Monday, July 16, 2012

Driving Miss Josie

In keeping with the chauffeur theme (not just my previous post, but also this one and this one), this entry will discuss the Monday last month that I took Josie and Lightning downtown to play some poker with Tony and Koala.
I had sent a tweet out or two earlier in the day to try to see what Josie and Lightning were up to, knowing that Josie was catching a red-eye back home that evening.  Also knowing that Josie had only one goal left to make her Vegas trip a successful one—earn her own label on this very blog.  But my tweets were ignored for a few hours, until, just as I was about to find a poker room to spend time in, I received a tweet from Lightning that the two of them were headed to the Golden Nugget downtown to play with Tony and Koala. Please note, the tweet from him came after Josie and Lightning had lunch. Without me. Just sayin’.
A second tweet said, “Come join us.  Others welcome too.”  I tweeted back, “Ok, Guess I’ll head over there.”  A few minutes later, another tweet from Lightning, “Can you pick us up?”
My tweet back said, “Sure, Tony, where?”  Lightning later called this response on my part “the tweet of the year.”
I was headed for Bally’s, where I assumed they were, but it turns out they had decided to eat at the fancy, schmanzy, and pricey, Aria buffet and were there instead.  Fortunately, I remembered the back way to the back valet area of the Aria where they said they’d be (a happy coincidence). It’s actually a very circuitous, tricky route to get there from the west side of Tropicana, which is where I was. I bet a lot of locals can’t do it. But I remembered how to do it.  So I found them and I took the two of them downtown.
We got to the Nugget and found Tony and Koala at the same game.  There were two seats open so of course, as the hired help, I was excluded from the cool table and sent to some table in the back of the room.  But as it happened, a third spot opened up at the adults table and I was allowed to join them.  But Koala made me (and Lightning) promise that we would not infringe on the special dinner Tony had arranged with Josie later that evening.
Of course once again, I was seated on the opposite side of the table from Josie.  I was next to Lightning and Koala, which was fine, except neither of them had been asking for the chance to get their own label on my blog.  If Josie was going to be outrageous enough to earn such a distinction (which, as I said, was her #1 goal for this trip, even above winning at poker), I’d have to sit close enough to her to hear her be outrageous.  And possibly play footsie with.
After awhile, I was able to get a seat change so I could sit directly on her right, which was far from ideal.  Josie raises every hand, generally speaking.  I would much prefer to be on her left.  But hey, I wanted to be fair to her and give her the best possible chance to earn that label.  See what a nice guy I am?  I risked losing money just to give her a fair shot at her prized goal.
As I took the seat next to her, I made a comment about doing so even though I was giving her “position” on me.  She nodded and so I said, “And by the way, what is your favorite position?” This was a hanging curve for her to earn that label, but she fouled it off.  All she said was, “Oh, there’s so many…..”
But soon after that, someone at the table (it might have been Lightning, or it might have been a perfect stranger) said that, in a poker context, he was trying to show a little “discipline.”
Josie said, “Oh, you like discipline, huh?”  It was more the way she said that made it so, um, suggestive.  I wish I could duplicate that here.  But the way she said it was highly provocative, I assure you.
Soon thereafter Josie and the guy next to the dealer were discussing “favorite” hands.  I believe Josie was admitting that her favorite hand was Jack/10.  The other guy said he had a favorite hand too.  Before he said what it was, Josie said, “I bet I know what your favorite hand is.  The right one.”  Again, it wasn’t so much what she said but the way she said it. And after saying that to the guy (who she didn’t know from Adam until they started playing together an hour earlier), she turned to me and said, “Write that down.  That will get me a label.”
I didn’t want her to stop trying, but  I knew I already had enough to give her that coveted label on my blog—even tho we never got around to playing footsie.  Well, it was those comments plus the fact that two nights earlier, she had both grabbed my ass and exposed pretty much her entire chest for me at the Mirage.  Actually, I think that may have had more to do with it than the comments at the Nugget, as interesting as those were.
I enjoyed playing with the gang, but I’m not really a big fan of the Golden Nugget poker room.  For one thing—and perhaps the main thing—they have the dreaded button straddle there. But at least in their iteration of it, action starts UTG, not on the small blind, so it’s not quite as much of a crime against humanity as the way they do it at Bally’s.
