Cabo baaaaby

So, I definitely had the Aruba blues this October, not getting there for the first time in 3 years, so to drown the sorrow away, donkeyherder, myself, soccerpro77 and herder's wife took a road trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It is called Land's End and for good reason. It ends literally where the Pacific ocean and the Sea of Cortez meet. It is only a two hour flight from So Cal, so we got there and we had bought a time share from a bro of mine and did not know what to expect except the pix looked good and the price was right. We knew we were about 40 minutes from the airport to the hotel and were debating to rent a car or take a cab and see what's up. There were hundreds of 'hawkers' around the airport, offering to give you a ride if you see a timeshare presentation and we're like " ah nah" and hook up an overpriced cab for the trip. It is an okay somewhat scenic drive and the town is a typical small town with the haves and have not's as far as we can see. There are mansions and there are shacks and the people all seem happy regardless of which one they are in. We pull up to this long drive headed for the ocean on the Pacific side to Pueblo Bonito Sunset beach and it is spectacular, a definite 5 star resort. They have some construction going on, building more rooms and a Jack Nicholas golf course and we get to the lobby check in and the check in attendant is cool and gives us a couple options. We had already paid for a 2 bedroom suite and he says, you can have this one or that one, but I also have this other one that has a jacuzzi on the balcony of the 8 floor and we say " hell yeah, that one" and we are off. This place is built on a side of a hill and they have golf carts take you anywhere you want to go...down these winding paths, all decorated with local foliage and it is obviously well kept. We get up to the room and SCORE...nice room, fantastic view, beautifully furnished and we are very happy. As we had not vacationed together before, I was not sure if we would all get along for an entire week together, but it all worked out fantastic and time flew. We partied on the sunset cruise, headed down the coast to snorkel and spent one day fishing the Pacific, just the 4 of us on our own chartered boat. As none of us are avid fisherman, we didn't know what to expect and the girls took some seasick meds but still ended up hurling and sleeping for a lot of the time. We were cruising a 1/2 mile from the shoreline trolling and ended up hooking up 16 Dorado ( mahi mahi ) and kept 12 of them. This is a beautifully colored fish that strikes top water and is shiny all the way in. In many cases, they leap from the water and the 12 we kept were from 10 to 30 pounds. We got back to the marina, had them filleted, and took them back to the suite where we cut them into steaks and bagged and froze them, with the exception of one which we took to the pool and they kindly grilled up for us fresh for fish tacos. What a treat !. Herder and I both brought our laptops and were able to grind some, both making final tables on consecutive days and that was kickass....Overall, a great trip

