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Blog World Expo: The Party Edition

October 22, 2009
shayne-mural

One of the greatest parts of any conference is the after parties. Have your conference in a town like Las Vegas and it’s not hard to imagine that the amount of parties available to you is mind boggling. We definitely did our share of partying, too!

Here’s what our weekend looked like:

Wednesday Night
Mural of ShayneWe had friends arrive on Wednesday, so after I went to the Track Leader Orientation, we all headed out for dinner and a nice long chat. We followed that up by surprising Shayne with a 8′ x 9′ mural of his Twitter avatar in our photo studio. If you ever want to make a mural yourself, let me tell you that this was 120 sheets of paper and 4.5 hours of cutting/taping/hanging. But it was worth it!

Thursday night
Ted Murphy & John HawkinsThis was the first official day of Blog World Expo. I spent a few hours at the convention center, but mainly just to meet up with and say hello to a few friends in from out of town. The fun began around 5:30 when we met up at Bar Louie for our weekly Beer n Blog meetup that was set to kick off the WordCamp weekend. We had a turnout of about 60 people including a few people I had beer really looking forward to meeting; TechnoSailor (Aaron Brazell) and Ted Murphy from Izea (pictured with me here). Both of which, as expected turned out to be really nice guys. After spending 4 hours downing Blue Moons with the group, we headed home to rest up for the marathon day we expected on Friday.

Friday Night
Jeep hitting beam in parking lotAfter a full day at WordCamp/Blog World, we headed out to the Hard Rock Hotel. You know it’s going to be a good night when you are pulling in to the parking garage and the guy in front of you is towing a Jeep on a flat bed and you get to watch the Jeep hit the “7′ clearance” sign followed by the next 3 concrete beams. Ahh, welcome to Vegas. (sorry the photo isn’t better on this one!)

Once inside the Hard Rock, we headed to the poker room where Blogs With Balls crew had organized a charity poker tournament for Ante Up For Africa. Pro poker player Annie Duke co-hosted the event and brought along a dozen big name poker pros to play in the tournament as well. Each table had 1 pro poker player and 1 pro blogger. They had put bounties on each of the pro bloggers, so if you knocked them out of the tournament you’d win a gift basket. I’m happy to say I knocked out our table pro and took home 7 xBox 360 sports games! We had a great time it was all for a great cause! HUGE thanks to Dan Levy for getting me and my friends in to the tourney and for putting on such an awesome event! Check out the video on YouTube.

Saturday Night
After WordCamp/BlogWorld ended it was time to strap on the party boots just one more time before sending everybody home. We started off hitting up the official BlogWorldExpo BBQ that went on poolside at the Hilton. They had an open bar and a HUGE spread of great food. The party was well attended by tons of speakers from BlogWorld which was nice since I was busy running WordCamp all weekend, I wasn’t able to chat with many of them during the previous 2 days. I really enjoyed getting to chat with Darren Rowse in person since I’ve been reading his blogs for such a long time. It’s was also nice to be able to chat face-to-face with people I don’t get to see in person too often like Jim Kukral, Aaron Hockley, Shayne Sanderson, Austin Passy, Darin Hardy and at least a dozen others.

Aaron Brazell & Jeremy Wright signing KaraokeOnce the BBQ was over we had to make a tough decision between two events that both sounded like a lot of fun. In the end we opted for the one that required zero driving. We walked inside the Hilton and headed over to the spot where they were doing #TechKaraoke. Nobody from our group sang, but we amused ourselves by watching the drunk geeks singing (I use that term loosely) and by having a “Fake ReTweet war”. Don’t know what that is? Well, the bar had a large screen (10′ x 10′ -ish) where they were showing Twitter messages that people had tagged with #bwe09. So, what you do is write up a tweet in the form of a retweet of your buddy. For example:

RT @my_buddy: Wow, I sure hope this rash goes away! Another great time in Vegas! #bwe09

This would then scroll across the screen and we would laugh our heads off. There is nothing like childish humor plus alcohol to make for an incredibly fun evening!

After a few hours of Karaoke and fake tweets, it was time to head back home and spend Sunday resting up! We were a tired crew after 4 long days and nights. But, we are looking forward to doing it all again next year!

Filed Under: Entertainment, General, WordCamp Tagged With: , , , ,

The Real Deal Poker at the Venetian

November 23, 2008

My buddy Ryan had a couple tickets to go see The Real Deal Poker at the Venetian casino on Sunday evening. I had never heard of it before, but once he explained what it was, I was excited to go.

