CARDRUNNERS

 Hi.

Short internet brag post forthcoming.  Unfortunately this is the internet and not real life so brags aren't really brags, but I guess it's still worth something and since I'm on the internet I can post it comfortably.  As an aside, I was reminded again last week of how I really do live in two different worlds, real life and internet world, when I met some new people and casually mentioned "yeah, I talked about that in a blog post last week."  It immediately dawned on me that there is a distinct type of person that you can talk about your blog with, and if you aren't sure if the person you are talking to is in that category, you don't mention the fact that you blog.  Oh, internet world....

Here are some things that I find funny:

These videos are funny.  I've watched them a lot this weekend and I'm on the fence as to whether or not they are staged.  Watch them all before reading my analysis.

Arguments for being staged:

It is ranked as one of the most popular "partner" videos on YouTube.  I'm pretty sure "partner" means that it's someone who has bought advertising or placement on YouTube, but I don't know for sure.

I can't imagine buying that truck for a kid with such massive anger management issues.  Any parent would have known that this child's perceived social status is dependent on the car he drives, so buying him something like this would clearly set him into a rage.  I'm pretty sure the only type of kid that would drive this car is the cool slacker type or someone who really can only afford a $200 truck.

This family clearly has some money.  There is a Hummer in the driveway, both kids have WoW subscriptions ($15/mo), the younger brother has a video camera which almost undoubtedly cost more than the 16th birthday present for Steven.  So why on earth would they have a microwave that is so old and crappy?  I'm pretty sure you could get a decent microwave for less than the truck they bought the kid.  If it took seven minutes to cook a TV dinner, I think I'd probably pull a Steven on it.

Arguments for it being real:

I'm nearly positive that someone couldn't fake being as pissed off as Steven was in the first video.  One of my friends and I both tried to fake a freak out like that and he hurt his throat and I got a headache really quickly.  It's hard to act like that.

It appears like there family members, including grandparents, in the truck video.  I don't think grandparents would really want to be in a YouTube joke video where their grand kid is humiliated in front of millions of people.  I suppose it's possible they just hired some extras and these aren't real grandparents, I guess.

Anyway, let me know what you think.  I'm curious to see what CR members think about whether this is fake or real.

Also, I was on Urban Dictionary yesterday and I looked up my last name.  Here is what it said:

1.	caby	16 up, 2 down
	an uberly hot guy that you want to be with every second of everyday (even though hes total jackass to you all the time) *** cabys also enjoy activitiys such as getting drunk getting high and sneaking out at night**** oh my god. jason is a toatal caby......

This is awesome.  I'm pretty sure that every guy secretly wants to be "a caby" at least for one day in his life.  This was clearly written by a girl who was totally screwed over by some guy with the last name Caby.  My favorite part about it is that he not only does he get drunk and high with regularity, he has the audacity to "sneak out at night."  ha ha ha

All right, bedtime, peace.

Taylor

Hey all,

Been a week since I've updated, hi.  After about six weeks in Las Vegas I'm back in Chicago for the foreseeable future.  I'll tell you a little bit about the past week, which has been, without question, one of the most memorable of my life.  I've never experienced such a mix of such euphoric highs and agonizing lows in such a small window of time.  Enjoy, I'm writing this down now so I can look back in the distant future and try to recapture just how this felt.

To start, I'll pick up where I left off with the Main Event.  I really felt great after the first two days.  I don't think I could have played any better, I made one big hand in 18 hours of play and managed to chip up from 30k starting stack to 134k, giving myself a stack that was about 20% above average.  I laid down a set, made some other laydowns that in the past I would have begrudgingly called and chalked up to "can't fold, it's a live tournament."  I also made some hero calls that were correct.  In short, I felt proud that I had actually given a live tournament 110% effort and the results were there. 

As soon as I got home from Day 2 I knew something wasn't right.  I blogged about this just a bit, but I felt horribly.  I spent the two "off days" between day two and three laying in bed.  I probably slept about 16 hours a day.  The night before day three I woke up in my hotel bed, soaking wet, sweating like crazy.  It was so bad that I had to go take a shower and then lay on top of the sheets in the corner of the bed because the whole king bed was just soaked.  Anyway, I was feeling probably 70% or so by the time the tournament started at noon.  It was just frustrating to me to go in with a pretty big stack but still feeling crappy.  I proceeded to draw a horrible table and play what I would call C poker.  No excuses, I was really trying, there were just a few plays that I wish I could take back.  I gave it my best shot though, and eventually went out on a 65/35 type hand, standard.

