Min-cashed at Hollywood Park in their Sunday afternoon $70 trash-ament. Three tables and third place netted me a mere $285 total. Beats a poke in the eye with a burnt stick I suppose. I played pretty well, pulling the trigger (jamming) expertly with 12-22 blinds on average for the last 2 hours of play. Not once did I get looked up, save for the two times I had monsters, KK and AK, both held.
My tables (all 2 of them) were incredibly soft compared to the LAPC or other larger events, I felt very comfortable mixing it up with about 80% of my opponents.
Then just last week I played in a friend of a friends home game for the third time; it takes place almost every Thursday night in a sound studio. The players range from utterly clueless to semi-serious, mostly falling towards the former category. The buy in is only $20 but the rebuys are unlimited for an hour and the structure is beyond shitty. A starting stack in the third level is 10 bigs. But so far, the game has been massively profitable.
My one cash last month for first place was for $400 plus two $20 bounties. I did get lucky and suck out twice, once my A5 cracked AK and my 78 also bested AK, both AIPF, but at no time did I think I wasn't the best player at the table. Hopefully I will be invited back again and again, the game seems like it will be very enjoyable, not only for the cash flow but it's also loaded with nice people.
As for my planning...
On the 1st of March I'm headed to Vegas for a WSOP tune up. I've booked 4 days at Harrah's and plan NOT to rent a car for once. Nope, I'm going to walk and walk and walk from tournament to tournament.
There are no special events running, save for the Wynn Classic - and I don't plan to play there unless I can cash big first. The entry for their quarter million guarantee is $550, a bit beyond my budget.
Instead I plan to hit the Venetian and the Aria hard, as well as Caesar's and probably T.I. for some less serious events. The V or the A will be my one "serious" tournament each day, and then I'll follow it up with one "silly" event elsewhere. My good buddies Sven and A8Fold will be there, so it should be very good times as well as hopefully profitable. Yes, it is the beginning of NASCAR week in Vegas once again - I'm hoping for plenty of tourists who have their minds on drinking and gambling it up at the poker tables.
Looking beyond the beginning of next month, the World Series of Poker just released it's schedule of events and I'm salivating hard at the prospect of a summer poker bender.
First things first - I am truly torn at this moment in time whether or not I want to play in a bracelet event. I'm up over 2K in profit so far in 2013, which is fantastic, and kind of gives me the room to splurge if I so choose. (Ignoring the fact that I am stuck $1600+ in 2012). If I do that though, it basically puts my roll back down to $500 in the black, which is cool and all, but I know it can vanish quickly.
If I do play, it will be for a $1500 event, not a 1K, because the structure is so much better and also because there is also a very special $1500 event on May 31st. It's called the "Millionaire Maker" and what it is is a $1500 WSOP bracelet event with a guaranteed first place prize of a million dollars. True, the payout will probably be fairly top heavy, but on the other hand with two starting days and what will likely be a shit-load of entries, it may turn out to be an almost normal payout anyways.
So that's that. I also shouldn't forget that I'm having at least 2 home game WSOP satellites in my garage and maybe one online as well. I would really like to bink one of these and get a massive discount entry.
But whether I play in a bracelet event or not, I plan to stay exclusively at the Rio and play the 3pm deepstack events until I collapse in exhaustion. I may or may not play a sillier evening event here and there, but not the later Rio deepstacks as the price points are still high and the prize pools are exponentially smaller. I'll probably do the 7pm Aria or V.
Anyway, the end of this month can't come quick enough. I'm very much looking forward to binging a bit. The two big keys for me in doing this are to be 1) well rested and 2) to walk a lot for exercise. Also, I don't want to eat a lot of crap, though I'll probably get a nice burger somewhere as it has been awhile.
In the mean time, I have a cash game this Friday night in my garage and next week on Thursday I'm going to try to slip away for HPC's Facebook tournament. It's silly, it's $60 and they play till the sun comes up, but I know the field will be super fishy and it will in turn be super fun.
