Unlike my trip back in 2007 to the WSOP, there was no “Gaming Life Expo” this year. I guess it didn’t work out for the booths. In any case, since the glasses I bought back then were destroyed during my trip to Vegas, I had to get new ones. The WSOP store were selling the Poker Armor glasses for about $60 but with a 10% discount with the Harrah’s players card. These glasses have less coating on the bottom so it’s almost clear when you are looking down at your cards.

Poker Armor Sunglasses

Just like in 2007, I had to make a big decision with a medium pocket pair (10s) hoping they had AK, but turned out to be KK in one case, and QQ in another case. Both of these decisions turned out to be my downfall because I didn’t have enough chips to work with after these bad calls. I have to learn to know when to let these hands go.

Doyle Brunson shown here on day 1D

Right after dinner break on day 2, an active player raised, got flat called by the guy next to him, and I decided to put what is called a squeeze play on them with 10-7 suited. The active player quickly folded, but the flat caller went into the tank. After a long time, he called with K-10, which was bad since I didn’t have 2 live cards. Nothing came and I was out of the tournament with a whimper.

Although I didn’t cash like my last outing in 2007, I felt a lot more confident and relaxed. I never felt nervous like the last time, and I felt like I knew what was going on at the table at all times. What a difference 3 years and winning a couple of tournaments make. I really want to go back in 2011, and will probably do more than just one event.

Once you have your Palm Pre setup, you realize that there’s no obvious way to export all your contact list to your computer. Yes, the data is backed up in the clouds, but what if I want to export the data to a spreadsheet or another app?

As it turns out, there’s a “cheat” code for doing this. First bring up the Dialer (the same way you dial numbers to make a call).

Next, dial the number “##66623#”, without the quotes. When you dial the last #, an app called “Monad” will automatically launch and you will see something like this:

Help screen

The screen above is actually the main screen with the Help screen dialog box over it. All you will see is the “CelleBrite Export” button. CelleBrite is a company that makes a black box that exports contacts from any phone to any other phone. I found out this secret feature when I was at the Apple store buying an iPhone 4.

When you click on the export button, you will get the following screen:

Exporting

Depending on how many contacts you have, this can take a while to export the file. Just wait and don’t close the app. Once the app is done, it will tell you to connect with the USB cable. At this point, the export file is ready. Connect to your Palm Pre using your USB cable and choose “USB” from the options.

Look in the folder named “.temp” and inside the folder, there should be a file named PmMigration.vcf. This file contains your entire contact list in VCF format (vCard).

Where to find your exported information

Copy this file to your computer and manipulate it or import it to another app on your computer using the vCard format.

TV table from day 1B

My first day at the WSOP did not start well for me. After starting the day with 30,000 chips, at one point, I was down to about 12K. Mostly, this was due to a lot of loose play on my part but I was determined to not play scared this time.

After slowly working my way back to about 22K, I picked up A, J off suit. The flop was K, J and 5. I bet out and unfortunately, got one caller. This caller happened to be the tightest player at the table. Not good for me. The turn was an Ace giving me 2 pair. I decided to make a big move and went all in. The tight player called with Q – 10, giving him a straight. Basically, I had 4 outs (2 Jacks and 2 Aces). I stood up to get ready to leave the table, when a miracle Ace came on the river for me giving me a full-house.

This double-up got me excited enough to start playing well and managed to finish the day near 60k, which is above the average chip stack.

Next: Day 2A on Friday.

Tom Colicchio from Top Chef owns Craft restaurants and he’s got a Craftsteak in Vegas so we decided to check it out. Located in the MGM, I had high hope for this restaurant after the bad experience at BarMasa earlier in the week.

We decided to go for the gusto and order the Angus Beef Selection (Chef’s Angus Menu – $110) where the chef will pick 3 courses for you.

The meal started with warm fris salad which tasted just like breakfast in your mouth when the poached egg melted into the bacon. However, my favorite salad was the Persian cucumber salad, which was light and vinegary. This was the perfect prequel for the steaks.

Next, the main course. It wasn’t surprising that the Filet was cooked to perfection at this well known steak house, but the Porterhouse was not only perfectly prepared, but we were both surprised at the great seasoning as well.

