My lucky number 14.....

As many people already know I let house games get the better of me during my 5 weeks of Vegas hell this year! One morning I was playing in Caesar's and was up around $3000 on blackjack. Then the dealer was changed and the new one was an absolute bitch, kept commenting on plays etc. Then after a hand busted she would start adding up cards on the next hand saying what woulda/coulda/shoulda happened. From $3000 up i went $3000 down and decided she was so annoying I had to leave before I done something she would regret. I moved to roullette and from the first $200 i cashed I ended up with around $5000 so overall I was up $2000 and i decided to call it a night.

I catch a cab back to The Wynn where I was staying courtesy of Betfair around 3 a.m. and decide I still fancy a drink or two. I was going to just grab a few drinks from the mini-bar which I had been hammering (some days to the tune of 2-$300 plus), then I have the great idea I know I will sit on a table and just mess around with $100 and get a few drinks for free. This is very unlike me as usually I would rather pay for something as I know very few things in life are truly free of charge. On the table I start speaking to an english couple who lived close to me in London. Both of them shared the 14th as their birthdays and were backing it amongst other numbers. Being told it was a lucky number and due to come in I put a few bets on it for fun. I am winning a little on other numbers but 14 hadn't come in when I realise the time is now 8 a.m. and I am actually a few thousand down! I stopped betting on everything else and stuck with just $25-50 a spin on 14. Soon after Deejay walked past on his way to a routine beer or six to calm his nerves before he played the world series main event!

He had a few bets and was up around $1000 and having heard how number 14 hadn't come in for five hours decided he to would catch the 14 bug. Soon after the pit boss informs me according to some new federal law there are limits to how much you can drop at a casino and still remain anonymous. I had already said no thanks to getting a player rating as i felt like the amounts I would win or lose meant I shouldn't be in need of free meals or shows. Now i refused to get rated so I wasn't allowed to play at the table! To get around this I simply gave deejay the money to put the bets on.

Just before 11 evo2 turns up and I think now he has caught the 14 bug it is sure to drop in! However it still doesn't. It is now time for deejay to go and play the tournament so having played the number for 8 hours and still not seeing it drop in I have to back down and show identification to continue my pursuit of 14! The time is now half past 12 and I have been chasing ONE number for 8.5 hours and it still hasn't come in! I have one $25 chip left and no money and I place it on number 14, the ball is going close and then it goes three past then as if in slow motion it changes direction and goes backwards slotting straight into number 14!

Mission accomplished for me. The outcome, I will never back number 14 again, the english guy was an oil trader so I am sure oil prices rose a cent the next day and deejay( David Wells )decided he would leave Vegas with some money and went on to come 85th out of over 6000 entrants to earn just over $82000.

The main event I feel was a success for English players with 4 finishing in the top 100. Funnily enough the four of them are all polite, genuinly nice people who you could only wish to do well in tournaments. The highest finisher from England was Jonathon Kalmar who came 5th and won over a million dollars, he had some bad luck and was unfortunate not to win many more millions.

I will probably skip the world series in 2008 due to it being such a distraction in general. I may go to Las Vegas though to watch a few boxing matches next year, time will tell. For all poker players who go to Las Vegas to play poker try to do just that, there are so many great tournaments daily and throughout the day that there really is no need to play games where its pot luck. If you bust out of a $200 tournament to a bad beat dont try and win the entry fee back on the house games, you may lose your shirt! Just tell yourself poker is not a sprint its a marathon. An entrance fee today that is lost will be paid for by a win in a tournament tomorrow.