HugePoker

Yesterday, after two intense days of playing, cashing, and getting bad-beat out of the $1K bracelet event, I decided to get out of Vegas and go hiking in the Mojave National Preserve, which was fantastic (and not even too crazy-hot - totally under 95 degrees).

I was pretty tired today and decided to play the low-stressed, bite-sized, donkey-filled Wynn tournament. My initial table may have been one of the most idiotic collections of poker players I have ever played with in a more-than-$50 tournament (the Wynn has a $225 buyin). I wouldn’t be surprised if the gentleman on my left had never played a tournament before. All around the table there were constant protocol violations, weird misunderstandings about the rules, players misreading their hands or thinking they won a pot because they didn’t understand that their bottom pair was counterfeited, etc. And as a result of the low caliber of play on the part of my opponents, I … ummmm … went from a starting stack of 10,000 chips to … ummm … well … 4000 chips … by the end of the … ummm … third level. Yeah. Can’t really explain that. Well, maybe I can. I played bad. The idiocy of my table-mates made me not take things very seriously. When I should have been seeing a bunch of cheap flops and waiting for great opportunities to stack someone with a big hand, I was instead splashing around, trying to push people out of hands (?!?) and just generally spewing my chips away. With 4000 chips at 200-400, shoving with 55 seemed pretty natural, and when I won the coinflip against AK, I refocused and tried to identify which players I could exploit in which ways, and I quickly built my stack up to 27,000.

One key lucky hand propelled me to the final table. With 17 players left (we started with 56, and the final 9 would get paid) I called a raise from an active player with KQs in the big blind. The flop came JT4, giving me a straight draw, two overcards, and a backdoor flush draw. This guy seemed to always continuation-bet, and the stack sizes were about right, so I waited for him to bet and checkraised all-in. He hemmed and hawed for a while and I thought maybe he had something like Ace-Ten, which wouldn’t even have me in too bad shape. I was surprised when he called and tabled AA, almost as bad as being up against a set - my overcards weren’t good anymore, and he had two of my straight outs in his hand. Yuck. But the turn brought a little more hope - a spade to give me a flush draw - and the river was a glorious Nine, giving me the straight.

I made it to the final table as one of the three chip leaders, and the poor sod whose Aces I cracked busted out on the tenth place bubble with a zero dollar prize - sorry buddy. I ran into a mishap when one of the chip-leaders rivered me by turning his third pair into trips, which knocked me down to an average stack, where I stayed as players busted out - I won some small pots to keep up with average stack size, but I never got back among the top stacks. By the time we got down to 4-handed, there was one massive chip leader and the other three of us were jockeying back and forth as the co-losers. Peopple started talking about a deal, but they wanted to give the chip leader too much money so I kept vetoing it. I got solidly into last place, but then the blinds went up and I had a perfectly efficient shoving stack, and I definitely understood push-fold dynamics better than these other guys. I shoved myself back into contention, but then another short stack doubled up, and the other one won a nice pot, and I was in last place again. Deal talk persisted, and the others crafted a deal that would give the leader $2800 and the rest of us $1750. That was getting pretty acceptable, but I decided to be a hard-ass and ask for $1800, even though that would require the other two shorts to accept less money than me when they had more chips . One of them wanted to do it, and the other one almost fell for it, but then he dug in his heels and said no - he would have been fine with taking $1725, but he just couldn’t stomach the idea of letting me have more. So we played one more hand, and then the blinds went up, the antes doubled, and I was in the big blind, with the chip leader on my left. All that meant that the deal I tried to stonewall one hand earlier was all of the sudden VERY attractive. They really should have retracted it - all those factors meant that my stack was really not worth as much as theirs, but I think they had had enough of me putting them in difficult spots and feared that I would keep doing it (even though I really wouldn’t have been able to - with the new blinds/antes my M was down to 3 and I was about to take the BB). They totally jumped at it, not even pausing for a moment to think about why I would have changed my tune after just one hand.

So another final table, another nice little score, and another vote of confirmation for the Wynn as the juiciest $200-ish tournament ever.

