End of the Road

Its Over.

My Great Summer of 2008 in Vegas is over......

Sad but true. My 15 hour mission for one 'last lick' ended last night at 4am...with me walking out of the Planet Hollywood, having played the 2am DONKFEST, and, quite predictably...losing on a donkeyboy beat...not once...not twice...but three times....
I cant say I was sad or irritated, since I fully expected to experience this when I walked through those doors. My day started at the Ceaser's Palace. We got there late, but due to me being friends with the floor guys over there they got us in after registration had closed. MISTAKE. I made a bad read on a guy....who just happened to be holding, what else? ACES. I have run INTO ACES maybe NINE times this week.

Ugh. I left, went over to Mirage, with the idea of playing a sit n go. They weren't going off...so I sat in a cash game, quickly losing $150. I don't know why I thought QQ would hold up after I raised the $15 raiser to $40...only to be called by the clown with 97. Catching a board of K-7-10...I bet out $60. He calls. Turns a 7....there ya go. I left that game before I killed the guy. I go play Stud with perhaps the oldest people in the Western Hemisphere. 1-4 stud. So when I put $150 in red on the table, you would have thought I dropped $100,000 on the table. Whoops.

As it turned out I had more fun at that stud table than I had in several days, maybe weeks. It didn't hurt that I was running over the table. I love stud. Its a dying game...cant even find it in Biloxi anymore. They used to spread it at the Beau but not anymore. I was up about $75 when they called me for the $115 sit n go. And guess who was sitting on my left? Good 'ol 79 boy. He was on my left in the cash game as well...and he has this little habit of turning his right knee directly into the player on his rights' thigh. After about five minutes of fidgeting around I finally just said "Dude, if you could do me a favor please and quit shoving your @#$(*$@ knee into my thigh I would really appreciate it!" This guy turns out to be one of those jerkoffs you simply CANT BEAT...no matter what cards you have.

He couldn't miss anything...was running over the sit n go. I get AK in the BB....he limps in again for $150. I decide to flat it and try to trap. Flop comes K-9-3. I think about betting then decide to check to him. He leads out $550. Perfect. "I'm all in. $1150" He calls...of course...and turns over the EVER POWERFUL K-6..........and hey hey hey...what hits the river? You know it! Time to leave The Mirage. Went and met Rick across the street at Venetian, who was losing his ass in the WSOP Texas Hold Em casino game..the one I had turned him onto a couple days ago. He was irritated again.

We went to dinner at Palazzo...wow, you talk about a nice casino. The biggest, wide-open thing you have ever seen. Talk about a lot of unused space. I don't know what is going on in the gambling industry...I read a trade magazine yesterday about how EVERYONE is down this year...and down big. And yet all these new casinos, bigger and more beautiful than ever keep popping up all over the place. Squirrel is a cocktail waitress at the Beau and is so bummed out at how slow its been there. Sorry...for that little sidebar. We decide after dinner to play the 8pm $180 tourney at Venetian.

I tread water for about two hours...then this assclown who has been alternating between sitting and drinking his ice coffee while playing one hand out of ten...and sweating his buddy at the final table of the 5K tourney (turns out he had 40% of his action) watching with his hands on his hips like some kind of hairdresser in SoHo...prancing around sporting his man boobs. I hated this guy. After his buddy sucked out and ran around squealing like a pig repeating over and over "YEaaaahhh....ONE TIMEEEEE baby.....ONE TIMEEEE...ship it oneee timmmeeeeeeeee........." Everyone at the table took a collective sigh of "I hate that guy" which resulted in the inevitable. Me placing a $100 bounty on his Greg Brady-looking friend with his twitchy eyes and his chip fondling, chip flinging ways.

UGH! So there it was...bounty in play! He finally rejoins the table for an amazing 6 hands in a row. He is the guy who likes to Re-pop behind the limp/limp/raise scenario..... or raise 2x the pot behind the limp/limp/limp scenario. Just like our Euro buddies. I laid down a hand about three times to this crap...then finally I limp in with QJ spades...guy limps behind me...and 'ol twitchy eyes flicks $2000 in there. I have $3800. Screw it. I'm over it. I UPS that shit...and find AJ of hearts.

