I have to admit, I’ve chuckled quietly to myself overhearing the various L.A. pipe dreams of bar patrons and pedestrians. It seems like everyone out here is writing a screenplay or going to an audition in the morning. The city is such a huge lottery. For every big superstar who makes it, there are hundreds of people working in a Starbucks hoping to catch their big break. Despite the misery that I’m sure is associated with that struggle and lifestyle, it seems that people make the best of it and maintain a pretty upbeat demeanor.

Here are a few shots I’ve taken on my iPhone since getting into town:

Venice Beach:

A medical marijuana evaluation clinic right on the beach; somehow I doubt their standards for dispensing a marijuana license are too rigorous:

The palm trees here can be really tall:

Standing on the Santa Monica pier looking back at the beach:

The sun setting over Malibu:

Overall, I’ve enjoyed my stay here a lot. The major downsides seem to be that it’s expensive and the traffic is terrible, but otherwise I think I could definitely enjoy living here.

Today, all area schools are closed. My girlfriend’s bar exam review course got cancelled. After allowing a hankering for a panini convince me to brave the winter elements, I even found the local sandwich shop to be closed.

Meanwhile, this is what it looks like outside (I had to include a picture because it would sound like I’m exaggerating otherwise):

That’s right, nothing. A trace amount of ice on trees and bushes, but the roads are totally clear. And this was enough to shut down the entire city.

The Chron had a great image on their site today (source) of a guy pouring hot water on his windshield (what a genius) to deal with removing the trifle amount of ice on his windshield. Credit to my friend Ira for the link.

Keep us Houstonians in your thoughts. It’s a game of survival down here.

On the 23rd, my girlfriend and I spent some time walking all over the city. At the end of the day, I calculated we walked a total of five miles around New York. Here are some photos of that walk. We took the subway into Brooklyn so we could eat at Grimaldi’s, one of New York’s most highly touted pizzerias, and then walked over the Brooklyn Bridge back into Manhattan (an experience my girlfriend and I agreed provided some really awesome views of the city).

Looking back at the southern tip of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty from Brooklyn:

Downtown Manhattan. Were they still standing, the Twin Towers would appear in this image.

The Brooklyn Bridge with the Empire State Building in the distance.

Despite a temperature of 30 degrees, people still line up outside of Grimaldi’s for a chance at one of their famous pies.

Surprisingly, Grimaldi’s does not have any pizzas with predetermined toppings on their menu. To put it another way: each pie is “build your own”. We decided on pepperoni, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, onions, and basil for ours. I think it would be too hard to say it was the best pizza I’ve ever had, but it’s certainly right at the top. The crust was outstanding.

Stuffed beyond belief on pizza (and a bagel I insisted upon before getting on the subway into Brooklyn), we made the short walk to the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge to start the 1.9 mile walk over to Manhattan.

A look across the East River at the Manhattan Bridge with the Empire State Building sneaking into the picture. In the foreground, you see Brooklyn and the traffic on the bridge below us.

Halfway across the bridge, looking past downtown Manhattan at the Statue of Liberty.

Me, struggling to muster a smile in the cold, with downtown Manhattan in the background.

A thirty minute walk that helped alleviate the feeling of being stuffed on pizza later, the end of the bridge back into Manhattan.

Bonus pic from later that night of the Empire State Building lit up in Christmas colors. Madison Square Garden is in the foreground.

Here’s a 360 degree panorama video I shot on my phone (I love that you can do things like this now on a cell phone) from the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge. The video starts facing Manhattan, heads south facing downtown Manhattan where you can see the Statue of Liberty poking up in the distance, then across the East River towards Brooklyn where it completes a 180 turn facing east, then turns north towards the Manhattan Bridge and finally into uptown Manhattan where you can see the Empire State Building before completing the turn.

