For the love of the game..

As I promised, a trip report of turning stone. It’s going to be quite difficult recalling every individual event that happened in the past 2 weeks of my life, but I’m going to try. Not only am I doing this for you guys, but also for me.

Let’s go in chronological order. The first day I woke up at 6:00 AM, got a taxi at 6:30 AM, and was at the airport boarded on my plane by 8. Everything went pretty smoothly to be honest. I always expect crazy delays or incompetent people running the baggage things but believe it or not, everything went according to plan.

I arrived at my destination after flying from Minnesota, to Milwaukee, to Detroit, to Syracuse. Made for a very long trip, and a ton of txt msg’s to the parents informing them where I was. Anyway, I land in Syracuse and instantly get a text from Caleb saying he’s waiting to pick me up. Sweet. I meet Caleb outside of security and we walk to baggage claim. On the way to baggage claim I spot four or five banners advertising TurningStone Casino and Resort. It was a good feeling realizing that it actually is a decent sized place and not just a hole in the wall like everyone made it sound like.

The drive to TurningStone was close to 35 minutes, but on the drive Caleb and I made like poker nerds and started talking about recent drama on 2p2 and just recalling threads from long ago and laughing. We talked about who we would meet and who to watch out for, and the majority of our conversations were what people looked like and if they look like they come across as online.

Anyway we finally arrive at TS and we go to check into our room, and what do you know, the reservation is slightly changed and not how it was supposed to be booked. We ended up talking with the receptionist and she informs us that midway through our trip we were going to have to change rooms and we wouldn’t be charged the poker rate of $89/night, instead we would be charged the normal rate of something like $150/night. Lol right? Anyway, Caleb and I used our phenomenal persuasion powers and convinced her to check the computer “one more time” because she just may have missed something. Well who woulda thunk it? Our reservation was there, for the full time, for the poker rate. Holla.

Anyway we get into our room and it’s a pretty standard room, two beds, a TV, an AC, a bathroom and a shower. Meh. I don’t really need to do much in it except sleep, and I didn’t really plan on being in the room that long anyway.

Our first order of business of course was to check the poker room for anyone we knew. We get down there and it’s just standard TS regs grinding away at 200nl and 500nl. Lol donkaments. Caleb and I instantly sit down at some 200nl $1/$2 blinds and I win a little, according to my spreadsheet like $100 over the next 4 hours and Caleb drops a couple buy ins. The play is horrendous. Like legit $10nl. We start talking about dinner and food and a couple of friends that Caleb had met on the previous trips to TS show up, they happened to be going out to dinner right that second. So Caleb and I cash out the remaining chips that we have and go out to dinner with them. Little did I know that would become the posse that wondered TS for the next 10 days.

The group consisted of Josh (redsoxsox or something close) Soheb (metsfan) Kerby (kerby147 or something) Brad (philivey561) Brian (Isuckatcards) Shaun Hartlin (Hartlin) Caleb, and myself. We go to one of the pretty standard TS restaurants that’s very close to “fine dining” but isn’t quite up there; Peach Blossom, also known as Peach Hoffom lol. Looking back, the restaurant wasn’t that good, but it’s still much higher than Applebees or something. Hartlin loses CCR and it’s only like a $120 bill for all of us somehow, so he isn’t too upset. During dinner we all just talk about poker and our current goals/plan on how to make it big, and eerily enough each one of them share the same similar goals as myself. We kinda are the “next generation” of online poker players. We’re all up and coming, all have had a little bit of success, and all plan on having more success in the future.

