So, I’m writing this on the plane on Monday afternoon, even though I’m supposed to be at my desk at my office right now. Air Canada cancelled my red-eye last night so I spent an extra night in Vegas, got up early this morning at the crack of ass to get to the airport for my morning flight which was then delayed some more which was a big fat drag. But we’re in the air now so the only way I can get delayed at this point is if the plane flies into a… well let’s not go there.

Air Canada, amiright?

So, where were we? Were we at four tournaments with no cashes, no day twos, no luck? I think that’s where we were.

So, on Saturday morning I decided to take one more crack at the $500 Mystery Bounty tournament at The MGM. This was day 1E, the last possible heat to progress to Day 2 on Sunday and have a crack at some of those big bounties!

For the uninitiated let me quickly explain the ins and outs of a Mystery Bounty Tournament. The way it works is that a significant portion of the prize money goes into a “bounty pool”. Now, if you make it to Day 2 of the tournament, you will now receive a cash prize, also known as a “bounty” every time you actually knock someone out from the tournament.

When you knock a player out, you literally get to select an envelope and in that envelope is a random prize. In this particular tournament, that bounty could be anywhere up to $25,000. And that’s in addition to whatever money you might make by finishing in the top 10% of players in the tournament.

It’s a fun little twist that’s become quite popular amongst tournament organizers.  It’s still a poker tournament with just a soupcon of “game show action”.

Anyway, I was doing great. Finally, I was getting some cards. Finally, I was hitting some flops. Finally, some of my bluffs were working. Several levels into the tourney, I’d worked up a healthy 125K stack (from a starting stack of 30K. The average at that point was probably about 70K.

I look down at AA in the Big Blind, I think only the second time I’d seen those beautiful mountain tops all weekend.

The biggest stack at the table, in fact the only stack bigger than mine, raised from middle position and got two callers on the way to me. I three-bet of course, the original raiser called my re-raise and the two callers folded their cards.  

So far so good. The two biggest stacks at the table squaring off and I’ve got the best hand poker has to offer.

The flop came Q74 all different suits which is about as innocuous as a flop can get.

So far so great. That’s the flop you want to see in my situation.

He bet out, I went all in, he immediately called. I triumphantly throw over AA and he throws over QQ.

And I’m out.

Sometimes it just ain’t your weekend.

I’d had enough of poker by that point. I know when to quit.

I spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with my buddy and poker partner, Domenic Scalamogna. We had a few staggeringly delicious meals, one at my favorite Vegas restaurant, PIERO’S off the strip, and one at his fave, MON AMI GABI right at our own Hotel Paris.

Played some blackjack at some really fun tables at Treasure Island, got a little inebriated, and won a little bit of money back to put a small dent in my losses for the weekend. OK, maybe more of a surface scratch than a small dent, but whatever.

And that’s that. Sometimes, no matter how good you are (or think you are), no matter how well you play, you just run bad. You can’t win ‘em all. Every poker player and road-kill squirrel knows that.

Unlike the poor squirrel though, we will live to chew on the electrical wires again.

Addendum.

Oh, and Dominic finished 29^th out of 400 or so in a $2500 tourney at The Venetian which he’d actually satellited into for a mere $300. He took home $6600. Impressive player, that Dominic.