I had originally planned just to come to Vegas for the main event, but a combination of jealousy, guilt and the New Zealand weather changed my mind. Making the trip to Vegas just for one tournament was a bit of a stretch, and i'd have been pretty rusty having not played live since the Aussie Millions.

I had three flights to catch, the first of which was 45 minutes after I walked off the football pitch having been part of a Tauranga side's capitulation. Having been 3-0 up we conspired to concede three late goals, so having a plane to catch was a pretty good excuse to get the hell out of there.

Neil had already been out here for over a week and had decided to make the Gold Coast his base for the first 10 days or so. Excellent decision, it's a 5 minute walk from the Rio and the WSOP, and at $50 a night you can't go wrong. On landing in Vegas Neil had texted me telling me he was in the final 100 of a $1500 event, so I jumped in a taxi, dropped my bags off at the hotel and hotfooted it to the Rio. Unfortunately by the time I arrived he had lost a chip lead pot to that annoying “quack quack” guy, but still had 20 or so bbs to work with. I hung around on the rail for an hour or so, where our friend Dave joined me just in time to see Neil bust. Neil was downhearted, but not enough so to reject an invitation to join Kristian (Bwin VIP host) and an old friend Dario and his wife for drinks at the Mandalay.

On arriving it was pretty clear Kristian was well on his way, slurring words and demanding we catch up. As Dario put it “it shouldn't be hard, we have two bottles of grey goose between four of us!” In true Kristian style, the vodka wasn't enough of course, as he turned to me after having a word with the waitress and said “Guess what I just ordered?!”. It wasn't the most difficult of guesses to make, he had ordered Jagerbombs, just 15 of them. 

“But Kris, there's only four of us drinking”.
“So?”

Shockingly we didn't manage to finish the Vodka before we'd decided it was time to hit a club at the Wynn, so in my drunken wisdom I stuffed the remaining 1/3 of a bottle of Grey Goose down my jeans to consume on the way. I'm not sure what happened to that bottle, but to be honest I'm not sure what happened for the next two hours. Apparently we decided against going to a club at the Wynn, and instead based ourselves for a while in a bar where we bounced around talking to anyone who would listen – I don't think we spoke to many people.

On leaving the bar, Kristian and I made the obvious decision to hit a cash game and five minutes later we were at at a 1/3NL table. Neil headed home instead, with one eye on the England vs Germany game that was starting at 7am, ie in 3 or 4 hours time.

Unfortunately I don't remember too much about the poker game to give a breakdown of hands I played and my thought processes, but I was playing most unopened pots and didn't fold too often. I managed to cash out in the end showing almost $1k profit. 

I do semi recall the final hand I played.

I must have opened in early mid as the villain in the hand was the bb and he was sat in the no. 1 seat with me opposite him. I don't recall the specifics, but I cbet the flop with air, then barrelled the turn when an overcard fell, then miraculously caught a gutshot on the river.

The board read: T 7 2 J 8

The villain in question was about 50 and when he checked to me he gave me that look of “I'm going to call you son”. So I just had to work out how much he would actually call.

There was $100 in the middle and he had ~$400 back. I thought for a while and decided $200 was a good number, slid the chips in for him to insta call. I flipped over my 94o and he stood up peering at it, then back at the board before mucking his cards, then standing up grabbing the rest of his chips  he said “You're much better at this game than I am” and walked out.

It's a sad day when I'm bragging about winning at 1/3 at 6.30am.....

With the England game approaching I started to make some calls to try and find my friends who I had semi arranged to watch the game with, but received no response. I later found out that they were all passed out, although Neil claims he saw some of the match in his hotel room. At that point I remembered that my German friends had invited to me watch the game with them at a German beer hall called “Hofbrauhaus”. Walking out of a Vegas casino having been out all night is hardly a new experience, but it still amuses me.

On arriving at the beer hall I was immediately glad I had gone. The place was packed with loud singing Germans and there were multiple friends of mine from prior poker trips there supporting their team. A 2 pint stein of German lager was thrust into my hand and it wasn't long before I was munching on a bratwurst hotdog. 

I had been supporting England in the World Cup, but to be honest I didn't really care if they won or lost. That's the beautiful thing as a Scotsman who can stand to see England win. You're a winner either way, if they win, great and if they lose you can still laugh. The manner of England's defeat was unfortunate with Lampard being disallowed a perfectly good goal at 2-1, but Germany were without doubt the better team.

After the game I hung around with a few of the guys then took a taxi back to the Gold Coast, by now it was 10.45am and I managed to secure an early check in. 

I slept through until 5pm, pottered about on the internet then met up with Neil, Dave and Kristian to head over to Dario's apartment for a nice home-cooked steak, which was absolutely brilliant. That was to be my only meal of the day as I crashed just after midnight. All in all great couple of days preparation for my first event!

I've now played in two events without success. I'll blog a bit on them in the next few days. I'm planning on playing the $1k on Thursday and the $2.5k on Friday, but plans may change – it's Vegas.