This is a couple of days late largely thanks to lack of laptop, but I busto'ed on Day 2 in an impressive fashion, first getting to 157K (2x average) largely off a pot I won at showdown with T high and then calling two thirds of it off on 2 hands (one okay, one lousy) before busting several hours later.

This entry's a placeholder for a full recap later on.

I've got 69K heading into Day 2 (~45K average, 360 of 500-odd left, 54 paid.) It was a tough table/seat draw, with John Hennigan (last year's winner and, I think, one of the best poker players I've ever sat with) directly to my left, but I got the best of him all day - it helps to flop lots of sets. In addition, Rhett Butler was to my right, Rizen spent all day in Seat 8 (I was Seat 4), and a shortstacked Tmay420 showed up for the last couple of levels in Seat 9, but there were a few soft spots and I chipped up off all of them. I never ended a level with fewer chips than I started with, which is always a good sign, and will have > 100 BB going into Day 2, another good sign. As I've usually been saying on here, I'm getting more and more comfortable with the way live play flows and all of my moves are working/I'm picking off small bluffs with third pair repeatedly. This type of stuff (winning small pots with next to nothing, picking the one good spot every 2 hours to bluff, only losing one pot making a "wrong" calldown postflop all day, seeing no showdowns but constantly chipping up just a little every hour) is really big for me; when my reads are on like this, I only need to win one or two big pots a day to go very deep.

I'll post as many hands as I can when I get back home to a working computer.

Other notables: Vivek @ 110K, Thayer @ (I think) 50K, Shaun Deeb busto with 2 hands to go in the day.

Got here last night and just played the $5200 event ("just" as in "busted an hour ago".) It was another non-starter where I never got over my starting stack, although I played moderately well before running KK into AA with an effective 22 BB. Doh.

More (okay, not more) importantly, after struggling for a day or so, my laptop hard drive looks to have totally died. In fact, I'm typing this from the hotel lobby's free Internet PC's. This means no updating the blog until I'm back home on Monday or Tuesday (or maybe Thursday if I run hot in the ME, heh) - I already ordered a replacement off Ebay, but not having a working PC is really going to suck till then.

The good news is I always make sure to copy all the data over to my desktop/vice versa, so I think the only thing I've permanently lost is a few photos I was too lazy to transfer the last time. The bad news is the amount of time it's gonna take to install Windows/Office/Pokertracker/all the other stuff on the new drive...not to mention that my desktop hates rendering videos in Camtasia for some reason, so I've been doing that on my laptop. There are a bunch of raw video files on there that I've made into videos already, but will not be able to reproduce if they ever ask me (this comes up from time to time.)

All the same, this pales in comparison to what would happen if I didn't have a backup copy of (nearly) everything - I don't even want to think about trying to do my taxes with no proof for anything I did last year. 500-odd tournament 'sessions', hundreds of hours of cash games, and no convenient Excel spreadsheet for any of it/records scattered across eight sites, some of which are way less cooperative than others...yeah, okay, that wouldn't be good. If my desktop in NYC gets hit by lightning in the next three days, I'll either have to shell out a billion dollars for data recovery or kill myself. So, basically, the moral of the story is "back up your damn files".

With that in mind, I'm off to, uhh...watch TV and/or spend 12 hours a day in the poker room to avoid boredom, I guess?

Nothing of note this Sunday. I did go deep in the only thing I played on Saturday, a big event, but, you know, mess up a hand, lose half your stack, win 3 buyins instead of 30, ooooopsie. I *have* ramped up my play a little bit and am slowly learning to 6 table (this probably has something to do with why I bubbled everything on Wednesday, the other day I played a lot this week :p)

The two screwups of note that both cost me tournaments this weekend both involved misjudging raise size tells. I lost a huge pot just ITM in a $530 when someone raised only 3x after a limper, I didn't think for enough time and jammed 99 next to act; of course, he had aces. Similarly, in the Million, a 30/15 raised 4x in LMP, I had tens in the small blind, thought even a 4x size still meant a lighter hand than most people would have there and jammed a pretty nice stack. Nope, he had jacks. I probably still stack off on the ragged flop if I just call, but it's the type of thing where I should just know better than to jam pre. Most people don't think twice and it's the type of hand you can't really post on 2+2 because of how weak it looks, but the fact is that when I'm not a little bit rusty, I know better than to jam preflop in either situation, regardless. So, I'm posting this as a way to get myself to think a little more before I act.

Oh well, no big deal. I've gotten lots of good news lately and have definitely raised my confidence level and play - I just want to make sure I don't accidentally do something bad like that in the Borgata. The more time goes by between live tourneys, the more I want to play them (for no apparent reason at all.)

Short version: Went nowhere, only played one least bit interesting hand all day.

JackPotter2 is at seat 0 with 2770.
korrupt911 is at seat 1 with 475.
T LaZeR is at seat 2 with 3005.
BadAzzCop is at seat 3 with 2095.
Adanthar1 is at seat 4 with 2965.
phildar10 is at seat 5 with 3790.
Tmay_420 is at seat 6 with 1845.
RandalFlowers is at seat 7 with 2685.
Hixx is at seat 8 with 2645.
habash is at seat 9 with 2725.
The button is at seat 5.

Tmay_420 posts the small blind of 10.
RandalFlowers posts the big blind of 20.

JackPotter2: -- --
korrupt911: -- --
T LaZeR: -- --
BadAzzCop: -- --
Adanthar1: Qc Qh
phildar10: -- --
Tmay_420: -- --
RandalFlowers: -- --
Hixx: -- --
habash: -- --

Pre-flop:

Hixx folds. habash folds. JackPotter2 folds.
korrupt911 raises to 60. T LaZeR folds. BadAzzCop
folds. Adanthar1 re-raises to 210. phildar10 calls.
Tmay_420 folds. RandalFlowers folds. korrupt911
calls.

Flop (board: 7c 8d 8s):

korrupt911 goes all-in for 265. Adanthar1 raises to
530. phildar10 raises to 795. Adanthar1 thinks "lol" and calls for implied set value, then check/folds the turn.

Jeez, if he just slowplays one more street on an utterly nonscary board, he may well stack me somewhere, but no, he min3bets and gives me pretty close odds to draw to a 2 outer. I wish I'd have hit just to spite him :(

Anyway, after taking close to a week off, I'll at least take having the whole night to myself. No big deal. One more Sunday to close out the year on a high note :)