After dinner we go back to Brad’s room, and we start playing Chinese poker for $3 a point. I quickly lose close to $100 (pretty standard swing) but soon enough Hartlin’s degeneracy comes out and declares we are going to be playing Acey Ducey. For those of you that aren’t familiar it’s commonly known as “In Between” and it’s played as a drinking game. The way it works is that you each ante, and the person to the left deals 2 cards face up and you have to guess if the next card is going to be in between or not. You MUST ante the minimum (in our case $5) even if you have a 8 and a T (leaving only one card, the 9 to make you win). If it is say a Q and a K you are skipped and the next person gets a chance. It pays out at 1:1 exactly, so you can only bet as much as the pot, and once the pot is taken down the dealer rotates to the next person. It’s a neutral EV game, so it’s basically just having fun. But obviously certain “spreads” are more +EV than others. Like a 2 and a K spread (which leaves every card in between to make you win) is an easy time to “bet the pot”. Now, here’s the fun part. If the board pairs when it’s your turn to bet, you have to pay double. So with 5 people and a $5 ante, the pot is $25, if you get a profitable spread and decide to pot it, and you get paired, you must put in $50.

Our biggest pot the first night comes out close to $250 and we decide enough is enough, we will be playing much MUCH more of this game. We actually ended up playing until close to 5 AM, at which point people decided it was time to eat an early breakfast and get started on the day. Caleb and I decided to go down to the cage in the casino and cash in our winnings (I came out ahead close to $300) and then go to bed.

While cashing in the chips I realized that the first tournament of the series was later that day at 11 AM. Means that it was definitely time to get some rest and be on the top of my game. Looking back this is also hilarious, because I doubt I got a solid night’s sleep the entire time I was there. We were always doing something late into the night having fun.

Early in the first tournament I double up at 75/150 where a guy 3bet and called my 4bet jam for 20k with AJo. He goes as he’s calling, “I put you on queens!” I had kings. Good read sir, thank you for your 20k chips at 75/150 blinds. Live players are incredibly stupid lol.

Anyway, I continue to chip up and our table breaks and come first break I’m sitting at around 48k with blinds at 100/200 and 20k starting stacks. Being deep like that was amazing haha. Fast forward a few levels and I hit the 100k mark, blinds were around 400/800 at that point. One hand that helped my stack tremendously was when I 4bet bluffed a young guy in the BB with QTo. He tank called with AJo and I won the 60/40. Weeee. Around this point I was notified by some of my new found friends that I was chip leader, there were around 75 left. At that point some newer guys were moved to my table and they all had some chips. At 2k/4k a younger guy who doesn’t seem too familiar with the online theories of smaller raise sizes opens to 12k. I’m in the BB with KQs, flop comes Jx4s5s, I check/jam for close to 30bbs, and he tank calls with JTo and fades. When the river hits he yells, “FUCK YEAH!” and of course in anticipation of a penalty from Mike (NoGimmicks) he walks out of the poker room and cools off. Meanwhile I’m sitting in my seat just kinda staring in disbelief at how terrible he plays. I get up after a few seconds and say good game to my table and am still flustered that I played close to 6 hours of a tournament just to bust 15 out of the money. That would seem to be a reoccurring theme on this trip, seeing as how I went 0/10.

That night after grabbing food with the guys I decide that I’m a pretty competent online player and that the cash games would be where I spent the majority of my time outside the tournament room. My first experience at 500nl ($2/$5 blinds) was amazing. It was a Friday night, games were super soft, and they had multiple tables running. A few of the games had some business men that just enjoyed losing money, some enjoyed losing it slowly, others enjoyed building big pots. One memorable hand that I played occurred when I was sitting with close to $1,200 on the table (~2.4 buy ins) and Brad was to my direct left with ~$500. I’m in the SB with T9o, limps around to brad who checks. Flop comes 67Jr, I check to Brad who fires out $40. Younger guy in MP calls, a couple others call, and suddenly I’m getting implied odds to call also, so I do. Turn 8h, bink. I now have the immediate nuts although there IS a flush draw out there. I check to Brad knowing he’s the aggressor, he open jams his remaining $400. Young guy who was in MP tank calls, leaving himself with close to $250 behind, and when it get’s on me I insta jam for his remaining $250. At this point we’re drawing a crowd because the pot has risen up to $1,600 or almost 3 buyins. The younger guy tank folds and hates his life. It’s very clear to Brad that I have 9To for the nuts and the river comes a J pairing the board. I look at Brad with this face basically asking, “did you get there on the river?” he shakes his head no obv, so I reach to scoop the $1,600 in the pot and the table erupts with multiple, “SON, LET ME SEE YOUR HAND!” directed at Brad. This is news to me, but apparently if cards go to showdown you can request to see them even if they have been “mucked”. Brad knew this and did a move I will never forget. He grabs his cards, stands up, leans over the table and grabs the cards on the table that have already been mucked and shuffles his cards in there extremely quickly before anyone can react.

