Get to CP poker room...$150 for the tournament? wtf, I literally just checked the website like 15 minutes ago.

Summer schedule. Changed like 5 days ago.Still haven't updated the website.

And worst part - the effed with the schedule. New format skips a few extra levels. Guy says they changed it so 60 person tourney should finish now in 3 hours instead of 4-5.

maaaaaaaan. Why'd I even come here? This is more expensive than the other daily's I was looking at, but figured it was worth it for the extra levels.

I even got up early for this thing.

Well I'm here.



They had 57 in this tournament yesterday so they start us off 6 tabled.



So it's looking like getting up early for this one was a mistake. After 20 minutes they finally break one of the tables. And there have been a few more buyings. But at 11am, they still only have 31 entries, and we've been playing 6 handed most of the time.



It's tourneys all day today. I've got a spreadsheet on my phone of all the dailies I was considering entering depending on when I bust.

My notes say that at noon I should go to:


Of course, since I'm an idiot, it didn't occur to me that if one Total Rewards casino changed their tournaments for a summer schedule, then the other ones probably did too.



At least I get a tipoff from the Harrah's floor that even though the website isn't updated, the bravo app IS updated. I confirm, the new tournament buyins is updated on bravo. Ok, we'll have to check that out later before I go anywhere else.

But now, let's sit down and play.

So...how many players have we got?

The table does fill in about 15 minutes, so we're playing 10 handed after not too long. We get up to a total of 12 entries, so the extras waited and filled in spots as alternates when the first couple of busts happened.

I liked this poker room btw. The floor and dealers were especially friendly. It had a very welcoming to tourists and novices vibe.

And the table was indeed full of tourists and novices. Gameplay was exceptionally soft. But - it's a turbo. When they colored up during the first break, they colored up 2 denominations of chips, that's how fast stuff was going up. So lots of luck no matter how good or bad the play is.

Started with 7500 chips. Early Game - I didn't really get involved. Limped in a couple times with small/med pairs trying to set mine. check fold the flop.

Picked up a few chips early with AK on a A9x flop with bricks on turn and river. Bet all 3 streets for value, called down by 9x. Up to around 10k.

But seemingly just a few minutes later, that's only worth about 10 big blinds.

There are probably a bunch of basic rules to turbos, but here is the one that I put into play that gave me my biggest competitive advantage over this table:



I'm the first person at the table who starts open/shoving pf, and it lets me pick up a fair number of blinds without showdown.

There's a lot of players with like 6 big blinds in their stacks calling a 3bb pf raise with no plan and just folding to continuation bets with half their stack in the middle.

As tempting as it is to possibly reduce my risk a little and try to win a little extra per hand, I stick to my plan and just doing push fold.

______________
Hero is BB. Folds around to SB. SB calls. Hero Shoves for 10bb. SB thinks awhile then calls all-in for 8bb.

welp, I'm either decent or screwed.

hero flips


villain flips


Board runs out


_____________

pretty soon we're down to final 4. Payouts are $695 for 1st, and $395 for 2nd. I'm third in chips at this point. Shoving and taking down the blinds about once every other orbit so bleeding a little bit. But the others are playing a lot more hands so I'm expecting them to bust.

And one does. Down to 3.

Stacks.
Hero: 20k
45yr old Mom: 30k
55yr old Doc: 50k



Notmilf brings up the idea of a chop. I'm certainly the strongest player at the table...but I'm also noticeably shorter stacked than the others.

I offer:


Notmilf counters:


____________
Very next hand:
Hero Shove. Notmilf Call.



Me and doc are now both about equal close to 50k, and she is down to <10. I'm shoving nearly every hand. She is folding every hand hoping that we will knock each other out first. He's folding every hand waiting for her to blind out.

I pickup the chip lead, and she eventually goes all in with like 2 bb and gets eliminated in 3rd place.



Doc raises. I fold. I raise, he folds. I open fold in sb. Repeat for a few more hands. Eventually he calls my shove.
Hero:
Villain:



______________
It's about 3pm. What now? I'm hungry! Let's get some lunch and then make my way to a 4pm tournament.

4pm tournament location:


Hmmm, what can I do for lunch between Harrah's and PH.....

Geez, a hundred bucks for those crappy little dailies. Better off to play the $135 Deepstack.

I wanted to hit up a burger joint. There's a bunch of good options, though one in particular is literally right on the way.



