Borgata Poker School, Caesars Deep Stack and Anselmo Villanezl

The past few days have been somewhat crazy, I feel like I have been busy 24/7. It has been a few days since my last update and I have a lot to report. Today will in all likelihood be the money day for the main event, and is the first day that the field combines to one day. As the field narrows and the final table players are determined, I will hopefully be picking up a student who along with Michael Binger and a couple of others, we will be working with to help increase their chance of success.

I am happy to report that I have reached an agreement with The Borgata to launch a joint venture and set up a poker school. We will begin in September before the start of their events. The plan is to target beginners and novice players and help them build a skill set which will enable them to enjoy the game of poker. I will have more on the details of this in about ten days.

After playing the 5k at The Bellagio and busting about 20 places from the money, the next day I played the Caesars deep stack championship event the past two days, which was a $1,000 buy in no limit holdem tournament, with 25,000 in starting chips. 1175 players participated and there were two start days which combined yesterday. We started with about 280 players with the money coming at 99^th place. I made it to 36^th place and I have to admit played my last hand badly. I was slightly below average chips with about 700,000, the blinds were 15,000-30,000 with a 4k ante. So each lap around the table cost 85,000, giving me an "m" of about 8, or about 23 big blinds. During the WSOP during one of the events, the table chat discussed the significance of "m" value versus number of big blinds. One of the players was insistent that calculating m value was the only important thing and number of big blinds is completely irrelevant. I tried to explain that there is a relationship between the two and as long as you understand the significance of the number it doesn't really matter which one you use. Sometimes it's hard to discuss concept with players who are unwilling to consider alternative view points to their own.

I was happy to see my good friend Clonie Gowan win the Bellagio 5k. Over this past year I have enjoyed getting to know her and I am amazed how she manages her poker and family. I can barely make it through the poker.

Getting back to my bust out, a player was moved to my table who told me how much he enjoyed reading my blog, Card Player articles, and was a big fan. We talked a bit about his poker and history, and he was a very nice guy. So, UTG I pick up Ace 10 suited and raise 3 big blinds. It is folded around to the big blind, my new friend Anselmo Villanezl from Wisconsin, who seemingly unhappily calls my raise. I know Ace 10 is not a great hand, but we are 8 handed and I have been looking at 7-2 for the last 20 hands and felt that I could outplay him after the flop, and besides he looked weak. I have to digress for a moment here and say I have not had any cards for the past two days and have pretty much kept alive by maneuvering as necessary and showing down almost no hands. So the flop comes A 9 4 rainbow and with about 230k in the pot Anselmo bets 125k. I have about 600k left and I move in. Anselmo tanks for about two minutes and then he says "I'm sure you have a set, but I call," and he turns over A K. He played the hand well and I thought he was just taking a shot at the pot and my read was bad. To his credit he played it well, smooth calling me out of the big blind with AK camouflaged his hand. To sum it up I made a rookie move and got outplayed.

I have several more exciting things to report, but I'll continue tomorrow.

For more information on Roy Winston, you can visit his website: www.oraclepoker.net or send him an email: [email protected]