The Cyclone was actually pretty good. For a roller coaster that’s been around since before the Great Depression, I wasn’t expecting much, but it gave a thrill for sure. I was just more concerned that it was going to give me back problems (as rickety old wooden roller coasters can tend to do), but that was no issue. I was going to take a POV video on my phone while riding it (because I’m a dork like that), but just before doing so, I figured I would check to see if there was already something like that on YouTube. Turns out there is, so I put my phone back in my pocket. This is what the ride is like:

Oh, and as cliche as it is, Nathan’s hot dogs really are way better at the original location.

Lastly, here’s a November Nine preview I did for PokerTips.org.

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog. I haven’t played any poker since busting out of Event 49 in 150th nearly a week ago. A week off has been so nice. My girlfriend was in town the whole time and we had a really nice week just doing various stuff around Vegas most of which didn’t involve poker.

On Saturday, we went to the Rio to check out some of the celebs in the Ante Up for Africa tournament. When she saw the WSOP (for the first time), she immediately noted that she didn’t understand how someone could play every day for the whole summer without going totally insane. That made me feel a little better about having gone kinda insane after five weeks of continuous poker!

There was a point on a dinner break last week where all I wanted was to get away from poker. Like, badly. I just wanted to go somewhere where I could sit down, enjoy a meal, and not be around anyone talking about poker. I tried a Thai restaurant about a mile from the Rio. Just as I was about to dig into my Pad Thai, I overheard this woman in the restaurant saying, “I three-bet him preflop with Seven-Six…”

AHHHHH!!!

I thought I was losing my mind. Is there not anywhere to go in this city to get away from people talking about various poker hands? It actually seems kind of funny to me looking back on it, but at the time I was losing it due to poker overload.

Hearing my girlfriend’s perspective on the WSOP was pretty interesting. It’s second nature to me at this point, so I’ve kind of lost perspective on how an outsider would be likely to view the poker culture. She just didn’t see how people could sit at a table all day every day without going insane and noted that a lot of the people we encountered apparently lacked basic social skills and kind of seemed like a part of this zombie sub-group incapable of functioning unless they’re gambling or talking about gambling.

Five weeks of being immersed in the poker community can take a toll on your sanity. Vegas and poker is such a false reality that I think hearing someone point out what an abnormal lifestyle the poker playing community has was kind of refreshing. It’s like, “oh yea, a bunch of people passing around millions of dollars over a deck of cards for six weeks is pretty nuts, isn’t it?”

I know it sounds like I’m dogging on poker and poker players, and in a way I kind of am, many of them are truly insufferable people, but I don’t want to make it sound like I don’t love poker or the poker culture. I do love poker. I have a blast playing poker and really enjoy the types of conversations you can have with poker players that are hard to achieve with people unaccustomed to forbidding emotions from playing a part in their thought process. But with that being said, everyone reaches their breaking point, and I think I reached mine after five weeks of nearly daily exposure to poker and poker players, so a week off felt really, really nice.

Okay, that’s enough about the psychology of poker. It’s time for a celebrity photo dump! (Apologies in advance for the picture quality that lies ahead; all of these were taken with my phone).

A few nights ago, I was hanging out with a friend in Aria who pointed out a gentlemen at a roulette wheel that he thought might have been Roger Clemens. I walked over for a closer look. Yup! That’s definitely Roger Clemens. I wanted to take his picture (I mean, it’s Roger Clemens!) but I figured he probably gets sick of being bothered in public, so I decided I’d just snap a picture of him on my phone from a few feet away. I really didn’t expect him to notice me, so I figured it was win-win: I get a picture of Roger Clemens, Roger Clemens gets to avoid being bothered by some fanboy.

There was just one problem: he noticed me. Right as soon as I was taking a picture of him, he wagged his finger at me and said, “dude, it’s not a zoo, if you want a picture all you have to do is ask!”

“I’m really sorry… but would you mind?” I asked, feeling pretty embarrassed to have gotten caught and called out. “Not at all!” he said. I gave my phone to my friend and pulled my girlfriend in for a picture with him. (I photoshopped her out since I dunno if she wants her picture on a poker portal that gets thousands of daily visits).

