Lucky in Las Vegas

We've been in Vegas for almost two weeks, and I've been quite disappointed in the quality and quantity of bloggable material since our arrival.
Sure, there have been plenty of people acting like idiots, but none doing anything rising to the level of blog-worthiness.
So instead of writing about the kinds of things I really enjoy writing about, I'll just fill you in on something pretty cool that just happened to me.

I really don't like poker tournaments. I play cash games almost exclusively. Last year, I played one World Series of Poker tournament, and maybe one or two other tournaments the entire year.
I came to Vegas this year with the same plan -- to grind the cash games and maybe play one tournament if I was doing well in the cash games.
I did quite well in my first week here, and a couple of my buddies who are sharing the house with us wanted to play a tournament on Thursday at the Venetian. The Venetian is holding a series of tournaments to compete with the World Series of Poker. They are cheaper buy-in tournaments than the WSOP but they are run very well and have become very popular.
Due to a couple of unforseen events, we only had one car to share between my family and the guys who are sharing our house. I wasn't really amped to play the tournament, but I figured I'd enter it with those guys so we could all ride together and then I'd play cash games after I inevitably busted out of the tournament.
I've always preferred the cash games, where you can start and quit whenever you want, and if you play well you almost always win. In tournaments, they make you start playing at noon(!!!!), grind 14 hours a day, eat dinner when they tell you to, and you can play perfect and get knocked out on one hand. Only 10 percent of the entrants get paid, and only the top one percent make a significant return on their investment. Why would people put themselves through that??? The upside is that you can win 150 times what you invested if you make it all the way to the end, which you certainly can't do in cash games.
It's been five or six years since I cashed in a tournament. Granted, I've only played three to five a year during that span, but I've cashed in nary a one. I'll be the first to admit that my attitude about tournaments hasn't been very good, but whenever I've entered one I've always tried my best. I almost always make a decent run in them, but get knocked out with 10 to 30 percent of the field remaining, just before you make the money.
My friends that like tournaments always tell me the same thing. "Just wait til you score big in one of them. Then you'll love them for the rest of your life."
Well, I scored big in one the other day.

