Happy Belated Friggin' New Year

Yeah, well, things are off to a decent start with the booking of a first place finish in a Stars $12 turbo 180 SNG to the tune of $594. That's the second of these I've won in the past couple of months and it simply begs the question of why I don't play them more often. The answer being, I'm too stoopid to stick with something that appears to be working. Maybe I'll work on that as a goal for 2009.

I also played in the Stars $40K guarantee $3 rebuy, which officially has become an unwieldy monster. There were 5,499 god damn entrants and the prize pool hit $65K. That's thank to the guarantee and the ungodly 90-minute unlimited rebuy period that starts the thing off. I actually cashed and ran fairly deep; if finishing in 311th can be considered deep. This tournament used to be kind of fun and it had decent payouts, but now it's almost intolerable. That, of course, probably means I'll play it at least once a week for a while. I loves me the prospect of some big payout that I'll never see.

In other goal-setting thoughts, I'd like to come up with some goals that are performance related, but not dollar win focused. It strikes me that improving my final table, top three and win percentages as reflected in Pokerdb stats might just fit the bill. That will involve some actual research into what kind of numbers the really good players post, where those are in comparison to my current numbers and what is reasonable for me to achieve, so let's see if I ever get to it. But it's the thought that counts, right? It might also involve Bluff getting the database updated so that you can track the current year, but maybe that's too much to ask.

Tonight

Tonight finds me on the road, which means a decent slate of FTP MTT's is in the offing. I'll start off with the $21K guarantee in about 30 minutes and see where that takes me. It's a Zen sort of approach that almost certainly will lead to some poor bankroll management.

Vegas in February

Yes, folks, I do have a Vegas trip planned for a conference February 8-10. I'll be forced to stay at the Palazzo at the Venetian, so it's a tough gig indeed. I even managed to pull a grand off of FTP (via bank transfer, no less), so there's even a marginal bankroll in hand. The Venetian will be running their deep stacks event and, unfortunately, the noon start times won't work for me. If their nightly tournament is still going off, however, I'd like to play that. If not, a Caesar's tournament side trip probably will be on the agenda. Beyond that, I would like to ring up a fair number of 1/2 NLHE hours at the Venetian and/or at MGM, but I'm open to other suggestions too.

That leads me to two requests/offers. One, any suggestions for where and what to play while I'm there would be greatly appreciated. Two, any bloggers or readers who might like to meet up for poker and/or socialization should post a comment or drop me an email.