HugePoker

Rachel and I just got back from a whirlwind 3-day trip to Vegas. I had a travel voucher left over from the world series and two good friends of ours from New York were on their first visit to Vegas for their first anniversary, so we decided we should go and show them the town. I’m still a bit stuffed from two buffets in three days, plus one of the best burgers I’ve ever had … at the “Burger Bar” at Mandalay Bay – I restrained myself from ordering the $60 “Rossini Burger” (Kobe beef, sautéed foie gras, shaved truffles, on onion bun with a rich brown Perigord sauce) … I almost ordered it, but decided it needed to be the prize in my next prop bet with everyone’s old pal Dan, so I called him from the restaurant and read him the description on the menu. We’ll probably have a weight loss bet where the loser has to take the winner out for a Rossini burger and watch them eat it – maybe the loser can have a veggie burger or something. I found a more drooly description on the web: “Feeling flush?: Order the Rossini Burger. It’ll set you back at $60 a pop, but it’s pretty much like sex between a fresh baked onion bun with Kobe beef, sautéed foie gras, shaved truffles, and Madeira sauce” (I guess the sauce changes from time to time) and in my searching I stumbled onto a list of the 5 most expensive burgers in the world in which the Rossini Burger only gets an honorable mention.

I got to watch the crowning of the 2009 WSOP champion live at the Rio, in the Penn & Teller theatre – it was pretty strange to sit in a 1200-seat theatre watching two guys play cards with eight million dollars in cash piled up between them on the table, with the audience oohing and ahhing every time someone would raise, and jumping to their feet when someone would go all-in.

I played two tournaments, both at the Wynn, and one cash game session at the Flamingo, where we were staying. The first tournament ended badly – we had 57 entrants and I made it to the final 15 (they were paying 9) when I got all-in with JJ vs AJo, and everything looked rosy in the 100,000 chip pot until the dreaded Ace on the river. I’m not sure whether it made it worse that the guy who sucked out on me was a dwarf. (Not joking)

Second tournament (yesterday) went a bit better … this time they were only paying 5 spots (the tournament started with 45 players) and I made it to the final table with a good stack. My chips continued to multiply in spite of losing pots with KQ vs K7, with AK vs 43s (with an Ace on the flop), and another bad beat that I’ll describe in a moment. The other players wanted to make a deal when we got down to 8 players, first suggesting that we just chop it eight ways, which I first just ignored and then laughed at, and then the one guy who was the most aggressive in his whininess about wanting to chop the prize pool said that they could each take $1,000 and give me the extra, and I laughed some more and said “naah, I like to play poker – I know that sounds weird, but let’s just keep playing”. I said I would take $2100, which was the prize for 2nd place, but I only even suggested that because we had tickets to see the Lion King and I was afraid that the tournament might take too long and I’d miss the show. So the guy kept whining and I kept laughing and 8th place busted out and 7th place busted out and I kept accumulating more chips. He kept saying how I would change my tune in a few minutes and with the blinds so high things could change in a heartbeat, blah blah blah. He was pretty tiresome – Rachel and our friends were watching at this point and she hated him more than I did, thoroughly badmouthing him to our non-poker-playing friends. I was generous enough to agree to a deal in which $50 would be removed from each of the top prizes so that the 6th place finisher would get $250 – $25 more than the tournament entry fee. Whiny guy busted out on the pseudo-bubble and slithered away with his $25 profit.

I continued to dominate as the next three players busted out, but the last guy to bust out gave his chips to the other short stack, so when we got to heads-up I only had about a 2:1 advantage. My opponent was pretty good – all through the final table he seemed like the best of my opponents – but I felt pretty confident playing heads-up with him, and I generally chipped away at his stack until I had a 3:1 lead. We got all-in with my A-9 suited against his A-2 suited, and it looked like a solid clear victory until he hit runner-runner diamonds for the flush on the river, and suddenly we were close to even in chips, and I was very close to missing the Lion King, and I suggested that we chop it, and he agreed, so we each took $2510 and I jumped in a cab, rushing into the gift shop at Mandalay Bay to grab a Snickers bar so I wouldn’t faint from hunger during the show (though I did fall asleep for a bit and I’m still unclear on how Simba’s father died). We all enjoyed the incredible puppets & costumes in the show and we all rolled our eyes in artistic superiority at the stupid Disneyfication infusion. And WHY THE HELL do big casino restaurants close at 10PM when they have a huge theatre show that gets out at 10:15?? We went past like 10 restaurants that were either closed or not interesting before finding the Burger Bar, though that turned out to be a happy discovery in the end. When we got back to the Flamingo at 1AM I decided I needed one last nibble of poker before flying back home, took the elevator down to the small poker room, bought into a 1-2NL game, built up a few chips, and then coolered a guy with my AA on an A-6-6 flop vs his 7-6, so picked up another $350 in the 3AM cash game … a pretty good day all around.

I think I’ve finished 1st or 2nd at the Wynn tournament 8 or 9 times now - it seems possible that I could make a living just playing that one tournament every single day.

But now I’m back in cold grey Seattle, and I’ll be back on stage tomorrow night. I just got email indicating that 2-for-1 tickets are available for this weekend for friends of the cast – let me know if you’d like to come and I’ll either arrange tickets or let you know how you can get the discount. We got a pretty good review in the Seattle Weekly and a positive but odd review in the Seattle Gay News in which one of my characters is described as a “batterer and possibly an incestuous pervert”. Yeah!!

I’ll get in trouble again if I forget to mention that if you haven’t seen Rachel’s brilliant adaptation of “Emma” at Book-It, you should see that too. Both shows run through a closing matinee on November 22.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 12:34 am and is filed under Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.