It's curtains for Vegas

This is Kevin and I am writing the final blog of our Vegas trip as we head to San Diego in my truck (obviously I am not currently driving). Today (7/15) was our checkout date from Vdara and therefore marks our departure from Las Vegas. We all played our last Vegas poker sessions in Aria last night and on a good note, all won during those sessions even if it may have been a small amount for some of us. On the trip, all three of us ended up in the black for our poker playing. Thus we all avoided the miserable situation of leaving Vegas stuck.

But before we wrap up the trip with some final thoughts, there are some recent events worth sharing. First, Matt Boucher took on a prop bet, which involved consuming an 11x11 burger from In-n-Out Burger. For those of you not well versed with In-n-Out lingo, an n x m burger indicates a burger with n beef patties and m slices of cheese. Due to an incident with a fireman, YouTube video, and a 100x100 burger, In-n-Out Burger now only serves burgers up to 4x4. Fortunately, the In-n-Out manager was very accommodating and recommended we construct our own 11x11 burger with a 3x3 burger and 4 Flying Dutchmen. With that Matt Boucher was able to take on a burger with 11 patties and 11 pieces of cheese. He crushed it and consumed the entire burger in less than 20 minutes. Well-done Matt. While he was successful and looked fine at the time, there was a concern about the cross-country flight he was boarding in less than 3 hours. Those poor passengers around him had not been given any advanced warning. We apologize if any of you reading this were caught in the presumed firestorm present on that flight.

In other news, Scott and I had the privilege of playing with NBA superstar Tyrone Lue at the Bellagio. Previously, one of the best poker games of my life involved the Bellagio, Tyrone Lue, and Damon Jones (NBA player as well). To my surprise, Lue played very un-fish like, but fortunately there were plenty of Europeans at the table and one super-fish who had just busted from the WSOP Main Event earlier in the day who was eager to take his revenge on the world by playing every hand he saw (please note this an incredibly ineffective strategy). To put this man in perspective he had the skill level of Bryan Russell trying to take an angle on a running back. I ended up destroying this super-fish.

While were on the topic of poker, our very own Matt Affleck (UW grad 2010), is crushing at the WSOP Main Event. He was been flirting with the chip lead for the past couple of days and is currently in the top ten in chips with only 200 people remaining. Note he was also a chip leader last year around this time and thus this repeat accomplishment is quite significant. We have been told that he was given an ESPN couch interview. We look forward to seeing what is said in that interview and the prospect of visiting him back in Vegas in November during the final table. Get some Matt.

In a real time incident on the highway, we just lost a trash bag full of Scott’s dirty clothes out the back of the truck and Scott is not pleased. By the time we could turn around an approach the bag again a solid 15 minutes have passed and I am expecting to see a disaster seen with Scott’s clothes scattered about the highway (note at this point in the trip we have much more dirty clothes than clean ones so this potentially represents a significant loss). To my surprise, upon arrival to the scene the clothes bag is in one piece conveniently located between two lanes. In a daring effort Wes grabs and the bag and we are quickly on our way and have luckily avoided any cops in the process. I did not see the conversation with the officer where I am explaining that we pulled over on inside part of the highway to pick up a part of our (apparently unsecured) load, ending well. I guess we are running well.

Since it’s the end of the trip all of us are able to calculate our hourly wage for our hard work here in Vegas. It dawned on me that I spent a decent portion of time shuttling people back and forth from the airport to avoid annoying cab expenses (They tilt me, too). If I had been playing poker instead of operating my company, Kevin’s Vegas Airport Shuttle Service, I would have had an expected income of $225. To my dismay, I realize it would have been +EV to literally pay for all of my friends cab rides and instead play poker. Also, since I do not hail from the Foster School of Business, I just am realizing now running a business which does not accept any sort capital is probably a poor business model and will not make me a millionaire. Oh well, I guess I know a better approach for next time.

Two nights ago, after playing some ball at UNLV (for those of you following the summer league, it is currently taking place at UNLV, although we never got a chance to observe for ourselves. After the game, “Suicide Tom”/”The Balla”/”Taro” invited us over to his house for some beers and a BBQ. We were very excited to visit the house of 9 presumed millionaires (They kill online poker). The house that they have rented for the month, which would be more appropriate to label as a mansion, did not fail to disappoint. Backyard amenities included a basketball court, pool with hot tub and a putting green. The inside of the house was even more impressive. It included a master bedroom like I had never seen before. A general theme in the house was Giant televisions surrounded by smaller (50 inch) LCD televisions. If things go well, maybe next year we upgrade to something like that, although Vdara treated us very well.

That should get everyone up to speed and it’s time to start wrapping up this final blog post. For those of you interested our travel plans, they involve swinging through California before heading back up to Seattle. We will be avoiding the 20-hour drive and breaking it up a bit for the way back. I don’t think any of us have any interest in a 20-hour drive in my truck ever again. We plan to stay in San Diego Thursday night and Friday night then head up to LA Saturday morning. Scott is planning on showing me around LA and selling the prospect of living here. He says it’s great, but with the current state of California debt and frequent risk of earthquakes (for those of you who saw the movie 2012 you will remember California disappeared into the ocean as a result of earthquakes), Scott has a lot of work to do. We plan on departing from LA on Wednesday morning and visiting Sam Wright in Berkeley to continue to break up the trip. After that it’s home free. For those of you eagerly anticipating our arrival, we are planning on arriving sometime late Thursday night (7/22). Then it’s time to look reliving the infamous party bus experience.

And to finally wrap things up, this month in Vegas has flown by extremely quickly. It seems like just the other day that we were arriving here, but the experience has been nothing short of awesome. Vegas is like a fairy-tale land where there are no rules and the ridiculous is encouraged, but as a whole the crew is starting to get worn down and it’s time to return to the real world. We want to thank all the visitors who shared in the experience with us; hopefully you guys had a good time as well. A month of poker next summer is a very real possibility, but for now we say good-bye, Vegas. With our crew it will only be a matter of a couple months before we return.

Vegas is Winning

Wes Louie here. I've been away for a bit partially because I was bed ridden for a day or so. In the time Wald was away from Vegas, both Scott and I got pretty damn sick, but on separate nights. I blame the sandwich Warbis made me eat at Planet Hollywood but I can't be certain. I am sure that this was one of the worst nights of my life though. Scott can vouch for my misery since he experienced the same thing I did a day before I did.

On the bright side though, Warbis and Schweik were nice enough to pay us a visit! And who would have thunk it, 2 of the 3 nights they were in town, I threw up. Keep in mind I haven't thrown up for a very long time. I went all of graduation week and 3 weeks in Vegas without throwing up, yet somehow, Schweik managed to bring it out in me twice. That wasn't the only thing that Ryan and Jake brought out in me, they revived the degenerate gambler in me. Between Schweik's Roulette Strategy and a few free top shelf drinks from Aria and Bellagio, I was right where my ancestors wanted me. Gambling. Table game after table game. There was blackjack, roulette, pai gow, and my personal favorite/specialty...blackjack switch. For many of you out there, these games are all losing investments. However, little did you know that I am a professional blackjack switch player. For more on my skills, please consult Scott. However when it comes to Roulette, Schweik is the man to talk to! He led the team to many a victory at the Roulette table. Not going to lie, he also led us to a few losses as well, but the team victories when we all followed his lead were a damn good time. We also managed to dabble in some sports betting. We (Schweik and myself) bet an over under on runs scored in the first 5 innings, and we also bet Yankees to crush the Mariners, thankfully we scooped both. Warbis bet the Germany game and managed to collect a little extra cash there as well.