I was pretty card dead, and knowing that Josie would raise me if I ever limped into a pot, I tightened up more than usual.  But I did have one nice hand.  Since Josie said on her blog that I never played a hand there, this may have happened when Josie and Tony were away for their double-secret, private dinner.  But I had the dreaded pocket kings, and got it all in on a low flop.  The guy who paid me off had pocket queens.  Honestly, I almost fainted when the Kings held up.  I won over $100 just on that one hand.
Josie played only a few hands after returning with Tony from dinner, prefering to get felt up by Rocky Balboa instead. And yes I mean felt up this time, not felted. She soon left for the airport, after giving me a goodbye hug.  I believe her other chauffer, Poker Grump, took her there. Then Lightning, who was under the weather, asked if I was heading back to the Strip, and asked if I could drop him off.  I was hoping he and I could play some more poker that evening somewhere on the strip, but he was ailing too much and just wanted to rest.  So dropped him off and headed to BSC for a rather uneventful poker session. A quiet ending to a fun day.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Driving Miss Prudence

As I mentioned in my previous post, I played in a WSOP 2PM Deepstack tournament last month at the Rio.  The disgustingly brief details of the tournament play itself were covered in that post.  This post concerns the rest of the day, a full day of poker, laughs, drinking and inanity with my pal Prudence.

We met up at the venue just before the tournament started, and as I noted, were kind of sitting back to back at adjoining tables.  The one thing that is relevant here is the cocktail service at the WSOP.  First of all, the really hot looking women who serve drinks inside the casino at the Rio?  You know, like the one who is depicted in the post here whose ta-ta’s were licked by my friends’ dog?  Well, those girls don’t work inside the WSOP venue.  Instead, it’s mostly male waiters—and the women they have there were not hired for their looks.  Or their ability to serve drinks promptly.  Also, I believe they are woefully understaffed.
For the two or so hours I was at that tournament, nobody came by to take our orders, even tho the guy next to me asked the dealers and the floor several times.  But somehow, one aisle over, Prudence got served.  Boy did she get served.  She ordered a double and when the guy came back with her drink, he said he was so swamped he didn’t know when he’d be back so he bought her a double-double.  She said it was basically four drinks in one glass. And so it had an effect on her.
Although she unfortunately busted out of the tournament in about an hour or so, she was pretty well under the influence by the time she picked up her stuff to move on.  She went over to the cash games and started playing 2/5 while I continued playing in the tournament.
But my tournament experience came to an end not longer after hers did, so I found the table when she was playing.  I volunteered to join her at that game, but she said no, she’d play 1/3 with me.  That was ok too.
While we were waiting to get called to the 1/3 game, we visited Ginger, the BSC dealer I’ve mentioned a few times (see here). She too was playing in this tournament and Prudence wanted to see how Ginger was doing.
Prudence found Ginger at her tournament table, and apropos of nothing, greets her by saying, loudly and in a sing-songy voice, “It’s Vagina Time!” Everyone at the table, including the dealer, heard this.  Probably a few tables nearby heard this too.  Now this was the first time that day I heard the v-word but I’ll never be able to remember all the times I heard it.  Suffice to say I believe that she set the record for most times the word “vagina” was spoken inside the Rio convention center, and that includes the yearly gynecologists convention they have there.
Yes, that four-in-one drink she had gotten was working its magic.
While she was talking to Ginger, she said vagina a few more times just for good measure, for no apparent reason, and also talked about flashing the table, which the guys there were all in favor of.  Of course Ginger said hello to me, and when Prudence told her we were gonna play cash, Ginger immediately became jealous because she wanted to join us and get smashed.  Ginger has a personal rule, only drink while playing cash games, never while playing a tournament.  So while we were there she actually played her hand purposely badly so she would bust out of the tournament.  But it turned out she won the pot anyway, the guy didn’t call her bet.  So we left and got into a 1/3 game together.  We sat right next to each other.
Between hands, and sometimes during hands, Prudence regaled me with stories of her past outrageous behavior at this very venue, including the time she got cut off.  Even before I got to town she had sent me messages about some of the “fun” she was having during the WSOP.  Some of it involved playing poker and winning, some of it involved her being, well, Prudence.
