[Windbreaker]

Part 1

Friday August 8, 2008

I take a flight out and arrive to Las Vegas around 2 PM local time. We had a general itinerary of the weekend events. And even after touching down, it didn't real feel like it was happening. When I arrived, I had a limo waiting for me. This was my first time in Las Vegas, and I really had no idea what to expect. I had arranged to meet my brother and sister in law in the lobby of the Palazzo. They took an earlier flight out and we were to meet in the lobby.

I knew the Palazzo was one of the newest hotels in Vegas, and expected a pretty grand room. My car arrived to the front door, and I didn't see my brother, and just checked in myself. I went across the casino floor to get to my room and drop off my bags. I only briefly glanced in my room - but could see how awesome it was.

I had a suite - (I believe all rooms at the Palazzo are suites). I had two large LCD televisions - one in the living room and one in front of the bed, a large couch, office, the washroom had a lcd tv, double sink, bath, and walk in shower.

I didn't spend much time at all in the room before going down to find my brother and sister in law. I went back down to the lobby and spotted them. I took an early flight out and was pretty tired. We relaxed in the room for a little while before going for food.

We walked around for a little while and found a food court for late lunch. We went to search for the Venetian Poker room as that is where we were meeting that night before going to Daniels House for a BBQ.

We went back to the room and rested. We were meeting at 5:30 and had like an hour before meeting up. We sat in the hotel when 10 minutes to 5:30 someone knocks on the door. I open it up and I'm given a gift bag and letter.

The gift bag was a huge PokerStars bag. It's larger than what's allowed on carry-on flights. I open the letter and it was a welcome letter signed by DN. I quickly opened my gift bag....and it was amazing.

Off the top of my head the bag included -
2 PokerStars fitted hats
1 PokerStars hoodie
1 PokerStars straw hat
1 PokerStars t-shirt
1 PokerStars long sleeve shirt
....and now for the good stuff....

1 pair of SkullCandy headphones
1 pair of Oakley Shades
1 Oakley watch

To say the least, I was very impressed with the giftbag. It was pretty exciting and a little bit of it still didn't feel like it was happening. I was only allowed to bring one guest to the BBQ, and my brother came along as my sister-in-law took care of herself for the evening.

We headed down to the Ventian Poker room and met up with Jeff. He's one of the people that help coordinates these sorts of events. I met another of the coordinators Brandon and we all headed were getting set up and a little bit of mingling.

I'm rather quiet/reserved person in general...I don't socialize very much with strangers. At the beginning, I was more sizing up the guys, because we would be playing a tournament for the PCA package. In general, I had a sense that the other players were not exceptional. I already checked the stats of the other PokerStars qualifiers and knew I had a much better ROI, and played a lot more than they did. From what I could tell, the guys there were not that strong.

Generally, I feel the more someone talks about how great their game is, the more likely they over estimate their ability. Actually, I pretty much could guess how good the players were - and was pretty accurate, from just seeing them and hearing them the first night.

In any case, we all got together and got into a party limo. Let's just say where I come from, there's not a whole lot of stripper poles in vehicles. The ride to DN's house was about 25 minutes or so. On the way there, we got to meet some of the other guys. Some of them I could tell bought in directly and had little experience playing 'good poker'. One of the other guys thought he might have played more than anyone else. I didn't think anyone there would have played as much as me, but didn't say anything. Before we left, we all were asked to submit our player profile for DN to gauge our abilities.

Jeff had read it and knew I was a SuperNova...so my jig was up. They had asked about how many FPPs I had. Which is over a million. They were kidding about me getting a Porsche....which is in fact what I've been considering getting for a while.
I'm still a long ways from getting it...and may opt not to due to the technicalities involved.

In any case, we arrive to DN's house and he came out to greet us and shake everyone's hand. We introduce ourselves and my brother and I have similar names and unique names - since it's a direct translation from our Cantonese name. He had fun with our names. Afterwards, the photographer came up to me and said, hey, we've gone to jr high together.

I didn't recognize him at all until he told me his name. It's so weird after 14 years or so I randomly meet up with a guy at a pretty unique event. In any case, we all went inside and checked out his house. If you have not seen it, you can go to CardPlayer and check out their High Stakes Living segment and see DN's house first hand.

If you guys do not already know, he's a bit of a golf nut. He had a golf simulator upstairs, and putting green in the back yard, Golden Tee arcade game, pool table, poker table, etc. We got to play around with his stuff. We all got drinks and food. We had some chicken wings, ribs, beans, etc. The food was good and most of the time we spent listening to DN sharing poker stories and he went around talking to everyone.

Some of the interesting things he says about the other players - Phil Hellmuth plays well against bad players but awful against good ones. Mike Matusow - bluffs huge to win small pots, and loses huge pots; instead of bluff small to win small pots, and win big pots. Johnny Chan and Minh Ly are cheap tippers. Sam Farha is one of the easier high stakes player for DN to read.

We go back inside and DN shares his bracelets with us. He has 4 WSOP bracelets, and 2 WPT one. I think he might have had another one from another event or so. This year WSOP bracelet look better than his older ones. Some of the older ones look rather cheap. The WPT ones look pretty awesome.

He also had to show us his amazing golf shot. He goes to the front yard and chips it over his fence and gets it onto his green. His first shot went great. Then his next one he miss hits it...and it he hits the neighbours house. It was pretty funny and he swears it was his first time hitting her house. Apparently his neighbour isn't that fond of him....I can see why...lol.

After that we gather around his living room and watched/discussed HSP. A lot of what he discusses is physical tells he has of players. And it wouldn't be appropriate for me to discuss those on an open forum. As an online player, I miss many of the things that are very clear to Daniel. He sees small little details that the general public basically fails to pick up on.

In any case, more people show up at his house. I don't know how he keeps track of everyone, but all of a sudden he looks up at a guy, and says, who the hell are you. It was the driver of the limo and we were all set to return and get ready for the first real day of training.

We went back to the Palazzo I just basically crashed.

- I'm sure day 2 is going to be a lot shorter - I'll skip over a lot of the poker training content he goes through in day 2, because a huge majority of the details are in his book and on PokerVT. If you have not purchased his book, it's a must read for players planning to play deepstacked tournaments or cash games.