HugePoker

I endured the most frustrating 8 hours of my poker career between the noon start time and 8:00 dinner break. I didn’t lose any massive pots, but everything went wrong - I had lots of good starting hands to see cheap flops with, but never hit anything more than marginal top pair hands. I lost two sizeable pots with AJ, once against J9 on a 932A9 board, and once against AQ on a AT3A9 board (pleased I didn’t lose a lot more on that one). I did win a couple of decent pots to stave off oblivion, but by the time dinner break rolled around, my 30K starting stack had been amputated down to 13K, and I was not happy.

I was pretty psyched about my table at first, as it seemed like the tougher players were on my right and the bad ones on my left. The prime example of the latter category was a little blonde bimbo who people kept coming over to photograph. After she busted (spectacularly) we learned that she was a Playboy model and wife of some famous rock-star. She busted on a KT9T board when a guy bet 7500, she put out 3 5000 chips, the dealer said “raise” and she argued that she was only calling and took back one of the chips(!) Of course it was ruled a raise, her opponent reraised all-in and she only had 8000 chips left and called, and her opponent had 99 for the boat. Sadly for the rest of the table a miracle queen did not materialize on the river, and our little cutie was gone.

The old codger on my left who loved to “reraise those internet kids!” also busted mid-day, in fairly stupidendous fashion. So the two best targets for me to shoot at got blasted by others, and I was left with the sharks.

The first hand after dinner I won a nice little pot with a flat-float-bluff maneuver, giving me a glimmer of hope for a comeback. about a half hour later, hope materialized. After 3-betting JJ and getting called in 2 spots, I didn’t like the King on the flop, but I really liked the Jack on the turn, and I especially liked the paired Ten on the river, giving me a full ouse. I played the turn cagily and got my opponent to stack off on the river, doubling me up to 30K. Indescribable sigh of relief.

TWO HANDS LATER, I flopped trips with T9s on a TT8 flop, and hit ANOTHER FULL HOUSE with a 9 on the turn, and got the very tough player to pay off a sizeable bet on the river when a Queen hit. I feel good about how I played both hands, extracting maximum value from both, and getting me up over 40K.

I finished the night with 40250 chips, right around average. There are more stories from the end of the night, but I’m sitting by the Bellagio pool, so I’m going to stop thumbing on my phone keyboard.

My Day 2A will start tomorrow at Noon (Day 2B is Saturday, Sunday is a day off for everyone, and the whole surviving fielf returns for Day 3 on Monday). Stay tuned…

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