So…one time she offered to massage the balls of all the other players.  Unfortunately just as she said that, unbeknownst to her, Tom (her boyfriend) showed up right behind her and heard that.  So she saw him and said to him, “Oh, hi there.  Can you take your big cock out so I can use it as a card protector?”  Tom said that was enough, and decided it was time to take her home.
Another time she was being very aggressive at the table, raising and shoving a lot.  She could tell the other players, all guys, were surprised to see a girl play like that.  So she explained by saying she used to be a dude.  Yes, she said, she was transgendered.  She said that she is still taking hormone therapy, but she used to have a penis, now she doesn’t .  Now she has a vagina.  And she has boobs from the hormone therapy.  She asked if they wanted to see them, and started pulling up her shirt.  This may have been the time Ginger was at the table with her and stopped her, or that may have been another time.  I can’t keep it straight.  But I’m pretty sure there were at least two times when she started pulling her shirt up and one time when Ginger stopped her.  Guys started throwing chips at her and said that she could keep them if she did indeed flash them.  But I assure you, no actual forbidden flesh was exposed during these incidents.  Actually, when you consider stories like this one or this one,  it’s hard to believe that yours truly was nowhere to be found when a very attractive woman was threatening to take her top off at a poker table, but it’s true.
Anyway, when she claimed to have a brand new vagina, two guys who were very straight-laced and uptight didn’t approve, and took her seriously.  They openly complained that they didn’t approve of people just deciding to change genders like that.  Prudence kept talking about her hormone therapy and her lack of a penis and this put the guys on tilt and they started playing badly and giving all their money away.  They eventually left, disgusted at the thought of having played with a gal that used to be a guy.
Of course, she was telling me this loudly, so everyone at the current table heard.  Everyone was cracking up although I think a few serious poker players were not happy about this nutty girl.  When she gets like this, it isn’t all vagina talk.  There’s lot of poker talk too, all of which can be annoying to a serious player.  She’ll scream and screech and say “boom” as a reaction to the cards hitting the board.  Her reactions have nothing to do with whether it helps or hurts her hand but if she is in a hand it could be very misleading.  A lot of the time she does this she isn’t even in a hand.  She even brags about bluffing just to throw players off (this is not during a specific hand).  Or other times she will only play the nuts.  One time she showed that she pulled off an awesome bluff and then said, “Well, now I can’t do that again.  From now on, I’m only playing Aces.”  It really confuses the other players.  When you add in the fact that she was so obviously drunk, it makes it tough on the other players to get a read on her.  It’s actually a pretty good strategy, but it’s only partially on purpose, and partially due to the booze.  I think.
Another time, she was talking about a possible scenario with the cards, basically making up hands she had, her opponent had, what the flop, turn and river would be.  The river card in this scenario would scare her, so she said, “And then I crap my pants. And the smell will be a tell.”
In her inebriated state, she will often give players a hard time for calling or raising, “I thought this was a friendly game”.  Or tell players they are too serious.  If a guy didn’t respond to her ribbing, she ribbed them more for being too serious.
When we got to this game, there was a female floor person helping set it up.  Prudence announced that this person, who she called by name (from her name tag), was the best floor person in the place.  She thanked her for the compliment but then Prudence said, “Certainly much better than that Asian man who gave me a hard time the other day for offering to massage his testicles.”  The floor person froze in her tracks.  “Oh.”  Everyone else at the table—again all guys—cracked up.  I said to her, “Well, for sure, you won’t be making that offer to this floor person!”  She went on to say that the Asian floor man had cut her off and she told him, “You just need your balls tickled.  How long has it been since you’ve had them tickled?  Just three strokes in the back room and you’ll feel much better, I promise.”  The guy didn’t respond, she said, but he reinforced his pronouncement that she was to be served no more alcohol that night.
Another story that she told was when she had a really good nite, but was totally drunk and had to have Tom pull her away from the table.  As he was taking her to the cashiers cage, she was screaming and showing off her huge rack of chips. “Ha! 2/5 players, look at this, look at this, I took all this money, Ha ha.  Wanna see my tits?  I’ll show you my tits, 2/5 players, I got your money.” 