Ordered:


A couple notes on this joint.
1. I guess it's been renamed. Used to be BurGR. Now it's Burger.
2. Burger was pretty darn good. To improve, I'd have rather had the bacon cooked more, it was pretty floppy. I think burger bacon should be crisp, not chewy. Egg was great though. The bun too.
3. I sat at the bar right in front of the open kitchen. Was pretty cool to watch his kitchen operate. Really works just like a kitchen on one of his tv shows. There's like twice as many people as there needs to be and everybody's talking to each other the whole time and whenever anybody's not doing something, they grab a rag and wipe off surfaces. Pretty tight ship.
4. $15 burger isn't really that crazy. But dude, $10 for a side of french fries. Come on. that's higher than steak house side dish prices (well not vegas steak houses, but regular steak houses).

But also, I was in a bit of a rush. I ended up getting registered about a minute late and missed a few hands.

Take my seat at about 4:02pm. 15k chipstacks.

Hero sits down to KTo in the bb. Raised to 3x by hijack. Call

Flop:


check-call. Turn brick. Check-call. river brick. check-call. (all the bets were pretty timid, as were my calls)

villain flips:




___________

Now is probably a good time to talk about Planet Hollywood's tournament chips.

These are the worst tournament chips I've ever played with. I'd rather play with the plastic chips you get at Walmart.

The colors lol.

100 denomination chips have just a little bit of light gray around the edges.
500 denomination chips have just a little bit of light purple around the edges.

From any distance more than about 2 feet these look completely identical. At least half the pots involved one of the players having to pause for a few seconds to stare extra hard at the pot to try and figure out the pot size and how many larger chips were in there.

1k chips had some yellow so they at least stood out a little better. But seriously, everybody at the table was complaining about these chips.

Yup, they complained about them last year too, and the year before.

about 2 hours go by and tournament director comes over and starts passing out seat cards.

It's final table time baby.

We play 1 hand.

I start in the small blind. Fold about the first 5 hands.

Hero utg+2 (8k)


utg+3 (15k, so also pretty short)
All in - pretty quickly


Cutoff (40k)
All in - insta


blinds fold

Let's turn em up




Flop:

Turn:

River:

I float for another half hour or so, bleeding a little. I double up in there somewhere. We're now 5 handed. Let's look at the payouts.

1st: $900
2nd: $500
3rd: $250
4th: $150

Chip leader (I'll call him "Left" since he's sitting to my left") is probably the strongest player at the table. He's around 150k chips. Been playing very well on the big stack, taking advantage of people just trying to fold there way to the money by raising relentlessly and taking down lots of blinds and flops. Next couple spots around 80k. short stack maybe around 40k.

Discuss a chop. Idea floats to have everybody chip in $20 so 5th place gets $100. Everyone agrees except chip leader.

Play on.




Same guy, not the previous chip leader takes out 5th and 4th place and is now chip leader. We'll call him "Right".

Stack Sizes:
Right - 250k
Left - 150k
Hero - 75k

We play about 20 minutes 3 handed with either me or Left open shoving every hand and stealing Right's blinds. Right folds every hand.

Until...


And it's break time. 7 minute break. Not sure why we had to rush, the bathroom isn't exactly close, but we were given 7 minutes.

We come back to the table. Blinds are 5k-10k

Stack Sizes:
Right: 170k
Hero: 155k
Left: 125k

Right proposes a chop. Tournament Director informs that an even split would be $550 each. That's better than 2nd place money. Everyone agrees, and it probably was pretty fair. Left is probably the best player at the table. I was second best. Right was definitely worst. So since the chip stacks are reverse that order - an even split seemed right.



What time is it? 7:30pm.

sonofa - Didn't I have a show ticket for tonight? No time to dilly dally, I'm late!

I hoof it to the Linq. Googling on my phone, how long is this show anyway, will I even get there in time for the end...it's a 90 minute show, started at 7pm.

I get to the theater at about 7:55. Nobody's standing there at the door, so I just walk in. Nobody checks my ticket or anything.

Well, there is a lady inside with a flashlight which is good because I have only a vague idea where my seat is (somewhere left and towards the back) and all the lights are off. I hold my ticket up for her and look around with a 'where to do i go' expression.

She asks "did you just get here" in a very judging tone of voice.

Hero

Her




I look up at the stage and see:


___________

Ok, so again - for the rest of this post, these are real spoilers, not just suspense builders. I'm going to be talking about the show here so if you dont want the show spoiled, don't read the rest of this post.





Comparison of David Copperfield vs Mat Franco
+David Copperfield - I liked more of his tricks better. He really is at the top of the field for a reason. His tricks are big.
His jokes are lame though (same lame joke about getting beat up by United Airlines that was featured in the Marriage Can Be Murder dinner and probably every other low rent stand up comic in the country), and I didn't really care about his personal stories.

+Mat Franco - I liked his personality better. He is a better entertainer. I liked his jokes and stories much better.
His tricks are smaller in scope than David Copperfield, but they are stil pretty darn cool. Just not quite up to the same level. And that wine bottles thing - I maybe even like that one as much as anything Copperfield did. Really well executed small trick can hold its own against a medium execution big trick.