Unlike at other outings, I made sure I had room for desert. Personally, I like very light desert so the Sorbet with fruit was perfect for my taste. However, for decadent pleasure, the Monkey bread with banana ice cream was to die for. The clever mix of monkey with banana just tops off the greatness of this dish.  If you just want to get great desert after your dinner, I highly recommend getting this desert.

It was a nice change to be completely satisfied with a great meal. Personally, this was too much food for me, but if you want to taste the different offerings here, let the chef decide for you and I’m betting that you will be as happy as I was. Be sure to make this place one of your stops in Vegas.

BarMasa Entrance

The new Aria Hotel and Casino is located in the new City Center in Las Vegas. The entire complex is stunning to look at. It’s a complete change from the 80′s look of the Balagio, Paris, and Mirage. BarMasa is located towards the inside left. The entrance is so large, you might not even realize what it is.

By Los Angeles standards, this restaurant is gi-normous, but by Vegas standards, about what you would expect. Basically, it’s a bar and one large room with mega-high ceilings.

Service is very good but maybe because it’s new, some of the servers seems a little tentative, like they’ve never done it before. The prices here are somewhat expensive, even by Vegas standards. We decided to try the Sushi sampler for $98 shown below.

Sushi Sampler

Although it may be hard to tell in the picture, the portions are very small. The selection is good and everything is fresh but the preparation technique is not top notch. In LA, you could get this same thing for $20. The strange thing was the sushi chef loaded the cucumber roll with wasabi to the max. I’m used to wasabi, but this was over-kill.

There was no need to even ask about “free” green tea. I knew what the answer was going to be. All in all, although the ambiance is good, don’t come here for the sushi. It’s over priced and not close to anything that I would consider great sushi. In fact, I would have to rate their sushi sub-par and would never order it here.

I’ll have to look for another good sushi spot in Vegas this trip.

It seems like just last year but it’s been 3 years since my last WSOP. There were no big name poker players on the plane from Los Angeles but Gene Simmons was right after us in line.

One thing that I did notice is that in 3 years, they have improved the registration process a lot. Instead of an ad hoc room, they had a cage like they do for a small casino, and another table area for pre-registered people like me. Registration was quick and easy and everyone was very friendly.

This time, I’m not hear to just cash. I’m here to win.

Finally, after all the leaks and rumors, the new iPhone 4 is out and in my hands. Just about now, you’re asking: “After going to the Palm Pre and avoiding the previous iPhones, why did you get one?”

Good question my friend. My answer: It’s sexy.

Yes, gadgets can be sexy. The older iPhones were sexy but this one has the x-factor. I think this version is not just sexy, but macho industrial sexy. So will my new iPhone get me laid? Only time will tell.

iPhone 4: Very sexy

Apple Store:
One of the first things I encountered was the Apple employees at the store. I’ve dealt with them once before when I was there with a friend, and they are very knowledgeable about their products, unlike the Best Buy workers.

Once I entered after the long line, an Apple salesperson is assigned to you and they walked me through everything from up-selling accessories, turning on my AT&T account, and eventually getting a technical person to transfer all my contacts over to the iPhone.

On a side note, I found out that California charges sales tax on the full price of the iPhone, instead of the discounted price. This really jacks up the tax, but I guess California is broke and they need the money.

AT&T:
The first thing to consider are the AT&T plans. Since I mostly text and don’t make a lot of calls, I picked the least expensive plan for 450 minutes ($39.99), 200 MB of data ($15) and unlimited text ($20). Although the calling minutes roll over, the data (and texting) do not rollover.  So the total on AT&T is about $75. My current plan on Sprint is $69.99 (450 minutes) has unlimited data and texting. I’ll have to use my AT&T for a month to see if I go over the 200MB limit or not.

iPhone:
After getting my iPhone home, the first thing I did was check to see how much memory was available from the 32G. Without downloading anything, the capacity is 29.06G. As long as you don’t go crazy with video, that should be enough for most users, even with a lot of music.