Not long after this, a new dealer came to the table, a good looking, youngish woman.  And as she is sitting down, she says, “I heard there was talk about flashing going on here, so that’s why I came.  I want to see some of that.”  I guess her previous table was right next to ours.
Prudence said yes, that the guys were flashing, and pointing to a guy at the other end of the table, who wasn’t fat but could lose a few pounds, “You there, show us your man boobs. Show us you moobs.”  He laughed and lifted up his shirt an inch or so.
Later, this same dealer tossed a chip to Prudence for change, somehow it took an unexpected bounce off the table.  I think it landed in her chair.  She reached down and got it and put it back on the table.   The dealer said, “Oh good, you found it.”  “Yes,” Prudence said, “It was in my vagina. I just reached in and got it out of there.  The big black hole.”  Again, much laughter but the dealer was frozen.  “uh….that’s not what  I was going for, but ok.”  Actually, it’s possible she said she was going for that, I can’t be sure I didn’t mishear it.
Meanwhile, I was dying of thirst.  This cash game I was at was the same as the tournament table—no friggin’ cocktail service.  It was now three hours in there and no one had offered me a drink.  We kept bugging the floor person to get us a waiter but it never happened, we even heard them paging cocktails to our table but it didn’t work.  I finally went outside and paid $3.25 for a 20 oz. bottle of Diet Mountain Dew. 
Meanwhile Prudence was getting close to sobering up.  One time we saw a server right at the next table and we thought finally we’d get a drink.  Nope, they turned away and disappeared. “What a cock-tease,” Prudence said.  “That’s an actual cock-tease.  Just the head, don’t stick the whole thing in there….just the head.” 
While we were playing in the cash games, I found out from Twitter that my fellow blogger buddy Memphis MOJO was playing in the same tournament Prudence and I had busted out of.  He had been in Vegas for a few days, was soon to depart, and somehow, we had not met up at this point.  So I went over to find him at the table he tweeted he was at.  Since he had indicated to me that he was not a young guy, I figured out easily which one of the guys at that table he was and said hello.  I hadn’t warned him that I was coming over.  So he had his baseball cap on properly (see here).  He immediately flipped his cap so it was backwards for me.  We had just a short chat as I didn’t want to interrupt his tournament play.
When I returned, I told Prudence I had gone to say hello to a fellow blogger, but I didn’t say who.  “Memphis MOJO, right?”  I said yes, somewhat surprised.  Apparently she had been following the tweets herself.  Also, around this time she announced to me, “You used to have a moustache!  Don’t grow it back.”  Hmm….I wonder if Prudence is stalking me?
She got tired of the 1/3 game, and thought she could do better at 2/5, so she took off to play that.  I was doing shitty too, and figured it would be worth playing at the 2/5 with her for the entertainment value.  So I left the game and got into the 2/5 game, eventually we ended up at the same table.  Finally a table where they actually brought us drinks.  So Prudence got a chance to reload,
Unfortunately, we didn’t have any better luck at the 2/5 game than we had at the 1/3 game. And soon Prudence got itchy to try something else. We were debating what that would be  She asked if I was headed to BSC.  And yes, she said “BSC” not the name of the actual casino that employs her boyfriend.  She usually now refers to it as BSC rather than it’s real name.  That always tickles me.  She also frequently refers to her boyfriend as Tom even though his real name is….oops, almost goofed up there!
Tom had dropped her off at the Rio.  If I went to BSC, I could take her there and save Tom a trip back to the Rio to pick her up.  Since we had pretty much both had our fill of the WSOP venue, we decided to head for the friendly confines of BSC for the evening.
I had only one concern about this plan. I said, “You’re not going to throw up in my car, are you?”  She assured me she would not.  Actually, she seemed fairly sober at this point.  But I did recall that earlier when she was seriously feeling no pain, she did say to me, “You have to watch me, make sure I don’t get too out of control.”  I promised I would.