Perfect. Looks okay though when I flop 9s-8d-2s.....any spade, any Q, any 10.....but nope, I brick it out...and jagoff gets all my chips. I DO SAVE my $100 bounty though! He would proceed to donk off a pretty big stack of chips in less than hour. I went over and bought into a $1/$2 game for $300 and when I cashed out at 1:30am had $1260. So I won what I would have had to finish 3rd in the tourney to win. Not to shabby. That was when I bee-lined it over to Planet Hollywood to play that stupid tournament. And you know how that ended.

Its weird around here now. Its pretty much taken on a ghost-town like feel. All the tourneys have less than 100 players, so its not much better than the tourney scene in Biloxi. I know this weekend they have the $20,000 guarantee at the Beau...so I am feeling somewhat motivated to get on the road and get home by Friday to catch that. I'm sure Squirrel is going to be ecstatic with me coming home and going straight to the casino to play poker. Once the WSOP leaves town...its like there is a big hangover. Its kind of depressing.

Frank played yesterday in the WPT Bellagio...and got up to over a half million chips around 5pm....but as I was trying like crazy to get an update around 11pm...no website would give me the chip counts....I cant understand the lack of coverage on a damn $15,000 buy in event with most of the worlds best players...but finally found out that he had busted out, I think 35th. I was bummed for him. But it does mean that I don't have to sit around until Thursday to watch him at the Final Table as I promised I would. Two weeks ago, I loaned a guy $2000....it was a friend of Allie's who I felt I wouldn't need to sweat getting the money back from...they were on a blackjack bender. I was promised it back in four days. Well...needless to say, I haven't gotten it back. Then, my old backer wanted to buy a piece of my WSOP Main Event action...so a day before I played I sold him 12.5% of myself for $2500.

Got out of Day 1....called about it....since it wasn't in my account...told me not to worry about it....it would be there. Next day. Not there. Played and got out of Day 2. Still no money. Then lose early on Day 3. Money? Still not in my account. Now have called and texted twice and heard nothing. I love this life. That's $4500 out on the limb. It pisses me off...because had I cashed I would have paid him his piece right away. Like I ALWAYS do. I'm so tired of getting strung along. So I am going home with, lets just say...a tiny little bit of irritation lingering deep in my soul! And I have no money on PokerStars....what little money I had Squirrel has depleted with her late-night, bored and lonely sessions on there. So before I leave for the drive home, I need to get some money on there. I have the wireless card...I hope to let Rick drive some so I can get my fix!!!!!!

I woke up around noon today and thought it would be nice to head out to the pool and try and recapture what I spent the last 8 days losing...my killer Vegas tan! Between being locked away in the poker room coupled with the last 6 days here being overcast with the occasional rain showers....despite still being 90-100 degrees everyday. This following 6 consecutive weeks of nothing but clear skies and 110-115 degrees and every day of pool and tanning.

Great...so what happens? I go out there when its nice and sunny...only to watch this huge cloud roll in..and start raining and here comes thunder. Hey cool..maybe I will get hit by lightening on my last day here! So naw..instead I've come back into the house to sit on the couch with Claudia and watch Jerry Springer and his Leg and Torso-less security guy. WTF is that all about? Claudia is now discussing the merits of the Springer Show...how it has never crossed her mind to get into a fight with another girl with her shirt off! But that she wouldn't mind giving it a shot! Lord, please kill me! I love my life!

Me, Rick, Claudia and Gabe might leave tomorrow morning, driving together. We all kind of want to see a tour of the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. Make a bit of a longer trip of it. My buddies JD and Smoke (from Baton Rouge) just moved to Dallas to open a bar (I think) so we might stop in there and spend the night before making our way back to Biloxi. I don't know though....as the weather is crap outside, and its 1pm here...IM thinking more and more about leaving today. Otherwise, I might be tempted to go down and find something to play...which is just going to make me tired for tomorrow's drive. Probably talk to you all when, or after...I get back to Biloxi, hopefully after a nice score at the Beau Rivage. Take care!

MONKEY