Rudy Edwards

My five week working vacation playing in the side cash games in Vegas began today. Last year, I had a lot of success during the WSOP, and this year I'm taking it a little more seriously. I rented a house just off strip, with Justin, Aziz, and Dan. While I will have many Atlanta friends coming and crashing with us through the five week time we're here, that core group will be here for the full five weeks.

My cash reserves took a hit this past few weeks, for non-poker reasons, So playing within a 3k bankroll would save me a lot of stress. I'm going to start out a little recklessly, and if i hit a downswing, I'll get very conservative at about 2k.

Arriving in Vegas, We dropped our stuff off at the house, and Justin and I headed out to Caeser's where David Dubsky, a friend from Atlanta, was on vacation playing. We weren't excited about the games, and headed over to the Rio. Justin bought into a $225 satellite, while I sat at the 10-20 limit game I did so well in last year. It wasn't a very interesting session, although in the hour or so I played, I was up $275. I made it to the river three times. Once, I earned a fold with a river raise (my KK straighted on the river) and twice I called a check raise on the turn, and called a river bet, only to not even have to show down my cards because the bettor mucked when I called. Twice.

I got a bit of sleep, and headed over to Caeser's to try my hand at the 1-3 NL game. This is what I've been working on for the past month, and I was excited to try my hand at live NL again, this time with real NL training. I bought in for $300, and set to playing a little extra tight until I felt I could take the training wheels off. I don't have any great hands to talk about during this session, although I'm concerned about something, and will discuss it here. 4 times during the session, I continuation bet having missed the flop, and was raised all four times. The fourth time, I thought about whether or not I announced my bets consistently or not. I played about 5 hours, and finished down about $9. That's pretty good for a session where I was challenged on every missed continuation bet. Most importantly, I think I may have pinpointed something that I subconsciously do that I need to pay attention to. Making the transition from online play to live play will take me a little bit, and i'm still uncomfortable in no limit, but as long as i'm learning, I feel like I'm being productive.