Wynn Classic trip report day 1
Sorry for the delay... I'm finally putting together a trip report from my trip to Vegas a month and a half ago. Here are days one and two. Days 3, 4, 5, and 6 will probably be minimal at best, because I stopped taking notes while I was down there, but I will write up some random recollections of the more interesting events in the last half of my trip.
VEGAS 2007 – Day One
Toward the end of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, he writes: “After five days in Vegas you feel like you’ve been here for five years”. Ain’t that the truth.
I decided to drive to the airport and leave my car at Pearson. Of course, I picked up a grande one raw sugar latte on the way… (the reason you order the one raw sugar IN the latte (instead of adding it yourself) is because if you add it yourself after the drink is made, it creates a hole in the foam, and who wants a hole in their foam? I strongly suggest that the next time you order yourself a grande latte, you make it a grande one raw sugar latte instead). I got out of the car and placed the coffee on the roof while I grabbed my suitcase from the trunk. As I was doing this, I heard the sickening sound of a 10% post-consumer recycled fiber Starbucks cup sliding off the roof of a 2004 Infiniti G35X. All I could do was jump out of the way, as most of my grande one raw sugar latte spewed itself all over my car.
Bad beat number one: a coffee-covered car will be waiting for me when I return from Vegas. Ouch.
I hooked up with my brother Jared inside the terminal, and we encountered a downtrodden Englishman. Of course. He explained to us that he was stranded at Pearson (how very “The Terminal”) because he didn’t have enough money to pay for a flight home. Brightening slightly, he opened his wallet and said: “I do have all this purple money though!” showing us a few Canadian $10 bills, which wouldn’t pay for a cab ride to Union Station much less a flight to London.
While waiting for our flight, Jared and I reviewed some of the casino info we’d printed out. While reading about our host casino (The Orleans) we learned that you can smoke in the poker room between 3am and 9am only. What a random rule… maybe they’re trying to corner the market on low-limit poker-playing insomniac smokers. Maybe it’s working, who knows… On the plane, I noticed that a guy in the next row was reading “Championship NL and PL HE”. He read it for the entire duration of the flight, and his lips never stopped moving. The woman next to me asked if my brother and I were on our way to Vegas to go to the luggage show. I told her that no, we weren’t going to the luggage show, and then I politely asked if she was going all the way to Las Vegas to buy luggage. She was.
The cab driver who took us from the airport in Vegas to the Orleans was the most casually racist person I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. I won’t repeat most of what he said, because it is offensive, but I do remember this priceless bit of conversation:
Him: You have a lot of Asians in Toronto, don’t you.
Me: (with pride) Yes, Toronto is a very multicultural city.
Him: That sucks.
ANYWAY, we threw our stuff in our hotel room and headed to Caesar’s to play in their $220 NLHE MTT. We had some dinner there first, and played some blackjack. We sat down at an empty table and were surprised to discover that the dealer was only using one deck. We were also surprised to discover that blackjack paid only 6:5 instead of 3:2, and we were also surprised to discover that we couldn’t double down on a split. What kind of crazy city was this, with these terrible blackjack rules? We were about to hop on a flight back to Toronto when the dealer said: “You guys are counting, right?” Worried about having our kneecaps broken in a back room, we told him that we were definitely NOT counting cards. He laughed and told us that we were supposed to be counting cards… that when a casino spreads single-deck blackjack they EXPECT the players to be counting cards, and that’s why the rules are slightly different: to try and skew the edge back to the house.
We beat the game (+$200 for me) and quietly resolved never to play this terrifying variant of blackjack again.
Jared and I both made the final table at the Orleans (42 entrants, so no great feat) but neither of us made the money. He went out 9th, I went out 8th, and they paid top 5 IIRC. I don’t have any notes on this tournament, although I do remember that my brother meant to raise my big blind after it was folded to him in LP. He didn’t do it correctly though… maybe it was a string raise or something, and maybe I was the one who pointed that out… so he had to just call instead, letting me see the flop for free, whereupon I hit two pair and checkraised him off his hand. HA!
I also remember a couple of particularly bad losers in this tournament. Hands that play themselves (ie: AA vs. QQ all-in preflop on relatively short stacks, QQ spikes a Q and rakes the pot) created much bitterness and open hostility. I really couldn’t believe it.
After the tournament, Jared went to the washroom and dropped his hat on the floor. A guy in the washroom with him saw this happen, walked up to him, and pointed and went HAHAHAHAHAHA within a few inches of his face. My brother came out of the washroom in shock, explaining that Vegas was just too weird and that we had to go home.
Instead of going home, we walked to the Wynn. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: walking anywhere in Vegas takes a looooooooooong time. The walk took forever. Don’t walk in Las Vegas.
I sat in a $30/$60 LHE game with Marcel Luske and took $630. I recognized one other guy at the table from some televised tournament somewhere, and generally felt outclassed, so I left fairly quickly. The dealer and I shared a moment when a player at the other end of the table (clearly a dick, and clearly on tilt) was telling a random MASSAGE THERAPIST a bad beat story: “So, I was 88% to win…” The dealer looked at me and told me that was a first for him; he’d never seen a player tell a bad beat story to a masseuse before. I briefly considered waving her over to tell her about the latte on my car in Toronto, but thought better of it.
