WSOP Event #48 (VegasSummer 09, gambling)

This was the $1500 PLO8 that I really wanted to play. The result was disappointing as I lost rather quickly. Everyone started with 1500 in chips with two rebuys of 1500 each that can be taken at any time in the first three levels. Blinds started at 25/50 and the second level was 50/100. There were at least three pros at my table and I'm pretty sure the pro directly to my left has a WSOP bracelet and ended up being the chip leader after the first day. Nobody at our table took any early rebuys.

It didn't help that I didn't get much in the way of cards. I was dealt A2xx only once during my hour and a half of play, and it was A2KT where everyone folded to my preflop raise. Any kind of speculative hand that I had (eg. 2345 double suited) in position would completely miss the flop. There were only two flops that I really hit. One was quads which I bet the whole way as the other guy chased an A3 low and caught on the river. The other hand I flopped the nut low with a flush draw and gutshot straight draw. The pro that called my bets had top two pair and the second nut low. The river counterfeited my low, filling his gutshot and leaving me without even half the pot.

For my first live tournament experience, I thought I learned a lot. I think if I played a similar event again I'd be more comfortable and more patient. Of course I would still need to get some cards and hit some flops, but I think I learned a lot more about the difference in live and online tournament play.

L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon (VegasSummer 09, food)

Only an hour off the plane and barely checked into my room, my buddy calls me and says that he and his friend are going to L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon. As many of my readers know, I love all the L'Ateliers, having eaten at four of its worldwide locations (NYC, LV, HK, Paris).

So off we went to a huge meal on my first night in Vegas. I opted not to have any wine since I was playing the WSOP event #48 the next day. We decided on the "discovery menu" and added one of the miniburgers each because it's one of my favorite items on the menu and it was actually cheaper than the price on the NYC menu.

Foie gras parfait with port wine and parmesan foam
this amuse is one of the best things at L'atelier and I can never get enough of it.

Smoked salmon in an herb gelee with light wasabi cream
this was everything I would want in a starter. Light, tasty, with a kick from the wasabi cream and a good mix of textures.

Poached baby Kusshi oysters with French Echire butter
we all agreed that this was the least impressive of all the dishes.

Maine lobster in a tomato sauce and green asparagus
well-cooked and tasty, one of my friends said that this was his favorite dish. I liked it but was not blown away.

Foie gras ravioli in a warm chicken broth with herbs
this was much better than the one time I ordered this in NYC. For some reason the flavors melded much better this time. Great dish in cold weather.

Mackerel filet, baby artichokes, ginger oil
this was the most impressive dish for me. Just spectacular flavors and a perfectly cooked piece of fish.

Beef and foie gras burgers with caramelized bell peppers
wonderful as always. the flavors, the fat, the meat, it all just goes so well together.

Entree choice of foie gras stuffed quail or hanger steak with fried shallots
i've had the quail many times so I decided to try the hanger steak. It was very good but I'm not sure I would ever order it a la carte.

Peach confit infused with Moscato d'Asti, apricot milkshake
this was good but it was heavier than we all expected for a predessert.

Acai granitem, light caramel cream
good dessert to round out a great meal.

The discovery menu was $148 and the extra burger was $16. Unless you go crazy, I never find L'atelier to be overpriced for the consistently high quality of food.

Back from Vegas (VegasSummer 09)

Just came back from Vegas today, and will start posting my thoughts about the trip. I'm mostly going to go in chronological order, and will discuss food, hotels, gambling, etc. I know that it probably would've been more fun if I had updated in a more real-time fashion, but I only paid for internet use 1 out of every 3 days anyway.

The posts will be labeled VegasSummer09 in case I mix other posts in between.

I wish everyone a happy 4th of July weekend, and I think that Kobayashi will be very good value this year as a bet. It's his last year as he is retiring, and I imagine this means that he can go all out and extend himself without worrying too much about future repercussions since he won't be competing anymore.

Vegas update (gambling, entertainment, food)

Just a quick post so that noone thinks I'm buried up to my neck in the desert somewhere.

Got KOed of the 1500 PLO8 tournament in 1.5 hours. There were at least 3 pros at my table, and I think the pro directly to my left was actually the chip leader after the first day. It wasn't so much that as the fact that I didn't have any cards and didn't hit any flops. The only flops I hit were quads with a guy chasing A3 low all the way and catching it on the river and another hand where I flopped the nut low and flush draw against someone's two pair and second nut low and my low got counterfeited on the river for his wheel.

Food-wise, the notable meals were a meal at L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon and a teppanyaki meal with Kobe beef. Other than that, I've mostly eaten in the hotel, including an averagish prime rib at the steakhouse and some 75cent (beef) hot dogs and $5 steak and eggs at 5 in the morning.

I will jot down all the stuff I want to post about so I can do it later. But as I'm going to bed at like 6am every day, I will probably not be writing any more posts until I get back.

Food videos (food)

Some food videos I want to share. These are not particularly new, but interesting enough to rewatch even.

Gordon Ramsay on what might be the best farmed caviar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF-rPKM-2EU

Dan Barber on humane foie gras. I am hoping to get a reservation at his farm/restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns when my mom visits in September:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_s_surprising_foie_gras_parable.html

Jennifer Lee on Chinese food history in America. I have always been quite fascinated with American Chinese food actually:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_8_lee_looks_for_general_tso.html

Both of the last two talks come from Taste3 http://www.taste3.com/ which looks to have been quite a conference. However, I used links from TED http://www.ted.com/ because I think that if you haven't heard of TED, you should definitely check it out.

