Final Vegas Thoughts

I left Vegas late Friday night and arrived home this afternoon. I happened to be on the same flight from Toronto to St. John's as my aunt and uncle who are coming to visit so that was a nice coincidence! On Thursday night I tried to cram a lot of the partying I had missed out on into one crazy night, which led to a predictable outcome for me. It certainly was a fun night though! Anyways by the end of the trip the live tournament grind finally got to me. I gave away almost all my chips on one hand in the 2nd level of the $10K Bellagio Cup event with AK on a K54 rainbow flop in a situaton that was a clear fold. I never give away my chips in that type of situation, the grind was clearly affecting my play.

Overall I guess I can't be too upset with my WSOP. I played 25-30 events between Venetian/Bellagio/WSOP and cashed 6, which is a very high in the money %. I just didn't break through for the big final table score and I didn't cash either of the big $10K events. Looking back I just never got anything going on Day 2 and that was that. I probably made a few more mistakes than I'd have liked but that's part of the game. The trip was a good learning experience and a lot of fun. Also my online results during the trip were fantastic so I ended up substantially ahead despite coming home with less than $1000 in my pocket. Assuming I can get back most of the 30% of my cashes that was withheld plus square up whatever timex owes me for buying pieces of my action I won't even be down as much for the live tournaments as it seemed.

Looking back the one thing that sticks out is my run on Day 2 of the PLO8 event. The day just seemed to go by so quickly and I never really appreciated how close I was to something big. I guess there are a lot of possible reasons for this. First, I don't really know how to play the game that well so I think in a lot of situations I don't even really realize how lucky I may have gotten. On top of that I also had to try to stay focused on my play since so many more decisions than usual were not at all automatic to me. Also, I basically was on my own at this point. I didn't talk to anyone all day about how I was doing because no one else was really playing at the Rio that day. I also never really had a big chip stack so my expectations didn't get too high at any point. And of course my day ended so abruptly on that unfortunate river card. Nothing ever really had a chance to sink in. Certainly not how I would have envisioned my one close call.

Anyways from here I really have no idea what my plans are. I'm planning to play the newly announced WSOP Europe and some other live events that are around the same time in September. There are numerous European Poker Tour Events as well as the UB sponsored Aruba tournament and others I'm forgetting also in September so I'll have to put together a schedule at some point. Those will be my next big live tournaments and I'll still be playing online some for the rest of the summer of course. There are also various things I put off untl after WSOP that I'll have to take care of now. Definitely an exciting time in my life right now but there's several things I'll have to get figured out. Alright I'm going to bed Newfoundland time is the worst. Sundays tomorrow obv.

Mike