I’m going to assume that like me, you are new to The Real Deal Poker and explain how it works. It’s like a mashup of a Vegas style show and a game show. There’s a poker table on a stage, a couple pretty girls {hostess and poker dealer}, a comic for an MC and 2 well known poker players (there are 10 pros who are part of the show, 2 per night). The MC selects 6 players out of the audience and they get to sit down at the table to play against the pros. Even if you aren’t chosen to play on stage, you still get to play along from the audience. Every seat has a touch-screen available that lets you be part of the action. Not only do you get dealt a hand in the game, there are a string of prop bets that add a bit of randomness to the game and the scores.

Here’s how the prop bets work. Before the poker game stars, you use the touch screen device to select your choses for the following prop bets:
1. Red or Black. You are betting on what color cards are going to hit the flop, turn and river.
2. Pick a Suit. The more cards of your suit that hit the flop, turn and river, the more you earn.
3. Pick 3 cards. You get to select 3 specific cards (8 of clubs, for example) and any time one of your cards comes up, you earn points.
4. Pick a pro. Decide which of the 2 pros are going to last the longest.
5. Pick an amateur. Decide which amateur is going to last the longest.

Now the game begins. The dealer starts by dealing 2 cards that belong to the audience. Everybody in the audience decides if they are going to call or fold (you can not raise). You can call or fold pre-flop, on the flop, turn or river. If the hand being played at the table is not going to make it to the river because everybody has folded, the last player with cards goes up against the audience to see who wins. There’s no penalty to the player on the table for losing to the audience. They are just trying to accumulate chips. The first round is 4 hands long. At the end of the first round, the short stack is eliminated.

In between rounds, on the touch screens they show all 52 cards face down. Everybody selects 5 cards. When they reveal the hidden cards, the top 9 players get to advance to the final round (I’ll explain this in a few.)

This process is repeated until it gets down to one pro and one amateur. At this time, the top point earner from the audience gets to join the remaining 2 players on the featured table. They battle down to the final player (there’s a certain set of hands that can be played, so it’s not going to last too long) and then the player with the most chips is the champion. If the pro wins, the second place finisher receives a nice gift. If one of the players wins, they receive a bracelet and some other prizes.

Once the tournament has finished, it’s time for the final round. This is where somebody in the audience has a chance to win a million dollars. All the players that made it on stage, and those that advanced to the final round by winning the mini-games between rounds are shown the 52 cards face down. If somebody picks 5 cards that give them a Royal Flush, they win the million. A straight flush wins them a 75 thousand dollar necklace. There are some other gifts for some other high hands as well. Of the 40ish players who are in, the best hand wins a nice prize as does the top point earner from the audience.

The show was pretty cool. We had a lot of fun watching our prop bets and bustin’ each other’s chops about who was winning. In the end I finished in the top 15 and Ryan finished about 100 places behind me.

The show lasts just over 90 minutes. Tickets are $45 for regular seats or $125 for VIP seats which are right down front, include a free drink and a meet & greet with the poker pros. In case you are wondering, sitting in the VIP section does not better your chances for making it on stage (as far as I could tell, anyway)

Here’s a shot of the game going on on-stage with the leaderboard behind them. That’s me in 13th place.

The Real Deal Poker

I just read that they have an “after hours” show where the comic is “let loose” to do his Don Rickles style comedy. Add to that the bar service and I think I’ve found the night for me to go back and take the wife since she couldn’t go with us tonight.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , ,

2008 WSOP recap

November 13, 2008

The World Series of Poker is finally over. Congratulations to Peter Eastgate on becoming the youngest player ever to win the Main Event at only 22 years old. I have a feeling it’s going to be a LONG time before anybody is able to beat that record.

This year, rather than playing out the final event of the World Series until there was 1 player left, when they eliminated the 10th place player, they put the tournament on hold and sent the players on a break. A LONG break. A 3 month break. If you are asking yourself why they would do something like that, well, you are not alone. Back when they first announced that they were going to do this, the explanation that I heard was that they were going to send the players home and invite them back in November to play out the final table live on TV. This would give ESPN time to show all the preliminary events, and the action from the main event up until the point where there were only 9 left. This sounded like an awesome idea. Last year I paid for the Pay-Per-View of the final table and watched about 7 hours of the event. I was definitely ready to watch the final table again this year. Unfortunately, that information was incorrect.

