I just texted James (*Split*) to see if we can get the full micro full ring no limit moderation team together for a meet up tonight. With luck, he’ll be free; otherwise, I’ll only be hanging out with one, rather than both of, my best online buds from 2+2
Should be fun; Kurt seems like someone who knows how to have a good time, so I imagine it’s going to be a helluva night.
The title says it all. I was at the Venetian.
The table was crazy tight; a very solid table. It was a session notable only for the fact that I made a terrible play early in the session and spewed off a stack in a three bet pot.
I made it back from the fish at the table, but, in retrospect, I think I missed value on that hand, too.
I finished up a little bit despite having misplayed those two big hands, so even a crazy tight 2/5 table isn’t the end of the world, apparently.
I played an interesting hand against a husband and wife team who were cheating by signaling each other and working together to try to trap players between them. I suspected they were cheating before this hand, because they had acted suspiciously–the husband came in well before the wife despite the fact that we had two open seats at our table when he sat, and when she came to the table 20 minutes later, they ignored each other. I only found out that they were married when a friend of the woman came to the table and said that the woman at our table and her husband were expected at a party or something, and when the visitor said husband she gestured at the man across the table from the woman who was playing.
Here’s the 2+2 post I made about the hand:
Day three was a grind. HUGE technical difficulties with a couple of major leak detection written reports I was supposed to do today. Neither one got done, and I was only able to import one set of hands.
I spent a lot of time catching up with my wife, which was awesome.
I played a solid session at 1/2 at the V tonight. I finished up a bit over a buy in.
That’s it for day 3. The glamorous (heh) after party scene is done, Mike Bunin is in Hawaii, Olivia is back home and things will now likely settle down into more what I was expecting in the first place–coaching and grinding and not a lot of fun.
At the V tonight, Joe and I were sitting on either side of a solid 2+2er named Jonathan, from Los Angeles. I told Jonathan that as I was driving through Arizona on my way here, I saw road signs indicating that LA was only 400-and-something miles from there, and how I was tempted to keep heading for LA just so my drive would have been from coast to coast. He said we ought to come to LA and play some poker there, so that may happen. The point would be just to drive across the whole country so I’d have those bragging rights. I have negative interest in LA, but if we could get tickets to a Dodgers game, then that would be a legitimate reason to go.
So we’ll see on that.
(Only one playmate, actually)
Our home game donkament marathon at Dan’s house ended mainly because it was time for Mike Bunin to do his last two shows of his tour.
Joe and I went to play some poker while Mike performed, and we all planned to meet up later. We played at The Palms, where Mike was performing, just for the sake of convenience.
The $1/3 game I played in was one of the softest I have ever seen, and it took only an hour or so to chip up a couple hundred bucks. That was when I got the card rush of my life. In the space of 11 hands I was dealt AKs, AKo AQs, QQ, JJ, TT, 88 and KQs–and dropped $300 with them playing them nearly perfectly.
I picked up TT on the next orbit and a sweet fishy looking river overbet on a 89JQK board into a guy I (correctly) had on a set of Jacks got me back up on the session a bit. I finished the session a bit above break even an hour or two later.
Dear Las Vegas Dealers Association:
The memo you received to not deal mpethy any sets until future notice has been rescinded. Resume your normal dealing practices.
Sincerely,
whoever decided mpethybridge would be card dead
After poker, Joe and I met up with his brothers and his Vegas friends and we went to a club in The Palms called something like The Mint. I’m not a big club guy, and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Fortunately, Joe was getting along very well with a beautiful woman named Christy who was a friend of a friend, and whom I guess he knew slightly from a year or so before. they decided to go to the coffee shop next door for a bite to eat.
UNfortunately, Christy’s (even more beautiful than Christy) friend went along with Joe and Christy. Seeing a potential c**k blocking maneuver in the offing, I joined the three of them and (if I do say so myself) gracefully counter-blocked the attempted c**k block with the tried and true: get-her-to-talk-about-herself- and-ask-a-lot-of-questions-about-her maneuver that kept her completely out of Joe and Christy’s hair for the entire snack.
The spinach and artichoke dip was fantastic–the best I ever had–but I only managed five or six chips in between talking to the c**k blocker.
This was not tough duty–she was gorgeous and actually very interesting to talk to. So it was kind of fun, and the mission was accomplished successfully. Things may or may not develop there, but Joe got an unobstructed shot. Fair enough.
All of this time downstairs left Olivia Paige (the lovely Miss September) more or less abandoned upstairs in her room/suite/palace/whatever they had her in. The group sort of decided this sucked, so someone texted Olivia to meet us at Mike’s suite and we’d all hang out there. Which we did.
Despite my resolution on the previous evening not to get one, I wound up as the proud owner of a (hilariously) autographed copy of Olivia’s issue of Playboy.
Dear Playboy:
You people are idiots. The pictures in your magazine have been so air-brushed that you significantly detracted from Olivia’s looks. While she looks great (but fake) in the photos, in person, she is way more attractive than you made her appear in the magazine.
