Didn’t sleep well, even with sleeping pills. I never sleep well in Vegas. Some say it’s the rarefied air, the pure oxygen they pump into the casinos to keep people at the tables. I think the pillows are too thick. I have to start to be the kind of guy who calls down to housekeeping to demand that they bring me thinner pillows “and make them hypo-allergenic while you’re at it, Godammit!” Then the slippery slope to : “I’ll have the free-range chicken but only if its corn-fed and only if the corn was grown organically and locally or if it absoluetely needs to be trucked in, then only by libertarian truckers using ethanol gas, please.” (Although transporting unsuspecting ears of corn in vehicles that are powered with a corn-based fuel seems kind of insidious, like asking Christians to feed Christians to the lions, or training a cow to be a butcher).

So I was up most of the night thinking about all the things I did wrong yesterday. You know what I came up with? Not much. Of course I know I should be playing aggressively in the proper situations against specific targeted opponents, but at the end of the day you still need some decent cards once in a while so that you can get paid off for that aggressive image you’ve created. Any professional poker player would agree with that. But in over 8 hours and probably more than 200 hands I got AA zero times, KK zero times, QQ once (where I skillfully extracted the maximum amount of chips from my opponent), JJ zero times, TT zero times, 99 zero times, AK zero times, AQ once (suited no less and I had to lay it down to an oversized raise from a meek player who’s bet indicated to me that he absolutely had AK – which he indeed revealed, so I dodged a bullet there), AJ zero times, a smattering of low pairs that I was able to limp in with, none of them hitting the board at all.

Truth be told, I’m lucky (skilled?) to be alive in this tourny at all at this juncture. BUT ALIVE I AM and you never know what could happen. The operative word being could. Like a spider could crawl out of my nose reciting Act I Scene II from The Taming Of The Shrew, or Joey and Henry could perform Rigoletto in Yiddish at the next talent night at Beth Sholom Synagogue, or my kitchen renovation could go smoothly and come in on time and under budget. So actually if you see it from that perspective, the most likely one of those things that could happen is that I make a miracle comeback in this tournament. And listen, we’re not looking for a miracle of biblical proportions here either. This would be more a miracle along the lines of a “Don’t Pay A Cent Event” at Leon’s. How’s that for bein‘ a “glass half full” kinda guy, uh?

In the “glass half empty” department though, if I go out early today, I’ve already sourced out that there’s a $350 double rebuy tournament at The Bellagio (where I have done very well in the past and chopped the main prize last time I played there in March, you may remember) at 2:00 PM with late registration until 3:30. And there’s a $225 buy-in tournament at The Wynn (I won the only tournament I ever played there) at noon with late registration until 1:00 PM. And there’s a $200 buy-in right here at The Venetian which is a Satellite for the next NAPT event at The Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. So you see no matter what, it’s going to be a very busy day. A lot of people would read that last bit and the word “compulsive” would come to mind. I like to think of it as “Enterprising”.

We start at noon. Remember this: Anything can happen. Life is short. Fame is fleeting. Dogs like cheese.