(The dealer had it in for this guy anyway… the guy was giving him a hard time. After taking a couple of bad beats, he told the dealer to deal him out until he was out of the box. Now, maybe you believe in certain people bringing you bad luck, and maybe you don’t, but when the cards are coming out of a shuffle machine in the table, it’s pretty clear that your bad luck isn’t the dealer’s fault….)
Sidenote: I’m not staying at the Orleans anymore. It used to be my favourite place to stay in Vegas, because it is cheap, and the rooms are spacious, and it’s a short cab ride to the strip. However, my bed smelled like ass. Literally… it smelled like ass. My brother picked the right bed I guess! I was exhausted by the time I climbed into it and noticed the foul odour (which was definitely not coming from me; first of all, I don’t really sweat that much or that often, and second, I know the smell of my own ass, and this wasn’t it. It was definitely someone else’s), so I decided to suck it up and live with it. By the next night the situation was remedied, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. (Literally, haha…) Also, we ran out of hot water on a regular basis. Two consecutive showers in one room was apparently too much for the Orleans to handle. Also, the TV remote control really really sucked, for reasons that I won’t get into, but were definitely putting me on tilt on a nightly basis, and probably subtly influencing every decision I was making at the poker tables.
VEGAS 2007 – Day One
Toward the end of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, he writes: “After five days in Vegas you feel like you’ve been here for five years”. Ain’t that the truth.
I decided to drive to the airport and leave my car at Pearson. Of course, I picked up a grande one raw sugar latte on the way… (the reason you order the one raw sugar IN the latte (instead of adding it yourself) is because if you add it yourself after the drink is made, it creates a hole in the foam, and who wants a hole in their foam? I strongly suggest that the next time you order yourself a grande latte, you make it a grande one raw sugar latte instead). I got out of the car and placed the coffee on the roof while I grabbed my suitcase from the trunk. As I was doing this, I heard the sickening sound of a 10% post-consumer recycled fiber Starbucks cup sliding off the roof of a 2004 Infiniti G35X. All I could do was jump out of the way, as most of my grande one raw sugar latte spewed itself all over my car.
Bad beat number one: a coffee-covered car will be waiting for me when I return from Vegas. Ouch.
I hooked up with my brother Jared inside the terminal, and we encountered a downtrodden Englishman. Of course. He explained to us that he was stranded at Pearson (how very “The Terminal”) because he didn’t have enough money to pay for a flight home. Brightening slightly, he opened his wallet and said: “I do have all this purple money though!” showing us a few Canadian $10 bills, which wouldn’t pay for a cab ride to Union Station much less a flight to London.
While waiting for our flight, Jared and I reviewed some of the casino info we’d printed out. While reading about our host casino (The Orleans) we learned that you can smoke in the poker room between 3am and 9am only. What a random rule… maybe they’re trying to corner the market on low-limit poker-playing insomniac smokers. Maybe it’s working, who knows… On the plane, I noticed that a guy in the next row was reading “Championship NL and PL HE”. He read it for the entire duration of the flight, and his lips never stopped moving. The woman next to me asked if my brother and I were on our way to Vegas to go to the luggage show. I told her that no, we weren’t going to the luggage show, and then I politely asked if she was going all the way to Las Vegas to buy luggage. She was.
The cab driver who took us from the airport in Vegas to the Orleans was the most casually racist person I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. I won’t repeat most of what he said, because it is offensive, but I do remember this priceless bit of conversation:
Him: You have a lot of Asians in Toronto, don’t you.
Me: (with pride) Yes, Toronto is a very multicultural city.
Him: That sucks.
ANYWAY, we threw our stuff in our hotel room and headed to Caesar’s to play in their $220 NLHE MTT. We had some dinner there first, and played some blackjack. We sat down at an empty table and were surprised to discover that the dealer was only using one deck. We were also surprised to discover that blackjack paid only 6:5 instead of 3:2, and we were also surprised to discover that we couldn’t double down on a split. What kind of crazy city was this, with these terrible blackjack rules? We were about to hop on a flight back to Toronto when the dealer said: “You guys are counting, right?” Worried about having our kneecaps broken in a back room, we told him that we were definitely NOT counting cards. He laughed and told us that we were supposed to be counting cards… that when a casino spreads single-deck blackjack they EXPECT the players to be counting cards, and that’s why the rules are slightly different: to try and skew the edge back to the house.
We beat the game (+$200 for me) and quietly resolved never to play this terrifying variant of blackjack again.
Jared and I both made the final table at the Orleans (42 entrants, so no great feat) but neither of us made the money. He went out 9th, I went out 8th, and they paid top 5 IIRC. I don’t have any notes on this tournament, although I do remember that my brother meant to raise my big blind after it was folded to him in LP. He didn’t do it correctly though… maybe it was a string raise or something, and maybe I was the one who pointed that out… so he had to just call instead, letting me see the flop for free, whereupon I hit two pair and checkraised him off his hand. HA!
