Much Needed Update

I've finally decided to sit myself down and write another blog entry.

First of all, we've made it to Las Vegas. I had planned on writing up a detailed report on our drive from Seattle to here, and I still might at some point, but for now I'll just say that it was quite an adventure.

It's been about a month since we first arrived at our new home and started unpacking the U-Haul. Sadly, there are still boxes strewn around that have yet to be fully unpacked. Though I suppose that is not that surprising since I have never really had a move where I've unpacked everything. In fact, some of the boxes I packed for this move contained smaller boxes with stuff from a previous move. It's not my fault though as I think it runs in my genes.

Anyway, as for poker, I've been playing a lot of $100 to $500 buy-in tournaments and finally had my first decent sized cash. It was in a $500+$50 weekly tournament at The Venetian which ended with an 8-way chop for ~$5,000 each.

Yes, you read that right, an 8-way chop. Honestly, if someone else told me that they were involved in an 8-way chop I would probably laugh at them. Chops with this many people generally come about because the players think "there's no skill left with the blinds so high." While this is true to some extent, I think that in general, people underestimate the skill edge a good player has even in high blind situations. Bad players fold way too much in these spots. They blind themselves down under 5 BBs waiting for a big hand that might never come. And then, when they finally shove their micro-stack in, the raise is so small that the other players are forced to call and they have to hope to double/triple up just to get back to being a small stack. A good player knows that they have to look for spots to shove any two cards to make sure that they don't get too short stacked enough to have any chance of stealing the blinds.

That being said, a chop is almost always good for the shortest stack, which I happened to be after losing a coin flip with the former shortest stack and with the blinds going up I was going to be near that 5BB mark where I was going to have to shove any two. So when someone else asked what the amount of an 8-way chop would be I made sure to voice my support for such a deal! In the end, the other two short stacks and I gave the three big stacks a little extra from our share to get them to accept the deal. I'm definitely happy with the result. It is my 2nd largest profit from a tournament next to the Pendleton HORSE tournament last fall. It would have been nice to win the $14,800 for first place as I was a slight chip leader going into the final table, but considering how bad things were going for me, I feel like I was destined to go out 8th and get just $1,700.

Other than tournaments, I've played a few sessions of 2/5 with moderate success. The games are generally good at these levels as even the "regulars" have leaks. I've been considering taking some small shots at the 5/10 game at the Venetian but have yet to go for it. It's probably not more profitable than 2/5 anyway.

One semi-interesting celebrity moment so far: I watched Phil Ivey shoot craps at the Venetian a few days ago. He was betting $10,000 on the pass line, taking max odds, and putting out as many come bets as possible. It was quite amazing to see him throwing around the $25k chips like they were nothing. While I watched he ran really bad and was down over $500,000! I didn't stay long enough to see if he made it back or lost even more, but it definitely made my $1,000 wins or losses at the craps table feel mighty insignificant.

That's it for now, though I do want to start posting more regularly and may try to set aside some time each week to make a post.