So the plan was to fly from Borgata to go play the WSOP, EPT, and High Rollers events in London, but I decided that I really didn’t want to be away from home for a month. I also discovered that the EPT overlaps with early Festa events, and I really wanted to be in Vegas for that.

I’ve been really busy the last week or so. I went to a Foo Fighters concert that was pretty good (3rd time I’ve seen them). My birthday was on September 30th, so 8 of us went to my favorite restaurant Nobu. I ordered for the table, and ordered a hell of a feast. The bill came out to $3700, and I narrowly escaped the roulette when it came down to me vs. Scott Siever HU. The meal was absurd. No one was disappointed, and two of the eight people said it was the best meal they’ve ever had in their life. I really love going to Nobu and ordering for the whole table! Normally I’m a bit more conservative, but this time I had to get a ton of Japanese Kobe and toro.

Went out drinking a couple of times recently, which is something I don’t do often. I realized that I just hate night clubs and that whole atmosphere (largely due to the fact that I don’t like pop music), but we’ve been drinking at more relaxed places / local spots which is much better.

Festa is in town, and I’m going to *gasp* SKIP TOURNAMENTS! I really think I can play more money, and improve my game a lot more just from sticking to cash. It started yesterday, so I played my first session of 25/50 (that was kicked up to 25/50 w/ a 100 ante on the button). I got outdrawn a couple of times, and was just losing every pot I played (except for like 2 where I bluffed all-in), and was down 17k at one point. At around 3am I staged a late night rally. I stacked one guy for his 13k, and semi-bluffed and got there vs. another guy for 4k, and grinded a little back on top of that to end up with a 2k profit! Winning 2k is normally a “meh… cool I guess” type feeling, but after being down 17k it’s awesome!

Today I’m going over to the Venetian for some rehearsal of their new live audience show that Lizzy Harrison is running. I think Lacey Jones is the host or something. I’m not really sure what the deal is, but it sounds like its poker meets Price is Right. Win prizes, play against the pros… who knows.

On Sunday I’m playing the Bodog Poker Open Main Event. It’s a $500 buyin, with a $300k guarantee. They’ve given out over 50k in overlay already for these tournaments, so they are a great value. They’ve also had a ton of bounty tournaments which are always fun.

Other than that, it’s just going to be Festa Festa Festa for me. I’m gonna try to average 12 hours of cash games a day until it’s over. I might only play the main event as far as tourneys go, although the 5k’s are tempting.

Once that’s over, I’m gonna go back to LA to record the next few episodes of the All Strategy show with Pokerroad. We’ve gotten some tremendous feedback so far. It’s overwhelming to be honest. For those of you that don’t know about it, it’s the newest show at www.PokerRoad.com. Its 100% strategy talk and the hosts are Daniel Negreanu, Scott Huff, and I. I gotta be honest and say I’m really impressed with Huff so far. He basically does all the hard work, formatting the shows, digging up hand histories for us to discuss, getting the flow going, etc. I think we’ve kind of established a great dynamic after our first few episodes, and I’m really looking forward to the future of this show.

Time to head over to the Venetian, so here’s another one of my blogs super abrupt endings.

-Justin Bonomo