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Irish Open April 09

The 5 of clubs, that's all it took for this young Cake player to make his way to Ireland this past April. You know those gold cards you get when you play ring games at cake, well Brad had the 5 of clubs and won a FREE tournament and won the Ireland trip (by the way, this was to be his FIRST ever live tournament) and not only did he win the trip to a great destination, but he ended up coming in 7th at the tournament for a total almost 75,000 euros ($100K). Yours truly also won the trip and Amanda and I were off on our 3rd international trip in less than 6 months (Aruba with Ultimate Bet in Oct 08, Australia with Cake Jan 09 and now Ireland ) . We flew to Dubin via Amsterdam and upon arrival to Dublin, was a bit unimpressed, as there was construction and traffic and looked like any other city. We took a cab out of the city about 20 minutes to a resort called Citywest. It was a hotel/ golf resort/ convention center/ and pub. It was definitely upscale with a private helicopter sitting out front. After getting unpacked, and resting a bit, we headed down to the pub, where all the cake players were going to get together for some drinks.....did I say some drinks, I meant a whole lot of drinks, these Canadians and euros can put them away. I also met new friend Jim, scrpionkng, and his beautiful girl Chantal where we immediately hit it off. Scrpionking, it seems had just recently been to the Bahamas for big tournament and made final table taking home over 150 K. I am soooo jealous..nice job Jim. Anyway, back to the drinking, we have a lot of characters in this group including a 6'2" Irish lad that maybe weighs 110 with long hair and is a metal head and loves poker. He can drink too, we also have a Asian gangster with a screen name of raginghardon...nice, Cake was very proud of that one. We also had some Germans, some from Finland, Canada and the states. Oh, did I mention freaking Mel Judah shows up and has some drinks with us, yes, that's him in the picture above. This pub ends our day every night after this, and there are all kinds of things going on..they have oldies playing in the bar (like Neil diamond) and everyone in the bar is singing along...we are at the bar about 3 in the morning and some dude (the dude with the guitar in the picture above) and I'm thinking he's hitting on Amanda and says in his Irish accent, " you Americans like Garth Brooks " and we're like, yeah I guess and he grabs his guitar and starts banging our Garth Brooks songs but has an Irish accent, I'm cracking up. We did have one down day and I had set up a private tour of the Guinness storehouse in Dublin through a connection I have back home, so we hop in a cab and head for Guinness. I really did not know what to expect, hadn't studied it and we pull up in this industrial looking area of warehouses, etc. and I'm thinking, blahhh. We get to this little street with a little door and there are hundreds of people waiting to get in, wow. We go inside and it's amazing in there. It's 7 stories high and as you stand in the middle of the room, you look up and see all 7 stories through the middle of a pint glass. This brewery was celebrating it's 250 year anniversary while we were there and I had no idea what a national treasure this company was and how vital it had been through hundreds of years to the Dublin economy. We got taught how to properly pour a draft Guinness and I'm not really a Guinness guy, but it tasted really good after seeing the literally thousands of people there celebrating this company and all it's history. Amanda got chosen to make a batch, and so there is an Amanda batch of 19,000 pints out there somewhere.

POKER

The main event started and I doubled up in the first hour with 10 10 with a board of K 10 10 rag rag against an opponent with K K...ouch....I made it through day 1 with no other notable hands that day and started off day 2 with about chip average (Brad, that kid I told you about playing his first live tourney, was chip leader) . We play about 5 hours into day 2 and have lost a few chips and am sitting with about 26k and a young player to my right with about the same amount of chips pushes all in with 6 6. Now, we are at 103 players left and 70 get paid, so he pushes his 6 6 for 26k all in and I look down and woop woop, there they are ,

A A and I Hollywood a bit (wanting another caller behind me to participate) and I call. No one else does call and it's heads up with me having a huge advantage, right ? Flop comes a 6 and I am done, so sad. Oh well, nice trip at least, right.

I moped around for a bit and then wanted more so I jumped into a 180 euro 10 man satellite and easily won it for about $2000 so not all was lost. I just kept the money, instead of playing the higher costing tournament, to pay for all the other stuff we had going on. Jim, scrpionkng, Chantal, Amanda and I decided to go see some real Irish countryside and a very famous pub up the hill about 20 miles. The Irish countryside was green, plush and fun to watch. We got to this really little old pub (over 100 years old) and it was crowded, quaint and full of atmosphere. We had a nice dinner (starting with frog legs) and then this Irish band came on and sang Irish folk songs, and was a blast, an adventure I won't forget. I had signed Amanda up for a ladies only event the next day and off she went. She didn't last long though (unusual for her) and came back REALLY pissed. She had flopped a set of Q's and lost runner runner to a straight, but the hand that really got to her was when she was mid position and had 9 9. There is limp ahead of her and she has a somewhat short stack because of the set that lost and so she raises 3 times the big blind. There is a caller behind her and it folds around to the big blind and that 'player' says raise and throws a chip in (not clear what the chip was), but the limper folds and Amanda thinks about it for a long time, decides she is beat and mucks. Well the caller behind her says 'call the floor' and the floor comes over and agrees it was a bad raise, and takes it back. Well Amanda had mucked even though she had the right amount of chips in. The flop has a 9 of course, the raiser wins the pot with K K and Amanda never recovers .....