The tourney my friends and I entered was a $350 buy-in at the Venetian. There were 910 people in it and we started at Noon on Thursday. My buddy Travis got knocked out within the first couple of hours and went to play the cash games. 
I made it to the dinner break with a pretty average stack. My buddy Jason had a few more chips than I did. Travis was up $2500 in his cash game, and we all went to eat together.
My anti-tournament side was already a little irritated about what was going on. "I'm going to play for two whole days, beat 95 percent of this field and make less than Travis is going to make in the cash game," I said. "Tournaments are so stupid."
We resumed play and a few hours later we were close to the money bubble. The tournament paid 90 people, and Jason got knocked out with about 150 people remaining. Again, my anti-tournament side was not happy. "Jason just played really well for nine hours and he gets absolutely nothing. And he didn't even do anything wrong. He went all in with a premium hand (Ace-King), got called by a premium hand (a pair of Jacks), and lost what amounts to a coin flip (each player had about a 50 percent chance to win.) Tournaments are so stupid."
Luckily, I got a couple of premium hands and was able to win big pots without having to flip a coin. I had KK vs AK, and AA vs KK. That's just a different kind of luck. My opponents had premium hands but I had them dominated, with about an 80 percent chance to win each hand. Had I ever gotten KK vs AA, I would have been busted too. But as it was, my big hands held up and I coasted into the money for the first time since 2006 or so.
We played until 2:30 a.m., when the field was down to 47 players. We were in the money, but a long way from the significant money. I was pretty excited to have a shot at a big score, but my anti-tournament side would not have been happy if I made an early exit from Day 2 and made less than I would have playing cash games.
I didn't sleep much that night, and I got up early to have lunch and some ice cream with Missy and Addison. That was a lot of fun :)
Then it was back to the Venetian, where they handed out a chip count sheet showing that I was 11th in chips out of the 47. I won a couple of decent pots early on, but then I went pretty card dead and basically folded my way to the final table while other players made silly mistakes or got unlucky to get eliminated.
The final table was 10-handed, and I was eighth in chips at that point.
In most tournaments, by the time you make it to the final table, the blinds are so high that it becomes an all-in fest. This is another one of my biggest gripes about tournaments -- when you get down to the point where there's serious money at stake, there is no real poker play left and it becomes a matter of who can get lucky for thousands of dollars.
But as I mentioned earlier, this tournament was so well run that there was plenty of play left. In fact, nobody was short-stacked enough to be forced to go all-in without a very good hand. After playing for 12 hours on Day 1 and a few hours on Day 2, I didn't want to lose the tournament by bluffing all-in with 5-high.
A couple of people got busted and I lost a pot, making me eighth out of eight in chips. I was in all-in mode for the first time in the tournament, but even then I had enough to wait for a good hand to push with, and enough that my opponents wouldn't want to double me up.
I got lucky to pick up KK and double up, then I flopped a set of sixes and doubled up again. Suddenly I was in decent shape, third in chips with six people left.
Throughout Day 2, I was getting tremendous support from my family and friends, both here in Vegas and back home. Missy and Addie came up to see me for a bit, but unfortunately they couldn't stay long because they won't let anyone under 21 linger in the casino. Jason and Travis were there to root for me and text Missy the updates, and I got lots of encouragement from my other friends. If you were one of them, know that it really meant a lot to me. I was absolutely mentally and physically exhausted, and all the love I got made a huge difference.
We agreed to do some slight tinkering to the payout structure. The original structure called for $56,000 to first place, $33,000 for second, $22,000 for third and $15,000 for fourth. We made it 46 for first, 35 for second, 25 for third and 20 for fourth. The other players wanted to divide all the money up equally and quit playing, but I wanted to keep playing for several reasons. I was having fun, the structure was still great, and I felt I was the best player left. Also, you don't get a good sense of closure when you quit before the end. 
Three more players got busted, and suddenly we were down to three. I say suddenly, but the whole final table took forever. It lasted ten hours, and about half of that came when we were down to four players or less.
There were 11 million chips in play. At three-handed, one guy had about 5.5 million, I had 3.5 million, and the other guy had 2 million.
Surprisingly, I hadn't been in one all-in coin-flip situation the entire tournament. But that's what happened when the short stack moved all in with 99 and I called with Ace-Jack. I couldn't connect, and just like that I was the one on the verge of elimination.
Then I got lucky when the two other guys butted heads and played an all-in pot. The guy who had staved off elimination against me when his 99 won got quite lucky and busted the other player.
Now we're heads-up. He had 10 million, I had 1 million. But I just made $10,000 American dollars when the big stacks battled and I was guaranteed second-place money.
I won a coin flip to get to $2 million, then I kept chipping away at my chip deficit. My opponent was playing far too tight and passive, and I was winning about 75 percent of the pots. At one point, I counted my chips and I had 5.5 million, which meant he had 5.5 million and we were tied.
Unfortunately that's as close as I got to winning. He won a couple of decent-sized pots, and on my final hand I had about 4 million in chips to his 7. My opponent bluffed all-in for about five times the size of the pot, and I decided to call with a straight draw and a flush draw. In fact, I could have made a straight flush, the best hand in poker.
Although my opponent was bluffing, his Jack-high was technically ahead of my 5-high. I had a 62 percent chance of ending up with the best hand, however, so it was a good spot to take a commanding chip lead if I could win. It wasn't meant to be, and I ended up winning $35,000 for second place. Congrats to Alvin, a really nice man from Portugal who won the tournament.
It was after 4 a.m. when we finally finished, and I was absolutely exhausted and brain-dead. We played roughly 27 hours of poker in two days, with about five hours of sleep on the night in between and no dinner break on Day 2. I had to rely on Travis and Jason to make sure they paid me the correct amount and get us a taxi home. I honestly forgot we were in Vegas for a minute and was expecting to go to our home in Oklahoma City.

The $35,000 was truly a blessing from God and by far the most I've ever made in two days of poker. Still, I have to say I'm not any more fond of tournaments than I was before. It was a truly draining experience, and I know I got pretty lucky to make it that far. My personality is definitely more suited to the cash game structure, but at least I'll have a little more confidence now when I do enter a tournament.
I'll probably enter one or two more tournaments out here, but I'm still going to play primarily cash games.

Hopefully a little slice of life will happen soon to allow my blog to go back to its roots. But if not, I guess I'll take another $35,000 payday and write about that instead.