So today I’m headed to Puerto Rico for my friend Dave’s bachelor party.  I did a little homework and it seems that they do have poker at Puerto Rican casinos.  The reports state that all they spread is limit hold ’em with an outrageous (10%) rake.  But the reports also state that it’s no fold ’em hold ’em in the truest sense:  pretty much every player sees every flop.  We’ll see what this mainland rock can do in these games.

Unfortunately, this is the most exciting poker-related thing I can say about this trip to Vegas. 

I played two tournaments, bubbling the $300 at the Wynn on Thursday, then finishing 17th out of around 80 players at the $1000 at Bellagio on Friday.  In both tournaments I made a nice comeback and had plenty of chips just before my demise.  I then got into a big confrontations with bigger stacks, got my money in when I was ahead, and got drawn out on.  If I win either hand, I’m making big money.  Blah.

The cash games haven’t been much better.  I got into a juicy NL game at the Wynn, but had a few unlucky breaks there and couldn’t make much money.  Then I played in a 2-4 NL game at Mandalay Bay, which historically has always been among the fishiest of scenes.  But when I went (Thursday Night), I was disappointed to find that it was a table full of poker dealers from other properties, all of whom were good players, and some of whom were softplaying one another.  Far from ideal conditions.  Oh well.

As the title of this post implies, I had the opportunity to play with Sam Grizzle on this trip.  When the Bellagio tournament got down to two tables, I drew the seat to Sam’s immediate right.  Some of you might remember Mr. Grizzle from ESPN’s 2003 World Series of Poker coverage, when he and Phil Hellmuth were hurling insults at one another. 

Sam is a very interesting character.  He’s an older, weather-beaten looking man from South Carolina, a true veteran of the poker scene that plays mostly cash games.  He talks continuously while he plays.  His chatter, which is delivered rapidfire in a thick accent (he sounds kinda like Hank Hill’s jibberish-talking friend on “King of the Hill”) has a disorienting, dizzying effect on his opponents.  He simply does not shut up, even when hands are being contested.  He seems to have a talent for separating his brain from his mouth–he can make accurate reads and good decisions at the table while simultanesouly talking utter nonsense about scinitllating topics like the best catfish he ever tasted. 

Sam also has a reputation for being very surly and discourteous, to put it nicely.  Others might just say that he’s a jackass.  I do know that at one time he was banned from both the Mirage and Bellagio.  He has allegedly gotten into physical altercations with both Phil Helmuth and David Grey.  On Friday, though, Sam was running good and was in a capital mood.

Sam had just busted another player.  The other guy limped in early position and Sam checked his big blind.  The flop came A-2-5 rainbow and Sam led out with a 1/2 pot sized bet.  The other guy smooth called.  The turn was a 9, and again Sam bet half the pot, and got called again.  The river was a jack, and this time Sam made a big bet.  The other guy immediately went all in and Sam said “ah cawl” before the other guy could even push his chips into the pot.  The other guy showed a set of fives, but Grizzle turned over the 4-3 of spades.  He had flopped a wheel.  And boy was he delighted with himself.  He cackled for three solid minutes after the conclusion of the hand.

Playing next to Sam Grizzle went something like this:

So, ahm head-up in this Omahaw-eight tourn’ment.  This hadda be ’round ’92 or ’93.  And this guy cain’t play a lick.  I mean, yer sister can play better Omahaw-eight than this fella.  But he’s talkin’ all sorta mess.  Sez ah got no chaince ‘gainst ‘im.  Tells it to mah faice.  (Sam open-folds).  Well you know ahh ain’t takin’ that shit from this nobody, so ah sez to him, ‘aww right fella, how’s ’bout this here:  let’s the two of us play for awl the caish, second place gets nothin’.’  Well that shut ‘im up right good.  So then ah started beatin’ on him, pot after pot…  Hol’ on justa second while ah try to steal these here blinds…. (Sam raises three times the big blind).  So finally ah git this dummy down to ’round a third of the chips in play, and the blinds are a-way up there now… (the small blind puts in a reraise).  Reraise to how much?  Sementy-two hunnerd?  What in the hell could you have there, bud, bettin’ me sementy-two hunnerd?  Ah raise it up in second position and you pull that shit?…  Aww right, i’m gonna lay one down for you, fella, jus’ this one time… (Sam folds, dealer ships opponent the pot).  So where was I?  Right, so this guy comes in fer a raise and ah look down n’ see two aces and a duece.  So ah reraise this fella all in, and he cawls me with… get this… some boolshit haind like jack-nahn-semen-three.  (Sam open-folds the next hand)… An’ a-course what flops?  jack, nahn, semen.  This fool makes two payer on me.  But the turn ‘an river came a-runnin’ tens or some shit and ah win the damn tourn’ment.  Ain’t that some shit?  (Sam open folds again and notices my little box of toothpicks).  Care to share, pardner?  (I give Sam a toothpick and he pops it in his mouth, then makes an exaggerated funny face).  Goddamn, what in the fuck is een these things?  Awstrailyen tee-trea toothpics?!  My mouth is burnin’!  What kinda of bool-shit toothpick did you give me, fella?  Yer tryin’ to take me offa mah game, ain’t ya?  Well that ain’t gon’ work on me, ah can tell you that…

I have arrived.  I’m back in Vegas for the first time since the ’06 World Series.

The phrase in the title of this post is a tribute to my current Vegas roomate Matt Catapano, for whom “dear blogisphere” is a two-word mantra.  The translation, loosely, is “David’s blog is gay.”

Anyway, I never lose in Las Vegas cash games.  Hopefully my forays on this trip will not be any exception.

Am I allowed to be doing this?

‘Cause I am.

Just a short post to congratulate my longtime friend Steve-O on quitting his job at a prestigious Wall Street law firm so that he and his wife can pursue their dream of being scuba instructors somewhere in paradise. 

For those unfamiliar with my background, my first job out of law school (where I met Steve-O) was at a similar firm.  While these places compensate you very well for your services, I found the work wholly unrewarding and discovered that large law firms are where douchebags who are intelligent but are devoid of creativity or personality go to roost (no disrespect to the group of big firm friends reading this, i’m not talking about you). 

Steve-O has been talking about jumping ship (no pun intended) for a long time.  Props to him for giving something else a go.  New York will miss The O, although i’m not too sure he’ll miss New York.

I have added a link on the right side of the page labeled “Team Schmoop,” which is the name of his webpage (also designed and set up by the inimitable Jon Marston).  You can directly link to it here as well.  As you can see, Steve is much better at doing stuff with his website than I am. 

Good luck Steve and Andrea!

Unless something miraculous happens in the next two days, I have just withstood my worst month as a professional poker player.  Specifically, in January 2007, I went to the Bahamas and Borgata and played a lot of tournaments, and I got my ass handed to me in almost every one I entered.  Borgata in particular seems to be my personal house of horrors: despite comically shitty fields in every event I’ve ever played there, I can’t seem to win a dime in AC’s monstrous faux-Vegas joint.

I’m pretty bummed about this dry spell. If I had started last year out this way, I might be in court right now rather than typing this.  But it ain’t last year, and I’m not about to jump out my window or anything.  I have spent a bit of time considering what went wrong in January 2007, and here are my conclusions.

Natural Variance:  Tournaments are swingy. And by swingy I don’t mean married couples having consensual sex with each other. I mean that droughts are totally normal: a tournament player’s result charts should have big swings. By playing exclusively tournaments (rather than cash games) in January, and by putting quite a bit of tournament entry money into play, I certainly did not mitigate this factor. I can recall quite a few hands where I was bitten by bad luck. I also know that I held an unusually low number of premium hands both at Atlantis and Borgata. I usually mock people who complain too much about never being dealt aces. A good player will pick up chips regardless. Shame on me for mentioning that.

