Trying to Remember the Past Month

The drive out to Vegas was leisurely. Having a back seat and legroom on a five thousand mile road trip is overrated. It was great to see Matt of St. Louis. In Phoenix we took a little more time and alongside Sterling we had a camping adventure. Drinking under the stars is one of the better spices of life. Little Toph is also a trip.

The condo at Palms Place was pretty ballin. There wasn't too much room for private space, but we were practically the top floor and had a corner unit with a view of the strip. Early on I got food poisoning. The following 30 hours I proceeded to vomit with Old Faithful-esque predictability and force. It took me about 5 days to get out of bed and play poker again. The highlights of non-poker activities included two epic Catan comeback wins, a lot of time in various pools, and some super fun games of horse (in basketball fashion) played on the putting green in the backyard of the estate of masters. I did quite well on prop bets. Back in the poker world I proceeded to go 0/5 in WSOP events [including an uneventful main] and lost a 10k flip in my one shot at 50/100/200 PLO. I did however win 14k in craps and we got nearly 10k in comps from it. Manny (our casino host) got us whatever we wanted basically, free rooms, free ballin dinners, free bottles in the club etc. After all was said and done, I was basically even on the trip going into the last stand, which I wasn't even planning on playing the day before it started.

In the Venetian 5k I managed to double up in the first 20 minutes in a 500bb chip pot. A young kid raised I 3bet AK, bb calls and the young kid 4bet and I just called. He fired three barrels on a AJxxx board and I called his river all in and he showed JT. The next few days were a blur of winning and losing a lot of pots, my stack was all over the map. In the biggest pot on day 3 I got it in with KK vs JJ on a 854 two heart flop board and he rivered a J. Instead of being a solid 2nd in chips with three tables left I was left real short. I ran real hot on all my allins and than ran a big bluff check calling flop and check raising turn to jam river on A9492 three diamond board to get called by AK. Again I got short and ran hot on allins to make final table with decent stack. The most interesting hand from the final table I 3bet a CO steal with 57s in sb and called the Russian's 4bet. Flop came 6d4d24d (I had spades) and I check jammed his cbet to win a real big pot. I busted in 3rd A8o<66 for $131,983; my biggest tournament score to date.

Nick and I drove the 2000 miles home in 26 hours straight.