I was pretty broke when I got to Vegas, but made a final table in event #8, which ensured a small profit for the Series, the rest of which I puttered and whiffed my way through. After busting out of the Main Event, I packed my stuff up and took it back to California, flew back to Vegas for the WPT Bellagio Cup III, and went on to take fourth place for over 225K.

Since then, I've been sitting listlessly on my couch, enervated, trying to crawl my way out of the black-hole of post-WSOP inertia, lack of direction, and writer's block. If and when I do escape the void, this blog might return to its former glory.

I ended level one with only half of my 20K starting stack remaining, after slightly misplaying a flopped set, running into some common chip-burning situations, and spewing a little.

When I came back from break, I picked up a few pots and was sitting on a workable 13,500 when my bust hand versus Brodie took place.

I raised AKo UTG to 600 (blinds were 100/200) and one of the seven weak-tight-passive-predictable guys at the table called in the cutoff. Quiet Lion (who started the hand with somewhere around 18-20K I think) was next to act and appeared to face a decision. After a moment, he made it 2600.

I thought there was a fair chance he could be picking on me and the caller with a less-than-monstrous hand, or that he might opt not to gamble with some of the better hands he had, like TT-QQ. That, plus the fact the pot already represented over 25% of my stack (and, shit, AK beats KK some absurd percentage of the time, anyway, if he has that!), compelled me to push. I pushed.

The original caller folded and Brodie, after thinking for a minute or so, called with a pair of jacks, which won the pot.

The main reason my play was bad is that I could have found many better situations in the tournament, had only invested 600 chips in the pot, and, based on my tilt-y table image, I was more likely to get called by Brodie's middle/high pairs and forced to gamble for my stack.

Incidentally, I think folding, rather than calling, would have been the best option in the situation, and I don't think my play is disastrous on its merits, but considering the magnitude of this particular tournament, it represents a type of meltdown.

***

I'm currently in a sort of limbo, but my tentative plan is to go home for a few days, then return to play the Bellagio Cup main event on Wednesday.

The World Series of Poker ended on a lackluster note, but after an inadvertent pep talk from an old friend of mine, I feel optimistic about my potential to shift things around in my mind and have a fruitful second half of 2007.

I intend to post an anthology of the 13 events I played at the WSOP, and other various successes, failures and observations from the trip, sometime in the next week or so.

Even though I've been playing high-stakes tournaments for almost three years now, I still feel unsteady as I approach the main event, with all the baggage attached to the Series as a whole. The conflict between knowing that this is "just another tournament" and also "the most important tournament of the year" is surprisingly difficult to resolve. Not knowing whether tomorrow marks the end of my WSOP, or the beginning, is bizarre and almost torturous.

When I bust out of a tournament, I'm usually able to process the event just like dozens before it--there will be another tournament next week, next month or whatever. Another chance to get it right. If I played well and lost, I usually have few regrets and, if I played poorly to bust, I can usually find a way to deal with the feeling of failure and look for ways to improve in the future. Yet, I'm pretty sure that if i bust out of the tournament on the first day (I play tomorrow), I'll be heartbroken despite the rational understanding that I've accumulated since becoming a "professional poker player."

So, the anticipation I feel is palpable, and that derives from the same special, intangible quality that the WSOP engenders. As badly as the tournaments themselves are organized, there is no tournament festival that creates a vibe to rival the WSOP (which happens to also be the reason that Harrah's can get away with so many mistakes and so much mismanagement--the WSOP has a presence of its own, regardless of who owns the rights to its name). After a summer spent in daily 100+ degree heat playing high-stakes poker tournaments, there is a feeling that even having survived is an accomplishment on its own.

So I'm going to relax today, maybe spend the day shopping at the Forum Shops or go to the Bellagio steam room. Even though it's been a long, hot summer, I am excited to play the Big Dance tomorrow and feel that my mindset has me poised to play halfway decent poker and maybe stick around Vegas long enough for a couple more blog entries.

