When last we left off, I’d been in Vegas for the first two weeks of the WSOP and only just made my first Day 2. I’d survived perhaps the toughest table I’d had all series, outlasting some of the best tournament players in the world in the process.

The next day was a welcome respite, as my table quickly developed into one of the softest in the room. No one was terrible – this was, after all, Day 2 of the relatively small field $3,000 Mixed Max event – but the really tough players busted early and were replaced by less skilled competition. Best of all, we were playing six-handed, so I had a lot more opportunities to realize my skill advantage. I picked up a tell from the way the most aggressive of my opponents, seated on my right, sized his re-raises, and I was able to take a large pot away from him with a light five-bet.

The next time I came after him, blinds were 500/1,000, and an active but not very good player raised to 2,000 in first position. The next player called, and then the guy on my right put in a very small re-raise to 4,500. I strongly suspected he was not hoping for a four-bet. Both of the players in the blinds were short enough that they couldn’t do much damage to me even if they woke up with hands strong enough to continue to a cold four-bet. So, the under-the-gun player was the only one who could cause serious trouble for me by waking up with a hand. I made it 11,000 with I don’t even remember what, a bluff that would need to succeed just over half the time to show a profit. The original raiser quickly shoved, and I lost a quarter of my stack.

Remember what I said before about how there weren’t any terrible players left in the field? The tournament directors managed to find one and move him to our table. In one of his first hands, he open limped, I made it 4,000 with black 88, and he called. He bet 4,000 into me on a K 5 2 flop, and I called. He bet 6K on a T turn, and I called. The river was the 5, we both checked, and he showed A5 without a spade to collect the pot.

After that I was short, and I put my last 9,000 into the pot in a less-than-ideal spot. The same guy open limped, the guy on my right raised to 2,500, I jammed with 22, and the raiser busted me with 99. Fold equity is so important with the last of your chips, much more important than the overlay I was hoping to get on a best-case-scenario coin flip, and I regretted not giving myself any. Playing well most of the time isn’t good enough.

I made a few more short stack mistakes in the next day’s $1,000 no-limit hold ‘em event, which with its 3,000 chip starting stacks provided plenty of opportunities for playing short. I sucked out after getting it in with 77 versus KK and then I moved to a new table where stacks were deeper and I could establish some good control. I was stealing a lot and generally outplaying people in position, ultimately running my stack up to 20K, which at the 200/400 level was about twice the average. Of course, I had a very aggressive image, so when I opened JJ in the hijack and an even bigger stack on the button three-bet me, I was pretty happy to four-bet him and call off the rest. He had AK and won a race that sent me to the rail and probably put him among the tournament chipleaders.

With just a few days left in Vegas before leaving for a wedding and some relaxation time before the main event, I decided to make my last tournament the $1,500 pot-limit Omaha eight-or-better. I don’t have a lot of PLO8 experience, but it’s a game that I enjoy a lot and with which I’ve had some success in the past. Plus in a $1,500 event, I expected that there would be a lot of people who weren’t too experienced, and I could count on at least knowing the fundamentals of poker well.

Still, I got off to a rocky start. Most people at my table seemed to know what they were doing – they were quite adept at reading the board and the mechanics of chopping a pot – but were playing in a way that seemed entirely wrong to me. I began to question what little I thought I knew about the game and made the rookie mistake of paying off big turn and river bets with basically a bare nut low. Sure enough I got quartered. In my defense, I had A22x, so I did have a blocker and an outside shot at high. I’ve actually since spoken to some better PLO8 players who didn’t think it was so bad, but at the time I was pretty upset with myself.

Thankfully, it was the 25/50 level, and the starting stack consisted of 1,500 plus two add-on chips that didn’t play until they were exchanged for an additional 1,500. So I was able to play a simple, short-stacked game and survive for a while until I got my bearings. I made some good semi-bluffs and even a pure bluff or two, which can be tough to pull off in a split-pot game but I could tell when my opponents were exuding weakness.

By the end of Day 1, I was playing deep-stacked PLO8 with relative comfort, even with Mark Gregorich, author of the O/8 chapter of Super/System, at the table. He actually complimented me on a sort of tricky slowplay, which was great for the old ego.

I opened to 1,600 at the 300/600 level with AAQ9 double-suited and was called by the big blind. The flop came JT9 with a flush draw for me, and although my hand would be good enough to get all-in, it was a rare case in PLO8 where a free card wasn’t likely to hurt me versus the range that would fold if I bet now. If I did get it in on the flop, I probably wouldn’t be ahead, so I elected to check it back.

A 3 on the turn gave me the nuts, and my opponent checked and called 1,800. He called off the rest on a 2 river, presumably assuming that I would have bet most flush draws on the flop, and I scooped.

Mark ended up scooping me in a big pot when I three-bet Aces and called off the rest on the flop to learn that he’d turned into a 60/40 favorite with the nut flush draw and the nut low draw. Still, I bagged an average stack of 30K at the end of the day.

I started off at a tough table on Day 2 and got lucky to win a big pot early. I opened KK43 with two small diamonds and a short stack in the big blind. Two good players who had position on me called, and the blinds folded.