Holes In My Game:  Another thing I have noticed about this month is that I made very few creative “outside the box” plays, and when I did make a creative (read: aggressive) preflop play, I failed to follow that play up with post-flop aggression. At this point, I can play a reasonable brand of tight-aggressive poker when I’m drunk, half-asleep, eating dinner, watching TV, whatever.  Too often this month, I was in that autopilot mode.  There were situations at Borgata especially, where I should have played more hands in position, and situations where I should have reraised preflop with air.  Instead, I played surprisingly passively and let some poor players “dictate tempo” to steal a sports phrase.  Only at very rare junctures could an observer say that I was terrorizing my table.  And people who win poker tournaments terrorize their tables.

Mental State:  This one strongly correlates with the prior category.  Unfortunately, I’ve spent the last two weeks in a mental fog. In small part this is due to the accumulated effects of constantly losing, which does wear on you a bit.  It is also due to some serious frustration dealing with Neteller, which held quite a bit of my money in limbo for several weeks.  It seemed I had no recourse, but I recently was able to secure my funds through some rather cunning means.  But the larger reason has been the sudden illness and subsequent death of my parents’ dog Maggie.  I really loved that little fucker, and when I heard she was on her way out, I was overwhelmed with sadness.  I think the news reduced my focus a bit, and my game suffered.

She was a really special dog.  She had a level of intuition that most dogs are incapable of–what poker players call “second level thinking” and what lawyers might call an understanding of “proximate cause.”  Maggie was able to identify the things that deprived her of attention and eliminate them, like a petulant child.  For instance, she had no tolerance for books or newspapers.  If you began to read in her presence she would attack whatever you were reading and scratch it out of your hands.  She also knew how important the TV remote control was.  When she was feeling especially feisty, she’d grab it and hide under the bed, causing my father a lot of grief and providing the rest of us with a good laugh.  She also knew how to use her “table image” to her advantage:  Any time a person walked through the front door, she brought them a gift (usually a shoe, but sometimes a pillow). 

I remember the day my mother and I picked Maggie up as a pup. I was in my first year of law school, immobilized after having knee surgery and living at my parents’ house, so I spent a lot of time with her back then.  I helped train her and I like to think I also helped instill her with the unique persona she displayed from that time forward.  She was very affectionate, but at the same time she took no shit from anyone.  Even though she was physically diminutive, my parents’ place was Maggie’s house!  Hanging out with her whenever I’d visit my parents was one of the best things about going home for the past decade.  Seeing her bedraggled and helpless for the first time in her life in the past couple of weeks was heartbreaking.

Appreciate your pets, it’s easy to forget their life spans are much shorter than ours. RIP, Maggie May….

As for me, in the last tournament I played, I was totally on point.  In the Full Tilt $300k Guaranteed last night I found myself doing funky things like reraising fools with 10-5 offsuit, checkraising guys with air on ace-high flops, and being a general nuisance, just like Maggie.  They couldn’t run me down until there were 70 people left out of over 2100, and I almost made a huge score.  You haven’t heard the last from me.

This week, I returned to AC so that I could try and satellite into the WPT main event. From playing at the Borgata last week, I figured that the satellite fields would be fairly weak. The fields were indeed weak, but I still managed to swing and miss in both tournaments.

In these tournaments, I played well and accumulated chips through the early and middle levels. But then, in each tourney, big hands arose in which I made poor decisions that crippled me. After the fact (yeah CBO log!), it occurred to me that both hands involved a distinct internal struggle: my instincts and my training were at odds. In both instances my gut told me to take one course of action but I chose another. Both times, my decision was based on the text of books i’ve read. And both times, I should have trusted my gut.

Poker players typically just sit down and play. Most beginners play purely on instincts, with experience serving as a guiding hand, reshaping those instincts as time progresses. Not entirely so for me. Since I have read at least twenty poker books (some of them several times), I can often cite the reason I am making a certain play, along with the author who told me to make it. However, I’m not a computer and I do have underlying instincts. My game is not totally pre-programmed by books and videos.

