Tomorrow - biggest tournament of my life so far

I haven't been posting much and honestly I haven't been playing much over the last few weeks.  I've been out of town on the weekends and busy.  That's OK.  I'm not sweating it too much.  I do want to play more, and I do want to study more.  

Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza 3.5 - playing event 1

I'm playing Event #1 of the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza 3.5.  (3.5?  Weird.)  $600 buy-in tournament.  Unlimited re-entries which I don't love, but they have to build up that $200k guaranteed prize pool somehow.  My wife decided that this would be a nice anniversary present for me, and I agree.  What a great wife!

The biggest tournament I've ever played up until now was pretty small.  Probably a $300 or $350 buy-in tournament at Aria one night.  We went there for the nightly $125 but they were running something else, and we played.  Busted out, nothing very special about it.  Other than that it's been all tournaments $150 or less.  

I've been reading Kill Everyone this week in anticipation of the tournament.  (Wow, only $10 on Amazon right now!)  I won't get through it all, and obviously I'm not going to be able to execute on everything, or maybe anything, out of the book.  The one thing I'm getting out of it though is that pot odds in a tournament are not the same as pot odds in a cash game.  They are always about the same or worse, because losing chips is more negative than winning the same chips.  I acknowledge openly that I don't understand ICM in tournaments and that's something I need to work on in the future.  Kill Everyone tells me that, simply put, if you are a medium stack and you are going up against a big stack or another medium stack, you need WAY better pot odds if there is a money jump coming.  Especially if there are short stacks about to bust.  I think that's a valuable thing to know.  That way at least if I get in a situation where I am thinking about risking a lot of chips and it's a borderline situation, I can fold easier than I would in the past.  Maybe pushing is OK but if I know I'm going to get called or if I'm calling an all in, I need to be stronger or be getting better pot odds than normal.

This tournament is going to be big.  Depending on how they are calculating the 200k, they either need to get 334 players registered overall, or 385 players if the 200k is after the rake.  They are raking a ton (13%) which sucks, but what can you do.  

It's a multi-day tournament which is super exciting to me.  I have never been in a situation where I got to bag chips.  Hoping this is my first time.  That would just be so exciting.  I'd love to get to sleep on Saturday night dreaming of running good and hitting huge on Sunday.  

I'm going to buy in tonight at the Venetian and the tournament starts tomorrow at noon.  I'm so excited.  I've been playing good tournament poker lately and I feel pretty confident that I'll be able to make decent decisions (to the best of my ability), pay attention well, and not freak out if/when I get short on chips.  I don't even care about getting short on chips.  The way I see tournaments is that it's somewhat of a predetermined path.  Your path to winning may include dropping down to just a few big blinds.  You just need to ride it out, play well, and if it's your day to win, you will win.  Maybe this is my day.

I'll post more about it this weekend or next week depending on how deep I get.  Wish me luck!  If I happen to win it... this puts me in very close proximity to the money I want to get before turning pro and giving it a shot again.  That would be amazing.