Weekend Update

Helen is enjoying time in Thousand Oaks, Ca. while I'm in LV working on a couple of stories for the Booth papers.

Saturday I played in a Free Roll Poker Tournament at the Monte Carlo and finished 50th in a field of 104. Unfortunately they only paid the top 25 spots, so I was out of the money. It was a lot of fun and showed me that I am certainly capable of playing in this level of tournament. Here's how my final hand unfolded...

I started the tourney with 4600 in chips, somewhat below the average starting stack of 5500. But I was able to win a few early pots. The blinds started at 25-50, but rose every 25 minutes and were at 300-600, plus 100 antes when I made my last stand. At the time, I had 2700 in chips and realized at 1700 per round, I was only gonna see about 10 hands and the blinds & antes would take all my chips.

So when I looked down and saw J-J in late position, I was determined to go All In and either raise my stack or go out. I was not excited when two other guys - one was the table Short Stack and the other was Chip Leader - both went all in ahead of me! Still, I went All In. The dealer told us to show our hands and I was pretty pleased to see the other hands - Mr. Short Stack had A-10, while Mr. Chip Leader had A-Q.

I was actually ahead and feeling good, because there were only 2 Aces and 3 Queens that could beat me! Unfortunately, one of the two Aces fell on the River, giving Mr. Chip Leader the pot and sending me and Mr. Short Stack to the rail. I headed home, calling Helen and niece Katie to give them the news that I was not a poker tourney winner...

Earlier in the day, I took an autographed Joe Montana football helmet to a sports shop to try to sell it. I won the helmet last year in a contest at the Suncoast and we had it in storage over the summer. I was determined to get some cash out of the thing and after some negotiating, ended up selling it for $230.

I devoted Sunday to doing some research on the two stories I'm working on for Booth - one on cheap/free Vegas attractions and the other a feature on the Pinball Hall of Fame. I spent a few hours visiting the Bellagio Conservatory and Chilully art glass display and taking photos for the article. The Conservatory changes its floral theme every couple of months and now is honoring the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Tiger.

After watching some basketball in the B's sports book, I rolled down to MGM where I wanted to get some pics of the Lion Exhibit. Unfortunately the Big Cats were pretty lazy and content to lay on their sides like big stuffed animals tossed on the floor. I waited patiently for about 30 minutes for the cats to move, before giving up and having a comped pastrami sandwich for lunch. Then I went back to the Lion Exhibit and one of the cats was finally looking somewhat Lion-ly. I snapped three pics that I thought were pretty good, but after loading them on the computer they are blurry and have some glass reflections that make them unusable.

Today I plan to head downtown to scope out 3 free attractions - a chunk of the Berlin Wall that's inside a men's room at the Main Street Station, a display of $1 million at Binion's and a HUUUUGE gold nugget at, where else, the Gold Nugget. Hope to get usable pics of all of them. May play a little bj while I'm downtown.

The adventure continues...