Vegas July 2016 (WSOP Tag Team)

Planning

Last Updated: 2016-07-04 08:43:37

Usually I spend the entire spring dying to get to our annual summer Vegas trip for my WSOP adventure. This year the anticipation is going to be unbearable. "Too far away" doesn't even begin to cover it...

First the short version:

After the June trip with Joann, I will be home for a week or so and then I'm heading right back to Vegas to play in WSOP Event #61, the Tag Team event. Our team is comprised an old college buddy (Jim) along with one of my Colorado Springs poker friends (Patrick) and myself.

UPDATE: The trip will be a little melancholy for me, Jim fell ill just a few days before we are leaving and had to back out. As a result, the team will just be myself and Patrick. Last I heard Jim was improving! Current plan is to leave Colorado early enough Tuesday to get to Rio and register for the following day, check in at the hotel, grab dinner and still maybe play in the 7pm at Aria if it's not too big of a crowd. Don't want to be playing until 6am again...

This is a unique event where you get to put together a team of 2-4 players to split the buyin and take turns playing. You can change players any time you're not in a hand with the only caveat being each player must play a minimum of one round of blinds by the close of registration. All players on the winning team each get a bracelet and the WSOP will evenly split any prizes among the team.

Right now the plan is to travel Tuesday the 5th and all of us stay through Sunday. I got a pretty good offer at NYNY (two free nights) and even tho this event's final table is Friday I want to stay through Sunday for two reasons: 1) Even tho final table is scheduled for Friday these lower buyin tournaments often need a 4th day and I always plan for making it to the end; 2) now that I'm playing in three WSOP tournaments, if I were to make a significant cash in any of them I will be in town for Day 1A of the Main Event. And, yes, there's a plan for that possibility. Good thing I carried over a week of vacation time last year...

Long version:

I'm actually taking three weeks off work in the span of six weeks and I will be visiting Vegas three times from mid-June to late July. I should probably just rent a place!

When I posted to Facebook that I had booked our June trip Jim, my best friend from college, pointed this event out to me. We chatted a little on FB about it and at the end of the conversation Jim just said "hmmm". I took that to mean he might be interested, after all he was the one who brought it up, but that was the last thing he said...

Over the next 3-4 weeks a couple of things happened. First Joann and I tweaked our June trip to make it so I can play in the Seniors Event. We also figured out how to do our annual family trip out west on a fairly reasonable budget. We're going to do 4 days of hiking (2 Yosemite, 1 Grand Canyon North Rim and 1 Zion) with 2-3 days resting in Vegas in between. We're going to let the kids go to a Cirque du Soliel show without us (need one child at least 16 yrs old...CHECK!) so that Joann and I can have a date night for at least a few hours. Joann and I have seen almost every Cirque show in Vegas at least twice but the kids loved Ka and want to see it again themselves. These shows aren't exactly cheap, so this makes the kids happy without spending even more on a show Joann and I don't need to see a 3rd time...and more importantly we get a little time to ourselves!!!

While we were making all of those plans Joann, starring as the red-headed devil on my shoulder once again, kept asking me if I thought Jim wanted to play in the tag team with me and saying how great it would be. She was completely on board with the idea. I kept saying at some point I'd contact Jim if he didn't contact me first...

So one day about a month after my FB exchange with Jim, Joann was working on one of her massive 18,000 piece puzzles and I was doing stuff on my laptop and she asked me about it again. Since I had my laptop open I IMed Jim on FB...yes he was interested! We formulated a plan, we had a short list of people in mind to round out the team and we each agreed to contact one of them. At the same time I checked what kind of rates I could get at NYNY "just in case". When they told me I could get two free days, well, I had the first room booked before we even filled out the team.

Patrick was a yes, Jim got a maybe from another college friend. We decided that we're perfectly happy as a trio or a foursome so we'll just go forward for now as though we're three rather than trying to find a different 4th. If "other college friend" wants in, we have a spot for him...

If I were to final table in any of the three WSOP events (or get REALLY deep in the Monster Stack) then I would seriously consider buying into the Main Event and playing Day 1A the last day of this trip. I would return home as planned on Sunday no matter what happened, but if I were to make a Day 2 in the ME I'd spend Monday with Joann and the kids and get a late flight back to Vegas that night...and really blow my vacation time for the year. If I made a pretty significant cash but not an "I can blow a full buyin" cash in one of these WSOP events I might consider trying to satellite in.

Oh who am I kidding? "Consider???" hehe...