First she said goodbye to Ginger, who was pissed.  She had indeed busted out of the tournament and was now playing cash.  I’m not sure why she hadn’t tried to get moved to the table with me and Prudence.  Anyway, she had started drinking and for whatever reason, was not interested in playing drunk at her place of employ.  Plus her friend was driving, and was still in the tournament.  She doesn’t drink so Ginger had at least a safe ride home.   While Ginger was begging Prudence to stay, Prudence just started giving the man next to Ginger an upper back rub.  And she was digging her elbows into the guy and really going at it good.  She said to him, “I’m Asian….it’s in my blood.  I made a comment about “happy endings” but she didn’t hear it. This guy was a total stranger to her.
On the way over to BSC, she called another poker buddy, a young guy who is a 2/5 regular at BSC.  She begged him to join us; she wanted to play 2/5 at BSC, now that’s she gotten used to it at the WSOP.  She has told him about my blog and get this….the guy wants to have his own identity on my blog, like Prudence has “Prudence.”  I told her that he has to do something outrageous to merit a post.  Actually meeting the guy would help.  Sadly, tho this guy wants a Prudence-type identity on the blog, he hasn’t read it ever, to Prudence’s knowledge.  Well, this is a start, friend of Prudence.  Now we have to meet, and you need to do something blog-worthy and I’ll be happy to give a phony name right on this blog. 
Unfortunately, her friend said he couldn’t join us because he had taken some prescription drugs and was in no condition to play poker or drive.  Prudence will have to introduce me to him some other time.
On the way to BSC I told her I had to eat.  She agreed to join me at a place at the BSC where my comps were good—and has simple enough food for my limited tastes. On the way to the restaurant, she phoned Tom, who wasn’t dealing at the time.  He was in the break room eating.  She asked him to join us, and he did stop by at the end of our meal to say hello. 
We were done so the three of us walked back to the poker room together.  Prudence and I were able to get into a game together, next to each other, and at first Prudence was a total maniac.  Mostly it was the kind of poker talk I described above, talking and screeching about the cards.  But it led to some interesting talk.  A couple of her screeches (reacting to or acting like she was reacting to the cards) were rather unique.  One guy at the table said, “I’ve never heard a sound quite like that before.”  Prudence said, “What, you’ve never heard a woman climax before?”  He said he has and that’s not what it sounds like.  She said it’s what she sounds like. I so wanted to say to the guy “I guess you’re not doing it right” but that’s the kind of thing that could really get a guy pissed off if he doesn’t know me, so I didn’t.
She was so loud that at one point Mike, the dealer, came by and said to her, “Pardon me miss, the people at my last table were complaining about the noise.”  I said, “Are you kidding, the people at the poker room on the other side of the Strip are complaining about the noise!”
Later she saw Tom dealing at the table directly in front us (behind the dealer of our game).  She went over to give him a tip. Yeah, she just took a few of her chips and handed to him at the next table.  Then she said—to the people at Tom’s game, not ours—to remember to tip the dealer.  It was all guys at that table (ours too, except for Prudence), so she said, “Show how big your penis is by giving the dealers big tips.” 
Now the guy at our table who said he’d never heard a noise like Prudence’s scream said, to that, “It’s two inches….soft.  Hard, it’s one inch.  Yeah, it actually gets smaller when it gets harder.”  No one reacted to that.
At some point in the day, she mentioned Tom and said something like, “I just thought he was cute.  Who knew he had a huge cock.”  The current dealer was Derek, mostly a quiet, deadpan guy who generally doesn’t talk much when he deals—unless he and I are talking about the NBA.  She had joked a few minutes earlier that Derek was the first dealer at BSC she had asked out.  I think she was just joking.  So Derek said, in response to the comment about having a big cock, “Is she talking about me?”
There was another comment somewhere along the day about her having “surprisingly sagging bosoms. Yeah, it’s surprising they sag so much, considering I’m not that old.”
She was having some success at the 1/2 game but wanted to try 2/5 at BSC.  There was no game going when we got there but she got on the list, and after an hour or so they had enough to start the game.  She moved on to that game, where she was, surprisingly, quiet as a titmouse.  She said the game was too serious and she was too concerned for her success to be loud and crazy.