On a related note: get a clue–she is 19. When we saw her at the club as the show concluded, she was wearing a sparkly silver dress, had her hair artfully arranged and was professionally made up. She looked fantastic, but more or less like very other blonde that has appeared in your magazine for the past 50 years, and just a little like she was playing dress-up.
In Mike’s suite after the show, she was wearing a white T-shirt with gray sweat pants, and little or no make up. And she looked about a thousand times better than she did on stage, her natural beauty was clear to see, and she looked like the kind of 19 year old girl that could cause 19-26 year old men to kill and die for a chance to talk to her.
Please stop masking the beauty of playmates such as Olivia with ham-handed air brushing in some twisted effort to achieve conformity or interchangeability among your playmates.
Sincerely,
mpethybridge
So, basically, day two ended the same as day one–a low key private gathering of friends that just happened to include a Playboy Playmate.
I’m just gonna keep saying that for a while. A Playboy playmate. A Playboy playmate. Nope. You know what? It doesn’t get old.
Today started with a minor crisis: the internet at my hotel went out. I came over to my buddy Joe’s house to borrow his access, and then I did my coaching for the day.
After that, we went over to his brother Dan’s house to grill some dead animals. Eventually, because everyone there is a solid poker player, the chips came out and the felt was spread and we were playing a 6 max sit and go donkament. This was a tough game–Mike Bunin just cashed in the main event, Dan Bunin has cashed in the past in a WSOP event, Joe is a regular on the Vegas tournament scene and a consistent winner, and their friend Martin, who is a local Vegas businessman, is a successful small stakes and SnG winner on Stars.
No lie, I felt like the dog in the game. We played two tourneys with blinds doubling every 10 minutes, so it got to be a shove fest after about an hour each time. Joe won the first tourney and I took second, and Mike shipped the second one with Martin taking second–I went out in fourth place in the second tournament.
Right now, we are on our way to the Palms. Joe and I are going to grind out some hands while Mike does his act for the last time, and then we are going to go to the cast party, or whatever they call it when a stand up tour wraps up.
I got into Vegas early in the afternoon Vegas time. After squaring away a stupid scheduling mistake that caused me to miss my appointments, I got started on Vegas.
Step one was to contact one of my oldest friends. he lives here, and he and one of his brothers have a law practice here together, Bunin & Bunin. Their other brother is a successful actor named Mike Bunin, who is one of the ensemble on the TBS series “My Boys.”
He is doing a stand up routine here in vegas at the Playboy Club with another of the cast of “My Boys,” Jamie Kaler. When i contacted my buddy to tell him I was in town, he informed me that i was joining him to watch his brother Mike and Jamie do their act. I happily agreed, as I haven’t seen Mike since he was maybe 12 years old.
The act was fantastic, and included a guest appearance by Playboy’s upcoming Miss September, Olivia Page.
After the show, friends and family went for a quiet drink and dinner, and I got to spend some time with Jamie and Olivia. Jamie is an absolute riot. It’s no wonder that he does a kick ass stand up routine, because he is more or less exactly like that off stage, too.
Olivia seemed very nice. Obviously I don’t know what most playmates are like, but this one really is your basic girl next door. She is bright, outgoing and handles herself very well for a young lady of 19.
Epic fail as far as you all are concerned, but I have no pictures. Truthfully, while I might have admired her pictures had I seen them first, having met her before having seen her Playboy shoot, I really don’t have any desire to see it. So go buy yourself an issue if you want to see her.
I guess that means I am old. Oh well, I am.
Other than that, my first day in Vegas was a bit of a disappointment. I ground out a few hours at 1/2 at the V just getting my feet wet in live poker again. I finished down half a stack, mostly due to a bad river check/call that came from arrogantly thinking, “this fish will value bet worse,” when the alleged fish in the hand had been trapping the whole hand.
So my thinking of who had been the fish in the hand changed a bit, and I buckled down, put on my A-game, and got half unstuck before I had to leave to go to the show.
My initial impression of 1/2 at the V is that the games have gotten considerably tougher since the last time I was here in 2007. They are still beatable for a successful micro-stakes grinder online, but it would not be the cake walk it would have been a few years ago. Even the worst player at my table had a clue.
So I’m going to play another day or two of 1/2, and then probably sit in a 2/5 game mid-week sometime.
Today was the day I have been waiting for in the road trip. I finally hit Arizona. Aside from my home, Arizona is pretty much my favorite place in the world. I love the desert and I love the mountains.
I was stationed here for a few months back in my army days. I went through the U.S. Army Intelligence School at Fort Huachuca back in 1984, and I have wanted to come back to Arizona ever since.
I’d never been to this part of the state before, and, as usual, Arizona did not disappoint. The Flagstaff area was gorgeous, with lots of pine forests west of town. East of the city it looked like New Mexico.
My day started at about 8:00 a.m. eastern, when I hit the road from Gallup. That was actually funny. I went looking for a cup of coffee and the first place I came to was a place called West End Donut and Deli. I walked in and the only two people there were the guys that run the place. They were both New Mexican hard cases–the one who got me my coffee was maybe 6’5″, lanky and strong looking. He looked like a gun slinger, but there he was frying donuts.