Vegas from Ansky. 16 May 2008, 1:01.

I, a professional poker player, have never been to Las Vegas. It is strange, and I have gotten a lot of shit for it. I will however be there for almost two months starting on May 29th. I am living with some friends in an absolute sick house five mins from the strip. Six bedrooms, six baths, pool, three golf holes, beach vollyball court or field or whatever its called, just an all around mansion basically. I figured out which events I will be playing tentatively. As it stands my rough schedule is as follows:

10k PLHE on May 30th.
5k NLHE Shootout June 6th.
5k NLHE June 11th.
10k NLHE Heads Up June 13th. This might be a problem. I may skip the 5k because I def need to play the heads up.
2.5k NLHE Six-Max June 16th.
5k NLHE Six-Max June 26th. Kind of a long gap here, I may play something in between.
10k NLHE Main Event July 3rd.

Roughly 47.5k total in buy ins. If I bust out early in some of the events, I may add to the list, but these are the ones I definitely want to play.

My live tournament record until now, is pretty poor to say the least. Since my first ever live tournament, (Aruba, September 2006), I have cashed one (Barcelona, August 2007) out of about 12 or so tournaments. I am absolutely determined to play my best in these events. I even have been playing online tournaments lately just to see if I'm still rusty in tournaments. I have definitely made a few misakes, one or two big ones. I also need to remind myself to have patience throughout the series. I am looking forward to the challenge, regardless of how I do.

I said in my last entry I promised to limit this blogs self indulgence. Thus far in this entry I have talked about my vegas mansion, and my 50k in buy ins, so as promised I owe some content, something worth reading.

I'm going to discuss a rather non standard heads up hand. This was played against a very aggressive and thinking opponent, and because he is capable of making a difficult or 'ballsy' read, I took a rather unconventional line. http://www.pokerhand.org/?2529936

15k deep, calling such a small reraise from the button is a no brainer. Against someone who never reraises light, I miiiiight fold preflop at 100 big blinds. Otherwise its an easy call. On the flop, with such deep stacks I have no choice butto call. If the board had been a bit different, say, J23 or something, I might decide to raise. The problem with raising medium strength hands 15k deep, is you often create a bad negative implied odds situation. You need to be very certain that your opponent is ready to put you on a bluff in order to raise a flop like this.

On the turn, betting is certainly an option. I know my opponent expects me to float this flop pretty regularly. Because of this, I can consider betting the turn and betting again on the river (depending on the card though). At the time however, I felt he could easily have an ace himself, or perhaps QQ/KK, and would check call me twice. This possibility, combined with the bonus of inducing a possible bluff if I check the turn, and the very good chance that he would simply check fold most worst hands, led me to check the turn. On the river, I initially typed out a 4/5th pot size bet, but then I reconsidered. If I made a large bet, over the size of the pot, I figured I could get a thin call by a lot of worse hands, figuring me for a bluff. After all, he cannot put me on a seven, no way. He doesn't think I would check an ace on the turn, that is for sure. Because of those two factors, I felt like there was a very high % chance he would "hero" call.

It's about 440 AM and I am getting tired, so I will call it a night.

Dani