Greetings from Las Vegas. 110 degree heat Las Vegas. A city so debaucherous, degenerate, and hot that it would make a great candidate for the capital of hell should the opportunity ever arise. That being said, I'm having a great time out here thus far, so I'm not really sure to make of that. Unfortunately, Poker has been about as awful as possible, but at least there is some silver lining in being able to have so much free time...

First the house. This place is pretty amazing. It's located only 10 minutes from the strip, is in a nice well-to-do neighborhood, and has just about anything possibly needed within a few minutes. Right now there are 13 people currently residing here, with the 14th to arrive soon. The chef, Mike, has been cooking his whole life, and everything he cooks is damn near perfect, if not already. His lasagna is the best I've ever had, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the addition to my limited exposure of Cajun/New Orleans style meals. That being said, I am in great need to hit up the gym. You'd think it would be easy to with all the offtime that poker has obliged me; however I'm to the point of motivation that I owe 50 dollars to a roommate if I don't go today... a number is actually parlayed from the 20 I lost from not going yesterday :P

Fortunately, there is plenty of money to be won (and lost) out here. Living in a house with a slew of poker players has led to an absolute onslaught of degeneracy in ways I never would have imagined. A pool table resides near the dining room table, of which many bets have already been placed on. Not so standard though, have been the prop bets which have been taking place around the house, ranging from who can catch a dollar bill with their mouth when dropped from upstairs, to games of H.O.R.S.E. using a bouncy ball and a laundry basket, to watching a roommate attempt multiple times to land a front flip.

So while everyone has been fun and multiple degeneracy occasions have occurred, the rest of the trip has been pretty meh thusfar. The heat is obviously something I'm not the biggest fan of. It is very dry heat, and actually has me longing for the Florida humidity im so used to, especially when windy outside. Having no motor vehicle has also been a pain in the ass. Taxi's are alot more expensive than I would have thought, with cab rides anywhere from 20-35 bucks, aka a ridiculous charge which was in no way budgeted for.

As for the actual purpose of the trip, poker, well I've had better weeks. Tournament poker is a very high variance version of the game, with only 10% of every field cashing, and so far for myself I am experiencing such variance. I have played 1 1k, 2 560's, and 3 350's, to find myself 0/6 for cashes, dinner breaks, and things that are generally positive reinforcements when playing this game.

Two poker stories. My very first tournament was my first ever WSOP event, the 1k. With only 3k starting stacks, play is very shallow and forces one to acquire chips as well as push edges where you might not with a deeper structure. At the 75/150 level, the gentleman to my right opens to 500 with 2600 behind, the larger than normal raise not out of line for him. I look down at AK, and with ~4k behind, raise to 1700, committing my stack to the hand. The man takes 3 minutes, calls the clock on himself, and with 20 seconds left finally sticks in the rest of his stack with KK. To put it in perspective, I've played roughly 700k hands of poker in my life, and have never once folded KK preflop. Needless to say no Ace, and I busted about 10 hands later when my allin AQ lost to AJ on a KQx10x board.

The second hand occurred in a Venetian 350, where I was sitting comfortably with 45k at the 500/1000 level. I opened Kd4d in the cutoff to 2400, and folds around the big blind who makes a call. We check a J82 flop, and when he checks a 3 on the turn, I fire 3100, which he calls. The river comes a Queen, putting a straight out and an overcard to the board. He checks, and feeling I could win the pot with an all-in, I do exactly that. Unfortunately, he practically beat me in the pot calling off his stack. I tell him he's good, and he replies Ace high, which unfortunately is still better than my King high. I was pretty much owned by a ridiculous soul read.

But in spite of of poker not going anywhere close to the direction that I would like it to be, I am having an absolute blast out here. It's absolutely surreal being out here for the WSOP, something I've wanted to do for 5+ years now. I'm hoping that by writing today, it will jump start my writing for the rest of the trip, as I have plenty of things I want to write about, and it's something I wanted to do the whole time.