Left eye:

Right eye:

Now my Optometrist explained what each part of the image is in great detail – unfortunately I’ve forgotten almost everything she said. The big blood vessels are veins, and the smaller ones are arteries. I think the bright dot is the cornea, I can’t remember what the black part is. Ten points for anyone who knows.

Eyes closed

On the way home from poker.

How could I resist? I wish I had a polaroid so I could have placed a copy in his pocket.

Eyes open

Tanya with her Nikon F3. She’s in India with my Canon 24-70 right now, looking forward to what she brings back.

Waterstones

Severin flew over to have some noodles.

And look at Graffiti. My film scanner has problems scanning dark photos, and I end up with things like this.

Eyes down

Jay Luck had another fancy dress Team Freezeout at The International.

I went as a banana, Kevin went as Buzz Lightyear, Nick went as a pimp and ginger Chris refused to wear his flashing police helmet. So Nick wore it. Kevin took second place for our team.

Nick and the hat.

Another scanner screw-up. I’m going to get this printed then scan the print.

Also in the news

We’re fast approaching the end of the financial year. This is when councils dig up the roads and spend as much money as possible. if they don’t spend it, they get less next year.

I wonder what his story is.

There’s something about shaving my head that makes me feel like I’m shrugging off the blandness of the working week, ready for the weekend, freedom and fun.

I’ve booked flights to NYC & Philly for mid-late June with Sean Mayer. Looking forward to seeing some friends across the pond again. And documenting the whole thing!

Geeky stuff: Voigtlander Bessa R2M; 35mm 1.7 Ultron; Kodak TRI-X 400 + 2.

£1,500 No Limit Hold’em Freezeout

I narrowly missed out on playing this event myself, finishing 6th in a satellite that offered three seats since I didn’t manage to play the event I covered it instead. Here is some shortened coverage.

Marylin and Elvis were here to spice things up.

Final preparations for day 1A

Annette Obrestad (better known online as Annette_15) won last year’s event. Her 20th birthday was a few days before the start of the event and her sponsor, Betfair (also the festival sponsor) gave her 20 birthday cakes.

Shuffle up and deal, bitches!

OK he didn’t say bitches.

Some fellow players from the now defunct Gutshot Card Club were playing day 1a.

Ghandi

Ed Roger. Ed eliminated me from the GSOP main event a few months ago. From Luckyjimm’s commentary:
“And James Bardolph’s out! His resteal with 56 sooted got looked up by Ed Roger’s pocket 6s and didn’t find a miracle.”

Nik Persaud. Nik has been looking for his seat for around 10 minutes. He eventually finds his seat on Ghandi’s right.

If you saw the Pokerstars WCOOP advert, Daniel Negreanu’s expressions on the table are exactly the same as the look he has when he throws the chips in.

Liv Boeree and Neil Channing in the house

Not everyone had turned up yet. Late Hellmuth entrance anyone?

This guy had a unique haircut

And a unique charm

John Juanda. I swear this man has zero tells.

We fiendishly started eating Annette’s cakes in the media room. Let’s hope she doesn’t find out.

Tables have been broken as players are eliminated.

Some hands

Walking over to Nik P’s / Ghandi’s table and and Nik (BB) is in the middle of a hand with the SB.

Flop:

SB bets 250, Nik calls

Turn:

SB bets 750. Nik thinks for around 10 secs then decides to call.

River:

SB bets 2,100. Nik calls.

Bettor shows A-6 for the runner-runner full house! Nik later revealed he had K-8.

On a board of , with 5,450 in the pot, facing a bet of 2,500 Liv has a serious decision to make.

She folds. The winner shows the ace of hearts.

Blinds are currently 100-200, with a 25 ante.Daniel Negreanu has accumulated a lot of chips thus far.

After each level there is a 20 minute break. The dealers check all the cards during each break to make sure they are all present and there are no marks or irregularities which could help a player identify a card that is lying face-down.