Once this happens the old TS regs absolutely go berserk and are basically screaming for the floor to come over and give a ruling. The floor comes over and at this point there’s legit NOTHING you can do to recover his cards because only HE knows what they were. Obviously this looks like the perfect example of collusion because he knew I had the nuts when I called, and we essentially “suckered in” the other player in MP. Obviously Brad and I weren’t colluding because he gave me $500 lol. Anyway, the floor comes over and gives Brad a stern, “Son, don’t do it again”. But the equity gained by not giving away the information of showing your cards greatly outweighed the “warning” given by the floor lol.

That hand sparked an epic heater that I continued throughout the night. Shortly after that I flopped top set twice in a row and got paid off both times. My stack slowly climbed from $500 to $1,600 to $2,000 to $2,500 to $3,000 and finally to $3,200 when I decided to call it a night. My favorite hand probably of the trip was when I raised JJ UTG to $25 (yes 5x the BB loll) got one caller from the BB. Flop comes J47, he checks I bet $100 (yes, into a $50 pot.) He flats, turn was a 4, I bet $125 into $250, he flats. River was a T, he checks, I bet $200 and he calls. I show my top boat and of course it’s good. Thank you for your $450 sir. Honestly, I have no idea what he was thinking but all night Brad and I had talked about that if we were in a hand against him we would just blast off for value and he would call. Shocker, he did exactly what we thought he would lol.

When I called it a night everyone else basically did too. I by far had the most money at the table and once I left no one was really left to take the money from. I finished +6 and a half buy ins on that table in about ~2.5 hours. Sick hourly.

We go back to someone’s room where we proceed to play Acey Ducey until close to 4 AM again. I finish up close to $500 and I feel ontop of the world. I’m on an epic heater and walking around with that much cash in your pocket just makes you feel good. I think our biggest pot of the night was ~$300 and I believe I won it. There’s really no skill involved, it’s all about running well at the right time.
The next day is Saturday and there’s another deepstack turbo. I busto towards the beginning of the tournament where I’m crippled early. My busto hand is at 100/200 and I have ~7k. An old woman raises from CO and I have AJs, I flat, everyone else folds. Flop comes 8x9s2s, she bets a little less than half pot, 500. I flat, turn was a 3x, she bets the same bet as on the flop, so it’s now like 1/4th pot and I raise the turn bet to 2k, she flats. River was a brick, she checks I jam and she insta called with the T and the 8 for middle pair and shit kicker. Oh well, I got soulread. Lol. I say GG to everyone at my table and rush to tell my friends about how I got soul read by a nitty old woman.

After telling everyone my busto story I sign up for some waitlists for 500nl. 3 or 4 hours later I book a +$ session and I cash out. At this point it’s about time for dinner. We decide to go to forrest grill (the same group as before) and Brad loses CCR this time. Brad runs pretty poorly, he ends up losing I think 4 or 5 CCRs throughout the trip. (I only lost 2, each for ~$110. I came out way ahead when it comes to food.) The CCR at forrest cost I think $340 a pop and Brad lost 2 there and then one at Wildflowers (the legit “fine dining” restaurant at TS).

We decide to take a break from Acey Ducey and we get a 2/4 HOE game going. HOE consists of Limit Hold ‘Em, Omaha Hi, and Omaha Eight or Better (Hi-Lo). It’s a $2/$4 game so there is no max buy in, and you can only bet a max of $4 per street (unless you’re raised of course). We decide that buying ~$1,000 in chips should be sufficient (lol it’s way more than sufficient.) and we end up building massive castles out of chips. (Pics to come obv). Throughout the night we decide that it’d be a good idea to bring down some drinks to better our experience. Shortly after the drinks arrive we decide we want to play Cap PLO at $100. Bad idea. This turns into just shoving preflop in Omaha sometimes headsup, sometimes 4 ways. I run like Usain Bolt in this flips and win 2 in a row sucking out BOTH times and I think I leave the game with close to $1,500. Ship the $500 profit from a $2/$4 limit game!

