Late Night in Knoxville

Playing Party NLHE trying to work my way to my $100 bonus. Got the account all straightened out. I was going to sneak in a trip to Atlantic City, but couldn't make any time to do it yesterday. Had one tough beat on Party raising with KK and 22 called, then the flop of 234 took the cash. Also have a maniac playing 67% of the hands. I've been able to trap him once, but he's stayed aggressive and gradually built up chips.

Looks like the Bellagio WPT is going really well. Enormous prize pool, with more than two million going to the winner. Doyle Brunson and the Unabomber are 4th and 5th in chips respectively.

I need to develop some specific goals for my game as I have been up and down. I had a chance to speak with a friend of mine who is trying to break into the world of tournament play. He is being coached by Tommy Vu, who placed 22nd in this year's WSOP Main Event. I also just got Dan Harrington's Volume 2. Listening to my friend plus reading Harrington shows me how little I know about this game. A quick list of my biggest challenges (an incomplete list):

• No ability to read any tells (when I say any, what I mean is any)
• No ability to put anyone on a hand; most of the time, my initial thought is what is the best hand they could have
  
• Minimal interest in play or players once I'm out of a hand
• Too focused on risk on my dominant hands and not enough attention when my big hands get attacked
• No regular plan during a hand; I feel like I need to develop some sort of ritual before and during play so that I think through each important aspect of the hand
  
• I tend to be too passive
• I tend to fire multiple bullets when I have AK or AQ, too often resulting in more losses
• I rarely hang in with bottom or middle pair
• I make too many quick decisions, really more reflexes as decisions overstates things
• I look at pot odds and implied pot odds in generalities vs. specific calculations
• I don't defend my blinds very much
• I don't attack blinds very much
• I get too cute; this probably my one of my three greatest problems. This mostly manifests itself by too often trapping and getting run down or losing bets. I would assume it is a negative play for me, especially in limit where most of the time folks come with you anyways

So, I'm not quite sure what this means I do well. I'll have to think about that as well. I need to understand both my strenghts and weaknesses, and currently I don't have a very solid catalogue of either. How I have benjamins in my wallet is a bit beyond me now that I think of it. I'll work on getting these lists over the next week, but if anyone has thoughts or similar work that they've done, please let me know.

I'll be heading to London Thursday. If anyone can give me the rundown of the Gutshot, that would be great.