Long days of poker with not enough sleep in between. Made it well past dinner break today ($3000 NL) but still busted short of the money.

I will post more specifically about these last two days because I found myself in what I think were a lot of interesting situations. But frankly, right now I'm just too tired to elaborate on anything. More later.

Tomorrow is the $2500 shorthanded and Tuesday is the $5000 heads-up. These are the two matches I'm most excited about.

Ugh, I tried to update this a night or two ago and my PC crashed in the middle of writing. Anyway, I'll give you a quick recap.

Friday I entered the Venetian 1k and made it for six hours in between some poor play early and some bad running later, and then finally busted with 22 to AK. I do have some possibly interesting hands from that I'll put up later. I played the 2500 NL a couple of days later and busted out early (some loose-aggressive moves didn't work out and I was down to 3k at the 50/100 level and got all in with JJ and lost to QQ).

I have my first cash from the 2007 WSOP. Unfortunately it was nothing particularly noteworthy-- 226th in the $1500 NL Event (#15), which paid out a whopping $3,401-- in other words, "not enough to buy into tomorrow's events". I dropped to 950 early on an ill-advised semibluff, then ran really hot for three hours, including being AIPF twice with underpairs and making quads-- enough to get me to 21750 at the end of 100/200/25. Then my table broke, ElkY had a ton of chips and was raising every hand at my new one, and I never got the cards to play back (and never had a good stack for doing so either). So I dwindled down to somewhere like 9k (yeah, that's awful, and that's how badly I was running, too-- the two times I opened from the SB I got action I didn't want, for example)-- until I got all my chips in for the first time of the day: ElkY limps from two off the button, SB studies me for a minute then completes, and I look at A6s in the BB and shove my 9k (it's 400/800/100 at this point). ElkY folds but the SB calls just as fast with tens. Pretty sick trap by him. I spiked an ace on the river, though.

Eventually I drifted down from my 21k into the money-- just no opportunities to raise or push my money in, or at least, not enough. I got up to 21k after pushing from my BB with QTs over ElkY's late position raise, but wasn't able to win too much in the way of other pots. The first hand after the bubble, I picked up AQs-- the best hand I'd seen at the new table except for a pair of nines-- and I won the blinds and antes and showed. The next hand, UTG short stack who seemed like a good player pushed in his final 5x stack (close to 6000 at 600/1200). I shoved over him with black queens; a guy behind me tanked a long time before folding what he said were two tens-- and the short stack flipped over aces. Yeah, I was not running well. I eventually busted shoving in 13k at 800/1600/200 with K8o and being called by KK in the BB. Somehow I didn't get there.

The next day I played the big Sunday tournaments online. I cashed in three of them but all three were relatively insignificant. Not interesting, either, as in two of them I simply took beats to lose my chips.

Monday I played the 2500 NL and busted out early (some loose-aggressive moves didn't work out and I was down to 3k at the 50/100 level and got all in with JJ and lost to QQ).

I followed that with an event I've been meaning to play a tournament in for a long time: 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo Eight or Better. It's actually one of my favorite games, which may shock people who only know of "omg crazy nath" or whatever. But I generally like it because I like my relative edge, especially online. I'm not the greatest player by any means, but I enjoy it and am a lifetime winner (though certainly in a very small sample).

Anyway, there was a $2000 event at 5 PM that day, so I signed up. I showed up twenty minutes late, but it didn't really matter-- the ante is small enough early on and the hands take long enough that I didn't miss much.

What I discovered was that I really don't like stud hi/lo as a tournament game. I got frustrated during dead runs of cards and probably incorrectly screwed up some hands along the way that I wasn't sure about. I could post a few of them later, if people are interested in a stud hi/lo discussion.

Richard Brodie was at my table and we chatted it up for a while. Nice guy. Dry sense of humor, but funny. We got along well.

After first break (and seeing me play many more hands than him) he asked me about a last longer. I counted out our stacks and asked for 6:5 (he had 3600 and i had 3000). He took it up-- $600 to $500. And after our table broke, I managed to float along at my new one long enough to make it to day 2, while he busted out with an hour and a half or so left in the day. So ship the bright point of my day.