It’s close to 3 AM at this point and there’s a live donkament the next day at 11 AM so going to bed seems like a reasonable idea. Luckily for me, the next event is a $240 non turbo. I start at some weird table with some soft spots, and eventually get moved to xBlah’s table. He’s a competent thinking player around my age and we hit it off pretty quickly. We just chat about random poker things while at the table and it ends up being a lot of fun. The blinds end up getting higher and a guy limps with 12BB effective so I just jam KJo over him and I have around 5k. He tank calls with 66, and he wins the flip. I’m down to 3k with blinds at 100/200. This guy to my right kept limping so I shove J5 over him and he folds. Next hand he does it again, so I shove A6 over him. He folds. For the third consecutive time in a row he limps, I look down at KK. Bink? I shove over his limp AGAIN, and he tank calls with A6 claiming that “he’s had enough.” I flip my kings and his face turns white. It’s ok sir, window card is an A and he holds to scoop the 6k pot crippling me down to 600 chips at 100/200. I fold one hand until I’m UTG and I shove my last 3 BBs in. I looked at one card and it was a 7, little did I know that my other card was also a 7. Sweet. Anyway, folds to xBlah who just flat calls, (sick tell btw bra) obviously he has JJ+ and wants action. He gets one more caller and he bets into the dry side pot and the 3rd guy folds. xBlah flips over QQ and I show my 77 and obviously he’s surprised at how strong I was there. Oh well, what can ya do. Apparently zima421 put a bounty on my head and told xBlah that if he busted me that zima would give him $40. I found zima later in the week and made sure that he paid xBlah his money haha.

I decide to play some cash for the rest of the day and I book another +$ session, at this point I’m close to +$3k in profits from cash, but also had $4k in tournament buyins. Being that it’s Sunday I decide the next best thing to do would be to go find my online buddies that are all grinding in a room hoping to hit it big. I go up to Brad’s room where it’s just 6 people all lying in various positions throughout the room with their laptops on their lap grinding anywhere from 3-25 tables. I decide to play some online cash and book another +$ session and am very pleased with success I had been having. While hanging out in the room we watch Tiger Woods blow up and lose the PGA championship and watch an FTOPS final table. The final table was of the $2500 6max event and PSUTennis11 was at TS while he played the FT. First was only $453k, so nothing to get hyped up about obv. Earlier in the trip we had run into PSU and introduced ourselves and he seemed like a very down to earth person. He ended up beating Brian Hastings heads up after Hastings insta declined a chop. It was a pretty epic heads up battle but in the end the “good guy” won. I later found out that PSU had gotten 2nd in the Sunday Warm up the week prior to this win and that was good for another $100k. In the span of 7 days PSUTennis11 had won $550k in two tournaments, and had won smaller tournaments such as the 100r for a solid $30k. We were all incredibly jealous obviously.

On our way to dinner we stop by thezcar19’s room. In his room is DannyMac31, letmelive, xxjondxx, JeanGrey, and 5 or 6 other people. Each with their own laptop hooked up to a larger monitor, propped on a mini table that they had brought up from the front desk specifically for their monitors. Theczar19 had two tables, one for his monitor, and the other for his volcano in which he ate bananas out of. Getting out of the elevator the entire floor smelled terribly of bananas and that was why. At one point while talking to theczar who was seated next to jond, jon randomly explodes, “THAT’S A FOLD DANNY!”. Apparently jon backs danny and didn’t like the way he played a hand. Everyone was instantly interested in the hand because hey, were all nerds. Jon goes, “Danny called a 15bb button shove with AKo from the BB” in an incredibly irritated voice. Everyone in the room was befuddled for a bit and kinda like “Ha Ha jon, that’s a good one!” But we could tell Jon was legitimately pissed about it. After a couple minutes Jon looks at us with this pissed off look on his face and goes “it was a satellite!” Oh. Woops. At that point everyone’s no longer chuckling and reluctantly agrees with Jon that it’s definitely a fold. Danny ends up bubbling the satellite and doesn’t win the $1k seat. Sucks. We decide we’ve had enough of Sunday’s and now it’s REALLY time to go get food.

