Buy-in reached!

I was in Las Vegas last weekend, and I am happy to say that I had a very nice couple of days at the poker table, and I am now officially staked for my $1500 buy-in on June 2nd.

For our annual guys' weekend, we decided to try downtown Las Vegas this time instead of the strip. In the past, our trip has been reserved for Super Bowl weekend, but we opted this year to go to during the March Madness college basketball tournament regional finals. The sports part of the trip was pretty much a bust... we arrived too late to watch two of the four games, and we didn't really find anywhere downtown that was very good for watching sports. I foresee moving things back to the strip on Super Bowl weekend next year. One major advantage to staying downtown, though, is that everything is very convenient. If you get tired of one casino, you can be at the next one within a few minutes. In most cases on the strip, you are looking at a nice 15 minute walk.

We did find an interesting card room at the Plaza Hotel and Casino at the end of Fremont Street. The 'room' itself, is really not a room per se, but more like a carved out corner of the casino. While not the nicest poker spot in Vegas, it does have a great option for tournament play. From 10am until midnight every day, they offer $40 sit-and-go 10-seat tournaments, which turned out to be profitable for me (13 tournaments played, four won, second place twice). Coincidentally, my sister and brother-in-law gave me Phil Gordon's Little Blue Book for my birthday, where he suggests that a good way to practice for final tables is to play in sit-and-go tournaments. I found my experience last weekend to support his suggestion.

Although this is true, based on my experiences last weekend, I think that there are some differences between final tables of multi-table tournaments and single-table sit-and-gos. The most significant difference is that with multi-table tournaments it can take a heck of a lot of concentration, energy, and time to get to the final table depending on the size and structure of the event. With sit-and-gos, it is a simple matter of throwing in your money and you are magically at the final table already! The point is that mental and physical fatigue figure into the final table of large multi-table tournaments. It is no secret that anyone playing in the World Series has to be prepared for long hours of intense play, which further supports my intended plan of getting plenty of rest in the days preceding the tournament. In fact, I am considering moving my flight to Thursday instead of Friday so that I can get used to the time difference and get settled in.

On a completely different note, I also finally came to the realization last weekend that 'other' casino games are for suckers. I know that my coming to this conclusion will not seem like much of a groundbreaking achievement to most, and I know that casinos don't offer games just for the fun of it. Even though I half-heartedly came to this conclusion long ago, the non-poker casino games have always nonetheless been a big source of entertainment for me. The fact is, however, that games like blackjack and craps are volatile... you either finish the session up big or down big, there is rarely any in-between. On the other hand, just about anyone can take $100 to a $1-$2 limit hold 'em table, play a super tight game, and sit there for hours listening to people talk, watching the casino, having free cocktails, and if you are in a nice place, enjoying the surroundings of an upscale card room. With blackjack or craps, you can start with the same amount and be up to $300 in ten minutes, or, the more likely outcome, down the same amount in the same time span. Given the choice, I will take poker every time! I like to keep it cheap, and poker is the way to have cheap fun in Vegas.

So, now that I am staked for the WSOP, where do I go from here? For the next two months, I am planning to focus almost exclusively on multi-table tournaments. Deep-stack events are hard to come by in Atlanta, Georgia, so I am going to have to make do with the local bar games and perhaps a junket to Atlantic City with Pablo and maybe a trip to Tunica. Since funding is no longer a concern, I can experiment a little bit, and see what works best against different styles of play.