A Report from Vegas

Well, I just got back from Vegas where I enjoyed a healthy dose of humble pie. The tally: 5 no limit texas holdem tournaments played, 1 final table reached, 0 cashes. All of the tourneys were $65 buy-ins (I know, I know, big spender huh?), one had a $40 rebuy. I played poorly in the first one, got progressively better until my last tournament, a 10 pm, no rebuy event on Sunday night at Treasure Island, where I finished 6th out of 37, with the top 4 places paying. Heartbreaker.

Anyway, I learned a lot over the weekend in Vegas. Most notably that in low buy-in tourneys, you can't bluff because people call with anything and vastly overvalue their hands. So play tight, play patient, and you will likely survive. I had to rush to get Harrington on Hold 'Em Vol. II finished but it was mighty valuable because it got me thinking about M. M is the amount of your chips divided by the total of antes and blinds currently in force. This tells you how many orbits of the table you can survive before being blinded off. Harrington impressed on me that you have to make moves even if your M seems decent. In other words, it's always later than you think.

As you might guess, I'm itching to play another tournament. Have to think about a trip soon to AC. If nothing else, Vegas whetted my desire to get better at NLH.