Due to our break from Acey Ducey the night before we decide it’d be a great idea to play while at dinner. We get chips, cards, and everything needed and we head to emerald, the cheapest diner on the resort. Very comparable to Perkins or Denny’s, same style of food and everything. Anyway, while ordering food we were going around the table with a $5 ante and just having a blast of a time. It’s all fun and games until someone loses a shitload of money. Rolls around to Caleb with an $450 pot and he has a Q2 spread, leaving any card in between to grant him the pot. He insta yells “POT!” and Will flips over the amazing 2. Everyone kinda sits there for a split second and then the “oh shits” come out. Were all quietly laughing and basically thinking “wow that sucks, I’m so glad it isn’t me.” We all watch as Caleb pulls out his “onion” (wad of cash lol) takes off the rubber band and counts out 9 $100 bills and puts them into the pot. At this point all of us are kinda like “wow that’s such a big pot for a $5 ante.”

Hartlin being the genius that he is kinda suggest if we’d be interested in chopping it. Because after all, no one wants to have a 3 K spread and have to pot, get fucked over, and then have to pull out $3,200 in cash. At some point $100 here, $100 there, adds up and $3,200 is real money. Caleb is pretty reluctant at first because he has the most money out of us and would be willing to pot on a $1,600 pot. After a couple minutes of debate we figure out a deal where Caleb gets $600 of his $900 back, and the remaining $1,000 is divided equally among the 4 of us. In the middle of the chop discussion with $1,600 on the restaurant table in front of us the waitress comes out with our food and kinda stares in awe at us. We work out the chop, divide the money equally, and dig into our $8 dinners. Mind you I ended up losing that night’s CCR, so everyone’s $8 dinner was on me.

That night at dinner was the first time I met Will (WRR1986) Steve (banned on most sites) and their friends. Will is a 2p2er and I recognized his name. Will is very similar to me, he played underage and was extremely successful (unlike me tho :-/), is my age, and goes to a small liberal arts school in California. As a 15 year old he was playing high stakes limit cash games and pretty much crushing. He also has a fake ID where he has cashed and won many events at Foxwoods, the Venetian, and the Bellagio. Good for him I say, that’s pretty hof imo. Throughout the next 8 days or so Will and I hang out quite a bit and just in general become good friends.
After the Acey Ducey pot that we chopped I basically came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to play much more of that degen game. Every now and then when walking through the pit we get a sight of rmthawk grinding away at craps or blackjack. Rumors have it a couple series ago he lost his $12k bankroll. Meh, sucks for him I guess. I don’t have much respect for people that are huge degens and can’t control how much they win or lose in the pit. Caleb and Will taught me craps and it seems like an interesting game but it’s still long term –EV, which is why I don’t understand why ANY poker players play in the pit other than just for “entertainment”. I’ll admit, that night I played in the pit, and I lost a couple hundred $ and decided it wasn’t for me. Wally (RankMeNow) and I took a vow of degeneracy and basically said we wouldn’t play any more degen games (anything on the casino floor). He got drunk a couple nights later and broke it but I’ve held to it haha.

