We get to the Airport in Philly and our plane (US Air) has a broken light bulb which takes 4 hours to fix... uh oh bad luck. My friend is freaking cause he wants to register for event 2 ($1500 NL) and there were rumors of it selling out.

We get in to Vegas at 8:30 and go straight to the RIO... the line was enormous for registration and then even longer for the cashier. With about 100 people to go to the cashier they announce that the rest of the people on line would be alternates as they hit 2000 players and that they would be seating alternates as people were knocked out.

My friend didn't like the sound of that so he just bought in to the $1500 limit for Sunday.

We woke up the next day and went to play at Bellagio as they are one of the only card rooms offering higher limits that 4/8. This room is beautiful - so ornate and so professional. Only thing is that you have to get there before 11am if you don’t want to wait for a table.

We then went back to the Rio next day to find that they had seated all the alternates and it was 11 handed. Now we are a bit pissed that the WSOP guys are obviously not prepared for the influx of players that all the televised events attract. We checked it out for a while spotting all the pros and watching hands.

The next couple of days we played a 4/8 half kill game at Monte Carlo (where we stayed) which is a small but nice room to play with tourists and regulars. We also played at Wynn which was also a very nice room with skilled and unskilled players alike.

The last day I played a tourney at the Luxor which was a bit of a joke but it was the only one I could do... $45 gets you 250 starting chips with 10/15 blinds going up every 15 minutes. 5 hands in I got JJ, raise to 55 with 1 caller and the flop comes A68. I bet 100 at it and he calls… turn is a blank and I have 110 chips left. I check, he bets, I fold. I managed to come all the way back and place in the final 4 out of 39. We all chopped and walked with $275. Luxor was the worst of the poker rooms I went to. Several of the dealers were not so great and the felt was dirty. Don’t play there.

My friend busted out in on the 3rd level in the limit tourney after getting rivered 1 too many times. Soon after him Ivey, Brunson and a host of other pros busted as well.

Best moment of the week was watching Phil Helmuth put a short stack all in with KK vs AK with the flop A68. Seeing Phil steaming like that was worth the cost of the trip alone lol.

If you are going to play at the WSOP make sure you pre register and send your money in advance… save yourself the headache.