Over this past weekend, the “November Nine”, as they were so cutely named, took over the Penn & Teller theater and with about 1000 people in the audience, they played down to the final 2 players. The following evening, the final 2 came back and played it out until Peter Eastgate held all the chips in play. Of course all of this action was filmed, but there was no live broadcast, no pay-per-view, no extra content to be had at all. Instead, the well produced condensed version was shown on ESPN just like every week leading up to the final table. So why did they make the players wait? I have a guess; money.

If they had completed the final table back in July, even the most casual of poker players would have found out by now who won the WSOP. It’s not like the SuperBowl, but if you are in to Poker, you are going to run across the information on a website, magazine or word of mouth. But, by making everybody wait, they have a built up of excitement to find out who wins. This could cause poker players who may not normally watch the ESPN telecast to turn it on to find out who wins. Face it, most poker players don’t actually watch televised poker. ESPN wants those eyes watching. So anything they could do to build SOME excitement has got to be good for them.

I was pretty bummed when I found out they weren’t going to show the entire final table. But, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to watch the final show.

There were a couple of really ugly beats to knock people out, but I have to say, every player at this final table conducted themselves with a level of professionalism not normally found at the final table. When Scott Montgomery lost on the river to a one-outter, he simply smiled, shook everybody’s hand and walked away. It was a very refreshing sight.

ESPN did one thing during the telecast that is my biggest pet peeve when it comes to televised poker. When they were down to 8 players, they came back from a commercial and they are showing Kelly Kim shaking hands with some of the players. The announcer says that Kelly Kim has just been eliminated. Are you going to tell me that this player fought his way through more than 6800 players and you don’t even have the decency to show his final hand in the tournament? I don’t care if it’s the most mundane hand ever played, he deserves to have his final hand shown.

One other side effect of having a 3 month layoff before the final table, it gave all the players a chance to get sponsorships from dozens of companies. I had made a joke that it looked like we were watching a NASCAR event with everybody covered in sponsorship badges. For the players I’m stoked. Why shouldn’t they get an extra quarter-million if they can work the deals? However, for the viewers at home, I’m a little embarrassed. I would like to think that if I were to ever make it to a televised final table, I would pass up the sponsorship money and instead wear a comfortable suit that actually looks nice.

I’m really curious to hear the plans for next year’s WSOP event. I plan on playing in a couple events next year and want to know what surprises I have ahead of me. I guess I have to wait and see.

Filed Under: Ranting Tagged With: , ,

Two Types of Poker

October 12, 2008

On Friday night we went over to a co-worker’s house for a poker game. The host made some fantastic food, supplied some drinks and had invited enough people over that we could put together a 10 person tournament. As you may know, I have a fair bit of experience in running poker tournaments as we had one at our house on a monthly basis for about 4 years. I’m always glad to go to other people’s houses to play poker as it’s nice not to be the host every time. For all the fun, it is a bit of work.

We brought over our poker chip set and my laptop which has my Poker Tournament Manager software installed. We arrived right as the game was supposed to be starting, but luckily we weren’t the last to arrive, so it wasn’t a big deal. We ate some food, had a drink and then set up the game.

Even though I wasn’t hosting, my poker knowledge and the fact that everybody there KNOWS I know how to run a poker tournament automatically puts me in charge. I don’t mind, I actually enjoy running the show. But, there are still some things that the host should be making the decisions on, or at least asking about prior to everybody sitting down at the table. For example, the amount of the buy-in, the amount of chips to start, the length of the blind levels and the rules for rebuying. None of these things had been discussed prior to the game so we made some quick decisions and the game was underway. I should also mention that I offered to deal the entire time as I knew it would take FOREVER to pass the deal around the table.

For the first 20 minutes, no real big hands came up and there was a lot of limping in the pot. Any time somebody would raise, at least one person would say, “they are trying to buy the pot.” During the second round I picked up a few hands. A/K, A/Q, 9/9, 8/8 and one hand that I would love to have back where I folded Q/Q pre-flop face up. All these hands I raised with pre-flop. On the hand with Q/Q, here’s what happened. With the blinds at 50/100 I raised to 400, it folded around to a player across from me who looks at his hand, he sits back a little and got really silent and then throws out 1600 without saying anything. He never showed his hand, but even if he had A/K there, I didn’t really want to race for all my chips, so I decided to fold. I honestly think he had A/A, but we’ll never know, I guess. The reason I say I’d like to have those cards back, is I may as well have just got all my money in with Q/Q and felt unlucky to run in to aces as compared to the way I got knocked out (first of course) a few minutes later. I was really steamed at how I got knocked out and gave myself a time-out away from the table so that I could simmer down.

