Vegas in the winter is wierd

Something just seems off here.... I have only ever been to Vegas in the summer during the WSOP. It's scorching hot every day, and the very thought of a cloud in the sky, let alone a raindrop falling from one, is laughable. While it's certainly much warmer here than Canada this time of the year, it's actually pretty cool out. Not only that, it rained all day today. I was in shock. However, one constant remains to let me know the world is alright. Me losing money in poker tournaments.

I was originally planning to play the $5K event at the Venetian today but their events have been getting basically no attendance. So instead I played the $3K tournament at the Bellagio. I still expect the $15K at Venetian to at least get a playable turnout on Monday, but that's the only tournament I'll be playing there now. The Bellagio tournament today attracted 220ish players iirc, so it was a pretty nice sized field. Unfortunately things didn't go very well for me, though it was partly my fault for sucking.

Hand 1: 25/50 I have 5750. Raise to 200 with AKo, 3 callers, BB makes it 650, I am extremely confused and call, only the last limper calls who is a seemingly aggressive but competent looking asian guy. The flop comes AK6 all spades. The reraiser now leads for 1K, I'm still confused as hell so I call and the overcaller instashoves. Reraiser now folds (wtf could you have had?), and I ended up tankng and folding. Pretty sure it's really clear that I should shove the first time around and then call. I was tired of calling and having live players show me the nuts over and over again, and I'm sure not wanting to bustout in the first level AGAIN came to mind, but I can't justify folding here at all getting big odds on the call. I figured it made way more sense for him to have 66 or some kind of suited connector preflop than a hand like QJo with the Ks, and it does, but whatever it's not like people don't play awful preflop, especially live.

Hand 2: Skip to bustout hand, I took a bunch of chips back off the aggro asian guy but then went card dead and got moved to a new table. 100/200 a 25, I have 7500. A seemingly tight/straightforward guy opens to 600 UTG. 2 people who basically never have a hand call, and I find JJ OTB. I'm torn between just calling and taking a flop and reraising. If I reraise I basically have to call a shove so long as AK is in his reshove range, but it's really not clear that's the case. In fact I'm sure a lot of live players wouldn't have to think too hard about laying down AK in his spot, but it's still pretty awful to reraise and then fold. In that case the fact that I have JJ is almost irrelevant if I do that. I'm basically just bluffing and I might as well have any two cards. If the two callers weren't there I would just call, but with their dead money in the pot it makes reraising a lot better, and calling a lot worse. So I made it 2500, UTG moved in pretty quickly. I really didn't think he'd be so confident with AK, but getting over 2.5:1 I call and lose to AA.

I then went to dinner at Mesa Grill I think it ws called in Caesar's Palace with Kyle (grafyx) and Jason (JP_OSU) because Kyle said it was really good. The waiter began by asking us if we knew about who their chef is. Ummm nope. It's [name]. OK... You've probably heard of him as the Iron Chef. Oooooh, I've heard of that show, cool. Anyways, he told us about how he uses a lot of southwest style spices, combining "sweet and heat" to bring out the flavour in the chiles and other hot spices he uses. At this point I was already getting pretty excited about the meal because I love those types of sauces, a bit spicy but with a lot of flavour, not just burning. And the meal delivered. My main course was a ribeye steak in a chipotle glaze with two kinds of chile sauces. Also, mixing mashed potatoes with a pesto was a delicious twist, and shrimp in corn-based sauce as an appetizer was also excellent. So kudos to the Iron Chef. I'm still not going to watch your show though.

After dinner we headed back to Bellagio and registered for the $1k 2nd chance tournament. We had some time to kill so Kyle and I played a shoe of blackjack and ran insanely good, I made $100. Perhaps i should just stick to -EV gambling. The $1K tournament was relatively uninteresting. The play was really really bad, and I got off to a good start but then went card dead and eventually pushed into the aces. $5k at Bellagio tomorrow should be a fun one though. Gonna get some sleep now.

Mike