If I feel well-rested in the morning I’ll be playing Day 1A of the $1K bracelet event. If not I’ll play something else and play Day 1B on Friday. I’ll let you know…

-huge

I don’t often get the opportunity to come into a new day of a tournament as the chip leader at my table - in fact I’m not sure it’s ever happened to me before. To amplify the effect, because I won a few pots at the end of the night last night after they had colored up some of the green (25) chips but before they had colored up all of them, I ended up with an absurd number of green chips, so that not only did I have more chips than everyone else in terms of my chip count, I had probably three times as many physical chips as anyone else, and I speculated that I might be the tournament chip leader in terms of the weight of my stack. When I got to my table about 30 seconds before start time, everyone else had unbagged their chips and stacked them into a small number of neat little piles, but the dealer had just cut my bag open and dumped it in an unholy multi-colored mountain. In front of my seat. I walked up and said “oh, I think that’s me”, and spent the next ten minutes stacking them.

The very first hand I was dealt seemed like an auspicious beginning - guy on my right raises, I have AK in the hijack and reraise, everyone folds. I could almost feel everyone tense up, like “OK, so this is how it’s gonna be”. Unfortunately after that I didn’t pick up a decent hand for a while, so I couldn’t keep them on the ropes (or maybe I’m not quite ballsy enough to do so without a tolerable hand).

It was kind of a funny day, quite a contrast from yesterday … I got involved with a lot of pots, but very rarely played a big pot. I stole blinds, I occasionally 3-bet, I raise-folded, I made a few continuation bets, but I don’t think I played a single hand all day long that involved action on the flop AND on the turn or river. I bounced around between 30K and 40K until we got to the bubble. I didn’t get a lot of opportunity to play bubble terrorist, and after 7 hands od hand-for-hand we were in the money with 324 players remaining, all of us guaranteed to cash for at least $1800.

No big action until the short stack on my right, who had shoved on my big blind twice already, was unfortunate enough to do so a third time when I had AQ. I snap-called, he was live with KT, but an Ace on the turn doomed him - that took me up to 46k.

At the new table things continued in a similar manner, but I had stepped up to the 40k-50k range. And then disaster struck…

An active player in late position open-shoved his 31k stack, and I pretty much snap-called with JJ, believing htat it was nearly inconceivable that he would do that with Queens or better. I was right, he had A6o, and I was in good shape to make a nice jump up to a 75K stack … the 679 flop gave him two more outs but was otherwise acceptable to me … the 5 on the turn added four chop outs (an eight would make a straight on the board for a split pot) … but all of those extra outs were made irrelevant by the Ace on the river. YUCK!!! With that I was crippled, down to exactly 10,000.

On the very next hand another player raised to 5000 and my AK in the small blind was an obvious reshove. He turned over 66, and I lost the coin flip, and just like that in two hands I was gone.

I busted in 158th place out of 3106 players, for a prize of $2,589. Not what I was hoping for at the start of the day, but a WSOP cash is never anything to sneeze at, and this was my first bracelet event cash in a long time, and I might be bummed about how I busted out but I’ll take the $2,589 and not whine about it too much. I believe this result makes me mildly positive for the trip - just in terms of poker, I’m not talking about expenses or anything crazy like that.

Hopefully it’s just the first step.

It looks like I’m in exactly 50th place going into day 2. 324 of us will make the money, so I’m in good shape. I’ll be the chip leader at my new table:

Seat 1: Frank Calo - 15550
Seat 2: Braxton Dunaway - 26400
Seat 3: Matthew Sweeney - 15100
Seat 4: Robert Voit - 27000
Seat 5: Manuel Davidian - 9100
Seat 6: Dara Davey - 18850
Seat 7: Laurence Hughes - 37475
Seat 8: Joseph Ebanks - 11650
Seat 9: Matt Sterling - 18000

You can watch the action at:

http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2010-wsop/event-47/

or get my personal updates on my twitter page:

http://twitter.com/hugepoker

must run, bracelet awaits…

I got up at 6AM to finish packing, Rachel took me to the airport at 7AM, flight at 8:30AM, landed Vegas 11AM, Mark collected me and took me to the Rio, where I checked in to my room … all the while debating whether I should play the $1K WSOP event at Noon. I decided that I was in pretty good shape, having slept for most of the flight, so I dumped my bags, put on my loud red Hawaiian shirt, grabbed my silver card protector and headed downstairs. I reg’d for the event a few minutes late and go to my table at about 12:20.

It was a wild day. It started off pretty badly, as I drifted down from the 3000 chip starting stack to just under 2000, then pulled in a few pots to get back above 3000, where I caught my first bolt of lightning. The button was very active, and at 100-200 he raised to 550. I looked down at 98s in the SB and decided to put him to the test, shoving my 3300 chips in, expecting him to fold. He did not fold, in fact he called pretty quickly, which made me think I was completely dead, but he turned over AJs and I had live cards at least. I was more than live on the 982 flop, and I was golden when the 9 hit on the turn.

