Vegas -- Long live the lime

LAS VEGAS -- The sabre-toothed lime has spoken.

I've had this new T-shirt, which has one of the familiars from the game Kingdom of Loathing, for a few weeks now but it had yet to go into the starting rotation.

In my early trips out here, I wore my "Sequoia" T-shirt -- that shirt, from Sequoia National Park in California -- was the one that I was wearing when I busted my first opponent in a NL game, at the Plaza last year.

Since then, I've been happy wearing a Nike T-shirt with "United States Postal Service" and another shirt that says "Spam: An American Classic" as part of my starting rotation.

Yesterday's basic "Kingdom of Loathing" T-shirt netted few results. So I thought this lime-green T-shirt complete with a picture of a lime with fangs coming out of it would do the trick.

And boy, it has!

I'm up nearly $800 for the trip on less than six hours of play. Most of this came from the Excalibur tonight.

I made a bit of money from this guy when I raised with KQs near the button. He called with J-something. Flop was JTx and he let me bet it out.

Then a K came and I bet some more. He called.

On the river, an A came and he later said I didn't appear to like it. So he bet out $83 and I went all in. He promptly folded.

I made some decent money against a guy who called my raise with QQ. My cards flew over the flop, so I pot bet. And he called. I wasn't sure what he had next, so I went all-in. And he was like "Oh, I have to fold."

So next time, when he was the only one who limped in and I was in the bb, I purposely didn't look at my cards. An A came on the flop and then I bet it out and he folded. I was like, "I didn't even look at my cards" and flipped them over QTs. A decent enough hand.

In between, I picked up what could be another lucky talisman from the Kingdom of Loathing game. This guy next to me had ordered a hot tea. It came with a few pieces of lemon stuck together with a tiny plastic sword. He busted out and left the sword.

I kept telling myself that I wasn't superstitious. But my mind kept telling me -- get the sword!

So I did. And then the last big hand also was against the same guy I had made the nut straight against in the previously mentioned hand. He raised with AA in late and I had 99 in the small blind.

I called and checked in the dark. Flop was K9x. He made it $40 and I went all-in. He reluctantly called for about $200 more.

My set held up and suddenly I had more than $700 in chips at the table!

I cashed out more than $550 and just made about $60 more at the Sahara in under an hour.

As much as I'd like to wear this shirt the entire trip, I think I'll go ahead and give it some rest days. Spam and USPS shirts are on deck for the rest of the trip...