No good at Binion's (PF=10.14) and Bubble Boy at Planet Hollywood

It doesn't get better at all. The Binion's tournament ($150 Buy-In) has a good structure and got 488 players. Unfortunately I went out early on 440th position. Here's the six hands I played during the 75 minutes I was in the tournament: Win a nice pot with 99 (no showdown). Get AJ and we see a flop containing an Ace. Lose the pot to AQ. Pick up the blinds twice and finally get AK after an hour of unplayable hands. Flop comes K82. I bet, get re-raised and go all-in (which is a little more than a pot-size bet) as I think he want's to chase me out of the pot. Wrong idea as he shows 88 for a set. An Ace on the turn gives some hope but river is blank. Two hands later I get 88 in the big blind, go all-in with my remaining 800 chips (blinds 100/200) and get called from UTG limper with ... AA (the same guy who had the set before). Well not particularily bad beats but still nothing to be happy about.

At our table was a guy who was wearing a ring that I had seen on photos before but never expected to see one in reality. The ring was a WSOP Circuit winner ring and belonged to Michael "Scott" Arents who won the Circuit event in Lake Tahoe last September. At least I now have a story to tell. Unfortunately I didn't see many hands from him but what I saw was very decent. And we had some nice table talk as he is a very nice guy.

Being at Binions was an interesting feeling. This is were the WSOP started. There's the wall with the 30 champions. Joe Hachem's photo is the last one as he was the last to win at Benny's Bullpen. No picture for Jamie Gold and no picture for the future champions. But on the other hand if Harrah's hadn't taken over the WSOP how would it look like now? Would it still exist? If not there would be another big tournament for sure but the World Series has some kind of history that no replacement would be able to overcome. So kudos to Harrah's for realizing what gem was hidden here and making it to the biggest pokerevent in the world.

I decided to take another shot at the Planet Hollywood tournament a few our's later. In between I had a look at the Amazon Room that was packed with players as it was Day 1 of the $2,000 No-Limit Event. Six more tables belonged to the six-handed event with players including Ram Vaswani and Phil Hellmuth. And there was the final table of the Omaha High-Low with Marcel Luske. I had a short talk with Jan Heitman who just had busted from the $2,000 No-Limit Event and was on the way to the cash games at the Wynn.

Again I was able to accumulate a good stack in the beginning of the Planet Hollywood tournament but wasn't able to keep the pace. I busted out 9th of 70 but only 8 got paid. At the end I went in shortstacked with 99 and the big blind found KK. I played this tournament three times now and final tabled every one of them but made the money only once. Do I need to be more aggressive at the later stage of the tournament? I have to think about that. But being aggressive with crap can be dangerous and can backfire (and doesn't fit my style at all). Have I been just unlucky or haven't I found the right aggression factor in the late stages? I will review this issue in future tournaments very carefully.

So even if I now have less money in my pockets I learned a lot this week and in general my results are much better than last year. This is a good thing. But at the end only money counts. Therefore I will play the Planet Hollywood tomorrow at 2pm again. If I don't cash I will take a break on Sunday and play it a last time on Monday. If I cash I may try another tournament (Caesars, Venetian or so) again. On Tuesday morning we will head to Chicago and my poker time in Vegas will be over (at least for this vacation).

Remark: Did you know that I have my own street in Las Vegas? ;-) Take a look in the gallery where I added sixteen more photos