There is a new version of iTunes available (9.2.061) and of course, that is one of the perks of having an iPhone. It’s a snap to download music from your computer to the iPhone with just a few clicks of the mouse.

What is not so easy to do is to download ringtones. Let me clearify. It’s easy to buy ringtones for 99 cents to $1.29 from the iTunes store and download it to your phone. But I’ve never paid for ringtones that are shorter, low quality versions of the songs that I already have in my collection. In fact, some of them, I’ve bought 2 or more times in my life.

It took me hours to search and read through a bunch of crap but I finally found a video that explains everything for the cheap bastards that do not want to pay for ringtones. Yes, the guy in the video seems a little creep-geeky, but the information is correct and works.

Now with my ringtones setup, it was time to download the apps I already had on my Palm Pre. As you can imagine, with a catalog of 200,000+ (compared to 2000+ on the Palm) there was no trouble locating everything and the work was trying to figure out which version is better from the hundreds (some even thousands) of reviews that these apps have.

Next, music. Of course, since the iPhone has a built in iPod, it’s a snap to play music, and with the new iOS4, you can actually listen to the music while you run other apps. The multi-tasking is not completely there (more on that later) but at least you can do that. With iTunes, it’s a snap to bring all your music onto the iPhone. This was indeed a no-brainer.

As for sound quality, there are 2 speakers at the bottom of the phone and they do sound pretty good for a cell phone. My old LG enV2 actually had louder speakers but that’s because the LG has the speakers pointing toward you.

As a test, I watched a Youtube video for 30 minutes and the sound was fine in a quiet room but holding the phone in my hand got to be tiring. My old LG was more like a laptop so you didn’t have to hold it when you watched videos. There’s no kickstand and the back of the iPhone is super slippery so I was not able to stand it up against anything.

Bottom: Speakers and connector

The volume is controlled by 2 separate buttons on the side. There’s also a switch to turn of the ringer which is very easy to operate and important these days when people stare at you like you just killed somebody if your phone rings at the wrong time. The headset that comes with the phone seems kind of cheap but it works nicely and fits well. The only thing was,  it was very hard to unplug from the phone. Perhaps because it’s new and things are still a little tight. Or maybe I’m just a weakling.

Side: Volume up/down and ringer on/off

After downloading a bunch of free games (I like Angry Birds), next I downloaded the turn-by-turn navigation app. Unfortunately, unlike Sprint, you have to pay $6.99 a month for this service. Of course, in my case, it doesn’t even work, so free or not, that’s irrelevant. On Verizon, you also have to pay but I don’t remember how much it was. The $6.99 is a special iPhone price and it’s normally $9.99 so make sure you get the correct lower price when you get it.

AT&T Navigator by Telenav

One feature I liked was that the Navigator operated in landscape mode, unlike the one on my Palm Pre. If you click on the picture above, you will see the full sized version of the screen and you will see that the app is not in the high resolution mode. You can’t really notice it on the iPhone unless you look really close.

Speaking of the screen, it is bright and gorgeous and is not matched by anything else I’ve seen on a phone. Apple calls it the Retina display, but basically it just high resolution 640 x 960 in the same space as before. New iPhone 4 compatible apps have been upgraded with higher resolution icons and images.

You can see the difference below with the Apple apps’ icons, versus the icons for the AT&T Navigator and Qik. Those older apps clearly have the older lower resolution icons. In time, most of the apps in the catalog will be updated to the new resolution. As you can see, it’s a big difference when you look at it this close.

Amazing 640 x 960 resolution

As for the switch from physical keyboard to on-screen keyboard, I’m having a hard time. Everybody that has an iPhone has told me to keep using it and I will get used to it. So I’m going to try. But so far, it’s not working out for me.

FaceTime:
Yes, I did try FaceTime (the video calling) and it’s fun but the fact that you have to use WiFi limits it’s use. Your WiFi does need to be strong too. If not, you’ll see a lot of frozen screens. I’m not sure I’m sold on having people watch me when I’m talking to them. I kinda like that I can be in my underwear when I’m talking to my boss.

Camera:
As for the 5M pixel camera with flash (and HD video), that will be reviewed in my next iPhone post, so stay tuned.

