Two tournaments, two cashes

That was indeed an almost perfect start!

We arrived late in Vegas due to the delay. The new "central rental car center" is horrible (as it is far away on the other side of the airport). More worse: the computer system of Dollar was down so they had to do all the stuff manually. Finally we got our car. The counter upgraded our economy car to compact and the guy in the garage told us "no compact available, take a midsize car". Well, no complains :-)

As we arrived at the Rio we were told we have to change rooms the next day. At least I talked them into a change at late afternoon so I could play the MGM tourney and we weren't forced to wake up too early. As we were really tired we went to bed immediately. My girlfriend decided to sleep as long as possible in the morning while I went up for the 11 am tournament at the MGM [PF=2.80]. Nice changes there since my last visit. They now have a restroom close to the pokerroom (so no more long hikes). And next to the pokerroom is a Starbucks. Imagine were you can find me during the breaks.

This was a strange tournament for me as I barely played 4 hands until we were down to 20 players (from 88). And those four hands were ... pocket aces! I would have loved to play more hands but beside that Aces I only got unplayable crap. And as I had an image to be the tightest possible rock I had to trap with the aces every time (like limping from first position and praying for a raise to put in a re-reraise). Fortunately I got paid well all times. It helped to get two of them in a row. After that I was able to do a lot of steals (with still medicore hands). And stealing is very important in the MGM tourney as the antes kick in very early. Finally I was busted in 6th place after 3 hours for a $185 win ($65 Buy-In). At the end I tried to trap the chipleader who played a lot of crappy hands during that final table but ran into a made hand (he flopped a set of 9's). Bad timing!

After we changed our room we got something to eat and I signed up for my next tournament - the 7 pm at the Planet Hollywood (Buy-In $60) [PF=4.21]. This went completely different then the MGM tourney as I was able to do what I like most: aggressive play. Like raising 5's, getting a re-raise from an early position limper who had of course either AA or KK. I called him to see if I make my set (or have to fold anyway). Flop came 5xx and he paid a lot of money for making a pre-flop re-raise that wasn't big enough. But I also got lucky two times as I was behind with AQ against AK. The board paired two times and we split the pot. Another time a raiser forced the winning hand out of the pot while my all-in won against him. Down to nine players we put up $10 each for the bubbble-boy. Good choice as it speeded up the process to burst the bubble. At this time I was severly short-stacked but again it looks like I'm quite good in short-stack play. I choose my spots wisely and managed to survive till 3rd place. Another payday of $327 for 3.5 hours of poker. By the way, the Planet Hollywood looks interesting after the re-design. The pokerroom is nice (similar style like the MGM), although I miss the fact that it is a real room like the old one. In the new room you can hear lots of the noise around from the slot machines.

Went back to the Rio and took a look into the Amazon-Room. Just in time to see George Danzer making the final table of the Omaha high-low. Talked briefly to him but he was too tired for a longer conversation (we hadn't met before). And I'm quite sure I saw Klaus "B@andit" Haussmann playing in the Limit-Event that was down to 99 players at that time.

For tommorrow I have planned to play some WSOP satellites and the nightly tournament at the Caesars ... so stay tuned.