NAPT Venetian Day 1

Pretty exhausted so probably won't go into too many details. Left the house yesterday at 12pm EST and got into my hotel room at 1:30am PST, so 16.5 hours of travel meant I was not at my best today. Got a really good table draw, a couple super soft spots and no superstars. Didn't really play a whole lot of huge hands, unfortunately lost the only two biggish pots I played. Ran pretty good in small pots all day, my couple bluffs worked, I didn't get 3bet much and generally just had the best hand a lot.

Got up to 40k doing that, then had a couple bleh levels where I didn't do much to get back down to starting stack of 30k. Back up to 45k thanks to a biggish bluff (which in retrospect was really terrible but it worked so it must have been good...) and more making the best hand, then played the only really interesting hand of the day.

300/600/75, effective stacks 45k
I raise JJ to 1500 utg+2, guy to my left calls, bb calls. BB spewed off most of his chips earlier making some pretty horrendous bluffs, then won QJhh vs QQ where he put in ~20% of his stack pf and then flopped a flush draw and got there and has since started making some hands and is up to 50k or so. Flop 953r, check, I bet 2600, fold, bb calls after a bit of thought. Turn K starting a bdfd and he checks. I bet 4400 and he grabs 15k and then makes it 10k. I really didn't feel like he was strong on the flop so while sets are possible, I was discounting them a bit. And he's definitely capable of just randomly turning whatever into a bluff, so I call. River plan is mostly just to not fold much unless given a pretty good reason to. He checks the river 3 and I check and his AK is good. Not really what I expected to see...

Not too long after that a young guy shoves 11k in the hijack at 400/800/100, I call 77 in the sb and lose the flip to AJo. Didn't really win any pots after that and finish the day with 19,300. The good news is my record when making day 2 without many chips is very good so hopefully that trend keeps up! If not, if I bust early enough I'll definitely be playing the PS $4M guaranteed (they made the normal sunday million $4M guaranteed because they're approaching 40 billion hands dealt), winning that would be an acceptable consolation prize.

Steve