So great, I thought to myself.  I had a big stack, played over 24 hours of live poker and had nothing to show for it, I'm feeling crappy, and I'm ready to get out of Vegas.  Then I headed over to check on my friend Joe (LatestLines2).  Joe had a pretty big stack for all of day 1 and 2, so I was expecting him to be cruising along as usual. Joe had something like 300k at this point, when the average stack was maybe 180k. 

Now, a little background on Joe.  He's one of the nicest kids you'll ever meet, poker player or not.  He plays SnG's professionally, grinding out the $100+ SnG's for what amounts to a comfortable living.  He's never really cared too much about playing as high stakes as possible, any sort of fame or recognition, but he's a really good player.  He could definitely beat high stakes cash games if he put his mind to it.  He'll play a ton of volume for a month or two, then just inexplicably take a month off, go to Disneyworld, hang out with friends, and just enjoy himself.  Not a bad lifestyle, indeed.

Anyway, Joe is such a solid player that I'll gladly put him into pretty much any tournament if he ever wants to play one.  Stinger talked him into playing the main event and we bought some action.  So fast forward to this point near the end of Day 3 and I am really frustrated.  I've just finished a blog about how I can just feel something good about to happen to me, I'm due fo some good luck, yet I just bust out of the Main Event and got sick at the absolute worst time.  Since there were only about 900 people left in the tournament at this point, I decided I'd stick around and see how far Joe could make it.

By the time the bubble burst, Joe had built up a stack of like 500k or something like that.  Stinger and I were feeling pretty good because by the end of day 4 I think his stack put him in 30th place with 400 or so people left to go.  I kept pushing my rental car and hotel room one day back every day, expecting Joe to catch some bad beat and bust any minute now.

I'll tell you one thing, sweating someone you really want to do well in a live tournament is infinitely more stressful than playing in a live tournament.  I was a freaking MESS on the side watching Joe's action.  He wasn't even playing a ton of hands, but everytime he was in one I was absolutely going insane.  You sort of "have to be there" to understand, but think about this.  When your guy raises, you don't know if you want a call or a fold.  When you get a call, THEN you have to hope that his hand holds up if it's good which is the most stressful thing in the world.  Someone came up to me at one point and said "Taylor, the pokernews people were laughing at how nervous you look watching Joe."  I was like "Yeah, can't you tell?  I'm a wreck, this is the most stressful thing I've ever done."

During day 5 and 6, Stinger, Bruce, and I went to the Rio's poker room to play some small stakes to kill time.  I just couldn't stomach watching Joe the whole day, so I would get into a 1-2 or 2-5 game and just sweat the pokernews updates for a couple hours.  These games turned out to quite fun and profitable, I think I managed to win about $1500 in 5 hours of play or so.  We had a pretty fun table the first day, with this crazy asian gambler who bought in for 2k at 2-5, plus Mickey Appleman who talked to us a fair bit about sports betting.  Mickey also seemed to think that many of the online kids who have had success will go broke, which I don't necessarily disagree with, I just don't think it will be me.  I'm not sure he agreed with that, ha ha, oh well. Stinger and I both managed to successfully kamikaze bluff the asian guy, which let me tell you, was generally NOT a smart move.  I decided to barrel three streets OOP into the guy, finally getting him to fold on the river.  While he was tanking, I ordered a burger from the restaurant and was carrying on a conversation with the left side of the table.  I think this helped my cause, because after a few minutes he mucked the hand.  I showed him the hand and Mickey looked at me like I was the biggest fool in the world. Truthfully, I might have been.

So eventually near the end of Day 6, Joe has something like 1.4mm and the average stack is probably just a bit more than that.  He's got a decent table, nothing too difficult but not an easy one.  There's 110 players left at this point, and we're really starting to think he might be able to make a deep run.  I'll just paste the PocketFivesLive news coverage of this hand, because I really can't do the situation too much more justice:

Joe Wards Off Elimination by Brett on 07.13.09, 9:02 pm

Joe “LatestLines2″ Ward is running well during this year’s WSOP Main Event. He’ll tell you that himself, especially after the way he scooped a massive pot just minutes ago to double up to nearly 3 million chips.

