Short version because I'm a little tired: I have 119,700, right around the average with 152 people left (paying 100). The blinds will be [edit: 1500/3000 with a 400 ante next level and 2000/4000/500 after 90 minutes, so a lot of people will be busting early on in the day, but I have enough chips to hopefully make it through for a while.]

I started off today at a tough table with Phil Ivey, the tournament CL (who's still the CL today). Apparently, the way he gets a lot of his chips is by getting someone to overcall his bet on a QT9K board, then check/call all in on the river without a jack. That said, he played very well and I felt lucky that the table broke after 30 minutes, until I got to my new table, which, at various times, featured Hoyt Corkins (with a big stack on my right), another FTP pro whose name I can't remember, JC Alvarado, Ted Lawson, Antonio Esfandiari and a bunch of other people who didn't suck. Playing my cards at that table basically led me to bleed off several thousand chips an hour with no discernable slowdown until I lost/won a decent pot each in a ten minute span, but I got lucky to get moved to another table when we were the last to have 10 players (the tournament shifted to 9 handed 2/3 through the day) and nobody busted/I was UTG when another table needed a fill-in. This table, where I spent the last level and a half, featured mig.com on my left but nobody else of note, and I was able to chip up 40K in the last 90 minutes.

Hands:

1)At my second table, Alvarado opens 3600 UTG at 600/1200 (he usually made it 2600 in this spot so this was weird) with around 50K, and I coldcall AQ with 70K-ish. Right after I do that, it turns out I misheard him and he did actually say 2600 - which is pretty bad because I was going to 3 bet him otherwise. At any rate, the SB, a pretty bad calling station Asian guy with 25K, overcalls, as does the decent BB.

4 handed, we see an A 9 8 flop. Two checks, JC leads 7200 into 11K-ish, I call (with very likely the best hand because his range was soooo wide). Now, though, the SB tanks and eventually overcalls??? BB folds, turn 9, SB takes 5 seconds and sticks in his last 18K, Alvarado instamucks. Problem: I'm getting 2.x:1 and I can't rule out spades or AJ from the SB, so I make a crying call and he does show me spades - AK. Well, I certainly wasn't expecting that...congrats for getting the most I guess?

2)5 minutes later, I have 45K and open AJo in MP1. Alvarado calls from his BB. Flop 433r ("I have the best hand"), he check/snap calls a 2/3 pot bet or so. Turn T (2 spades), he 1/2 pots it ("I still have the best hand"), I ship it in, he turbofolds, I show (this is lame because it looks like I'm bragging but I need to set up an image a *little* bit better than 'meganit' at this point) and have 65K again.

3)I fold for a while, pick up AQ and raise UTG+1, Hoyt calls in the BB. Flop A32, check/check. Turn 4 (2 diamonds), he half pots it, I call. River x, he checks, I 1/3 pot it because he's not calling more than that, he calls while getting ready to muck his cards and does. I've got 80K, get moved off the table a bit later and am really thankful for it because that one sucked.

New table:

I steal a few hands here, but play tighter than I would without mig to my left, including open folding an SB to him at 1K/2K/300 (with antes like this open folding is really annoying but had to be done.) Next hand, I pick up QQ on the button and make it 5500; mig folds, BB calls. Flop K 9 2x, check/check; turn 3, he bets 7500, I call after thinking 15 seconds; river 4, he checks, I make a really small 10K bet on the end because he's not calling anything more either, he calls and mucks (I think I rivered his king here, not sure).

That puts me at 100K and sets up the fun hand of the night:

2 orbits later, folded to me in the CO with 22, and I make it 5500 because I have a pair. It's folded to the BB, an older Asian guy who's probably one of the Nguyen/Tran/Vinh crowd (there are a couple of dozen of these guys, all related to and/or backed by each other, that travel the circuit), who calls.

Flop QT3 and he checks really quickly, making me ~90% sure I'm getting CR'd if I bet, so I check.

Turn 3, an interesting card. He takes 10 seconds and leads around 6K into a 15K-ish pot. I quickly realize three things: I have a very good chance of having the best hand here, he's not betting the river all the time if he does have air because this is the same line I took with QQ and looks like a hand with showdown value, and I might be able to bluff shove on some rivers if he bets the right (wrong) amount, regardless. So I take the same amount of time I took with the QQ hand earlier and call.

River K. With around 30-35K left behind and a 27K pot, he goes into a weird act, looking at me, the pot, the board, playing with his chips...for a full two minutes while I'm doing my usual thing and staring at the felt. I'm so confused by this I have no idea what he could possibly have, and every second that goes by makes me want to call a river bet, but I really just have no clue what to do until he finally clearly chickens out and checks. I instacheck behind (honestly, I might be better off shoving, but the way he acted sorta polarized his range towards air or, like, a full house or something) and get ready to muck my hand quickly until a few seconds goes by and he's forced to turn over A 7. Of course, when he sees I have fifth pair, he goes kinda nuts, slams his hand on the table, yells "how could he call???" and starts punching in his Blackberry to tell his friends about this. I don't really blame him.