***

My Series up until now has felt a little strange and arrhythmic, but it was far from a disaster. I never quite got into the groove, but managed to eke out a decent Series by stumbling into a 5th place finish and $111K cash in event #8, ensuring minimum profitability for the summer.

I'm not complaining, since I'm well aware of the players who participated in a dozen or more events without a cash, of people who dumped tens of thousands in buyins without managing to see a dinner break.

Then, on the other end of the spectrum, there are the players I marvel at: like Alex Bolotin and Michael Binger, with five and seven cashes respectively, who seem to effortlessly chew through every field they enter. Equally impressive are players like Tom Schneider and Robert Mizrachi, who dominated the non-hold-em events that were re-introduced into the 2007 schedule. These players seem to enter a zone where dominance is effortlessly achieved.

***

I'm not big on holidays, or socializing, otherwise I would have gone to Phil Gordon's July 4th BBQ, mostly because of the grace and good humor with which he invited me, handing me the invite in the Amazon Room and mentioning, with a smile, that he was extending the initiation despite my "trashing" Phil in a blog I wrote several months ago. As I mentioned in that entry, too, I've always been fond of Phil's outgoing nature, and I appreciated his acknowledgment that, "What happens online, stays online."

There were still two living members of my stable at that point--Greg Raymer, who cashed the event, and Mike Wattel--but ultimately David Singer and Barry Greenstein, both at today's final table, got the job done for Jesse's team.

The final table is absolutely sick and I'd like to wish especially good luck to chip leader Amnon Filippi and John Hanson, both New York players representing strong for the East Coast at this prestigious finale.

***
I busted out of the 5K-shorthanded event today, and I've decided to play the 1K Stud Hi-Lo event that Pat Poels won last year. It will be the first 5PM tournament I've played all season and should make for a nice change of pace. I actually played stud hi-lo (not well, or anything) a long time before I ever played hold 'em, at the Sandia Casino in Albuquerque, NM.

I got first pick and nabbed last year's champion, Chip Reese, Matt took Patrik Antonius, Ed grabbed Phil Ivey and Jesse, last to choose but with two picks available, went with Barry Greenstein and Doyle Brunson.

When the action got back to me (David Benyamine and Daniel Negreanu having been scooped in the meantime by Matt and Ed), I didn't realize that it was my turn to make two choices--and was so elated after I scored super-champion Allen Cunningham as my first of the two--that I sort of flubbed my #3 pick, going with Pokerwire's own Thomas Wahlroos, unsure if he even played limit mixed games, but confident that his hunger for poker gave him a shot in the biggest-buyin tournament of the year.

Turns out Thomas didn't even play the HORSE event, presumably because Pai Gow wasn't in the mix this year.

I made a couple more speculative picks for my fourth and fifth horses, selecting Mike Wattel and Greg Raymer, but expertly rounded out my team with David Oppenheim and Bill Gazes in the final picks of the draft.

The teams came up looking like this:

Shane - Chip Reese, Allen Cunningham, Thomas Wahlroos, Mike Wattel, Greg Raymer, David Oppenheim, Bill Gazes

Matt - Patrik Antonius, David Benyamine, Gus Hansen, Erick Lindgren, John D'Agastino, Joe Cassidy, Jeff King

Ed - Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Greg Mueller, Nick Schulman, Chau Giang, Jen Harman, Kirk Morrison

Jesse - Barry Greenstein, Doyle Brunson, David Singer, Andy Bloch, Chad Brown, Minh Ly, Howard Lederer

***

Jesse, who also recapped the draft in his blog, made a point of calling me up on my way home to emphasize how drastic an oversight it was that no one picked Jeffrey Lissandro, who, Jesse said, might be "the best poker player in the world." He wanted to make sure I included that in this report, as well as his regret for not picking Lisandro...who wound up being the first player eliminated from the event.

***

Current approximate chip counts (cumulative per team):

Shane: 956K

Matt: 539K

Ed: 613K

Jesse: 813K

For several levels, I maintained that level of balance and confidence--I felt great, playing precision poker and not prone to making a mistake, aware of all the table dynamics, energized to go deep again--when things took an unannounced turn for the worse.

