Day two in Vegas - May 6 2010

Last night I had dinner with old friends Sheri Winestock and Fred Gitelman – two transplanted Canadians enjoying life permanently in Las Vegas. From here they run the premier online destination for bridge play in the world – www.bridgebase.com.

It seems we have known each other for ever, but in fact they are both only in their early forties. Fred used to cut high school classes to come play at the bridge club I was working in to help finance my education. He always had a sharp mind for the game – so it was not surprising he blossomed into a world class player with numerous victories at the highest levels of the game.

Sheri is pretty damn good too, and is in fact preparing herself for the toughest event on the calendar – the US Open Bridge Championships being held in mid June in Chicago.

Dinner was at my favorite restaurant in Vegas – Sushi Samba – located in the Palazzo hotel. An eclectic mix of three distinct cuisines (with three different kitchens) – Brazilian, Peruvian, and Japanese.

We washed it all down with an elegant cold saki, and the drinks at the bar afterwards did not hurt either. Well that is until I decided to play some double deck blackjack after they left the hotel.

Three "donations" at three consecutive tables resulted in me giving back most of the goodness (read : profits) of the past twenty four hours. With tail between my legs, I slid off to bed, and vowed to be smarter in the morning.

To think I espouse treating blackjack play like a business, and then like a random tourist, I played when my senses were dulled.

This morning, I had a good long swim at Tao beach – wonderful – not so hot as yesterday, and played some highly disciplined BJ after the swim. I can report neither success nor failure though as all my play today has resulted in zero gain or loss.

The daily poker tournament got my attention again today – but I suffered a similar fate to yesterday. I am starting to resent the relatively small starting stack of $7,500 with a rapidly increasing blind and ante structure.

Luck still plays a huge role in the survival process – since you cannot just sit there and play your best poker – you always have an eye on your stack, relative to the table and the average left in the tournament – and you cannot afford too many unsuccessful moves.

My moves all seemed normal to me – but I batted 1 for 6 in the first few hours of the event and could not get myself over an average stack size all day. This was a table where limping was condoned – even encouraged. I rarely limp into a pot – I am a raiser. Each time I raised (or tried a squeeze play) I could not get rid of most of them – each time I had at least a three way pot.

Excepting of course when I was dealt pocket aces in the small blind. Now I was thrilled to be at this type of table. But on that occasion, everyone folded and I got no action – argh!

The hand I went out on was quite bizarre. I held J8 suited in spades in late position, and was able to limp into a multi player flop. The flop was 22J – giving me a respectable two pair. The flop included two diamonds.

I bet out around 2/3 of the pot after two checks, and got one customer, with the others folding, as you would expect with a dangerous board like this.

The turn was another two, giving me a full house with deuces and jacks. I decided to check. The other guy bet out about 2/3 of the pot and I raised him. He re-raised me and I snap shoved all in of course.

He went a little green but decided to call with his AQ of diamonds – quite foolish if you ask me. When we turned over our hands, he got up from his chair and was preparing his stuff to leave, when another deuce hit the table on the river!

Quad deuces on the table. He sat down, content to share the pot, but was blown away when all the chips went over to him.

You see my jacks had been counterfeited by the last deuce – my hand had improved to four deuces – with a jack kicker. His improved to four deuces with an ace kicker. So goodbye Ross.

Another 32nd placing out of 110 players. (Top 13 only get paid today)

I rarely complain these days about bad beats etc. but pleaze, cry me a river!

Probably the only person happy with these developments will be my bridge partner Keith Balcombe, since this means, for the third night in a row, even though I am here on holiday in Las Vegas, I am available again for practice on Fred’s website – www.bridgebase.com