Another beautiful hand when I called a small raise from the BB with A3s, flopped the nut flush draw, checkraised my opponent on the flop (again, mostly hoping he would just fold but knowing I had good outs if he didn’t) only to have him put me all-in. I was committed at that point, and I called, and he had KK. I had an overcard and the flush draw, so we were close to 50:50, and I nailed the diamond on the river to double up again, sending the “Pokerstars Team Pro” who I didn’t recognize into tilty fits. During the dinner break I went up to my room and opened up the Rizen/PearlJammer book to see if I could glean a little wisdom, and randomly opened to page 85, where I found PearlJammer playing almost the identical hand, check-raising on the flop with a flush draw, even with the same reasoning I had about trying to make the flop raise look stronger by not shoving all-in but still committing himself.

Lots of action after that, building my stack up to 26K, hitting a horrible slide down to 8K, moving around to 6 different tables, twice running into Jimmy “GobboBoy” Fricke, young online phenom who has turned into a live phenom (finishing 2nd to Gus Hansen in the Aussie Millions before he was 21) - very relieved to have him on my right both times. When I got down to 8K, I played a hand with him in the blinds in which I 3-bet shoved on him on the turn, he thought for a while and muttered “That’s very consistent with a good hand” but then called anyway doubling me up (I had AQ, he had A6, and we both hit our Ace). After the hand I asked him to clarify what he had muttered and he did, adding “I have trust issues - it started with my mother”.

That hand got me moving in the right direction again, and I soon doubled again with KK vs QQ, up to 33K. And on my last table of the night I grabbed a bunch of small pots, ending the night with 37475 chips, with average being around 21K. Between Day 1A and 1B we are down to 465 players (from 3128 starters), of which 324 will make the money. The chip leaders have 60-70K, so I’m in good shape.

Restart is at 2:30PM. Let’s hope for another huge day (maybe without some of the nasty downward swings).

I’m back in Seattle, giving my mind and body a break from poker and Vegas. On my last night (Monday) I played the Caesars “double stack turbo” and made a pretty good run. There were 138 players and they were paying 18. I made the final table, but unfortunately I was pretty short on chips by that time - I was probably 8th in chips by the time we got down to 10 players, and I was happy to make the money jump to 9th place (by knocking out the shortest stack myself), but after that there was no reason to be patient, and when the blinds went from 10,000-20,000 to 15,000-30,000 there wasn’t even the possibility of being patient (I had 240,000 at that point), and I shoved with T9o and got called by AK and I was out in 9th place for $733. I busted out around 1AM, and had to head for the airport in 5 hours, so I just stayed up all night packing and stashing my car … I’ve mostly been sleeping since my arrival in Seattle 48 hours ago.

I fly back to Vegas early Sunday morning, and I might play the $1000 WSOP event that day, depending on whether I feel rested enough.

-huge

My final table did not go well, I ended up finishing 7th for $1304, pretty disappointing given that I started the day third in chips and had a pretty good table draw (three shorter stacks to my left, big chip leader across the table from me). I went to Caesars 2 hours before the tournament restart to pick up the info sheet with everyone’s name and chip count so I could do some research and then walked over to the Mesa Grill for lunch (turns out it was brunch because it was Saturday, but that’s a good thing because they have this fantastic spicy chicken hash that … OK never mind, but the Mesa Grill is really good). While eating I was able to pull up everyone’s record on my phone, and I determined that there was only one player with more tournament cash than I have (an old-school European pro named Mark McLusky with $200k in live cashes - I have a little over $100k on record) and no-one else was even close. In fact there was an older gentleman two seats to my left with exactly one $300 cash from 4 years ago - but he was pretty short on chips so probably wouldn’t be around long (remember that thought for later). I looked into the massive chip leader first (he had 769k, 2nd in chips had 350k, I had 313k), determining that he had about $20k in cashes but then also finding that he had a twitter page. He had posted about the tournament all day Friday, and mentioned that he had a flight scheduled for Saturday morning so he was trying to “knock everyone out so that we wouldn’t have to play into Saturday”. As I’ve already reported, when we got down to 10 players there was a big brouhaha with some people wanting to play it out that night, and when it became clear that there were at least a couple of people who didn’t want to do that (me being one of them), then a few players started agitating for an even ten-way split of the prize money, which would be about $2500 each. It never ceases to amaze me that poker players will play for many hours to get down to the final few players, and then they’re all desperate to stop playing and split up the money evenly. The chip leader was so desperate, because of his flight in the morning, that he was willing to take an even chop even though he had more than double the next biggest chip stack. That’s just horrible poker, and entering a 2-day tournament when you have a flight the next morning is just brain-dead. I had a better-than-average chip stack, and I certainly believed that I had better-than-average poker skills at that table, so I wasn’t going to agree to an even chop, and I said so. On his twitter page he wrote “I have 769k and was willing to agree to an even chop, but one f’n guy wouldn’t chop!”. Ahhh, funny.

