You win, Julia.

I made a bet with my nine year old cousin. Loser wears the other team's hat. Sigh.

Well, I lived my dream of seeing Cal play in the rose--- no, I saw Cal play AT the Rose Bowl, not in it, and with 2 brutal back to back losses now, its not going to happen this year. Again. I know what Cubs fans feel like.

New Truck decisions....

I'm debating a new Silverado 2500 Duramax vs the new Toyota Tundra. Looks like Toyota uses Chevy's to tow their rigs... hmm.

Hee Haw. $2500 Grand Sierra Main Event

Only 85 people showed up to play this one. 1 hour levels, 5000 chips. This is the kind of tournament that I would like to play on at least a monthly basis. Enough chips and time for some play, and a buy-in that puts some decent players in the game. This is why Vegas is great-- you can play a $1060 at the Bellagio twice a week.

Anyway, I chip down a bit and then an old guy raises to 225 in EP. I call with 22. This guy "EP" who we have been calling "Eskimo" (although i think he's hispanic) flat calls also. Nice. Flop is 7-3-2 with two hearts and I've flopped a set. Yee-haw. I don't figure to win much though-- the flop I want is A-Q-2 or the like. Old guy leads out for 500, I make it 1500 and Eskimo repops it to 3000 or so. Wow. Old guy folds. Well, it is certainly possible that he has 33 or 77 and I'm toast, but an overpair or a flush draw is much more likely. I push. He tanks. Good. It means for sure he doesn't have 77, and maybe he has 33. Eventually he calls and shows JJ. He misses and I double up.

I really don't do much after that. I win my share of pots pre-flop, and don't play any big pots. I get moved to Champie Douglas' table. At 100-200 a guy makes a min raise to 400 UTG+1. Folded to me in the BB and I have AKo. I make it 1400. He turbo 4-bets me another 2000. He has me covered. Yuck. I tank a bit and eventually muck. My ace flips face up. He tells me later he had KK. Good laydown.

I make a steal raise with 95o and get called. Flop comes Q-5-3 and I check-call a 1/2 pot bet. Meh. What am I doing in this hand? There are 2 hearts out there and if another one comes I'm taking the pot with my fake flush. Turn is another 3. I check, player bets 2000 and I'm done with the hand and my stack is a bit shorter. Stupid.

I get AA and win the blinds. Meh.

A fairly aggro player raises to 625 and I repop him to 2000 from the BB with KQo. He folds. Someone notes that "that move has been suiting you well all day." Hmmm. I don't remember reraising preflop much. Besides the AA, the biggest pocket pair I had was 77. I have been fairly aggressive post-flop though, letting people take stabs at pots and then coming over the top. Clearly the next time I do this I will have a big hand...

But before anything else happens they move me to a much more laggy table. This really sucks, as I had pretty good reads on the players and was chipping up. I raise the first couple pots pre-flop and take them down. We go to 200-400/50. A player goes all in for abotu 4200. I have around 9000 and look down at 66 in LP. I'm thinking about calling, but before I can act, the big blind announces "call." Well, that makes my decision for me. I muck, and my cards hit the dealer and turn up. The raiser has AKdd and the caller 99. Flop comes 9-6-x, two diamonds. Wow. Good thing I mucked, because if I came along I'm pretty sure the pocket nines weren't folding. Next card is another diamond and the AK doubles up. Dodged that one.

A little later and I'm down to 7500 or so. I raise in LP with K9ss. BB calls. Flop comes Q-Q-J, two diamonds. Check-check. Turn is 9d. BB checks. We have about the same stack size, (he covers me slightly) and any bet one of us makes pretty much committs us to the pot. I dunno why, but I thought he had nothing and if I bet I win. Betting half my stack looked awkward (at least to me) so I just pushed. He instacalls with A5dd. Right into the nut flush i push! Idiot. I think I'm drawing dead, but actually a Queen would save me. And then BOOM- a queen comes on the riv-------------------------no. not really. nothing comes on the river and I'm out and I kick and hee haw my way out of there. Yuck. What a moronic play. Just awful.

Winner!

Well, I navigated the minefield that is a $125 buy in tournament at the Grand Sierra Pot of Gold. 296 entries. First place. I was playing very well. Didn't have that many big hands, but did a lot of chipping up with well-timed raises and staying out of troubling spots. What I found in this tourney was that hand reading and people reading seemed very easy. Part of this is certainly due to the poor quality of the field. Its a lot easier to read players in a $125 MTT versus one where the buy in is $5K or so.

One key hand was the first hand of the final table. I came in as the chip leader I think, and we were 10 handed for the first time. To my left was Scott Gould, a hyper-aggressive player who I've played with before, and fortunately had the opportunity to play with for several hours at this event. Scott raises just about every pot he plays, an effective style that created a big stack. It also puts him at risk of getting trapped so this was the plan. I also thought that Scott was the most dangerous player at the final table, so when he smooth-called my standard raise I was a bit worried. I held KQ off-suit and the flop came K-8-7 with two spades. I made a continuation bet of about 2/3 of the pot and Scott pushes all in. Its a substantial bet, and I'm really not sure if he was trying to make me go away or he was betting for value. If it was the first cause, he miscalculated as my chip stack was large enough to be able to lose the hand and still be at the average. If he had a set its a strange bet. More likely he has a spade draw. I called him and he flipped over pocket nines, drawing to two cards. He missed and I had a very nice chip lead.

We then lost several more players and got down to 5. I made a couple attempts to knock out short stacks and also found situations where I would raise pre-flop, face an all-in from a short stack, and then have to call based on obvious pot odds, despite knowing that my AT or the like was a dog. This went on for awhile and about 2:30 am I asked for a chip count. I had 165K which was 2% better than the second place player. The prize pool was the following:

1st $10,652 + $2600 entry into the main event on Saturday
2nd $ 5859
3rd $ 2996
4th $ 2330
5th $ 1997

Using their chip count calculator, they had me getting about $5800 and second place getting $5100 or so. Everyone else got over $3000. The main event seat had real value to me as I was planning on buying in anyway. It also took the tourney director about 20 minutes to figure this out and they wouldn't stop the clock. They also would not let us do a chop and then play on for the entry or the trophy. This was also strange because they had done so in past tourneys. Finally, it seems that the GSR was implenting new IRS rules about tourney wins greater than $5000 having withholding and reporting. That made it simple for me. I offered to take $4999 in cash plus the entry. The second chip stack would take the $700 or so I was giving up, and everyone else got what was calculated. One guy objected, trying to milk out another couple hundred bucks. Whatever. I paid him a bit just to get the deal done and that was that. Its a nice trophy and I hope to add to it by taking down the bigger tourney this weekend.