Vegas in my future.

Next weekend the madness will begin, with a 3 day, 2 night stay in Vegas - complete with 5 (count 'em!) 5 tournaments on the schedule!

But I also got a glimmer last Wednesday, that maybe, just maybe - an even bigger tournament is on the horizon.

I took down our first "Worldline" tournament, an off shoot of our "Flatline" league (a group of friends playing amongst ourselves online for no rake) that will award a seat and travel money to the World Series of Poker!

A 1500K bracelet event, not the 10K Main Event, that everyone knows of - but it's still the World Series!

So I've won one tournament, which means I lead in points - 17 currently. Now the race is still very tight as second place received 16 points, third place 15 and so on. But If I can aim for the top five every week, and maybe take another one or two down, it is VERY likely that my dream of playing at the World Series of Poker may come true.

I'm not really thinking about the money at all - but I promised myself years ago that if I do ever cash a hefty amount (say 10K above my buy-in or so) I'm setting aside 1K to try and satellite into the Main Event.

Yes, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Online raked play on Full Tilt is still not going that great, but I just today took down a 16 player HORSE SnG, and it felt GREAT to be the actual best player at the table who was able to persevere through card dead stretches and then by good play and correct decisions be able to stomp my opponents in the end.

(By the way - SnG means "Sit-n-Go" a single or two table tournament that starts as soon as the table is filled. MTT - Multi-table-tournament. HORSE is a mixed game format, Hold-em, Omaha/8, Razz, Seven Stud, Seven Stud 8 or better.)

I've been experimenting with all different stakes (though all low) and types of games (cash games, MTT's, SnG's and satellites) and I think I finally know what I need to do to have a good shot at growing my roll.

Clearly, I have to invest some effort to going deep in another MTT like the Double Deuce. I will allow myself 2 shots in a 60c satellite a week to accomplish this.

Second, SnG's are just too tough to crack on a frequent enough basis - I think I can find an exception to this in the 16 and 18 playr SnG's of HORSE, PLO8 and NLHE. These are the ones, where if I single table, and concentrate on what I'm doing (and I don't get completely coolered) I can either win or cash about a third of the time.

I think the payout is big enough at this level, where I can grind out a steady profit.

Lower $ SnG's - the rake is just too nasty, the stakes not high enough for me or others to take seriously.

Higher $ SnG's - say $5.25 or so, just take too big a chunk out of my BR for me to be comfortable and not play scared, especially when I drop 3 or 4 in a row. Then even if I cash in the next one, I'm still down. Very frustrating, and I'm sure I'm tilting a bit when I realize that I have to win multiple times just to recoup my losses.

Right now, I'm down to $275, after being up over $400. I don't feel as though I've been playing terrible, but I definitely feel more comfortable risking $1 in a MTT or $2.25 in a two table SnG than any of the other types of games I've been dabbling with. I'll confess, I took a couple shots at $10 MTT's (the "Midnight Madness" is especially tempting as it has a large prize pool guarantee) as well as cash games that were above my BR.

I experienced a bit of success at the latter, and then subsequently lost it all and more within a week. My tournament experience has, it seems, worn away most of the patience that I just assumed was built into my poker DNA.

So hopefully now, I've learned with such a big down swing, that I'll just have to slow down. I'm still planning on aiming for the big payoff of a large MTT (and for that I can have many, many losses and still be a winning player) and the SnG's will be strictly low (but not ultra-micro) stakes.