What's up everyone,

So like I mentioned in my last blog me and Julie flew down to Portland, Or. for the weekend to visit Two and his girlfriend Esther.  The traveling time was brutal, had to fly to Vancouver, then connect to Portland...all and all its like 10 hours of traveling.  We got there about 6ish on Friday night and were able to settle in and go out for a nice dinner.  We went to this awesome steak house, forget what it was called, but the food was real good.  After dinner we were pretty exhausted so we went to bed early trying to get some sleep for the 1k tourney the next morning. 

The tournament had a 200k guaranteed prize pool but I think they only got like 165 entrants or something like that, so the overlay was pretty good.  We started with 20k in chips and blinds went up very slowly and they didn't skip any levels.  Right from the get go I could see that most of my table sucked, there wasn't even one decent player.  There was only one guy who kinda knew what he was doing but he was tighter than a duck's ass so I wasn't too worried about him.  In the first level I got into an interesting hand with an unknown. Blinds were 25/50 and he raised utg+1 to $150,I flatted with AQ off suit directly to his left and the player on the puck also called.  The flop came down 8,5,2 with two spades.  The original raiser checks, I check, and the puck checks.  Turn is a red Q.  Original raiser checks again, I bet $300, the puck folds, original raiser snap calls.  River brings the Ace of spades, giving me top 2 pair.  Original raiser leads for $200 into a $1050 pot.  I think for a second and make a standard value raise to $1250 looking to get called by a hand like AK or AJ thinking he called my turn bet with Ace high.  As soon as I raise he immediately grabs a bunch of chips and re-raises me to $4850.  I hated life at this point.  He was obviously representing a flush but it just didn't make sense.  I sat there for a while and replayed all the streets in my head and his line and it confused the hell out of me.  When thats the case they are usually bluffing, but my read on him was that he hand a strong hand and he didn't really have a reason to bluff me this early in the tournament so I decided to fold.  When I mucked my hand the idiot dealer fumbled my cards accidentally exposing my hand and the entire table looked at me like I was nuts and had no idea what I was doing.

From that point on I went completely card dead.  I picked up small pots here and there but nothing substantial.  I stayed about average most of the day till I got moved to a crazy table.. It was table Two got eliminated from and on break he told me how nuts it was.  From the first hand I sat down I could see that it was ridiculous.  There was soo much action I knew if I picked up a hand I would build my stack quickly.  Unfortunately I continued to pick up no hands and my stack slowly dwindled.  I honestly couldn't do anything, I was handcuffed with a short stack and could even pick up any blinds because the guys to my left were calling every raise and not folding any c bets.  I somehow managed to stay alive in Day 1 and had to come back the next day with only like 8 big blinds.

I sat down on Day 2 looking to hopefully go on a run and win a few all ins to give myself a shot.  About 20 minutes it was folded to me on the cut off, I look down at and see one Ace so I quickly shove.  The small blinds thinks for a while and shoves over my bet, and the big blind decides to call us both.  SB had AQ and BB had AK.  I slowly sweat my other card to see a stupid 3 having me drawing close to dead.  Two runs over to watch the all-in, the flop comes 10,4,2, immediately he starts shouting out FIVE! FIVE! FIVE!.  The turn is a brick and the river comes a FIVE! We both jump up and start giving each other high fives like Tiger and his caddy after making a putt.  As we were both bumping around like idiots I look over to the dealer and see him pushing the pot to the guy with AQ.... little did we know that guy made the nut flush and we were cheering for no reason.  It was actually pretty funny, we both put our heads down and got the fuck out of there asap.

That pretty much summed up my entire tournament, slow torture.  The worst part about it is that he pretty much took up our entire weekend and we neither of us even came close to cashing.  Not too much you can do, thats how tournament are I guess.

Here's a pic of us in front of the casino before Day 1.

(Two, Esther, Julie, Me)

Aside from the tournament we had a real good time.  We managed to do some pretty sick shopping courtesy of Esther and got to check out the city a bit.  We went to a sick sushi joint on the Sunday night which was awesome. We ordered this roll called 'Death by Sushi' and it was honestly the best tasting sushi I've ever put in my mouth.

All and all it was a great weekend and it was good to catch up with Two and meet his new girlfriend. The trip home was also torturous but luckily Air Canada had good movies playing which made the trip go by pretty quickly.

The rest of the month I'm going to be playing like a machine.  Last month was one I want to forget and no easier way to do that but having a big month in Sept. 

Time to hit the sack and get my sleeping schedule back in order.

Later