I was doing terribly when we were together at that 1/2 game.  I was stacked when I hit 2 pair and someone hit a straight, the exact same thing that busted me out of the tournament earlier that day. From now on, I’m pretty much folding whenever I flop two pair.  I re-bought and was still struggling.  But once Prudence left for the 2/5 game, I was able to focus a little more on the poker and managed a nice turnaround.  I ended up leaving up $140 for the nite, after starting out down $250.
Prudence was still doing ok at the 2/5 game when I got too tired to continue.  So I left and said goodbye, finding out the next day that she had unfortunately busted out of her game after I left.  But she was comfortable playing at that level at BSC, and said there was a fair amount of weak players there.
And thus my day at the WSOP and my night at BSC came to an end.  A lot of fun, a lot of poker, and a lot of “Prudence."

Thursday, July 12, 2012

If it Weren't For Tournaments, I'd Be Doing Great

((As I post this, Alicia ("Veronica") is still doing great. At 2nd break on Day 3, she has 317,000 chips.  You can follow her here.))

((7/13/12--Edited to add:  Well, sadly, Alicia busted out last night, very close to the end of the session.  Her Pocket Kings (I should have warned her) ran up against well known pro Lee Childs' Pocket Aces!  Ugh, what a tough break.  But it was a great run, Alicia, and you should be proud of that!  As reported in Poker News:  "After a series of bets and raises, Lee Childs six-bet shoved for effectively 275,000. Alicia Spencer called all in with kings, and was dominated by Childs' aces.  Spencer found no help, and has been eliminated from the 2012 Main Event.")) 

After this last trip to Vegas, I’m beginning to wonder if I should just stop playing tournaments and concentrate on cash games. Since the beginning of the year, I’m ahead playing NL cash games.  Where I’m losing money is on the tournament play.

What’s weird is I really started making the transition from limit to NL via tournaments.  I studied up on playing NL tournaments first, and then on a trip in November of last year, I cashed over $1000 each in two tournaments within 4 days of each other (see here and here). Ironically, or perhaps not so ironically, this was before I had played hardly any NL cash games.
Since then, I’ve had some success in tournaments, a few small cashes, but the farther back those two nice runs become, the cashes I have been having have been getting smaller and less frequent.  Now, although there are a lot of similar concepts used in playing NL tournaments and NL cash, there are also a lot of differences.  Is it possible my experience—such as it is—in cash games is somehow hurting my tournament play?  Am I trying too hard to make take my cash game to tournaments? Is it just a coincidence?  It does seem the last batch of tournaments I’ve played, I’ve been especially card dead.  In a cash game, when you’re card dead, you can afford to wait it out, or time your “moves” very carefully.  In tournaments, with the blinds continuing to go up, you don’t have that luxury.  Or were the two big scores I made just total flukes, proof that there’s a lot of luck in this game, something that I’m not good enough to ever repeat?
I don’t know, but I tell you, right now, since I prefer winning money to losing it, I’ll probably be playing a lot fewer tournaments in my upcoming Vegas trips, at least for the time being.
Last trip, I played in five tournaments, cashed exactly zero times. I’ve already blogged about two of those tournaments, the AVP tournament here, and the TBC tournament here. It was the latter where I came closest to cashing, bubbling instead.  In this post, I’ll combine the stories—such as they are—of the other three tournaments.  It shouldn’t take long, unfortunately, since I didn’t last long in any of them.  Since it’s me, doing a separate blog post for each of them would make for unacceptably short posts. I’m afraid even combining the three of them will not make this a sufficiently long blog post by my standards.
My first attempt was the old stand-by, the Aria 1PM tournament.  When I got there, I was a bit confused because they had set up the tournament separately from the regular poker room. Presumably this was because they have bigger turnouts this time of year, when the WSOP is running at the Rio. And indeed I was told the day before, a Monday, they had 185 entrants.  A couple of things I didn’t like about the new area.  One, no TV monitors.  This was only going to be a problem if I lasted long enough to still be there when the NBA finals game scheduled for that night started. Unfortunately, or fortunately, it didn’t become an issue for me.
