 Vegas June 2023 (WSOP) |
| Days 2-4 - 3 days without poker IN JUNE? |
| Last Updated: 2023-06-11 15:09:02 |
| Having busted out of Badugi late day 1, I had no poker plan for the next three days. Aria was running a multi-day event tied to their sports betting app BetMGM. MGM and Orleans were running almost nothing but bounty and/or satellite tournaments, neither of which I am a fan of.
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| Knowing the 10th would definitely be an open day (Badugi final table would have been the 9th) Joann and I bought tickets to see Trivium and Beartooth that night. Wanted to have a night to have dinner with Heather and Glenn so Heather made dinner reservations for the 9th (to be cancelled if I final tabled Badugi) and I just made the decision to spend the day with Joann on the 8th instead of a 7pm at Orleans that was the only thing I'd have really considered once I failed to make day 2 for Badugi.
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| And then there was the whole sleep thing. I was up unusually late the couple nights before we left so I was already behind on sleep, got up at 3:45 MDT Wednesday, played poker until midnight PDT. Long day.
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| Oh ... and by the way ... TOOL VIP presale was the next morning (Thursday) at 10 local, 9 pacific. So I needed to be up 8-ish, which normally for me is sleeping in! But ... I could have used some more catchup sleep time.
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| That said ... up at 8am local Thursday, online by 8:30, 9am sale starts and I score 3rd a row seat for a very expensive VIP experience!
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| I was planning to get two tickets, me and Joann, but they jacked the price of VIP packages up another $250 per ticket than the last tour. We would have been paying well more than we paid for U2 for the two of us. Even more than a pair of Sick New World VIP tickets if you can believe it.
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| As badly as I didn't want to go by myself, that was just way, way, way too much money to pay for a ticket for Joann who doesn't care as much as I do about seeing them. So ... one exorbitantly priced ticket for me and I'll be going by myself again.
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| Starbucks, pool, Chik-Fil-A, south outlets, gas up at Sam's Club with another quick stop or two along the way. Oh and massive traffic jam trying to get back to the hotel due to Formula 1 repaving efforts that had just started on Harmon Ave, the road we take to get into Vdara. Didn't get back to the room until close to 6pm.
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| Eataly at Park MGM is definitely our top go-to place for when we want a good dinner but don't have a reservation somewhere. Having spent four weeks in Italy over the last few years I can tell you that this is the most authentic Italian street food I've ever had in the United States.
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| Several different small counter service restaurants selling everything a la carte so that you can build your own Italian meal. Throw in a couple bars, a sit-down restaurant that basically serves what's at all of the a la carte places combined in one menu and a fancy restaurant we haven't tried yet. The food is excellent and I'm tellin' ya it's exactly what you'd get walking around Rome and ducking into some random restaurant. And you never need a reservation.
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| But ... seating is quite limited. Since it's all a la carte we'll search around for a table, one of us will sit down and we'll take turns getting food and drinks.
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| Oh, and by the way, the bartender at the bar we use knows me. We were in Vegas last October and did this meal. Next time we were back in Vegas was this past April. Dude remembered my name, our drink order, the fact that we stay at Vdara, the fact that I take a lemon instead of a lime in my gin tonic and that he's turned me on to having some juniper berries in my GT. Scary!
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| But wait ... there's more ...
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| I'm sitting at the table we found while Joann is getting appetizers and I swear I see a ghost.
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| Is that Rich Provenzano standing in line at the pizza place chatting with some people???
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| He looks an awful lot like him. A little heavier than I remember but ...
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| The guy doesn't order anything, walks away from whoever he was talking to and in my general direction ...
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| I yell out "Rich!"
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| His head snaps around and he looks straight at me and smiles. Walks over, we catch up a little. He's in Vegas house hunting, he got a job here and is hoping to move here soon. Wife is somewhere nearby, he needs to go look for her. He hands me his business card and I stuff it in my wallet.
