Vegas Baby!

Its official, I am going. I was supposed to go to Atlantic City for the first WSOP tournament in January at Harrah’s, but family obligations prevented that from happening (my tiny bankroll did not help the cause either). I will be in playing the $200+$25 Satellite on Saturday 3/19/05 at the RIO at noon and we will see what happens from there. I realize that is incredibly unlikely that I will actually win a berth to the WSOP the following day but it will be fun trying.

One drawback/kicker, depending on how look at it, is that this is also during the NCAA tourney. I will be there in time for the second round, so I expect every Sports Book to be overflowing, and possibly running into thousands of drunk, screaming, post-adolescent men (hopefully some will play poker while in this state) in the casinos. I love the tournament and I love to bet on sports – just not a big fan of crowds. I will deal with it.

Anyway, I am going with four of my in-laws who apparently are regulars, because just about every room we are getting is comp’d in one way or another. I didn’t ask, because I don’t really care. I just need a place to lie down occasionally. My wife is being VERY cool about this as she is due to have our FOURTH child on 2/17/05, and will be taking care of our 9, 5, and 1 year old kids in addition to the newborn while I am gone.

This will be my first “real” table experience in a casino. I have played home games before and had some moderate experience with live play, but the majority of my experience is online. As a warm up we are going to play a $70 buy-in tournament at Binion's on Friday afternoon so we can all get a little table experience before playing the satellite. One of my in-laws played at the Binion’s tournament last year, his first “real” table experience, and won the whole thing. I hope that one of us has a lucky run of cards. More trip updates to come...

BTW – The table is done is ready for play, although the cup-holders are not finished yet. The dining room table is working fine for now, so I think I will continue with the construction and not play on it until it is completely finished.