Scott Diamond

Yesterday i decided to play the $225.00 Nl event at the Bike. It started at 4:15pm and since i was off at 3:00pm I headed over there. they have had some big crowds lately,but only 107 people entered and from what I heard registration closed before 5 pm on a Friday here in LA, when traffic is at its worst. Apparently about 25 people were turned away during the first level of play.

We received 4,000 in starting chips with 30 minute levels and I again played well. Late when blinds were 800-400 and 30 or so people left I has Ah-Ks on the button with a raise in front of me by a very aggressive player who was all decked out in Full Tilt gear. The player to my left re-raised him and I went all in for 8400 chips into a pot of 5,000. Aggressive guy folds and the other guy calls and of course shows AA. I could not put him on this hand because he had AA 5 times already today. The flop was very nice Kh-8h-4h but it bricked out and I was left with 600 chips. My very next hand I have 10-9 and go all in with 5 callers. Flop 7-8-J Nice!
I am up to 5000 again and cannot hang on as I bust 20th and 18 get paid.

I do not play to make the money, I play to win and I only had QQ-JJ and 44 pocket pairs all day. So I played very well,but just couldn't get anything going and no cards to make any moves with.

No bad beats, pretty solid players last night and I may play the $120.00 NL today. The field may be small again but I want to go to Vegas Monday Night without any rust and if I can make some extra money by winning a small event, it would be a great confidence boost.

My friend Jim Pittman is in Vegas right now and he won a $225.00 satellite and is playing the $1500.00 NL buy in event today. Jim told me there are a lot of Local players in Vegas and this could be the reason for a small turnout.

The Bike changed the name of this years event from the "Mini Series" to the 20/30 event making it a mini deep stack tournament with low buy ins, but it did not attract the throng of players as their last deep stack event did.

I saw the 10k Pot Limit event had just over 300 people registered. I thought there would be more and I am not sure how many entered this event last year, but I know it was a 5k event in 2007.

Hope this is not an indication to the crowds this year. Todays event will tell as it has 2 start days and last year there were over 2900 people and I heard that Jeffrey Pollack when starting todays event at the Rio told the crowd, "Welcome to the 4th largest NL event ever" Good Luck Jim and see all of you in a few..

Be Safe...Take care..