I depart for Las Vegas tomorrow.  I’m feeling quite dispassionate about this trip; going out there for the first time in seven months arouses nothing in the way of excitement.

The purpose of this trip is to enjoy the possible fruits of the grand return of the direct-online-satellite entry tournament to the poker scene.  It arrives in the form of Pokerstars’ newly minted NAPT, which debuts at The Venetian on Saturday.  ‘Stars has located a handful of US-based entities who are less squeamish about them than Harrah’s Inc. and taken the bold step of forming a tournament tour in the States that will compete with the WSOP and WPT.  This means attendance that will be heavily fortified by players who have won non-transferable seats online, theoretically creating a larger, softer 5k than is typical in the post-UIGEA/post-recession poker world.  My attempts at winning a seat online were laughably futile, so I will either win a live satellite or peel the five dimes.  I’m a baller like that.

I have less than zero interest in experiencing the Vegas-y side of Vegas right now.  On this trip there will be no gluttonous steak dinner, no limo rides, no Spearmint Rhino, no Drai’s and no wandering about the Strip in goofy blue sunglasses at 6:30 am.  I will probably spend nearly all of my time away from the poker table alone.  I’ve purposely selected The Orleans as my home away from home for this trip.  A relatively sleepy casino hotel that caters mostly to locals, The Orleans is located a couple of miles from the strip, on a stretch of road populated mostly by strip malls, gas stations and fast food joints.  (It’s also a testament to my abstinence from pit gaming:  it’s the last casino from which I can still wrangle a comped room).

My itinerary, roughly, is:

1.  fly in

2.  rent a car

3.  set up shop at the Orleans

4.  report for work at the Venetian poker room every day

5.  profit

If the NAPT event goes poorly, I may hop in my rental car and drive to LA to make my LAPC debut.  I’ve never done the fabled LA/Vegas desert drive.  It will give me the opportunity to see Barstow in February, which I hear is quite lovely!  It will either be very Fear & Loathing or it will be something more dull and lonely.  If I were a betting man I’d put a few bucks on the latter.  As it turns out, I’ll be lacking the insane cohort and the trunk full of exotic drugs on this journey.  Yes, definitely the latter.

I’m not sure how many more of these trips I have in me.  This could be the last cross-country sojourn for awhile (until the WSOP at least), but we’ll see what kind of tune I’m singing in a couple of weeks.  A score of some kind would be welcome.

My 2010 Borgata Winter Open Main Event was a disaster.  That may sound like a harsh assessment but unfortunately it’s true.

My first misstep was innocent enough.  This past Sunday was one of the biggest online tournament days in a long time.  Apparently Pokerstars ran a two million dollar guarantee, Ultimate Bet ran the main event of some big series, and all the Full Tilt guarantees were doubled.  So when faced with the decision of playing the Borgata Main on Sunday (Day 1a) or Monday (Day 1b), I chose Sunday.  I envisioned an army of online pros sequestered in their hotel rooms dumping thousands of dollars in online buy ins and I aimed to avoid them in the real world.

When I took my seat at Table #1 I was in for an unpleasant surprise.  There were two excellent high stakes live cash game players there along with a LeggoPoker instructor who crushes online heads up cash games.  There were also a few other competent pros in our midst.  I was the fourth best player at the table at best. So much for my crafty plan of matching myself up with donkeys.  I’m fully capable of holding my own against tough players, but by the middle of level two I had managed to destroy that possibility.

I played a hand atrociously at the 50-100 level.  I’m not ready to discuss this hand in detail, but the despicable fact that I lied about my hole cards when recounting this hand to a couple of people tells me all I need to know.  The long and short of it is that I made an absolutely hopeless call on the river, giving away three streets of nearly pot-sized bets to a strong player who was obviously value betting every street.  A nitty player would have folded the turn, and any sane/observant person would have snap-folded the river (and a true baller would have check-shove bluffed the river).  So what did I do?  I called him down the whole way.  I’m very disappointed with how I handled this hand and it will probably haunt me for awhile.  I had not made a blatant, stupid, “WTF was that?” type of mistake in quite a long time.  I saved my first one in awhile for the biggest tournament of new year.  Oops.

In closing, I’d like to announce that I now have a new leak in my game:  I’m a calling station.  Making correct hero calls is so goddamned exhilarating that I can no longer restrain myself, even in big spots early in a $3500 Main Event where any moron can see that I’m beat.  I just hate folding, and it’s gotten out of hand.

Possessing this particular leak is an amusing development because my progress as a tournament player has closely tracked my de-nittification; my ability to sniff out bluffs and make big calldowns has served me well over the years.  I’ve undressed a lot of clowns in my day.  But now I’ve gone a bit overboard.  I’m a total station!  At least I’m capable of diagnosing the disease.

Good luck to my friends who are still alive in the BWO Main Event.

My next live tournament action will be at a dog track in Fort Myers!