WPBT 2006 Trip Report

12 JUL 06

Yet another incredible WPBT. Huge thanks to April for setting this up. I can’t imagine what you went through to pull this off. We all owe you a huge debt of gratitude. And kudos again for the speakers. One of my complaints last year was that the speakers were out of control and droned on too long. Not so this year. The stories and readings were brief, entertaining and appropriate. Howard Lederer was angry and topical, but what a great forum to talk about the politics of poker, especially given recent legislation. Roshambo with Phil Gordon was hysterical. Was anyone surprised that Veneno won heads up?

Random thoughts from Vegas:

I stayed downtown at the Golden Nugget. I was in their newly renovated North tower. It was… nice. I guess. I will forevermore stay on the strip, if for no other reason than it took almost an hour on the “Deuce” to get from the Nugget to Caesar’s Palace.

Random conversation heard on the Deuce. I was sitting in front of a father/son combo. The son (Timmy) sounded like he may be 5 or 6.

Timmy: Dad, what kind of birds do you like?

Dad: I don’t know, Timmy. I guess I like colorful ones like parrots or fast ones like falcons.

Timmy: No Dad. I meant do you like alive ones or dead ones.

Pause.

Dad: I guess I prefer the live ones, Timmy.

Timmy: I like the dead ones.

Dr. Chako gets off the bus.

Random cool occurrences:

I got a hug from Veneno. I belong, baby.

I played one table over from Shannon Elizabeth at the Venetian. Geeaahh.

I played a live game with Heather. As I said below, sorry I stormed off. Like I’ve said before, I’m prone to tilt. BTW – on that hand you said I had a huge tell, I was semi-bluffing with middle pair, weak kicker. Sorry.

My friend Dr. C won 10th place in the blogger tourney. She didn’t know until afterwards the quality of players she was up against.

Okay. I’m a geek. I admit it. Still, it meant a great deal to me that both Dr. Pauly and Otis remembered me (and even remembered my name)!

I got to shake hands with the thricely confirmed Bobby Bracelet. I called him over to my 2/5 NL table at MGM and we chatted briefly. It wasn’t until I saw him at the tournament that he noted that I was playing next to Laura Prepon from That 70’s Show. He laughed about it because he thought I was calling him over to introduce him to Laura, but in fact, I just wanted to shake the hand of the famous Playboy Mansion dweller. Who cares about some overly aggressive actress (she actually played decent poker), I met Bobby, dammit!

I shook hands, met or saw all my blogger heroes, including Speaker, Al, Iggy, Felicia, Grubby, Dawn Summers, Sir Waffles, Bill Rini, Pii (who started to my right in the tourney and placed 2nd), Joaquin (who started to my left), Michael Craig (seen here with Jennifer Harman courtesy of ccexplore, who is moving to Pokerworks, which is blocked on my hospital computer), DoubleA’s, Linda Geenen (also at Pokerworks and therefore blocked), and Amy Calistri.

Franklin (at least I think it was Franklin. His last post says he wasn’t planning on going to the WPBT Summer classic) got the stethoscope bounty, and F-Train won the thing. Well done to all the finishers.

I wish I spent more time playing donkey poker with bloggers as opposed to throwing my money at morons in the NL games. Only once did I get my money in with the worst hand, and now the BR is going to need some serious nursing before I’m ready to crash the tables again. Don’t worry; I’ll be back.

It just might not be until the next WPBT.