Day 4 on my WSOP week. Mt. Hopkins - Las Vegas

Posted by bellatrix

June 19, 2008

I’m sorry, I just ended this report so abruptly. Las Vegas happened, plus a bunch of other personal stuff (good stuff, don’t worry). Finally I’m getting to update this. Anyway, this is Day 4 on the WSOP trip. Let’s get on with it!

Observing was great. We got a lot of data and I’ve got a lot of work for the next few weeks. But this isn’t about work. This is the day I go to Las Vegas. A lot of driving to do today, but I have done the trip before and I know it’s beautiful. So we all get up at around 11 am (after having worked until 5:30 am), I guess we are all just eager to leave the mountain. After driving down the long and winding road, basecamp is reached at around 1pm. I am in the real world again…

Quickly, in the car, leave Southern Arizona behind me. I want to have as much daylight as possible. I grab some drinks on the road, but the one of the things that get me, is that suddenly my A/C is starting to break down in 100F heat. Nooooooo. I guess, the idiot mechanic didn’t think to stop and look to refill the A/C fluid, when I gave him my car to do a major check before the trip. Grrr. But a little is still left, so I drive far and am soon in Phoenix (traffic).

One of the greatest parts of this trip is Hwy 93, which around Peoria turns into a very romantic road. Basically very soft curves winding through the desert. Not many cars or trucks and plenty of two lane roads. It is actually called the Joshua Tree Highway and boy, there are lots of them. There is one stretch (just before the turnoff to Bagdad, AZ, lol) which is so densely populated with these Joshua Trees, that the whole desert is green. But as the Joshua Trees don’t really have a purely green color, but rather a blueish-dark green color, so that in the middle of the desert you have a deep green forest, very surreal.

Eventually you reach Kingman and travel on Route 66 for a while, ooops, sorry, it’s Highway 40 now, which is a boring super fast Freeway with a high concentration of trucks. Always glad to get off a few miles later and get on the road to Hoover Dam, only accessible to cars.

Hoover Dam! Sorry, I’m really bad at taking night pictures. But if you are ever in Vegas, set aside a few hours to visit this marvelous monument. Not much I can say without sounding like a teacher, so just go here and read all about it. It is always exciting driving over it. The bridge they are building around it, which you can kind of see on the left upper part of the image, is gonna go around it. That bridge is impressive by itself, but it will be sad, when the actual highway doesn’t go over the dam anymore.

So Hoover Dam is the last stop before Vegas, yay. I quickly drove to the 4 Queens. Downtown was pretty crowded and my fears were confirmed that they didn’t have a free suite upgrade. Oh well, my 20$ room was good enough and this trip was gonna give me a lot of mailers anyway, so next trip hopefully no dough, hehehe. Since I didn’t have any lunch, I sat down and had a huge New York steak.

Ah, filled and itchy to gamble I headed over to the Rio. What does the WSOP fuss look like? Am I going to see anybody famous? Jeez, I can’t believe I was so giddy. Right while getting off my car at the Valet, I immediately overheard some “Yeah, but he called me with the straight” - type of conversation… ah, poker players. It’s 11 pm, but as soon as I enter the long hallway to the Amazon room, more and more of these conversations get going. The whole hallway isn’t really filled, actually it is kind of empty, but every corner there is somebody on a cellphone telling a hand or people analyzing some play. Norman Chad walks by all serious and all I can do is laugh inside (”Why do you look so serious when going to the bathroom? Did you get whamboozled?”).

Anyway, I quickly go to the cashier and to my surprise there is absolutely no line, just 2 other cashiers are taking entries and this one guy is buying into the shootout and is told he has to wait and will get a temporary registration, but the cashier has no idea why he has to wait. It’s pretty simple if you think about it, but it’s one of the quarrels the people have had this year with Harrah’s mostly at the HU event. Anyway, the reason is that they want to fill the table, so that everybody has the same chance in the shootout (or in the case of the HU event, they want to eliminate the byes). As I stand there pondering these things and why Harrah’s should care about filling the tables rather than getting more contenders in, my cashier is also overwhelmed by the task at hand. Apparently this is her first day at work and she has only been taking satellite entries. Great, no entrants to the events? As the supervisory helps her enter my name and not my rewards number she looks, no STARES at the 1500$ stash of cash. Lady, what will you do when the 50K HORSE people come walking in? Anyway, I get my ticket. It’s set! Tomorrow 5pm.

I go into the Amazon room. Amazing! There’s the 10K mixed event going on. Dolly Brunson staring tired into the distance at a table. Sammy Farha chatting it up. Johnny Chan looking angry (and horribly dressed in some aqua blue silk shirt). Durrr being very intense. Wow, these guys are there and it doesn’t look glamorous or anything, just like any other table in the many cardrooms I’ve visited.

I keep walking and should’ve walked out. To bed. Sleep. I’ve just driven 500 miles and slept very little in the past few days. But what does a degenerate gambler do at midnight at the WSOP? That’s right, walk up to the cash games and start playing shorthanded 20/40 LHE… This was a disaster. Especially with an excellent aggressive player to my right (the two fish I did have to my right left a few hands after I sat down). I have seen the guy before, but I don’t know who he is. Clean shaven asian kid, who can read your soul and is sitting on Mt Everest of chips. Plus my luck sucks. I 3-bet 88, 99, AK against him, flopped whiffed everytime. Also, WTF, I thought only fish were there at the cash games. I don’t see one donkey play, only weak-tight and passive, but nothing where you are salivating. I open KK and only passive to me left calls and hits his Ace on the flop. Anyway, after 2 hours, I stop the madness down 2 racks. I’m tired and beaten. What a horrible start to the weekend.

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