The Caesar's 1k

There is a lot of good news to report. The players here are fairly weak overall. I only recognized two faces in the poker room today - Captain Tom Franklin and a surprise appearance from Allen Kessler. The structures are quite good - hour long levels starting with 25-25 blinds. The venue is pretty decent and the hotel is nice. The surrounding countryside is surprisingly beautiful.

Today was the $1000 NL, contrary to Cardplayer's reports that it was a $100 + $60 event. In the second level, 25-50, I made a very weak play despite yesterday's vows. After the cutoff limped I made it 225 with AK and the small blind made in 700. The limper folded and I had to decide what to do. We both had around our starting stacks of 2500. This was the first preflop reraise anyone had made at our table in 80 minutes and this particular fellow had been one of the tighter players at the table. However, I think it's almost an automatic push for me in this spot. This was the third time I had raised limpers in late position (the first two with crap that was not shown down) so if he had been paying attention this was the perfect time to make a play. In the end I took the weakest possible course of action - calling, missing the flop, and folding.

Shortly after that I took out an idiot with AA against his AQs to get back above the starting count. I had 3400 at the break when we moved to 50-100 blinds. The first hand back it was folded to the maniac in the small blind who raised my big blind to 300. In the big blind with pocket fives I elected to reraise to 900. Often my play here is to just call but this time I decided to reraise. The small blind was the type who would bet the flop almost 100% of the time after raising preflop and I did not want to play a guessing game with my fives. He quickly called which made me confident he had a solid but unspectacular hand. The flop came 642 rainbow and he quickly pushed in, having me well covered. I now had to decide if this guy was nutty enough to have 33, 45s, 78, A4, A5, etc, in this spot. Ultimately I decided there was a chance he might have a hand like that and I called. He had pocket eights, the board bricked, and I went out to the boat deck to read Ender's Game. PiMaster, after taking a couple silly beats, followed soon after.

The Gambler and Dan the Jew made a surprise drive up here this evening. Tomorrow is the 1.5k NL and also a chance to check out Louisville in the evening.