We went to the Rio because I'm an inveterate poker-watcher, never missing a World Poker Tour event or World Series of Poker show, though I don't play the game. As it turned out the Main Event of this years WSOP started on Thursday and Saturday they were playing the 3rd round of the first official day of play (the first day was split into 4 rounds because they have nearly 12,000 entrants - at $10,000 a pop). This was the scene in one of the two huge convention halls that they were using for the tournament:
The thing that's kind of funny about watching live play in person is how quiet it is in the room. The spectators all kind of whisper to each other and about all you can hear is the constant clicking of chips. Every now and then you'd hear a dealer yell out "there's an all-in call on table 52!" which I guess they have to do, and at one point we saw a dejected guy get up, pack up his stuff, and walk out. He had busted out of the $10,000 tournament after playing only 19 minutes. I decided that I'll start playing poker tournaments as soon as they start telling me what all the other guys have in their hands like they do on TV.
I've watched a lot of poker tournaments on TV and know many of the players, but there were surprisingly few that I recognized among the huge crowd. ESPN televises the WSOP and they had their featured table which you could see in the distance here:
As we wandered among the railbirds who were watching the play, I spotted a familiar though not very pleasant face among the players at a nearby table:
The guy at the left in the blue shirt is Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt, with his toady sitting right beind him. Larry was perched in a gold-plated wheelchair as he played.
We only stayed for a little while and then headed off to our hotel for Saturday night, the Las Vegas Hilton, and some shopping at the Miracle Mile shops at Planet Hollywood. I wanted to run up to the Sahara to check out the NASCAR stuff up there, so we rode the monorail over there and got to the NASCAR Cafe about 40 laps into the Cup race at Daytona which was running last night. We grabbed a table in the bar and had our dinner there while the race played on dozens of screens around us.
Las Vegas native Kyle Busch won to the cheers of the Las Vegas crowd.
Following dinner we jumped back on the monorail and rode down to the other end of the strip to take some pictures. We stopped by Studio 54 at MGM to get this quick picture. Mrs. HolyCoast was born in '54 and turns 54 this week. 
Today we move over to Paris Las Vegas where we'll be for the next three nights. More reports later.
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