I was in Vegas over the weekend with the usual suspects (Dave, Sarah, Katy, Cathy, Erica S.). A good time was had by all (or at least by me). Here's some highlights:

Friday

We all arrived on Friday evening, and by the time we were all together and fed, we decided not to go out anywhere, but just stay at the Sahara and play some blackjack. Or at least Dave, Cathy and I did, Erica and Sarah wandered off to do who knows what. Blackjack was up and down, but mostly down, though not horribly so. Dave cried for mercy first, and soon after, I decided that a little poker sounded better than either blackjack or sleep. I later found out that Cathy made a nice comeback after I left the table to get to at least even for the night.

The Sahara poker room had been expanded since last time I was there. They now sport 15 tables, and 3 daily tournaments ($40 + 1 $30 rebuy I believe). When I got there there were a couple of 2/4 games going, and they had a seat for me at a full table. Rock on! I sat in the 9 seat for about 3 hours, and managed to finish -$16 through a combination no cards and poor play by the rest of the table. But it was fun to play some poker after not sitting at a table for a couple of months. I ended the poker session at about 4ish because I vaguely remembered Sarah saying she was going to get us all up at 9 for breakfast.

Saturday

We started the day with the early-for-vegas breakfast, and a little blackjack. Dave, Cathy and I all cleaned up at the tables, erasing the losses from the night before plus a little bit extra for our troubles. Take that casnio!

After that we took the spiffy new monorail into the main part of the strip, and checked out the Wynn. For me this was just a waypoint on the trip to the Rio to experience the 2005 World Series of Poker. We got to the Rio at about 3:30, and walked down the world's longest hallway, finally arriving at the event at 4:00 two weeks later. The room can only be described as HUGE. No, really, it was huge, and completely filled with poker tables. It was truly an awe-inspiring sight. And the sound was pure heaven, nothing but chatter and chip riffling. Music to the ears.

Anyway. I had a hard time figuring out which tables were which event, but after reading some reports later, I think most of what we saw was Event #17 $2,500 Limit Hold'em. We didn't stay for long, because after getting over the awesomeness of the room, the event itself was pretty boring to watch (as I expected). But before we left, I did see some pros: Phil Gordon, John Juanda, Daniel Negranu, and John D'Agostino were all in action. The nice thing about the crowd is it made it really easy to find the recognizable pros. They're at the tables with all the people crowded around them.

When we got back to the Sahara, Dave and Sarah went to get ready for their big dinner at Emril's restaurant and the girls were napping, or something, so I decided it was the perfect time for poker session #2! A similar mix of opponents, but slightly better cards netted +$10 in about 3 hours. I can't really remember any notable hands, partly because I spent most of the session trying to be nice to the crazy lady sitting to my right. I think I'm too friendly at poker tables, I always get the crazies talking to me. Everyone else just ignores them, or is actively rude, but I'm usually trying to portray the friendly non-serious player (which isn't easy to do when I fold almost everything, and raise half the openers I do get), so I usually give them the friendly smile or nod, or courtesy laugh. That seems to be all it takes, and suddenly I'm hearing life stories that I really don't want to hear. But oh well, its a trade-off I'm happy to make if the other option is being rude to everybody, and risking boring to hostile tables every time I play.

Eventually the girls got their act together, and we had dinner before meeting up with Dave and Sarah. We ended up at V Bar inside the Venetian, which was actually better than I thought it would be after hearing the thumping music from outside. I'm not good with loud bass-music, it makes me queasy after awhile, but luckily the song I heard before we went in was the exception, and the rest of it was pretty good. We spent a few hours at V Bar, where I had several Guinnesses (Guinnessi?), but somehow never managed to feel much of anything. Must be the extra oxygen they pump into the casinos. Either that or I'm just in tremendous drinking shape. Either way, after getting back to the Sahara, just about everyone wussed out and went to bed. Seriously people, its Vegas! Katy gets a gold star for not succumbing though. She went off to play slots somewhere, while I headed back to the poker room for...

The Best Poker Game Ever

This game was spectacular. I'm not going to be able to do it justice, because, let's face it, I'm a pretty bad writer. It started innocently enough with the guy in the 7 seat posting a blind raise UTG. No live straddle in 2/4 they informed us, but no matter, its bound to come back re-raised anyway, so the blind raiser gets a perfectly valid chance to cap it. This one innocent act started a firestorm of the same. The 7 seat and the 2 seat ended up playing several hands blind to the river, betting and raising the whole way. The 7 seat got some sweet karmic reward for starting the hilarity when he took down AK with his flopped two pair (K4), betting and raising the unfortunate AK holder in the 9 seat the whole way. At the end the four was flipped over first, and then the K, followed by an incredibly non-chalant "Oh, I flopped 2 pair" before scooping the huge pot. The 9 seat couldn't believe it, and he ended up leaving the table an orbit later, taking his two friends with him. You've gotta love the blind two pair that chases three people from the table .

The blind play got so common that the most frequent response to, "Raise" was, "Did you look?" One of old, white-haired dealers got in the best line of the night, to the big blind (playing blind) preflop, "Its $4 to you, you might as well cap it"

I even got caught up in the action a couple of times, and got myself nicely stuck $40 by about 4am. I later made a comeback with a couple of big hands at the end to finish +$60 for the night.

But the blind raising wasn't even the highlight of the game. That honor goes to the guy who sat down in the 8 seat at 4:30, looked around, saw the 1 seat eating a BLT (which we were all drooling over), and promptly ordered a round of BLTs for the table. Seriously. A round of BLTs. Craziest thing I've ever heard of. One of the tastiest too. So at about 5am, when they were finally ready (after much discussion over whether he actually ordered them or not), the whole game slowed to a crawl while we all happily munched away.

A couple of other quick highlights from that game:

- One of the big hands that put me into positive territority was flopped quad 10s. I believe that's the fourth time I've had quads in a live casino game. And I've only got, what? 1500 hands or so of live play under my belt? I'm doomed to never have another big hand again.

- Our game was a new table that started right when I got there. As we were sitting down (about 60 seconds before the cards were in the air at our table), another table hit a bad beat jackpot. I found out later that the Sahara pays a share of that jackpot, not just to the table that hits it, but to everyone in a live cash game in the room. Doh! I think the room share was $51.

Ok, that's it, I'm getting tired of typing now. Wow, this ended up being a pretty long first post. I'll try to contain myself in the future.