I’ve been pretty busy lately. I went to San Diego to visit some friends for Thanksgiving. That was a ton of fun. I wish I could have stayed longer.

I got into Vegas last night at 3:30am for the Five Diamond tournaments at the Bellagio. Today was the $2000 100 tourney, so I got a wakeup call for 10:45 and was at the tournament site by noon.

Blinds were 25/50 and everyone pretty much had a starting stack of 4k when the following hand came up 30 minutes into the tournament. I got red aces in the Hijack (hijack is the seat next to the cutoff, aka 2 off the button) and opened for 150. An old guy called on the button, and Carlos Mortensen called in the big blind. The flop came A63 with two spades giving me top set. Carlos checked, I bet 400, and the button called. The turn was a Queen which put two hearts on the board. I checked, the button bet 400, I checkraised to 1500, the button moved, and I um called, cuz that’s what you do when you have the nuts and someone puts you all-in.

The button flipped over 33, and when the river gave him quads, I seemed to be the only person at the table that believed it. The guy to my right said something like, “Well at least you don’t have to worry about a beat that bad happening for another ten years.” If only he knew.

If you can’t tell by my tone, I’ve been running pretty bad. I’m essentially even over my past 130k hands online which is extremely frustrating. This is by far the longest cold streak I’ve ever gone through. At least I haven’t lost any money! Somehow that%uFFFDs not much of a consolation to me.

Despite this, I%uFFFDm extremely confident about my chances over the next two weeks. My poker game, especially my live tournament game has been in top-notch form lately. I’m really hoping I can take down one of these tournaments, and I know I can play well enough to do it.

For the most part, there is a 1.5 – 3k buyin each day. There are also two $5,000 buyins and the WPT main event which is a $15,000 buyin. I’m especially hoping to do well in those three because I%uFFFDm donating 5% of anything I win in those to SENS research (check out www.sens.org or my previous blogs).

Now I’m out to dinner at Nobu (my favorite restaurant in the world even though I’ve only been there once before) and then Tryst.