Caesars $1k Circuit Event and a Failed Escape

I played a $1k prelim event for the WSOP Circuit at Caesars yesterday. I was really happy with how I played. There aren't more than one or two hands that I regret a decision on - and those are pretty mild regrets. The tournament had something like 240 players. I finished 13th for like $2.5k. My bustout hand was a bit of a heartbreaker. A guy with a large stack limped (which he hadn't done much). A young, aggressive guy raised to like 3.5x in LP. My read on this was that the young guy didn't need much of a hand here since he was exploiting the weak limp. I shoved 15 bbs from the small blind with ATo and the young guy snap called me with Queens. Before that hand, there were only two times in the whole day where I was all-in, called, and covered. In both of those instances, were we were already in the money. One was a race and one was Aces versus King-Jack. So in that regard, I have to be happy with how things went, but it was pretty disappointing to miss the final table by such a slim margin.

This morning I woke up with an overwhelming "I gotta get out of this city" feeling. I tried rescheduling my flight two days earlier to today, but the cost to do so wound up exceeding my urge to flee Vegas. I just ordered some room service. Between a bunch of work to catch up on, NBA games, and online poker all at my fingertips, it's possible I won't leave the room today.

I had planned on playing the $500 prelim event today, but I'm pretty drained after playing all day yesterday. Tomorrow is a $1,500 event. It's hard to know how I'll be feeling at the time, but I'd say there's a pretty good chance I'll skip that too. I'm just not "feeling it", and I know I won't play patiently if that's the case.

Finally, good luck to Ray "Exitonly" Coburn, who has 35 bbs going into day three of the WPT Championship. I think there are around 180 players left with $3,000,000 to first. It's a good thing I didn't wind up leaving today. I'll want to be around when Ray is at the final table in a couple of days.

Confidence, Isaac Baron, and Vegas (Baby!)

One (on a long list of) leaks in my poker game is that my confidence goes up and down with the predicability of a yo-yo. I'm not sure if this is a common struggle among other players, but I regularly find myself unsure of how to play situations that, in other times, seem quite simple to me. I think this problem has to do with my confidence. It's absolutely ridiculous, I know, but I'll find myself actually thinking less of myself as a player after a bad beat. Like, I can lose a race in a tournament and immediately afterward, I'll feel like crap. Likewise, when I win the race, I feel like a huge pimp. These aren't productive thought processes. I imagine most players have similar struggles, but I'd have to guess that the top players don't.

And speaking of top players, I want to wish Isaac Baron luck in the EPT Monte Carlo. They're down to ten players, and Isaac is second in chips. First place is $3,000,000 and he's 20 years old. Figures like that aren't supposed to be in the same sentence. But jealousy aside, I had a chance to meet Isaac in Dublin and I was really impressed with how he handled himself. It would be easy, given his age and accomplishments, to think that he'd probably be pretty cocky or arrogant. Quite the opposite, he was the most down to earth individual you could hope to meet. A part of me always cringes a little to see the rich get richer in tournament poker, but if it must happen, Isaac certainly seems deserving... so... good luck to him.



Finally, I'm leaving for Vegas on Saturday 'cause some of Michael's cousins and what not from Israel are invading the townhouse for a week. Oh poor me. Someone's taking over my bedroom so I have to go have fun in Vegas for a week. What an awful life I lead.

There are some prelim tournaments for the Caesars Palace WSOP-C event that I'll probably play. On Sunday, I'm going to pass on the live stuff and play online. The monthly Full Tilt $535 $1M Guarantee is this week, which is probably my favorite online tournament. It has an absolutely sick structure, an incredibly soft field, and a huge prize pool. What's not to love?

Monday is a $1,060 and Tuesday is a $550 at Caesars. I think the Venetian is trying to cash-in on the "second chance" dollar by spreading $330s every night at 6:00 pm, so I'm sure I'll play those too if I busto the early stuff.

My next entry will be from Vegas telling everyone about how rich and awesome I am. Probably.

If You've Ever Said "I've Seen It All", Watch This!

Regarding this video, someone commented on Digg by simply saying, "God". I believe that sums it up pretty well. And for the first time in my life, I've actually looked at a piece of art and said, "wow... I'd pay a ton of money for that."

Another Sick Month (March Recap)

I posted at the end of February that I was going to donate 5% of my net winnings in March to charity. Good news for charities: I had another great month. When I tallied up how much 5% of my winnings was, I was like, "wait... I'm giving all of that to charity?!" I mean... we're not talking that much... barely four figures... I've just never donated much more than old clothes before! :-D

Up until writing this post, I had no clue where or what I was going to donate to, but I just remembered an interesting dinner I had last Saturday. I'm not sure the parties involved would want me to name names, so I'll keep it anonymous by saying that I met up with a few friends, one of whom brought one of their friends. Anyway, that friend-of-a-friend, if you will, is currently undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. I hadn't met her before, but within minutes I couldn't help but feel heartbroken for her. She's still quite young and is clearly a beautiful, energetic individual. However, you can also tell her disease has taken a lot out of her. She said she struggles to take her dog out for regular walks. We even had to cut the after dinner conversation short because she was too exhausted from the evening (which wasn't much more than meeting for dinner at 7:30 and leaving by 8:45). Anyway, her courage and positive attitude amidst awful circumstances was a big inspiration to me that night. I'm happy to be able to make a small donation to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation in her honor.

I want to continue donating a portion of my net winnings to charity, but it occured to me that I should probably stretch out the duration longer than a month at a time so as not to further expose myself to the perils of variance. Being that it's a new quarter, I'll keep the donation schedule quarterly. Five-percent of my net winnings from this new quarter will be donated to charity.

Hopefully that donation can be pretty sizable. The way poker has been going for me lately, I'm hopeful it will be. I've been playing a ton of online tournaments the past couple of days and feel great about how things are going. Just since Sunday, I've played 65 online tournaments, easily the most I've ever played in a three day stretch. Fifteen of those went for cashes, including five final tables. The biggest of these was a 6th place finish in the Sunday Mulligan for $9,000. Unfortunately, I had tens lose to ace-king for a really huge pot with seven players left. Had that held, I would have been in good position to make a run at the $45,000 first place prize, but a score that huge will have to wait another day.

Thanks for reading, and all the best to you in the new quarter! :)
(Can you tell my roommate watches CNBC five hours a day?)