Day 11 (Wednesday)

Well i managed to delude myself a bit thinking i had got over the bust within a couple of hours. Surrounding myself with Azi then the others and having several drinks before and during playing cash and a few trampy crapshoot tournaments it seemed to work but as soon as i left at 5:30am and was back by myself i felt down again. Ive woke up today (thanks to housekeeping ringing to see if want room cleaned, DO NOT DISTURB DUMMIES) not feeling like doing much at all. Come on here to see if i fancied online poker but have no such motivation so i guess i will probably go down and chill by the pool with Azi again. I hope i can motivate myself to play at least a couple more $330-$550 games at Venetian or Caesars but im not going to play them if im not 100% up for them as its just a waste of time. Vegas is not a good place to be when you feel low so i need to be mentally strong and push through this to make the most of the 4 days (inc today) ive got left before Sundays flight home. Few more pots from day1b below:

1st hand of the day im bb with 10,8hh and call a standard raise from a 60k stack. Flop comes Q96 with 2 diamonds and i just check call the priced in 4k flop bet. I dont want to go over the top here as put him on something and his stack would do far too much damage compared to the pot size on the flop. Also if he hasnt hit he may check the turn and enable me a bluff on the river. Turn is Ax and he bets 12k, i fold and a couple of hands later he is trying to catch my eye to tell me he had 2 pair. I believe this was true for sure but irrelevant after i miss anyway.

I raise to 3500 (500,1000) button 85off and guy thats showing middle hands and aces when folding in the bb once again shows an ace and folds. Nxt hand i make the same raise with AQoff but this time the same guy in sb makes it 10k more. As its too early i cant get any sort of read and reluctantly pass preflop, although i was close to flopping it. He showed 34std, good move, but this guy was obviously dumb as he flat called the button before with A9 before folding to a standard raise from the sb, showing the A9 as well and others similar to that. Nxt hand i make it 3500 again with A10std but this time the bb kid who looks terrified to be at the table makes it 12000 more, LOL at this point i reminded myself who easy my day1b table was to play flops etc and started thinking i would have to change strategy and gamble more (probably what induced the 10,8dd hand allin pre shown previous post).

Again i remember just flopping a few low pocket pairs and missing. You see so many people get paid off with sets to overpairs and i didnt manage one all tournament which was a shame. Oh one more hand that could have been potentially exposive:

Only 10 hands in on my bb it folds round and sb makes it 3000, i make it 9500 with A7off and he calls. Flop is K54 and im ready to fire 12k in when sb leads out for 16k, very good bet cos i have to move in or fold really and dont fancy it and let it go unfortunately. Maybe regret that now but its difficult to think how i would have felt if i stuck almost 70k in at that point on a stone cold bluff and he had say QK or AK and made the call and i bust that way. With hindsight it would be more my style to bust that way than the savage 3 hands in 15 minutes way and at least it would have been proper poker not the allin luckfest rubbish i had.

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After an hour or 2 by the pool i almost felt myself again and by 6:30pm i was well up for the 7pm Caesars $330 which Azimut was playing as well. Told myself to play rock ABC until the blinds caught up, i did such a game until the tells ive been spotting all week came into force. I think this is actually one of my best hands in Vegas and shows how much my live game is progressing if i was to put more effort into it. The key thing most of the time is spotting tells when you arent actually looking for them, ie they are obvious to you:

Im on about 5-5500 (starting stack 4500) and utg+1 makes the 200bb 600 to go. I have AK on the button and just flop it, the sb and bb come in also. Flop is 922 rainbow and i first think ok i prob give this up but then i spot the following double tell:

bb pauses and considers leading out, its weak though and i immediately put him on a low pocket pair or mayb the 9, he checks after a few seconds (he is a decent enough player so know he can respect bets b4 him)

at the same time utg+1 raiser is staring at the flop the whole time which he hasnt done in other pots so i put him on AK, AQ or similar.

Anyway utg+1 quickly bets a 1k chip and announces 800 which sounds weak and i quickly make it 2000 to go. sb folds, bb looks at me cringing and says well i have to respect that then and folds. utg+1 takes a while but eventually folds and claims he had AQ. I know im playing like a rock and not gonna be stealing so i show the bluff so there is more potential to be paid. bb claimed he had the 9 which i 100% know was true.

Anyway later in the tourney the blinds turn crapshoot mode and caught me up, after 1 or 2 pushes i eventually made a cringe call with A2 in the bb with 7xbb left but the button had AJ so i picked the wrong spot for once and got no help. With 131 entrants i finished 20th and once again didnt get the luck at the business end, similar to the wsop or the Venetian $550.

So no cashes in multis out here as of yet but i know im playing well and want to fit in at least 2 more $330 - $550 ones, i dont think bellagio daily $1000 are on at the moment so looks like Venetian 12pm or Caesars 7pm are the only ones left for the trip. I will also consider sitting on a higher cash table with a day or so to go as a option to try and put into practise some of what ive learnt this trip as well.

After Caesars 3 of the others went to the Flamingo to play $1/$2 for a laugh and all went on one table. I railed them which was fun with Punterz playing like a nut for a bit. Once again though i picked up on some really really obvious tells just from the rail, its surprising how easy some games seem if you have your head on out here. Ive read its better to play cash in the smaller casinos for profit and i can see why watching some of last nights stuff for sure.