Not surprisingly, the last blog I wrote started a little controversy.

First I want to apologize to anyone that feels I was categorizing Vietnamese players. Perhaps I should have come up with a different name for the player I labeled VP (Vietnamese Player), but I was not trying to infer anything with that comment.

I only meant to speak out against one person, and have nothing against Vietnamese players, nor do I have any reason to believe that on average they are any less ethical than any other ethnicity.

A very well respected Vietnamese player approached me today telling me that my comments seem to categorize all Vietnamese people. If you read my blog that way, I apologize. I have absolutely nothing against Vietnamese people.

I really don’t want to spend much time on this issue, so I’ll just say one other thing. Some people have criticized me for speculating, but I really don’t think I’m doing much speculating. I wrote about what I observed first hand. I could have written about the seven or eight stories I have heard of people observing him cheating or palming chips first hand, but I prefer to only speak about what I know to be true.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, I can talk about topics that don’t infuriate me!

I was planning on playing the $2,000 event at Bay101, but procrastinated and it sold out before I booked a seat. I flew in on Sunday and bought into the main.

I have a very rocky day 1. We started with 20,000 chips, and a few small pots along with a king high flush brought me to 32k early on.

I found myself with 43 against Eric “Rizen” Lynch on the Q663 board facing a turn bet of 4k. Eric called UTG raise from UTG+1 preflop, so I thought him having a bare 6 in his hand was unlikely. 66 and 33 each had only one possible combination (since 2 6’s and 2 3’s were accounted for between the board and my hand), so I thought Eric’s most likely holdings were 1 pair (well technically 2 pair since the board was paired) or a draw (there was a flush draw on the flop). I decided my fold equity was high enough, so I check raised to 11k. Unfortunately, Eric had the one hand that I was really worried about – QQ for queen’s full.

That and a couple of unfortunate smaller hands brought me down to just below 6k. I had 90 minute stretch where I made 3 sets. Even though I didn’t double up with any of those hands, I found myself at 60k at the end of that stretch.

At the end of the night, I ran KQ into QQ on the KQ5 flop, and that brought me down to 38,400 at the end of day 1.

I had a day off for day 1b, and spent it taking care of some things that were long overdue, including an article for Bluff. I also tried Chipotle for my first time ever (welcome to 1998… I know), and it was pretty good!

Today was a very interesting day. My starting table didn’t include a single player with an above average stack. I had Cindy Violette to my left (bounty), Huck Seed to my right (not a bounty) and Michael Binger three to my right (not a bounty).

I started off playing a ton of hands, calling raises and opening to 2700 at 500/1,000 and quickly discovered that my table was really aggressive. It wasn’t particularly loose, but there was more than the expected amount of reraising, and a few huge all-in overbets into small pots.

In this spot, I have two choices. I can play tighter, or raise to a smaller amount. This table didn’t have very good players, so I started playing around with a few limps and smaller raises to 2,200. It started off well. A couple of guys were actually folding their big blinds to this raise, despite their insane pot odds that should commit them to call with any two cards. One guy moved all-in with a 50k stack (I had about 40k at the time) after I open limped the button. I managed to pick up AKs twice, and QQ once, but sadly got no action on those hands.

On my final hand, I raised 65s preflop and got 3 callers (sometimes you get into really fun pots when you make small raises constantly). The flop came T93 also giving me a flush draw. The big blind led out for 2k, so I pushed all-in for what was about a pot sized reraise. He tanked and called me with T6, and his top pair held up.

I feel like a good live pro in my spot would have gotten this guy to fold. He held his hand out to muck to gauge a reaction from me and then started talking about his hand, telling me he had top pair (one of those things that’s not allowed, but never enforced), almost as if he was looking for an excuse to fold.

I kept the same stone-cold demeanor I usually have at the table, which was probably a mistake. I could have said something like, “If you haven’t called yet, your kicker must be worse than mine” and gotten a fold. I personally hate talking at the table. Usually I’m in “super-focus” made paying attention to everything going on at the table, and I feel that striking up a conversation only distracts me. I’m not a big fan of small talk anyway, so I make it a general point to stay away from table talk. I know this isn’t a case of chit-chat, but was a case of someone trying to talk about a hand in progress. I just feel like a scum bag if I’m trying to lie to a guy to get him to make the wrong move. It’s especially bad since at the start of most tournaments, the floor man says, “You are not allowed to talk to try to discourage or encourage action” or “You may not talk about a hand in progress”. There’s really nothing vague about these rules. I just wished they wouldn’t make them rules if they were meant to never be enforced. I don’t think it’s ethically wrong for table talk to go on since it’s generally accepted as ok (in spite of the rules), but it’s something I would prefer to not do myself.

Anyway, so I busted that hand, got back to my hotel room at 12:30, saw there was a flight leaving for Vegas at 1:50. I packed as fast as I could and made it to the airport in time to buy a ticket.

Melissa Hayden was at the counter with Allen Cunningham when I got there, and she invited me to sit with them on the plane. We had some good chats, but I must say I was very happy when Allen asked me, “Do you know who Ray Kurzweil is?” I’m a HUGE Ray Kurzweil fan. I’ve written several blogs about his books and how they relate to futurism and the charity I endorse – www.sens.org. I don’t really have time to get into all this stuff, but I just thought it was really cool that Allen was familiar with this “world” since it’s far from mainstream (despite having overwhelming scientific evidence).

So now I’m in Vegas for the Wynn tournaments. Tomorrow is a 2k, followed by a 3k, and the 10k main event is on Sunday. Melissa invited me out to Naked Fish with Allen and JDN (famous for forwarding the Howard Lederer “he’s a freak and a weird dude” email to Gobboboy), so I’m looking forward to that.

I’m gonna end this blog now, because my room service is here. I haven’t eaten all day, so I’m gonna eat this huge meal despite having dinner plans in 2 and a half hours. I have a fast metabolism, so I’ll probably still be able to out eat the table at dinner tonight.