While Afflect was busy battling at the final table, Warbis decided to take a walk over to UNLV to check out the summer league game which featured Quincy Pondexter. While Schweik and I railed Afflect (railed is the term used when watching someone play from the sidelines), he was able to book a 5th place finish in a Bellagio tournament. After he busted, he was able to comp Schweik and myself in for free at the Bellagio buffet. Free buffets in Vegas are quite tough to beat people. It's like a $30 value!

The drinking on the weekend was aggressive to say the least. We had one night where we killed a 5th between 4 of us within a half hour window, and then went immediately to purchase slushies with 7 shots or so in them. By the end of the night I was destroyed and I almost puked on a blackjack table. The other night people went out was the night I was destroyed and stuck in bed. Everyone went to a local hot spot called Stoney's and apparently had a ridiculous night. Scott said he saw multiple people drunker than he has ever seen them before.

Oddly enough Vegas is winning, Scott almost died one night, I almost died one night and Jamie was almost sent to the hospital 2 nights ago. He was at the Aria buffet and was handled a plate of pasta that just so happen to be served on a scolding hot plate. He received 2nd degree burns on his blister filled hand. Paramedics were brought in on the spot but that wasn't enough. A personal call was made to a doctor that night at 5am in order to properly care for his hand. Jamie has been in pain for days, well, he would have been if he wasn't drugged up on every pain killer under the sun. Let me tell you guys that James Shaevel on pain killers is never a dull time. As much as we wish he wasn't in pain, we're all enjoying the haggard James Shaevel show. But on a serious note, get well soon my man.

On a side note, we are at the tail end of our Vegas stay. We will be leaving the desert July 15th and making our way to San Diego to visit the one and only Denise Tamura. We were informed tonight that she has planned a home cooked lasagna meal for us the night we arrive. The 3 of us could not be more thrilled especially since our room here has no oven and we haven't been able to have a real home cooked meal in about a month. So not only are we looking forward to an amazing home cooked meal, we will be able to spent a day or two in San Diego with Denise. Plans to devour some authentic mexican food are already brewing in my head. After our stay in SD we will make the drive to LA where Wald and I will be crashing with Scott for a few days. We will be playing cards at Commerce, hooping a bit, returning to visit the Twist Twins, getting Wald his first Bay Cities sandwich and last but not least, saying hello to Hanna and Larry Heineman. After our 3 day stay in LA we will continue our drive north into Berkeley to visit Sam Wright and hopefully through Sonoma to visit Ben Mo. As far as our return to Seattle these are the 3 pit stops we have planned.

However! When we do return to Seattle, we have big things planned. We are hoping to put together party bus #2. I would love to do a bon fire at Alki/Golden Gardens. I hope to get some hikes under my belt, and last but not least, tear up the ave. So until then boys and girls, clear your schedules, prepare your livers, lace up those hiking shoes and don't forget to unplug that lamp in the corner.

Clubbing

Via Kevin -

After a weekend of drunken debauchery with my roommates, I went into recovery finally being sober for a couple of nights. It was nice staying away from alcohol for a bit and getting down to playing some more cards, but by Thursday night Scott and I were both more than ready to partake in one of our favorite pastimes, drunken 1-3 no limit poker where we get belligerent and berate lesser players in front of them. We knew that there would be some drinking this last weekend with Cassie, Sam, and Brittany coming into town for 4th of July weekend (obviously a big weekend), but couldn't resist the lure of some drinks on Thursday night. I came to regret this decision later down the line, like for instance Monday night. 5 nights in a row is a lot for a non-greek college alum to drink alcohol. Anyway, back to the beginning of the weekend.

The previously aforementioned girls came in on Friday and were ready to party with an intensity that I was not expecting. Night one started with ladies night at the Bank (the club in the Bellagio). The girls loved it, they got free admission and free alcohol. The guys on the other hand got the privilege of paying a slightly increased admission fee, which did not include any complimentary alcohol...how fun! I had already left the club at this point, but highlights include the club making it rain on Scott (stripper style). He came out $22 richer. Way to grab all those one dollar bills off the (I'm sure very clean) floor! Also, perhaps inspired by Birdman and Lil' Wayne, some black guys started poppin' bottles of champagne and making it rain on Scott and the girls again (this time with champagne). But not everything was positive from the night. According to Scott's scouting report, the talent level at the Bank was low as there weren't too many persons of interest. That was our Friday night.

By Saturday night the girls were ready to go out to yet another club, which was tough to commit to since the poker games were very very juicy this weekend. Wes and Scott were unwilling to leave those games, but I had a hard time to saying no to a night of partying and agreed to tag along. This time the destination was club Haze, which is located in Aria and less than a 5 minute walk from our room. We met up with Sam's brother Adam who is a professional poker player and his friend Shaun, also a pro-poker player. Getting into Haze was significantly more annoying than getting into the bank. We had to tip bouncers, pay full admission, but we finally got in and the club it self was pretty sweet. There was this dancer on a 20 ft pole doing Cirque du Soleil like things. She was awesome. Also, the music was great. And props to Shaun for making friends with a group of black girls who had a table with bottles. There was literally no other guys who got in with these girls the entire time I was there. Yet he kept coming back with glasses of patron and grey goose for us to share. It was great. Good work Shaun.

Next comes Sunday, the 4th, obviously a night for going out and this time both Wes and Scott were joining me which was big (I'd only had Scott come out with me once thus far and no Wes). We also had Jason, Matt, and Jake joining us in the addition to the girls. The destination was Lavo at the Palazzo. Unfortunately for Matt and Jake, they were wearing polos and promptly turned around by the bouncer at the door. We came up with a plan to get Matt and Jake into the club; we told Matt and Jake to go into a store and buy a button down shirt and return it the next day. Unfortunately for them, the only store close that was open on a Sunday night at 11:30 pm on July 4th was the gift shop at the Venetian. So Jake went in and asked about the return policy on the only button down shirt for sale (it was covered in rhinestones stones). The guy asked "Are you guys going to the club?" and Matt said "yes". The guy explained that if they wore the shirts then the shirts could not be returned. Jake then asked, "What if we're not going to the club?". The man said, "Since I know you guys are going to the club you can't return the shirts". That was the end of Jake and Matt's night and it was probably for the better since they would have looked ridiculous going into a club wearing matching rhinestone button down shirts. Once the rest of us got in, the club was packed and we had a good time. Sam almost got into a fight while dancing, but fortunately Scott was able to step in a prevent a brawl. As a result of the work of Brittany, we were able to dance with two tree-like volleyball girls which was quite entertaining. Thanks Brittany, I crave nothing more than giant (which means slightly over 6 ft before heels) blonde volley-ball girls... I'll call it quits for now and we will discuss the rest of the weekend soon.

