Went to Vegas on May 7th for a convention and to play some poker. Mainly I wanted to play in the Saturday Noon tourney at Venetian with the $340 buy in. I got in Friday night at around 5pm anc checked in to the Mandalay Bay. The $20 trick worked for a very nice upgraded room! Had a great dinner at Stripsteak but had too many martinis. The wine with dinner and the shot the young lady at the bar bought me put me into a very hungover situation Saturday morning!

3 tylenols and a sandwich later, I bought into the Venetian tournament. There were 110 runners. 12000 starting chips and 25/50 blinds to start. 40 minute levels which really suits my game. After losing a couple hands early, I built my stack steadily for a couple of hours to where I had 22000 chips when the average was 18000. Weird Russian Guy 2 seats to my left had bought in late and kept leaving the table for extended periods. Not sure why he bothered but he seemed ot be a loose player. Russian guy goes all in for $6500 and another player calls. I'm on the button with pocket nines. Caller had another $9k behind him. Putting them both on an Ace, I pushed. (what do you think of this play?) The caller folded kind of quickly considering he had 40% of his stack in the middle! Heads up with Weird Russian Guy and he's all in. He tables K-6. Flop comes 10, 4, 9. Set for me! Of course the turn is a J and the river a fricken Q to triple him up with a straight. What are you going to do?

I still had close to the chip average and I was determined to not go on tilt! Steady play built my stack back up to average or so where I stayed for hours and hours! Kept treading water as the number of players dwindled. As we approached the bubble (13 players paid) I found myself with a Crazy Old Guy on my right. COG loved to steal blinds and make 3BB raises with 2 broadway cards. As we got down to 15 players I had about $40k chips when the average was $65k. COG raised to $8k from the button. I looked down at KJ suited and decided to make a play. I pushed and COG called. He turns over Q-10 off and I'm feeling good. The flop comes down with a spade flush for me! COG rivered a straight and reaches for the pot before the dealer pointed out my flopped flush. Very satisfying because COG was a cocky SOB.

That double up put me at $90k chips with 2 players to go for the bubble. I cruised into the money and then resolved to climb as high as I could up the payouts. A while later I have a dwindling stack of around $65k when COG (around $50k) makes a raise to $18k. I pushed with A-J and he called with A-5 of diamonds. (he was crazy!, how does he make that call when I've been playing solid all day and never showed a hand worse than his, not even once!). The flop comes with 2 diamonds, turn gives him a gut shot wheel draw and I fade his outs on the river to double up to around $140k. With 5 players to go, 4 of us have between $120k and $200k and one guy has more than $800k. We start talking deal. Chip leader is fine with it but he wants full first place payout. The rest of us are ok with it but COG (how is in 2nd or 3rd) won't do the deal. Ok... we play on. Of course I take out COG 20 minutes later and we're down to 4. Chips keep getting pushed around the table and an hour later we're down to 3. Chip leader is down to around 575k, I have around $380k and another player has around $350k. problem was it was almost midnight by now and the blinds were only $1200/$2400 at this point. We could have played for quite a while more but decided to deal. Chip leader took $1k less than first and myself and the other player split the $1k plus second and third. Nice $5300 payday for me!!

Played Sunday afternoon at Mandalay Bay for about 3-4 hours at a 1-2 table. Some bad players but some very solid players. Playing TAG poker for most of the time was able to cash out up $450.

Played a final session at Mandalay on Tuesday evening for about 2 hours. Table was full of solid players with only a couple of week players. I was tired and left after 2 hours happy to be up $180.

Broke even at BJ, lost some money at slots and had some great meals (I highly recommend Stripsteak!) Nice trip!