I guess I'll talk about the boring stuff first since this is a blog about poker, and I have to get my little fix in each post. Poker went really well down there. I lost about $1k in cash, which was actually a pretty big accomplishment since each of the 2 out of the 3 nights I played cash I was stuck over $5,000 within the first 20 minutes. One of the nights I lost $6k in the first orbit and vowed I wasn't leaving until I was a winner. So 5 hours later or so this was the scene in front of me. A few k after this picture I had met the goal. The highlight of the night was definitely winning a $4,300 pot with 2nd pair in PLO that went 3 way to the river and was potted on the turn.
I lost the main event in about 2 hours, so there was another $1,600 down the drain. Fortunately, I went really deep in the penultimate $1k No Limit event and was fortunate enough to get some pictures along the way.
Here is me looking very intense at the final table
Here is me looking very calm as I jam my entire stack in with Jack high with 4 people left
Since you are likely getting tired of looking at me, here's my Tahoe roomate Dmitri
And now back to me eating some soup and then getting a massage
I had about 50% of the chips in play when we got down to 3 people, and the $50,000 first prize was in sight!
Unfortunately, the first hand of heads up play I decided to bluff away my entire stack and my opponent made a pretty ridiculous heroic call with 2nd pair on a very flushy/straighy board, and I ended up getting 2nd place for about $32,000. Dmitri was happy as he had 10% of my action, as was my buddy Brian from high school who had swapped 5% with me.
But it was still my second biggest live score ever, and definitely got me back on track for the year which had started out rather poorly.
And we are finally done with the poker part... onward to more important things!
My good friend Chris and his girlfriend April came down for the last few days of the trip, and one night we spontaneously decided to take a limo ride down to Miami to watch the Heat play the Wizards and check out my cousins new restaurant. You may know Chris as the legendary csfalcon18 Rush Poker extraordinaire. You also should remember my cousin Josh from a post many months ago; you'd better because he's the famous one in the family, not me.
Anyways where was I. Oh yes a limo ride from Palm Beach to Miami.
I was surprised to find out that a legend of online poker lived right in between the two cities and was up for coming out with us for the night. I'm speaking of course, of the legendary vinivici9586. If you play online poker at Poker Stars you know vini. Hell, you probably don't even dare speak his name for lack of 7 months of runbad. But he's always there, taking your paper and hiding somewhere in the confines of his parents' basement. Vini's real name turned out to be Vincent, but I had known him for way to long as the legendary vini, so henceforth he will be referred to as such.
But first, a picture of most of the crew in the limo!
If you've read this far, I assume you can figure out who is who. As we arrived in Ft. Lauterdale to pick up Mr. Vini, we were informed that he'd be bringing a date. Naturally as poker players, we decided to gamble on her ethnicity. I took Asian and Blaabar took the field giving me 3:1. I'll let you readers decide who won the bet as there was much confusion.
That's vini on the left, if there was any confusion about that part. Yes, that is the guy taking your paper every day. And yes, that is his 100% asian date for the night.
Moving onward!!!!
We proceeded to the Heat game which was a lot of fun. Dwade put up 41 points and Lebron can fly which was interesting to watch. I snapped a few pictures of the game...
The Heat won by 8 if I recall correctly, so everyone was happy. We quickly exited the arena where the limo was waiting for us and moved on to location number 2, Josh's new restaurant.
Now, I knew the restaurant was new, I just didn't know how new. The sign displaying the name of the place wasn't even up, and it turned out to be the second night that the restaurant was open to the public. We got lucky that the hostess flagged us down as we passed the place for the 3rd time. I'm not sure whether Josh let the staff know that we were coming, or it was because we all got out of a stretch limo, but they ended up clearing out the nicest table in the place for us. It was separated from everything else and in a library-esque room which was pretty amazing.
Speaking of amazing, I should talk about the food here. Oh first I should give the place a shout out since it's really great food. The name is Symcha's and it's located in South Beach, FL.
But back to the food. I had lamb with some truffle infused sweet potato mash and asparagus and everything was just about perfect. I also tried some of everyone's plates and would definitely order everything off the menu. I think the sea bass was my favorite though, so give that one a try if you end up at Symcha's.
Naturally, I couldn't contain myself and took a ton of pictures of food as you probably realize I do a lot by now.
What I'm getting at is if you happen to find yourself in the Miami area, check it out because I pretty much guarantee an awesome meal. And if you happen to be lucky enough to meet the chef, mention your a fan of cousin Daniel and maybe you'll be lucky enough to have the executive chef himself choose the cards when you Credit Card Roulette for the bill.
And Dmitri finally lost and had to pay for a dinner, so all was well with the world.
Here's the whole crew from that night...
The rest of the trip was pretty relaxing and uneventful.
We played some Chinese Poker on the beach.
We watched a master chef make onion volcano and scream "JAPANESE KETCHUP" at a hibachi place
And Dmitri and I played golf. It was his first time. He shot 78... on the front.
I think that's about it for now. The few days we've been back in Tahoe have been eventful, involving a Harry Potter lookalike, a very drunken night at Montbleu, and me buying the jacket off a guy's back. But we'll save all these stories and more for next time. And I promise there will be more as I'm headed to Vegas in 2 days for some festivities.
Goodbye world,
- Daniel
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