PCA Shenanigans - First Days in Tahoe

Hello world, it's been a while, and a ton has happened.  This might get long so I'll try and throw in a picture here and there to keep you occupied.  As I write this, I'm just chilling in the master bedroom of our Tahoe house (yeah, that was a nice flip to win), and watching the 3 roomates grinding it out downstairs.  Unfortunately I lost a boatload already today, so I figured I'd take a break and write some stuff and get my mind off poker.

PCA:

I left Atlanta and headed down to the Bahamas on January 7th with my stepbrother Jerel.  At the Atlanta airport I happened to be sitting next to another Supernova Elite from Atlanta 'king10clubs', who I'd tried in the past to meet up with but never could get our schedules to work out.  Nice guy, although he went to that shitty school in Georgia.  The plane ride down was hilarious, as probably 75% of the passengers were young internet poker players.  Kathy Liebert was on the plane down seated a few rows ahead of me.  Should you care, eh not really, but I thought I'd give her a shoutout.

We arrived in the Bahamas, and took an hour shuttle ride to the Atlantis resort.  The drivers were out of their damn minds down there.  If you weren't laying on the horn, you were doing something wrong.  There were about 10 passengers in the cab with us, and all of them got out at the Royal towers, where most of the PokerStars rooms were for the tournament.  Fortunately, being a SNE, Stars put me up in the Cove suites, which were isolated from the rest of the resort.  When we told the driver where we were staying, he asked how many millions we had brought to gamble with.  I felt like a boss, he probably just wanted a bigger tip.

The room was cool, here's some pics to prove it.

Those don't really do the room justice.  The bathroom was bigger than some hotel rooms I've stayed in, and the room itself was great.  It also had a pretty nice view from the balcony...

That day I went down the registration desk and was given something truly awesome.  It certainly made my entire grind last year worth it.  See, I give them over $200,000 in rake, and they give me a cool black card with my name on it!!!

We ended up meeting up with a bunch of guys that night who I play against nearly every day, but have never gotten the chance to meet in real life.  I didn't get too belligerent as the $10k main event was starting the next day, but we pounded some Bahamas style brewskis called Kalik and played a bit of live poker.  I think this was the night I was playing poker with internet legend MeleaB, who after finally beating me in a pot ripped his shirt off and starting singing and dancing at the table.  The floor told him to please keep in down, and he simply asked the lady "do you like it when I rub my nipples?"  I wasn't too interested in getting a shirtless pic, but I did get one of him staring down a player very intently.

And I found this picture of me and the stepbro.  Don't we look alike?

The main event started the next day.  My only previous $10,000 buy-in event was the WSOP main event last year, which went terribly and I busted about 2 hours in.  I was determined not to blowup in what was sure to be a pretty soft field with a $2.3 million dollar payday for first.  I really don't love writing about actual poker hands, and I know they are boring as hell to read, so I won't go into much detail here.

We started with t30k chips.  I played a lot of pots because I was bored and I wasn't getting free drinks at the table.  Hoyt Corkins was 2 seats to my left the entire first day, so there were cameras all over our table.  He's a real nice guy from Alabama who folds a lot.  About 6 hours into the day I opened KK and he 3 bet from the button.  I 4 bet to about t10,500 and we were both about t50,000 deep.  He tanked for about 10 minutes and finally folded what he told me to be AQ at the end of the day.  That was about the only time we tangled.  Hoyt, if you read this, you defend your big blind too light my friend.  That really can't be optimal.  Luckily you box and weak players just pay you off because you are a legend and are always on TV!

Near the end of the day I was up to about t90,000 in chips.  I got QQ all in pre against JT for 40k each, but the board ran out KQJ9x and I ended the day with t50,000.  Had I won this pot I would have had a really great stack headed to Day 2, but instead I was in the bottom half of the remaining field.

I had the next day off, so we layed by the pool and drank a bunch of Kaliks.  I was also introduced to the official mixed drink of the resort which was called the Goombay Smash.  Very simply it's a lot of Bacardi 151, some coconut rum, and pineapple juice.  You don't taste anything but the pineapple so inevitably you end up passed out on the floor somewhere yelling GOOOOOOMBAY.  Yes, I did this multiple times.

Day 2 started rather poorly.  I was in a few bad spots and was down to about 20k in chips from the 50k I started the day with.  I stole my way back to about 30k, and then at 1k/2k blinds I looked down at KK after an open to 5k from early position.  I jammed it all in there and he quickly called with AA.  It was nice, confrming my suspicion that live poker is rigged, and I was out in around 400th place.  243 got paid so I got a whopping $0.

The rest of the trip was a bit of a blur.  Jerel went home and my buddy Rob from college came down for the last week or so.  We drank... a lot.  I ended up losing about $10k more in random cash games and pit games.  I also bubbled a $1k 6max tourney where 40 got paid and I finished 43rd.

