Finally Back

Let's work backwardsish.

My original Vegas plan was to leave on the noon flight on Sunday. This would get me home Sunday night and I'd be at work Monday.

But I made it to day 2 in the Caesar's megastack. Whoops. So I pushed the flight back to the red-eye. I almost pushed it back further to the Monday noon flight, but that was oversold, so my chances of getting out were slim. CK and I killed time at the Rio until it was time for me to head out. As I was walking to the cashier to turn the remnants of my craps chips into money, my leg vibrated. I flipped open my phone to hear my mother's voice - "Have you called the airport?" "No, why?" "Your flight is cancelled."

Shit. I got the airport # from the front desk and called. After navigating their voice system, they confirmed it. Mom calls back to let me know I was rebooked on the morning replacement flight. Guess I get another night in Vegas. Damn, I could have played the P-Ho donkament with Smokkee and Love Elf. CK and I wander down to find F-Train at the WSOP. He's using all 135 of his lbs to cover the HU final table. So we grab a seat and watch the magic happen. Live HU is about as boring as it gets. We go find LJ. A drink or two later and CK and the Train are heading home. LJ and I head back to the WSOP area to see what's going on. We marvel and Barry Greenstein playing the 10k LHE game hours after winning the Razz bracelet. Turns out he was multitabling. We find Change100 whiling away the hours as the $5k PLO rebuy bubble is ready to burst. Off the top of my head, this was who was left on the final 2 tables:

Negreanu, Ferguson, Hellmuth, Chan, Benyamine, Juanda, Kostritsyn, Elezra, and Williams... and obviously 9 others. Hell of a room, and at 2am, pretty damned empty.

We hung around for a while, chatting with Change as she needed a break from the boredom of consolidating coverage of bubble play. Anyway, I got to bed far later than was a good idea for someone who needed to be up at 7:30am to make it to the airport early enough for his flight. I was a bit late, but that was fine... since the flight had been moved to 12:15 instead of 11:15. Which was also fine, because I got "selected" for additional screening. It happens every time in Vegas with a standby ticket.

So I wait... and wait... and then get bumped from the flight with 6 other passriders because of weight restrictions. Next flight? The red-eye, 12 hours later. I call CK and we meeet up at the Rio again... LJ finds me first as I was getting rid of flight tilt by feeding benjamins into the slots. Not really a +EV move. Once CK showed, we moved to the Rio poker room (in the casino proper). My AA cracking CK's JJ, along with a couple other luckboxy hands had me up with a big stack early. It stayed pretty strong until our table broke and my AA was cracked by 85 with... a 9 on the river giving him the 9-high straight, despite me betting all the way down. Guy claimed to be on tilt and apologized. I never really recovered and ended up down $155... although if the guy with top set called my push a baby straight, I'd have been even.

Anyway, CK, LJ, F-Train and I grabbed some grub at Rub before one last spin of slots wheels. CK gave me a lift to the aiport and I was "selected" yet again. Twice in one day... awesome. I joked with the security guys about it... we all had a good laugh. I mean, I figured they might as well save the spiel about random selection since it was the 3rd time I'd heard it in Vegas. The 4th departing flight I was booked on worked out and I finally got home at 7am this morning. I just realized that dinner was the last thing I've eaten... that was 15 hours ago...