Bracelet Hunting - A WSOP 2026 Trip Report

GL Tony!

The cash on the right, Three Fiddy, was sufficient for an official submission 😀

May be I should change from GL Tony to GL Bracelet Hunter for motivation!

Rooting for you. I'll reach out when I arrive in about a week.

Slumming it in Horseshoe, but leaving tomorrow, prob before you start.

I will be curious to hear about the process to get your cash deposited at the WSOP cage? Specifically, how long was the line? If my memory is correct, last year it was a mess the first couple of days and then smooth sailing after that.

When I got there around 2pm there was about 20 people in line. As I didn’t need to deposit anything for this tournament I went back later around 10:30pm on one of the breaks and there was no line.

Day 2
Wednesday May 27

Had a good nights sleep and woke up to find that the $80 mix had been running all night and was still going. Discipline David. I resisted the urge to go over there and stuck to the plan of a relaxing morning by the pool.

Seems I missed the entertainment. Kim from Finland was drunk and threw his glass against the wall after a bad beat and was promptly escorted off the property and barred from the Bellagio indefinitely!

This is how we Vegas:

I’d forgotten how nice the Aria pool area is, and I especially like how the music is not intrusively loud like a lot of places.

The O8 is taking place in Paris black and they still have the gigantic new stage area under wraps.

We start steadily increasing the 25k to 32k on 1st break and 57k on 2nd break.

I had it up to 70k before some unfortunate rivers dropped us back down to 39k on the next break at the end of late reg.

From there it was hard going and I had to grind hard just to stay alive.

We did find a bag, barely. 29k sealed up coming back to 6k -12k limits gives us only 2.5 big bets to work with.

We’re still 54 short of the money so will need an epic spin-up tomorrow.

Table draw for tomorrow. Re-start at 1pm

Aria pool looks very chill yes, looking forward to lounge there myself in a week or two (staying at Vdara but will have access).

GL with the spin-up tomorrow, everything's still possible!

Congrats on the bag! I hope you stick around long enough for tomorrow to bad beat Vanessa

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Here's hoping for a nice spin-up!

Your trip reports have inspired me to try to get some pool time in this next trip. I don't think I've been in a Vegas pool in 20+ years.

One of the minor annoyances of staying at Vdara is that the pool area kind of sucks due to the Death Ray. Thankfully, Vdara guests may access the Aria pool (last I checked), which is a lot nicer.

Now I know you are stalking me! Yeah, I knew that about the Vdara/Aria pools, and I'll be checking out both.

Day 3
Thursday May 28th

Slept in today and missed my usual pool time. I took some sleeping tablets and they definitely worked.

View from my room:

So coming back in the O8 with only 29k at 6k-12k limits I needed to find a hand to double with early. What I got was pretty much the opposite. No playable hands for the first two orbits and lost 9k in blinds each round so down to only 11k.

I find AK69 with the Ace suited which is the best hand I’ve seen all day and go with it. The big blind defends and we chop the small blind. Up to 12k woohoo!

Next orbit I have 3456ds on the big blind and decide I can’t fold to a button raise. Two 6’s on the flop give me hope but Vanessa Selbst also had a 6 and an Ace along with it. GG No spin-up this time.

Over to Bellagio we go where there are 3 x $80-$160 mix games running and it’s not long before I get a seat on the 3rd table.

It’s also not long before they open a 4th table and in fact they could have opened a 5th table but for the fact they had no more game plaques lol. Mix games are the future!

I’m on the right side of a cooler for once. Playing NL 2-7 single draw Damjan opens for 11 chips and I call on the small blind with a 1 card 7 draw. I could also 3-bet here but Damjan plays pretty snug and opened from early position so I know he’s either pat or also has a very good D1.

We both take one. I make my 7 and lead out for 25 chips. He caps it for 80 chips total. Obviously I insta-call. 7 he says and I have to do a double take of his hand and see what the countdown is.

He has 76543 and we have 76432. Phew! Photo finish, we out-pip him with our 4 against his 5.

We also scoop a nice drawmaha pot with aces up in our hand and quad eights on the board.

We make our way from the 3rd table, to the 2nd table and eventually onto the main game. Bellagio does it right. Every table is a must move to the next table. Cannot understand casinos that don’t do it this way then you get all the nonsense with people wanting table changes.

We were up +$4,000 at our high point then dropped to only +$1,500 before racking up a +$2,900 winner after 8 hours.

So the tournament was disappointing but pleased to have booked a nice cash win.

On Deck Tomorrow: $550 NLH Mystery Bingo or is it Bounty I’m not sure? [emoji3]

Those chip stacks look awesome! Nice work on finishing up for the session

Yes Bellagio does similar. The game is 8-handed but the main game is only guaranteed 7 players to protect the must moves a little.

First sports bets of the trip. Tomorrow is the Champions league final and I really like PSG.

I have them +145 on the 3-way moneyline and -0.25, +100 and pk -140 on the Asian handicap lines.

I love that the term "must must move" makes zero sense grammatically/linguistically but so perfectly and concisely describes the third game in a must-move daisy chain. Whoever came up with it is a genius.

Seen you are starting the day next to Dan Charlton AKA Judgedread in the $550. It came up on his insta. Gl to both

Day 4
Friday May 29th

I did wake up early enough this morning to get in my pool time. A little overcast early on today:

Then I decided to jump into the mini mystery millions after the first break at the start of level 5.

About half an hour in I play my first significant hand:

Blinds: 300/600/600

There’s been an open to 1,200
I have Q-Q and raise to 3,000
Villain calls.
Flop: T-J-Q with two clubs
I bet 3,000. Villain raises to 10,000
We go all-in for about 20,000. Villain calls with A-5cc for the flush draw and a gutshot.
Turn: 3 diamonds
River: 2 clubs completing villains flush.

GG. I take it as a sign it’s not going to be my day and elect not to fire again and head to the office.

3 x $80 Mix games running and I have to wait a couple of hours before I get a seat in the 3rd game. (A 4th game also starts up later on)

This is the line up today. Not as good as yesterday with Peter R and Kenny D two of the best regulars in the game.

I have a steady session however, the highlight of which was scooping this best/best hand with nut - nut, winning the high with quad sixes to beat Hernan’s queens full.

Later on the game gets worse as players get pulled to go to the 2nd game and are replaced by a couple of Japanese players who are tough. There’s a lot of Japanese mixed players and I haven’t met a bad one yet so I decide to call it a night with a +$1,700 profit after 6 hours.

Guitar construction update.

On Deck tomorrow: Tomorrow is the $10k O8 and while I have sold enough action to play it, I haven’t sold enough for the other $10k’s so looks like I’ll only have one $10k shot to take and that being the case I prefer to take it in my best game which is HORSE so tomorrow will just be a cash game day.

I take it as a good sign for the summer that the 80 mix is running 3+ tables every day, even during the week.

Nice update Tony - the single draw hand was truly sick lol! Nice pot!

Me too. I mean the main table might never break all summer lol. It’s been running around the clock the last two days then we start the must moves at 12pm each day that feed into it.
So far I’ve resisted the urge to go over there first thing when I wake up.

Thanks for the update Tony.

Seems that the guitar is largely a facade? The rooms look like they'll still be boxes, with the guitar curves just hanging off the end.