He was a really nice guy, and huge, too; I thought he was going to crush my hand when he shook it. We chatted with him for maybe a minute about Houston (since he’s played there) and about the WSOP (he asked what we were in town for). I told him he should give the Main Event a try and offered to coach him, but he said something to the effect of wanting to leave that stuff to the big boys like Hellmuth.

The next afternoon, we were walking through the Forum Shops at Caesars and noticed Pete Rose signing autographs at a collectables store (he’s the one with the hat on).

So in a span of like 15 hours, we saw two of the most famous baseball players of all-time, both of whom, incidentally, have had their storied careers overshadowed by controversy. Pretty ironic.

At the Ante Up for Africa event, we saw Matt Damon (black hat in the one seat; note the very DOJ-friendly table draw of Lederer and Ferguson seated together):

Jerome Bettis (ten seat) and Don Cheadle (seven seat):

And David Alan Grier:

I was surprised at how short Matt Damon is. He stood up at one point when his table broke and was like… little. The internet says he’s 5′10″, but he didn’t look an inch over 5′7″ to me. All in all, the celebs in the tournament seemed to be enjoying themselves. You could tell poker is still new and exciting to them. Ahh… I remember those days.

Today is Day 1A of the Main Event and I’m still not sure if I’m playing or not, though I would say it’s pretty unlikely at this point. I might try a couple of satellites, but barring luckboxing one of those, I doubt I’ll play this year. I’ll be fairly disappointed if I don’t end up playing, but what can you do?

The plan for the next few days is to bet soccer (Netherlands over Uruguay and Spain over Germany both for fairly big bets) and try to run hot in a couple of satellites or something. If push comes to shove, I might put a couple hundo on a number on roulette and try to spike a Main Event seat (how good does that story have the potential to be?). I’m taking suggestions for what number to bet (0-36). The suggestion with the most logical reasoning for why that number will hit might just get my action!

I guess it’s been a couple of days since I’ve written anything here. On some evenings or mornings when I’m contemplating whether or not to write a blog entry, it is not uncommon that I take a pass on account of not really having done anything since the last time I wrote. I know it might seem like being in Vegas for the WSOP could never get boring, but when every day is very similar to the one before it, it’s easy to start to feel a little bored after a few weeks here.

Two days ago, I busted out of the $1500 no-limit event in level three. I think it was probably the worst event I’ve had all summer in terms of how quickly I busted out and how small my peak chip stack was relative to the starting stack. We started with 4.5k in chips and I’m pretty sure I was never over 5k before losing a handful of pots and shoving 1,700 after looking at one Ace on the button during 75/150. The big blind quickly called with Kings. I squeezed a pointy-card, but alas, it was the Ace’s tranny cousin, a 4, and I was making my way out of the Rio as early as I have in any tournament this summer.

Later that night, I met up with my buddy and infrequent PokerTips blogger Steve. He and I joined my friend Dave, who was a blogger on here last year but is too cool for PokerTips now or something, for a meal at Isla in Treasure Island (excuse me, TI). Isla is a decent Mexican place which has guacamole and margaritas, both of which were exactly what I was in the mood for.

Steve and I parted ways with Dave after dinner in search of some single-zero roulette. I didn’t even know you could find single-zero roulette anywhere in the US, but Steve assured me that Venetian has it. For those of you who don’t understand the ins-and-outs of pit games very well, most roulette tables in the US have two green zeros. The wheels in Europe have just one. Single-zero roulette has a much lower house-edge than US-style roulette (2.7% vs. 5.4%). Sure enough, there it was at the Venetian in all its glory: a roulette wheel with just one zero. Unfortunately, it was a $100 minimum bet table which was a little more than either of us were looking to gamble.

Steve mentioned that Aria, the newest casino on the Strip, also has single-zero roulette and that when he was there at 2:00 am last Friday, it was just a $25 minimum table. So we made our way out of the Venetian on a quest for the cheaper single-zero wheel at Aria. On our way out, I saw this:

I knew it was just a matter of time before I saw someone playing online poker while seated at a brick-and-mortar table.

