LA Trip

The trip to Los Angeles was good. Got a direct flight from NJ; sooooooooo much better than saving a few bucks and having to stop/take longer for the trip. Time is money, so from now on I'll be doing that every time that I can. Real life money is so much different than poker money( mindsets with them), and always trying to save money, but when you break it down to save $100 or less to spend another few hours flying/waiting in airports, etc... is not worth it at all.

My flight got in Thursday evening and 2 guys from the casino picked me up in a Lincoln Town Car. So comfortable/relaxing taking a ride in that after a long flight, rather than a smelly small cab. When I'm rich, if I ever don't want to drive as much I may hire a driver and buy one of those for them to drive me around in.

I checked into the hotel, and went up to the room. The hotel was real nice. The hotel at the casino was all sold out when I went to book the week before so we got a place a couple blocks away. Brett's plane didn't get in for a few hours, and I was beat so I just chilled in the room and watched a movie until he got in. When he got there we walked around looking for something to eat since the places in the hotel were closed by then. We tried walking thru a Carl's Jr. but they wouldn't take our order, so I walked up to a guy's car about to drive through and asked if he'd order for us. He said he would. We stood next to his car and waited for him to finish his order before telling him ours. Dude was a beast so he ordered like 8 things. Me and Brett ordered, and we walked up to the window next to his car. The guy started talking to us and Brett didn't understand what he was saying.(he was Mexican so talked with a bit of an accent.) Brett says, "no comprende senor. no hablo espanol." haha. I told Brett he was speaking english. Luckily the guy was cool and didn't kill us on the spot.

We pretty much just ate and crashed that night since we were both tired. Friday and Saturday we grinded the 10/20nl games. One hand that I remember, I was on Brett's left. He had the button, and raised to $60. I made it $220 from the sb with KQ. He calls. Flop is Q-9-T, 2 clubs. I bet $350. Brett makes it $1,000. He has about $2,000 behind, and I cover. Such a crappy spot since I know his range is huge here, and he will be semi-bluffing a HUGE portion of the time. However, the rest of the time he will have me crushed here and to guess where I'm at for $3,000 didn't seem like a great idea. I fold, and he shows me 9-7. :( That was really the only hand with Brett that anything much happened. No sense messing with eachother a ton when we can wait for home games. Like they say in Rounders, "We're not playing together, but we're not playing against each other, either. It's like the Nature Channel. You don't see piranhas eating each other, do you?"

Brett left Saturday night to go see a friend who lived near there before his flight in the morning. I stuck around and grinded. A lot of actors/professional athletes were out. James Woods plays like every minute it seems. Every time I walked in it seemed like he was playing, and every time I left he was still playing. He plays a TON of poker. He's like 60 years old, and had a good looking model type girlfriend he made out with lots who was maybe 25.(note to self: get rich and famous) I was sitting next to former NBA player Jack Haley, and another former NBA player, Chris Mills was sitting behind me. Other NFL/NHL guys were there as well. Bunch of well known poker pros there- Chad Brown, Vanessa Russo, Men the Master, Cindy Violette, Tuan Le, Barry Greenstein, Mimi Tran and a few others. Eskimo Clark was walking/sitting around all weekend, looking for a stake or something.

Funny story I just found out about Tuan Le: He went to Foxwoods Casino and played the main event of a big tournament there in 2004. He won the tournament for $1.55 million. He didn't have a bank account at the time, so he took his winnings in cash, bought a duffle bag at the gift shop and caught the next flight out.

When Jack Haley was sitting next to me, the guy next to him was an NHL player, so they were exchanging some stories. One cool story Jack mentioned was that when he started playing poker about 2 and a half years ago he was there during a tournament and wanted to rent a room out. The rooms were all sold out, but they did have one room, a presidential suite available. Jack said he'd take it.(I dunno what that costs, but I'm sure it's ridiculously high.) Anyways, he liked it so much he never checked out, and is still checked in over 2 1/2 years later, using it as his poker pad.

Sunday I played for a few hours before my flight. I forgot to set up a ride to the airport. I called the floorman over to the table I was playing at. I asked if he could arrange a ride for me. He said he'd see what he could do and went and made a call. A few minutes later he came back over to the table and said I'd have a limo waiting outside for me at 5. Beautiful!

We had to drop off two ladies in Beverly Hills on the way to the airport. The limo driver was telling me that the one lady basically owned Santa Monica. She was ridiculously wealthy. We dropped her and her friend off in a sick neighborhood that you could tell costs crazy money to live there. Makes me want to get filthy rich. She asked what I did and I told her I played poker for a living. She told me no one can win at gambling and I should quit before my luck runs out. :)