Snuck out to Vegas over the weekend to catch the World Series of Poker Final Table.
A ton of people showed up to see Phil Ivey play. We ended up coming at a good time and only had to wait about 45 minutes to get seated.
Ended up in the de facto Kevin Schaffel cheering section. To recap, this is the final table of the 6,000+ entrant Main Event tournament held in July. The 9 players left took a 3 month break and then came back for 1 weekend to play for the $8.5 million dollar first place prize. Every one of the 9 were guaranteed at least $1.3 million.
As you can imagine, since the stakes are so ridiculous, everyone plays super conservatively. Every player folds almost every hand. I started to doze off when all of the sudden Schaffel went all-in pre-flop against this guy named Eric Buchman. Schaffel flipped over pocket Aces and everyone around me when nuts. Buchman had pocket Kings and was a huge statistical underdog. Unfortunately Buchman pulled off the miracle of his lifetime and turned quad Kings to send Schaffel home in 9th place.
For a guy who just took a 1 in a million bad beat that cost him potentially millions of dollars, Schaffel seemed to take it pretty well.
Ran into Doyle Brunson on the way out.
They had a huge sports silent auction in the Rio lobby. I had won a small fortune in craps the night before so I had to resist the temptation to blow it all on these Autographed All Star Edition Nike Kobe II's.
Stopped by Caesars.
Neil Leifer was promoting his Taschen photo book so they had some of his prints up all over the poker room including this famous shot of Ali.
Cool noodle restaurant inside Caesars.
But nothing beats the $2 South Point Graveyard Special.
