This is a conclusion of a series of posts that starts here with an introduction to who these people are and why I’m driving to Las Vegas with them.
Objective: Drop me off in Las Vegas. Optional: Continue on to Tahoe.
The drive from Zion to Las Vegas is a relatively short one, but it’s awfully boring. To my surprise, the kids initially took some interest in the landscape. Apparently they’d been looking forward to seeing a proper desert, and this was not what they’d anticipated. I tried to explain that I found so interesting about the desert, that despite the connotation of a barren environment devoid of life, it’s actually full of plants and animals that are well-adapted to living in an unforgiving climate. They just wanted to see sand dunes, though.
We tried to pass the time by telling jokes. For those who have seen the Louis CK bit about his daughter’s jokes, it was a lot like that. Henry knew a few actual jokes, but he wasn’t much at inventing new ones. Oliver, on the other hand, just had his own bizarre sense of humor and idea of what a joke should look like. He’d usually begin with the same premise as the last joke told and then just go off the rails with it.
For example, I shared the old, “Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 ate 9.”
Which prompted Oliver to ask, “Why was 8 afraid of 9? Because 9 jumped up and went boop boop boop all around and punched him in the butt.”
When the jokes got old, Jerica played Go Fish with the boys while I drove. Even though I couldn’t play, I enjoyed listening in on her attempts to convey even the most rudimentary strategy to Oliver, who is 4 years old. It went something like this:
Jerica: Henry, do you have any nurse sharks?
Henry: Go fish.
J: Your turn Ollie.
Oliver: Mama, do you any pufferfish?
J: (Who can see into Ollie’s hand and knows he has a nurse shark) Are you sure that’s what you want to ask for?
O: Yes!
J: What card did I just ask Henry for?
O: Nurse shark.
J: So what card do you know I have in my hand?
O: Nurse shark.
J: So what card do you want to ask me for?
O: Pufferfish!
Not that a lot of tears were shed over my imminent departure, but I did tell them that I would miss them but I needed to go to work.
“Poker isn’t work!” Oliver told me.
“Why not?” I asked him.
“Work is where you go to get your money and you don’t get your money took away from you.” Hard to argue with that.
I hugged everyone goodbye and then went to pick up my rental car. Jerica was still unsure of their plans for the rest of the day. They needed to get to Tahoe by the next day, and although it was a long drive, there weren’t a lot of good stopping places between Las Vegas and there. She texted me late that night to say they’d driven all the way through and arrived safely.
I woke the next morning to another text from her phone:
“I hope you play poker better than crazy 8s. From Henry.”
I’m sure you enjoyed the trip, but (looking back) do you think it was a distraction from playing good poker? In other words, would you be better prepared if you had flown out a day or two early and relaxed?
Coming in and trying to play the next day would have been a mistake. I gave myself a few days to recover before the Main Event. I got into LV on July 1 and didn’t play the Main until July 7. It was certainly tiring but it put me in a good mood as well.
One more question. I played Day 1A, you apparently Day 1C. Do you see any advantages between the three?
That was a pretty good joke by Oliver.
Was really hoping there would have been a chance for the three of them to gang tackle Carlos.
I think my question was lost in the shuffle (no pun intended). What are the advantages of the three different Day 1s of the Main Event?
My philosophy has generally been just to play whichever day is best for my schedule. I do like getting a day off after Day 2, which usually requires playing one of the early Day 1s. However, the final Day 1 always draws the largest and presumably therefore softest field. They’ve tried to mitigate this effect by making the early Day 1s weekends and the final one a Monday, but it seems that many recreational players still prefer committing to fewer days in Vegas over starting on a weekend and possibly not needing to miss work at all.
Thank you for your reply. There was plenty of dead money on Day 1A (and Day 2 for that matter), so hard to imagine Day 1C was much worse.
Dave – Congrats on the 3rd place finish in the WSOP Seniors event.
Dave is the retired associate editor of the national bridge publication, the Bridge Bulletin, and his former boss gave him a nice write-up in this month’s magazine.