Ghandi shoves it

A short stacked Ghandi gets and shoves pre-flop for 2,625. Small blind goes all-in, granite player who limped folds JJ face-up. Small blind shows

Flop:

Turn:

River:

Ship it!!!

Some guy is getting a finger massage…

Ghandi’s table decide now is a good time to look at the hand rankings in Texas Hold ‘Em. Curly hair man deems it fit to read the card upside-down.

Juanda doing well

A short stack moves in on Seidel’s big blind. Seidel is like ARGH and calls with .

The all-in guy actually raised blind and turns over .

Flop:

Turn:

River:

Double up for the all-in guy!

The green ’25′ chips  have been coloured up. The blinds are now 400-800 with a 100 running ante.

Later on Seidel finds himself short stacked.

Play has ended for day 1 of the £1,500 NLH WSOPE tournament. Someone doubled up with Aces vs Kings on the last hand.

Time to put down your name, how many chips you have left, bag ‘em up and get some sleep.

Not before I snag some more of Annette’s birthday cake(s), though. They were just sitting there OK, it’s not my fault!

Day 1B

Day 2

Geeky stuff: Canon EOS 20D, 24-70 f2.8L lens.

Finally met up with the Arab again. She was not ready for her photo here.

OK photo time.

On the train to the airport.

Vegas. We stayed at the Luxor, which is the big pyramid.

The other person in this bent shot is Gareth. We were in Vegas for his 21st birthday.

Luxor is a good place to stay. We had the morning buffet the first day but after having the Bellagio buffet the next day there was no turning back. The Luxor is at the south side of the strip next to the Mandalay Bay.

We didn’t bother to try and adjust to the jetlag; instead we generally went to bed at 5pm and got up at 12am and stayed out all day. If your main priority is general gambling and not poker tournaments/cash games then this is fine, if you’re there just for poker then I couldn’t comment. If you’re hungry in the small hours there is a Caesars restaurant through the left-from-centre entrance, to your left.

Taxis are cheap and a lot of the drivers are real characters. I had a Korean guy who thought I looked Korean, an English guy from East London and a Japanese guy who I spoke with about Japan and Kazushi Sakuraba. He asked me to write ‘mate’ on his notepad and gave me a hug when I gave him a tip. He was a top guy, I should have made a photo of him.

I didn’t forget to make a photo of this guy though. Yes I did give him a hug.

After a few days people tend to become familiar, mainly dealers in your regular haunts. All the dealers/croupiers that served us were cool except for one blackjack dealer in the Bellagio, but i’ll give her the benefit of the doubt as I was drunk (more below).

Fremont Street is a $10 ride from the Stratosphere (which is at the North, seedier end of the strip). Worth going there if you’ve never been. We popped in one of the casinos for 20 mins for some roulette/blackjack then left for the Bellagio buffet. The view from the top of the Stratosphere is also definitely something to see.

For poker tournaments I think the Luxor cardroom is way too small, and the structure is ridiculous. $30 / $50 / $62 tournaments = 800 chips, blinds double every 15 mins. As for ring games I don’t play ring myself so I couldn’t comment.

We spent most of our gambling hours between Bellagio and Caesars. I was mainly losing money at blackjack (started off as a total novice) and making money at roulette which was cool.

Don’t play blackjack in the Bellagio after 1am when you’ve had 3x long island iced teas and 2x margaritas because:

• You will pay no attention to the dealer or your cards when you see the smoking hot waitress with short black hair in the main aisle
• Even if you ARE looking at your cards, you’ll be so drunk you’ll have no idea what game you are playing. At one point I tried to hit on 20; luckily the dealer realised i was a drunk buffoon and ignored my request.

Note: Don’t play three card poker! Horrible game!

Anyway I went to Caesars (how aesthetically fab is their cardroom?) and played the 3pm $65 tournament, dominated the whole thing from early on to come first for $950.

