Back to Borgata, The Women's WPT Championship

First of all I would like to apologize to my readers for the gap in the blog. I have been multi-tasking a little bit too much and something had to give, unfortunately it was this blog. It has been a crazy few days, and I guess I have been a little down going out of the WPT Championship close to the money. I felt that overall I played well right up until the end, when I played a hand poorly and lost half my chips to Mark Newhouse. I slow played AK before the flop in a four way pot, and then fell in love with it after the flop. I thought I could push Mark off his hand, which I read as weak, but turned out to be a straight, anyway, not my finest poker moment.

I still have not settled on a car or house, but am searching for both. I am planning a trip to The Borgata for next weekend. They have a great deep stack event where for a $2,000 buy in you start with 30,000 in chips and very gentle blind increases. It begins Sunday May 4^th and coincidently the WPT show from last Septembers Borgata main event will Premiere on May 5^th. Since this is the event I won, it will be great to be back at The Borgata, playing in an event while enjoying the show. It will be on the game show network, and I will let you the time as soon as I find it out. It will also give me the opportunity to catch up with my family in NY City. To those of you who have not played at The Borgata it is a great experience. The live action room is the best I have ever seen. Spacious, clean, designed from the ground up as a poker room and not an afterthought like so many places. The tournament area, which takes place up in the conference area is nothing short of fantastic, combine that with Tab, the tournament director, and his great staff and you have a winning combination.

As for the events of the past few days, most of which I'd rather forget than remember and write about, I will go over a few highlights, or are the lowlights? In any event, here goes; I have played 2 of the preliminary events at Caesars and have run really poorly. In fact in the WPT Championship and the 2 Caesars events combined I haven't had a straight, a flush, a set, or pocket aces. That represents a lot of hours of play without making a hand. Now I have played the junk pretty well, but sooner or later you need a little something. Perhaps not Gus Hansen, but us mortals do. I can't believe how many times he is able to come from behind after putting his money in bad. Now don't get me wrong, I like Gus and think he is a great player, but his play leading up to the final table was let's just say interesting. He knocked out many a player drawing pretty slim when the money went in. If this sounds a little like jealousy, well maybe it is, but hey, I am human after all. I do wish him well and you can't argue with his results.

I did attend the WPT women's final table last night. A friend of mine, Janice Kim, made the final table so I went to support her. If you have never been to the TV taping of one of these, you should go. They are really a lot of fun. Although it sometimes moves a little slowly, watching the competition, and seeing the production is definitely worthwhile. Janice started short in chips and hung on to finish fourth. She played well, but with the large blinds and antes was unable to make anything happen. Nancy Tyner won the event, although my money was on Vanessa Selbst, from my hometown of Brooklyn, NY. I have played with Vanessa at various tournaments throughout the past couple of years and find her to be an excellent player, and would have bet on her, but it wasn't her night.

Today I'm off to play the Caesars event again. I do like that poker room, well designed, clean, and one of the best rooms I have played in.

The Oracle