Festa al Lago Update

Hey I've been lazy and haven't written anything in a little while so here's what I've been up to this week. After I busted Niagara I drove home immediately and started looking for a flight to Vegas. There was a very cheap Westjet flight at 9pm that night and I had a credit for Westjet that I had to use soon anyways so I booked that right away, threw a bunch of extra clothes in my bag, and was off to the airport. I got in around 11pm PST and checked into the Bellagio. They were nice enough to comp my room for this trip as the returning champion so that was pretty badass. I had actually never stayed at the Bellagio before though I had seen the rooms and knew what to expect. Still, my room is way nicer than I remembered them being. There's so much space, the bathroom is huge, and all the decor is really classy without being excessive or snobbish. I of course still have to pay for all my own incidentals (internet, gym/spa, room service, mini bar, etc...) and they're very good at making those add up quickly, so even without paying the actual room rate they're still making an alright sum off me.

I've played a fair bit since I got here and had no success. On Thursday I played the $5K buy-in tournament and busted early without much going right. The next day I played a $1500 satellite to the main event but played very poorly and wasn't really focused and busted early again. I then played some 25/50 NL live and lost a bit over $5K getting in some tough spots and making a few likely questionable/poor plays. Today I played the $5K tournament and hung in until just before the dinner break very card dead for the most part. I busted on a tricky hand which I think I'm fine with:

600/1200 a100. A player who has been playing a lot of hands and limping a fair bit limps in MP. He seemed to be a cash player so competent but making a lot of preflop mistakes on the shorter effective stacks. I find KJcc in the CO make it 4200 with ~27K behind, and it folds back to him and he calls. The flop comes Ah Jh 7s and I check behind. The turn is the 2s and he leads very big for 10K. I feel like his bet sizing is either a made hand protecting against the 2 flush draws or a semi-bluff. I thought he would raise a lot of aces preflop so it's a bit less likely he has an A, and there are tons of ways he can have a flush draw that I'm ahead of. With only 17K behind after the 10K bet I think it's a spot where I have to move in for value if I think he has a draw since the pot will be so big if I call that trying to play the river would really not be fun. In the end that's what I decided to do but he had ATo and I lost. I think there are more aces in his range than I originally gave him credit for since he can probably limp/call a bunch of suited aces as well as some offsuit ones with middling kickers but I still think he should have a draw often enough that stacking off was ok.

The $15K WPT main event starts Monday and Tuesday, and after that there is a $10K buy-in tournament at Caesar's that I didn't know about with a million dollar guaranteed first prize so I'll probably stay until the end of the month to play that as well. I'll probably also try to play more big cash games during the main event since they should be fairly good, but I'm still not a big fan of live cash at this point. Maybe I just need more experience but it can be pretty boring. Oh yeah I've also picked up one Adam Junglen as a roommate again on this trip as he just turned 21 today! So happy birthday to him! I thought I got rid of him after London but it seems I was mistaken. Oh yeah also Friday night was David 'Bakes' Baker's birthday so a bunch of us went out for beer pong at O'Shea's which was a fun time as always. There's not as many people here that I know as usual but more and more are arriving as we get closer to the main event so it should be a fun couple weeks!

Mike