Also, the temporary tables didn’t have automatic shufflers (temporary tables seldom do).  Minor point, but one of the great things about this tournament is the long structure, so taking away the shufflers somewhat mitigates that.  Anyway, I was assigned to a friendly table but the cards were anything but friendly. The guy to my left is some kind of computer programmer who doesn’t have a permanent residence. Everything he owns fits into his car and goes from place to place and sets up temporary lodgings anyplace that has internet access.  For WSOP, he took a room for a month at neighboring Vdara for what he said was a reasonable rate of $2900.
I was so card dead I only remember two hands.  One of course was with the dreaded pocket Kings. I made a reasonable raise and got one caller.  The flop was all low, 8-7-4, and two of a suit (don’t remember the suit, but it didn’t match either of my Kings).  I put out a 2/3’s pot sized bet and the other guy made a big raise, triple my bet.  Hmm….I kinda smelled a set there, thinking te had called my preflop raise with pocket 8’s or 7’s, And I also didn’t like the coordinated board.  Even if I was ahead, there were too many chances for the other guy to catch up.  How much did I want to lose on an overpair (my personal demon overpair, at that) with a board like that?  Answer, no more.  I folded, never knowing if I did the right thing.
I was hoping for a better hand to play, but it didn’t come. Soon after the first break, down to about 10 BB’s I picked up pocket Jacks.  If I had a lesser “big” hand I might have shoved there, but I decided to just make a good opening bet there, about 1/3 of my stack.  One caller.  When no card higher than a 10 hit the flop, I shoved.  Ugh.  Guess what the lady who called me had?  Of course….pocket kings!  I would have shoved pre-flop if she had 3 bet me anyway.  No Jack on the turn or river, and, since she had me well covered, I was done with the tournament.
Returning to my room to lick my wounds, I finished up doing some research on all the extra deepstack tournaments around town that had been added because the WSOP is in town.  Turns out Caesars Palace had a series that sounded intriguing.  For $130 (only $5 more than the Aria 1PM) you start out with $15K in chips, not $10K like the Aria.  Also, although the blinds start at 50-100, not 25-50, they wait a lot longer to start the antes.  Thirty minute levels, just like the Aria.  So it seemed like a good deal.
Only problem was it started at Noon, which is pretty early for me when I’m in Vegas.  Try as I did, I couldn’t, get myself out of my hotel room early enough to have some food before getting to Caesars.  Since it had been ages since I’d been to that casino and I’ve actually never actually parked there before, I wanted to make sure I got there early.  I knew I would be spending a lot of money for a quick, probably lousy meal at that casino but I didn’t leave myself a choice.
I did find the “backdoor” entrance to the parking structure ok (by “backdoor” I mean you can access it without driving on the Strip, which is against my religion).  But what I thought was a parking spot close to the casino turned out not to be due to some terribly misleading signs.  After the long walk, I had to reorient myself to find the poker room as I’d never gone there from the parking structure before.
Once I found it and registered for the tournament, I had about an hour to find a “cheap” meal and eat it before the tournament started.  Turns out there was a snack bar/restaurant right next to the poker room where I could get a hot dog and fries for only $12!  I would have done that but there was one problem; although it was now 11:15, the place appeared not to be open.  Huh, why would it not be open when it clearly is supposed to service the poker room and the poker room has a big deepstack tournament starting in less than 45 minutes? Does that make sense?
There was someone inside, it was just roped off.  “What time do you open?” I inquired.  “Well, we’re supposed open at 11, but we’re running late. We should be opening soon.”
Soon? Ok, I can’t afford to wait.  So I ask him if there are other eating places nearby. He said there were a couple “over there” and I head off in the direction he pointed.  I found a little stand with a French sounding name that appeared to have a selection of about half a dozen pre-made sandwiches.  One of them sounded relatively inoffensive—a turkey sandwich—that was “only” ten bucks.  So I ordered that and a Diet Pepsi (20 oz bottle).  This came to over $16 because they charged me FIVE DOLLARS for the soda.
And there was no place to eat the food.  I wondered over to a slot machine and sat in the stool in front of it to eat.  Not too pleasant.  I should have gone to the sports book to eat, it would have been more comfortable.  Anyway, I couldn’t believe the size of the sandwich they gave me.  It was a joke.  Three bites, tops.  For ten fricking dollars?  What a joke.  I was hungry before the damn tournament even started.  This would have been a problem if I had lasted deep into the tournament.  But that wasn’t a issue, as it turned out.
