While in Las Vegas this week for the Affiliate Summit I had some time to play in the daily $500 + $40 buy in. The tournament started with 52 players and I chopped the remaining prize pool with the last 2 players for $5700. I was tempted to play for the win, but I was facing a chip leader with double the chips and I didn’t want to be the dick that wouldn’t deal and have them gunning to knock me out 3rd for only $3700. I liked this tournament since it has a good structure for a small buy in starting with 3,000 chips and 40 min rounds. I have played a few others below or close to that buy in and you usually start with 1,500 chips and 25-50 blinds. Which makes for lots of quick action and less skill involved. Anyway it was a good warm up for the L.A. Poker classic 10k buy in I will be entering in next month. I won that entry at Ad Tech as I bogged about before. Doing well in this tournament gives me some needed confidence going into the big buy in as I beat out some good players at the Bellagio and not just some drunk internet marketers. I also feel my game has evolved since my first major tournament at the Bellegio in 2005. The play was real tight as most players folded to my raises and I was only all-in once early when I was short stacked. It was a coin flip and I won it of course. I had one piece of luck when I committed about 1/3 my chips at the final table to suck out with KQ vs QQ. Otherwise it seems, I never committed more then 2-3 Big Blinds to a pot before folding. When I pushed more out people folded. On the negative side I felt I didn’t always get good value from my trips or Aces, but I won with all of them and took decent small to medium sized pots. I also made 2-3 gutzy calls with when I had ridiculous draws (13+ outs on the flop) and hit them. Like I had a big call on a 9sTsAx board holding KsQs. A J hit the turn. I took down the pot on the turn wishing I value bet a little more to get a call on the straight, but I got a decent pot out of it.