July 4th weekend Part 2

Wes Louie here. Thought I would do a little follow up on the whole club scene that Wald informed you all about. After the awesome night at Lavo (at the Palazzo) with Sam, Cassie and Brittnay, my cousin Jason and I had plans to go and earn some free rooms at the Venetian/Palazzo. The game plan on the night was to blow $500 playing $25 a hand. Jason had got a tip from someone saying that if you play 3 hours of blackjack betting a minimum of $25 a hand, that was enough to earn yourself the free room offer. I had no interest in investing finacially in this matter but I always love a good table game experience. I normally choose to get a little alcohol flowing, and by a little I mean a lot. Once I get pretty drunk, I start getting a little loose, a little loud, and quite frankly, easily the loudest person in the casino. So my cousin and I decided it would be a fun idea to have me play using his money that way I still get the gambling experience and he still earns his free room. Little did we know that at our table there would be a man who would appreciate the madness that a drunk Wes Louie brings to the table as well. This is the part of the story where I introduce you to our new friend Jay. Now Jay is a very special kind of man. He comes to Vegas like any other man to escape the stresses of life. Naturally, while his wife is sound asleep in bed, he sneaks away to the blackjack table. Lucky for us, he just so happen to choose our table to gamble his millions at. This blackjack session started off just like it should, losing. That 2.5% edge the house reserves for itself was getting the best of us. We were down to about our last $150, but still full of energy. For those of you who have never seen my "energy" at a blackjack table, it is essentially me attempting to will the cards I want from the dealer. I'm talking full on screaming and openly stating my disgust for the dealer if things don't go my way. Occasionally it becomes personal with the dealer, but most of the time, the screaming winds up working in our favor. After we finally start to rally a bit we get ourselves back to about $250 in chips. Our boy Jay on the other hand, is now sitting with about $1,000. He starts to raise his bet, as well as play 3 hands, so he now has about $300 riding on every hand he plays. The next hand we play, he winds up staying on all 3 of his hands, I hit on mine, and bust. But it just so happen that the hit I took, would have been the dealer's money card which would have made him a loser on the hand. Jay felt compelled to give us the bet back that we sacrificed in order to make him a winner. So Jay throws a $25 chip our way. We try to refuse because it seemed so ridiculous but he insisted that it was good karma. Like any intellligent person, if a stranger is going to force money on us, who are we to take this pleasure away from him right? Little did we know this would continue all night. Jay's other technique was throwing us 2-3 $5 chips which are red. He threw them to us before the bets were finalized and he wanted us to bet these chips on our bet as "putting the cherry on top". If we won, he wanted the original chips back that he gave us, and we kept the extra profti. So he allowed us to freeroll for $10-$15 additional dollars a hand every other 4 hands or so. So at this point Jason Scott and myself are all rooting for him to win almost more than ourselves. He is betting anywhere from $25-$400 a hand. When he was betting $100+ a hand on 3 different hands, we were screaming for dealer bust cards, celebrating when he pulled a triple winner, we celebrated it all. I also should have mentione that this was at about 4 in the morning. We started this madness at about 1am and after about 3 hours of this madness alongside Jay, we had collected $275 in handouts from Jay. Literally no risk was ever taken to collect this money, simply our energy and support was apparently worth $275 to this man. We kept the Jay donations separate from our other chips, but thankfully, we had run our stack up to about $700. Jay however was not so fortunate, at this point we had seen him go into pocket for a little over $3000. When things are going well, everyone is celebrating and screaming because of the easy money being won. However, when things started to go south for Jay, we went speechless. When things "go south" I mean he has $400 a hand out there and the dealer pulls a sick 21. Therefore, $400 a hand, playing 3 hands, the man is losing $1200 in a matter of seconds. When that happens a time or two in a row, you start to feel pretty awkward. Jay asks us how we're doing and we tell him we are up about $700 at this point. He wants to know why we aren't celebrating too much, but its because the man to our right is losing his shirt. It's a bit comical because of how much of a degenerate he is. It's 5am and he is reaching into his pocket to chase this money. Eventually we got so tired, and it got so awkward, we just had to call it a night. Thankfully Jay was in decent spirits upon our completion of the blackjack session. The final tally on the night was $275 donated from Jay and $745 won from actual blackjack. It was a perfect session, we got free drinks while playing, $275 in handouts, pending free rooms at the Venetian, and $745 for our time. Not a bad way to spend a couple hours in the middle of the night right?

I (Scott) will concluded this weekend that stetched into Tuesday. What Wes decided to leave out of the Jay story was at around 3:45 am a group of four girls approched the blackjack table that we were at. One of the girls takes out a few hundred dollars in chips and looks like she wants to play. While that is going on another girl in the group says "Hey Asian guys, what are your names?". Wes and Jason introduce themselves and the girl took a unique liking to Wes. She immediately started complementing Wes on his looks and spitted her most awkward game. She went from where are you guys from to are you a model!? Wes lets her know that he isn't a model, but she pushed on and said "Are you kidding me, your jacked! You have to be a model!". She then complemented his hair (in case you've never seen Wes he rocks a buzz cut) and a some other things. Wes flattered and a bit confused smiled, stayed pretty composed and thanked her for her complements. Once this girl got the clue that Wes wasn't interested she was ready to move on, so she sent the signal to her friend who was "their" to play blackjack (ended up playing only one hand and lost) and they were well on there way.

Me and Wes wake up Monday morning just after 1:00 pm and go to the Aria buffett. Sam Wright and Nick Bernardi were on the way to Vegas from LA. We met them at Aria and no later than 10 minutes of being in our room the first beers were cracked open. We took Nick and Sam to the Aria cafe for a late lunch then went to the Aria pool. By the time we got back from the pool it was 6:00 pm and Nick and Sam were looking for some drunken gambling. We decided to start favorite drinking game of all, drunken 1-3 no limit at Aria. Me, Wes, Wald, Nick and Sam put our names on the list a got a couple of drinks while waiting. Wes and Wald got seats pretty quickly while Sam, Nick and I had to wait much longer. Luckily the wait was well worth it as they opened a new 1-3 table. One of the best poker players in the world, Annette Obrestad, was sitting at my table. I saw her sit down a freaked out a little bit. I frantically searched for Wes and Wald in the poker room to tell them that Annette is sitting at my table. I found Wald first, and interrupted a hand he was playing to tell him to move to my table. Without hesitation Wald tells me to lock a seat up. I eventually relay the message to Wes who joins us about an hour in. A player of Annette's skill level would never play a 1-3 game normally but she was around Aria and the friend she was with wanted to play so she did. In the brief time we played with her you could see how good she was, she was essentailly soul reading everyone at the table and especially Wald who lost a few pots to her early on. Wald stayed composed (keep in mind we were ordering drinks throughout the 2 hours we played with her) and won a big pot off her. Wald had pocket aces (the best starting hand in hold'em) and they got all the money in before the flop and Wald won. I completed the job a few hands later by winning a big pot off and taking all of her chips. That is probably our proudest poker moment (winning a big pot off a well-known and very well respected professional). We left the poker room giddy and pretty drunk

One of the only requests that Nick and Sam had was to get a Nathan's hotdog from New York, New York, clearly inspired from the Nathan's hotdog eating contest the day before. So we went to New York, New York a got some hotdogs. The hotdogs very dissappointing and we headed down the strip and went to Planet Hollywood. On the way there we saw a women who was no younger than 35, sitting up righgt and completely passed out on a bench outside of Paris. We obviously found this funny and tried taking a picture with her. Unfortunately, the one got was too dark and blurry. We got to Planet Hollywood and wandered the casino floor until we ran into "The Pleasure Pit", which is just normal table games with half naked girls as dealers. We were unimpressed and moved on down the strip towards the Flamingo. Nick expressed an interest in playing craps somewhere on the strip, so right when we entered the Flamingo Nick bolted for the craps table. He won and moved onto Casino Royal. Casino Royal is without a doubt one of the worst casino's on the strip, it looks like a fun house from the outside and is a fun house inside with mirrors on the ceiling and crazy dealers. We do go there because they offer cheap table games and even cheaper drinks ($1 margaritas and $1 Michelob everyday). Nick also played some craps there. Sam and I started a UDub chant when Nick got the dice to roll and let's just say the other players at the table and employees didn't approve. Nick won again and we moved on the Wynn. Nick played another round of craps at the Wynn and kept his winning streak alive. We called it a night after the Wynn.