After 10 minutes away, I calmed down and because the rules on rebuys had not been discussed, both myself and another player bought back in right at the end of the rebuy period. I sat back down and started dealing again. About 15 minutes later, I realized that I was an idiot for being steamed about losing. What I failed to do was properly evaluate the type of poker game we were playing. The home tournament that I ran for 4 years would start out as a friendly game with drinks and laughter and people playing a little loose. But, once the rebuy period was over, the game would get serious as people were interested in winning. However, this particular home game was not like that at all. The majority of the players there could care less if they won. They were there for a good time. Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that attitude. It was my attitude that was wrong given the circumstances. Once I realized all of this I switched my way of thinking and the rest of the night was a lot of fun. There was very little “poker” being played, but again, there’s nothing wrong with that.

This morning I went to the Cannnery casino to play in the 10am poker tourament. There were 3 tables and a total of about 25 people. I played fairly loose during the first few rounds knowing that I could rebuy if needed before the end of the first hour. On the last hand prior to the cut-off, I got involved with a hand I should have never been in, but I made 2 pair on the turn and was able to double my stack back to almost it’s original starting size.

Over the next couple hours I played some pretty decent poker. I stole several pots on the turn and river when I felt my opponent wasn’t in a position to call a bet. I also ended up having to show down some hands that I had raised with like 6/8 suited and K/7 suited. As I accumulated chips, that loose play would serve me really well as the tournament went on. I was able to get a guy to move all-in against me after I raised. We turned over the cards and I had Q/Q and he had A/7. He made a flush on that hand. In another hand, against the same guy I made top two pair and he once again made a flush against me. I still had plenty of chips, so even though the second double-up was a decent set-back, I felt it was only a matter of time before I beat this guy because he would never give me credit for a hand. He always thought I was bluffing.

When we were down to 4 players the guy I doubled-up twice had the chip lead. I was dealt A/A on the button. The lady before me folded and with the blinds at 800/1600, I decided to min-raise to see what would happen. The lady in the small blind had only 3400, so I figured it wouldn’t take very much for her to get all her chips in on this hand. And, I was really hoping that if she called or pushed all-in, the buy in the BB might push all-in with a marginal hand in order to get me to fold and play against only the lady. The lady just called leaving only 200 chips in her stack. The guy thought about it for a short time and throws in the additional 1600 as well. The flop came Q/6/2 but had 2 spades. The lady throws in her remaining 200, the guy calls the 200 and I push all-in. He has me covered in chips, but not by much. He decides to call and shows Q/K. The lady had A/7 with only one spade. I was in really good shape here. I just needed to avoid a K or a Q basically. The turn was a 7 and the river was a 10. I knocked out the lady and left the guy with only 800 chips. He went broke on the very next hand. And I know had a HUGE chip lead against the other player. We put all the money in blind on the very next hand and I won the tournament.

Winning a tournament always feels good. But, I think this win felt especially good after how crazy the poker play was on Friday night. I was able to bluff at pots in certain spots today that would have NEVER worked on Friday.

I learned a valuable lesson at Friday night’s game that I will carry with me from now on. Be mindful of the type of game you are playing in. If the majority of the players are just there to have some fun and hang out with friends, do not expect them to make logical poker decisions. Had I realized that earlier in the evening on Friday, I would have saved myself some unnecessary aggravation.

BTW – If you are interested in running a home poker tournament, I wrote a guide that has some helpful information. I hope it helps.

Filed Under: Entertainment, Ranting Tagged With: , ,

Grand Opening, Casino Style

September 1, 2008
cannery.jpg

When it comes to Las Vegas, everything is done in extremes. Hell, even when they demolish a casino, they pull out all the stops. So this weekend when the Eastside Cannery was set to have their grand opening Thursday night, I was expecting an “over the top” spectacle. Since this was my first time attending the grand opening of any casino, I didn’t really know what to expect. In my mind I was seeing fireworks, laser lights, fog machines and a chorus line of show girls a mile long. Much to my surprise, there was none of that. Honestly, I didn’t miss any of it. The low key approach was much more to my taste!

cannery_small 

I’m not normally the kind of guy who’s going to rush out to a casino the night of their grand opening. But, since my wife is an employee of the new Cannery, we figured we’d go and check it out. They were set to open at 8PM. We made the mistake of showing up at about 7:50. The parking lot was filled to MAX capacity. The line to get in the building was wrapped around the building. We ended up parking down the street and walking a 1/4 mile back to the casino. We nearly got a jaywalking ticket when we chose the exact wrong spot to try to cross the street while the place was littered with cops directing traffic. By the time we got to the doors, everybody had filtered inside and the place was packed. The line to get a player’s card was a mile long. We skipped that line and went right to the poker room.

