Day before the ME was relaxing. Checked into a our place we got for the week, the Marriott Grand Chateau, great location right on the strip and an amazing roof top pool/bar. I took some nice shots, including the one here with me and Shoe with the ole Monte Carlo (MC) in the background. The MC was our hotel of choice back in the day! We did something like 7 super bowls straight there with the boys, they treated us well.
After the roof, Shoe and I played a couple low buy in tourneys across the street from the hotel. Nothing much to write about, was out early in the first and went deep in the second but no cash. I made it over to the Rio around 5:30, met up with Don in front of the FullTilt (FT) lounge. The FT “party” was, let’s say, a little disappointing after the UB bash and a few others I popped in on. There were a few pros there, Mike the mouth, Eirk Seidel, Chris Ferguson and Phil Gordon. They were all nice, got some more pics. I’ll post a link to a gallery soon.
Well, I picked up my “FT gear” (one t-shirt, a pull over, a hat and small bag for it all, woohoo!). FT is a great site, but when it comes to marketing they need to look at the big boys and what they are doing here. Before I made it into the "party", I walked through the Amazon room (the Zoo). Where ever you looked all you saw was PokerStars (PS) hats and these big butt PS Jerseys. No wonder their number one. “Ok, just stop!” (I think I justheard someone say that). One little funny story here, for the World Series of Poker (WSOP) websites like PS and FT can’t put “.Com” on anything people wear. Well, PS had “pokerstars.com” on everything. A HUGE No No. They must have had their interns running all over Vegas buying every last roll of black take, you can read the story here. Too Funny! I’m sure there’s a marketing person out there looking for a job…
After the party and the Zoo, Don and I met up with Brian from MSR and his wife. We made it over to a The Palm and had a really nice dinner. Rob, a good buddy of mine from NC met us as well for dinner. The dinner talk was all about Poker, “imagine that” (that voice again, I can hear my wife Kathy saying that right now). We did talk about some funny poker stories, Rob had some great ones. Like the time he was hanging out with a bunch of guys on the poker tour and they were bowling Oranges for 1k a roll. The object was to get your orange closest to the wall with out hitting it. What??!!?? Don’t ask… Brian left to pick up his Mom and the three of us had some more after dinner talk, poker of course… The one consistent theme was, don’t me consistent. Make sure you keep them guessing and don’t fall into a pattern of betting the same way. Over bet a pot here, value bet there. Make it look like your stealing when you got the stone cold nuts and the next time just value you bet when you got them.
I always read and hear about the big players, like Dan Harrington, talking about how they’ll go out with friends after playing and talk about the hands they played that night. Why they played a hand one way and then played the same hand another way the next time. They always talk about how they learned so much from these conversations and grew into a better player. If they were anything like the dinner and after dinner conversation, I can see why. I looked forward to many more of these conversations.
After dinner we made it down to the Caesars poker room where Shoe was playing in the 7 pm tourney. He didn’t make dinner, if I were in his shoes (that came out funny), I would have been playing too. He was doing really well. Looking around the room, he definitely one of the chip leaders. Didn’t want to Ricky/Jinx (sry Rick) him so we left. Was going to head back to the Rio with the boys, but while waiting in line for about 30 minutes for a cab I decided to make it back towards the Marriott. I told the cab that I wanted to go to the Aladdin, it’s next to the Marriott and they have a small quiet poker room. The plan was to play a little cards and then go to bed, that was the thinking. As we were driving over I kept hearing some saying, “just go back to the hotel, you need to get some rest!” I think it was Kathy again. Well, you’ll be happy to hear that on the way over I told the cabby to drop me off at the Marriott. I’m glad I did.
When I got to the room it was a little after 10 I did a little email and read the updates on Card Player. Man, some brutal hands on day one. One hand I guy flopped Quad 5s (4 5s) only to lose to a runner runner straight flush. I think I would have been sick right there. Another guy got pocket Ace’s 5 times! If I lose and go out with Quads, that will be OK, it wasn’t my time. But if I get pockets A’s 5 times, I’ll be up there…
Shoe and I were talking yesterday and he’s got me on a plan… Have a good workout and a good breakfast before the Marathon. Might even play a little Hoops before the workout (I’ll be D’ing it, as my boy Doy would say). It’s going to be a long day!
I slept great last night. I was out by 10:45. After shutting down the computer I was out in 2 sec’s. Not sure how, but I was… Woke up around 4:30, 7:30 east coast time… That would be just around the time my “human alarm clock” that is Trey wakes us up. Not going to get mushy, I’ll just say I miss him and Kathy a ton. Thank God for cell phones. 6 hours of sleep is great. As for it being a long day today, they played day 1a until 3:15 this morning. That’s over 15 hours of poker!!! They played down to 800 with starting field of 2138. The chip leader is just over 100k and the small stack is at 3k.
The plan today is to play my game, see what the table offers me and get through day one (winning Kevin O some money). Let’s hope I can stick to the plan! Out for now, may check in before I head over to the Zoo!
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