Vegas June/July 2022 (WSOP)

Day 19 - Epilog

Last Updated: 2022-07-10 11:02:29

"And remember folks, for every silver lining ... there's a dark cloud!" - Hal Sleet, the hippy dippy weather man (a.k.a George Carlin from "Class Clown")

What a trip...

Knowing we were going to be here over two and a half weeks and that we'd surely spend significant time in the room I brought several mostly empty bottles of whisky with us (and some not so empty) intending to try and clear out the bar a little.

I've heard people say they have too many open bottles. To all of those people in the world, "hold my whisky ... er, beer..." 'cuz they ain't see my collection of "opens" yet.

The housekeeping staff must have thought we were raging drunks tho seeing empty after empty sitting next to the garbage :-)

In fact the first few bottles only had a drink and a half to two drinks in them. Then again, I did polish off half of a bottle of Blanton's (maybe a little more than half) and Joann killed off 2/3 of a bottle of her favorite Irish whisky. And as I'm typing this paragraph I'm sipping from what will be the last empty of the trip, what was left of a 1.75 1792 Small Batch (and NO it was NOT one of the mostly full ones, easily less than half ... tho I'd be lying if I said I didn't think a little was going home with me when the trip started).

I'm actually writing this epilog before I finish the last poker BLOG because I started writing this stuff and decided it deserved it's own entry. I've made the decision that enough is enough, I'm going to go home with what cash I have left instead of playing one final time on Sunday. I'm walking away doing well better than "worst case budget".

If I had infinite amounts of time and money believe me I could keep on going and going ...

But ... I have infinite amounts of neither of those things.

It's been a long trip, it's time for me to go home.

As frustrating as some of my BLOGS surely came across, yes I really did have a great trip.

On the non-poker front we found a new Italian restaurant, I will be stunned if I gained less than 10 pounds, we got to be among the first people on the planet to find out my cousin Heather got engaged to long-time boyfriend Glenn (hell we found out before she posted a picture of her ring on Facebook!!!), we managed to give our son Peter a great time out here for all his hard work at home (also for his birthday) seeing a couple of shows and letting him see what it's like to fire a real weapon instead of a virtual one and Joann and I got some serious quality time together.

Which, if I'm being honest, wasn't the goal! I was supposed to be ignoring her playing poker all day almost every day ... the silver lining!!!

On the poker front...

I put myself in a position several times. I made correct plays in situations that didn't work out, but being results oriented is the mark of a poor poker player not a good one. Just because it didn't work out doesn't mean it was a bad decision.

You're supposed to be stealing from the guy who's raising out 60-80% of hands when your stack is under 25 big blinds. But sometimes that guy has a hand too, and I seemed to run into the few times they had a hand more often than I should have.

Matt and I made a WSOP Day 2, I was in a great position to make another Day 2 and a run at a nice WSOP cash. All you can do is play well and put yourself in a good position as often as you can. I'd have liked to have had more than one cash, but it is what it is. When they're paying 15%, 85% don't get into the money. That's the poker tournament life, it's what I signed up for.

That said, this is surely the longest summer trip I've done and I think it's unlikely there will be a repeat of "this". Next year will almost surely be scaled back.

THAT said, don't be surprised if there's a fall poker trip this year. Joann and I have talked about it and we really like having platinum status. If we get through our October trip (non-poker) and we're a little shy of status then I'd say a November trip to put us over the top would become all but a sure thing.

As always, thanks to everyone who read along!!!

Regardless of the level of success, the ends of these trips is always a little melancholy for me.

When they go especially well, you hate to stop. When they don't go as well, you want to keep going and get it back. Either way, you don't really want to leave.

But you also have to know when it's time to call it a trip and go home.

Writing these BLOGS is beneficial to me, sorry but I don't just do it for all of you (Patrick) :-)

It's important as a player to think about the decision you made and writing all these up definitely causes me to reflect A LOT on the actions I took and whether I could have made better decisions or not. That's the personal reason for doing it.

But if nobody ever read them, I doubt I'd be doing it. I do appreciate all of you out there! I try to entertain you, I hope I accomplished that as well.

Maybe November, definitely next June you will hear from me again. Until then, thanks again.