"Feeling good, Louis!"

Tonight was one of those rare nights where it all comes together.

I played my best poker, to the extent that I can't think of a single decision that I would have made differently--at least none that would have mattered more than a few bucks.

I never got ridiculously unlucky, and I got lucky in a few good spots. The most notable of these was flopping four queens, which won me a $75 high-hand jackpot in addition to the $180 pot. (That makes at least my fifth set of flopped quads in Vegas. See here for the others, and here for the math of the probability of this occurrence.)

There were blissfully few occurences of the many things on my list of pet peeves.

I played for a few hours at the Venetian and then a few at Imperial Palace, making a decent amount of money in each venue.

In each place I got to share the table with two pleasant and interesting people (making four in all--very unusual for one day) that I have met through this blog and/or through http://www.allvegaspoker.com/.

I had fun with Twitter.

I had some good chats with dealers that I like.

I generated an idea for a new occasional series of blog posts.

I even got to eat an ice cream cone while I played.

In short, I had fun, had some good fortune, played well, made some money, and exercised my atrophied social muscles a little. It's pretty rare that all of those things happen in one day.

I'm going to try to appreciate the resulting good feeling while it lasts.

(The post title is the last line of one of my all-time favorite movies, Trading Places. I'm not sitting on a beach on a Caribbean island with a drink in my hand, my girlfriend at my side, and millions of dollars in the bank, but it's close enough.)