Free Drinks and I'm on the Wagon!

So last night I wasn’t ready for sleep and a $540 tournament had started a couple of hours ago. It was the standard Bellagio type with 10k starting chips and you can late register for the first 4 hours or so. Since the blinds go up slowly it is still a good value. I made it deep but not deep enough. I went out 14th; they paid 9 places with 86 runners. My last hand I began with about 45k in chips and with the blinds 1.5-3k a mid-position player made it 8,000. In the big blind I looked down at AK of hearts and moved in. The other guy insta-called with 99 and although the flop had two hearts, no help came.

I called it a night and slept like the dead for 10 hours. I got up in time to catch a late lunch and after a walk around the grounds went to catch the satellite for tomorrow’s main event. The location here is really breathtaking. It is located on the Turkish side of Cyprus, on the Southeastern coast, which lies on the Mediterranean a couple of hundred miles off the coast of Israel.

The satellite is a $1,080 buy in, and had started about 90 minutes ago, so in I went. I again started with 10k in chips. 117 players participated and I am on the dinner break right now with 23 remaining and about average chips, so I am hopeful. There is one really crazy player two to my right who sat down with about 60 players left and had 70k in chips. He plays almost every hand and calls almost every bet. He initially dumped a lot of chips then got very lucky against a few players, including me. He called an all in against a tight player who re-raised him and had about half as many chips, with 22, and as advertised the other player had KK. The flop was 568, turn 4, river 7 for a chop. It is amazing to me how a guy like this accumulates a huge chip stack early and then blows it. I guess the way he gets the chips is how he loses them.

Anyway, with a little luck he will double me up. I will let you know what happens next time. On a side note, I lost Layne Flack. He seems to have disappeared, and with the entertainment possibilities, it wouldn’t take much for him to run off. He had a great quote at lunch, saying “this is classic, I’m at a great resort with free drinks and I’m on the wagon!”