With the blinds at 12K/24K ante 3K a player raised from under the gun and Ward came along for the ride. The flop came 765 and the two players got into a raising war that resulted in all of Ward’s chips going in with a chance for him to double up or go home:

Ward: 88
Opponent: JJ

With Taylor “GreenPlastic” Caby and several of Joe’s friends on the rail (and almost forcing it to collapse), the dealer peeled over the A on the turn. No help to Ward. He needed a nine, four or eight to stave off elimination. The river: the 4, giving Ward a straight and sending his rail into a frenzy. Caby was so excited that he actually ran between the ropes and into the tournament area, causing a secrurity guard to give him one last warning before he’d be thrown out. Ward, meanwhile, began stacking an enormous pile of chips that total 2.8 million, placing him around 20th out of 107 players still in the field. The current average is 1.8 million.

Wow.  We were going crazy.  Anyone that knows me or has played with me knows I'm generally a pretty laid back guy.  Something just came over us and we HAD to sweat that action.  The floor guy wasn't letting us in to see the turn and river but with all the time we had invested watching this tournament and because I wanted this so badly for Joe we just had to sweat it out.  When Joe binked off the straight I immediately ran over to him, hugged him, and we were just jumping up and down like crazy.  The ESPN cameras were all over us and it was total euphoria.  I've never felt a feeling like that, Stinger and I agreed it was the best sweat of our lives, even though we had both had some pretty serious high stakes hands to sweat out.  My whole body was shaking after this pot.  It's really weird, it was like the adrenaline or whatever it was was just causing me to hardly be able to function.  I think it was a combination of having felt like I've run pretty damn awful so far this year and also wanting this so badly for Joe.  I told my friends, I'd rather have a piece of Joe and have him win the main event than have me win the whole thing for 8 million.  That's how much I really wanted the kid to do well, he's that type of guy.

Okay, so Joe was onto day 7.  There were 80 people left or so and his stack was basically average.  Not a whole lot happened to be quite honest, he was chipped up just a little bit when he smooth called an EP's raise with KK, the blinds squeezed, EP reshoved, and Joe called it off.  He was up against QQ and JJ!  He knocked out both of these guys, and with 36 people left, he was in 8th place!  This was the most unbelievable feeling ever, Joe was in great position with only four tables to go!

Of course, who but Phil Ivey gets moved two to Joe's right.  Joe had played with Ivey for about 4 hours already so he felt about as comfortable as you can feel, but it wasn't a great draw.  The very next hand, Joe picked up KK again and raised from UTG.  Ivey called with 97cc, and eventually took about 1mm from Joe on Q7473 board.  Joe was down to about 9mm, with the average stack at 5.75mm or so.  Only a couple hands later, Joe got it all in with KK v AA, total cooler.  KK couldn't suck out and he was again down below average.  He stayed steady for a couple hours, and eventually got it all in with 66 v AQ. Thankfully, he won the flip and was now in about 20th place with 28 people left.

About six short stacks doubled through when the following hand came up.  Keep in mind we had been sweating Joe for about 4 full days now and about 9 hours so far on this day. Cutoff raises to 250k at 50/100 blinds, joe makes it 950k on the button, cutoff shoves all in for 4.4million, Joe goes "well, it's time to gamble," and calls with AK.  Cutoff shows AQ and Joe is looking great!  I am SOOO nervous at this point, I can't even see the cards because there is a swarm of people and and media watching.  I knew there was no way I could pull a bush-league move like last time and run out there, so I just decided I'd watch Joe's reaction and sweat his face.  ESPN makes the dealers wait for like 30 seconds between each action, so on with the sweat.  Joe looked calm after the flop, I knew we were okay.  One of my friends goes "King! King!"  And someone at the table turns to him and goes "the King will give the other guy more straight outs, he'll have four outs instead of three."  My friend goes, "DEUCE, DEUCE!"  Haha, it was pretty funny. 

Turn was a deuce!  AT82 board, Joe needs to dodge a Queen on the river and he will have 8.8 million in chips, putting him in 10th place with 28 to go.  I turned to the pokernews guy next to me and said "only a queen can hurt him, right?"  He said, "yep, looking good, just needs to dodge a queen."  I still couldn't see the board at this point so I sweated Joe's face once again.  River: death.  I knew it immediately by Joe's reaction.  He turned and yelled an expletive and threw his hat at the rail.  In what will certainly be good TV this fall, Joe's fate was sealed with Queen on the river.  It was the most agonizing thing I've ever seen. Joe was one card away from timely double up, a big stack with 28 people to go, and he couldn't dodge the Queen.  The whole room was cheering because now we were down to our final 27, I felt so bad for him.  We walked over to meet him, asked if he wanted a beer, and he said "no, got a gun?"  It was a pretty funny moment that thankfully we have all sinced laughed about.

