I tried to get into the poker mode, took an extra nap after breakfast to try to catch up on some of the sleep I thought I had coming my way. I woke up just in time to head down to the Majestic to sign up.

It turned out there were less than 40 players in the tournament, quite disappointing for the organizers, and quite disappointing for us, too. A lot of good players were not here, as well as a lot of the Venezuelans. Aruba just happened last week, and there is another big tourney at the Veneto next weekend with $400,000 guaranteed, so maybe that had something to do with it.

Both Dustin and I bought in for $2,100, and were seated at 2 different tables. The organizers decided to change the 30 minute levels to 1 hour levels, which should mean a lot more poker, but we were also less than half the expected field, so a good adjustment.

I was happy to have brought my music as the cards I was looking at were more than boring. meanwhile the weak players at my table just threw chips at each other, their starting hand requirements were creative at best, only overshadowed by their reckless postflop play. There were a couple of rebuys (max. 2) from the guy to my right, while the guy to my left could not stop babbling. Had to put on my shades and turn the music up louder to hint to him I really wasn´t interested in how little he knew about tournament poker. The dealers we had at our table were slow and inexperienced, and the new tournament director was a joke. Just like last time in May they did not have a set of rules present. We ran into a situation at our table, where I had reraised pre-flop in position with a pair of tens, and the original raiser wanted to re-raise me. I had originally raised his $300 raise ($400 total) another $800 ($1,200 total), the BB had called, and then the re-raiser in question said re-raise, which to normal standards required bumping my total bet another $800 minimum to a total of $2,000. However, the dealer claimed it should be a total doubling my total bet, i.e. making it $2,400 total.

Long and heated discussion, with the very interesting outcome, that he could now only call my bet and not reraise it. Furthermore the TD insisted on the "double the bet" rule - outrageous. Anyways, a ten came on the flop and I won the hand, unfortunately without more action from the others in the pot.

That bumbed me up to almost $12,000 (started with $10,000). A level later I was down to just under $10,000, the blinds were now $75/150. A young guy raised to $400 UTG, the loose guy to my right (pleasant fellow btw) called, and I re-raised on the button to $1,200. The UTG guy called, but now Mr. loose re-raised all-in. I had seen him do this a couple of times before (that is why he had had to buy in twice), and since he had only flat called the original raise, I was quite sure I had him beat. I was not sure about the other guy, he had been quite solid in his hand selection, but I had him covered, so I called. The third guy also called, so we had the tourneys forst 3-way all-in bet. The first guy had JJ, Mr. Loose held AQ, and then my AK. Bad news the guy had jacks, good news I had a better hand for the side pot. Bad news a queen came on the turn to elevate the worst hand of the three to the winner.

I decided to re-buy and get $5,000 in chips, enough to play around, and with the huge stack of chips to my right, I expected to get good chances to pick "mine" up again. However, that is not what happened, and in the end I got stuck in a nut flush draw that never came, and the tournament was over, the blinds were now so high and the other stacks so tall it did not make sense to invest in another re-buy, and I was not seeing any good mojo either. Back to the hotel to catch up with Dustin, who had exited the tournament as the second player, failing to beat CJ´s pocket aces with his pocket kings.

I was poker sour, so I went straight for the blackjack tables and the beer, a lot of laughs in good company, winning almost $500 trying to do a card count, then losing most of it again. I went to the poker room and sat down in a 5/5 game, went all-in with two pairs on the flop, got called by a player with the same hand as mine, but we were both called by a guy with top pair, who caught his higher 2 pairs on the river, goodnight.

Today I need to do some shopping, then an afternoon at the spa and the gym, and then get ready for poker tonight, maybe I will sit in at the No-Limit Omaha game, Dustin killed it last night.