As we crawled down the Strip in my Infiniti from Treasure Island to Aria, Steve explained to me how his whole single-zero session at Aria last week came and went without ever seeing the ball land on the zero. His perspective on roulette is that it’s a vig-free game except for when the ball hits the zero and then all of your bets on the table are just your way of paying vig. That doesn’t change the house-edge or anything, but it’s a nice, comforting little way to view the game.

Not too long after we pulled up a chair at the $25 single-zero table at Aria, the ball found the zero. “Damn,” we exclaimed, “I guess we’re paying vig tonight.” Rather than collecting each of our $25 that was resting on red, the dealer took away three of the $5 chips and added three $1 chips to the top of our two remaining $5 chips. We both just looked at each other in disbelief. Is what we think is happening really happening? Yup! At Aria, they give you half of your bet back when the zero hits on their roulette table! We were like a couple of nerds who just cracked some secret code. “Holy crap! Roulette with a 1.3% house-edge in the nicest casino in Vegas! This is great!”

And like that, Aria is now my favorite casino in Vegas. I already liked it a lot before discovering their generous roulette rules; they built a really nice, trendy casino without taking it too far over the top on the douche-factor (like, say, Wynn does). I guess they also have blackjack switch with player-friendly rules too which is a great game that’s tough to find in most casinos. Aria will definitely be seeing most of my pit-game action on this and future trips to Vegas.

————

Yesterday, I woke up early again for soccer, a practice that is becoming routine for me during the World Cup. After watching Uruguay put away South Korea, which was the result I was rooting for, I have money on Uruguay to win it all, Dave and I headed to Lagasse’s in Palazzo to watch the US-Ghana match. This is hands-down the best place I’ve been to in Vegas for watching games. They have TVs absolutely everywhere and a ton of different bars, couches, and chairs that allow you to have whatever viewing experience you wish. There is no other place in Vegas I would care to be for watching the US during the World Cup.

Unfortunately, this was the last time for a while that I’ll need Lagasse’s for US World Cup viewing purposes. Ghana played great and scored two goals on the few opportunities they were able to create; US just couldn’t capitalize on their chances and like that, they’re out of the World Cup. I was pretty depressed when the game ended and decided to drown away the pain with a distraction: the $350 event at Venetian. It worked pretty well. After a couple of hours of playing poker, I had mostly put the US demise behind me.

The tournament was nothing special: I lost a race for a 35k pot during 300/600 and got my last few big blinds all-in with King-Seven suited against pocket Queens in a blind-vs-blind battle.

————

Soon, I’m heading out the door for Day 1B of this weekend’s $1000 donkament special. One of my best friends in poker and the guy more responsible than anyone else for helping me grow into an adept tournament player, Ray Coburn (Exitonly online), is 7th in chips with 35 left in the $1500 event that I mentioned busting out of earlier. So it looks like it’ll be a long day for me at the Rio regardless of how I do in the $1k: Ray is one of the nicest guys I’ve met in the poker world and is as deserving of a bracelet and a huge score as much as anyone could ever be “deserving” of such a thing; I look forward to sweating him at a WSOP final table!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update, so this might get kind of long-winded.

I got back into Vegas two days ago after spending the weekend with my girlfriend in New York. It was a nice break that I’m really glad I was able to take. There’s a lot to be said for clearing your head of poker for a couple days at some point during the WSOP.

My first tournament back was yesterday, a $350 event at Venetian. I really love the Venetian events. They’re just so soft albeit a little boring at times (okay, most of the time). I built a 12k starting stack up to a peak of 45k without ever being all-in or ever even making a value bet. Ten hours into the tournament I hadn’t hit one flop or anything. Just made a few bluffs, took a few pots down preflop… stuff like that and before I know there’s 100 players left with 63 primed to finish in the money.

I had a cruel welcome back to the tournament tables by getting AQ all-in preflop against AT for a 30 big blind pot and seeing a Ten come on the river. A disappointing outcome near the bubble after playing for ten hours, but what can you do?

On to the next one.