During the 150/300 level, a young, blond European player was moved to the one seat, and he had almost as many chips as I did. He looked sharp and confident, wearing a crisp-looking Versace jeans-jacket and sitting on an imposing stack. I figured he was a poker expert, and I knew his presence constituted potential trouble, and that it was not inconceivable one of us winds up with a disgustingly large stack before the table broke.

Before and during the crucial hand I'm about to describe, the atmosphere at the table became chaotic: There was a petty dispute taking place. First, it was between Mimi Tran and the dealer, whom Mimi was criticizing for not making change correctly. Instead of smoothing out the situation, or just moving on, the dealer called over the floor, even after the technical matter had been resolved. Then, David Tuchman, who wanted Mimi to stop talking about the incident after the fact, inexplicably called the floor to delegate again, and the whole vibe at the table became unruly and somewhat unfriendly.

While Mimi was bitching, and David was calling the floor, I tried to ignore all the noise, turned up the volume on my headphones, and picked up QQ in early position during the 200/400/50 level. I still had about 35K and was called by a seemingly inexperienced, but not incompetent, player on the button, who had about 12K left in his stack. The blond kid called out of one of the blinds, and we saw a flop three-handed, J54-rainbow.

The Euro checked, I bet 3600, then the first caller threw out 6,000, a botched raise. The dealer informed him that he was required not to make a minimum raise to 7200, which he did. As soon as the raise-size was sorted out, the European guy casually and instantly pushed allin.

If there's one very noticeable leak in my game, it's that I don't give myself enough time to ponder certain crucial decisions. Although there may have been a small chance that the European guy had a hand I beat, like top pair, or a straight draw, and was figuring he could safely gamble with the shorter stack flop-raiser while getting me to lay down many hands, it was far more likely for him to have a hand like a set, a sneakily-played overpair to my QQ, or, what he did wind up having, a two-pair type of hand, in this case 54 for bottom-two.

In any case, once again, I didn't take a proper amount of time to consider all the dynamics and made a snap-decision that one pair of queens was good enough to gamble for a huge pot in level five. I could have folded, regrouped, and still had plenty of chips, but instead I called the allin. The guy in the middle--the one who tried to raise to 6,000--had AJ for "top/top," and the European's two-pair held up.

I was left with 2700 chips, which I got in remarkably good with KJ in the BB vs JT for a 6K+ pot (thinking to myself, maybe here's another classic roller coaster tournament, where I get crippled then soar back up), but I lost and undertook, once again, the long Walk of Shame back to the Rio parking lot.

***

Perhaps My biggest mistake of the trip so far was going to see Bill Maher perform at the Hard Rock on the same night that Roger Waters played the MGM. Maher's political comedy was good, as always, but not exactly better than he would have been if I was sitting on my couch watching his HBO show. I heard from a couple of different friends that Roger Waters was amazing. What was I thinking?

***

Tomorrow is the 5K Headsup "World Championship," and, since I intend to win, I really hope I don't get busted in round one.

A lot of players have been paying lip-service to the notion of "balance"--the need to create structure within the void of this poker life--and, especially during the WSOP, to the importance of avoiding burnout. Despite arranging my 2007 WSOP schedule around a more limited, concentrated group of events, I'm still finding that balance hard to achieve and the fatigue difficult to avoid.  It's hard enough figuring out which events to play and which to skip, let alone finding the time to update my blog(s), catching up with friends whose path I usually cross only during the WSOP, and generally maintaining a positive social life.

Like junkies whose dealer ran out of the good stuff, readers of my blog have been hounding me to pick up the pace, to put more of the experience of the Series into words, but often times I feel at a loss. I'm actively trying to not get "caught up in the moment" this year, and I don't want to stop dissect the events taking place, but rather appreciate the long summer in Vegas as one distinct part of the whole, the "whole" being life on poker tour.

The amount of action this year is so staggering, it's also a chore just to take stock of who's kicking ass at this year's Series. There's something about the WSOP, no matter how poorly organized and oppressive, that brings the poker out of people. The WSOP might be only one part of the whole, but at the same time, it's almost certainly the hub.