So the first development at the final table is that the older gentleman with $300 in tournament cash on his record made a bizarre play, raising for over ¼ of his stack with QJo and then just shoving all-in on a T93 board. The chip leader called him with QT, and it looked like I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of his weakness, but he spiked a King on the river to double up to 250k. I folded everything for a while, and when I tried to make a move or two, I got spanked, usually by the guy who had just doubled up and who I pegged as the weakest spot at the table. I don’t think I was wrong in my assessment, but either he was just catching great cards against me, or he was (as in his QJ hand) trigger-happy to get it all-in in any situation where he hit any piece of the flop. So I bled myself down to about 220k, while others gained ground and two of the short stacks busted out, so that with 8 players left I had slipped to 6th. My first real good news of the final table came when the agro player on my right got into a blind-vs.-blind tangle with me. He had stolen my BB three times when he tried it again and I picked up AJ. I flat-called and the flop came J73 all clubs (I had no clubs). I shoved all-in and he agonized for a very long time before finally folding, and I was up to 340k. But very soon after that I lot a big pot with AK when I raised and continuation bet, only to get insta-check raised by the old $300 guy, and I had to dump it. That and some lesser catastrophes brought me down under 200k. Another player busted out, and now I was 6th out of 7. When the very active chip-leader raised from mid position and I found a pair of Eighrs my stack and my hand looked pretty perfect for a reshove. The chip-leader thought for a while and finally called, turning over AQ. The flop was a bit of overkill - 3-Q-Q. So I was out in 7th, and our chip leader posted on twitter: “just busted the dbag who refused to chop”. So I’m a “f’n guy” AND a “dbag” … I must be doing something right.

I meant to write up more stories but this has gotten too long … Sunday I played online, as Pokerstars ran their big annual WSOP mega-qualifier, out of 9000 players I got down to 900th and then busted when I made a very difficult call that turned out to be correct - I had AK, my opponent had KQ and check-raised me all-in on a JT3 board. The only way he could win was to make the straight, and I had one of his Ace outs, but he found another one on the river to bust me (and I needed 252nd for the $12000 package). Sunday night I played a super weird single table satellite, in which I got it down to two players and got all-in with 83 vs. 75 on a A87 flop, and he spiked a 5 on the turn to beat me. And Vanessa made a great run in the $10k Heads-Up championship, making it to the round of 8 (they started with 256) and running a 5-hour marathon match yesterday, and also ultimately busting when she got her money in good. $90,000 is not a bad payday, but with such a good shot at a bracelet it really had to suck to go out that way.

I’m flying back to Seattle tomorrow for a 5-day break from Vegas. I’ll see some of you there… In spite of the title of this post, I’m actually feeling better about poker and the WSOP after my victory at the Wynn and good run at Caesars - obviously sad to finish 7th but I feel like I put myself in a good position for a much better cash, and just got unlucky to lose a coinflip.

-huge

This will be brief … Yesterday I played in the Caesars Palace Mega Stack tournament (actually I tried to play the 1PM tournament at the Rio, but it was sold out so I entered the Caesars noon tournament an hour and a half late). It was/is a two-day tournament with 168 players, and by 12:30AM this morning I had secured a seat at the final table, which will start play at 2PM today. 10 players, $7171 for first, $733 for tenth (they paid 18 spots). I have 313,000 chips, and the average is about 260,000 - I think I’m third in chips, but I might be wrong.

I ran well early in the tournament, ran into some trouble in the middle stages, and then closed very strong in the last few levels of the night. The final table should be interesting - we were playing at two tables of 5 and 6 players until the final table was determined, so I haven’t played with everyone, but my sense is that there are a few pretty decent players, but no internet superstars or anything. I’ll try to get the restart listing beforehand so I can do a little research.