But before the next one could come around, there was the US-Algeria soccer game. I woke up at 7:00 am to sweat the US who needed to beat Algeria in order to advance to the elimination round of 16 (technically there was a scenario where a draw would be adequate, but late in the game it was pretty clear England was going to win meant the US needed to win). The game wound up being one of the most exciting sporting events I’ve ever seen. I’m sure anyone who cares already knows what happened, so I won’t recap the details, but this goal with just three minutes to spare was sooo sweet!

I think every US fan was just in a state of absolute despair around the 89′ mark, so to find a goal like that with just three minutes left in their World Cup dream just made my day. Heck, it made like my whole summer. I was going absolutely bonkers when that ball found the back of the net, as was pretty much every other American with a passing interest in soccer I’d imagine.

With a grin stuck on my face after that goal, I embarked on the drive to the Rio for today’s $1,500 event knowing no matter the outcome, it’d still be a great day. The atmosphere at the WSOP was just electric. Everyone was talking about the soccer game and the Wimbledon match between Isner and Mahut that will be heading onto its third day of play tied 59-59 in the final set. I mean 59-59!?! How insane is that? I didn’t think it was possible that there could be anything happen in the sporting world to top the story of the miracle goal by the US, but this tennis match might just have done it. I had tournament directors checking in with me to get an update on the match since they overheard me updating my table from my phone.

For what it’s worth, I like Isner tomorrow. He’s only -114 on Pinnacle. Isner is the better all-around tennis player, has the advantage of serving first out of every tie, and will be able to regroup after some much needed rest tonight. He looked weaker than Mahut for most of today, but I think Isner should be more of a clear favorite once the two continue play after a night’s rest. You gotta love Mahut’s unending effort though; he’s held serve fifty-nine times in the fifth set keep the match going! Although I think there’s some value on Isner -114, I’ll probably just pass on betting it. This is one of those once in a lifetime sporting events where a paltry bet is wholly unnecessary in order to increase the excitement and could actually detract from being able to enjoy what will be a historic finish whenever someone wins. If someone wins.

So the $1,500…

I played one of the top 3 or 4 most interesting hands I’ve played all summer in level three today:

Shortly after being moved to a new table, I raise to 500 with Ace-Ten of clubs after an Asian guy with a ton of chips limps for 150 under-the-gun. He checks a Queen-Ten-Trey flop and I check behind. The turn brings a Five putting two spades on the board. He checks and I bet 650. He calls. The river is another Five and he bets 3,000 (I only had 3,450 total when he made that bet). I immediately felt like I was good here. I didn’t see how he could have a Queen; if he had a Queen, I feel like he would have led out on the turn. King-Jack made a lot of sense to me. I just felt like he was bluffing such a huge percentage of the time here that I really wanted to make the call for basically all of my chips with second pair. Not only did no hands that beat me make much sense with the way he played the hand, but there’s also the Asian-factor and the huge chip-stack factor both of which made a bluff more likely to me.

Still, I had just the slightest bit of doubt regarding whether or not a call was the right play, so I decided to have a random outside variable make my decision for me. I told the table, “in a second, I’m going to look at the tournament clock. If the second-number is between 00 and 50, I’m going to call. If it’s between 51 and 59, I’m going to fold.”

I looked at the clock. 55. I said, “well, I guess I have to fold,” and did so by turning my cards over. The Asian dude showed King-Seven of spades, air. Ugh… what a bad beat. I gave myself a 51/60 chance of making that call and he sucked out on me by peeling a 55. So sick…

The only other time I’ve done the clock-maneuver at the WSOP was in last year’s Main Event where I gave myself just a 33% chance of making a call, hit it, and lost a key pot. So I’ve hit a 1/3 that was wrong and a 9/60 that was wrong. Brutal.

During a break, Phil Ivey was presented with his 8th WSOP bracelet which drew a huge crowd. He is an absolute rock star. Flashbulbs were going off like crazy when he held the bracelet up for the crowd. It was pretty sweet when they played the US National Anthem in honor of Ivey’s win. US soccer has one of the sweetest victories in their program’s history, the best poker player in the world gets presented with his 8th bracelet, and bam, the National Anthem right in everyone’s face. It was pretty cool. There was just a buzz in the air at the Rio today that I’ve never felt before. What an awesome day.