Fast forward to Tuesday Morning and it’s the $300 bounty tournament. Wow. Honestly this was probably the toughest field I have ever seen at a live tournament. Every single table had at least 3-4 online regulars. The tournament only got something like 66 runners or so. My starting table had PSUTennis11, xxjondxx, to my direct left, and to my right 3 of PSUTennis’s friends. The other seats were empty due to seats that were going to be filled by late registration. Obviously in a tournament like there were very few late registration TS regs, so my table was the first to break and I was extremely pleased about that. I sent Caleb a txt in the first couple levels of the tournament saying, “I’m the worst player at my table” and he found that pretty funny. I did play an interesting pot where jond checkraised me on a monotone board and I flopped the flush. I flatted his c/r and he c/f turn. I must be a live tell box or he must have been just making a move on me. Who knows, it was still a great learning experience to play for a couple hours with them. PSU had a prop bet with charder for $300 and the deal was that PSU couldn’t fold preflop for less than a 10x BB raise, and any pocket pair he had to open shove. This led PSU into very intriguing situations where he would have to level his friends that knew the bet was going on. In the end I think Charder won the last longer because a mutual friend of theirs was on PSUs table and just opened every pot to 9xBB until PSU was busto haha.

I got moved to JeanGrey’s direct right on the 300 and busted in a super standard spot where I just lost a flip for the majority of my stack and then lost a 40/60 to knock me out.

This is where most of my memories tend to blend together. I think that night I meet Rainetech and decide he’s not as bad in person as he is online. That night we play more Acey Ducey and Rainetech runs incredibly pure. We do this in slicknastyAK’s room and everyone just kinda laughs at how well Frank (rainetech) runs. He ended up buying in for $200 and leaving with close to $2,200. Sick life. Towards the end people were doing flips, and Frank lost a $700 flip to ArgentinaBoy and STILL left with $2.2k

In that Acey Ducey game my incredible heater ended and I potted a $400 pot on a K2 spread and of course one of the last remaining K’s came. I sigh and everyone else laughs when I have to pull $800 out of my pocket. Oh well, all my profits from my 500nl session from earlier that day go into the pot. I get amazingly lucky and have the pot come back around to me via different skips and bad spreads. I get a K3 spread and pot it again. Some people at this point are rooting for me because no one (except Frank obv) wants to see me get fucked on a $1,200 pot. The middle card comes a 5 and I scoop it in to break even on the night. Phew. That would have seriously sucked. At that point I decided that I was REALLY going to cut back on my Acey Ducey game playing. Later on in the game there is a massive pot brewing and it slowly gets up to $200, someone pots and misses and now its $400. Someone pots and misses and now its $800, it goes around a bit more and suddenly it’s a massive $1,500. Somehow, the pot gets up to $1,500 and it’s on the one and only Don Boivan (slicknastyAK). He gets a T2 spread and instantly yells “POT IT!” the next card hushed the room like nothing else could. Bink, and then T hits bringing the total pot to $3,000. It was sickening watching Don empty his pockets. He only had a few hundred on him so he wrote an “I owe you” note for $1,600 haha. Shortly after that we decided to chop up the pot because once again $3,000 is real money and putting $6k into the pot just because you have a profitable spread is a hard thing to do.
The game ends up going late again of course and Caleb and I slowly find our way back to our hotel room and go to sleep. I don’t play another Acey Ducey game for the rest of the trip due to the incredible variance of it.

Getting up in the mornings was an incredible pain in the ass. I would always wake up first, shower, get dressed and be waiting on Caleb. By the end of the week our shower ledge was lined with the redbulls that Caleb would drink in the shower. I can say with 100% honesty that not once in those 10 days did I drink a SINGLE red bull or ANY energy drink. It was incredible how much caffeine others consumed to stay awake.

Nothing incredibly interesting happens the next couple of days that really sticks out in my mind. Come Friday and that’s when the fun stuff starts to happen again. The $750 was on Thursday and the final table was on day 2 (Friday) and it consisted of Theczar19, Luckychewy, Agame18, GrinderMJ, RMTHawk, and another 3 or 4 notable players that are escaping my mind at the moment. Watching that final table was pretty epic. At one point a guy 4bet and called luckychewy’s 5bet shove with 93o. Obviously he got caught 4bet bluffing in the wrong spot, and as chewy flips over his hand he mutters, “I kinda have a good hand.” And he slowly shows the A, and the other A lol. Being on the rail for that moment cannot be described by anything other than “epic”.