2PM, Caesars Palace, wish me luck…

Tomorrow will mark a week in Vegas for me, and until today it has been a frustrating grind. I have only played one WSOP bracelet event (the $1k on Saturday), and it didn’t go well. I’ve had a couple of good runs where it looked like I had a good shot at a decent cash, but they have fizzled or exploded before making it to the bubble. In the $1k event I basically had three hands go wrong that I couldn’t really avoid, and with the shallow structure of that event, having three hands go wrong is pretty much fatal. The first blow came when I reraised from the small blind with AKs against a steal-ish looking button raise. When the flop came ragged I decided that a continuation bet was in order, but when my opponent raised me I knew I was pretty much cooked. Next was a hand in which I called a raise in position with T8s (reasonable), floated a continuation bet with middle pair (speculative, but I expected the tight woman in the BB to fold, leaving me alone with position on the raiser - she didn’t), and had to reluctantly call a small bet from aforementioned tight woman on the turn when I made two pair. Luckily the board got super scary on the river and she checked, but when I checked behind, she turned over top-two-pair. The final nail in the coffin (crucifix? too self-aggrandizing?) came with the blinds at 75-150 when I called a shove with my measly 1400 chips and a nice looking pair of Tens. My opponent had A-J, and the flop of 5-4-3 was not *too* bad, as I started muttering “no deuce”, but the turn was the dreaded deuce indeed (maybe I should have said it out loud instead of muttering) and there was no happy chop on the river (with an Ace or a Six), and I was out of the tournament four hours after it started (instead of doubling back up to an average stack and being back in the thick of things).

I had another opportunity for the “No Deuce!” cry, in the 1PM Deepstack tournament at the Rio. I had built up a nice stack but then ran into a nasty beat - a short stack limped for 200, middle position raise to 700, I find AA in the cutoff and make it 1850, wanting to play the hand heads-up with the raiser, but they both call, which is weird since the short stack now had about a third of his chips in the middle (I can’t even imagine what hand would make sense there). The flop comes 2-3-7 and I’m feeling pretty good about my Aces, but the limper surprises me again by shoving his remaining 4000, and the raiser makes the call. I raise enough to get him pretty well committed, and he agonizes for a long time before folding JJ face up (Crap!). The weird-playing short stack turns over 5-4-suited (REALLY??? Almost a third of your short stack flat-calling a reraise with 5-4-suited??) giving him a straight draw, but two of his outs are in my hand. He’s got 6 outs, but two of them give me good redraws … the turn is fine but of course he hits the Six on the river and more than triples up at my expense. So I no longer have a great stack, but I’m in decent shape. After that I make no progress though, and the blinds get high enough that shoving with JJ is a no-brainer. I get called by the big blind who turns over AK. Once again the flop looks pretty good even though it adds an extra ugly out for my opponent: 2-2-2. This time he’s gone from having 6 outs to 7 (instead of 10 outs on the 543 flop) and I feel more confident to call “No Deuce!” out loud, but this time, due to the possibly inferior quality of the players, two people look at me like I’m crazy because they actually don’t know why I wouldn’t want a deuce to come. The turn is some rag, and when the river is (of course) the last deuce, the other players still don’t get it and act surprised when I start packing up to leave and the dealer pushes my chips to the other player. One of them finally understands and says “Wow! I woudna even thought o’ that!”.

