...I spent the next couple of days acclimatising (god I love the sun and the heat, why am I so white?) and re-adjusting the body clock to be wide awake at high noon Vegas time, with all the grey matter buzzing at full speed. So I also played a couple of the warm-up tourneys to get my eye in.

In addition to the recession, Jack had managed to cock up the schedule with too many re-buy fests and the numbers were desperately down on expectations. I was playing in tourneys with 60 or 70 runners that would have had 600 or 700 runners only a couple of years back... and much of the field appeared European to boot. There were probably more Irish, French and English than Yanks. Erm, not to mention the two Welshmen. One of whom won one of the $1000 NLH comps. Unfortunately for me, it was Iwan Jones.

However, I wasn’t having that bad a time of it. Conspiracy theorists alert! Whilst logged in on a Bellagio IP address I just ran like god online. My negative EV of -12k turned around to +5k whilst on a 30k upswing. In English that means although I won playing well, I was also very lucky. As opposed to the opposite run in sunny concrete jungle Brum back in Blighty. Strange but true. Even stranger is that my EV has now returned to -12k upon my return home. It was fun while it lasted though and put me in a positive mood for the big one.

I had a strong starting table on Day 1 with Prahlad Friedman, Martin De Knijff and a group of the latest internet whiz kids. A couple were ranked 1st and 2nd on some online list somewhere. Neverthelss I was reasonably happy as I have different opinions to The Coach on how good the latest generation of whiz kids are in the live environment.

Over dinner at the end of play, Keith enthused as to how one of ‘them’ had milked him on every street including a nice river value bet with Queens when he had Jacks. Personally I think I, or say Mickey Wernick, could have made exactly the same river bet. Not because we had Queens and he ‘knew’ Keith had Jacks on a 10 high board, but because it is a good bet against most hands. It’ll get called by some weaker ones, it won’t get raised by many stronger hands, and it probably drastically reduces the likelihood of losing the pot to a ‘bluff’. I’d call it an all-round good stopper bet. Keith calls it a brilliant Internet whiz kid read, incredibly thin maximum value, value-bet. Bored yet? Nuff said.

The point is, the kids didn’t appear to be any sort of special problem in my eyes. In fact Prahlad was table chip leader at the end of the day and he is closer to us than ‘them’. Having said all that, I ended the day with fewer chips than I started with. Doh.

With a Day 1 deepstack (100k starting chips) you don’t make your money from a measly one pair like Aces or Kings. You need to hit a few flops and find someone to pay you off. Unfortunately I didn’t. I saw about 20 flops with small pairs without once making a set on a plethora of Ace High boards.

I made a nut flush against Martin De Knijff when he held a lower flush; however the river brought a fourth heart that killed my action. He passed his hand with a look of utter disgust; “How unlucky had he been with that fourth heart giving me a higher flush?” I so wanted to tell him quite the contrary my dear chap, that fourth heart saved you 30k. I already had it. But I patiently held my tongue.

My Day 2 table was altogether different and my hand holding improved as well. I was sat next to the effervescent David Benyamine who spent the first four hours text flirting with seven or eight of his girlfriends. Overnight he was one of the chip leaders, so I guess he felt there was no need to get involved.  In between chatting about the old days at The Aviation Club in Paris he casually mentioned he had lost the odd 14 mill online over the last couple of years. No problem though, he was winning well live... where did I miss this boat?

Mr Benyamine went on several days later to make the Final Table of this event along with another of my Day 2 opponents, David Williams. The Williams boy went slightly better than making the final table, as he actually won the whole schamoodle. Strangely though, he hadn’t even turned up for Day 1! For this event, the policy is that buy-ins don’t close until the end of level 2 on Day 2. Believe it or not 20% of the field didn’t buy in until Day 2. It didn’t do David Williams any harm! He was to prove my nemesis. He was ducking and diving, messing about, floating and stealing all over the place. However, the twice I tangled with him, he had me by the short & curlies. The most expensive blow came when my pocket Kings made a set on the turn, but were behind to David’s flopped nut flush. I couldn’t find a pair-up on the river and I was left on life-support.

Just before the end of the day my adjacent French Friend finally put me to the guillotine in a typical blinds on blind skirmish (It’s not what you’re thinking!), and I was left to support Withnail and The Coach and worry about the volcanic ash clouds and getting home... Did I really want to come home though?

DC