I don’t even understand how, but I’ve been super busy the past few weeks. I just have 100 little things to do every day that seemingly come out of nowhere and/or never go away. I’ve been using the fact that my site has not been finished as an excuse to not write blogs, but I’m not going to do that anymore. I’M GOING TO WRITE MORE BLOGS IN 2008. I PROMISE.

Ok, so on the 4th I flew to the Bahamas which is one of my favorite (if not my #1 favorite) tournament spots of the year. The Atlantis is amazing. The food is amazing. PokerStars always does a great job of running the tournament. I think it has both the record for largest WPT (did commerce break that record?) and largest EPT, and of course, it’s great to meet all the up and coming 18-20 year old poker players that can’t play in the states yet.

My starting table in the main event was super tough. I honestly think Tom Mcevoy was the weakest player at the table. It featured myself, Lee Markholt, David Redlin, Tom, and John Myung (who I have come to respect a lot as a tourney player – he is always super tough to play against). Along with the 5 pros, we had four internet players, and I swear, every one of them was a solid tight aggressive player. There was very little limping, no minraises or raises larger than 3.5x, no crazy bluffs, and very few showdowns. I hated it. It must have been the toughest starting table in the entire field. We didn’t have a single bad player.

The tournament itself went almost as badly as my table draw. I ran kings into aces during the first orbit of the tournament. I lost about 7k of my starting 20k stack that hand. Later I doubled up a semi-short stacked Lee Markholt when he rivered a flush against my flush draw. I grinded a short stack for a couple of hours. I finally busted when a good internet player raised the button, and I moved all-in from the small blind with KQ and a stack of 13 big blinds: a very standard play. He had AK.

There were over 20 magic players in the Bahamas, so naturally we set up a bunch of drafts. I started off 3-0 in team drafts, before we found some big money opponents. I started off 0-2 when the real money drafts started, but rallied back with another 3-0. I probably ended up only a couple thousand despite having gone 6-2 in team drafts.

I only played one cash game session. Lost a quick 10k at 50/100 when I semi-bluffed all-in on the flop. I had 10 outs twice, but didn’t hit. Other than that, I only played one other day of poker.

On the day of the 3k tourney, I was registered for both that and the battleship, because I couldn’t turn down a chance to multi-table live. I started off well in the 3k. There was either a 3-bet or a 4-bet pot, where I had AK and my opponent had AQ. Somehow he stacked off to me on an A high flop. Ship the free money. After that, I had a run in with ADZ124. He is known as being a very successful high stakes online player with a very tight style. Oddly enough, he is a super aggro tilt monkey when he plays live. I played some cash with him in Canada and never saw a “good player” tilt off so many chips in my life. At 100/200, he opened for 550 in either the HJ or the CO. I was in the BB with AK and I reraised to 1600. He made a big reraise to somewhere in the 5400 region, and I shoved all-in for a little over 20k (starting stack in the tourney was 10k). He had me covered and thought about it for about a minute before calling with QQ. He won the race, and I was out.

The good news was this meant I could play the battleship without any distractions. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the battleship is a $2,000 heads up tournament that got 64 players. The catch is that it’s played on PokerStars. They setup laptops so that you are face to face with your opponent. It’s a neat way of adding physical tells to online play.

My opponent was a very aggressive Swedish kid. He was slightly too tight, and extremely too aggressive though. When I raised the button, he would rarely just call from the BB. He would either reraise or fold the vast majority of the time. Against a good player, this is a huge mistake heads up. After a short while, I adjusted by minraising every button, and it took him too long to adjust properly. He didn’t start calling until the very end.

There was one key hand early on. I raised the button, and he reraised KJo, and I called with something like T9. The flop came KTx. The flop went check/check. He check called a small bet from me on the turn, and the river went check/check. I think it was a huge mistake for him to let me lose so little on that hand.

I rebuilt up to a chiplead with some small ball poker, and got KK all-in vs QJ on the J9x flop. He runner runnered a straight to cripple me. I had about one twentieth of a starting stack at one point, and doubled up 4 or 5 times, but by that time the blinds were huge, and I lost what I had rebuilt in an unavoidable 60/40.

Forgetting poker, the whole trip was awesome. I was on PokerRoad radio with Daniel Negreanu, Joe Sebok, and Bart Hanson. We discussed some interesting game theory concepts, although I wish we would have gone more in depth. I guess the show isn’t really geared towards that type of audience.

My highlight of the trip was probably swimming with the dolphins. I went with a new friend that I met down there. If you’ve never swam with dolphins before, I highly recommend it. They are just so cute, warm, and playful. At one point I put a boogie board under my chest, and stuck my legs out. The trainer blew a whistle, and then two dolphins swamp up and pushed my feet with their noses, and then swam full speed – and those things swim FAST. It only lasted for a few seconds, but it was hella cool. It wasn’t hard to keep balance, despite how fast I was going. It was awesome.

Of course they did other typical dolphin stuff. Jumping, and flapping, and dolphin kisses and hugs. All that jazz. It really was cool.

I skipped Tunica, because, well… honestly… who really wants to go to Tunica?

Next is Borgata which I always love. The hotel is great, the food is great, and the tournament structures are great. They literally have the best structures of any of the sites that host WPT events.