Here’s a pic I snapped of Ivey holding his bracelet:

The day got slightly less awesome when I got AQ all-in preflop against 44 for a 35 big blind pot and couldn’t find any help, but that will hardly ruin what’s been an awesome day so far.

I don’t have a whole lot of events left. So far, I’m 1/11 in tournaments this summer (0/10 in no-limit events… I thought that’s supposed to be my best game, what gives?) Tomorrow is a $560 at Venetian. There’s a $1500 WSOP on Friday. Saturday is off (go USA vs. Ghana!!!). Sunday is a $1k. Monday, another $1500. Tuesday the $3k triple chance. Wednesday I’m taking off because my girlfriend will be in town and it’s my birthday. Thursday another $1k. And that’s probably it before the Main Event (if I play).

This summer has gone by so fast I can’t believe it! I guess they say time flies when you’re having fun, and I definitely have a blast being in Vegas for the WSOP. No matter the outcome in the remaining events, I’ve had an awesome time out here this year, but one more deep run in something, anything, would be some nice icing on the cake!

Yesterday, my Dad and I woke up really early (7:00 a.m. is “really” early to any poker player) to go hike around Red Rock Canyon. My friend Dave Irish and a friend of his came along. The Canyon is about an hour away from the Strip, so by the time we got out the door, stocked up on bottled water, and made it to Red Rock, we were hiking by 9:00.

We drove around for a little while trying to figure out what trail we wanted to hike. The process got a little frustrating because we couldn’t find an “easy” trail (they’re rated easy, moderate, and difficult) that was in the ~2 mile range. After searching for a trail for a while, we decided to just try a “difficult” trail that was 2.5 miles long. We always figured if it proved to be really hard, we could just come back to the car and go search for an easier trail. Whoever makes the decisions on how to rate the trails must have a pretty skewed view of what is truly “difficult”, because none of us had much trouble on the trail at all despite no experience, equipment and mediocre physical fitness levels.

It was a really cool experience and something I hope to do a few more times this summer. Here’s a shot I took while we were hiking. The moon was positioned in between these two peaks. You can barely see it in the picture, but in real life it was quite the sight.

My Dad and I pressed on a little past the blazen path just for fun while Dave and his friend waited back and hydrated. We stumbled upon this old military gear box that was wedged in between two rocks. The chances of stumbling on this thing randomly are pretty low; we had to walk through a bunch of bushes that kind of cut up your arms and stuff. In other words, getting to where this box was located was not somewhere many, if any, hikers would be likely to do unless they were purposefully seeking it out. My Dad kind of thought that opening the box could be dangerous and that maybe we should just carry it down with us and return it to the park officials. I wanted to gamble a little and decided to open the box anyway. Here’s what I found inside:

Here’s a closer view of the note (an even closer view here).

Pretty cool, huh? I had never heard of geocaching prior to stumbling on this box, but I absolutely love the concept. The only thing either my Dad or I possessed that could really constitute as a “trinket” was a $5 casino chip from L’Auberge du Lac in Lake Charles, Louisiana that I had in my backpack, so I left that in the box and notated on the pad of paper the date that we found the box.

The whole geocaching thing seems pretty cool; when I’ve got the time, I might look into seeing if there are other boxes hidden around the Vegas valley. It gives a little more purpose to hiking than just a desire to exercise and be outdoors.

Later in the afternoon, I took my Dad to the Harley Davidson Cafe on the Vegas Strip (he’s really into motorcycles) where we ate a pretty huge meal. We walked off a lot of those calories in the following hours when I showed him around the Strip. We walked from Planet Hollywood north to Wynn on the east side of the Strip then crossed over to the west side and came back down to New York, New York where we rode the roller coaster they have.

All in all, it was a really enjoyable day where I estimate we walked probably about 8 miles. I just dropped my Dad off at the airport a little while ago. After I finish posting this entry, I’m going to head to the Rio where a summer of poker officially starts for me with the $1k event. More about that in the next entry.