Like usual, I sleep in and lounge around for the day (I briefly fire up a session of online poker, entering a 50r, rebuying immediately, losing with aces on the first hand to drop back to a single stack then losing with eights a couple hands later to bust. I decide not to rebuy again and i’m too tilted to continue so I abort the session before heading out to Palms in the early evening. I try and walk (I don’t mind walking around Vegas at night; during the day it’s too hot obviously) but find that a bridge that you have to cross doesn’t have a pedestrian section so I flag down a taxi driver who decides to rip me off a few dollars by quoting a fare and ignoring the meter. Whatever.

I arrive at the Palms to catch up on the latest movies I want to see at what i’m told is the best cinema in Vegas. It seems pretty normal by Australian standards so it’s a bit of a letdown after all of the glowing reviews but it’s more than acceptable.

I watch The Hangover and Transformers: ROTF back to back. The Hangover is every bit as good as everyone says; it’s a must see and definitely the best comedy of the year. Five stars. Transformers is a solid action movie but advanced storytelling isn’t exactly Michael Bay’s forte. He’s good with explosions though… and casting the two hottest acrtresses in Hollywood doesn’t hurt at all (Megan Fox and Australia’s own Isabel Lucas; formerly jailbait on Australian soapie Home and Away and now rivalling Megan Fox for hottest babe ever). Three stars for transformers. After the movies, I wander over to the Gold Coast Casino for some 1/2. I find myself shorthanded (ranging from 5-8 players) with three of the biggest fish i’ve seen in Vegas so far; an ageing drunk stripper who was busy abusing the guy next to her for not saying thank you for something that happened before I arrived, an old woman known as ‘mama’, a guy who flatted a lot of 3bets and open shoved more than the pot on each occasion and then two bad scandy lags (from Finland I believe) with random other people coming and going.

Somehow, I manage to drop a little over buyin and a half (down 315 overall) when spazzy guy flats my 3bet twice then open shoves for over the flop on two seperate occasions for a bit over the pot; I have QQ on an AKx flop and lay it down (a huge mistake as he said he had eights and from what I saw later I tend to believe him) and then with Ax on a low flop. He’s cold calling 3bets for a third of his stack on the SB and jamming stuff like QJ into random people on undercard boards, so I decide i’m not folding to him anymore. Somehow, over about 100 hands/4 hours, I win precisely one pot (losing with QQ, QQ again, AK, 99, etc. along the way) and miss countless multi-way flops with low PPs and suited connectors) and I find myself with about $145 remaining. I find A3o on the button, one limper, scandy raises to 11 on cutoff (he does this a full 100% of the time when someone limps and that is not an exaggeration; he’s playing something like 85/70/1) so I reraise to 40 and superdonk guy flats in the BB with an identical stack to me. I’ve already made my mind up that the rest is going in on any non KQJ type of flop.

Flop is 752. He donkbets all in for what must be the seventh time in seven times he’s flatted a 3bet and I tank for a little bit, tell him i’m considering an ace high calldown, this seems to rattle him so I call. He tells me he has ace high too.

#$%^&#$%^&*$%^&*$%^&*(*$%^&* roughly sums up my feelings when he turns over AJ. I know the call is SO bad on paper even getting 2-1 but I knew he had absolute air again (the QQ on AKx is a snapcall in hindsight, as is the AK high but those were the first two times he flatted the 3bet and openshoved against anyone and he’s down several buyins and done it several times against others villains since)

Anyhow, I miss my seven outs, wonder how the hell i’m down a buyin and a half, realise I just called off my stack with A3 high and decide to call it a night. Softest 6max game ever and I got owned. I was already down 160 before that hand but it feels pretty crappy to essentially give away 3/4 of a buyin to a total fish. I play so bad. I’m fairly sure I got all three decisions wrong against him and that if I had called on the other two I would have been good. For the record, Gold Coast is as much of a dump as its reputation suggests but if you want to find a soft table, even the 2/4 players seemed really bad. I find i’m down to $14 in my wallet (I brought a shade over 3k USD with me, so i’m down 3k now) which is just enough for a taxi home and a 6am snack at the service station.

I think I need to wire myself more money. This displeases me. I now have the main event and about 3-3.5k as my bankroll for the remainder of the trip. Ten more deepstacks/megastacks. I’d better at least cash in one of them (or ideally the main which ironically, I think is my best chance of cashing overall due to the structure). If I go 0/11 or 0/13 or whatever for the second half of the trip after going 1/12 or so on the first half i’m quitting live poker forever.

In conclusion, I can sum up today with some cliffnotes; I saw a good movie and an average movie, I visited two new casinos, I donked off a buyin and a half to one of the fishiest 1/2 tables i’ve ever sat at and i’ve gone through half of my non Main Event Las Vegas bankroll a couple days before the halfway point in my trip.