Instinctively, I am a very tight, conservative player. In a vacuum, priority number one for me is to protect my stack and avoid confrontations. Come to think of it, this “instinct” might not be 100% inborn. The very first book about tournament poker that I ever read was T.J. Cloutier’s book, which preaches super-tight conservative play and counsels against unecessary risk taking. Frankly, this book is complete garbage when applied to the modern tournament scene, and reading it before I read any other books probably set me back a good deal. It was only when I expanded my tournament poker library that I opened up my game and began to see results.

In any event, whether it is my own doing, T.J.’s doing, or some combination, my hard-wiring says to avoid big confrontations in tournaments. However, it is also indisputable that selectively welcoming big confrontations is required to win poker tournaments. So at certain junctures in a tournament, a little war is being waged in my head. Sometimes my gut says one thing while page 157 of Harrington On Hold ‘Em says another. Here are the two hands from the supersats where I should have obeyed Mr. Gut:

Supersatellite #1:

About half the field is gone. The blinds are 200-400 with a 50 ante. I have an average stack of about 12,000. My table is broken and I’m moved to a new one. The most exciting thing about my new seat, incidentally, is that it is located two seats to the left of the one being occupied by Captain Tom Franklin.  (Google “Tom Franklin” and “Brandi Hawbaker” for some background). At this new table, about 10 hands are played, none of which really give me a read on what’s going on. Then I am dealt JJ in middle position. I make a standard raise to 1200, and the player three seats to my left, who has about 8,500 chips, makes a reraise to 3200.  I have absolutely no read on this player. Everyone else folds.

My gut was screaming that he had a big hand and was making a small reraise to entice action, and that I should therefore either fold, or call, then check-fold if I don’t flop a set. 

However, this type of situation is discussed in several books (among them Harrington’s, Erick Lindgren’s, and the Kill Phil book). Each of those books states that big hands only come around every once in a while, and that you simply have to play them, especially when the blinds are large in proportion to you stack. Harrington’s book also states that when you have no particular read on a player, you should never discount the possibility that he is bluffing. He states that players can and do make strange moves, even if they don’t appear to make any sense. While my instinct said “get away!” these two concepts were telling me to go ahead and play the hand. In an effort to talk myself into the book-learned play, I also told myself that since I was in a supersat, I needed to accumulate a lot of chips soon. Further, I noted that this player could not bust me. After perhaps 40 seconds of internal back-and-forth, I finally pushed all my chips in, my opponent called and showed KK, and I was crippled. 

Supersatellite #2:

Once again, about half the field is gone and the blinds are 200-400 with a 50 ante. My stack is at around 5500 and fading fast. My table draw was very favorable, and there are many bad players. One of the bad players is a total nit–a very conservative player that is scared to put his chips in play. He has me covered and is in the big blind when I pick up pocket queens in middle position. I am technically in all in-or-fold territory, but I know that most of the players at the table, including the big blind, are not savvy enough to know this. I instead raise to 1000 in order to induce action. Everyone folds to the big blind, who calls.

The flop is Q-10-x with two diamonds, giving me top set. The big blind checks, and I desperately need him to catch something (flush draw be damned), so I check behind. The turn is the ace of clubs, and the big blind bets 400 into the 2500-chip pot. I put him on a weak ace and flat call. The river is the jack of spades, making the board A-Q-J-10-x. My set of queens no longer looks so good when the big blind fires 2000 into the pot. From almost any other player, I would instacall this bet, because a bluff is very possible in light of the prior action. However, this player was a very scared player who was clearly uncomfortable playing in a tournament of any magnitude. My gut began to scream “fold!” but I’ve been trained to calculate pot odds and not to discount the possibility of a bluff. Both these factors made this an obvious call. But somehow calling didn’t feel right. I called anyway. Despite being virtually certain I was beat.  The nit showed A-K and took down the pot, crippling me. Unbelievably, he didn’t reraise all in preflop with big slick.         

A few years ago, prior to my exhaustive exploration of poker manuals, I would have laid down both of the hands I desribed without much thought. I would have felt beat and thus simply gotten away. My education actually was detrimental in those two hands. But before I can curse those stupid books, I need to remember that I probably never would have advanced as far in those two tournaments without them. 