So things were not going well, and I was getting discouraged. I decided this morning to head over to the Wynn for their Noon $225 tournament, which has often been my fallback, my haven, my solace. The players there are about the worst I’ve ever seen in a $200+ buyin tournament, and I’ve won it or come in 2nd several times (they don’t get a lot of people, so winning it doesn’t yield a big box of hundreds, but a win is a win, and when you’ve been striking out over and over again, there’s nothing like rolling over a bunch of donkeys to get your confidence back). When in the first few minutes the unter-the-gun player said “I check” before the flop and got all embarrassed when the dealer said “you can’t check, sir - it’s 50 to call”, I knew I had come back home. They only had 16 players, so it was really a 2-table sit-and-go with the top three getting paid. I actually dropped some chips in the beginning, from 10000 down to 7200, and I thought I might be in for another frustrating day, and wondered where I could go for comfort if I couldn’t even win at the Wynn. But then I hit a couple of hands and maneuvered the donkeys into paying me, and I was a little above average in chips when we thinned down to 10 players at the final table. There were four guys from Russia at the final table, only one of whom spoke much English, so he could occasionally translate when the others didn’t understand what was happening. Things got a little comical after I busted him out, as there didn’t seem to be any chance of enforcing the “English Only” rule. The Russian goon on my left had a ton of chips and was pretty annoying until he doubled me up by putting in 45BB with A5 on an A4467 board (I had AQ) hurting his stack pretty badly and making me the chip leader with 6 players left. I must confess that I ran well at the final table, picking up AA and QQ several times, and never having them cracked. I lost the chip lead for a while to the crazy Hawaiian on my right, but took it back when my AA crushed his AQ on an AK79K board. He and I busted all the remaining Russians, and when it got down to the money with three players, it was me, the crazy Hawaiian, and an Iranian guy who kept saying “ahh, just you and me, my friend” whenever he would get into a pot with either one of us. We jousted back and forth for quite a while, and I bounced between being substantial chip leader to being roughly even with the other two, but I never really fell behind. When I knocked out the Iranian I had a 2:1 chip lead on the crazy Hawaiian dude, who didn’t seem to have a firm grasp of the concept of position, especially as it applied to heads-up play. I would whittle him down and then he would hit some weird hand with starting cards that he never should have been in there with in the first place, until I raised with A8 and he called, out of position, with J5o, and when the flop came AAJ he just couldn’t get away from it.

$1552 for first, which doesn’t get me even for the trip, but it does wipe away most of my losses, and puts me in a slightly better mood about this whole stupid poker thing.

I arrived in Vegas Wednesday after a three-day drive, played two tournaments on Thursday - the $350 Deep Stack Extravaganza at the Venetian and the $160 nightly at Caesar’s, both with sort of dreary results - never got much above starting stack, took a couple of routine bad beats, bled down enough that I had to start shoving marginal hands, and sooner or later ran into big hands. Today I went for the $550 “Mega Stack” series event at Caesar’s, similar to the Venetian’s “Deep Stack” events but with much smaller fields. Last year I decided that the tournaments at Caesar’s were softer than Venetian’s, partly because better players want to play with bigger fields to have a shot at a truly big score. I tend to like smaller fields because I think a big part of my edge over weaker players comes at the final table, and I’m much more likely to make a final table in a 100-player tournament than in a 700-player event.

So I went to Caesar’s, with somewhat excessive 25k starting stacks and 25-50 blinds, but they go up pretty fast after that. By the end of late-registration and re-registration (they’re so desperate for bigger fields that if you bust out of the tournament they let you buy back in for the first 4 hours and 40 minutes) we had a whopping 69 players. Things were mostly quiet for the first three hours or so, and I made slow progress up to around 30k. A hand came up where a player raised from middle position to 2400, super-loose Asian kid to his left flat-called, I look down and find AQ in the small blind. I’m out of position with a pretty good but not superpower hand, and I’d love to just take the pot down right away, so I raise to 8100. The initial raiser folds, but the S-L.A.K. immediately shoves for more than my 30k stack. So I’m in a weird spot … if the initial raiser had shoved I would have a pretty easy fold, but the S-L.A.K.’s play smells really weird. Of the 4 hands that beat me, if he had AK I’m pretty sure he would have 3-bet right away, likewise with QQ and probably KK. Maybe with KK or AA he flats to induce a squeeze, but maybe not. So why did he flat for 2400 and then shove for more than 30k? I don’t do this very often, but this was definitely a situation where a big bet really smelled fishy and made me more inclined to call. So in the end I think forever and then call off my stack and hold my breath until he turns over A-T-suited. I get in one breath and then hold it again until the board fills up with no Ten and no flush for my opponent, and I more-than-double up. I work my way up to 75k, which was about double average at the time, but I can’t get any more chips than that, and things started turning sour. I lost a big pot when my AK lost to KQ after we both flopped a King but my opponent made a one-card flush on the river - yuck. I made it to the dinner break - BBQ brisket is covered by the $10 food voucher you get with your tournament buy-in - yum. I get moved to a new table and it becomes clear pretty quickly that this is a much meeker bunch, and I commence immediate aggression, which makes me some progress, until I look down at AQ again, which is a lot better than all the other hands I’ve been shoving with, so I shove again with 40k (blinds 1k-2k-300). An old guy on my left agonizes for 3 or 4 minutes and finally calls, turning over 99. I’m hopeful that I might double up again with AQ, but that hope is dashed quickly when the flop contains no Ace, no Queen, and a big fat nine-ball. So I’m out in 24th (only 9 people got paid) on an annoying coin-flip, but at least I feel like I put together a decent run and got a flip away from a well-above average stack with 24 left.