We woke up the next day and went to the Bellagio buffet for breakfast/lunch. Nick and Sam played Keno during the meal, turing into degenerates before my very eyes. Sam broke even and Nick lost $2.00. After the meal we met up with Sam Croffut and Cassie and went to the Vdara pool. Wald and Wes joined and to my surprise I found out Wald was going to attempt the watermelon prop bet (For those who are too lazy to look up past posts the bet is eating an entire costco watermelon in an hour for $20 USD). Wald had prepped earlier in the day with a run, some tanning and consuming as little water as possible to get dehyrated. He started at 3:30pm and wasted no time, he killed the first 1/4 of the melon in the first eight minutes. The watermelon started to have its way with Wald after that as he struggled to get the next fourth down. By 4:15pm Wald still had between 1/4-1/3 left and he gracefully conceded.

Wes, Nick, Sam and I headed to Aria to play some Pai Gow and we said goodbye to Cassie and Ms. Croffut. It was a positive first experience for Sam and Nick with Pai Gow because they both won. After a very short craps session for Nick at Aria it was time for Sam and Nick to leave. They were only in Vegas for 30 hours, but they did a lot in those 30 hours.

Since this post is so long I will save the details for the next post, but Jamie successfully completed day 1 of the main event, along with Tom and Matt Affleck (who played Tuesday).

We are looking forward to the arrival of Jake "your boy" Schweikl, Ryan Warbis and Colin (my favorite) Perez tomorrow. We'll have more stories to share with this group in town.

My name is Wesley Louie, and I embellished

Wes Louie again ya'll. First off, I would like to clear up things about my last post. My intentions were to create a humorous yet miserable image for you all. Upon reading through the post later in that day, I realized how poor of a job I did haha So to clear everything up, there are no hard feelings on my part. The misery that I spoke of was not by any means enjoyable, however I was happy to make the sacrifice for a friend and would be more than willing to do it again. I very well could have been drunk the morning after when I was writing the last post, although not an excuse for the last post which portrays my boy in a negative light, however perhaps a reason why my writing style was so poor.

On to more recent news, there is a new prop bet! Kat I know you're excited to read that last sentence haha Any guesses? :-) Well, depending on how well you know us, you might be quite close. It involves eating. The new prop bet on the table is can Wald eat a full Costco watermelon in an hour. $20 is the value behind completion of this unbelievably respectable feat. The prop bet attempt is supposed to take place sometime early next week. I spoke with the Captain this morning and I heard about his game plan. He had prior plans to change the oil in his truck early next week, and he plans to go for a jog while his truck is being worked on. The thought process behind this is that he should come back pretty dehydrated and therefore in need of all the liquids the watermelon can offer. We got word of Nick's father, Terry, attempting this back in college and ever since then, he has never had the desire to consume watermelon. Some of us fear that Wald will experience this same turnoff however Wald assures us that his passion for watermelon should not be affected by this bet. Do keep checking back on our posts for any and all things Watermelon Prop Bet. I am even flirting with the idea of attempting it with him...WWDPWD

Wald and Scottie are currently taking shots of Makers while Scott stretches to limber up for the trip to the Bank tonight. Scott was able to work his magic with Natalie in order to hook up entrance for about 10 into the Bank. Some of the crew is playing drunken 1/2 at the Bellagio to prefunk the night, some are landing in Vegas as we speak and the rendezvous will soon take place at the Bellagio. Madness will undoubtedly follow. I'm sure a blog post will be added in the near future on all things Bank. We've been to Vegas over 5 times and never have we seen what the inside of the Bank looks like, so tonight is a big night. Wald mentioned Cabo form, the Party Bus, and "it's going to be a big night"...lookout Vegas.

Excitement for Schweik and Colin obviously growing by the day. Prepare yourselves boys.

That's about all for now, so until next time, may your cards be live and your pots be monsters.

The Calm Before the Storm

Wes left you guys with a funny miserable image from this past weekend. Let me (Scott) just say I was not even close to as miserable as Wes. The little amount of sleep wasn't great but we are in Vegas...

Since Wald's roommates and Jeff left it has been pretty calm. We have been detoxing with food, pool and poker. Remmy (Ryan) left today and had a very successful stay. He left us his Aria room key so we can now go to the Aria pool whenever we want, which is nice because it's a lot bigger than the Vdara pool.

As Remmy leaves more visitors come in. Bobby (Gupta) arrived last night, on his birthday no less. We enjoyed a festive meal at the Grand Lux (At the Venetian), where wine and Bacardi were going down faster than BP's stock price. After the meal, part of the group attacked the table games. They started at Blackjack and ending with Craps. As the casino and everyone else in the world predicted it didn't go so well. Fun fact about the free drinks you get playing table games as opposed to poker, the table game drinks are stronger than the ones you get playing poker (it makes sense). To drown our sorrows we made it back to Matt and George's room and continued. We were flipping hold'em and omaha hands for shots. Tom ran better than Usain Bolt with Moses on his back; even when Tom lost he had an amazing hand.

The cab driver we had on the way to Bobby's birthday dinner was unreal. Image a slow talking southern accent on guy who looks like this http://www.mikeandmandy.us/wp-content/uploads/bucktooth_mugshot.jpg (add one more tooth) telling us crazy stories about what has happened in the back of his cab. Let's just say the back seat of some Vegas cabs isn't as clean as you think.

Rumors of Ms. Lemieux (Katie) arriving in vegas a few hours ago are running rampid, but because I haven't seen or heard from her yet I can't confirm these rumors. Also Adam Kubiskey (aka the greatest fantasy football GM the east coast will ever see) will be in vegas sometime soon. Sam Croffut and friends will be coming in this weekend for the 4th, hopefully they are staying at the Venetain so we can accompany them to Tao Beach. And breaking news out of Berkeley, CA is that Sam Wright (that's right, BMI guy) and Nick Bernardi will be making a one night stop in Vegas on July 5th. It's going to be hard to top this past weekend, but with this group coming in on top of it being 4th of July weekend things will be crazy at the very least.

