Tournament reviews:

MGM, Friday 11am -- played in this tournament once before, and it is extremely well run. Professional dealers and extremely courteous floor staff. Special kudos to floor person Jim W. for how he handles everything, from helping a novice who is nervous find his seat to handling experienced players during coloring up, etc. In terms of players, it seemed to mostly be tourists, covering the complete range from very experienced players to people playing in their first live tournament. Overall a good crowd. My one complaint about this tournament is the blind/ante structure, in particular the jump from level 2 to level 3. The blinds plus antes for levels 1,2, and 3 are: 75, 150, and then 550. And if I remember correctly you start with 3000 chips. In my opinion/experience you almost have to get lucky and hit a few hands and double up in levels 3 and 4 to survive this jump. If you do, the level escalation afterward feels more "normal". Despite that, I still would definitely recommend this tournament.

Venetian Deep Stack -- didn't last very long in this one, so I don't have too much to say. It drew a lot of people, somewhere around 200 or so. In terms of the crowd: a lot of locals, a lot of attitude, and a lot of sunglasses. Definitely the most uptight and unfriendly crowd I encountered... I guess that comes with the territory as the buy-ins increase?

TI Headhunter -- TI is definitely the most approachable room I've played in. Two things surprised me about this tournament: first, how few people it drew on a Friday night (20). I guess that does and doesn't make sense in retrospect: either people were out to dinner or seeing shows, or they were in one of the special bigger buy-in tournaments that start in the evening. And second, I expected the bounties to generate much more action than they did -- especially when short stacks were going all-in. It seemed to me that for the most part players were not altering their play whatsover to try to get bounties. But that could have been just been an oddity with this particular day.

TI 2pm -- Not much else to say that wasn't mentioned above. I really like TI's $65 buy-in tournaments. Definitely recommend them.

And finally, in retrospect one thing I would do differently next time is play a satellite for a mid-level tournament instead of doing the full buy-in. The buy-in for the Deep Stack was $340, and its satellites were $80. The fact that I had put up so much more money for the Deep Stack made me feel more pressured, and thus I had less fun and didn't focus as well. If I get in for cheap by winning a satellite, there's definitely less pressure. And if I don't, I only spent a little more than a lower buy-in tournament.