Momentum

A couple days away from the trip and I'm heading to Vegas with some momentum. For a couple years now I've been playing in a game set up tournament style. Last year's trip to Vegas was interesting in that most of the tourney's were set up with the same structure that I was used to in my local game and I did very well- winning the first one I played in and cashing in a couple of others.

So going into this week I've been working on strategies that I think may work. I'll play certain ways against aggressive players and different against very loose players- basic tournament strategies that I wanted to work on.

The results were good. In Saturday night's tournament it took a lucky river card (still had the best hand pre-flop), but I won. Last night's tourney was a bit different. Had a healthy chip stack early, looked down at Aces, with two raisers before me, I move all in and get called by both for all their chips. I had AA- first raiser had KK, and the second caller had KQ offsuit. I was in very good shape until...the case King showed up in the door on the flop. Took a big hit to the stack but caught a boat on the next hand and doubled up and from then on it was pure power poker.

Teri (one of the hosts) and I were heads up at the end- she was the one who beat me with her KK- so it was only fitting. I had a 9-1 chip lead on her. After calling her in the dark the first two hands (I doubled her up twice), we went back and forth for about an hour. I finally won when we both caught a ten high but my kicker was better.

So- going into Vegas I've got two straight tourney wins, the patience is good, and I've been making good reads on other players, so I'm feeling pretty confident.