The floor guy counted out all of Joe's chips.  Joe was outchipped by a mere 200k, or two big blinds.  We immediately left the building, I went home, booked a flight for the next morning, took a shower, and met the guys at the blackjack tables at the Encore.

We played about an hour of blackjack.  We talked about nothing besides the poker tournament, and almost nothing besides that last hand.  The floor guy didn't really seem to understand why we kept talking about it, but no one really wanted to let him know just how big of a deal having a non Q river would have been.  Joe ended out cashing for $250k for his troubles, a great run that he should be proud of, but we couldn't quite help but wonder what would have happened if that river had been a different card.  I decided to bet whatever money I had on me on my last hand.  It turned out to be about $1100.  I wanted to lose it.  Something felt right about leaving Vegas with an empty pocket to go along with my empty dream of Joe final tabling the Main Event.

My hand played out like this:  Dealer showing a T, I get dealt 15.  Apparently the right play is to surrender.  I was in no mood to surrender, having felt so crappy and just wanting some pain, but I felt like if I'm going to be playing blackjack, I should always at least be making the right plays.  I surrender and get $550 back.  Joe is next to me, he hits, and of course, it's my 21 card, a 6 :(.  Oh well, I think, I'm not looking for anything but pain.  Next hand, I bust, and walk up dejectedly to my room.

All in all, it was a great summer in Las Vegas.  Thanks to Joe, I had a nice little score and a very profitable summer.  I'll never forget us celebrating that 4 on the river, the agoniziing defeat on Day 7, and all of the good times in between.  I recently blogged about how I was due or some good luck, and this life experience was worth more to me than any amount of money I could have won.  Being 25 and spending the summer in Las Vegas with some of your closest friends is an experience that most people will never get to have.  It's amazing that it took a crappy beat in an inoportune situation to pick me up from my preverbial funk, but I feel better now.  I'm ready to get back to the grind at the CR office and take on whatever is coming next.  This truly was one fine week, and I'm really glad I was able to experience it.  Good luck and thanks for reading.

Taylor

Hey all,

It's the end of another summer at the World Series of Poker.  I've really enjoyed this one, I don't feel quite as burned out as I usually do.  I made sure to really take time and enjoy this summer because I sort of realized I never know when this could all be over and it's a pretty cool experience to be able to live in a 9 bedroom house in Las Vegas with a bunch of great guys.  I expect to do it again next year, but ya never know.

With being sick for three days and playing 3 full days of poker in the Main Event I have such an unbelievable backlog of work to catch up with.  I'm going to start pounding some of it out this morning but this whole week should be kind of crappy in that regard.  I've also got two videos I need to put audio to and also one video I need to produce and then do the audio.

I'm still waiting to book my flight because one of my housemates and good friends' Joe is still in the main event.  He's got 1.12m chips when the average is something like 450k. There's 407 people left right now and I'd say he's probably in like 25th place.  There is nothing I would rather see than for Joe to win the main event.  You will not find a nicer guy in or out of poker and if I could pick one person in the world to win this tournament Joe would absolutely be that guy.

He made a deep run last year, finished 218th after a heartbreaking elimination hand to Gus Hansen, and I think he's poised to do even better this year.  I'll be sweating him until he busts out, while trying to get some work done in the mornings and evenings.

Good luck, see everyone from Chicago soon enough.

Taylor
 
PS - Good luck to Cole, who has also made a deep run.  I'm sure there are people still in that I'm forgetting, also, gl.

First I should give the obligatory "follow me on Twitter" for poker updates.  My url is twitter.com/taylorcaby.  I have yet to decide if I will continue to use twitter after the WSOP, but it's the best way to give poker updates to friends.  Either way, you can be sure I won't be one of those people who will be tweeting everything from "just waking up" to "nothing exciting happened today...i'm bored."  Monks.

I had a pretty miserable table draw again on Day two.  The first table was full of pretty aggro players, two pros I had seen on TV (one was the guy who got 2nd in the 50k Horse last year), but did have a few week spots.  It didn't really matter because it broke in about an hour. 