I think good tournament players understand all the important NLHE tourney concepts, most of which have now been written about in books I’m very familiar with. The really great tournament players not only understand these concepts, but also know the exact right times to disregard them, trust their gut and go with their read of specific situation and do something unorthodox. I’m still fine-tuning the delicate balance between my knowledge and my “feel.” I owe my lack of success on this trip to the fact that my game isn’t 100% fine-tuned.

I’m getting comfortable with Atlantic City, NJ. Maybe a little too comfortable. AC on a January weekday is a strange place. Away from the boardwalk, AC is always a quiet depressing place, but never more so than during the middle of the week in the wintertime.  Midweek, even the boardwalk and hotels, which are bustling on the weekends, are quiet. The streets are barren, and so are the casino floors, save for the slot machine areas, which as always are entertaining a steady stream of retirees in sweatsuits, fresh off the bus. As for me, I have developed a little AC routine. Mostly it consists of driving from parking garage to parking garage, using my free transfers, and dining at the White House Sub Shop.

One very notable exception to the prevailing quiet in Atlantic City this past week was the scene at the Borgata’s convention center area. The turnout for the WPT Borgata Winter Poker Open has been astounding. If anyone is wondering whether the poker fad is dying out, the answer is no. If one were to judge by the record attendance during the opening days of the event, the poker wave is actually cresting. So while the US Government is currently doing everything in its power to kill online gambling, this country’s citizens want to play poker more than they ever have. The $500, $750 and $1000 events that kicked off the Winter Open drew a ridiculous 1370, 610, and 630 players, respectively. On weekday mornings, no less.

I think it’s neither bravado nor an exaggeration when I say that these three events offered me the biggest overlays of my career. The fields were that bad. Guys came out of the woodwork for these tournaments. Virtually every type of bad player was on display: Scared nits, good time Charlie’s, brash young punks…. I’m very disappointed that I only managed to cash in a $200 second chance event and could not crack the money in any of the three larger events I played. I owe it to myself to go back to the Borgata this week.

On this trip I came up with a special innovation. I call it my CBO Log. It’s my Cripple/Bustout Log! (patent pending)

No Limit Hold ‘Em, as we all know, is a game of mistakes. We try to limit our own mistakes and take maximum advantage of others’ mistakes. One place where mistakes are common in tournaments is the hand that cripples or busts you. I therefore have resolved to take notes on each hand that cripples or busts me in all my tournaments, review what happened, and try to learn from my mistake, if any, in each instance. Maybe some of you will follow suit. I’m sure CBO Logs will be all the rage in due time.

My actual CBO Log is a bunch of shorthand mumbo jumbo, but for my blog readers, I will expand on the CBO entries for each of the Borgata events I played. Here they are:

Tourney #1, $500 NL
Blinds are 300-600 with a 50 ante. My stack is approximately 10,500. About half the field has been eliminated. My table has many inexperienced players who overplay hands preflop. I am dealt AK offsuit under the gun. I limp. It is folded to an aggressive, inexperienced player in the cutoff, who makes it 2500 to go. He has me covered. The button and small blind fold, and the big blind, who also has me covered, calls. I go all in for 10,500. The cutoff folds. The big blind thinks for awhile and calls with 77. I get no help and am busted.

Critique: I think I played this exactly right. My stack was at the very peculiar size (7.5x the pot) where open-pushing and standard raising were both –EV plays. Open-pushing would have been an overbet that would only get called by JJ, QQ, KK and AA, open-raising would leave me in a spot where if I missed the flop, a continuation bet would commit my entire stack. The limp-reraise all in was probably my best play here. The big blind made a daring call that worked out.

Tourney #2, $750 NL
Blinds are 100-200. My stack is approximately 4200. It is still fairly early in the tournament, but I have already lost almost half my starting stack. I pick up AQ UTG+1 and raise to 600. I am called by the player to my immediate left, who has been playing tight-aggressive poker, and I also get called by the cutoff and the button. Both blinds fold. The flop comes K-K-8 with two hearts. I check, and all three other players check. The turn is a black four, and all four of us check again. The river is another 8, putting two pair on board. I check, the player to my left bets 2000, both late position players fold, and I reluctantly call. My opponent shows KQ suited and I am crippled, left with around 1500 chips.