Need some sun (food, health)

Not just because of the constant rain lately. I'll avoid that soon enough when I'm out in Vegas. The reason we might need more sun comes from a study presented at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting. Researchers found that after placing subjects on a calorie-restricted diet, those with higher vitamin D levels had increased loss of belly fat. While vitamin D also comes from healthy food sources like fatty fish, our skin makes vitamin D after exposure to ultraviolet light. So the whole fit-bodied tanned culture might be more than just a correlation of being someplace sunny.

As I prepare (really haven't prepared anything) for my trip, I decided to introduce more flavors to my palate since the detox and light chinese food. However, I think I went overboard by having three tacos with my first exposure to Mexican spices and beef and pork all at once. It was delicious though. I wonder what I will end up eating while in Vegas. The fact that it's 9 nights is a bit daunting since that's a long time to be on vacation alone.

Vegas (entertainment, food, gambling)

At the behest of my bosses at work to stop going in and losing too much money every day in this crappy market, I will be on a trip to Vegas from Jun 24 to Jul 3. My plan is to play the 1500PLO8 tourney, and then just chillax from there. The good news is that between redeeming credit card miles, using Hotwire, and getting three free nights at the Bellagio based on my last visit there, the trip expenses for 9 nights will only be about $400 of cash out of pocket.

However, as I really want to play that tourney, I probably won't be doing much in the way of gambling otherwise. So I am looking for:

Anybody who wants to come join me or knows locals they want to introduce me to.
Anybody who wants to back me to play some poker.
Any show/comedy recommendations.
Any restaurant/local food recommendations.

Right now I have my sights set on "O" or "Ka", maybe even Carrot Top, and perhaps Robuchon for a meal although it's really out of my price range.

Detox over (food)

I lasted 5.5 days. The half day was because one of the days I had to eat something or else I was going to faint, and so I bought a turkey and swiss sandwich from Starbucks (I can't believe I paid $6 for that thing). I wouldn't consider this detox I went through to be particularly healthy. To put it in perspective, in those 5.5 days i lost about 8 lbs. But I felt like I needed a shutdown reboot of my body and I felt that this was the best way.

To restart my palate, I'm going to go with light (not American) Chinese food. Since it'll mostly be fish, chicken, vegetables, and rice, you could say that I'm continuing my diet. Chinese food is also cheap (from Chinatown), which is a very good thing for me right now. I continue to suck at work, and even though I sound like I'm making excuses, I probably shouldn't have been trading during this detox.

Besides work, my mood certainly isn't helped by this awful weather. Raining and humid all the time it's like I'm back in Hong Kong. I remember those days of stocking up on luncheon meat (think SPAM) and canned fish as June is generally typhoon season in Hong Kong.

Detox and Food Inc. (food, entertainment)

After going crazy last week food-wise, I just started a personal detox on Saturday. This was much needed, as I ate at Prime House (the 65-day dry aged ribeye, superb), Eleven Madison Park (for lunch, again), L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon (one of my favorite places, see my review from 2 years ago ), revisited all my favorite sandwich places, and drank 3 cartons of chocolate milk all in the same week.

Although it hasn't even been 48 hours, I'm suffering. Maybe it's withdrawal. It's not that I'm not eating at all, but I'm eating very little and whatever I do eat doesn't have much taste to it. Perhaps I shouldn't have started this detox on a weekend, seeing as how when I have more free time I have more of an itch to eat. I'm only hoping to last through the week, after which I'll start eating sensibly, but adding flavor back into my diet.

Speaking of my favorite sandwich places post, I forgot about Dogmatic. Dogmatic (http://eatdogmatic.com) is on 17th St and Broadway, and serves gourmet sausages in minibaguettes with fancy sauces. They source their food from sustainable farms and they heat the minibaguettes with spikes so that the sausage and sauce inside stay warm (often hot). My favorites are turkey sausage with truffle gruyere sauce, lamb sausage with mint yogurt sauce, and pork sausage with chimichurri. For less than $5, one will do for lunch, although I usually end up having two.

Another food-related thing I've been meaning to do is go see the documentary Food Inc. Here is their website http://www.foodincmovie.com and the trailer looks pretty good. I don't know how much new information will be in this movie, but I think I will appreciate the movie and the reviews have been quite good so far.

The Amherst CDS trade (trading)

This WSJ article was making the rounds today:

"A Daring Trade Has Wall Street Seething"

(EDIT: It appears the link leads to the usual WSJ thing where it says you have to be a subscriber. To bypass this, type the name of the article in google, and the google link to the WSJ article will allow you to read it in full)

It was an interesting situation, and the journal article did a good job of explaining everything such that someone not in finance could still figure out what happened. In short, a small firm sold a lot of CDS on a bunch of bonds backed by subprime mortgages that were about to fail. After selling an amount that was multiples of the underlying bonds, the company "somehow managed" to get the servicer to buy up all the bonds and pay off the principal (something which was allowed only in this circumstance because what was left was 10% of the original batch) and caused the CDS to be worthless. Some of the big banks (JPM, RBS, and BofA were named) who had bought up the CDS, at 85+cents on the dollar, were now whining.

Another example of the problem when the derivative is bigger than the underlying instrument. Of course if the market was regulated and open interest was available for all to see, this coup might not have happened. Regardless, this was a great trade for whoever Amherst was representing and just an apalling oversight on the part of the named banks because this certainly had to have been foreseeable.