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PCA Trip Recap Part 1

Hello from Paradise mon! Tings ave ben goin jas fine doon 'ere.

Tings we brought this year that we did not bring last year:

1. Food

Everything is so expensive that we thought it would be a good idea to bring some of our own food. Original credit for this idea goes to Matt and Mandy who had a suitcase full of goodies in 2010.

We brought 2 boxes of dark chocolate almond bark (Thank you Willy Wonka and the gang!), a box of saltines (4 sleeves), a gigantic block of Tillamook sharp cheddar, 1 insanely large bag of sour patch kids, 1 pack of skittles, 1 pack sour watermelon gummies (Cloat Cloat MFer!!), 15ish emergen-C packs, and 6 diet cokes.

2. Games

2 packs standard playing cards, 6 multicolored ping pong balls, skill ball marble game, Uno H2O, about 50 trivial pursuit cards, catchphrase electronic game, yahtzee pads and dice.

3. Movies

Amistad from Netflix, a bunch of Hitchcock - Strangers on a Train, Psycho, Life Boat among others, Bullitt, Dr. Strangelove, Sunshine and a few more I'm sure I'm forgetting but am not willing to get up and see.

4. Warmer clothes

After the 'blizzard' that was last year we both packed for all types of weather this time around. The first half of the trip has been much more tropical than last year although it's supposed to be cold (68-70F) these last couple days so we're happy to have jeans and a light jacket.

Day 1

The toughest part of this day was asking Patrik L. for a ride to the airport at 3:45am in the morning. She graciously agreed to be our chauffeur and we arrived at DIA without incident. Our flight left on time and we arrived in ATL on time and ready for Bahamas. The plane to take us there did not arrive until about 30 minutes later. Upon boarding we were immediately greeted by a few familiar faces (Gambler, MasterJ, and Seth) and it felt like the trip was really underway. Punkypickle and I breezed through customs, getting there ahead of a large horde of young males. Matt S. had arrived a few minutes earlier and the 3 of us took a cab to the Cove at Atlantis.


After arriving at the room around 430pm, and getting unpacked, we went down to Seaglass and joined a group of our friends (Seth, Carolina, Joe, Master J, Matt, Mandy, and Joel) who had commandeered a number of couches. Seaglass has the best, and possibly the strongest, mojitos I have ever had, and I did not hesitate in getting two. Pickle ordered a pomegranate marg. After drinks we went back up to the room and debated what to do for dinner. We decided it would be a good idea to pick up some Cap'n Morgan's and then have dinner. We arrived at the off-site liquor store around 7:00pm but it had closed at 6, so instead we stopped and got a coconut rum cake and decided to do room service. We split the turkey club and enjoyed the rum cake for dessert. Both of us were pretty exhausted so we went to bed early.

Day 2


A gorgeous day with a high around 80. (The Cove is the structure on the far right in the picture.) After catching up on some much needed sleep we met up with Mandy, Seth, Carolina, Joe, and Joel, at Seaglass. I ordered a ham and cheese panini to go and Michal had the tuna melt she has been dreaming about since last year. We ate about 20 feet away from the ocean and spent some time lounging by the Cain pool, sipping the 'world's best' pina coladas. They really are delicious.

Saturday was Day 1a of the PCA Main Event but only 2 of 'our' people were playing it. Thomas and Matt, both of whom busted before dinner. After fueling up, the rest of us hopped into tubes and did a couple cycles on the lazy river. I bought a small nerf football, a steal for only $7.99, and Joel had found a large beach ball. The football was lost to the jungle about 20 minutes into our float trip but that did not deter us from multiple trips down the waterslides.

The group decided to do dinner at Chopstix. We were joined by Master J and Jason Senti. I ordered the seafood fried rice and Michal had sweet corn egg drop soup and the Dim Sum sampler. The food was good, but for the prices I would have to say only mediocre. The service was absolutely terrible - so bad that we didn't even want to leave an extra dollar on the automatic 15% gratuity that is added to every food service bill. I was pretty steamed by the time we left and needed to get a good nights rest before playing the event on Sunday so we did not join the group for craps. Chopstix is close the the poker room so Michal and I went over there so I could register for the main event and pick up my swag backpack full of Pokerstars goodies. She liked the hoodie a lot so I ordered a size M. The long walk back to Cove (about 15 minutes at a quick pace) alleviated any residual frustration I had been harboring over dinner.

Day 3

We woke up around 10am and went to the marina village for Jamba Juice before Day1b kicked off. I arrived at my table feeling refreshed and ready to play. For more a more detailed report of how the day went feel free to check my Twitter account (VoyeurWolf). I had built my stack to 34,000 from a starting stack of 30,000 but lost a large pot as an 80% favorite with 1 card left to come. Winning that would have put me at around double the starting stack but instead I was left with less than 20,000 chips. Boo.

Michal met me in the poker room for my 75 minute dinner break and we quickly headed back to the room so I could shower while she picked up sandwiches from Seaglass.
I had the roast beef and swiss panini (my favorite!) and then had to hurry back across the property for more poker.

I played a few medium size pots and hovered around 16,000-24,000 for most of the rest of the evening, eventually getting short when the blinds had risen to 500-1000 and shoving from the button with Kh5h for about 12bbs. The small blind called with Ad3d and we were off the races. The flop of Jd7x5d put me in the momentary lead, but not feeling optimistic, and the turn sealed my fate as another diamond peeled off and I busted from the main event around 1030pm.

When I arrived back at our room, Michal was deep in a $10 1r1a so I fired up some tourneys and joined her on the bed. She got down to the final 50 or so but busted and I was left single tabling a late night FTP $10 rebuy. I played until around 4am eventually going out in 11th of 650 players. It doesn't make much sense, but busting from that tourney was much more annoying than busting from the main. Stayed tuned for part 2...

Return to Paradise and Blogging, Mon

Stayed tuned over the next few weeks...

Woof Woof

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