International
I would say that a birthday calls for taking a couple days off from the Rio…and that is just what I did last week. I had several of my amazing girlfriends from LA and college come into town for a couple days and we spent our time in Las Vegas having a blast.Some of the highlights include meeting up with Brian Lemke, Justin Shronk’s cousin. Brian won his first bracelet in the $5000 no limit event #15 and it was fantastic he was able to do that for himself and his family.
Mike Sowers invited me and my friends to join them for a few drinks at VooDoo at the Rio the night before my birthday. After visiting with them we ran over to Lavo at the Palazzo for David Williams' birthday. He showed up just after midnight, which technically made it my birthday so we shared a shot to celebrate.
We finished the night off over at Pure where we ran into tons more poker players enjoying a night off.
The next night we started off with dinner at Social House with Trishelle Cannatella, Adam ‘Roothlus’ Levy, Amit ‘Amak316’ Makhija, along with my best girlfriends from LA and college.
After dinner we hopped in a limo and headed to the Artisan hotel lounge. There were already a couple of people there when we arrived, including Liv Boeree, Alex Outhred, Matt Graham, and Ryan Daut.
As more people started to show up we came into a problem with the bartender. Although we had alerted the Artisan that we were bringing in a big group for the night they still only had 1 bartender working. After long days of playing at the Rio there were a lot of thirsty poker players there and not enough service or booze to go around.
I remember at one point this conversation:
“May I have a vodka soda?”
“We are out of vodka,” she responded.
“Ok, a mimosa,” I said.
“We are out of champagne.”
“Ok a beer?!”
“We are out of bud light.”
Guess we drank the bar right out of stock.
It was still an amazing time, definitely one of my favorite birthdays I have ever had. Just for fun, some of those that attended included Joe Sebok, Lacey Jones, Tiffany Michelle, Jared Hamby, Jamie Armstrong, Jeffery Pollock, Chris Ferguson, Robert Williamson, Michael Watson, Tony Dunst, Pam Brunson, Christian Harder, Dan Martin, Phil Galfond, JC Alvarado, Jeff Madsen, and Brandon Cantu.
The next night I stopped by the premiere of the new documentary All In: The Poker Movie, and I thought it was great. It was really interesting to see the development of the game we all now play and work with on a daily basis.
Some of the other fun things we have done include partying at the Playboy club for Emil ‘whitelime’ Patel’s birthday, and meeting Mr. and Mrs. Durrrr at the Bellagio before heading out to 2 massive tables at XS filled with some of online poker’s best players.
I have also gotten a kick out of learning how many random prop bets are constantly circulating among poker players. For example Alec Torelli has bets ranging from not crossing his arms ever, to no drinking during the WSOP, to not opening a twitter account. I asked him how many bets he thought he had going at any given time and he guessed about 20-25.
Over at the Rio some amazing things have been happening with Phil Ivey winning 2 bracelets, along with Brock Parker and his back-to-back bracelets in hold ‘em events.
It has been an interesting series so far and no doubt will continue to be…
WSOP Tournament of Champions
The Tournament of Champions is back at the WSOP. You can vote for 20 players that you feel deserve to be part of the tournament. 
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