I Thought This Weekend Was Supposed To Be Fun

This is Wes Louie again. Yes two posts in a row! We are saying good-bye to Jeff, Ruben, Katya, Hayley, Kara, Alain and the crew today. Although these people are some of my best friends, I couldn't be happier to see them go. Aside from a few fun experiences throughout the weekend, the weekend was full of misery. On the bright side, we did experience the MGM pool which was absolute madness and we finally dined at Carnevino. Although the pool and Carnevino were amazing, that still did not negate the misery which I encountered over these past few nights. I wish I could blame a prostitute for giving me a horrid STD, or an asian blackjack dealer for taking hundreds of dollars off me, or perhaps a disgusting stripper who forced cocaine upon me, but sadly none of that took place, all of my blame is able to be directed towards one person, and one person only. (side note Scott just made me breakfast in bed, no homo)

But who wants to be negative, lets stay positive for the time being. The Payton crew and the Alain's bachelor party crew gave Vegas quite a bit to be excited about. I saw Alain three straight nights, and can't say I ever hung out with him sober. Alain was drunk the entire weekend rambling off phrases such as "i'm too excited to sleep!" or "we're in Vegas baby!". He even attempted to get on stage at the comedy show we attended at Harrah's to tell a joke or two of us. Much to our disappointment, he never made it. The comedy show however was a great time because everyone from Seattle was able to make it out to enjoy the humor and good company.

The following morning Remmy (Ryan Martin) joined us in Vegas for his first time in the desert. We immediately made out way to MGM to join the Payton crew at the pool. At Vdara, we have a great pool, very exclusive, peaceful and elegant. The MGM scene however was a bit more, how do I say it, Cabo-esque. There were beautiful girls in bikinis everywhere you looked. They were Ronnie wanna-bes surrounding every beautiful girl you saw. And quite possibly the best thing I saw, were people buying $35 buckets of beers (6) pouring the beers over girls in the pool. Literally pouring money into the pool. It was like 500 people were on spring break and they all came to this pool to party. I even experienced my first flashing in Vegas thanks to the incredibly drunk girl who gave into the extreme encouragement from the gathering of bros who were poolside. We did however join the party, steal a few innertubes, and ride the river current for a lap or two. We also witnessed a couple girls try to start a dance party and oddly enough, it wasn't Hayley, Katya and Kara.

Staying positive, I'll move to the topic of the Carnevino meal. This was the highlight of the weekend for me not only because of the amazing food, but because of the fact that we had everyone together for a nice dinner of good company, great food, great service, and some wildly inappropriate conversation. I want to preface this meal description with Carnevino gave us the best service I have ever received. The restaurant is located in the Palazzo and if you ever have a chance to dine here, I strongly suggest you do not waste that opportunity. Our meal started with complimentary appetizers which were a lightly fried blend of cheeses. Followed by rosemary bread with our choice of spreads was incredible. The bread alone was delicious but when paired with the pork lard spread they offered, it was hands down the best bread/roll I've ever experienced. We also decided to split three of their pasta appetizers as more of a tasting due to the fact that we knew the portions would be small. We sampled black fettucine (crab, jalapenos, shallots), spago (spaghetti with lamb ragu), and ravioli di stracotto (duck livers and acero balsamico). All three dishes offered me flavors I had never experienced before. The black fettucine offered a rich flavor with a light after taste which I loved. However my personal favorite was the spago because of the surprisingly rich flavor. The highlight of the meal however was the bone-in ribeye. I'm sure some of you have heard me rave about this meal before but it couldn't hurt to reiterate just how much hype this steak has to it. Men's Health's food critic labeled this steak one of the best in the country if not the best. Carnevino has it's own dry aging facility 10 miles off the strip so the restaurant is caring for the meat they serve from the get go with no middle man. They server informs us that upon ordering this menu item, that it will take about 45 minutes to prepare. As most of you know, when I am hungry, I do not like to wait. Perhaps this is where you think my misery for the weekend will begin but you're wrong. This 45 minute wait for my bone-in ribeye was worth every second. The mouthwatering steak sprinkled with sea salt and drizzled with Carnevino's olive oil was even more beautiful than I had remembered. The medium rare thing of beauty placed in front of me brought my teammate near tears. The $65 steak must be ordered for two and with Jeff as my partner, I had hyped this steak up for the past 6 months. I had told him it would be the best steak he would ever had. I told him it was the best food hands down I have ever had. I told him it would blow his mind and change his view of steaks forever. Upon his first bite, the released a sigh of ecstasy that only a Carnevino steak can do. When I asked him if I had over hyped the steak, which i feared, he confirmed that all my statements were indeed accurate. With the wonderfully seasoned tender steak also came perfectly marbled fat. Jeff can tell you himself, the fat added amazing flavor to the meal. Kara even described it as "a taste of Heaven". With the amazing food, obviously great company, and wildly inappropriate conversation, it was a perfect way for Payton to say goodbye to Vegas. The wildly inappropriate conversation you may be curious about will be left to the imagination. Keep in mind it was Hayley, Kara, Katya, Wald, Scott, Remmy, Ruben and myself around a table for about 2.5 hours after being in Vegas for 3 days...oh the possibilities!

That concludes the enjoyable part of the weekend.

On to the misery that destroyed the weekend. As most of you are aware, there are 3 of us staying in the room and we have agreed to rotate sleeping arrangements. We have 2 people in the king and 1 person sleeping on the air mattress (adjacent to the bed) on any given night. However, for the past 3 nights, I haven't slept in either place once. For the past 3 nights, I haven't been able to return to my room until after 4am. As a result of such things, I was forced to do other things to entertain myself until I was able to go to sleep. Imagine paying a large chunk of change for a place to sleep and stay in the desert, and not being able to sleep there when you want. Sounds pretty awful right? Weeeeell I'm not quite finished. Because this gave me an extra couple hours a night to entertain myself, I found myself grinding the Aria 1/3 poker game. The quality of the average player is poor. So poor that they explain their logic outloud and attempt to spout off statistics to sound intelligent. In my haggard sleep deprived state, Im not able to exercise restraint and begin to combat all the statements made by these re-tards. To give you a better idea of how haggard I got on these bonus unwanted poker sessions, I believe it is Miley Cirus' song about the USA or something...I was so haggard from being around these bafoons, and losing to these bafoons mind you, I began to sing along. So picture this, here I am, 4 in the morning, I'm collapsed on a poker table, losing to people who I don't respect and am making fun of (but they're so dumb they don't realize I am), as I sing along to Miley Cirus. If that isn't misery I don't know what is. To add to the misery, by the time I am able to return to the room, I don't get to sleep in the bed or the air mattress, I am reduced to sleep on a queen size pull out bed with Scottie. I forgot to mention this but Scott did in fact share in all the misery I did because he wasn't able to return to the room either. So by the time we return to the room, we are forced to sleep in a queen size pull out bed where you can feel the individual springs beneath you. I have woken up the past 3 days in physical pain. Lucky for me this morning was only my back and jaw that hurt. Did I get punched in the face or run into something? No, that would make perfect sense though for my jaw hurting. But instead, the only answer I have for why my jaw hurts is because I slept on the damn sofa bed again! I am laying on the sofa bed as a write this and it angers me with every minute I continue to lay here. Aside from being sleep deprived, stuck at the poker game, and being haggard enough to sing that awful song in public, my misery continues into the morning where I woke up in pain.