On a break here. The end was imminent. Two stacks of orange 1000 chips at the front there, one stack with a few pink 500s on top. I had about 45k in chips at this point.

Highlight of the tournament was raising from middle position, chap pushes all in and I call, he flips over K-10 off and I show A-K. He immediately started shouting “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!”, and stormed out of the entire cardroom screaming “FUCK!” all the way. Pretty hilarious. I think the poor guy was playing with money he couldn’t afford to lose, or maybe it was because after playing for hours he went out in 11th place when the top 6 got paid. Gareth came 5th for $200.

Under that tent thing you can see in front of Caesars is a bar. They do slush puppy type drinks with or without alcohol. The mango flavour is worth the money! Unfortunately if you drink them too fast you will get brain freeze, that extremely painful feeling behind your eyeball. I couldn’t help myself and got brain freeze seven times from one drink.

If I were to recommend a place to have dinner, it would have to be Neros steak/seafood in Caesars. We had a starter of snails, for a main I had Alaskan Butterfish and Gareth had lobster, we had a side of macaroni cheese and two long island ice teas. Came to $100 each including tip.

If you play at Caesars or any other Harrahs-owned casino then get a reward card and make sure you hand it over when you put money down on games, once you make 300 points you can get a huge Caesars beach towel. Tip on getting extra points: if you are going to spend $100 on roulette or another game, put down $500 (or more) and just play $100 and let the rest sit there. You’ll rack up points a whooole lot quicker. Points are calculated on how much you play and how long you play for.

Lastly, tip anyone who has to bring you anything! Waiters and waitresses. $1 seems to be the norm. Seems puny but they are given a dollar by pretty much everyone they bring a drink to so it adds up for them.

I didn’t take my camera out as much as I’d like because I was busy playing the casinos but here’s an assortment of images.

Huge slot machine in Luxor.

Bellagio restrooms.

One more thing: If you take a cam to vegas, bring something wider than 35mm. 24mm should be perfect.

I did not get any shots of him as I thought the day was going to be a little more serious so I left my cam at home, then picked it up after going to the office. WPT held the day in conjunction with Bluff Magazine who took a bunch of pics, so you may see me in the next edition. Lipscomb has a passing resemblance to Roy Castle by the way.

The classic ‘hand on face’ poker strategy, as famously used by sbrugby on High Stakes Poker.

The guy on the left is really feeling the Drama. You’d think he was playing for money.

I won the very last hand of the day with Ad5d and the MC gave me a pack of WPT playing cards for having the biggest stack. He was pretty cool; he even acknowldged an earlier hand where I won a three way all-in fest with the Gutshot Powerhouse: 5-2. Ship it!

I found this tent amusing. This was the last shot on one of the rolls from Gay Pride if you’re wondering why it’s in colour.

I want one of these.

Ewa gets her fringe done

Stansted airport, en route to Dublin. Someone vandalised the ‘G’..

In Dublin, people sell fruit on street corners from old prams. Sorry the hipshot is bent.

Say it with me Miriam. Brewery!

Tanya doesn’t like her face in this shot so I pixelated it. Behind her is Seamus! Top bloke.

The bar on the 7th floor of the Guinness Brewhouse has a cracking view.

Free beer!

Seamus likes his Guinness.

Every time I enter a country I’ve never been to before I play ‘spot the black guy’. I spotted a bunch at Dublin airport but this guy was bar far the best dressed.

My plane back had to load a chap in a wheelchair which took some time so we missed our take-off slot. We had to wait around for about 30 mins for another one. Seemed this guy had to, too.

Arrived back in London the day some jihads tried to blow things up with cars full of propane. The Police in central London became very paranoid and stopped cars at random.

Tanya is ridiculous.

Vain attempt to hide her face

Handlebar moustache

Action shot!

I had dinner at the Royal Shakespeare Globe Theatre yesterday. Amazing food. Strange message in the toilet…

That is all.