Weekend At Daniels - very long

[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.

[PShabi]

sweet

[Talking Poker]

Great stuff. Can't wait for part 2.

[Benji]

Nice TR mate, btw what was the FPP value for this ?

[juiCe[3x]]

That's great. Sounds like an awesome time.

[2Tone]

Excellent report. Appreciate it.

[Windbreaker]

No FPP value - I believed all players had to either buy in directly for 15k, or win their package from a PokerStars tournament.

[Windbreaker]

Part 2 -

Saturday August 9, 2008

I didn't get a ton of sleep the night before. Just a bit excited about the previous evening and looking forward to the next days event.

I got down to the meeting area and we all got to our private room next to the sportsbook in the Venetician where Daniel would be instructing for most of the weekend. We met around 9 am and had a catered breakfast. Nothing extraodinary, but definately had everyone one would need. DN came in the middle of breakfast and chatted around with some of the guys.

We got ready around 10, and basically everyone sat around in a semi circle as DN went through the day's lesson. Virtually all his material from Saturday is identical the information from PokerVT. I have not gone through everything in his latest book, but I believe it would be much of the same information.

I went through all the material on PokerVT before heading out to Vegas, so much of the information was a review. The material provides the fundamentals to poker and should be understood before a player can become more advanced. Most of the content is geared towards deep stacked tournaments, and/or deep stacked cash games. If players are interested in learning more about the small ball strategy and how to incorporate it to their game and/or seeing how small ball players approach the game, the book/PokerVT is a must have to improve your game.

In any case, most of the players obviously did not go through the material before hand. And very few of them took any notes at all. I took as many notes as I could, even though the majority was a review.

I believe we took a few breaks and maybe took a late lunch. By the time came to 2:00, we had covered preflop and flop play. From 2-4 pm, we all went to our private room at the Ventician poker room. The basic idea was to simulate early stages of a deep stacked tourney. Everyone started with 10k in chips and started with blinds of 25-50. Everyone would play their hand as they normally would. Any time a player folded preflop, but wasn't sure if it's correct, he would set the hand aside. Also any time a player folded after the flop, he would set it aside. After the hand was over, everyone would show their hands and we all discuss the hands.

Right off the bat, it was obvious some of the players were really bad. A lot of them had problems taking instructions (eg. raise 2.5x preflop if you're the first to enter or fold). I didn't have too many interesting hands. I mostly called raises pf and folded when I totally missed the flop.

There were a few interesting hands that came up. One of the other players had position and reraised the 2 or 3 other players pf with 66 (really poor play). He flopped a set and bet really small on the flop and 1010 decided to fold. DN was instructed how the pf raise was really bad, and the flop bet was also bad. It would have been better to check the raggity board and let your opponent catch up. So of course they rabbit hunted and a 10 peeled off. DN quickly changed the cards to help illustrate his point...lol.

I did play one interesting hand late in the session. It might help you guys more if I don't tell you the exact details of how it ended:

11 handed, I have 7800 chips. Blinds are 100/200 antes are 25. I'm in the SB with 6 8. Folds around to a MP+2 or so, who bumps it up to 500. Folds to me in the SB and I call. The pot is roughly 1500. Flops k 10 3. I check, and pf raiser bets 1500. I have 7300 left.

Answer these questions before you read the spoiler in white.
What do you guys do in this spot?
How long did it take you to make that decision?
If you folded - why?
What is your plan if the A comes on the turn?

I took a while to make this decision. I was checking the flop with the intention of calling anything up to 3/4 pot - relatively quickly. The pot size bet confused me - also I'm rarely play live. So I kept thinking weather it was worth the call or not. His pot size bet seem like he had at least a king. I took my time to think about the hand. Then I suddenly realized that I can't call this hand anymore. If I had a king, I would have called much quicker. If I had a 10, I could call or fold...but wouldn't take this long to call. There are no other draws - so my hand is basically face up. I folded the hand.

When DN saw that I folded, he said Wow. He looked at me and said I had to call there. I was getting 2:1 on my call. Also, my opponent might not have the K. He flipped over AKo. He told everyone we want to make straights and flushes and have top pair stack off. He told the dealer to peel the turn. It was the A. And said I should bet 2500 into the 4500 pot on the turn if I had call.