I plan to stay away from alcohol for the rest of this trip unless it is to drink with Colin Perez or Jake Schweikl. Anything that happens with those 2 I am on board and will be pumped to create madness. However, with the weekend I just had, I don't want to drink anymore, I hate Vegas and I just want to sit on the magical couch.

Something I did miss, Jeff Ko put on a show at the Aria buffet. I managed to sneak in for free but for others it was $38. Jeff ate more crab than i knew a man could. Wald and myself, both Vegas buffet regs, declared Jeff's performance one of the most impressive we have ever seen. Props to my boy doing work and showing Vegas how Seattle rolls.

Until next time guys, remember, being a good wing man is one thing, biting the bullet is another, if you have to consistently bite bullets to be a good wing man, you may want to find yourself another wing to man

A Taste of Las Vegas Madness

Wes Louie here. I was supposed to have blogged late last night, but a night of drunken 1/3 at Aria turned into more drinking in our room. Once in the room all I could focus on was making Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, once that was devoured I passed out hence the day after post here. Lucky for me, I had quite the day to post about since we not only had our first batch of visitors arrive yesterday (Alain and his bachelor party crew), we also dealt with some people getting out of line at the poker table.

I will start with bringing you all up to speed as far as the poker debacle is concerned because that is what is freshest in my mind. I showed up to Aria where Wald and Scott were playing 1/3 side by side. They were both about 7 drinks deep by the time I showed up. I quickly had people at 3 different tables ordering me drinks so I could catch up (special thanks to George/Jake). Scott happened to be losing during this particular session and as we all know, when you start to lose, you get haggard, you stop caring about pretty much everything else except how awful the people at the table are, and how much they don't deserve your money. Scott was in the misery/haggard mode and as he mucked his two hole cards, he exposed them to the people at the other end of the table. Most people aren't too upset about this happening because it can be an accident; however, Aria poker players take things a bit more serious than the average. Upon Scott's muck that resulted in the exposed cards, one gentlemen began expressing his frustration that Scott exposed his cards, and almost simultaneously another guy at the table, lets call him Boston (he was wearing a Red Sox cap), literally lost his mind. He stood up, ripped out his headphones from his ears enraged at what just happened, exclaimed "I'm getting the floor!" and stormed off. For those of you who aren't familiar with poker rooms, the "floor" is the poker room manager or authority who oversees any and all disputes during a poker game. So Boston marches up to Jessica, the floor, and apparently struck her decently hard to get her attention so he could bring her attention to what was taking place at our table. As he is doing this, the 3 of us burst into laughter because of how ridiculous the scene he was creating was. After he sees the 3 of us laughing, he says to Scott (i assume it was directed towards Scott since he started all this) "yeah you think this is funny? keep laughing and i'll knock you out!". This actually made us laugh even harder because between Scott and this guy was both Wald and myself. And lets be honest, Wald is way too tall to let some goon get anywhere near the team Doctor. To give you an idea of the potential attacker, he was about 5'7, a little pudgy, and what I would describe as having stubby limbs. So if you can paint yourself a picture of how ridiculous it is for this man to threaten Scott with Wald and myself between them, you very well may be joining in on the laughter. After he finally got Jessica to the table, all Jessica said to us was "please don't expose any more cards, I don't want to get punched". Scott cooperated with Jessica's request and we all calmed down, shortly after that they rack up and we make our way to leave. Jessica asked us to remove ourselves from the poker room due to our groups volume...imagine that. So we haven't quite gotten kicked out of a poker room, simply asked to leave. However Scott has wanted to get kicked out of Paris for the past year and a half so perhaps sometime over the next 3 weeks we'll get drunk enough to really create some problems for Paris. That, or Scott offered me $75 to puke on the casino floor inside of Paris. Hello prop bet night...

Shortly after our incident with Boston, Alain and friends finally found their way to Aria after about a 30 minute search. Alain came over and greeted the 3 of us and within about 10 seconds of being table-side, he began to attack Boston verbally as only Alain can do. Our suspicion is that Boston was too dumb to realize Alain was talking about him, but nonetheless the Seattle crew still enjoyed Alain's unquestioned loyalty. If you are lucky enough, you may see me when I return to Seattle and you can watch/listen to the recordings I have from this night.

On another note, visiting group #2 just landed today. Welcome to Las Vegas Ruben, Katya, Kara, Hayley and Jeff! Prefunking for the evening is actually about to begin as soon as I post this and I believe we will be creating a bit of Payton madness anywhere and everywhere here in the desert. All we can hope for is that no one needs a wheelchair tonight. Thankfully we are within walking distance of everything so a 45 minute cab ride won't be necessary either. If that isn't something to get excited about party bus fans I don't know what is! We plan to aggressively drink the whole weekend with these guys in town, however one event which is mandatory is the return to Carnevino at Palazzo. This is where Wald and I tag-teamed a bone in ribeye back in January and I say this confidently, that was the best food of my life.

As far as future things to look forward to, our boy Schweik is coming to town July 8th. So if you are in the greater Las Vegas area and want to see a man go harder than anyone ever has before, you should come join us in Vegas. Schweik has sent each of us multiple texts since we left Seattle and they are all regarding just how hard he is going to go in Vegas. Hospitals standby.

With the 8 o'clock hour approaching I am running out of time to blog here, but just know that madness will be following this post. Whoever the next blogger may be, they will do their best to walk you through the night we are about to have, that is if they are able to remember it. To all of you back in Seattle and our loyal followers in any other of America's beautiful cities, remember the 3 guidelines to any great night out partying 1) Don't get arrested, 2) Don't get a STD, and 3) Don't go broke. You follow these 3 guidelines my friends, I ensure you, you will have a great night. Until next time...

Kevin's Grief

Kevin will be blogging today.

The topic of discussion will be my most recent poker session which I played with Scott. It comes as no surprise that it was in fact a losing session as I tried to overcome my two worst unlucky charms unsuccessfully. I will start with the first, who is Scott himself. I think it is most accurate to describe him as a leech. He sucks my luck from me and uses it for himself. Let me explain, when Scott is at a different table than me my cards are good and I have won nearly every time. Scott, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to make much money when not playing next to me and may be net losing.

The story changes drastically when he sits next to me. He is literally up on the trip because of the poker sessions which he has sat next to me (I am of course net down during these sessions). I have been nice about it up to this point, but in the future I am going to have to demand a cut of his winnings. I can't let him use my luck and not give me anything in return. Were still in the process of working out a deal, but I told him that he will make more money sitting next to me (using my luck) and giving my 20% of his winnings than he will playing by himself.

I mentioned earlier that Scott was not the only unlucky charm in play against me yesterday. Katie was the other. You may remember from a previous blog that Katie has a history of crushing me in the past. Yesterday was no different. Last night after I had been playing for several hours Katie sent me what was a random text message of "don't lose ;) ". Thank you Katie, I am glad we are keeping in touch...As you already know, her "lucky" presence was still felt from over a 1,000 miles away. I talked about racking up my chips and leaving upon the tater's text message, but I chose to try and fight through. Obviously, the "lucky" combination of Scott and Katie was far too much to overcome. I try not to be superstitious, but its starting to get ridiculous. Until next time, this has been Kevin from Vegas.

