I'm on my way to Vegas!!!!

I started this blog to chronicle my journey of qualifying for my 1st World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. In less than 6 months, I will be chasing to the dream of becoming a millionaire and perhaps sitting at a table with the likes of Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, or (God help me) Phil Hellmuth.

The funny thing is, I enjoy poker, but I don't play all that often. I only started playing maybe 3 or 4 years ago. And until this run, I considered myself a slightly above average player. I'm sure some of you reading this are like, "How the hell did Cahill get to play at the World Series? I've played against him and he's not that good!!!" However, the more I've played, the more I understood the game and the better I've gotten. Even when I've gotten knocked out of tournaments, 95% of the time I was in with the best hand but have gotten sucked out on. At first, it used to drive me crazy, but I soon realized, that's poker. Unless you have the absolute nuts, mathematically, there is always a chance you can lose a hand. If anyone knows mathematics, it's me, so I don't get as crazy about it anymore.

I qualified this year through the annual Dead Money Tournament in New Orleans. Bill Phillips has been running this for 5 years now.

I won my trip to New Orleans by winning a table in Delaware hosted by Mike Durbin. 16 players and it cost me $100 to enter and I knew no one there. Not knowing anyone you're playing with is good and bad. Good, because they don't know you and how you play, but bad because the opposite is also true.

In Delaware I started off well and accumulated a nice chip stack. It took about half the players to be eliminated before some finally asked me who the hell I was. I don't like to talk when I'm playing poker. When I'm in a hand, talk to me all you want, but you're not going to get a response because I become catatonic. Anyway, I ended up heads up with a pretty decent player. I gave him a pretty good chip lead when I called his all in with 2 overcards to his pocket pair, but I got no help.

Next hand I tried to steal the blind in the small blind by raising with Q3 offsuit. My opponent called and the flop was no help to me and included an ace. I came firing out, representing an ace and my opponent called. I knew I was in trouble because I figured my opponent had an ace. Turn comes a queen and I immediately went all in. I really had no choice because I was short stacked and pot committed. My opponent went into the tank. Said he knew how I played and figured I had him outkicked and laid down top pair. When I turned over the Q3, he wasn't very happy. That was the first time that I showed my cards the whole tournament. On tilt the rest of the way, It wasn't long before I took down the table.

I was off to New Orleans for the 5th Annual Dead Money Poker Tournament, with the winner receiving an entry into the 2008 World Series of Poker. As excited as I was to go to New Orleans, a place I hadn't been since Mardi Gras 2000, my excitement quickly turned when I woke up Friday morning to catch my flight sick as a dog. Throw in that it was supposed to be the coldest in New Orleans in quite some time and I was miserable.

Regardless, it was New Orleans. Bourbon Street. Harrah's casino in walking distance. Cajun food, which I absolutely love. I sucked it up and ventured out Friday afternoon.

Bourbon wasn't very crowded. I'm sure the weather and the fact that some people actually work down there had something to do with it. I ended up at the Cajun Cabin for some seafood gumbo, jambalaya, fried alligator (that was a first), and a couple of Abita's (local beer) and bloodys. From there, it was off to Harrah's. For some reason I've been playing a lot of roulette. I know the odds are terrible, but I've been pretty lucky lately. 6, 18 and 21. 3 numbers next to each other on the wheel for a nickel a piece. Luck was on my side as I ended up tripling my buy-in so I ventured over to blackjack where I doubled my buy-in there. Of course, blackjack wasn't without a dull moment as I had a major lapse in judgement when I split 5s against a 6. The dealer said he'd never seen that before and I had other people at the table yelling at me. I won the hand but realized the error and apologized to the table. They still weren't very happy and believe it or not, neither was I. I'd rather play correctly and lose and then play poorly and win.

I was exhausted and still feeling terrible at this point, so I went back to the room and slept until morning even though it was only 8:00.

The next day was the Dead Money Tournament. I was up WAY too early and it was miserable out. Rainy, windy and temperatures in the 30s. What happened the sun, heat and humidity in Louisiana?