If you could only go to 1, I would recommend David Copperfield, even with the higher price tag. It's worth it.

But I do recommend both, they are both good and both worth the price.

Alright, its like 9pm.

I've won 2 tournaments already today. Had 2 great meals. Saw the tail end of a great show.

WSOP is tomorrow morning. And I'm also realizing that I'm yawning. a lot. The past 2 nights I've only gotten about 3 hours of sleep per night. Tomorrow could be a long day so the plan for tonight is to get to bed early.

Since I'm at the Ling, I check out Flamingo and Harrahs to see if they have PLO going, maybe play a little. Flamingo has 10 names on the interest list, but all tables are full because of tourney. They'll start up a table in a few hours. Harrahs has 7 names on plo interest list, but they are full up too, expect a table to open up around midnight.

Screw that - let's just get some dinner, then go to bed.

Dinner...

Dinner...

I check my list of recommended spots that would be good about now. Secret Pizza is probably top of the list. Problem is, I'm at Harrahs. I'm not gonna walk all that way, and it seems a waste to Lyft it. I consider heading downtown, but it's about 9:30 now and spots like Smashed Pig close at 10pm, so I probably just missed it.

I head out to the strip and the answer appears right in front of me.

Lyft back to the D. It's only about 10:15, shirley I can't go to bed quite yet...


In bed by 11pm. Crazy I know, but I've got $1500 worth of buyins for tomorrow, and there's nothing I can do now that will help me tomorrow more than getting a good night sleep.

Totals after Thursday:


Plan for tomorrow: Get up early and have a nice big breakfast since with 3 tourney start times, I don't know when I'll have a chance to get a meal. 3 bullets ready to go. $565 in the 11am PLO flight, $565 for the 4pm PLO flight, $365 for the 7pm Giant NLH.

As I doze off, my mind wanders to Friday morning's nice big breakfast...I wonder what spot 2+2 would recommend for a nice big breakfast in vegas...

Hash House a Go Go?
Peppermill?

http://www.hashhouseagogo.com/vegas/

http://www.peppermilllasvegas.com/

Best of luck for the rest of your trip!

This is a great TR, very much enjoying. Great style with the spoliers and running profit/expenses.

(Thank you tapatalk for letting me know an old post got quoted (and glad you liked MTO ))

^ cosign both

Went to Peppermill three times in five days. It was phenomenal every time. Also, I'm fat.

No ragrets. Awesome.

It's now friday, 8am, but this time, I'm up with a full night sleep behind me and I'm ready to face the day. Out the door at 9:15, stop by Walgreens and grab a Mtn Dew to take to the table with me. Head out across the Fremont St Experience.

By the way, this is a really cool walk even at 8am. All the neon and roof is turned off, and there's no bums out doing their shows for money, but it's still a really cool sleepy vibe even though its bright and sunny out.

Anyway, at the complete opposite side of the experience, I see ahead of me:


and inside



But...I stopped. I didn't go in. I planned on taking the recommendation and getting a big ol benedict. But I couldn't do it.

Instead, I turn south and walk a few blocks...




Done with breakfast at 10am, and in my Lyft headed towards the Rio and the wsop.

That looks ten times better than the greasy crap at Hash House. BTW if you're going to the Rio anyway and want to do Hash House, there's one just down the hall from the Convention Center.

Walk into the Rio Convention Center entrance. There are signs everywhere and yet never signs for the things you are looking for.

A few wrong turns later, I make it to tournament registration.



It's about 10:40. What's the most important thing before starting the tournament?





And into the main room to take my seat. 2nd most important thing to do before starting the tournament:


Shuffle up and deal!

Stack Size: 5k

Yea I did eat at Hash House at the Rio last year before the 2016 plo event. It was super crowded though with lots of other players eating before the tournament start (plus other regular casino guests) and I ended up really rushed to finish in time.

Was gonna try the downtown location since it would probably be faster.

But I'm happy with the MTO Cafe choice.

I'm tempted to try and make that thing at home, but I'm sure I'll somehow screw it up.

I think you're better off sticking with that place you went, especially because it's convenient to where you're staying.

Where do I find this magic portal to outdoor wonderfullness?

Good wsop tips!

I ate at HHaGG in the Linq, thought it was terrible, and I don't really see the point in such big serving sizes. (Though I understand that is a minority opinion.)

Those massive amounts of spoilers are funny. Subbed!

needs more spoilers

Start off 6 handed, but we're up to 8 handed within 10 minutes. 9 handed pretty soon after.

First hour, see a couple limped flops, don't really see anything interesting, and don't try to force the issue.

Turn a Qhigh flush. River pairs the board. small value bet, called (prob trips).

12pm Stack Size: 5500