EPT San Remo

I played Day 1A today and I'll start with the good news: I'm still in. The bad news: I have 8.9k with blinds of 500/1k. Before I get into the rollercoaster of today, I'll start off with what happened yesterday.

I ended up meeting Moritz and Nico in Zurich as we all had the same flight to Nice together. Chinese poker on the plane didn't run quite as planned but I managed to win back my losses later in the hotel. At night, Nico and I went to the Pokerstars Welcome Party, but because it was a boring sausage fest as usual, I ended up leaving pretty quickly.

The tournament started today at 3pm and throughout the whole 9 levels of play I was pretty shortstacked. My strategy was to tighten up a bit as opposed to the last EPTs I played. I had JJ 3 times and AA once during the day but could never really build a significant pot. I tried to focus a lot on pot control in most of my semi-strong hands, something that ended up saving me a lot of money. I also made some pretty big laydowns (with the exception of one hero call that left me crippled) which is something I'm proud of.

Once I was short I had several auto-push situations where I was flipping:
79 vs K8 - I win after a 7 hits the turn
JTs vs A6 - flop QTQ and I double, though this push was questionable
AK vs AQ - the board double pairs and we split :(
Q5 vs 22 - flop QKQ, easy money
AKs vs Q4 - river 4, this was one of the last hands of the day

So as I mentioned, I now have 8.9k but anything can happen really. I'll definitely be pushing so hopefully I can find a nice situation and double/triple up to get a playable stack.

Other than that, San Remo is beautiful. Italy is a wonderful place to be in April as the weather is very pleasant. I'm also a big fan of Italian food and so far everything I've tried (spaghetti, lasagne, cappucino, red wine) has all been fabulous. The only thing that bothers me is that most Italians seem to show absolutely no interest in even attempting to speak English. I guess you can't have it all.