Ugh, I feel like I never have time to write these out in full. Anyway, a quick summary before I leave:

Wednesday was day 2 of the heads up event and I lost my first match to Toto Leonidas after playing for a solid 2 1/2 hours. I didn't get the breaks I needed; I feel like I did a great job running up from a short stack, pushing often and piling up chips with sheer aggression. Unfortunately, he found a couple of hands at the right time, I couldn't win a showdown, and with 20BB in play, there's just no other way to finish off the match.

Then Thursday I bubbled the final table of the Bellagio Cup's $2500 event. 10th place, no money.

Obviously frustrating times. I'm playing well; I'm sure of that. And this is just another example of the sick variance involved in playing live tournaments. And you can't let it affect your game... if you want to be a winning tournament player, if you want to reach the heights of your profession, you have to be stronger than that, you can't let bad runs affect your play. In short, you have to get over them.

Anyway, I'm going to play the $1500 today. I'll have a more complete report of everything in the next day or two, I hope.

I made the round of 64 in the WSOP $5000 heads-up match. They started with something like 390 players so many of us (including me) got first-round byes. I beat Luke (2+2er IWEARGOGGLES) in the second round and Josh Arieh in round three. I didn't play particularly well against Luke but got lucky in all of the big pots; against Arieh, I played more passively than I wanted to early, because I was fairly card dead, so I didn't much get to showdown with him-- making it hard to get a line on his play. I also ran some big hands into bigger ones in huge pots, but somehow managed to basically lose the minimum.

I busted him when I called his flop check-raise with a double-gutshot and he checked and moved in on the turn after I bet. He had a flush draw and an overcard and the river bricked.

I was fortunate today; I need to play better tomorrow. In particular I need to be less passive, pick up more small pots, and use position more.

We're in the money, BTW. Making the round of 64 pays $9,212 and it goes up from there. I'll report again tomorrow.

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.