One for the road

Since sleep is an over-rated vice, I will squeeze in a quick post before I head to bed. There are already lots of stories coming out of vegas regarding the first 10 days of tournaments. One of the more interesting ones is that Phil Ivey won another bracelet in the 2-7 no-limit low ball event. The prize was 96k, which is small for a wsop event, but there were only 147 entries at a mere $2,500. The kicker is that every year Phil makes a lot of prop bets on whether he will win a bracelet and other milestones, and the rumor is that his side bets won him an addition 5 to 10 million dollars in action. Of course some of those bets will not be paid until the end of the series since the other bettors can tie if they win a bracelet, etc.

For me, there will be a lot of playing choices. In addition to the wsop events, there are events at Caesars, the Venetian, Golden Nugget and Binions. And that doesn't inlcude the normal daily tournaments at Bellagio, Wynn, etc. The Venetian events are quickly becoming the second tournament of choice and are drawing decent crowds of 500 to 800 players or so, depending on the buy-in. Plus they are deep(ish) stack structures, with the added qualifier that this year instead of starting at 25/50 blinds, they start at 50/100. So is that like getting half as many chips as last year? Not exactly, since they added a 75/150 level, so level four is still 100/200 with a 25 ante, you just get there a different way. This might actually work out better, since you can start winning some chips right away. Now if they can only get everyone to show up on time, so there is a full table! At 25/50, playing short handed with sometimes as little as four players can be a little 'high variance', but it's still hard to lose a lot.

As popular as the Venetian tournaments are, they are still mostly no-limit hold em events. The Golden Nugget went to the other extreme and are offering low buy-in events in PLO (high), Omaha 8, Stud, Stud 8, etc. with a couple of no-limit events thrown in. Binions offering is something in between, while Caesar's event mix is similar to the Venetian, but the starting stacks are 18K instead of 15K chips, though I'm not sure what the starting blinds are... possibly 200/400, lol. Hopefully a phone call with solve the mystery.

Since Tuesday's Venetian schedule is a shootout event and the wsop is a pricey HORSE event, my game plan for starting out will be either a low priced game downtown at the Nugget, or a more expensive one at Caesars. One bonus for the Nugget, is if I bust out early, the cash games are pretty soft there, and they have a 1/2 no max buy-in format. Plan B, would be to play cash games, where I have a better shot at actually winning something. As juicy as the payoff Phil Ivey collected, I will go easy on you by not betting that I will win something while I'm there...