Agame18 and chewy get heads up and Agame has a 2:1 CL. Charder and Jordankickz want to prop on who will win and apparently an even line would have Agame as a 2:1 underdog (even though he had 66% of the chips in play.) That’s just how sick chewy is. Anyway Agame ends up shipping it for $38k. I end up having a couple solid conversations with Agame and he is a really cool guy. He’s had a bit of success recently and he definitely deserves it. He gave me a few tips on BR management and moving up, and I think they’re going to come in extremely handy. In the past we had a few disagreements on 2p2 and we got over it at TS and I almost want to go as far as say we’re friends haha.

The night before the $1,500 started there was a team draft, which was run basically the same as the TLB team prop bets. Except the entry was $300. Having hung out with chewy in the past and seeing he was captain I jokingly asked him if he’d stake me in it because shelling out $300 on a neutral EV bet is kinda stupid especially seeing as how I can’t control what team I’m on. Chewy insta says “Sure.” Holla. Anyway I ended up getting drafted by chewy and my team consisted of Joel (oldschool043) Chewy, Caleb, myself, and DontBluffMePlz.

After the draft a bunch of us head back to chewy’s room and hung out in his lodge room. The lodge room itself is simply amazing. It’s basically a double suit with 2 rooms, and the bathroom is immaculate. The shower can only be described as “baller”. I wish I had taken a picture of it.

The next day I played the $1500 and busted at 100/200 to zima421 when I squeezed him and an older guy with TT and 5k, and he 4bet jammed QQ. I sigh and called and flopped a T only to be rivered by a Q. I said GG to him and wished him luck and he made a deep run almost final tabling it.

Throughout the week I had hung out with various people including slicknastyAK, ArgentinaBoy, RankMeNow, SJUBaseball, Timmy720, Charder, LuckyChewy, theczar, letmelive, Joel, and so many others I really can’t name them.

I forget what night it was but Brad and I played racquetball, then Hartlin and I played racquetball, and on a different night we went to the driving range and just chilled.

The day of the $1500 KingDan arrived and I had hung out with him for a significant amount of time at PCA so we were already pretty close. He and I both busted pretty early and we tried to find a place to play air hockey and just relax. We never ended up playing air hockey but we walked around the resort and caught up on things. We made it to an arcade but they didn’t have a puck for air hockey. The machine ate our dollar that we put in but whatever it was worth a shot. As we’re walking out of the arcade Caleb and Brad walk in and they had the same idea we did of trying to play air hockey. Sighball. No puck. We tried using a quarter but it couldn’t stay on the surface of the table.

We walked back to the poker room and heard through the grapevine people were going to the club lava and were getting a table. I asked if there was any I could get in and Dan looked at me with a smirk and asked if I had an ID. I said I unfortunately do not, and he asked if I would be willing to bribe the bouncer. I said of course. Long story short, I talked to a few other people that had tried in the past and they all told me that they had bribed the bouncer only to be rejected on the inside because they didn’t have a wrist band. Dang.

While Dan and the others went to lava I hung out outside the poker room with Wally and Tim and we just talked about our futures. I am the only one of the three of us in school, so hearing their perspectives on poker was incredibly interesting. We all kind of have the same short term goals. Which are: grind a shitload, make a lot of money, go to PCA, and have lots of fun. We exchanged information and I got their IM’s and told them I looked forward to seeing them at PCA haha.

There multiple weddings going on throughout the week at TS, and we half jokingly always said we would go crash one. Never ended up happening but got pretty close when Chewy asked if I wanted to borrow some clothes and go crash one haha.

All in all it was a great trip, I ended up breaking even from Wends-Sunday at 500nl, I finished up +$5k even after having $4k in buy ins. On Monday morning I sold all my cash to Caleb so he could transfer it to me online. It was a tough decision for me deciding whether or not to give up that much cash. We didn’t have a safe in the room so I had to keep it on me at all times. I had heard horror stories but nothing even remotely close to a sketchy situation ended up happening while I was carrying cash. Anyway, in the end I put the money back online and it was a great experience and if the timing is right I will definitely do it again. That’s my trip report and pictures will follow.

GL @ the tables all.

- Nathan

P.S. Here are pictures