WPBT 2009 - The Bacardi Diaries, Part 3

Time. Quite the funny thing in that one's perception of it can warp reality in profound ways. Adding alcohol as a catalyst certainly enhances that particular reaction. This chapter of the recap relies on my trying to reconstruct a timeline, after the fact, as accurately as possible.

Saturday night was passing into Sunday morning and the Geisha Bar was hopping thanks to the tourney runner-up and many willing participants. I could not, however, avoid the allure of -EV games so I sat down at a blogger filled pai gow table. Managed to hit AA up front with a full house behind but didn't have money on the fortune bonus. Oops.

After some amount of time, quite the number of drinks, and about $100 in the black at pai gow, I wandered over to another blogger table. This time it was Let It Ride. A table where a $5200 straight flush was made while I was sparring with the Asian coolers. It was my first time playing the game, but the strategy isn't all that complicated. Managed to dust off the pai gow profit in about an hour, but it was mainly about the comraderie. Please drop a comment if you know who was at that Let It Ride table. For the life of me, I can't remember who I met there.

Anywho, at some point early in the morning (pre-dawn), I made my way back to the IP poker room for some more LHE donkery. Similar to the previous night, I played equally aggressive with air as I did with the nuts and the nice people who were already there eventually grew weary of my shenanigans. Once the table was down to 3, an IP dealer off hours, a crasian waiting for a seat to open at the one NLHE table still going, and myself, I dusted off a bit of my profit, finally leaving around $30 or $40 up for the session.

At that point, I decided to sit down and play a little blackjack before heading upstairs for a few wimks. I bought in at the nickel table for a single hundred and played for what seemed like a couple hours. I remember calling out for a monkey to be dealt every time I wanted the dealer to peel off a face card for a bust, and I seem to remember most of the people that came and went over that session to be at least mildly amused by my drunken antics. It was, by far, my best session ever (for the bottom feeder that I am), running that initial $100 up over $1300. I had worked my way up to betting $25 a hand (unheard of for me) and was still running good when a new dealer came over. Immediately, I got a bad vibe off the guy and, even through the Bacardi haze, I thought the floor had just sent over a cooler. Of course, why would IP care about someone playing at my level? Either way, I played one shoe against the guy, lost about $100, and called it a night up around $1200 at that table.

Somehow I managed to find my room for some sorely needed shut eye as I intended to meet up with everyone for the Sunday football games. I got up with the clock telling me it was little after 10:00 and, while in the shower, it dawned on me that it wasn't necessarily 10:00 AM. Checked my cell when I got out and confirmed that it was, indeed, 10:30 PM Sunday night. According to Facebook, I had updated my status right before I crashed, at 3:17 PM Sunday afternoon. Evidently, I kept drinking and playing 21 from before dawn on Sunday until into the second halves of the late games. Oops.

Now there were only about 11 hours to kill before my flight home on Monday morning. What to do?

To be concluded...

And there go another 5 minutes of your life you're not getting back...