Look at that crazy bastard...

Saturday: played another $1500 side event. Decent start with three interesting hands before the break.

Hand 1: Not having won a pot, I'm down to 2300 with 54 in the sb. After two limpers and with a passive big blind I decide to complete. Flop TT9 and it's checked around. Turn is a 9 and I decide it's a decent bluff spot with there being a high likeliohood nobody has anything so I lead out. Folded to the button who calls. The dealer however seems to have forgotten he's in the hand and goes to spread the cards. The button, an Asian guy who seems dreadful, starts to freak out. The dealer reassembles the deck and tries to reassure the player that there's no harm done and he'll deal the river, but the player is having none of it, obsessing over the deck being shuffled so the same card won't hit the river. This leads me to suspect he's on a straight draw so I decide to pot any river blank. I do so, and he folds continuing to complain loudly.

Hand 2: I'm in the BB with 53o in an unraised 5 way pot to see an A53 rainbow flop. I decide to go for a check raise but it gets checked around. The turn brings another 5, the Asian in the SB leads for half pot, I not much than min raise, everyone goes away but him. He checks the river and I don't think he has much so I make it cheap with a half pot bet, which he calls.

Hand 3: Two hands later, I'm on the button and it's the last hand before the break. Three limpers and I raise to 3 bigs (300) on the button with AKs. The tightest player on the table makes it 900 (quarter of his stack) in the small blind. Everyone folds to me while I have a think. I know he has a hand, most likely a decent pair. Flatting at this effective stack is not good, and folding isn't appealling either, so that just leaves the ship. Now it's his turn to tank and after 5 minutes and half the break in there, he folds QQ face up.

After the break, I was priced into calling a shortie shove in the BB with AJs. He had 99 and I lost the race. Same guy won another race against me (this time I had the pair) and now I'm short. With 3300 and blinds and antes 150/300/25, there wasn't much time to hang around and I went for a marginal squeeze in the BB with 66 after MP raiser made it 800 and two guys called in late position. With the amount in the middle matching my stack, I pushed hoping for a race, but the first guy had KK. Flop was about as good as it gets without a 6, 457 all clubs (I had a club, he didn't) but I managed to miss all my outs and that was that. Definitely a marginal squeeze and in other cases I might just fold. Particularly without antes but with a cost per round of 550 I was going to have to push in the next orbit anyway.

Hung out with Nicky Power for the evening. He told me he'd been in a taxi the previous day when the can driver said "Look at that crazy bastard running in the heat" and yup, it was yours truly. My unusual physiological tolerance for heat has been reenforced since I got here: one day I went running at 3 in the afternoon and arrived back to see the TV advising people that with temperatures at 112F, to be very careful if they had to go outdoors. I hadn't even noticed it being particularly hot.

Chatted with Nicky about how when you're in Vegas, the rest of the world just seems to stop existing. This city is designed to let nothing distract you or come between you and the job of extracting all your money, and has already claimed a few Irish victims who have done stuff they'd never do elsewhere.

I decided to take Sunday off from the live grind and played online instead. I won about a grand so felt good about that. Afterwards I went to the Rio and played two STTs (chopping one for a profit of $700) and reg for today's side event, which sold out shortly after I regged.

Played that today and last all of ten minutes until I got it in with top 2 against bottom set and didn't improve. Came vack and potted online for a while. Tried some PLO for a change (not my specialisation to say the least) but finished about 1K up so that was good.

Congratulations to Albert Kenny who made the third last table of Saturday's event.

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