Checked in

I came home early from my family vacation in Galveston last night. After I put away the stuff I brought back from the beach house - including two half-gallon jars of the mole poblano I made there using this ridiculously complicated recipe - and after I watered my unusually successful potted herb garden, I had the house to myself.  No dogs, no kids, no lovely spouse, just me puttering around in a quiet house.

I should have gone to bed early. My flight this morning was at 9:25, which meant I needed to be up at 6:15 to be out the door by 7:15. But I stayed up, rereading my poker books, looking for a nugget of wisdom that I could retrieve at exactly the right time to survive in the tournament.

I didn't find it.

Poker books are mostly probability treatises, advising you on how to calculate your likelihood of making the winning hand and size your bet to avoid suboptimal returns and seize on bargains, and psychology manuals, telling you how to read opponents, sniff out weakness, and use aggression and table position to push other players out of their winning hands.

(There are also the personality books written by celebrity poker players, who tell their war stories and try to give you a sense of why they win and you don't. These books can be terrible for your game, but they are always fun reading.)

At about midnight, I double-checked my luggage and went to sleep. I had strange dreams about everything but poker, none of which I can remember except for a general sense of displacement, like being transported to an unfamiliar place and trying to figure out how to find my way home.

(Maybe they were about poker, now that I think about it.)

I woke up groggy, but made it out the door on time. The trip to the airport was uneventful and I got to the gate an hour early.  (As usual, my gate was literally the furthest gate away - when will I ever get to fly out of Gate 1?)

The flight was fine. My strategy of posturing my bulk in a way to discourage passengers from taking the middle seat next to me didn't work, but I didn't mind - I was asleep for most of the two-and-a-half hour flight.

Upon arrival in Las Vegas, I checked the weather - a balmy 110 degrees today. The cab dropped me at my hotel and I paid extra for early check-in.

About my hotel: I am staying at the Flamingo through Thursday. Why? Because Caesars Rewards has deemed me a degenerate-enough gambler to comp my rooms for three days.

This is my first (and probably last) time here. The room is dated, with a vinyl cushioned headboard and weird Sixties wallpaper and worn carpet. 

When I got on the elevator to my room on the 26th floor, I asked a family going up with me if they had been here for a while. They nodded yes, and I asked them what the best thing to see or do at the hotel.

"Here?" the dad asked.

"Yeah, here," I said.

The family members glanced at each other and kind of smirked.

"I dunno. Not much. The animals, maybe," a teenage kid said.

So, I will look for the animals on Wednesday, after Day 1B of the tournament is in the books. I'm guessing there will be flamingos.

Meanwhile, I am off to pay my entrance fee and find Wojo, who is playing today. I expect to see a giant stack of chips, but will settle for a small increase.  

This is a long game, after all.