Vegas trip - decent cash

So I had to go to Las Vegas to pick up some Australian friends on Thursday and thought I would head out a couple of days earlier and play at either the WSOP $1500 event on Tuesday (#34) or the Venetian deep stack.

I got into Vegas just on 2pm and after getting my room key found out I missed the late registration for the WSOP event by an hour and the Venetian 12pm deep stack by 15 minutes. Thats not a great start.

Undeterred I headed to the RIO and played in a $350 main event satellite with 58 players and only 1 place into the ME (second place got the remaining prize money). The field seemed pretty soft and I did ok chipping up until I hit the inevitable bad beat and went out about 20th. My thought here with one prize is I had to gamble fast to get a big chip stack as with 2 places paying there will be a pushfest with 2 tables left. Anyhow 0 for 1.

I headed back to the Venetian after railing the $10k limit holdem tourney (lots of big poker names in that one) and entered the 7pm $120 second-chance tourney. This went better and I chipped up nicely to the final table where I went card-dead and ended up in 7th place. Still the $750 meant at least I had turned a profit.

A bunch of British guys from the LPPL league were in town and staying at the Stratosphere so I headed over there Weds and spent a few hours looking but did into find them. I played some cash games and picked up an easy $300 profit and played their 4pm tourney (2 tables) where I was leading nicely until I pushed AKs into a short stack with AA and then AK into a big stack with AJ where the J hit the board.....oh well. Back to the Venetian for the 7pm tourney where I did not get going at all and finally lost an AK v A-10 race with 12BB left - obviously the 10 hit the board.

On Thursday I met with my Australian friends and found out the LPPL guys were missing the day before because one of their group had gone real deep in the $1500 WSOP #34. I headed over there after lunch and found them and railed Steve B who eventually took 7th place and $74k. Not bad for a pub player who most of the LPPL group thought would not last the first day. From what I saw Steve played great poker and a big shout out to him for his accomplishment - the whole LPPL league over there is going nuts for their new hero!!

That was that - I headed back with my Australian friends to Southern California for a few days of R&R but will probably head back to Vegas next week for another go at the Venetian and maybe one of the smaller WSOP events. I was 1 of 4 in tournament cashes for this trip and had a small cash profit so all is good (dont ask me why I played the CRAPS tables or how I did there....).