My next table was actually much worse.  There was one player who I would classify as weak that had over 100k for most of the day.  Then there were about 4 MTT/cash pros that each had 100k+ as well.  At the time when I got moved to the table I had about 45k, after working my starting stack up from 36k with a few standard situations.  I guess the only interesting hands are: limper limps EP, I limp Q8cc on the cutoff, blinds call.  Flop is QTc7c which is basically Christmas for me.  The only problem is the early limper decides to just ship 14k into the ~3k pot.  I really don't know what to do here because I reallly didn't think the guy was weak but I figure he never does this with a set and he does it with lots of combo draws, some of which I crush, so I might as well call and I'm risking less than half my stack.

He flips over AQo and I'm very much alive but not in ideal shape.  Turn is an Ace which is not good, but river fills my flush and I'm thinking wow, maybe I was due for some of that good luck that I blogged about yesterday.

Ten hands later I raise 99 in LP and am called by the BB who is name pro that I don't know his name.  I'm pretty sure I've seen him on TV and he knows Norman Chad and I saw him in the FTP lounge so he's gotta be someone.  Anyway, flop is T96ddd, I have no diamonds obviously but I have a set.  I bet like 1600 into 3k or something like that, whatever standard was at the time.  He thinks for a bit and calls.  Turn comes a black 3, nothing doing.  He checks, I bet 3800.  He thinks for about 30 seconds and makes it 13k.  I have NO idea what he can have here, or if he can be value raising worse?  Honestly this spot sucks because I felt like he thinks I'm just barreling a ton here and figures he might be able to push me off overcards and a diamond.

I decide to call knowing I've got outs and he could be bluffing, I'll evaluate the river.  My stack before this call is about 50k, so I'll have about 40k after I make it (average at this point is 50k).  River bricks and he thinks for a little and bets 19k.  Great.  His body language seemed very confident and he didn't seem like a crazy player, but at the same time, I'm sure he thinks I am peeling some diamonds and could also have overpairs + diamond etc.  I went into the tank for probably 3-4 minutes, the longest I think I have ever gone into the fish tank and after apologizing a lot for taking so long I decided to muck the hand.

He said, "jacks?"  I told him that I had jacks beat by quite a bit.  He goes, "trust me, you were drawing dead with whatever you had."  I was a bit puzzled and then he said, "I flopped the straight flush, 78dd, good fold kid"  He could have been messing with me but I'd give it 75%+ that he was telling the truth.  I should also add that this was the only laydown I made all day, most of the other times I wasn't sure what to do I called and was right.  Nice to run good.

So I move to the table that I will be at for most of the rest of the day (with the big stacks and mostly good players).  I am getting 3-bet incessantly and the table is quite aggro.  I basically just bided my time, working my stack up to about 47k over two hours or so when I finally flopped good.  I'm not going to talk about any more hands for the rest of the day because I don't really want to get into too many specifics of how I'm playing now that we are getting to day 3 and I'm sure people I'm playing will read this.  I finished the day at 133k and I was never all-in for my stack or had any really crazy beats/hands.

I got a chance to talk to Isaac B (who is still in) on most of the breaks and after the tournament I pledge to make a short powerpoint video talking about live tournaments adjustments for online cash game players.  It's not going to be anything super complicated, just some thoughts i've got and I assume there are some online cash players who are just turning 21 that could benefit from watching.  I wish I knew what I know now about live tournaments, I'd certainly have lost less than 100k in them at this point :).  If you hate this idea please say so because I won't waste my time.  xoxo

Anyway, gl, see you guys out there.  I'll be back in Chicago as soon as I bust.

Taylor

 

Last night was a fun time.  It's funny, I've become so used to the Vegas lifestyle that when contemplating blogging about the night before I thought to myself "nah, probably not blog worthy," when in reality it was pretty damn fun and I should blog about it so I can remember it thirty years down the road when I'm old and my memory is fading.

We started off the day by hanging out, playing bball, and just chilling at the house.  Nothing too exciting, I won a couple hundred in our bball game which means I'm only slightly down prop betting this summer (lost 1k in a brutal 3-point shooting day a week ago).

We headed down to MGM because we were going to see Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood in concert.  I had tickets but was having a quarterlife crisis of sorts and felt like just going home after dinner and sitting around and moping a lot.  I don't know why but lately I've had my fair share of mood swings and haven't felt all that great about life in general.  That's probably a story for another day but I'm going to start back up with the therapist I saw a few years ago when I was quite emo after graduating college.

So we had dinner at Pearl at the MGM Grand.  Pretty good meal, I got some Schezuan Shrimp and a chocolate banana dessert that was excellent.  I always have a great time going out to dinner with my Vegas roommates and for some reason this year we just haven't done it very often.  I'm lucky to be staying with a great group of guys because it can be hard to find that in the poker world.