There's a First Time for Everything

The team woke up with the intension of playing our first session of basketball at UNLV. Unfortunately, Jamie was sick while George and Jake were not awake when we left (this is at noon mind you). So Me (Scott), Wes, Wald, Tom and Matty went off to the UNLV gym to play. When we arrived we parked in the covered structure, there were three options for paid parking: $1.00 for an hour, $2.00 for two hours and $3.00 for all day. We decided to go with the two hours because Wald was adamant that we wouldn't be there for more than two hours and didn't think parking enforment would be too strict during the summer. Tom meets us at the gym and makes sure we paid for the all day parking pass. When Tom finds out we only paid two dollars he responds with, "Really? You didn't want to pay a dollar for the extra 22 hours?" As we are signing up for our month long membership the lady over hears that we only paid for two hours instead of all day and advises us to pay for the all day pass. She told us the story of her boy friend's car who had unpaid parking tickets and was caught for not paying for parking at the UNLV lot. The car had two boots placed on it, then it was impounded and sold. On top of all that, he still had to pay $600 in fines. This can't be legal, but after hearing the story Wald was still willing to gamble and left it with only two hours.

After we were official members we journeyed up to the basketball courts to warm up and scout the "competition". Let's just say an early afternoon Monday at the UNLV gym was not prime time for basketball players. There was only one court running a game with about 14 people total on all four basketball courts. We had a huge size advantage, with most of the guys playing were as big as me or smaller. The one good player on the other team said it was "The Looney Tunes vs. The Monstars". When we got on we literally ran the other team off the court. The first game finished 15-5 and 13 of the points we're fast break lay-ups. The next game was a little closer at 15-12, but a lot of that had to do with the other team getting hot from three (At UNLV they play one's and two's so a three pointer counts as two. Much dufferent from UW rules of all one's). During the game we imposed our will physically against the smaller team as Wes and Tom were frequently scoring and putting people on the ground. We wanted to play a third game, but the good player left and four others followed. We decided to mix up the teams, obviously east vs. west (aka me, Wes and Wald and two randos vs. Tom, Matt and three randos). The west held it down and won but it was a very ugly game.

After we finished the third game an employee approaches Matt and asks if we go to school at UNLV. Matt lets her know that we just purchased passes for the month, but she still seemed concerned with us being there. She didn't really say anything else, but it was pretty awkward. We concluded that one of the guys told on us for ruining their game because there is no way an employee would walk up to the third floor (where the basketball courts are) and pick out five guys who probably don't go to school here. Nonetheless, it was great to play basketball for the first time in over a week.

We are heading back to Wald's truck and are a little worried because we had been at the gym for about two hours and ten minutes. On the way back we see another car that had two boots on both left tires. Luckily Wald's truck had no tickets or boots. We dodge a bullet there. Needless to say we will be spending the extra dollar from now on.

We came back to Vdara and ate the leftovers from last night's Maggiano's. We decided to meet Grue at the pool. While at the pool we meet a pro poker player from Norway who is in Vegas for three months (so we're not that ridiculous). Our first prop bet was designed and completed and another in the works. The first completed prop bet was who could hold their breath the longest under water. Wes, Tom and Matt competed and Wes won rather easily. The bet in the works is swimming the entire length of the pool under water. Jake was trying to put something together with Wes and Matt. Jake thought better than challenging Wes and decided to go after Matt. We'll keep you updated if that bet goes down.

We finally got to playing poker around 6 pm. It was not a good day for the team. Me, Wald and Jake went to the Venetain and all three of us lost. This was a monumental day as it was the first time Wald has lost on the trip. Wald is placing a little blame on me for not wanting to leave when he was up a little and most of the blame on Taters (Katie), who texted him and Wald instantly starting losing (There has been history of this). Almost everyone else played at the Bellagio (Wes, Jamie, Matt, Tom and Grue) and only Tom and Matt won. George was on his own at Aria and was winning pretty good when we left him around 2:00 am.

We are planning on playing basketball again today at UNLV and hope the games are better and people don't try to get us kicked out. Until next time.

and Were Back!

Kevin will be reporting the blog today.

For those of you who like poker, the 10k WSOP heads-up tournament was quite the tournament to observe with 256 entrants composed of many of the well known poker professionals, kids who look like they just turned 21 (the internet geniuses), and of course the Big Game himself (these were basically the best poker players in the world). An interesting first round matchup was Ivey verse the Grinder. Naturally, Ivey just shoves all in the first hand (this is a deep stack heads up match) and the Grinder tanks and finally calls with 99 only to have Ivey slam a river A with his AK and win the match (and cause me to lose a $5 bet).

As for the Big Game he squeezed out a first round win, in which he fell behind early, only to come powering back. Unfortunately, his luck ran out in the second match and his AQ couldn't outdraw an AK and so the Big Game would not be winning the 10k heads up tournament or coming in the money. You know you are at the WSOP when you look over at a guy nudging you to get a better view on the rail is Antonio Esfandiari. However, he was a normal sized human being and it took me moving out of the way before he made any progress.

In other news, yesterday marked the first day that everyone in the UW room booked a win. Good work team. A special shout out to Scott who did particularly well as we learned that people at the Venetian will get in their entire stacks whenever they have pocket Kings (naturally Scott would always have AA in these situations).

Scott and I made our first attempt to take advantage of the Vegas nightlife on Friday. We planned to meet up with Scott's friend Jesse and some others at the nightclub PURE. Things did not got well there as by the time Scott and I had finished pre-funking (thank you Aria for the free drink vouchers) and actually arrived at PURE they had already grown tired of the club and left. Not a good start for PURE.

But we did a most interesting cab ride home as the cab driver passed some of his infinite wisdom off to us. The topic was wasted girls (and yes there were plenty to be seen at 2 am on the strip). He classified them into two categories, Wasted-fat and Wasted-hot. He explained as a rather large wasted girl walked in front of the cab (certainly obese by BMI standards), how no one wanted to see that and it definitely wasn't hot. Then followed by this girl was a wasted skinny girl. He explained while this girl was also wasted it actually hot because she was skinny. Thank you for your wisdom cab driver.

Our mentality has quickly been changing here in Vegas. Things like doing our own dishes and making our bed seem like things of the past. The kind staff of Vdara seem all too pleased to take care of these obligations. Also, the idea of parking your own car anywhere seems like a thing of the past. No more parking and walking a whole block to your destination. We definitely don't have the time to be doing that during our month long stay at Vegas. I mean that could potentially cost us a whole five minutes of play at the poker tables. This is why there are Valets.

And in wrapping this post up, we got to give a shout out to Chetty Lembs who will finally be joining us Vegas after his 5 day hiatus in California. We look forward to everyone finally being here. The plan is to gather the team for a return to Maggiano's soon to celebrate the whole team finally being together again since MLK weekend.

As far as things to look forward to, Scott and myself will be playing in a Venetian Deep Stack this afternoon and we both plan on making some noise. First prize will be about $27,000. Wes will be sticking to the live games at the Bellagio for the time being. Stay tuned for all things poker, all things WSOP, and more importantly all things Vegas. We are eagarly awaiting the arrival of those who plan to visit us. Well, except for Schweik. We actually fear your arrival here in the desert. Until next time folks.

When you're here, you're family!