Tomorrow is day 1A of the $1000 WSOP event at the Rio, and I’m about 80% sure I’m playing (if I don’t feel like playing tomorrow I can play day 1B on Sunday). It should be a massive donk-fest, and hopefully my tables will be filled with random tourists taking their one shot at WSOP glory.

Noon Pacific time … cross fingers (or whatever).

-huge

I busted out of the EPT San Remo main event about 20 minutes shy of the end of day 1B. It sucks not to make it to day 2, but in truth by the time I busted out I was so short-stacked that I really wanted to get my chips in and either double up or bust out before the end of the night, rather than coming back for day 2 with a miniscule stack - I would have preferred the former option, and I put myself in a good position to get it, but the latter, sadder option took me in the end.

I got off to a pretty good start in the first two hours, working my 30,000 chip starting stack up to almost 40,000, thanks largely to the generosity of an older Italian gentleman who didn’t seem to have a firm grasp of some basic poker tactics, like “if you don’t have a strong hand, you should usually fold”. Very early on he took a pot from me by check-raising my continuation bet when I didn’t really have anything (and before I had determined how bad he was). I decided he was a good person to play pots with, and that I should never ever bluff him under any circumstances. When he called a raise and I had position on both him and the initial raiser, QJs seemed good enough. The big blind also called and we saw the flop 4-handed. KQT, two suits. Not too shabby, but with three opponents I can’t go crazy with second pair. The raiser checks, Guido bets out 600, I call, BB folds, original raiser calls, so we’ve got a decent pot brewing. The turn is a beautiful Ace, giving me the nut straight but putting a second flush draw on the board. Now raiser and Guido both check, allowing me to dare to hope that neither of them have another Jack. I can’t slowplay anything here with two flush draws out there and either opponent perfectly likely to have one of the flush draws, two pair, or even both. I fire 1200, which should make my hand pretty transparent, and the raiser folds but Guido shakes his head and calls, like “OK, I know I’m beat, but I just can’t lay down top pair here, damn it”. The river is a perfectly brick-like offsuit deuce, and I know I’m not losing the hand, but before I can decide how much I can milk Guido for, he actually fires into me, for 3500. Hunh? Could he *possibly* have slow played a Jack on the turn with two flush draws on the board and another player in the hand? OK so that would be really weird, but he’s bad and might do something really weird (hold that thought for later). It doesn’t really matter though - I can’t lose the hand - the worst thing that can happen is that we’re chopping, in which case it doesn’t matter what I do, so I can completely ignore that possibility. If we’re not chopping and he has a weak hand, then no matter what I do he’ll fold, so I can completely ignore that possibility too. So the only thing to consider is that he has a pretty strong hand but not the Jack, and I need to decide whether to just min-raise him, tempting him to call for the size of the pot or shove out a big raise to make him think I’m trying to bluff him. I opt for the min raise, and he agonizes for a long time and I pray pray pray for him to call, and he ends up showing his cards to his heighbor before folding, which prompts another player to insist that he show his cards to the table (a rule known as “show one, show all”). He does, and he has AQ for two pair … I wonder if I had bet bigger if he might have suspected weakness and called me down, but I kind of doubt it. Anyway, nice pot for me, and more info on this Guido guy.