I also remember a couple of particularly bad losers in this tournament. Hands that play themselves (ie: AA vs. QQ all-in preflop on relatively short stacks, QQ spikes a Q and rakes the pot) created much bitterness and open hostility. I really couldn’t believe it.
After the tournament, Jared went to the washroom and dropped his hat on the floor. A guy in the washroom with him saw this happen, walked up to him, and pointed and went HAHAHAHAHAHA within a few inches of his face. My brother came out of the washroom in shock, explaining that Vegas was just too weird and that we had to go home.
Instead of going home, we walked to the Wynn. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: walking anywhere in Vegas takes a looooooooooong time. The walk took forever. Don’t walk in Las Vegas.
I sat in a $30/$60 LHE game with Marcel Luske and took $630. I recognized one other guy at the table from some televised tournament somewhere, and generally felt outclassed, so I left fairly quickly. The dealer and I shared a moment when a player at the other end of the table (clearly a dick, and clearly on tilt) was telling a random MASSAGE THERAPIST a bad beat story: “So, I was 88% to win…” The dealer looked at me and told me that was a first for him; he’d never seen a player tell a bad beat story to a masseuse before. I briefly considered waving her over to tell her about the latte on my car in Toronto, but thought better of it.
(The dealer had it in for this guy anyway… the guy was giving him a hard time. After taking a couple of bad beats, he told the dealer to deal him out until he was out of the box. Now, maybe you believe in certain people bringing you bad luck, and maybe you don’t, but when the cards are coming out of a shuffle machine in the table, it’s pretty clear that your bad luck isn’t the dealer’s fault….)
Sidenote: I’m not staying at the Orleans anymore. It used to be my favourite place to stay in Vegas, because it is cheap, and the rooms are spacious, and it’s a short cab ride to the strip. However, my bed smelled like ass. Literally… it smelled like ass. My brother picked the right bed I guess! I was exhausted by the time I climbed into it and noticed the foul odour (which was definitely not coming from me; first of all, I don’t really sweat that much or that often, and second, I know the smell of my own ass, and this wasn’t it. It was definitely someone else’s), so I decided to suck it up and live with it. By the next night the situation was remedied, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. (Literally, haha…) Also, we ran out of hot water on a regular basis. Two consecutive showers in one room was apparently too much for the Orleans to handle. Also, the TV remote control really really sucked, for reasons that I won’t get into, but were definitely putting me on tilt on a nightly basis, and probably subtly influencing every decision I was making at the poker tables.
Comments
Haha...
"Devo's log... hand number 24172-5, I.... can't believe this strange creature to my left.. he.... hitseverythinghedrawsto.... we're about to embark on a search and destroy mission, with AA versus his KK all in pre-flop"
Flop
So far so good...
Turn...
Yes.... we're all good as long as
River
KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNG
Mark
I also like how Drtyore's post is Kirk-esque, instead of Picard-esque. Nice touch.
Just curious as to how you know what ass smells like
Entertaining. Would read again.
You donk. You forgot to add that the K completed a Royal Phisbin.
My post or Devins?
ps...I hope you didn't tip that cabbie!
Well, look at it this way, if it really was Star Trek, and he'd lost the hand, all he'd have to do is like, hit the pedal to the metal around the sun and grab a whale or something.... then power fold the AA preflop
Mark
A part of me just died. I can no longer be your friend.
No, those two statements are not related at all.
Hehe I meant to comment on Devin's post it was entertaining.
Your one-liner was pretty awesome though. Great Job.!!!!!!!
Hyachahchahchahcahacha.
lol, probably cause Asian and Tipping don't go too well together.
How true
Are you as big of a celebrity in Vegas as you are in Canada? I doubt Daniel Negreanu would have put up with an ass-smelling bed.
P.S. Nice car. What kind of mileage do you get on that?
Anyway, the X stands for X-tra coffee on my car please OK thanks.
Am I as big a celebrity in Vegas as I am in Canada... there is no good way to answer that, because answering would presume that I think I'm a "celebrity" in Canada, which I don't. Not really. One Vegas local did know who I was, and remembered my name from the 2004 WSOP. Although, I think this speaks less to my celebrity status and more to his incredible memory.
In retrospect, I really don't know why I didn't request new sheets/new bed/new room/new hotel...
2 bad you cant do the same in the sunday million hey devo, i am watching you in that tourny, and i bet i can outlast you in it.
lots of respect
philliivey
Hey Phil... I did do the same in the Sunday Million.... I got 2nd a few years ago.
I bet you can watch longer than I can play as well, even I take it down, you could keep watching.... hahaha
mike
I am cheering for you and hope you do well. Your poket kings that lost to a flush on the river was hard to swallow so i dont blame you for your poor showing in that one.
But as a wsop final table guy you should be finishing closer to the money or somewhere in it, but then again everyone on pokerstars do not beleive in folding their hands when even when they know they are losing. So there is quite a bit of "brutalness" you have to dodge.
Still like Johnny t better as a host:)
philliivey
quote=all_aces;115649]Hey Phil... I did do the same in the Sunday Million.... I got 2nd a few years ago.
I bet you can watch longer than I can play as well, even I take it down, you could keep watching.... hahaha[/quote]