That's It

Well, I’ve come to the end of my second Las Vegas summer as I’ll be heading back east in a few hours.

Apologies for the lack of blogging towards the end of the trip. Frankly, I’ve been really frustrated. I was on one of the worst cold streaks I’ve had, couldn’t seem to win anything, and even got in a big argument with another player (and eventually the floor manager)… yikes. All of that resulted in pretty poor play and (what felt like) a massive amount of money lost.

I actually had quite a nice result tonight in my last small-ditch effort to make up some ground. I played a 135-person $160 tournament at Caesars and ended up making the final table. It was already almost 3am, so the whole group of 9 people wanted to chop. As the 2^nd chip leader, I wasn’t really interested in that, but there was otherwise unanimous agreement, so I went along with the group. I ended up getting $2,150, which was more than 3^rd place money would have been, so it’s hard to complain. On the positive side, I can leave on a high note… on the negative side, that payout doesn’t fill very much of the financial hole I dug myself.

For those who are interested, the final tally: 33 tournaments, 4 cashes totaling just over $10,000 (doesn’t even come close to covering all the buy-ins), actually up a few thousand dollars in cash games, and 42 days of fun (well, they weren’t all great… probably more like 25). I won’t give my exact net loss at poker, but I will say that I was able to keep it to 4 figures – definitely a big disappointment after last year.

Like I said last year, I really hope this isn’t the last time I get to do something like this, but it seems unlikely I’ll ever have this much free time again. I could see myself coming out for a week or two of vacation and poker, but who knows…

I guess it’s about time to pack up and get a couple hours of sleep before heading to the airport. I’ve still got a pretty great summer ahead of me, with 3 weddings, 3 other weekends away, a move to Boston, and the start of my 2 years at MIT, so at least I’ve got a bunch to look forward to!

Hope you all enjoyed another summer of reading about my Vegas adventures, and I hope to see you all soon.