So far I am 0/6 in tournaments this series and am down $8100 plus expenses.  Not very glamorous but I am not discouraged.  I will continue to take beats like a professional and continue to learn, grow, and play my best everyday moving forward.  I still feel good about the way I have played and look forward to my next shot.  Here’s a wrap up of the last 3 tournaments I have played…

Tourney #4- Venetian 1600

This was easily the toughest field of players I have played with this summer.  The reason is that the larger buy in Venetian tourneys usually draw a smaller field, which is made up of more talented players than my WSOP events are.  This tourney had 300 players, 80% which were good.  My WSOP events have fields of 3000 and 20% are good.  That’s the distinction. 

Anyways here’s what happened…  I played really good, and really tight the entire day.  I grinded out a 20-30 big blind stack for roughly 7 hours, making disciplined decisions the whole night.  Around midnight and with 90 players left , my fate was sealed… With blinds at 500-1000, the hj raises to 2200, I go all in for 9700 all day, every one else folds and he calls.  I have A7…. He has A6… the flop comes out…. 6 in the window.  I played a very annoying and unrewarding 12hrs of poker.   Good game.

Tourney#5- WSOP 1500

I was very happy to see my table when I sat down for this tournament. 

Outside of myself, there was not another player at my table who knew anything about poker.  I mean these players were terrible.  Two guys on my direct right took the cake.  These idiots were the guys that think they know what they are doing, talk (a lot) like they know what they’re doing, talk about strategy and past hands like they know what they’re doing…. But in reality they just plain suck.  The more they talk the clearer the picture is of how their feeble minds work. 

To top it off, the guy on my right is wearing rainbow socks w sandals, ski goggles, Bose headphones, and a backpack full of novelty items and snacks.  He reminds me of Seth Green from the movie “Can’t hardly wait”. 

Anyways, of course I can’t take advantage of this table because the deck decided to be cruel again.   At 75-150 three players limp in, I complete from the small blind with K7 and the big blind checks.  The flop is KQ5 rainbow… I check and it checks around to the button who bets 500… I call and everyone else folds.  The turn is a 7 giving me 2 pair… I bet 1000 with 2400 behind and he calls (at this point I put him on a king, and assume the only hand he could possibly have that bats me is 55).  River is an A, adding J10 as 1 of 2 hands that’s beats me now.  I go allin and he snap calls and pops out his chair as he flips over J10 for a straight.  Drowned on the river again.

Tourney #6-WSOP 1000

Another good table draw for me.  Outside of Shane Shleger, everybody at my table seems soft and exploitable.  I am sitting on Shane’s direct right so I have position on him.  My table most likely will not break the whole day so I’m very happy with my seat.  It is a shame I couldn’t sit in it longer.  At the 75-150 level I have just under a 3k starting stack… It folds to me in the small blind.  I look down at 77 and jam, the old man in big blind has 3300 chips… he snaps calls me….  With A9 offsuit… and flops an A.  I was told I could have played the hand different but I am very content with getting it in there.  I just can’t beat the deck so far this summer… Things gotta turn around.

Outside of poker life continues to be great out here, and a few more funny things have happened…

• On Wed night we went to a “T-Pain concert” at Gallery Nightclub in Planet Hollywood.  Concert my ass… for a total of 15 minutes he stood on top of his table and spoke lyrics into a microphone while the DJ played bits of his songs.  He sat up there and said “uh huh” and “yeah” over and over into the mic… he could have at least did “Bartender”, that was my jam a few years ago.  The “concert was lame but we managed to have a good time before he went on and after we left so all in all it was a really fun night but I won’t be seeing Teddy Pain in the future that’s for sure.
• Friday was an off day for me so we chilled by the pool and got our tan on.  We decided on going to the club again so I called my friend Ethan to put us on a list somewhere.  I really didn’t care where, just somewhere decent where we wouldn’t wait and could dance.  Ethan lives out in Vegas and has been a huge help to us out here the last 2 summers, he has also been very reliable when needed.  He gets me listed at Surrender which is at Encore.  Ralph and I went there a few weeks ago and had a great time.  I get to the line and go up to the list.  I tell the girl who I am and what list I am on but she cannot find me.  Ethan told me I was on Vince’s list… well, I wasn’t.  Annoyed I text Ethan to let him know what happened, and then hit up my friend who was in town because he had a table at Pure Nightclub in Caesar’s.  He lets us know that we will be all good over there so we head that way.  After leaving in cab to go to pure, Ethan texts me back to let me know he made a mistake and that I’m not on Vince’s list… I’m on Anthony’s list.  It’s too late… Way to go Ethan, you mopped it up.  We go to Pure and it sucked… end of story.
• Last night we head over to Palazzo for dinner.  Our cab driver is a 48 year old Asian man.  We tell him we are going out to dinner and he suggests going to an Italian restaurant called Battista’s hole in the wall.  Then he tells us why he likes the place so much.  Here are some of his quotes;                                                                                                                                         
  “The meal comes with this wine, and I swear the wine makes you feel high like you’re on weed!  The wine makes me so high and horny I have to put my napkin on my lap so nobody could see me rising!”              
  “I swear they put Viagra in the bread, I kept eating it and all I wanted to do was grab my wife and play with her like I did in my twenties."
  ”I love my wife but I’ve had the same menu for 27 years, so I get bored… but after I ate the bread and I drank the wine, I was ready for dessert if you know what I mean!”  

So that’s the bulk of my activities this week.  I still need to find my groove at the tables, and am still looking for that elusive opportunity to get my shot.  It will come; I will continue to be patient and will continue to stay disciplined on this trip.  A lot more fish to fry… and a lot more mops to pop.