Critique: This one is harder to defend than CBO #1, but here is what I was thinking. When both the flop and turn was checked around, I ruled out middle pocket pairs for all three of my opponents. There was just no way they wouldn’t try to find out where they were at with a pair of kings and a flush draw on board, given two opportunities. So the only hand that was beating me on the river was a hand that had a slowplayed king in it. After the bet on the river, I tried to put the player to my left on a hand. I had raised from 2nd position, and he had been playing tight preflop. So the only hands with a king in them that he might call with were AK and KQ suited. But why would he give two free cards on a flop with two hearts? I was somewhat concerned that he held 88, for a flopped full house, but when the second 8 arrived on the river, I reduced the chances that he held that hand. It was really looking like he held AQ or AJ, or possibly A10 suited, which is why I chose to call. The big problem with this line of thinking was that I was calling to merely chop the pot when I had only 600 invested. If I was beating any of his possible bluffing hands, this call would make a lot of sense, but since I was calling to merely chop the pot, I think I made a bad call.

Tourney #3, $200 NL
Blinds are 1500-3000 with a 500 ante. My stack is approximately 15,500. The bubble has burst and the field just made the money. I have J6 offsuit in the big blind. Everyone folds to the small blind, who completes. I don’t know much about this player, except that he’s conservatively dressed and in his 50’s. I push all in and my opponent gleefully calls with pocket kings. He has me covered and I’m gone.

Critique: It looks silly when you bust out with J6 against KK, but this is the biggest no-brainer of the group. If you don’t know why, you need to read Harrington or buy yourself a PXF subscription. As a matter of fact, in one of the PXF videos, Johnny Bax says something like “if you want to bust me, slowplay aces from the small blind when I’m in the big blind and short stacked. You’ll bust me every time, good for you.” Same here.

Tourney #4, $1000 NL
Blinds are 1000-2000 with a 500 ante. My stack is about 40,000. There are 87 out of 630 players left, with the money bubble lurking at spot #63. I have been playing aggressively, open-raising a lot of pots. I have two black sevens on the button of a ten-handed table. It is folded to the player in 7th position, who has about 30,000 chips, and he raises to 6000. He seems to be a tight player, and I have made him fold by reraising him all in once before. I reraise all in. The player in the small blind folds. The player in the big blind thinks for a long time, then reraises all in for approximately 50,000. The original raiser calls immediately. The big blind has JJ and the original raiser has AA. The aces hold up. The original raiser wins a huge pot, and the player in the big blind wins the side pot. I am busto.

Critique: I was overaggressive here. My image at this table was not ideal for this move. I had been playing very fast and loose for the 30 minutes preceding this hand. That said, I had taken a look at the payout schedule for the event and noticed that it was extremely top-heavy. The first few money levels for the tournament paid only a few hundred dollars in profit, while first place was something like $175,000. I decided I was going to play to win, hence this shove. But in retrospect, the original raise did not come from the cutoff or the button, so it represented strength from a tightish player. Also, I was on the button, not in one of the blinds, so I had to get through two players to my left. In light of my stack size, I think this was a close decision, but it was proper to fold here (not call, incidentally). That’s a shame, because I was up against aces.

