Woke up really late after the night of Vietnamese partying and didn’t get back to the blackjack tables until around 2p. Really made the most of it though, as we caught a hot shoe and I pressed my bets consistently, turning my 1k buy-in into 3k and then cashing out. The pit bosses had been pushing buffet comps the last two days and since we weren’t planning on meeting up with Men for dinner until 9p, Heidi and I decided to go check it out. I hit up the shellfish station and ate my fair share of king crab legs and shrimp cocktail. Perfect snack for an afternoon break between gambling sessions. Kin came down from his job and met up with us there because there was a good chance he wouldn’t be able to join us for dinner. Hung out for a bit and then he went back to work, and so did I…

Next session started out good but then lost a bunch of profit back before deciding to jump tables. The next table was a lot better and I walked away +$700 for that session after losing a $150 bet trying to make it to a clean thousand. No sense losing back that money trying to chase a round number. By this point I had pretty much lost accurate track of where I stood overall on the trip, but I am guessing it was still about -$1000. That’s a lot more palatable than where I had been, so I was in a good mood heading into dinner.

Kin texted me to say he couldn’t join us for dinner since he was once again too beat from work, so we called Men to tell him it would just be me and Heidi for dinner again. He was tied up doing interviews and such, so he had Young drive over to pick us up. We headed back to Chinatown to a KOrean bbq place on the 2nd floor of the same building we had gone to Korean karaoke the night before. Men met us over there, bringing along his friend Warren. Heidi ordered up a ton of different meats and we had a feast and she picked up the check for all of us.

Afterwards, you guessed it, we were back to the Vietnamese karaoke joint. Men and Young were immediately greeted by two guys sitting at a table near the back and we pulled over a table to sit with them. I extended my hand to one of them and said “Hey, I’m Steve, what’s your name?” He replied amiably but forcefully “I’m Hon Le”. I heard the name and then took a better look at his face and in my head I went “oh shit! It’s Hon Le!” He’s the guy from one of the more memorable moments in WPT history when he emphatically pointed at his opponent and declared “I CALL YOU!”. When Men had said we were going to meet up with some of his other students, I had no idea who he was referring to. But by the end of the night, his whole entourage had shown up, at least two more of whom I know I’ve seen on tv before (one of them introduced himself as Danny, and I’m thinking it was Danny Nguyen, but he didn’t have the big hair and seemed a bit slimmer). Hanging out with Men The Master and Young Phan the first night was already outrageous, now this was just surreal. I found myself sitting around this table with all these Vietnamese poker greats, thinking to myself, shit if this were a final table at a televised event, they would be saying what a tough table it was. And there we were just kicking back and chillin. These guys were all really friendly and seemed to treat each other like family with Men as the proud papa. And yes, my theory from my prior post was reinforced- all these guys were good singers too. It was a very fun time indeed. We were also getting treated very well by the two super cute and friendly bartenders seen here (and I think the one on the right may be the owner):

They kept coming over to toast with us and to buy us drinks. One of the things they kept bringing over for us were goblets of some sort of sweet red wine served cold. My first reaction was that it was shitty wine, but when I realized it probably wasn’t meant to be a regular red, I didn’t mind it so much. At the end of the night they brought out something that was familiar to me but was the first time I had ever seen it in a bar- dried cuttlefish. These fishy strands of dried cuttlefish were the exact same kind that my sister and I used to love snacking on as kids. They’re strands of fiberous fish jerky basically, but because they’re seasoned generously with msg, they’re really kind of addictive. We were served two big plates of them and in another first for me, I discovered they were warm. I had only ever eaten cuttlefish straight out of the package as a kid, it never occurred to me that they might be better if they were slightly heated. Now I know. It was served with a plate of Sriracha, the ubiquitous Vietnamese hot sauce that everybody recognizes from the rooster on the bottle. Cuttlefish dipped in hot sauce, such a sensible combo yet nothing I’d ever thought of. What a neat snack to end the evening with, and it was particularly amusing to hear Men point at it and say his trademark “All you can eat, baby!” 🙂

Heidi anticipated we were leaving soon, so she tried to get the owner chick to give her the check. The owner chick didn’t speak English too well, but basically was trying to convince her that she shouldn’t have to pay since she’s a girl (not to mention how many millionaires were at our table). During that conversation, Young and Men figured out what Heidi was trying to do, so they went up and Men pulled the O.G. maneuver and told the owner chick he was going to pay. While Young and Men were distracted by Heidi’s animated objections, I tried to out maneuver The Master by sneaking my way over to the owner chick and gesturing to have her give me the check. The poor owner chick was now all flustered and put her face in her hands because she didn’t know who to give the check to anymore. I almost had it when Men came all in over the top of my action, giving the final word that he was going to pay and taking out two of his gargantuan wads of benjamins held together by rubber bands. I looked at Young to see if he could convince Men to let me pay, but Young said no, and that was that.

Afterwards, we said our goodbyes, Men headed home and had Young drive me and Heidi back to the Wynn. We sat down at a blackjack table one final time to take a stab at winning back or money. No luck. I was up a few hundred, but was getting awfully sleepy, so I made a couple of big bets in a row trying to win back my last thousand so I could be even on the trip, but those bets were losers, so I decided to just cash out for my original 1k buy-in and call it a night. Down about $1k on the trip seems acceptable given all the fun I had and the terrific accomodations at the Wynn. It’s been a really enjoyable and memorable trip.