He then looked over to me and asked why I folded. I briefly said I didn't want to play the hand face up. He said Wow again. He was like yeah, yeah...because you took so long to make the call. I nodded and he said, you know what you can do against good players. If you have a strong hand, like a set, you can play it the exact same way. If the turn misses the flush, you can check the turn and your opponent will stack off.

There were no other hands I played that were at all interesting. One of the better other players ended up laying down QQ's preflop. Action folded to a shortty, who raised to 500. QQ calls in position, only to have the button pop it up to 2800. The short stack went in for about 4k. QQ didn't take too long to fold before the re-raiser called.

Everyone flipped open their hands and the 2800 chip raiser also had QQ's and the shortty had 55. When the good player folded QQ, DN was totally impressed and said most of the time, you're looking at AA/KK, in the spot he was in. We basically got to the point where, we're never that happy to be all in preflop before the flop - in deep stacked situations. It was an impressive fold, and I wasn't sure if I could make it.

In any case, after all that, we went back to the private room and went over turn play. We ended the session around 5 or 6. And it felt like a long day. I think everyone was tired. It was almost like going back to school all over again.

We all were free till 8:00. We planned to meet at Morel's - a steakhouse outside the Palazzo Lobby. The guys love choosing steak houses whenever they hang with Daniel as he is a vegan. We had our own private room in the back. I talked with some of the other guys. Mostly to one of the organizers of the weekend events. He usually helps with the production of the PokerVT material and plays a bit online.

We had oysters, shrimp, and octopus for starters. Unfortunately seafood isn't high on my list of things to eat. During dinner, DN shared some stories and we had some interesting conversation. He mentioned how hard it was for him to play lower stakes. Apparently he's been asked by railbirds - Halle Berry 6 hours dead or Kathy Liebert....that led to more interesting conversation. I also talked to the guys about how to multi-table and etc. Over dinner, I had a steak and it was one of the best steaks I've eaten. I'm usually not a steak guy, but this new york steak was delicious. We also got Creme Brulee for dessert. Needless to say, I was stuffed from dinner.

So after dinner, we headed to the Tao Beach night club. It's basically an outdoor night club...so since it's still hot, I thought it was a good idea to wear shorts. Apparently not. The bouncers there love their authority. They made up rules as they go. From no where, they decided people needed collars to enter the club. Then everyone needed pants....even though half the girls in there were half naked anyways.

So I returned to the hotel room which is a bit of a ways away and changed before returning. One of the coordinators came back to get me and when I back and the club was packed. We finally got to the top and we had our own private area. DN had some of his buddies over...and we had random woman coming in to get drunk. Nightclubs really aren't my thing. I never go to them, and really have no interest in it - I rarely drink alcohol. Anyways, I talked to a few of the guys....and grabbed a glass of Orange Juice. I'm just standing around and there's three chicks in front of me... I don't know it was, but it was hot out, I was tired, and condensation from my cup.... basically the cup slips out...and it was like slow motion in a movie as I saw the cup crash to the ground and all over the place. The girls screamed, and I was like *hit....I appologized so many times and felt so bad. Those chicks must have thought I was drunk...lol.

I recounted the story to DN and of course he had to share it all with his buddies. In any case, Mark Seif came by later to the booth. I hadn't really noticed on tv, but he's a bit bigger then I thought. I really didn't want to get into the whole AP scandal with him. He has been playing mostly online as of late and even on Stars. He found out I was a supernova and said he was platinum for a month, but couldn't find the time to keep up that pace. Apparently, when he plays online, he's often high....it sounded like he smoked a lot.

Talking to most of the other guys, I've been mentioned as the favorite for the tourney on Sunday. I really never thought much of it and mostly replied, whatever happens happen. Anything can happen in poker and it's not worth investing so much emotional interest into one tournament when you know there's another one right around the corner.

In any case, I didn't want to stay up too late and took off around 1:30 or 2. Before taking lost, I basically got lost in the club. It's pitch black and I have no clue where the heck I was going. Eventually I found the exit and looked down as there was a hot chick with barely anything on in a bathtub with flowers all over. Too bad I didn't bring my camera with me. I went back to the room and slept.

I later find out that the Tao Beach is actually a topless nightclub during the week. They apparently hire strippers about 100 bucks to lay out up top and get gocked at.