The Big One

“If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.”
–Vannevar Bush
First off, thanks to everybody for the overly kind comments about my last post. I really wanted to write a lot more about the “stages”, but I ran out of steam at around midnight. Maybe I’ll win enough money to have the time to really write something good and put it on paper in book form. The odds of that happening are probably about the same as me winning the WSOP.
That’s right. Yours truly will be rolling up the WSOP pipe dream and smoking it tomorrow night, as I play in a couple last chance super satellites against a field much better than me. What better way is there to wrap up my first year as a poker player? It’ll probably take me the whole weekend for me to recap my losses from the satellite losses, but hopefully Iggy will by my side, up to his famous shenanigans. That’s right, the prodigal son is returning to Vegas, and I’ll be there to bail him out see it unfold. I’ve heard Iggy’s got a great rack, so I can wait to meet “him”. Felicia and Glenn will also be making the trip, so between the three of us, we can probably put all the pieces together and come up with a comprehensive trip report.
I had never planned on playing in the WSOP, as I feel it’s a sucker bet… even Phil Ivey has got to be 300:1 at best. I’d planned this trip as a chance to get away from the 9 to 5 grind in the City of Angels. But hell, I’m gonna be there, I have to at least take a shot right?
I’ll be staying at the horrible Hard Rock Casino, thanks to a free room hooked up by my buddy M (Monk’s younger brother). We leave bright and early tomorrow morning, giving us a full 48 hours of pure Vegas. In the remote chance that
1. My right hand isn’t wrapped around a beer
2. I spend more than 1 hour in my room
3. There is an internet connection in the Hard Rock
4. I am able to type coherently
I’ll post updates when I get a chance.
For my few readers who like to gamble, I’ll be giving out some sort of prize (to be determined) to the person who has the most correct answers to the following questions:
1. Best hand of the weekend?
2. Number of beers consumed total, rounded to the nearest 10 (Iggy + HDouble)?
3. Number of big bets won/lost HDouble (if I can keep track)?
4. Number of posts made from Vegas?
5. More money won (or less money lost) on blackjack or craps?
So send your karma in the general direction of Vegas, sacrifice a virgin or two to the Poker Gods, and we may end up with a poker blogger in the WSOP.
Poker Blog Patrol
There is so much great poker writing going on out there, I don’t have a chance at keeping up. Check out Pauly’s “best of the poker blogs” wrap up for some of the great stuff of the past week. A big “Welcome Back” goes out to Sean, who’s writing about poker and life again. And I was ecstatic to find a comment in my latest entry from the great Andrew Prock, whose old RGP posts have won me many big bets over the course of the last year. Andrew coded up one of the first poker software simulation packages, PokerStove way back in 99, and is a fellow computer scientist. Check out his blog for a veteran take on the poker scene.
More tomorrow night before the big one…