out why I like Rosa so much. I would make the strangest plays and it would work (like standing on 14 when the dealer is showing an 8. Rosa's down card ends up being a 5 and she draws a 10 to bust). Mel shouts "Cut that out!".  She eventually went to another table cause she got tired of watching me "suck out" while she was being beaten up by Rosa. Gambling can be a cruel wench.

But playing poker has had an odd effect at the blackjack table. On one hand Rosa had a 7 showing, turned over a 7, then pulled a 7 from the deck to beat everyone.  In the past this would have caused distress, but now it didn't even phase me. I pointed that out to Mel and she said noticed the same thing. You just get numb to people sucking out on you.

We got back to the Luxor (where we were staying and who was hosting our tournament) in time to play in a poker tourney there. That was when it first occurred to us what was going to befall us.  We were all very disappointed in the tournament. It was a lousy structure (the aforementioned one), the dealers were amateurs, we were playing with "grandpa chips", and it looked as though they hadn't bought a new deck of cards in 10 years. Our thought was that "this had better not be how our tournament is going to be run."

The next day Jason (the dude that set this up) told us that the Luxor was going to give us more starting chips and make the levels longer.  That turned out to not be the case (at least not in a an acceptable manner).

Since everyone else was playing in the noon tourney, I hopped in. The results for me were no different than from the previous night. A little over $100 spent on poker over 2 tourneys, and no cash out.

Maureen showed up and started talking about playing in a tourney at the Monte Carlo. TOURNEY'S AT THE MONTE CARLO??!!!  (That's my home away from home.)  : ) This was new. Other people were planning on hitting Ra that night (the night club at the Luxor) but I wanted to go play in a tourney at the Monte Carlo. And I had to endure peer pressure.

Louis extolls "Lance, dude, chicks, man, chicks."  Now, since I am the complete opposite of what the "chicks" at Ra are looking for, I didn't quite get his point.  : )

I was touched  : ) when Michelle said "There's going to be enough poker this weekend, come to Ra." It's nice when a scorching hot mid-twenties lady shares that sentiment, but harken back to the Louis paragraph for my take.  : )

And I don't regret it.

I took first at the Monte Carlo (specifically, I chopped 1st and 2nd with the gent from California I was heads up with. This is common at Vegas tourneys. Plus, the manager wasn't too thrilled that our heads up play had gone on for half an hour.). $100 buy in, $544 payback.

Some people may have been proud of me. I think I actually ticked some people off.  : )   A woman's "I'm all in" after the flop was so exuberant I kind of laughed at her as I folded. She apparently didn't feel there was anything funny. She didn't stand up, but I guarantee you that her butt and the cushion of her chair were no longer in contact with each other as she was pushing in her chips. : )  I said "I caught some of that too, but I don't think I caught what you caught."

After a guy folded a hand to me, he asked me 'Pocket pair?"  I responded "I knew you didn't have a flush. That was all I needed to know."  His look said that he just wanted me to answer his question, and, well, I didn't give him the answer he was looking for. If I wanted him to know what I had, I would have shown it to him.  : )

Mike C. was randomly seated next to me at both tables I played at and it was obvious to all the other players we knew each other.  That is only relevant because as I was knocking the aforementioned lady out of the tournament at the final table she commented "I should have knocked you and your little buddy out when I had the chance."  Apparently she folded suited hole cards when Mike went all in and I called (and I won and knocked Mike out).  If she would have called she would have hit a flush and knocked us both out. You keep thinking that way, babe. That will work well. The guy from California told me afterwards he wanted to tell her "Then you should have." He said that was some poor sportsmanship on her part. She must be Hellmuth's sister. : )

The next day was the WPT satellite. It didn't matter. The only positive was a good guy won and will be representing us in Reno next month.

If it's not already obvious, in my opinion, never play poker at the Luxor. It's just horrible.

A bunch of us hopped in cabs and headed to Binion's, home the World Series of Poker. The mother ship, so to speak.  : ) We gandered upon the wall of champions, and the tables hung up with the signatures of legendary players. I had seen it before, and was wondering why my plaque wasn't up yet. : )

I didn't even last an hour in the tourney. If Sklansky heard why I did what I did, he would have been so disappointed. I had K-8 and the flop came King high with 2 spades. I bet relatively big, but I don't think big enough. I had one caller.  That bothered me. My 8 isn't very strong. The turn gives me an outside straight draw with the 8 so my outlook brightens up a bit. He checks, I check.  I don't want to waste any more chips unless I have to.  I hit my straight on the river.  But it's also the 3rd spade on the board. The other guy puts me all in.  He has me covered, and since he won some pots early on he has a nice chip stack and he's been doing some bullying. My ultimate reasoning for doing what I did? What would piss me off more? Laying down and him showing me I had him beat? Or calling, and him showing me 2 spades? Sklansky says option 2 knocks me out of the tournament, so avoid it.  I decided I wanted to be less pissed off, so I called.  He had 2 spades.  : )

But that's OK. I went to the cash/ring tables, bought into a $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em table for $100 and three and a half hours later cashed out $356. That more than made up for the $110 spent on the tourney.  : )

That put my net for poker for the week at $500 (give or take). I came out $40 ahead on the "gambling" games.  All in all, a very good trip. And I'll be back (May 13-16).

My funniest line of the week. Some of you are familiar with Mel and how she looks. For those not in the know, she's nicely endowed. And not one of those where everything is endowed. She's endowed where it counts and everything else is as it should be. And being in Vegas she had to dress to kill, all the time. My thought was "I'm going to be walking the streets of Vegas with you dressed like that? OK!" : )  And I put Rob to tears from laughing so hard when I said "When people see me walking  with Mel I KNOW they think in their heads "Oh yea, she's on the clock".  : )

You can email me at lancep62@hotmail.com