So far it's been a decent start on my Vegas trip, and one of the better ones socially for sure. Thursday's flight from San Jose to Houston went smooth, and when I lined up to go through immigration I spotted Hugh, Tyler and Brandon in the line for US citizen's, they had arrived from Liberia at the same time!

We hooked up at Pappadeaux's for great seafood chowders, bisques and beer, and the first ray of luck shone through when I caught a standby seat on the afternoon plane with the guys - instead of having to wait more than 6 hours for the evening connection I had originally booked.

Checked in to my suite at the Rio, great bed, spacious room. Hooked up to the internet right away to Skype with Marian and got updated on "stuff". I took advantage of the relatively quiet evening at the WSOP and got registered for the Saturday event #51



Friday it was about shopping - getting some practical stuff like batteries and a US phone number (of which I did not get the latter), get some much needed sleep etc. I took a half hour by the pool, got a haircut and a shave, read up on some poker literature and followed the developing story on Michael Jackson's tragic death.

Jeff - who is staying 3 floors above me at the Rio - and I went to play some friendly stakes cash game at Bally's in the late afternoon. He had already been in the line of fire at a tournament at Harrah's and had come in 5th to cash a $400 profit, a good start! At Bally's we were seated at different tables, and while Jeff scored a massive profit of $7!! I had to record a $89 loss on my score sheet. I only won one hand the entire session, and every time I had an ace with a face card, someone woke up to my left with either KK or AA!

We upped and left and walked over to the Bellagio to meet the other Guana guys at Fix. Tyler had reserved a table which was more than filled up when everybody  showed up for a great dinner with awesome food and beer, lots of laughs and a last-longer bet between the players in event #51: Julian, Tyler, Harry, Kevin, Jeff, myself and maybe Mike Schaefer - he is still not sure whether he is playing or not.

WSOP 2009 has had a good start, with or without big results in the tournaments. We've got a great group of Guana Guys and I look forward to enjoying their company over the next days...





Rounded off the evening at the cash game in Rio's poker room, won a few good hands and left when the table got a lot tougher around 11 p.m. - and when I realized the rake was a whopping 10%, capped at $5 - a far cry from Bally's 5% capped at $4!

I will try to get you all updated some time Friday evening at the dinner break.