12:45pm, Blinds 100-200

2 limpers
Hero cutoff - call - (A567 )
Blinds call

5 way action to the flop (1000)


checks around.

Hero:


Turn (3400)


BB checks quick. Hijack checks slow. Hero:


River (3400)

check-check - Hero:


Stack Size at 1pm

Now we're in Level 7 (Blinds 250-500. It's about 3pm)

Hero utg+1 (8k stack) AAxx (1 suit) - limp
3 other limpers.

Flop (2000, 4 handed)




Turn




River (8000)

Hero:






Around 4pm, finished level 8, break to color up 25 chips, stack size

Hash house blows. I had some really good food and no wait, good service at the diner upstairs at the D. While DT hit up Aloha specialities for spam musabi and saimin at the Cal.

Oh yea, I forgot one of the most interesting parts of the story.

Number of WSOP Main Event champions playing at my table:


So that's pretty cool for a filthy casual like me. He joined us around 1pm, maybe an hour before the end of the rebuy I think.

(There's another guy who came to the table who apparently won a 10k event in Europe a few months ago for 700k. I didn't catch his name though.)
____________

Skip back ahead to Level 11, 600-1200 blinds. It's about 4:45pm. The tv screens are showing about 350 players left. 256 places pay out.

Fossilman tells a story about how a friend of his last year bought in at the very end of the rebuy period (end of level 6), only played a single hand which he won, and then he folded every hand afterwards and was able to make the money without blinding out. Some people were curious if he double or tripled up but Raymer wasn't sure, just knew it was only 1 hand.

This is a very funny story to me...



This has been a long and drawn out TR, but perhaps a reminder back to post 1 is in order:



Remember the whole point of this trip was redemption for bubbling last year. Once I won that big full house, I was at the time comfortably above the chip average, and a little math based on the blind sizes showed that I could easily make the money by folding.

Any hand I played after that point would only decrease my chances of cashing, which were already 100% if I folded.

Here are 3 hands that I folded between 3pm-5pm. WARNING: This may make you cry. I was absolutely crying on the inside at the time.


Two of the hands totally missed - but the rundown hand was especially painful because it was raised preflop and the flop came down 578 rainbow with a K on the turn.



But - I kept my eye on the prize. My goal was to cash. Best play to accomplish this goal was to fold. So I did. For over 2 hours.

Starts to move fast now. TV screens are updating every 10 minutes or so, with >10 dropping out each time so it's about 2 people getting eliminated per hand.

We're right at the end of level 12. TV screens show 265 left. 256 pay out. They've been making regular announcements for dealers to shout out eliminated players right away.

Break starts and the screens show 257 left. Looks like we'll be hand for hand when we come back.

It's 6pm.

Come back from break...




256th place pays out $850. It's a pretty flat payout structure, lasting another hundred places only pays out an extra couple hundred bucks so expect the action to be fast and furious as players try to build up chips or bust trying...
_____
Goal #1: Cash in a WSOP Event:

Level 13: Blinds 1k-2k - about 6:15pm

Hero UTG (20k) - Limp
Hijack (40k) - Raise 6000
Button (35k) - Call 6000
SB (60k) - Call 6000
BB (50k) - Call 6000
Hero:

Hijack:

Button:

SB:

BB:


Let's turn em up:


Flop:

Turn:

River:


Everybody just sort of stares for a minute not sure what happened

Hero:


Dealer:

As we finish up level 14, it's time to color up the 100k chips.

Since I'm chip leader at the table now, I get to buy everybody's chips.

For a small period of time I have a literal mountain of chips in front of me with five full trays of black chips. Granted, it's not like a chip tower or anything, the trays are sort of cheating as far as mountain building goes, but it's still pretty cool to have so many chips, even if they are tiny denominations.

Come back from break:


We've played 7 hours and had 4 breaks, so it's about 7pm. We're starting Level 15, 1500-3000 blinds.

Level 18 will be the last level of the day. If I survive level 18, I bag chips and make day 2

Here's the thing though...


So, during the next 2 hours I need to double up or bust. No in between.

_____

As I look over the payout structure, I realize that I'm quite a bit further ahead than the tv screen indicates. I had brought $1500 with me today, 2 bullets for plo and 1 bullet for the Giant. I only spent 1 bullet on plo, and since I am cashing here, no need to play the giant either. So that's like $900 in buyins saved.

Over the next 2 levels i get involved in 3 small hands, fold 2 on the flop, take one down on the flop.

___________

Level 17, 8pm, blinds 2500-5000

folds around.
Button (90k): Raise 10k
SB: Fold
Hero (BB) (75k):


Button takes his time and accurately reads the situation.


Flop:


Hero:

Button:

Hero:


Pot has 150k chips

Villain flips:


Yikes, that is a pretty damn good hand to go up against the aces he put me on...



Hero flips:


Turn:




River:

nice run!

Great TR!

So if you've never cashed in a major event before, here's what happens.

