I'm done Mid-terms woooo-hooo, now in just 2 more weeks I start finals haaaa. Messed up eh? Yeah we can all thank the TA's at York University for this blessing of never ending cramming. But the light at the end of the tunnel shall be Vegas baby.

Family and friends have been asking me if I'm ready, especially my father. he keeps asking me, "What makes you think you can win." I tell him, "Well, I'm determined to win and I have the skills, I just need the luck." It's been in the back of my mind for almost 4 years now since the first time I saw the World Series on TV. I must win. For the past year it's all I've thought about. I think about all the strategies I'm going to employ, how fast or slow I'm going to play, who I might play, and what to do in certain situations. Every tournament I play I assess what I've done right and what I've done wrong. I've been thinking about what I'm going to do with the money WHEN I win. First I'm going to buy a house in Las Vegas and Miami because with the current housing market I will be able to afford both for the price of one. Then I'm going to give my friend(a very hard working friend) my car, and buy a Mercedes-Benz CL550, black exterior, beige leather interior. Hopefully I'll still have 2-3 hundred thousand left over. I'll put 100 thousand in the bank for a rainy day, use another 100 for a my bank roll so I can travel and play and use the last 100 to open a small restaurant business for my family. If lucks on my side when I go, everything should go according to plan.

Now my strategic plan.

Since I have no followers as of yet I can discuss how I'm going to play for the tournament. From my past experience in playing no-limit hold'em tournaments, you can not play strictly by the book. In cash games, if you play by the book you should do okay. With tournaments I find the book should be used as a slight guideline. The book tells you to stay patient in the first few stages of a tournament, but everyone knows that now because every book published states that. So I play a lot of pots and gather a lot of chips early. Since I gathered a lot of chips, I can make educated gambles later on in the tournament, since the book is telling everyone they must be more aggressive and play more marginal hands. Now although most of the time I'll have strong hands that are crushing the opponent, they can still get lucky(the reason why so many people think they can play) and I'll have enough chips to make an investment, lose and still be strong in the tournament. Where as the opponent I just beat played tight early and gambled on one hand. I look at poker as a financial investor would. The goal is to win 1st place because that's where almost all the money is. If I get kicked out early on it's better than investing 3-4 days worth of time and effort and not getting a return on my investment. So if I play more aggressive at the beginning, when people are scared of losing, I'll have more of an advantage. Then when people want to gamble, I can leverage my bad beats(when some one wins a hand and the percentages of winning were not in their favour) with the large amount of chips I gathered early on.

Now once in the money, I tighten up and play only premium hands. Why? Even when the books says you should be playing real aggressive. What the book forgets to mention is that everyone has made the money. Most amateurs don't fear losing anymore because they already made a profit. Also pros aiming to win it all also know you must be aggressive to win the whole event. Now books also say that to win you must always play opposite of everyone else, which is true. Therefore if every one's playing aggressive with marginal hands- KQ, Q10 off suit, then my tight hands-QQ, AK, KK will be dominating most of the time. Now books say that blinds will be increasing so fast and will be so high that one can not wait for premium hands as such. This is true, but with the WSOP tournament structure, there will be enough time. Blinds raise every 2 hours, where other tournaments raise blinds every hour. Therefore my strategy is to play opposite of the book's strategy as well as the common strategy.