So at the end of the day, will this new iPhone get me laid? I don’t think so. So far, only men have asked me about it. No ladies have said anything to me. But of course, that could just be me c-blocking myself with my looks.

Next: Camera and HD Video

While I was driving on Pico near Hoover and came across Best Buy Foods. It’s a grocery store. Hmm. Do the words “cease and desist” mean anything?

So after hatching complicated plans for obtaining the iPhone 4, it all comes down to an enormous line at the Century City mall. As you can see, the line goes out of the mall, to the side of the next building, over the bridge, and even past the bridge.

The people at the very front of the line have been there since about 8pm from the day before. Some had sleeping bags, folding chairs, laptops, iPads, and other distractions. Some just sat on the ground. Although there was originally a list of names, it turned out that was done by the mall security and had nothing to do with Apple. I think Apple needs to come up with a better system before they have a riot next time from people trying to cut in line.

The long line goes over the bridge and beyond

The people in the reserved iPhone line were moved anywhere from 10-30 people per group to the mall. Each group would be moved every 30-40 minutes or so. The people in the non-reserved line were given tickets that confirmed that they would get an iPhone, assuming they stayed in line and waited. This line moved in groups of one person to 10, every 40-50 minutes or so. The reserved line started moving at 7am, and the non-reserved line started moving at 10am. Apple handed out

Once moved into the mall, you stood in a second short line across from the Apple store. Then you were moved again to a 3rd tiny line (of just 7 people) right in front of the store. There was another line for people who were not getting iPhones. I don’t know why people would stand in a line to NOT get an iPhone today, but some people like the action.

Now, from the 3rd line, you are moved to your 4th line inside the store where somebody asks for your information and types it into their computer. And finally, from there, an Apple employee was assigned to get you everything you needed.

Although the waiting and standing in the lines in the hot sun was excruciating, I have to say the Apple people are well trained and very helpful. Once you have made your purchase (with any software or accessories), you can optionally have your old phone contacts moved over to your iPhone. They are using a CelleBrite box which is basically a black box that connects any phone to any other phone and transfers the contact list. Very interesting stuff but must be a nightmare for the CellBrite company to keep up with all the new phones that come out everyday.

iPhone 4 with no AT&T service

Unfortunately, everything seemed okay at the store but when I got home, I realized the AT&T service was not properly connected and I was not able to make calls.

Next time: First impressions.

The Countdown To iPhone 4

Since I wasn’t able to have my iPhone mailed to me, I have to wait in line at the Apple store tomorrow. From reading about past experiences with people waiting for 7 hours in line, I decided to go to the Apple store and ask some questions.

After finding a helpful employee at the Apple store, this is what I learned. It turns out that at the Century City store, the mall will not allow people into the mall until 5am. The store opens at 7am and the line will be in a larger area in the mall, not in front of Apple. Apple employees will bring in 10 people at a time into the store. This is the same way they did it for the iPad recently, according to my source.

At this point, I have no idea if I have to wait in line from 5am to secure my iPhone or not. I started to look around Craigslist and found a few people willing to stand in line for money. After contacting a few, I picked 2 of them, and hedged my bet by employing both in case one flaked or got arrested for loitering.

One guy had several “employees” (mostly family I’m guessing) doing it at several stores and I paid him a deposit by Paypal. This guy will send his guy at 4am.

The other guy was a kid and I met with him and gave him a deposit in cash. Actually, the deposit was my idea with him. I don’t think he’s done this before. He seems like a real nice guy and I’m hoping he’ll come through for me. He says he’s going to go to the mall at 9pm and linger there all night. I hope he doesn’t get arrested.

I’ll call him Matt (not his real name). Matt told me that for the iPad, there was about 40 people in line. I’m pretty sure there will be a bunch more for the iPhone. One thing was clear. This guy loves Apple. He says he bought every single version of the iPhone. Matt also told me some AT&T cheats that he uses. Obviously, he doesn’t want this info made public, which I completely understand.

Now I wait.

Update 11pm:
My line guy says there are about 20 people ahead of him in line already. It’s going to be a long night for him.

Update 2am:
Now he says there are about 50 people in line.