It was still a little warm back art the house with the A/C malfunctioning. And by “a little warm,” I mean that between trying to get everything settled in the past couple of days, playing at the Venetian into the early hours of the morning the other day, and a bit of excitement at my first day of live reporting, I’ve been operating on about three-and-a-half hours of sleep each night since I left Portland.

Since I woke up early, I got myself together and headed to the Rio. The early bird gets the nearby parking spot. The MutantMobile (aka a baller 1998 Ford Escort wagon). I set up my stuff in the live reporting office and saw that “Jammin'” Jay Zeman was planning to fortify himself along with some friends in the Hash House a Go Go down the hall. So I trekked over and was scanning one section of the restaurant when Angela Jordison hailed me from one of the benches near the entrance where she was also waiting for Jay. We chatted about her dinner the night before with a group that included Allen Kessler and the owner of the Lotus of Siam restaurant, among others. And we speculated on where Jay was, as the hour drew nearer to the time I had to go to work. Eventually, she made another pass through the restaurant, and not seeing Jay, walked down to the tournament area with me.

My first post ever as a live reporter was a lucky catch. Just a few hands into the tournament, I was watching a table when a young man from Mississippi won a pot for nearly half the starting stack with quad nines. Then I ran into Jay, who pointed me to one of the players at his table who’d busted another player’s aces on the first hand, knocking him out and doubling up.

It was a long first day, though, and I made my share of mistakes as we covered 20 half-hour levels. By the end, after an editor pointed out to me that I’d tried to color up a hand with some analysis that was completely wrong because I mentally swapped the cards the players were holding, I was happy enough to be assigned to these important posts:

Action ended at about midnight and we scurried around to all of the tables to get the chip tallies of the last 23 (of 731) players. A bit of confusion when we were trying to figure out the count for a player we appeared to have missed. I had a name that was completely different from the missing player, and another reporter had made the same mistake transcribing their last name. Not writing it down wrong like me, but writing it down wrong exactly the same as I had. We sorted it out.

Went back to the house and sat out back in the “cool” Las Vegas evening. The pool’s ready to go! And despite the fact that I haven’t been in the water for a long time, I somehow had two pairs of trunks that looked like the right size in the drawer at home.