back from the 2009 Borgata Winter Open

I returned late last night from AC connecting through Las Vegas. I was seriously tempted to pull an all nighter cash session at MGM but, decided to follow through with my plan to come straight home.

When I got to Vegas for my layover, I texted Lucko and found out he and LJ were both knocked out of Day 2. Apparently some fish chased his gutshot with overs all the way to the river to put a dent in Lucko's stack then he lost a flip with AK.

I had a great time while at the Borgata. Got a chance to spend a little time with Riggs. He picked me up / dropped me off at the airport (thx buddy). If you don't know this already, Riggs is a freakin rock star at the Borgata. As he showed me around the place after I arrived, players and staff were constantly stopping us to say what's up to Riggs. I also got a chance to meet Corron10 and NewinNov for the first time. Both cool peeps. Mr. AlCantHang was very generous taking turns letting me use his laptop during the tournament coverage. I was unable to bring ours since Tina needed it for school. Next time I'll have to bring my own.

A few highlights from the trip other than covering the tournament were:

- playing craps with Lucko and LJ. (dusted off -$200 ghey)
- dinner with Rizen during Day 1a dinner break. discussed his approach toward coaching Darus Suharto in the 2008 WSOP Main Event final table. He wrote an article about it in this month's edition of Bluff Magazine. Definitely worth a read.
- drinking it up with Al, Lucko and LJ in the racebook for free-fiddy-free. I won a $2 exacta on the 2nd bet i made for $26.40. the racebook also gives you a drink ticket for every $2 bet you make so i freerolled my drinking there.
- chatting with Mark "the Omaholic" Roland and Jason Young during tournament breaks. Mark took down the HOSE event for $70k and Jason took down event 1 for $100k. Both were very down to earth and easily approachable.
- I crushed the 1/2 NL cash tables making the trip a profitable one

Monday night I played a 3 hour session from 12:30am to 3:30am ET and ran pretty well cracking AA with 7-9s and flopping trips with AQs vs QJo on a QQT board. We got it all in. The turn brought a J and I rivered an Ace for the resuck. Also another guy bluff shoved his stack into me on the river when I had a set of Kings. I finished the night +$600 putting me up +$1450 for the trip at the cash tables. I <3 Borgata.

You can continue to follow the 2009 Winter Open Main Event at Borgata Poker and PokerPages. There are also some video interviews that were done prior to the start of the $2m Borgata Winter Open Main Event which should pop up on the site we were updating, keep checking back there.