It’s midnight, and I just got back to the Palazzo after a long day of poker. I IM’d shaniac, who is blogging on PokerTips for the summer and is also one of the best poker writers and my personal favorite (with the only significant competition being Pauly from Tao of Poker):

Me: man…
Me: after i busted today a friend texted me telling me to come play the $200 at binion’s
Me: i went, despite my better judgment
Me: and just now finished…
Me: …. 11th…
Me: for $500….
Me: fml
Shaniac: sounds uplifting, don’t see the reason for “fml”

Of course, I don’t mean “FML” in a literal sense here. It’s more of an expression, like how sometimes (most of the time?) when you say “lol” you didn’t actually laugh out loud. I guess the reason I can’t quite jive with his upbeat spirit is that, for the day, I was a $1,200 loser. I’m two for two now on busting out of WSOP events before the first break. Today, I got Ten-Nine of diamonds all in against Ace-Queen on a Queen-Eight-Seven two diamond flop and airballed it.

Not too upset about this, after all, it’s a long summer and there’s no sense in wasting a bunch of energy feeling frustrated about losing a 52-48, I made my way to the Rio taxi stand and instructed the driver to take me to Palazzo. En route, I texted Dave Irish informing him I had busted (he had 5% of me). He told me it wasn’t too late to join him in the $200 tournament at Binion’s.

I had planned on coming back to Palazzo, hydrating up, and paying what would have likely been an arm and a leg for a taxi to the nearest Bikram Yoga center. But what the hell, I thought. Might as well dust off another $200 real quick first and go to yoga in the evening.

“Let’s go to Binion’s instead,” I told to the driver. On the way, I quipped with him that the taxi to and from downtown Vegas might erase whatever edge I could expect to have in a $200 tournament. That’s not really a joke, either. About $40 in cab fares take a big slice out of the value I’d expect to gain from playing a $200 at Binion’s. This is something that failed to occur to me before we were already north of the Stratosphere.

Still, it had to be +EV. Tournaments at Binion’s are probably about as soft as online poker circa 2003. I made it to the dinner break with about 10 big blinds in a spot where two-thirds of the field would make the money. The twenty minutes after I polished off my cheeseburger and before the tournament resumed tested my patience. “I’d better at least cash,” I kept thinking as I stood on the stinking sidewalk outside Binion’s uninspired on what to do other than pace back and forth feeling marginally sorry for the predicament I had put myself in.

Dave had long since made his way home after busting from the tournament and the thought of striking up a conversation with someone else only to be asked “what I had on that one hand” made standing on the sidewalk and refreshing my email every two minutes seem palatable.

I did manage to remain at Binion’s for another few hours and make it into the money. With 11 players left, I realized that 11th actually meant more to me than 10th as a result of a complicated and insignificant swap I had made with Dave. And yes, I remembered to factor in the value of the free ‘Binion’s Final Table Participant’ hat I would have received for outlasting one more person. But the hat couldn’t quite dissuade me from shoving 13 big blinds with Jack-Eight from the small blind while we played five handed. I think I would have made this play regardless of Dave and I’s goofy arrangement and my free hat equity anyway. And I would have ran into Ace-Jack just the same.

So I traded yoga and an evening that could have been used to catch up on a little work for a min-cash that I suppose was accompanied by a little confidence in knowing that I can still navigate through a live tournament field. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get to find out what it’s like to make it past the first break in this year’s WSOP. The $1,500 6-Max event will be my third try. If I fail, I suppose there’s always the 3:00 Bikram class.