1. Dealer yells out to get floor's attention, and you have to stand at your seat until they get there.
2. Floor calls it in on the walkie, and you stay there another minute until somebody else comes over and hands you a ticket with your place.
3. Then they lead you to the edge of the room to the first of many people that will ask for your total rewards card and id. They enter your name into the system.
4. Then they point you all the way across the giant ballroom and tell you to head that way and into the room across the hall.
5. When you get there, they ask again for your id and total rewards card and again type a bunch of stuff into the system.
6. Meanwhile, if you're anything like me, you are still kind of in a complete daze as all this happens. You're sort of floating around still replaying the hand in your head, not entirely sure what's going on or what's next.
7. I don't know if they train the people in this room that the players coming to them are likely to be in a daze, and its part of their job to try and snap people out of it, but the guy typing my info into the computer keeps trying to talk to me even but I'm just staring off into space. All sorts of random crap like he's a barber or taxi driver or something.
8. Finally he leads you over to the other side of that room to the cage, where I think I had to show my ID again but I'm not sure.
9. Then that person finally gives you the money.
10. Now what?
11. Seriously, that's the next step - what do you do now? I have cash in hand, but it still hasn't really completely sunk in that I'm out. And I have absolutely no plan for what I was going to do with the rest of the night after the tournament.

I know I should be ecstatic at a great run - but I am mainly just bummed out right now.

I just head outside and open up my phone to grab a lyft back downtown.

Get changed at the D and plan to head back out. It's only about 9pm. Yea last night i had to go to bed early to play poker today. But tomorrow I'm just flying out at 730am. No bedtime tonight.

But dinner first. I haven't eaten anything since Fat Elvis for breakfast.

No wait, that's not true. I did actually grab something during the tourney, sorry I skipped that part.





So yea, back to dinner. Recommendation time:
From the D - I head...east?!? This place isn't easy to find even with gps on my phone. I was standing on the same block and didn't see it at all until I was literally right in front of it. The whole block looks like parking garages or empty nothing.



I grab a seat at the bar.

Waiter informs me that all their dishes are small and intended to be shared.



...so he recommends that groups order for the table and get twice as many dishes as there are people.



Eventually he leaves me with the menu. (my responses here are snarky, but it was a perfectly pleasant experience, i'm just spicing up the story a bit with some commentary).

I get a Pacific Wonderland Lager which was a great beer, and to eat





this restaurant came very highly recommended by a lot of people, and I concur. It was good. It was a very trendy spot for sure, so that may help you figure out if you want to eat there or not.

ok, so now it's like 10pm. I need to head to their airport in about 7 hours. I've got a big pile o cash burning a hole in my pocket. Maybe a celebration of some kind is in order? Maybe something to cheer me up a bit?



Guess that means only 1 thing...





Instead, I grab a lyft and have them drop me off at:



Why in the world would I do that? Sounds like a pretty stupid idea if you ask me.



Seriously, there's a plan here...

If you've ever been to a club in vegas, did you wonder why the bouncer at the door asks if you took a cab here? That's how they determine how much cover to charge you. Clubs have to pay cab drivers huge finders fees, so that means higher cover. Take a lyft across the street to jerry's nugget, then just walk across the street - bam, same cover the locals pay.

My main advice here is if you are heading up to the vip, stick to the shorter duration times. It's cheaper per minute to stay longer, but the dance quality drops. It's not easy to put on your best performance for a half hour straight. I got a 30 minute dance to try it out, but I was not impressed. Was like a 15 minute dance, then a 3 minute break then another 6 minute dance that's just the same dance from the beginning, and another break and then time's up. Would rather get 3 10 minute dances even though it's a little more expensive.

Anyway, Palomino is probably my favorite club in vegas. If you haven't been there and normally go to the giant spots like Sapphire - give it a try sometime. They do serve alcohol. It's smallish (some of the others are enormous) so you can actually see the whole place and make eye contact with anyone pretty easily. But it's big enough that there's plenty of selection and really top notch girls.

leave there and head back to the hotel around 4am. Shower, pack up, and that's it, off to the airport.

Let's see how we did:

I didn't exactly lose "too much" but I'm still counting this goal as not met.

Goal 2 is 'mostly' met. There were a few missed opportunities in there, but overall, I tried out a bunch of great spots. Bruxie was excellent. MTO Cafe and Fat Elvis I'm still raving about. And some other good spots. Though there was that Panda Express diversion...

Cash, accomplished. Touristy stuff, Hoover Dam, accomplished.
_____________
How about financials?








____________________
And I think that's it.

Thank you for reading my trip report.

Oh, one last piece of good news:

AWESOME TR!! Thanks for taking us on the ride!

great tr - really enjoyable read

Great TR, thanks for sharing. and congrats on the wsop cash.

Hahahah.. Fabulous report. Thanks for sharing your trip with us. Absolutely loved the spoiler use. The last one particularly. Just perfect. Had me grinning ear to ear.

Well done on your trip and thank you for taking the time to post.

Stay lucky.

Congrats on the cash. Great TR.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Congrats on the cash! And thanks again for the great TR!

Excellent TR. Nice cash! Extra points for kitties, of course.

Great TR. Thanks for posting.

I'm going to have to add some of your recs to my itinerary for my next trip.

Can't tell if TRs like this ease the itch of wanting to go back to Vegas or just stoke the fire.

nice TR; thx for sharing. I will say the excessive spoilers were cumbersome, and I skipped many of them consequently; still enjoyable though.