After some good conversation and a few beers I was feeling less quarterlifecrisisy and decided I'd go to the Clapton/Winwood.  We walked over the show, got some more beers, and headed to our seats at the perfect time as the show was just starting.

I didn't know what to expect about this concert as I knew they would only be playing songs from when Clapton and Winwood played together and this was way before my time and I'm not really into whatever it is the music is called (is it classic rock?).  That being said, I know Clapton is one of the world's most talented guitarists and I've always enjoyed Steve Winwood's stuff so I just went and figured I'd see what happened.  This is also a good time to remind myself again that I've never gone to a concert and been like "I shouldn't have gone to that concert" afterwords.  

This show was no exception.  I didn't know most of the songs they played but these guys could really rock even into their 50's or 60's, however old they are these days.  Watching Steve Winwood on the piano makes me pretty glad my parents forced me to take lessons for 8 years.  At some point in my life I'm looking forward to getting back into the piano, probably won't be any time soon!

As an aside, my favorite Steve Winwood song is: 

After the show we considered going to Studio 54 at MGM but decided we were clubbed out from recent days and instead went to the Hard Rock to play some blackjack and drink before seeing where the night took us.  I have to give places like the Hard Rock and Planet Hollywood credit for putting in the blackjack tables that have smokin' hot dealers in skimpy outfits dealing.  It's pretty brilliant because they jack up the table limits a little higher than most are comfortable with (in this case, $25 per hand at the Hard Rock) and they also pay out only 6:5 on blackjack which is flat out robbery.  To the casual tourist though I'm sure they know nothing of this and decide to play for more money with worse odds than they normally would.

I bought in for $400 and decided to not do anything too crazy because I only had $80 more in my pocket to last me the rest of the night and cab fare home could be $25 or more.  Well, I got up to about $700 pretty quickly and started to "ride the rush" and bet $50 per hand.  I quickly lost a million hands in a row to a very hot new dealer and chalked it up to negative variance.  Half of the group was ready to go home by now so my friend Stevie Ballgame lent me $500 so I could keep playing while we decided what to do.

An hour or so later we were starting to get tipsy and all having fun.  We didn't really know what we wanted to do but we knew playing more blackjack was a bad idea so we decided to go "all-in" on the last hand and make large bets relative to the stakes we had been playing.  My "bankroll" was at $800 so I for some reason bet $575 and hoped for the best. This is when it got interesting.

The dealer had a five showing and I had two three's.  Right as I said "hit it," Andrew reached over and stopped the dealer and said "that's a split."  I said, "ah crap, really?"  The table agreed and I obviously had to go by the book and split it with money I didn't have.

So the dealer splits them and rolls off another three.  Okay, time for another split.  I borrowed money from Scott and split it once again.  Now there is $1725 riding on this hand.  Hmmm.

First hand I get a 6, so I'm showing 9 vs. a 5.  Oops, that's a double.  I borrow $575 more.  I hit it and get an 8 and stay at 17.....meh.

Next hand, I get a 6, so I'm showing 9 vs a 5.  Again, oops, that's a double.  I borrow $575 more.  I hit it and get a 5 and stay at 14...not good.  I now have about 3k riding on this hand.

Last hand, I hit and eventually stay on 18, not too bad but not great either.

At this point the whole table is going crazy and across the five of us there is probably about 6k spread across a table where there is typically no more than $300 in action at any given time.  The dealer turns over her card and it's a 4.  Not good, dealer has 9 so if the next card is a face card I just lost 3k and we probably don't even have money to go out because we had to pool the rest of our money to play this hand out.

Next card is a 3, dealer has 12.  Good, not great.  Next card is a 4, dealer has 16, nice little sweat!  Next card an 8, dealer busts!  There is a lot of yelling and double checking/counting and we are all paid out.

I pay off my debts and now I've turned a $400 loss into something like a $2500 win.  Sweet.


At this point we do the only practical thing which is to walk across the street to whatever mediocre strip club is close to the Hard Rock.  The stench of BO at this place was a bit overwhelming but all in all we had a good time.  Drinks were on me that night thanks to my good fortune at the tables.  At about 4:30 we headed home and stopped at Jack in the Box only to find out one IRock's friends left to go to hooters and came back with 100 wings.

I fell asleep a pretty happy guy, all in all it was a fun night.  Okay got to go, going out to dinner with Cole, Larissa, and the roommates.  Peace.