A couple weekends ago I went down to the borgata to play in the borgata open winter main event (3500 buy in). I haven't been to the borgata in a while but I really like their cash games and tournaments. I don't think there is a better place to play poker in the east coast. During their tournament series's, the poker room really comes to life. It's constantly bussling with people, a lot of whom have just busted from a tournament and are most likely steaming. I played 5-10 for a while on satuarday but couldn't really get anything going, and ended up losing a couple thousand. This is always frustrating because the games were really good but I definetly wasn't playing my best.

I decided to play the main event on sunday, as opposed to monday, because I figured the field would be a lot softer. I got an awesome starting table which basically consisted of me, jdags, and a bunch of live fish. Most of the day was pretty uneventful and I chipped up to about 45k from the 30k starting stack. Late in the day, i picked up aces for the first time and raised, getting flatted by a huge fish to my direct left and jdags in the small blind. The flop came ak10 rainbow and jdags checked, I cbet and the fish raised 3x pretty quickly. Jdags flatted out of the small blind which suprised me, and I had a desicion on my hands. I ended up deciding to flat to disguise the strength of my hand. The turn came a wonderful king, and we both checked to the fish who bet again pretty quickly. Jdags folded, and I decided to make a small raise. Agiasn't a better player, I would almost never do this, but I just felt like this guy wasn't folding. He called pretty quickly, and the river bricked. I made another big bet and after a short tank he called, and I won about an 80k ish pot. That pot really put me in a good position, and I ended the day just short of 90k.

I took it easy on monday, and tried not to play too much. I went to the gym and had a good dinner with some friends. I got a good night sleep, and felt refreshed and ready to play in the morning. My table looked very soft, aside from Robert McLaughlin, and Jasin dewitt, who both only had around 30k to start to day. Jason was to my direct left, and early on he raised utg, got flatted by Robert one seat over, and I called out of the bb with 44. The flop came a42 rainbow and it went check check. The turn brought a 10 of diamonds putting a backdoor flush draw out there, and I led, and Jason called. the river was another 4, giving me quads, and i decided to check. Jason bet out about 5600, leaving himself with less than 20k behind, and I thought for a bit and put him in. He ended up calling after a mini tank, and mucking. It was a perfect way to start the day, and it was pretty much smooth sailing from then on. I worked my stack up to around 160k, before my table broke with about an hour of play left in the night.

I was moved to a new table where I proceeded to lose a couple smaller pots, before picking up queens in late position. Someone opened from utg +1 and I three bet pretty small from the cut off. When it came back to him he insta jammed for like 75k total. I never really considered folding, but I did think about it for a little while since his shove represneted more than half of my stack. I ended up calling though, and he had AKs, which I held agians't. I ended the day with 236k, once again almost trippling my starting stack.

After play ended for that night, I was really hungry and went to this asian restruant noodles of the world which I love, but is probably not the best thing to eat late, to get some food. I ate a bunch of stuff and felt kind of funny afterwords. Unfortanetly, I woke up in the morning feeling very nauscious, and went downstairs to get an eggsandwhich before play started. I was unable to eat any of it though, and I felt kind of funny, but it was time to play.

My first table broke very quickly and I got moved to a table with, Jcmousaxx and Adam Wesley on my direct right. There was also this lesbian chic who was probably the chip leader a couple seats to my left. She was doing all kinds of kooky shit and pretty much playing every pot. I ended up picking up some good hands, (AK, qq) and winning some smaller pots with them. I was up to like 260k at my high point, but it all kind of went downhill from there. Jblaze20 was moved to my direct left, along with another aggresive player with a lot of chips to his left. As the day went on I felt like every hand I opened was being flatted, and I was being outplayed after the flop, or turn. I bled down to like 140k as we were on the money bubble.

The bubble broke pretty quickly, and I contuined to slowly lose chips to the blinds and antes. I ended up getting moved to another table and shoving pretty quickly with aks over a preflop raise and losing to q10. It was a frustrating way to go out, especially after doing so well on the first two days. but tournaments are tournaments, and i def didn't play my best on day three. i cashed for 8400 which is really not bad at all.

The next day, I decided to hang around since some of my friends were still there, and I ended up playing some cash. I took a shot at 10-25nl because the game looked soft. I bought in for 4k which is not nearly enough for that game but whatever. It ended up working out really well and I cashed out around 13k. It was very good way to end the trip, and took a lot of the disapointment from the tournament out of my mind. I went back to the city the next day, which is where I am now. Things have been going pretty well online, although I haven't been playing too much. Valentines day is coming up and I am really excited because it will be my one year anniversary of not smoking weed! This is a huuuge accomplishment for me and it will be great to celebrate it with my girlfriend. I am also going to mexico on the 18th with her for a week, which should be a blast. Hopefully I will blog again before then!

-Will