I wasn’t surprised by the lack of shufflers in the tournament, but I was surprised the tables were each 9 handed.  Used to seeing 10 handed for tournaments, even as it is getting more and more common to see cash NL games that are 9 handed.
During early play, I did see a dealer error which caused a lady to bust out when she should not have.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying enough attention to notice and the player who did notice didn’t speak up in time, he basically only discussed it with a few neighboring players, and not the dealer.  A short-stacked player shoved with Ace-rag, and was called by AQ.  By the river the board had an Ace, two 10’s and a King.  The dealer showed that that the Queen was the better kicker and pushed the pot to the deeper stacked player.  The short-stacked lady took off.  But of course, the Queen didn’t play, the best hand was 2 pair, Aces and 10’s, King kicker, the board should have played and they should have split the pot.  Again, unfortunate that the lady didn’t notice that and also the player who did didn’t say anything.
After winning a few small pots early, I went completely card dead and was foiled on every move I tried to make.  Even with such a deep starting stack, it didn’t take me very long to get very close into shove-or-fold mode after the one break I made it thru.  Seeing pocket 8’s, I didn’t shove preflop (a mistake) but made a big raise.  One caller, a guy new to the table, an Asian gentleman who, on his very first hand at the table, when he was UTG, called the BB blind since he was too busy getting settled in to look at his hand. That should have told me something.
Nothing above an 8 hit the board, so I shoved.  I was called (much bigger stack) and he showed pocket 3’s for a set.  And I was done.
On the plus side, if I had played deep into the tournament, I would have starved to death and I would not have been available to meet Lightning for the first time, as posted here
Knowing I was committed to two more tournaments that coming weekend, I gave it one more shot the next day, at the Rio.  Actually it was the 2PM WSOP deepstack tournaments that had been running since the series started.  I had committed to playing this one when I first got to town.  As explained in the post here, my friend Prudence had actually asked me to join her boyfriend Tom and her in the 2PM deepstack that took place, Sunday, the day I arrived in town.  That didn’t work out, but Prudence and I agreed to tackle this same tournament together on Thursday.  Meanwhile, the two of them both cashed in the tournament Sunday.  She was hoping lightning would strike twice for her.  I was just hoping to get a hand worth playing more than once per two hours.

We didn’t get the same table, we were actually back to back at adjoining tables. I’ll have plenty more to say about this day with Prudence at a later time, but for now, I’ll only cover the tournament portion of the day, which will be short and not very sweet.  Totally card dead yet again, I lasted less than two of hours.  Actually I didn’t even make it to the break this time. What killed me was getting J/9 suited in late position.  I believe I limped or called a small raise.  It was the best hand I’d seen all day.  Seriously.
I flopped two pair, and the third card was an 8, and two of the same suit (not mine), so it was a scary board.  I put out a big bet, wanting to chase away the draws.  A guy who had just come to the table (ain’t that always the way?) check-raised me, making a pretty big bet.  The guy had to show his ID to the dealer when he took his seat (we all did at this tournament) and instead of a drivers license it was a passport.  I immediately pegged him as an aggressive Euro (he was German or Scandinavian).  So I didn’t necessarily think he had me beat.  Although he’d only played a couple of hands by this time, my “profile” made me think he could make this move with Ace/Jack or less.  I didn’t really think it through, but with two pair and a pretty big bet out there already, and a shrinking stack, I just decided it was now or never and shoved.  Even if he did have a hand, I could still fill up.  Have to get lucky some time, right?  He insta-called and showed Q-10 for a flopped straight.  I didn’t fill up. 
He had me covered and suddenly I was gone.  Another unsatisfying, all-too-short tournament experience.  Turns out that lightning didn’t strike twice for Prudence either, she was out before I was.  Ugh.
I know I may have misplayed the few opportunities I had in these tournaments, but man, was I consistently card dead in everyone I played.  I was getting much more playable hands, on average, playing cash.  Maybe just a real bad run, I dunno.  But now you have a pretty good idea why I’m thinking of playing few tournaments (if any) and more cash games on my next visit to Vegas.