We sat down at an empty poker table, bought some chips and within a few minutes we had enough players to start a game. I’ll put it on record that my first ever hand at the Cannery casino was playing $2/$4 limit poker and I was dealt a 2 of spades and a 4 of hearts. I folded. We played for a couple hours. The poker room filled up and at one point I believe all 8 of their tables were full or close to it. I finished with a $45 profit and we headed home.

Sunday morning I planned to drop my wife off at work since the employees were not allowed to park at the casino during the opening weekend. They all had to park up the street at Wal-Mart and be shuttled to the casino. I decided to go in and play poker for about an hour. 5 hours later I cashed out and headed home. I pretty much broke even.

On Monday morning they held their first poker tournament. A $25 buy-in, 4 table, No-Limit Texas Hold’em tournament. They start you out with only $1000 in chips, but they give you bonus chips if you play live poker for 1 or 2 hours prior to the tournament. $500 tournament chips per hour, maximum of $1000 in bonus chips. I was there for an hour before so I I started the tourney with $1500 in chips. I busted a few people out early and built up a nice chip stack. I then played some aggressive poker to continue building my stack. When all was said and done, I ended up chopping the pot with 2 other players. I had a chip lead on both other guys, but the blinds were so high it wouldn’t have taken but one unlucky hand to knock me out in 3rd place. Splitting the pot 3 ways guaranteed us each better than 2nd place money.

So far I haven’t eaten anything at the casino, so I can’t tell you how the food is. Though I heard several people talking about how great the chicken noodle soup is. Next time I go I’ll try out the diner. Plus I plan on getting some more information about their concert venue which apparently is going to host MMA matches. I’ll keep you posted on what I find.

More info to come later.

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Busy week in review

April 20, 2008

This past week was pretty busy. I started the week by flying to San Francisco for a trade show. The thing about trade shows, they are basically all the same. Maybe not the content, but everything else about them is identical. I’ll show you what I mean. Here was my trade show:

Day 1: Fly in the night before the show, eat dinner too late, go out for drinks and get to sleep way to late.
Day 2: Get up early, have a crappy breakfast, spend most of your day on your feet, go out to dinner too late, go to an industry party with an open bar, get to sleep way to late.
Day 3: Get up a little later, have a crappy breakfast, have very few meetings at the show because everybody else went out too late last night, too, eat dinner way to late, skip the industry party, go to sleep way to late.
Day 4: Get up and rush to the airport to fly home.

The show was good. I had some great meetings and made some decent deals. But still I arrived home totally bushed. On Thursday I planned on going to sleep around 10 PM so I could get a good night’s sleep. Instead I fell asleep at 8:15 and slept all night.

While I was in San Francisco, I did take a few photos that I’m pretty happy with. One of them was a 30 second exposure I took from my hotel room of the street below. I love catching the streaking lights of the cars on the road. I’m thrilled with how it came out. You can check them out over here.

Friday night we went back to Sam’s Town to play the 11 PM tourney. We started with 4 tables and it didn’t take that long to get down to the final table. We lost a couple players and when we got down to the final 5, I was the overwhelming chip leader. I then got unlucky in a couple hands and I was quickly the short stack. A few minutes later, I was out of the tournament in 5th place. That, as they say, is poker.

On Saturday I slept in. It was lovely. I woke up and watched some hockey. We then went to lunch and headed over to the Pinball Hall of Fame. Have I mentioned lately that I’m addicted to this place? My current list of favorite games are “Creature from the Black Lagoon”, “Star Trek”, and “Austin Powers”. I have had a few good games on Creature, but I feel like I’m about ready to break through and have a HUGE game. I currently have my name on the high score boards for 2 games (Star Trek & Funhouse) and I feel Creature is next on my list. Soon.

Saturday evening we ordered the UFC fight on pay-per-view and had a few friends over to watch. I have to say that watching UFC is way more fun with a group of people. I watch a fair bit of it on my own, but it’s just not the same.

Sunday is going to be low key. I need to rest up and get another good night’s sleep. I have a LOT of work to do this week. I would like to get out and take some more photos, but we’ll have to see how that shapes up.

Filed Under: Entertainment, Work Tagged With: , , ,