American Digest Volume 01

As I write this I'm currently sitting in Hard Rock Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard enjoying a rather unhealthy lunch. As I head into my fourth week here in the USA waiting for my replacement passport to arrive from the UK. I'm making the most of this predicament but I am looking forward to getting back to Sydney, especially considering I have flights already booked to come back here in less than five weeks. Moving on, I took the very long but extremely comfortable flight from Sydney > Los Angeles with Delta and flew in there BusinessElite cabin. This was courtesy of my good friend Monette, who listed me to fly as her buddy and as such I received all her employee benefits. She's such a great girl who I owe a lot and I'm very grateful for everything she has done for me. Upon arrival in Los Angeles I had a small hour layover before connecting to Las Vegas, which is just a short 45 minute flight and I arrived on Saturday 20th April around noon. I checked into the MGM Grand, check out room;

My boys from the UK didn't arrive until Sunday, so I just relaxed by the swimming pool until around 17:00. Then decided to head out for the evening to the Venetian to play a $300 Survivor event in their DeepStack Extravaganza series, I managed to run pretty well and close it out for $2,500. Whilst at the Venetian I also seen Allen Cunningham, who I introduced myself to and he was happy to share a Kodak moment with me.

I ended up pulling a graveyard shift at the MGM Grand 500NL table so by the time I crashed in bed it was around 11:00am Sunday morning. I slept all day until 18:00 in the evening, when I had arranged to meet the boys over at Pete & Shorty's in Hooters Hotel & Casino. Here I was introduced to some brilliant boys, some I was just meeting that evening and others I knew from previous trips. We all dived down Fremont Street as one of my mates got us on the VIP guest list at Gold Diggers in the Golden Nugget. I have very limited memory of the night, but check out awesome snaps below;

The following day most of the guys including myself were feeling a little bit worse for wear, so we had a relatively chilled out one. We went to the Crown & Anchor to watch Man Utd vs. Aston Villa and seen Van Persie net a hat-trick in half an hour which also crowned us champions. Then kicked it by the Hooters swimming pool for the afternoon, before myself and a couple of the guys decided to head back to Venetian for the $300 Survivor event of their DeepStack. We had no luck and I bust pretty early so joined the rest of the guys for a nightcap at Carnival Court, before having a relatively early night.

Tuesday I hit the poker hard playing the $2,500 main event and both the $300 and $200 side events at the Venetian DeepStack Extravganza. I had no luck as Jeff Madsen bust me in the main event as I got all in with AK on a AA6 board and he showed up with 66, then in both sides I made relatively deep runs without making the money.

Wednesday morning I had an early rise as I was off to the Grand Canyon with the boys. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time now, but for one reason or another I just never got around to it. I'm really pleased I've finally done it. The views are absolute phenomenal, especially from the new Skywalk. I went with five other boys, all of which I had just met this week and found all them to be great company during this excursion and throughout the week.

We were back in Las Vegas around 15:00 and I headed straight to MGM Mirage to get involved in the Poker Showdown I had seen advertised earlier in the week, I played the $500 and after running well I eventually bust in 4th for $2,000. So I was pretty pleased about that and decided to register for the $1,000 main event the following day with my winnings. Thursday morning and it was time to check out of the MGM Grand and into Terribles Hotel & Casino, this was to save on the weekend rates at the MGM Grand. I made a bad choice though with Terribles Hotel & Casino and found the whole experience very disappointing. Rude staff, dirty rooms, greasy food and a bad location. I'll not be staying there again that is for sure, see a couple of snaps of my room below;

I also lost my passport in the process of checking out of MGM Grand and into Terribles Hotel & Casino, but I'll go into that in more detail later. As mentioned earlier I played the Mirage Poker Showdown main event, fortunately I ran and played really well as I bagged up over 400,000 which was enough for the chip lead to take into day two and the final table. I had a rather restless night as I was really pumped to get the final started and spent most of the night surfing the internet. Nevertheless after having brunch with my boys at Aria buffet I returned full of optimism and after another great run of cards I managed to close it out for $34,000 knocking seven of my nine final table opponents out along the way. I loved every minute of this final and especially when my boys came to sweat out the action with five remaining. As any natural degenerate would do as soon as this was finished I headed next door to Caesars Palace and registered late for the $130 WSOP Warm-Up, another deep run here saw me bust in fourth for $1,574 to add another USA flag to my roll of honor over Hendon Mob. Needless to say the following day I relaxed drinking by the pool all day and celebrated pretty hard that night, with very limited memory of the evening. Check out some snaps below;

Sunday 28th came by all too quickly and I was saying farewell to all my boys from the UK and I knew when Monday came around it would be time to start making progress to get my passport situation sorted. But for today I decided to head back to Caesars Palace and get involved in their $240 WSOP Warm-Up, after three bullets and $720 later I eventually found some run good and again bust in fourth for $2,032. That pretty much brings an end to my first week here in the USA, but as mentioned earlier I'm still here and have a couple more American digests which I'll get written up over the next few days.

Don't go anywhere