I’m busted out of yet another $1500 event at the world series, leaving me 0 for 3 this year.
I took a big hit on the 2nd hand of the tournament when I picked up AK in the big blind with a raise and a call into me. I reraise to 375, happy to just pick up the pot right there but willing to see a flop too – the original raiser calls and the third player folds. The flop of KT4 seems like something I should be pretty pleased with, so I put out 525, and the guy on my left says “All In”, and I just restrain the urge to vomit all over the table. I work my way back through the hand, and I remember a little grimace he made when the other player folded, when he wouldn’t have thought I was watching him. All of the sudden my top pair of kings is shriveling up in a big fat hurry, as the only hand that makes sense for him to have in that spot is Aces. I almost call anyway, but I show a little discipline and make the good fold, and he’s kind enough to show me the Aces (kind of a mistake on his part - I would have suffered more if he had just thrown the Aces in the muck and let me agonize).
After that I’m in bad shape, and I tread water for a while until I pick up a pair of sixes on the button with everyone folding to me. I raise – again happy to just steal the blinds if they’ll let me, but both say no to that idea and call. I’m not too sad about that when the flop brings a glorious six, and now it’s just a matter of getting paid for my monster. Both players check and I bet small, hoping at least one of them will read me as weak – they both call and I rinse and repeat on the turn, betting a little less than half my chips on the turn. This time the guy who burned me with the Aces earlier says “I can’t believe I’m laying this down” and folds, and I say a silent “Crap!” and shift my prayers to the other guy, a cocky young player who has already bragged about winning the Bellagio tournament twice in the past week. He fingers his chips as if he’s going to check-raise me, but ends up calling. The river brings a blank – he can only beat me if he has a higher set, and there’s no way he has that with the betting so far. He checks and I toss my remaining 700 chips in and he starts muttering about whether the river could have helped me and I desperately want to reassure him that it didn’t, but even without my reassurance he finds a way to call, and I turn over my set and he wilts. Then he starts talking about how he’s not bothered at all about busting out of this event because he can always go over to Bellagio and win another one there.
So I’m back around 3000, but I don’t stay there for long – after a couple of continuation bets run into brick walls, I get back down around 1500 and then am happy to be moved to a new table. The blinds increase to 100-200 and I’m in pretty desperate shape, and AQ is plenty good to make a stand with. When a player with slightly more chips than I have agonizes and then calls I can’t be too worried – if he had anything that beat me he would have snap-called – but when another player overcalls I’ve got to sweat a little, because he’s *got* to have a big hand, right? The first guy turns over 55 – OK we’ve got a coinflip, I don’t think much of his call but whatever, I’m mostly worried that the last guy might have me crushed. But umm no – he turns over KQ. Bad news is that he has one of my outs against the other guy, good news is that I have him crushed and if I win the coinflip against 55 I’m very likely to beat KQ (barring a board with both a King and a Queen but no Ace), and the very good news is that if I win, I triple up to over 5000 chips. Some of you will remember that last year I busted out of the main event with AQ vs KQ, and here I go again, with not much consolation in the fact that it wasn’t the KQ that beat me. No high cards on the flop, turn or river, and no miracle two-pair on the board to counterfeit the fives, and the fives hold and I’m zero-for-three in WSOP events, and – this is ugly – zero for fifteen in the multi-table tournaments I’ve played since the tournament I won at the Wynn. I’ve won some money in single-table satellites in that period, and in general I’ve been successful with those. I may switch to grinding the singles for a few days to try and get to a more comfortable financial spot before throwing any more large sums at the multis. There are more $1500 WSOP events on Thursday and Saturday, and in my current mood I’m thinking to skip the Thursday and hold out for Saturday. But we’ll see …
In brighter (but infuriating) news, my buddy Ace arrived yesterday morning, took a taxi straight from the airport to Caesars, where he played the same $235 tournament I played, made it to day 2 today, made it to the final table as one of the chip leaders, and then negotiated a deal when they got down to three players that totally screwed over the other two (equal I think to the deal I struck at the Wynn giving me 90% of first place money – dealmaking is a whole separate poker game in itself), leaving him with $16,000 in his pocket and allowing me to coerce him into buying me food and drinks at the Mesa Grill, one of my favorite restaurants in Vegas. Congratulations, Ace. Ya big jerk.
Big things are awaiting you around the corner, so just keep banging and the door will open.