When I arrived in Vegas on Friday afternoon, I was planning on taking my
Horseshoe Limo to the Bellagio, where I planned to stay for a couple of
nights with my wife who was flying in later that night from Florida.
When I hopped into the Limo, I decided to call Benny Binion Behnan to
see what he was up to.  Before I hung up the phone, Benny had offered me
one of the 23rd floor suites at the Horseshoe for free!!  That was a
good way to start the trip!  When I arrived at the Horseshoe, my biggest
concern was whether or not Chuck Weinstock had been able to secure an
overhead projector for my power point presentation (PPP).  Right away I
found Chuck in the tournament, in fact, he was one of the chip leaders!
Chuck told me that everything was all right as far as the projector was
concerned, but that I would need to give my floppy disc to someone who
had brought their laptop.  I gave my floppy disc to Perry Friedman, and
what a mistake that turned out to be!  When I gave my speech to BARGE,
Perry had added a slide of his own to my presentation!!  It made for a
lot of good fun and laughs, as it related to me playing in the Tiltboys
home game (in my own hometown of Palo Alto) once and setting the record
loss ($2700), but that in another story for another time!

Speaking of Perry, I ran into him at the San Jose airport on the way to
BARGE, and played him and his friend Chinese poker on the airplane ride
down, and beat him out of $300!  However, he did exact a measure of
revenge when he beat me in the rock scissors paper World Championships
held at BARGE.

The calcutta was absolutely wonderful, everyone was having so much fun
there!  Spontaneous poker 'Freezeouts' broke out on the floor!  Imagine,
no limit holdem on the floor with Paul Phillips (aptly nicknamed Dot
Com)!  The people at BARGE just had so much enthusiasm for poker!  They
clearly love poker, and that warms my heart.

The no limit holdem 'main event' was great as well.  A consortium of
players put a $400 bounty on my no limit holdem head!  So that when I
moved all-in with Qh-Kh, for $2000, the $300 big blind called me with
Q-10 off suit figuring that he needed help, but he would pick up 5th
place money in the tourney if he won the pot!  Who could blame him?  It
came 6h-9c-10h, giving me a straight and a flush draw, but giving him
the eventual winner, a pair of tens.

My wife and went shopping and then took a two hour nap knowing that I
had to speak at about 9:00 PM.  I felt like the speech went pretty well,
and I learned not to read off the slides next time I give a PPP!  The
group seemed to really get into my no limit holdem stories, and then of
course, the 'Perry slide' gave me a chance to talk about setting
records, although in the wrong direction this time!

The Chowaha game was a blast as well!  They told me that the first hand
was always capped, and somehow my 'set of eights' held up to win the
first pot.  Again the enthusiasm was fantastic!  On Sunday, my wife and
I spent most of the day in bed, and then went out to dinner (Pierros)
and a show with Benny and his girl friend.  Benny insisted on buying
everything, even the $900 bottle of Chateu D Quiem...It was really
awesome!  When you ante as much as I do in one hand of poker, you might
as well enjoy the finer things in life sometimes...

Late Sunday night, I played some pot limit holdem with Mike Laing and
the "Math genius" Bill Chen, and I lost $500 and everyone quit!  Bill
picked up pocket aces and busted both Mike and I at the same time (and
then he quit us!)!  Nice job Bill!  At least Bill tipped our Limo driver
on the way out of town!  The raw 'poker enthusiasm' that was surrounding
BARGE really fired me up!  Long live BARGE,

-Cheers, Phil Hellmuth Jr.