Yesterday morning we got up having got a bit more sleep. After stumbling out of bed and getting ready we wandered down to the expo hall to get things setup. Everything got going basically without a hitch and the matches got under way basically on schedule. Polaris had some tough luck this match. To my eye, it looked a lot like the player downstairs was very aggressive and he won a lot of money in his huge upswing. On the other side of the cards, the human played more defensively and managed to lose less than Polaris in that downswing. The frustrating thing about that is that because the styles differ so much, there is just more noise. By more noise I mean more luck. If the cards had been reversed so that the lucky cards were upstairs and the unlucky cards were downstairs, Polaris could very well have won the match!

So our team was a bit disheartened at the loss. It means we're 1-2-1 going into the last two matches. If we can get a win today we'd still have a shot in the last match to win the whole thing. I truly hope we don't get unlucky.

After the session was over I wandered the expo a bit and also went off to check out the world series of poker (wsop) which is being played in Vegas while we are here. There is a *huge* room full of poker tables, and it was pretty incredible to me what it's like. There's a huge number of people playing poker, or watching from the side. You wouldn't think about poker as a loud game, but with so many tables, the roar of chips clattering together is actually quite substantial.

After checking out the feature table for a bit, Dave and I wandered back to the expo which was wrapping up right away. So we packed up and headed to dinner -- back to the Rub BBQ place! I'm hoping we get a chance to try a bunch of different restaurants, but this was a good decision because it meant we didn't have to wait in line with a huge group of people. In a few days the number of people we hang out with will drop down to a more reasonable number which will making getting into some restaurants a lot easier.

After dinner, our group split up into two groups. One group of us went off to play poker, while the other went to go check out some July 4 festivities. You'll have to have Diane tell you about the July 4 festivities -- I went to go play poker.

The tables in the Rio are a bit weird, but I think I'll save most of the poker talk for my other blog when I get the chance. For the time being, I'll just say that I didn't fell all that uncomfortable, but I also feel like I got a bit lucky to be up $180 at the end of the session. It's kind of fun though to sit around a poker table and chat with some people about what's going on in Vegas.

Vegas is ... interesting. It's so over the top, it's crazy. I don't really fully understand it, but every time I've looked around there's more stuff that makes me say "woah", or "wow". I'll have to post about that later I guess since I'm running out of time before heading back down to the expo this morning. The only thing I really don't like though is the smoke. Every morning I wake up with a bit of a sore throat because of the smoke I inhaled the day before. :\ I'm glad the expo floor has smoking disallowed.

I'm not sure what the plan is for tonight, but I feel like seeing a bit of Vegas. I hear we are planning on seeing a Cirque du Solei show tomorrow. I believe it's the water one, but I'm not totally sure. We'll see if there's still tickets today I think.

I hope things are going well in E-town!

Morgan