*post continued* As the tournament progressed, our table broke down and I was moved to a tablewith Iggy. I spent so much time running for pictures in between hands that I missed a lot of the action, and as usual, I can’t remember most of the names of the people that were at this table. Perhaps next event should find me just walking around with a camera and not even filling a seat?

Iggy brought the ‘Hammer Trophy’ with him for the winner of the event. A lot of bloggers bring their own bounties. I brought two Stardust chips – $1 of course -one with the metal inset and a newer version of clay that announced the Stardust’s time in existence on it – 1958 to 2006, and a black plastic chip that was being thrown out around Bellagio’s poker room last year by someone that’s a friend of the Stupak family – one side of it reads ‘Best of luck, One Million Wishes, for the New Year’ and the other side reads ‘Happy Holidays, the Stupak Family, Las Vegas’. When I arrived at the new table, I was in the ultra chatty Cathy mode, and as I sat down, putting all of my junk in its place, I tossed out my bounty chips and said, “These are my bounty. Don’t spend them all in one place because they are collectibles. Chips from the Stardust and a chip from the Stupak family that says happy fucking holidays or something like that.” *laughter* Sheesh! Yes…I’m bad.

A few minutes later the dealer waited for me and cautioned someone behind me to wait, “…it’s up to the lady,” he said it gently, without sarcasm or malice, and it hit home. I responded with a sincere, “Isn’t that nice. The dealer even called me a lady after I sat down and used potty mouth.” I meant it. I stopped with the swearing thing then. In a way, it’s sadly sick that I never swore until I got into the poker scene. I do, at times, go for weeks and hardly utter a curse, yet other times, when I open my mouth, it’s there. It’s just so damn acceptable at the poker table, especially in higher limit games.

Aaron was on my right in this game and we chatted back and forth. I was still being noisy and raucous and when he started to ask, “Can you tell me what is the best…” (I think he said poker room for certain games/limits).

I interrupted him with, “I thought you were going to ask what the beststrip clubwas.”

That opened a whole new line of conversation that I don’t even want to get into here. But Aaron was a good sport and took my bantering probes quite well. Tks Aaron.

More photos – of course:

When I was at the first table and we were on a break, Michael Craig came up behind me, chatting away on his cell phone, he had a major dilemma going on about what he should be playing in and now someone else was filling his shoes on FullTilt, while he phone chatted them. Yikes! He was in two places at once. Before I was moved from the first table, he came back, he was out. The first two Classics he played in, he went bust with A-A. Unbelievably, this time, he went bust with THE HAMMER. He went all-in with 7-2 and lost. HOW POSSIBLE? And as he stood over my shoulder chatting, that’s what I looked down to, 7-2. Although I won two decent pots with it in the $2-4H game at MGM the night before, I quietly folded it here…even though Michael chastised me for throwing it away. What the hell does he know? Anyone that busts out twice with Aces is NUT-Z-O.

I found a friend some time ago through the pages of Table Tango. He’s stayed in touch with me since our first meeting when he came to Bellagio and played in a game I dealt. He’s authored quite a few of my Player’s Diary posts and he manages to hit town around the time of the Winter classic. He looked me up again; this time I forced him to have a photo taken with me…meet GPO:

Another picture, long waitedby me, and mainly my own lapse in brain waves for not having it here sooner, is one of me and CC. We’ve hung out many times, at the WSOP, at Bellagio games when he’s in town, meals, phone chats, IM’s, and finally – almost a year after meeting him, we’re doing the picture thang:

We have a couple of bloggers with picture phobia or some dreaded mental disease that makes them imply this – don’t put my picture up but you can take it. I understand privacy, but it sort of sucks because in a group shot it makes it impossible to put up the picture. I’m thinking I need to create my own little ‘brown bag’ that I can put over someone’s face in an image program, just so the rest of the group can be seen. That’s a task for the future.

All bloggers – poker that is – don’t forget to register on the PokerWorks Forum, send me your ‘nick’ and I will approve you for the private forum. Help me kick this off so we can all stay in touch, in private, and keep our lines of communication up to date on events and happenings of interest.

Iggy got knocked out of the tournament by Dave. I looked over to see my Blog Father Buddy going all-in with A-J, against Dave’s Q-Q. The Flop was A-7-7 (I think it was 7’s), the turn a Queen, and I was standing up yelling for an Ace. No help for the Blog Father and he was out. I told Dave it was nothing personal, he knew that anyway, and he had shared a table for two with me in the middle of the buffet tables that were all pulled together for our Wynn grazing experience the day before. He bought my wine, his drink, and that particular day he looked like he was going to need a medic any moment…that’s what drinking, traveling, more drinking, no sleep, more drinking does for a person, even if they are a blogger. He’s kewl.

Aaron won my bounty chips. I finally gave up trying to play since I couldn’t find a hand; I went all-in with 6-7 off.Aaron called me with ??? I think he had J high. Truthfully, it was almost a relief to separate myself from the tournament tables and just mill around.

I got on the list for a $3-6 as Iggy and Joaquin were going to play cards with me. I took a seat that was open in a $4-8, won a pot or two, a $3-6 game was starting and I went to the Sport’s Book to find Iggy. We started that game. Grubby and Grubette joined us at one point. Tommy (can’t remember his blog name) was in our game, a guy from London was in the game and he reads both Iggy’s and my blog. SWEET!

People cruised up and visited from time to time – and we were planning to go to the Imperial Palace around 9ish to check out the PokerTek tables that would be set up for a demonstration – the Classic was still going. I started shooting pictures in ‘night shot’ mode. I will put those up, but they will have no titles, just a whole freaking page of thumbnails with pop-ups – probably tomorrow or the next day. But they are so damn kewl.

Wayne called. He was finished with work and coming over.

The long and short of it is that we played $3-6 for about two hours. I tried to bluff Iggy once…no go…he got my chips. I busted Joaquin and he almost never let me forget it. *chuckling* The tournament was down to four players, I was cheering for Jackie to win it. I called Wayne back because we were ready to leave for the Imperial Palace – yes the tournament was still going on but we were ‘outta there’. Wayne was circling the parking garage at Caesar’s and had been for 25 minutes. He opted to just meet us at the IP.

The PokerTek tables – one tournament, one heads-up play – appeared to be very nicely set up and easy to use, although I didn’t get to play on them. I did sit down for just a moment and watch a tournament in action, and the gent from PokerTek came over and explained how the table was loaded with chips, etc. I could easily see them being used in a bar/lounge setting where two or three people arrived and just wanted to play…no need for a dealer or any fuss or muss. I can’t see them taking over the main stream of live poker but what the hell do I know? Maybe my job is on the way out.

Wayne and I hadn’t seen each other in awhile, it was great catching up and just visiting. While Wayne was getting his initiation into the quieter part of a blogger gathering, the Tournament winner appeared with one bounty hammer trophy and the coveted hammer trophy that Iggy brought with him. And now our winner of the Winter Classic, Kevin *applause – foot stomping*

Jackie took 2nd…big congrats.

It was late, I’d looked at way too many poker hands, my truck was on the top floor of the parking garage at Bellagio and Wayne offered me a ride. Only problem was we had to find his car in the maize of parking garages and lunatic hallways and elevators at the IP first. I said goodnight to everyone that I could see or tell and Wayne and I headed out. Goodnight Vegas…Goodnight Bloggers…Goodnight Wayne.

*****

But this still isn’t the end. There’s goodbye Sunday and being stood up for lunch by two of my favorite bloggers.

*****

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