We all checked a Q75r flop. I checked another Queen on the turn, the first caller bet, the second folded, and I called. Figuring my hand would look like a low draw, I was planning to pick off a bluff on a blank river. Instead, I rivered a King for a full house and check-shoved over a pot-sized bet. He folded getting great odds, so my suspicion that he would bluff an apparent blank was probably correct.

After that I went a bit card dead, and the players at my table were intimidating enough that I didn’t feel comfortable tangling with them in sub-optimal spots. So, I more or less folded my way into the money. Eventually, I did find an opportunity to outplay someone, though.

Blinds were 1,000/2,000, and an early position player raised to 5,500. The action folded to me in the big blind, and I called with 7653 double-suited. It’s not the greatest PLO8 hand, but it’s hard to be a big dog pre-flop in PLO8, and as the big blind I was getting decent odds with a hand that can flop well.

The flop came JJ9 rainbow, which is about as dry as you can get in this game. I checked, my opponent bet 6,500, I raised to 15K with about 40K behind, and he folded.

Based on the three tables I’d been at so far during Day 2, all the players with no clue how to play PLO8, the ones who make these small buy-in non-hold ‘em tournaments so juicy, seemed to have gone out on Day 1. There weren’t a lot of opportunities to outplay people, and soon everyone at my table was short enough that most hands ended pre-flop. Quarters of stacks were flying back and forth. As best I could tell I was holding my own and probably running somewhat well in these pre-flop wars, and though I never ran up a big stack, I kept myself alive.

It wasn’t until we redrew at the final two tables that I realized what I’d been missing. There were two huge stacks at my new table who, from what I saw, were clueless. With blinds of 5K and 10K, the under-the-gun player, who was the tournament chipleader with two million in chips, opened to 25K. Action folded to the button who was second overall with a little over a million. He potted it for 90K, and the first raiser called.

The flop came J95 rainbow. The first player checked, the second potted it, and the first agonized and folded, flashing two Kings as he did so. Unless he had the sort of side cards, like JJ or QT, that wouldn’t fold this flop anyway, his hand belonged in the muck pre-flop. Then, the three-better showed that he also had KK. He claimed he got more of the flop than that, so I think it’s pretty likely he had KKQT or something and not necessarily KKA2 or one of the few other KK hands that could justifiably raise pot into the first position raise of the only guy in the tournament who had him covered.

My bustout hand began when a tight player opened under-the-gun to 25K, one of the above players called, and I was on the cutoff with A257 suited to the Ace.

I think without the third guy in there there’s a case for just calling and folding the worst flops, or maybe even folding pre-flop, but that extra 25K in the pot was pretty huge given that I only had 92K to start the hand. I jammed, UTG rejammed to force out the other guy, and then he scooped me with AK82 with a suit. On the drive home I questioned my shove because I figured I’d run into a better A2 quite often and I wasn’t sure just how much equity my hand had against it. Turns out I had 48%, which I felt pretty good about considering there was 40K in overlay.

It felt good to end the first half of my Las Vegas summer on a badly needed high note. Of course, it would have been amazing to make the final table, but it was a huge boost to my confidence to make a deep run in a relatively unfamiliar game and to feel like I was mostly playing it well. It reaffirmed that I still understood fundamental poker concepts better than a lot of the competition. None of these last three tournaments turned into quite as deep a run as you hope for, but I felt like I put myself in a position to do well in any of them, and that was a good feeling to have coming into the main event.

For those who don’t know, there is some sad news to report with the passing of poker great Bobby Hoff. While I only knew Bobby slightly, there is no question that he was a great no-limit hold ‘em player and was well liked by everyone.

In our book, Harrington on Cash Games, Volume II: How to Play No‑Limit Hold ‘em Cash Games by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie, there is an interview with Bobby Hoff. It’s a terrific read, and as a way of remembering this great player, we have posted the interview here.

As for other news, the number one question that’s being asked is when will the next Internet poker sites start up. Our answer to this is we don’t know, but we’re hopeful that it will be sooner rather than later.

It appears to us, and we have no inside information confirming this, that the state of Nevada is being very careful to make sure that not only does everything work right on the sites, but that there is no way any scandal, such as what we saw with Ultimate Bet, can occur. We at Two Plus Two think this is the right decision and support the go-slow approach by the state of Nevada even though we can’t wait for the sites to launch and for different states to link up,.

Next, we’re also being asked what has happened to our book Harrington on Modern Tournament Poker by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. Well, I just spoke to Dan and much progress has been made. We’re now hoping to have it published by the end of the year.

Finally, I want to mention that it has been discovered that the kindles of two of our books Applications of No-Limit Hold ‘em; A Guide to Understanding Theoretical Sound Poker by Matthew Janda and Further Limit Hold ‘em; Exploring the Model Poker Game by Philip Newall are not as good as they should be. So we have asked Amazon.com to take the kindles down and we’re hoping to have much better kindle versions available on Amazon.com in a few weeks. However, our other e-book version (for both of these books), which is available through our 2+2 store is fine.