Well, what can I say? I had a day of second bests. Nothing seemed to work and there is a limit as to how long you can hold on that way. I am not discouraged about it today, afterwards, and view it as a learning curve. There is a natural ebb and flow to poker which was absent yesterday. Kings run into aces (twice) and queens run into kings. I did my best. I have some business meetings tomorrow and then home sweet home. Cant wait to see some smilimg faces in Lincoln and Sierra.

Big one starts tomorrow at noon. I took the day off (an unusual move in itself) and resisted the urge to play another mega. I won two last year which was good for the pocketbook but hard from a fatigue standpoint. I will post here but live updates will be on www.WorldPokerTour.com. More as it unfolds.

Having played until late last night i decided to get some rest. Short of getting some coffee i didnt leave the room until 5 pm. Then i went down to see if they were getting any players for the mega satellite for the main event on Friday. A mega is where each person puts up a set amount and you divide it by the cost of the main entry. In this one 100 players put up $1,000 and every 10 players gets a seat. So there were 10 seats available. We just finished a few minutes ago and i won my seat and finished the tournament as the chip leader no less. Going to sleep and will see how i feel about playing the seniors tomorrow. Sleep first. Night

Got up early on Friday to drive to LA. Easy drive and no problem. Had a rough time in the shootout event (play till last man at your table is standing) when my KK got busted by Ace rag. Sigh. Happens. Got a good nights sleep then played the Celebrity Invitational on Saturday night. Although the room was full of amateurs there were two tables loaded with pros. Mine was one of them. Matt Affleck, Robert Bellande, McLean Karr and a few others made it a tough table. I just couldn’t get any traction going, then my AJ ran into Afflecks AK. Went downstairs and played cash until the wee hours of the morning at the $5/$10 table. Went better than the Celebrity Event for sure.

I wandered down to the tournament room only to find they were having a $460 mega satellite at 1 pm for seats into their 5 pm $2100 Ironman Event. there were over 90 players and it was arduous but I won my seat. play started at 5 pm. I just had a series of second best hands which chipped away at me. I flop a set only to run into a flopped straight. finally, i flop a flush and run. into top set and the board pairs, which put me out. played the hands correctly though which is all you can hope for. play again at 1 pm tomorrow.

Wednesday afternoon I picked up the phone and called an old friend, Jim Tabilio. We chatted for a few as he was headed into a Committee Meeting at the Capitol in Sacramento in a few. At 4:30 he sent me an email about the Committee issue and at 5:00 he had a massive heart attack and was gone. Wow.

Jim is the reason I ever even played poker. After Hayden, Jim is the one who would call when in town and ask me if I wanted to play a tournament. I told him the truth, I didn’t know where the poker room was or where to register. He literally took my hand and guided me. He also took all those late night calls with questions about hands and players, etc and when I made the final table at Bellagio I called him and he flew in to offer support.

It’s hard to believe someone is here one moment and gone the next. That’s just so brutal. Just goes to reinforce you simply never know.