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| As he's walking away Joann is returning from a different direction and asks who I'm talking to. Dude has his back to us now but is back by the pizza line. I point him out and tell Joann he's gotta go talk to that guy.
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| She goes over, says hi, big smiles, they chit chat, Joann comes back over to our table.
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| "That's not Rich"
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| We compare notes a little bit. Joann says too short, skin not dark enough. I remember I have business card and pull it out of my wallet.
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| Richard Skelly, Weather Forecaster.
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| It was Rich! It just wasn't our Rich.
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| If this dude's name doesn't happen to be Rich this encounter never happens. But this guy acted like he knew both of us and chatted us up like old friends even tho he had no earthly idea who we were. And obviously in hindsight I can pick out the parts of the conversation that didn't quite seem right.
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| Joann and I are going to have to agree to disagree on how much the guy looked like Rich (not at all according to Joann, but obviously there was some strong resemblance I picked up on...).
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| Fairly early night, I finally get to catch up on sleep and not have an alarm and we're on to Day 3.
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| Not much to tell. Starbucks, pool, shopping, hanging out in the room, aforementioned dinner with Heather and Glenn. Ate at the place that used to be Ruth's Chris off-strip Vegas location, very good meal. Tried a Pappy 12 lot B, was not hard to drink...
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| Back to the room to work on bottle-killing all the "near empties" we brought with us and some poker streaming.
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| Day 4 not a whole lot more to talk about. Typical morning, lunch at Javier's which we knew was going to be a mistake but we did it anyway. Stuffing ourselves with Mexican food when we know we're going to be standing for 6 hours at a concert not smart. But we were walking past the place and couldn't help ourselves...
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| And I'll say this - we were starting to get down on the place a little. Mainly because my favorite part of the meal, the roasted tomatillo salsa, was evolving hotter and hotter to the point where I wasn't enjoying eating it as much any more. I went in with a little trepidation, but this time anyway the salsa was perfect. And delicious.
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| My go-to meal there is basically "eat the chips with the salsa, order a quesadilla so I can slather that salsa all over my quesadilla." If the salsa isn't working for me it's not good. But spot on this time so I guess we'll have to try it again :-)
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| Over to the Promenade at the Linq, Heather came out to have a pre-show drink with us (she thought Glenn was going to be out of town so we had made a plan to meet up, Glenn was actually in town but wiped out from a busy week so we kept the plan), on to the show for myself and Joann.
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| Archetypes Collide, the opener of four, might have been my favorite part of the show! I thought they were really good!
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| I could have done without Malevolence, all screaming.
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| Beartooth was more screaming than I expected, there is more singing and less screaming in the songs I've listened to on Spotify, but damn Caleb has some energy! Band sounded great, he sounded great, actually walked out to the mosh pit towards the end of the show (gutsy!).
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| Trivium was exactly what I expected. Sounded good, played all of the few songs I'm familiar with. Lead singer actually interrupted what would be considered one of their top two songs to calm down a fight in the crowd that was brewing right in front of him. Joann later read that he did a similar thing a couple of nights ago to aid someone who got in some kind of distress crowd surfing.
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| You gotta at least like the guy for that kind of stuff, they can just be up there and be indifferent and play out their set.
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| Back to the room, late night snack and into bed.
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| Now things get real for me on the poker front. WSOP 8-Game Mix Sunday at 2pm. Probably going to wait until 3 to buy in, like Badugi I really do NOT want to be there when it starts and sit 2- or 3-handed with blinds whipping around in a crapshoot. Definitely no earlier than 2:30, but I think any time in the 3-4pm range is my sweet spot.
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| Perfect scenario would be that I get there when they're still assigning the last few original seats!
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| If no Day 2 for 8-game I probably won't play until a 6pm PLO8 tournament Monday at MGM. I'd love to turn around and play in WSOP 2-7 Triple Draw Monday but that would have serious implications on my budget. I'd have to drop some plans later in the trip, and volume of tournaments is a consideration too - more is better! So ... let's just make Day 2 and not worry about it! |
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