HANGING WITH HEF AND ALEC

Immediately after playing the NAPT Invitational, I was off to California for the Los Angeles Poker Classic main event. I had two options: stay in a hotel room at the Commerce or crash with my buddy Alec Torelli in Irvine, which is about 35 miles away.

Before you say that I should have stayed at the Commerce, you need to know a few things. Alec is a fantastic guy, and he lives in a place called the Village at the Spectrum. It’s essentially a huge resort with a five-story apartment building. There are five gyms, four swimming pools, and a hot tub.  Alec drives a BMW M6 and he routinely gets it up to 110 miles per hour on the I-5.  So that significantly shortens the commute.  And the Commerce is well the Commerce… So, yeah, I opted to stay with Alec.

In terms of the tournament, nothing great happened. I busted out on day two and played a lot of hands, but none of them were all that interesting. From now on, if you want to know how I’m doing in a tournament, check me out on Twitter. It’s Andrew_Robl, and I’m trying to update during each break.

What you won’t read about on Twitter is what happened after this tournament. There was a charity bash at the Playboy Mansion, VictoryPoker had a cabana, and I wasn’t going to miss it. Good thing, too, as this is definitely the best party I’ve ever attended. For starters, the girl-to-guy ratio was at least 3-to-1. Body-painted Playboy models were all over the place, and we had the best table at the Mansion. Thanks, Mr. CEO Dan Fleyshman!

Our area was so raging that some of the FullTilt guys left their table to come over and party with us. Phil Laak was at our table and we played a new game called Patch Phil; it involves trying to sneak as many VictoryPoker patches on Phil as possible. He doesn’t want to join our site because he has his own, but by the end of the night he was promoting Victory without knowing it.

To get an idea of how wild things were, I’ll tell you a story that came to me from Alec. He and Keith Gipson (a great guy and another VictoryPoker pro) were waiting on line for one of the bathrooms. Three girls in lingerie tried cutting in front of them. Alec told them they had no shot, that they needed to get to the back of the line. One girl said that her friend would make out with him in exchange for a cut. Alec told her to forget about it. But then he thought of a better idea: If  all three girls make out with each other, they can get in line. They did, and they did.

After the party, a lot of the VictoryPoker guys, who were still in the LAPC, went home to rest up. One advantage of getting knocked out early was that I had no compelling reason to sleep. So I joined Nima, executive producer of VictoryPoker.tv, and Craig Clements who was voted Prom King of Hollywood. We wound up at the Playboy Mansion after-party, inside a penthouse at the Roosevelt Hotel. Just one problem: We didn’t have passes with us, though we were invited to the party since we had a cabana at the Mansion.

When the bouncers told us that we couldn’t get in, we tried sneaking in a few different ways but never made it. Finally, I got the bright idea of joining a group of 14 girls coming off of the elevator. I situated myself in the middle of the pack and walked inside with them. Once there, I found the guy with our passes. Craig, Nima, and I had fun rubbing it into the bouncers as we sauntered past them, waving our invites.

Inside the party, I met a group of Sweden’s toughest online poker players. I knew them all by their screen names, but we had never had a chance to hang out before. They told me about the $15-million mansion they’re staying in for the next three months! Loads of drinking ensued. By the end of the night, I was in no condition to drive (or, truthfully, even to ride) back to Irvine. So I got myself a room at the Roosevelt.

Next morning, I received a call from Nima, and he talked me into going out drinking with him. We spent the day barhopping with  Craig and Hillary Scott, who had been voted Porn Star of the Year in 2009. That night I got my assistant to drive in from Irvine and pick me up. I had been MIA for a good couple days, but it was well deserved after all the poker I’d been playing.

At this moment, I am in Irvine, chilling with Alec. I plan on devoting the next week to working out, relaxing, and being healthy. I’ll take time out to play a charity tournament that VictoryPoker is sponsoring, in conjunction with the Academy Awards. There are supposed to be some big-name celebrities buying in. Check my Tweets for more details.