For those of you who get your up-to-the-minute poker info from DavidZeitlin.com, allow me to inform you that Neteller, the company that facilitates gazillions of dollars in online poker wagering, has put the kibosh on all money trasfers to and from gambling websites.  Here is the transcript of the IM conversation I just had with Neteller’s live support:

David: ok, i understand that no funds my be transferred to or from any gambling websites going forward?
David: i would assume this includes all poker sites
David: ?
David: (for US customers, which i am)
Chris: Correct
Chris: All gambling websites.
David: ok… this drastically reduces my need for Netller… what is the best way for me to withdraw my funds if i do not have a Neteller Card?
Chris: To give you a heads up, we are currently working on some exciting features in which will allow US clients to transfer to more NON-gambling sites
David: ok… well i would be willing to leave some $ in the account, but not the large amounts I have in the past
David: that will no longer be necessary
Chris: With the recent activity, our withdrawal volumes have increased.
Chris: An EFT withdrawal will be taking up to 2 weeks and checks will take up to 6-8 weeks
Chris: That’s fine. Your funds are secure with us and we have no plans on closing US client accounts
David: there is a limit per EFT withdrawal, correct?
Chris: Correct. it is about $5000 USD per transaction. If the system is not allowing a full $5K just adjust it by $50 and it should work
David: i am concerned that my money will never get to me, i really hope that is not the case
David: i appreciate your responses
Chris: You’re very welcome. You will get your money it may just take some time
David: okay. thank you for your time
Chris: Have a great evening
David: thanks, same to you
Chris: Thank you
David: if u don’t mind
David: can u stay there while i try to sign in?
David: to make sure it is all clear
David: ok, i’m logged in
Chris: Sure can
Chris: Great 🙂
David: all good now
David: thx again… and don’t take my money!!! 😉 

This Neteller thing is baaaaaad news.  Get your money out of there now.

In other news, today the Borgata drew something like 1,400 players for the opening tournament of the Winter Open, a $500 NL event.  The quality of play was roughly the same as one might find in a $1.00 tournament on Pokerstars.

I still didn’t cash.

What do you get when you cross a Star Trek convention with a Gamblers’ Anonymous meeting?  The Pokerstars Carribean Adventure.  It was packed with nerds who love to gamble.  The hotel lobby was the scene of much nerdy action.  

The lobby was the only place on the compound with a strong wireless connection, so you had continuous online poker amidst serious fanfare:

I also witnessed my first ever ‘Magic: The Gathering’ game in the lobby (picture courtesy of thepokerdb.com):

And what happens when you put a bunch of gambling-crazed teenagers with big bankrolls in the same hotel lobby?  I didn’t personally witness this, but apparently they get drunk and flip a coin for $25,000 per flip (pics courtesy of thepokerdb.com):

Incidentally, the Asian kid in these photos is “Genius28,” the same kid who was autoshoving in the 2-5 NL game at Turning Stone, described towards the bottom of this blog entry.  His coinflip opponent was a kid who calls himself “Action Jeff,” who has a dual reputation in the online poker community as a stone-cold killer and a douchebag.  They are both obviously somewhat crazy.
In Atlantis action beyond the lobby, here are some shots of Janeen and I being tourists:

 One notable development on this trip that I’ve yet to mention is Janeen’s first exposure to the poker wives/girlfriend’s club.  While I was busy playing the main event, Janeen was engaged in conversation with Lily Mizrachi, a.k.a. “Mrs. Grinder,” and the wife of Ralph Perry.

  
Unfortunately for Janeen, a poker wife/girlfriend’s reputation is inseparable from her husband’s.  So by the time the wives of the reigning tournament player of the year and a player with several million in documented winnings were through asking about me, Janeen had been thoroughly humbled.  Mrs. Grinder and Mrs. Perry nevertheless allowed Janeen to participate in the conversation, which included their wisdom on how to keep your poker playing husband from straying while he’s on the road and which tournament locations were the most kid-friendly.  I’m sure Janeen felt the same competitive undercurrent that pervades friendly conversations amongst the actual players at these events.  And I’m sure neither Mrs. Grinder nor Mrs. Perry were terribly disappointed to see my limping over to Janeen on the rail after I busted.
Our Caribbean Adventure wrapped up with a party on the final night, where Janeen took these two pictures:
Me with Pokerstars Manager Lee Jones, the man allegedly responsible for every bad beat ever dealt on the site:
 

And me with Humberto Brenes.  Who’s the shark now, Humberrrrrtoooooo?!
 

That’s all for now.  Back to the grind.