I tangle with him again a few hours later on a hand that brings back sickening memories of my bustout hand at the NAPT main event in Las Vegas in February. I have Tens and there is, once again, an early position raise and a call from Guido. No reason for me to reraise - I call in position to see what develops, ready to give up on the hand if overcards flop. But no … BANG! … The “door card” (the first card exposed by the dealer) is a secret-inner-fist-pump inducing Ten of Spades, and the other cards aren’t to shabby either - Seven of Hearts and Deuce of Spades. I have the best possible hand, but there are a couple of possible draws out there, and I’m up against a guy who’s not very skilled in the art of folding his cards, so there’s no reason to get tricky. Both players check and I bet 1600, almost the size of the pot. Non-Guido gets out of my way (a good player who knows that I know that Guido can’t fold, so he knows that I pretty much have to have a big hand here) but Guido does what’s expected of him and calls. He could have a lot of hands here given my read on the guy - flush draw, 88, 99, JJ, AK, AQ, AJ, AT, KQ, or maybe even (please let it be true) trapping with a lower set. I am of course crushing that range, and the only hand he can have with a decent chance to catch me is a flush draw. The turn is an off-suit King, which I think I like - if he happens to have a King I might win a big pot, and the flush didn’t come in - with the second nuts I’m sure I’m golden, and again, I’ve got a fish on the line who just doesn’t know how to fold. I bet 5500, again just about the size of the pot, enough to make it a mistake for him to call with a flush draw, but it’s a mistake he seems likely to make. And if I’m really lucky he’ll have a King in his hand and he’ll checkraise me. But he just calls, and the river is a Nine … of Spades. Damn It! But I’m not sure he has the flush, and when he checks to me again I’m confident he doesn’t have it (hold that thought for later). I mean, COME ON! … after the way the hand played out, he has to know that I think he might be on a flush draw, so if I have a hand like AT or AK or KT on that river it’s unlikely I’m going to bet it, and even if I did it’s dubious to hope I’m going to call a checkraise, so it’s completely idiotic for him to check if he has the flush, right? (hold that thought for later) He *HAS* to try to get some value out of the hand, and he can’t be confident that I’ll bet it for him. So I think I have to have him beat, and I want to milk him for just a little more money, and I decide it’s safe to do that, so I bet 4000, about a third of his remaining stack. He immediately shoves all his chips in and I groan inside. REALLY? Now I’m kicking myself for betting, but it’s 7,000 to call in a nearly 30,000 chip pot, and I just can’t lay down a set to this guy who I‘ve already seen make a ridiculous bluff at me, so I hold my nose and call and he turns over KJs for the flush, and I hand over more than half my stack, resisting the impulse to puke all over the table.

Another nasty river came up later with me holding JTs, calling a raise in position and seeing a flop of J-8-2. I called on the flop, not thrilled with my hand but certainly not folding. I got happier with the Ten on the turn, but when my good opponent bet strongly on the turn I felt like he either had an overpair or a set, and in either case it wouldn’t do me much good to raise - he might actually be able to fold an overpair, and I didn’t want to lose my whole stack to a set. The river Eight was another puker. Now whether he had an overpair or a set I’m beat, and the only decent hand he could have that I can beat is A-J, and when he bet half my stack on the river I just didn’t think he would do that with A-J, and I made a soul-crushing fold. He wouldn’t tell me, so I’ll never know whether the river was a bad beat, or whether I was behind all along, or whether he bluffed me or value-bet me off the best hand, but either way it was super painful.

So that made me pretty short … not quite desperate, but definitely uncomfortable. I went up and down for a while, but never doubled up or gained any real traction, and as the end of the night neared and the blinds went up I was in fact in desperate mode. I paid the blinds and realized that I would need to shove my chips in at some point that orbit, and just before I got to play my button the floor man came over and handed out chip racks, meaning that we were breaking our table. Horrible news, since I had just paid the blinds and was so short on chips. I got moved to a new table miles away, and luckily was in late position so I would get several hands before the blinds chewed into me, but there was a raise every hand in front of me and I never had a playable hand. When it finally happened that everyone before me folded, I was prepared to go all-in with any two cards, but I had to make a show of looking at my cards and trying to make it look like I was excited about them. It turned out that none of my (considerable) acting talent was required, as I was staring down at QQ, the best pair I had seen all day (the only other decent pair was TT, and we know how that turned out). So I push in my chips and actually hoped for someone to call, and when the small blind with a short stack (meaning only double mine) asked for a count and deliberated for a long time I was pretty sure I was in good shape. He finally shoved over the top of my shove, the big blind folded, and the small blind tabled AK. I don’t know what all his thinking was about, but we were off to the races. My misery was ended quickly with a King on the flop, and I made the walk of shame out of the poker room and back to our apartment.

That’s two big-buyin live tournaments in a row in which I’ve flopped top set and lost a massive pot, and two big-buyin tournaments in a row in which I’ve busted out of the event on pocket Queens. At least this time both events didn’t slap me on the same hand … I guess.

Vanessa and Chad both busted on day 1 as well, so it was a weak showing all around in San Remo for Team Rouge (get it?). There is a satellite tonight for the 2000 Euro event tomorrow, so I’ll try to win a seat for that (but probably won’t play the event if I don’t win a seat), and then there are 300 Euro turbo tournaments for the next few nights. So there’s a chance for some small bit of redemption, but the big event is finito.

Now on to the Italian vacation …

-huge