Tournament started at noon and there were 12 players. Not bad odds for a trip to Vegas and a $10,000 buy-in to the greatest poker tournament in the world. Two tables of 6, 10,000 chips to start, and I had last year's winner, Ross Wallin, to my right. I definitely made a mental note of that.

I started off well once again, picking up pots here and there. After about an hour, I had a pretty good read on most of the players at my table. There were a couple of key hands at the final table that helped me out, but there was one early which I think could have been the early turning point. I had KQ suited and raised a decent amount. One caller was the guy to my immediate left (I believe his name was Robert), who always played with an ace in his hand, so I knew what was up against. Flop comes A,K,Q rainbow. Two pair for me but I did not like this flop at all. I checked and he came out firing. I put him on AK or AQ. I laughed because I couldn't believe I was going to lay my hand down, but did and showed the table. Everyone was shocked, except for Ross because he agreed with me. Robert shows me AJ. Bad laydown on my part, but I asked the dealer to run the cards and sure enough, he would have rivered a 10 on me for the straight anyway. One thing I'm learning about no-limit hold em is that it's not the hands you play that are as important as the laydowns you make.

The second big hand at this table for me was me in the small blind with AK. Ross to my right on the button had been pretty aggressive with his raises in position. He'd gotten caught a few times and was someone short stacked and moved in. I immediately called and turns over KJ. The defending champ was dominated in danger of being the first one eliminated. But poker being poker, he flops a J and builds up his chip stack and knocks me down to about 5k in chips.

We merged at 10 and I was still alive. My chip stack was going up and down like a roller coaster. Definitely some pretty good players at the final table. Martin took over as the aggressive one and I took note. There were 3 key hands for me at the final table. First key hand was when I was short stacked against Ross, who was the chip leader at this point and was all-in with A8 I believe. Ross called with pocket 9s. Now here's where it got interesting. Ross was in the small blind and was shuffling the cards for the next hand, which is what the small blind usually does. In his haste, I assume he thought he was supposed to be dealing and dealt the rest of the hand with the wrong deck!!!! However, no one picked up on it until the hand was over and wouldn't you know it, I "flopped" an ace. Since it was his mistake and the hand was already done, I took down the pot.

Second key hand came when another aggressive player, Daniel from Virginia goes all-in in early position. I had a decent chip stack at this point and called with A10 suited. Daniel turns over A2. Dominated. But poker being poker, Daniel gets a 2 on the turn and stays alive taking a lot of my chips in the process.

Third and final key hand came when I was heads up with Ross. He had a substantial chip lead on me and was dealt 62 suited and I called in the small blind. Ross checks and the flop comes out something like queen, four, five. Don't remember if I went all in on the flop or turn but I was short stacked and had a gutshot and a pair after the turn, so why not? Ross had 45 for 2 pair. I yell out "Give me a 3" which would have given me the straight, although I didn't realize at the time that a queen, 6 or 2 would have given me a higher 2 pair as well since a 6 fell on the turn, so I did have outs. Sure enough, the 3 comes on the river giving me the straight and evening the chip stacks.

From there I played fairly aggressive, either raising or folding but mostly raising, and eventually wore down the defending champion.

That night we went out to celebrate and although I don't like to drink and play, I got talked into a 1-2NL game at Harrah's 5AM. Bad idea. I played terribly, loosely, talked too much, played too many hands and lost half my winnings from the day before. I hate cash games. I was almost embarrassed to admit that I won a satellite was going to play in the WSOP with the way I played. Might give bad players hope. But that's OK. I'll get it out of my system now. It's part of my strategy to make people wonder. Besides, I have a little less than 6 months to straighten it out and I promise there will be no cash games or beer while at the table between now and then.

To prepare, I'm sure I'll be making occasional trip to Atlantic City to play at the Borgata or the Taj. I think there's some WSOP circuit event coming up in March at Caesars also. I will be sure to keep everyone up to date on my progress and the events I play.