Wes Louie here. Today started off like the many others which involved rolling around in the amazingly comfortable beds here at Vdara followed by breakfast cooked in our kitchentte. Today was cheddar cheese covered scrambled eggs (tillamook cheddar cheese don't ya know). I am not sure if we have informed you all of our dining style here in Vdara 50020 but we do things Vegas family style here. And by Vegas family style, i mean we put all the food onto one plate and we all eat off of that same place. Although it seems a little ridiculous, we only have so many dishes and to be honest, it brings people together. Not enough to warrant frequent hugs between two of the suitemates which will not be named, but sharing a community plate daily is quite the experience. To welcome the entire team to Vegas we decided to head back to where it all started for dinner, Maggianos.

I am sure many of you are familiar with the restaurant especially since it isn't located too far from Seattle (Bellevue). This is a team tradition that every time we all meet in Vegas, we do a Maggiano's gathering. The Maggiano's dinner serves as a time where we all abandon our degenerate habits and our alcoholic ways to block out 2 hours out of the day where we can all be together finally. In the past the Maggiano's outing has been some of my favorite memories made here in Vegas, well, close anyway. And tonight was thankfuly nothing shy of expected. We had everyone including Matt, George and as Dave Button calls him "Baller" Tom from Boston, Jake and Jamie from LA, and last but not least Grue Wald Scott and myself. We enjoyed endless orders of calimari, bruschetta, chopped salad, caesar salad, chicken pesto linguini, veal ravioli, chicken parmeasan, pork medallions, tiramisu and caramel apple crustada. Everything was delicious as expected. My personal favorite was the veal ravioli in a white cream sauce which was topped with some garnish I couldn't pin point but it was still delicious.

Tomorrow will be our first day of basketball on the trip. We are all purchasig memberships at UNLV for the month and will be playing basketball quite often we hope. The Seattle squad is eagarly awaiting the match between us and Boston/LA. As of about 2:30pm tomorrow, bragging rights will undoubtedly be exercised for whoever reigns victorious.

As far as the party scene goes, I personally have been slacking. I have consumed one alcoholic beverage the entire time I've been here. However, with the visitors we have lined up, it may be for the better that I am saving my strength. Binge drinking will be the name of the game here soon enough. Special shout out to the latest potential visitor, Eliot David Olson! The good doctor and myself got word tonight that there is now a decent chance of this man making it out to the desert at some point over the next few weeks. Rest assured our fingers will be crossed and the alcohol chilled my man.

Other than these updates and my constant longing to be back on that oh so glorious couch in Seattle, that's about all I got. The next few days will involve a lot of poker but we do hope to mix in some drunken debauchery here soon. The suite here all recognize that we have been slacking and we plan to change that. If you have any ideas of madness we should get into or a crazy bucket list we should assemble for things to do before we leave the desert, your comments and suggestions would obviously be appreciated.

Until next time boys and girls, this is Wes Louie signing off and reminding all vulnerable young females everywhere, don't drink the punch, they put things in it.

Lakers Celebration

If you have no interest in NBA finals please skip to the next paragraph. The Lakers grind out a hard fought win! Pierce is softer than a pack of Pampers baby wipes, while Garnett seemed to be too pumped for his own good in the first quarter. For Laker fans, thankfully Allen shot like Jamarcus Russell aiming for anything and Big Baby disappeared like cake in front of a fat kid. Ron Artest was the real hero of game 7, locking down Pierce and surprisingly actually contributing offensively and even though Pau wasn't very efficient, his contribution can't be understated. We also had the privilege of watching the game with Baller Tom on the 48th floor of Vdara. Me and The Baller enjoyed the outcome of the game while George and Mr. Boucher had to pretend to be content with the outcome. On a side note, Wald absolutely put a hurt on a costco watermelon during the game and Wald maintains it was an "average performance". I guess when your 6'4 killing half of a watermelon after a full meal is standard, shore.

Me (Scott) and Kevin decided to celebrate the only we knew how, drunken poker. We filled up generous glasses of Makers Mark after the game and wandered over to Aria to play some "real" poker. Things didn't go so well for me, but Wald was too tall to be stopped, literally couldn't lose if he tried. The drink service at Aria cannot be understated as it was the best we've ever seen in Vegas and consequently we were destroyed very quickly. Wes decided to keep it classy and sober and play until the soccer game in morning at Bellagio (looking for those Eastern Europeans who are liable to do literally ANYTIHNG).

We are looking forward to Jamie's return to Vegas. He had a three day hiatus to go back to LA and witness games six and seven live from Staples. Jamie is playing in the WSOP heads-up tournament tomorrow at noon and is looking to make a deep run a la the Lakers; so feel free to wish him luck later today. We also are missing Jake ("CJ") Lemberger, who had to go back to the santa for his sister's graduation (Quick shout out to Thea, we wish her the best of luck at UCLA next year while dominating the Pac-10). Jake will be back Sunday and we will have the full crew in Vegas for the first time this summer.

I have a good friend of mine, Jesse Kass, coming in tomorrow and rest assured the madness will continue! Until next time.

The Beginning and Hopefully Not the End

Hello World, as many of you know Kevin Scott and myself (Wes) have set out for the desert to spend 4 weeks playing poker in Vegas. After the many days of debate, the three of us level headed people decided it would be best to drive to the desert versus flying like a real person. Our vehicle of choice was Wald's '97 Ford S10 truck. After this trip we can offically say it seats 2 people comfortably. You can ask Scott for verification but seeing as how he was in physical pain for hours after exiting the car, you can all imagine his haggard responses. Upon arrival in the desert, we were covered in sweat, tired from the drive, and so hungry we were at the point where hunger had subsided and nothing even sounded appetizing anymore. We haven't had a meal in 8 hours, we were in the unairconditioned car for 20 hours, we postponed out meal due to game 6, we opt to attack the Bellagio buffet. Shortly after the hurt the Lakers put on the Celtics in game 6, we made our way to the Bellagio buffet which closed in 90 minutes. We both double fisted plates our first round and we displayed a ravenous attack on anything and everything they offered. We left in pain and were asleep shortly after. As far as the room is concerned, Vdara is taking very good care of us. Personal servants are only a phone call away. We have even summoned a mini-bar technician. We have a kitchenette, a giant bathroom, king and queen size beds, two giant Philips LCD TVs and a gorgeous view of Las Vegas from the 50th floor of our luxurious condo (which is obviously better than anything on the 48th floor). The workout facility is pretty damn nice and the 3 of us are attempting to make that a staple of our daily routines in hope of not returning to Seattle in any worse shape than we left in. As far as the poker is concerned, the trip has not started off how I (Wes) would have liked. I am, as some would venture to call it, STUCK. There have sadly been no b****es stacked on my end. Wald however is amazingly enough still 6'4 here in Vegas so he obviously booked a nice win the first day out. The Doc is doing the standard acculation of chips but like we all know, only a matter of time until he starts owning poker rooms. On a side note, we literally just found a condom in someones suitcase from a prior trip! Needless to say, we're EXCITED!

On a side note, I no longer accept phone calls in the middle of the night. Out of respect for the other suitemates, the phone hits silent upon bed time, however, because we are in Vegas and there are no bed times, do feel free to call at any hour of the day, you have a very good chance that I will be awake but no calls will be accepted during GAME 7 ("this is the biggest game of our lives" -Scott).