The Walk of Shame...

Well, I got to do the walk of shame this morning. You know the one where you are leaving Las Vegas and, not only are you not coming home a winner, but you didn't even win a single dime. I need Kaci around to paint an L on my forehead. I guess I should have played a hand of blackjack or a cash game just to win a few bucks to ease the pain.

Thursday went about like the first 3 days of the trip. I decided to skip Thursday's World Series of Poker event because of family and work commitments on Friday and Saturday. The Bellagio 1k looked perfect for my schedule. For the 4th time this trip, my tournament lasted less than 1 hour and 20 minutes. I will spare you the details, but, basically, it was more of the same. I lost with AA in a 3 way pot - lost to BOTH of the other players. One player turned 3 of a kind. The other guy rivered 3 of a kind. I did well to only lose half my stack. The final blow was my 2nd best flush versus the best possible flush.

I went down to the Venetian to catch up with Andrew and play some cash games. When I got there I noticed a pretty long registration line. It turned out that they had a Pot Limit Omaha tournament starting at 4. I've never played PLO, but dang it, I'm a card player. Sign me up!!!! The worst part of the tournament is that it is mostly a European game. They are a grumpy sort, sometimes a little smelly, and are generally mean to the dealers. But, hey, there's very few crowds where I'm the guy with the nice teeth, so I was fine with it.

I was having a blast, playing ok, and actually built up a nice stack. Because the game was new to me, I really had to concentrate on the hands. In Omaha, you get 4 cards to start with and you must play exactly 2 of them. I had trouble picking up some of the nuances of the game. Like when I had AJ44 and the board read A6636, I announced that I had an Ace. The dealer graciously corrects me and tells me that if I want to win the pot, I better play my 44 for 66644. If I played the Ace, I have to use two cards which knocks out one of the 6's and makes my hand AA66J. Ahh... details... Europeans don't like giving their chips to guys that don't even know how to play. I tried to reassure them that I was a pretty decent hold'em player, but I don't think they were buying the story.

Everything was going really well until I learned that this tournament was scheduled to come back the next day to finish the final table. I didn't play the WSOP because I wanted to go home Friday, and now I'm playing some silly Omaha tourney that I may have to finish on Friday. I'm not too bright, sometimes.

I decide that there is no way that I am going to come back for this tourney unless I have a monster stack. I started looking for spots to gamble it up. We were scheduled to play until 2:00am. About 12:30am, I started getting itchy because I had worn down to a below average chip stack. A little later, I found a spot to put it all-in with AsKsTh9h and somehow managed to lose to AcKh9s4s. It's an amazing feat, but I pulled it off. I got it in good and finished 34th out of 284 PLO players. I had fun and it kind of lifted my spirits to play a different game without expectations of doing something great.

I can't wait to get home to see my family and get back to work. I'm signed up for day 4 of the main event, so keep an eye out for the blog starting July 6th. MJ will be there with me for that trip which will make it a lot more fun to do something besides play poker all the time. I am still excited for the main event because I know I can play better, and I don't think I can be more unlucky than I was this trip. Thanks for rooting me on.