Running-a-muck in Sin City: July 4 editon!

Is it wrong if I can't remember if I saw fireworks on 4th of July? I mean It's VEGAS BABY! That's a good reason for clinging to my bed and hating the world Monday morning right? RIGHT!! (Yes it gets 2 !). I warn that words will fail to truly capture this amazing weekend. And when I say weekend I really mean Wednesday till Sunday + Monday to recuperate! That's right! (OK I'm gonna hold back my ! excitement and get to it cause I doubt you want to read me saying ! every! other! word!!!!!)

So as Addy, Ethan and I sat waiting for our ride we got a little antcy. So after a couple cases of Becks Light we said Muck it and decided to play our own hold'em home game! However, the only chips in the house were Sour Cream & Onion Lays... Good thing the three of us are so damn resourceful... We ended up using BecksLight bottle caps!

Ok so we hit the road, I downed 5 hour energy drinks like they were shots of Patron (Yeah I was on a total of 15 hours of Energy if they accumulate) and finally, like wayward travelers, we reached sin city...and OH DID THE SINNING BEGIN!

As soon as we checked into the Rio we were like a blizzard transforming our hotel-maid-service-clean room to a swinging pad, deep stacked with all sorts of delicious poisons. "I take a shot of patron, 2 shots and it's on, 3 shots, 4, shots, 5 shots, oh shit i KNOW I'm gone!" Not sure if it went down exactly like that...it was hard to tell after the 3rd shot. After waking up fresh (sorta) on July 2nd we hit up the start of POKER PALOOZA. Poker Palooza was something that words cant describe. I was in LALA land, seriously it was like Disneyland for the poker lovers. With over 60 exhibitors ranging from bad-ass pimped out card tables to funky poker t-shirts to Jacks Beef Jerky, there was something to be found for everyone.

Oh, and did I mention Poker Palooza was part CARNIVAL! Complete with jousting, sumo wrestling, rock climbing, mechanical bull, basketball hoops, and Wack a Mole (Yep freaking Wack A Mole, I KNOW!)



Yep I got my joust on! Addy that mucker never heard of letting a girl win. Some gentleman he is. At least I got him in the head a few times.

Outside the walls of Poker Palooza the WSOP was going down (seriously the sound of hot poker studs playing with their chips made me feel like Odysseus being beckoned by sirens).

The energy surrounding Thursdays event, Ante Up for Africa, was something unlike anything I had ever seen. With the amount of celebrities and poker pros playing in this charity tournament that was started 3 years ago in order to raise money for relief in Darfur created this surreal-dream-like atmosphere. It was a great feeling for a great cause that has raised over 2 million dollars. ***Not to mention it put me an arms length away from Ben Aflec and my girl Val was to busy flirting with Matt Damon to remember that she was THERE WITH HER FRIENDS...Lucky BIATCH!

But hey, no worries. Because as adorable as Matt Damon may be, he is still only an actor, and at the WSOP that's second best. I, on the other hand, got the real deal. Peter Eastgate, the 22 year-old defending Champ himself, smiled at me. Yes him! Out of the 6,494 entrants in the main event this year I caught his eye!

I was in a frenzy. Seeing the ESPN featured table, legends like Phil Hellmuth, and just being so immersed in the energy of the WSOP had me itching to play some poker, and the fact I couldn't afford a 10K main event buy-in was not going to stop me. Oh no! I be ballin up in the Stratosphere with the $60 buy in. Yeah that's me at the final table, what did you expect? Starting chip stack was 4000 and in the end as chip leader I had over 60k+. I walked away with 500 bucks after we chopped the pot. Yep, I'm puttin that money towards the buy-in for WSOP 2010, hehe.

Then, of course, the 4th finally came around and we got our drink on...and on...and on...and sometime around 9 PM on the 5th, I came to my senses in the back seat of our car, leaving Sin City, with barely a recollection of this crazy whirlwind adventure.

All I can say is what an amazing 4th of July weekend...now I just need to remember if I saw fireworks or not ;p