I am in need of food and sleep, but I wanted to offer up a quick recap of the last six days.

First, the bad:

-I did not cash in the $300 w/ bounties, $500 or $1000 events.

-I suffered through my first bout of real loneliness after almost two years of off-and-on poker touring.   Unlike most poker players, I do not travel as part of a pack, which makes me an oddball.  I prefer it this way.  I do not want any “poker friends” unless they are also genuine, good-hearted people.  Unfortunately, many of the guys I’ve gotten somewhat friendly with on tour have an air of unpleasant desperation about them.  I really don’t need to be lending a degenerate my hard earned money.  So although I’m friendly with a lot of other players, I have chosen not to forge any real poker friendships so far.  Compounding things, I’m at freakin’ Turning Stone.  This means that I’ve spent six days by myself in the middle of nowhere at a facility that serves no alcohol.  I’m an odd solitary figure here, sitting in the 24-hour cafe reading a my book between bites of my turkey sandwich.  Still, I’m not going home to Janeen and NYC for at least one more day (see below). 

Things got so bad yesterday that I actually put in a lame request for a meetup on a poker messageboard.  I regretted doing this soon afterward, which was just as well since the request was met with complete indifference.  This is understandable (and probably for the best) since the average age of the people who frequent the message board is around 15 years less than mine.  I doubt the big meetup would have went especially well.  I haven’t done a bong hit in at least a decade and I don’t even know what a Volcano does.

Now, the good:

-I went to Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse for lunch yesterday.  It’s still the best.

-The structure of the tournaments here is amazing.  The blinds increase more gradually than anywhere else.  You get a ton of play for your money.  $300 entry tournaments embark on a path that is similar to (if not better than) $3000 World Series of Poker events.  You get a lot for your poker money here.

 -I cashed in the $300 six-handed event.  This actually belongs in the bad news category, since my cash was for only around $480 after a long day of poker.  I felt I was on top of my game in this tournament, and I had a big stack with 30 players left.  Then I ran AK into a megastack’s AA.  I generally do not fold AK against one opponent at a five handed table, and I was the one who put in the fourth raise.  No regrets.

-I am on absolute fire in satellites.  They have been running nightly multitable satellites up here, and I’ve gone a Carew-like 4 for 4 in them.  First, I won three seats to tonight’s $1100 satellite, two of which were converted to cash.  Then tonight, for an encore, I won a seat into the $5200 main event, which starts tomorrow at 10:00 am.  I have found the satellite fields to be very soft.  Like all the other tournaments here, these fields are a combination of older guys who are not very good and young kids who are fundamentally rock solid and often tricky.  In the satellites, the poor players play even worse than they would otherwise.  This is because many of the old guys do not understand satellite strategy and play them as if they were normal multitable tournaments.  They just don’t get the concept that first place is the same as the last qualifying position.  Tonight was a very hairy tournament for me, and I had to do some wacky things like open-folding both QQ and KK in the late stages, but in the end I won my seat. 

Hopefully the momentum carries forward.  Big prize pool tomorrow.  That’s all for now.