It is a time for dealers, media and players to let their hair down and party hard on Crown’s wallet . . . and year after year that wallet gets pushed to the edge.

Driving up from Crown I met up with Heath as we made our way into Fusion and quickly grabbed a beer from one of the gorgeous waitresses. Surrounded by dealers we eventually found some common friends before the rest of the PokerNews clan rolled in along with some fellow poker buddies.

Basically the night revolved around lots of drinks, heaps of photos and conversations about poker before the bar-tab eventually ran out and people started shuffling elsewhere.

With the night still fairly young – 2am – me and Alex decided that we would pay a visit to the Teak Room to cash in a $25 free play voucher that I had received in the mail. Alex had a smoke, and I couldn’t resist the lure of the Baccarat tables and decided to gamboooool it up for a little.

Maybe thirty minutes later and up $150 we headed down to the poker room to continue our sobering-up by taking a seat on the $0.50-1 PokerPro table. Alex ran hot, I got rivered seventeen times and took by beat-up negative $100 ass to the real felt of a $2-3 NLH table.

I never got anything going but still managed to profit $40 on the table which meant I finished up for the night before eventually feeling sober enough to drive home.