I have to marvel at players like Humberto Brenes and Scott Clements, who seem to be at a final table every time I check updates on the internet. At players like Phil Hellmuth, whose hunger for bracelets awakens a perennial poker beast each summer.

I still believe my best chance for success is to stay laid-back and hope that enables greater concentration in the few events I do play. I'll be playing tomorrow's $3K NL event, and I am extremely excited for the inaugural Heads Up No Limit Championship, beginning on Tuesday.

Tonight, I'm going to see Bill Maher perform standup at the Hard Rock, and I'm psyched for that, too.

Another eerily similar aspect about this event was that Gracz showed up at this year's final table right along with me, with a stack that gave him a serious shot at "repeating." Losing a few coin flips (usually with the slight edge) sealed his fate in 2007 at sixth place.

Amir Vahedi, also a serious threat to start the day, lost a tough hand with an overpair vs Dolph Arnold's huge draw, to take seventh place.

Around that point in the tournament, I managed to acquire a healthy stack of my own (first time over 1M chips), when I sucked out two pairs with QJ vs Barry Cales' AA on a J9-x board. I had grinded all day up to that point, and, with that lucky break of cards, I finally felt confident and poised to go the distance in the tournament.

Then, after losing some chips in late-position steal-type situations against Dolph Arnold (this year's resident 1K final table senior citizen; in 2005, it was Chuck Thompson) and Tommy Vu, Barry Cales avenged his aces' getting cracked with his own share of luck in a hand against me, winning a critical pot with A8s vs my ATs.

Losing that hand left me with 170K with blinds at 20/40K. I managed to pick up AQ two hands later, pushed allin, and got called by this year's 1K rebuy champion Michael Chu, who made the standard call with KT in the BB and caught a ten.

Michael is a fellow Santa Monican and very cool guy, who seemed to play a mistake-free tournament. Congratulations, Michael--dinner somewhere on Abbot Kinney is on you, pal!

The second place finisher, infomercial/real-estate/self-help impresario and Vegas super-celebrity Tommy Vu, was on my left during the entire final table, and I enjoyed his company throughout. He is a true character and a class act. I think the action and personalities from this final table will make for a decent broadcast whenever ESPN airs it.

***

The ESPN interview was a lot of fun, too, and we seemed talked about everything but poker, which is kind of how I like it. The producers for ESPN do a markedly good job of preparing the interviews and asking interesting, provocative questions. It's a privilege to be part of a broadcast that is run as professionally as the this one is.

It's also cool that the ESPN people don't offer any suggestions or requirements on what you are supposed to wear, nor do they ask you to put on makeup, the way the WPT does. (Not that I've ever been at a WPT final table, but that's what I hear about the makeup, and I've witnessed them asking players to change shirts for filming).

I think the production crew who handles the WSOP for ESPN is really interested in generating peripheral, quirky human-interest stories related to players in the tournament, and I always enjoy that more than watching  a long succession of poker hands (although I have many friends who prefer the opposite). In any case, it felt good and pleasantly synchronistic to be back on the broadcast for the second year out of three at the Rio.

***

Although not winning the event after getting chips five-handed was frustrating, it's undeniably satisfying to make a final table at the WSOP. However, I'm hoping the real value of two years' worth of poker experience will become evident in the coming weeks and beyond.

The exhaustion of the WSOP is well documented, and I still intend to avoid the burnout by playing a fairly limited schedule (maybe 10 more events), occasionally going back home to Los Angeles (my girlfriend and I are heading back tonight), and avoiding the pitfalls of Vegas and fast-money (I have sworn to myself and others that I will not play table games any time soon).

I will attempt to approach each tournament with renewed vigor and focus, whereas I feel like I subconsciously played sloppily in the events that followed my cash in 2005. Taking fifth place in one event is nice, and an effective momentum shifter, but it's not the be-all-end-all to anything in my life, and being aware of that is one of the keys to any potential success I will experience in the coming weeks.