So after the freeroll we headed down the road to the Palms for the PokerStars official WSOP party at Rain nightclub. After collecting our VIP Access “grey” wristbands and oddly being asked for ID, we fought through the crowd to the nearest bar. The place was packed and the bar was my favourite kind…open.

I grabbed a Carona and turned to find a rather flexible girl in a hoop suspended ten metres in the air above the dance floor. The hoop was all she needed to bend in an unimaginable variety of positions to get the evening off to a good start.

Apparently our VIP access gave us access to a more private bar, which was nice, but when some of the guys found an area we weren’t meant to have access to, (where PokerStars pros Joe Hachem, Emad Tahtouh and Grant Levy were hanging out) it suddenly seemed important for us to be in there. I’ve learnt in Vegas that if you are doing something you shouldn’t, you just act like you are doing nothing wrong, play it cool and no one cares. We walked into the “black wristband” area and hung out there for a while until security got sick of us ignoring their requests for wristband checks and asking us to move. I heard one of the guys slipped the meathead a $20 to stay. Personally, I was happy enough to be $20 richer in the “grey” area, so I wandered downstairs towards the stage and bumped into Tom (who had been working late and just arrived) and just in time to catch a eyeful of the delightful Dita Von Teese.

The Queen of Burlesque first emerged like a pearl from an oyster and followed that up with a performance as the bubbles of a champagne glass!




There were other performances from girls hanging from various objects, with girls dancing all night aound the massive multi-tiered complex. After drinking too much and laughing at stupidity of others (Isabelle Mercier/Dario Minieri/Steve/Schepis/Slippers/etc) we headed home in the wee hours to grab some sleep before we had to wake up with sore heads for the first day of the big one…the Main Event!

Here are some more pics from the party:

Tom showed me this video and I have to share…classic 80’s!