I made day 2, but I'd played poker for 15 hours that day. I got some rest that night, but my brain was exhausted. I didn't run well on day 2 and busted out an hour or two in, but I was so tired I decided to take the next two days off.

I'm resuming Friday with the $2000 no-limit. I expect there to be more playing these next few days, including the event I'm most excited about, the $2500 shorthanded on Monday. So I'll be resting up and preparing well for those.

Because I'll be playing a lot the next few days, so I may not write much, but I have a few ideas I've been kicking around for stuff to write about. I'll try to churn those out while I'm here.

(I had a strategy blog entry I wanted to write, but I'm putting it off because I had to talk about Vegas.)

So I got to Las Vegas two nights ago. Last year I stayed in a hotel for the duration of the series. I did not want to make the same mistake again, so I rented a house out in Henderson with about five other poker players (I say "about" because it'll be six of us for a couple more weeks, then some houses get shuffled and it drops to five.) I also hired a friend of mine to act as a personal assistant for me and my house, keeping my financial affairs in order and cooking and cleaning and doing anything else that needs doing. We're quite the motley crew but it's working out great.

I played two smaller events yesterday-- the afternoon 1k at the Bellagio and (after I busted with little fanfare in the second level) the 1k 2nd chance at the WSOP. The tournament is relatively shallow and structured quickly, but I feel like EI adjust to those structures well, and with only 76 runners, I had a reasonable chance to pick up $26k or so to put me in to the black. Unfortunately, I busted on an extremely standard hand when I moved in UTG for 5k at 200/400/50 with JJ. The big blind immediately called and I knew I was in trouble; he tabled QQ and it held.

Whatever.

I was only playing these smaller tournaments because I didn't want to enter the WSOP event that day, because I was saving myself for one of my must-play events: Today's $1500 6-max NLHE. As you probably know by now if you're read this, last year I turned $52 into two "Bracelet race" wins on Full Tilt, picking up $3000 in WSOP tournament chips. I used $2500 to buy into a 6-max NLHE event last year-- my first ever-- and finished in second for ~$238,000. For that, and a number of other reasons that have to do with my playing style (and with it being easier to read five people than eight or nine), shorthanded play has always been my bread and butter. So it was time to try to catch lightning in a bottle again.

I got off to a pretty good start. I was flopping big-- calling with 52s from the BB after a button raise and SB call and flopping A22. In hindsight I wish I'd led, because I think I get a lot of money in vs. a good ace anyway, but at the time I decided to check-raise. The button bet 225 and the SB made it 500; now I'm in a spot where I think I can't help but give away my hand. I made it 1200; the button quickly folds and the small blind chatters for a few seconds before folding. I wonder if I can just call there and get more later (they're live players; they're not immediately putting me on a deuce). Whatever; I won a pot that added about 30% to my stack, so I'm happy.

Other big pot I played was where I let a guy who was playing pretty LAG-- and probably bluffing too much-- bluff off 2k or so into me. I raised JTcc to 150 at 25/50 from the CO and he called from the SB. The flop was TT8 and I bet 175 (because he's calling or making a move a ton on me), and he called. Turn was a K and I bet 375 and he check-raised to 850. I thought and called because he's on air a ton and even if he has a made hand, he's rarely calling a jam with a worse one (kicker plays). He bet 1200 on the river and I called (I doubt there is much value in raising here); he mucked when I showed the ten.

I'm really annoyed at my bustout hand because I read the guy for having strength and moved in anyway (with bottom pair and a straight draw-- 64 on a Q754 board), because I basically decided "the pot's big and there's a chance I'm wrong and he folds." Wait, what? I'm putting in a lot of money into a big pot HOPING MY READ IS WRONG? I hope that sounds as ridiculous to you as it does to me. I won't do that again.

Tomorrow I'm playing the 1k deep stack at the Venetian-- assuming I get there on time to beat the enormous waiting list that was there yesterday. Should be good.

(Oh, and the guy had 86. Obviously. And bet the Q54 flop. Because he's a bad LAG. figures.)