The highlight of the trip was probably playing a ton of poker with Sergio Garcia.  He was down playing the event, but busted late on day 1.  For the rest of the 10 days, he was constantly in the poker room playing $100 sng's and random cash games.  One night, I drunkenly hollered at him to play a hand for me.  We got to the river with about $500 in the pot before he whispered in my ear "Why do I have 4 cards."  Apparently Sergio's not up on his Omaha.  But we talked some golf, and some poker, and he seems like a good guy.  He gave me a butt pat when I lost a sit n go we were playing together, and I haven't washed that cheek since.

We went out and had nice dinners a few nights.  I wasn't really impressed with the Nobu at the resort.  It seemed ridiculously expensive and I definitely had better food at the Nobu in Vegas last summer.  Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill was amazing, and I'll definitely be eating there a ton assuming I'm back next year.  I think I had some sort of seared tuna which was out of this world.  The final day we went off the resort and tried to get some real Bahamas food.  Unfortunately, the meal took about 2 hours as the wait staff really doesn't care about the customers because a 15% tip is already included in every meal.  And the food was pretty bad, I remember both myself and Rob feeling pretty terrible the rest of the day.

The next day we flew home.  Verne Troyer aka Mini Me was in the front seat of the plane back to Atlanta.  I thought about shaking his hand, but figured that it probably would give me nightmares as he's a real small guy, and I have bad experiences with people with small hands (boy, I hope she reads this blog).  We got back in pretty late, and I spent 2 hours looking for my car in the parking lot because my phone was dead and I forgot where I had parked.

All in all it was a good trip.  It was pretty poor financially speaking, but I had a ton of fun and got to meet a lot of people that I had been dying to know more about besides a little picture and a poker name.  Assuming I get SNE again this year, I'll definitely be down again for PCA 2012.

Back in ATL for a few days...


I had 3 days in Atlanta before my flight to Tahoe, and I was all pokered out from the PCA, so I got some relaxing in.  I spend a day or 2 moving all my crap into storage and only managed to break one table, which was glass, and shattered all over my arm.  It felt nice.  About a week before I went down the Bahamas I had met a really great girl named Sydnee, so we went out the couple nights I was back in town.  Sorry I don't have any cool pictures of us diving out of planes or anything, but here's the best I can do.

Look, we got matching milkshakes.  Isn't that cute?  You're damn straight it's cute.  Very cute.  Unfortunately I had to leave for Tahoe pretty abruptly, but hopefully things will work out for the best.

The last night I was in Atlanta, I left Sydnee's place around midnight to head home and pack for the trip.  Yep, I'm very organized.  I went to parking lot and my car was gone.  I figured it had been stolen as there had been a murder at the Apt. complex a few weeks earlier.  But as it turns out it was simply towed away at 10:30pm, which I still don't really understand.  So there I was, in Atlanta, with no car, haven't packed for my 3 month trip, flight to catch in < 12 hours.  Many would just call in quits right there, but luckily I have some great friends who are on weird sleep schedules.  My good buddy Mike and his gf Bailey (CyOswalt and TennePenne) for you internet poker players out there, picked me up and took me to the towing place.

Midtown Towing in Atlanta is probably better described by one word: crackhouse.  It was scary.  There was a little shed and two guys were asleep inside cuddling.  In the main office 3 or 4 people were asleep.  Somehow I managed to get my car back from this disaster zone and only had to pay $150.  I flew home and didn't even get to sleep, but I packed everything up and made my flight with about 30 minutes to spare.

Tahoe


I've been out here for 2 days now.  I met Ryan at the airport as we had planned, but Speedle and Dmitri were late for some reason.  It turns out someone on their flight from London to LAX had a heart attack, and the plane was diverted to Canada.  They ended up getting in the next day and took a shuttle down to South Lake Tahoe where we picked them up.

I went out and spent a ton of money on a snowboard and boots, and a bunch of random gear that the people in the store told me was necessary.  I think the coolest thing I got was a helmet with built in headphones.  I haven't tried that out yet, but I'm looking forward to it tomorrow.  Awww who am I kidding, the coolest thing I got was definitely this...

Yep, it's green, it's sexy, and I cuddle with it at night.  Ryan and I went out and checked out some of the runs while Speedle and Dmitri got settled and we had an absolute blast.  It was about 50 degrees out and sunny, and I ended up just wearing a thin long sleeve shirt and pants to go boarding.  It was amazing having a nice board and not being on rentals, turning was a breeze and I can't wait to get back out there.  Ryan managed to snap a picture of me with the mountain and lake behind.

It's nice out here.  I'm really looking forward to these 3 months now.  Everyone else seems to be having a good time as well (although they are all winning today, and I"m the big loser).  Here's some pictures of the crew from breakfast this morning.  We've got Speedle who has no warm clothes and stands out as clearly not being from this country, Dmitri and moustache, and Ryan lookin' like a bum.

Well, that ended up being super long, so I'm gonna go downstairs and drink a brewski with the gang.  Were headed out to check out the action at the casinos tonight, so hopefully things will go well!

Till next time
- Weinman