Well it’s been almost a week now since I returned home from fantasy camp (aka Las Vegas during the summer). In case you’re not familiar with this phenomenon, most young 20-something poker players rent houses with their friends for 6-8 weeks during the summer for the duration of the World Series of Poker. Usual things involved with this:
-gratuitous gambling
-lots of bottle service at clubs
-gratuitous gambling
-gratuitous gambling
-Ultimate Texas Hold ‘Em (let’s file this one under gratuitous gambling)
-occasional playing of WSOP Events
I’m pretty sure that most of my generation isn’t nearly as obsessed with winning a mountain of bracelets to satisfy our inner-Hellmuth. Most young poker players just want to set themselves up for life as quickly as they can and live comfortably. That alone should be enough in terms of something to ask for, as the majority of successful poker players already live head and shoulders above the average person their age.
I was out in Vegas from July 1st-July 17th. On the 10-scale, I think that I have to rate the trip about a 9.5. Here’s how I knew it was going to be a good time: when my cab pulled up to the house, Bastardo and Martijn were stealing the house van while Ryan and Nico were chasing after them barefoot with water balloons. Plus, I was arriving with two suitcases: one regular suitcase and one monster case of Corona that I picked up at a gas station on the cab ride over. How could this not be a good time?
The first night was relatively mundane for me, as we went to dinner (see: Olive Garden) and then played some indoor soccer. I think that I may have had the worst overall record in games played (1-6), as I simply couldn’t find a winning team in the 3 times we rented the place out to play. My next 3 nights: table at Tao, table at XS for Scott’s 21st birthday, cabana at XS for July 4th blowout with Steve Aoki and Afrojack (probably one of my favorite nights out ever). After those nights all strung together, I only went out casually. There was something more important to do…and only a few people that might read this will understand, but… WE MUST DEFEND THIS HOUSE.
One of the main highlights of the trip was the Olympics (12 gentlemen, 3 4-man teams) playing 7 events:
Team 1: Bastardo, Myself, Mac, Harrison (@#%*@#%*@##*#&%#^#@$%^@#%^@#% ^#@$&@#^%@#^$@#^$@#^)
Team 2: Ryan, Dave, Martijn, Frank
Team 3: Scott, Kane, Gordo, Adam
Event List:
Pool, N64 Games, Indoor Soccer, Basketball, Bowling, Beer Pong, Flip Cup
Our team got scooped in the three events, with Kane’s team taking the lead into the fourth event and holding it because we scooped basketball pretty handily thanks largely in part to Mac’s Larry Legend impersonation and Bastardo’s killer 3 point shooting. After 4 events, some people were ready to quit because we started three hours late and at 2 a.m., we were all well aware that it would last until 6 a.m. or 7 a.m.. True to form, we couldn’t just give everyone their money back…we had to flip for who got money because everyone thought their team had an edge in the final 3 events. So what did we do? RANDOM DEGENERATOR of course.
So how does Random Degen work? The iPhone has a random number generator app. Highest 4 numbers got paid out. 1-1000. Ship the 957 for the WIN.
Here’s how the game actually works for actual degenerate gambling: choose a number range to play to, say 1-100. If you roll a multiple of 5, you get to roll again. You pay the difference between the two numbers. For example, if I roll an 82 and my opponent rolls at 52, he owes me 30 bucks. Now…if he rolls a 55 instead of a 52, he gets to add that number to his next roll and have it be one number. As you can imagine, this game is highly addictive and can have some huge swings.
WSOP MAIN EVENT:
Oh yeah, I played some poker on this trip too, but almost by accident. About 12 hours before my flight, a buddy of mine and I were playing at his house casino (he gets a slight edge on all games but we collectively crushed him anyway) talking about which games the casino was offering. I mentioned that I was leaving and wanted to take a chunk out of the casino and he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse to actually play the WSOP Main Event. I registered at like 4 a.m. for the event, went back home and got some sleep before Day 1D. The day was mostly uneventful, and I built my stack up to 70K before the final level. After losing a huge flip with the big fish at the table right before the end, I was down to 25K. He had previously gotten all his chips in with AJ and 99 in 3 way all-ins and somehow held and chipped up, so I was pretty pissed when he showed QQ to my AK. Standard KQ93K board for good measure just to rub it in. This was at my new table in which I had one of the most aggro women to my left. She finished 62nd (Amanda Musumeci ..I think she’s a BoDog pro).
Day 2 was the only day in which I had a truly solid table draw. Nobody but one person under 40 besides myself, and he was short. But of course he got it in with AT off vs. JJ and the board came T5TA9 or something like that and he started chipping up after that. I doubled with 33 on J53TT when I bet 6,200 flop/12,200 turn, and shipped 86,500 in on the river. He called with the 8 high flush lol.
Easy game. I finished the day with a little over 100k after I again lost a huge pot AK<="" p="">
Day 3 saw me double up again early but I had a pretty marginal table draw. There was a huge chipleader on my left, but our table broke rather quickly. It was a pretty uneventful day other than that to be honest.
Day 4 was probably my favorite day. We started with about 850 players. I doubled to 400K with KK vs. AK and pretty much ensured that I was going to make the money. Sebastian Ruthenburg (he finished 55th) was to my direct left. He started the day 3rd in chips, of course. Instead of going nuts on the bubble, I had to pretty much fold every hand simply because any time I opened, he would 3-bet me. Seeing as how I was virtually card dead for 5 days, this was ultimately a huge problem. He’s a super entertaining guy with a great sense of humor, and I definitely enjoyed playing with him. I do think that I got the better of the play between us, as I kept letting him spew off chips to me Smile. Once we made the $, the short stacks started dropping quickly. By the end of the day, we were down to around 350 players. I finished the day with just over 400K and had about 40 blinds to start day 5.
Day 5 was the day that nothing went right. I had a horrible table draw (Sebastian’s roommate, Philipp Gruissem was to my left with over 1 million to start the day…yeah he finished 28th) . I failed to chip up early and lost some all ins that were filmed for ESPN (facepalm). Sidenote: The media is definitely awesome at the WSOP, but when they have to pause the hand to summon the media crew over and then take 2 minutes to film the hand for TV, it gets a bit tiring. I get that we’re playing this huge tournament for life changing money, but I feel like a lot of people playing the event get caught up in the hype and don’t focus on the moment. I’m not a big fan of pictures or cameras, but I’m sure some of the people that were following me will like to see actual footage. Hopefully I can time this perfectly at a bar when a girl asks the “so what do you do for a living” question so that I can just point to a TV and wait for the reaction. It still amazes me how hypnotized our culture has become by television.
My bust out hand saw me shove 130K all-in with 8K/16K/2K blinds, only to see Thomas Grey (he finished 59th) to my direct left (also one of the chip leaders at the time) re-raise to 350K. I muttered “please have AK” and he nodded side to side instead of up and down. He had queens and I bricked out on the 7TT52 board.
http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2011-world-series-of-poker/event-58-no-limit-hold-em-championship/day5/chips.12317.htm?page=12
By this point, I was definitely ready to leave Vegas. I played some craps before my flight with Kane and Seth and ended up just making my flight. It’s great to be home and the trip was a major success for me, and I’m now working on a couple side projects as well. I also started looking at condos and went here yesterday: http://www.thebrookwood.net/. It’s getting closer and closer to football season, so let’s end the lockout so Green Bay can repeat already.
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