Vivek is also still in (with a whopping 217K), as are two other team Wafflecrush members (Bakes 300K!, fatalerror 117K). Hopefully, we'll make some good things happen this weekend.

On second thought, I can't really sleep yet (soon, though!), so briefly, good hands from today:

-Re: Vivek: He calls PF. I think this is okay against a decent or worse player, but a mistake against g2cu (in fairness, he didn't know how good good2cu was - this is just a hypo we talked about later.) Even at 4:1, the reverse implied odds here are a real problem, because with middle cards, g2cu will probably play pretty optimally on the flop against your range - that is, if he's got air or totally whiffed the flop, as a good player, he will evaluate flop texture and check behind/fold more when middle cards hit, which is exactly what you have right now. Conversely, when he gets it in against you, you'll probably be in much worse shape than you want to be in even when you hit a pair.

I personally felt that g2cu was opening well more than what Vivek'd need to just automatically make a shove profitable, but V disagreed. Barring that, I'd just fold. At any rate, Vivek called instead and the flop came down AJ7r; he check/called 4K into a just under ~10K pot.

Turn 2, putting two spades up. Vivek checks (a little under 12K effective stacks, 18K pot), g2cu bets 6K. Action? (I think this is totally obvious now, BTW...)

---

-Hands I actually played today that didn't involve sucking:

1)I've lost pretty much every pot I played w/o showdown and have ~23K when I raise 2 limpers at 50/100 with black AK to 500. They both call. Flop J55, 2 hearts; they check, I bet 1K (this is a good board to cbet 3 handed IMO), one folds, one calls. Turn 9, he checks, I think about live tells and his range and decide he's folding a lot if I bet, make it 2500, he thinks and mucks. Yay!

2)It's 200/400/50 and I have a bit over 30K when I make it 1200 with red nines UTG. BKIce CC's it UTG+2 (at this point, we both know we've played with each other before but aren't sure who it is), and we're HU to a 554 flop. I bet 1600 (my standard half pot cbet here) and BK quickly calls. At this point, I'm 80% sure he's got exactly JJ-TT with the balance being high clubs.

Turn 8. I'm normally done here, except, playing nitty as usual, I've got the perfect image to turn my hand into a bluff and make him fold jacks. I second barrel 3500, he tanks a full two minutes and mucks. For the record, his fold is probably good because I do take this line with red aces fairly often and always take it with the nut flush so my frequency of bluffing is pretty uncommon, but it happened to be a perfect time to bluff with an overpair.

3)I'm nitting it up for a while until opening 85 in the cutoff later at 2/4. Micon, who's been doing some truly mindboggling stuff (we're talking open limping on the button, cbetting the flop *and then minbetting the turn*, the most transparent squeezes ever, etc. etc. etc.) snap calls on the button. Flop 7 5 5 ("gin"), I bet 1600, he starts counting out chips before making it...umm, 5K-ish? with 40K behind, and my brief thought process, consisting of "if he checks behind on the turn after I call I really will kill myself, so how do I get him to stick in lots of chips with an overpair?", leads me to, like, min3bet to 12K (lol). He does ship in the rest with A T, which somehow doesn't get there so I have 63K.

4)With 30K or so behind, BKIce opens two cards (that's basically my range for him tbqh) to 1600 at 300/600/75 UTG+1 and gets three callers. I'm in the big blind, look down, see J 7 and literally shrug as I toss an extra 1K in getting a billion to one.

Flop J 7 2. I run good. Anyway, SB checks, I check, BK thinks and bets 4200 into whatever giant amount the pot is, fold/fold to me..."hmm, if I CR here, this looks way strong, and besides, he probably has queens anyway. I'll just wait until a non-deuce comes off on the turn and then bet into him so he can ship it". Okay, I call...turn T. Well, that basically does wonders for my action or lack thereof, but fine, I'll lead 10K anyway and hopefully he shoves aces. Nope, he tanks for a couple of minutes and then apparently folds some kind of jack. Oops.

and with that, I'm off to bed. blogging is hard.

Okay, where do I start with today?

Umm...let's start with yesterday, instead. I lasted 90 minutes in yesterday's sat (thus, 0 for 3 on seeing the 200/400 level) but Vivek and I bought in to the 15K directly anyway, incidentally leaving us cash busto. That means we go home and go to sleep early, right?

...yeah, obviously, I don't fall asleep till 4:30 AM. But that's okay, because my alarm is set for 10:30 and that's six whole hours, right?

...yeah, the groundskeeper team decided to mow the lawn or something at around 8 AM with an extremely loud something or other, right outside our windows.

Of course, we both get to the Bellagio completely fried but still forced to play five 90 minute levels of deepstacked donkament poker with no dinner break...

...so of course I have 84K (45K average @ 300/600) and Vivek has 60K, after, at least in my case, misplaying almost every critical hand. The highlights:

1)I have 88 in a 5 way limped pot (30K stacks, 50/100 blinds). Flop 842r. BB leads 300 into 500, I make it 800, noted poker authority Micon coldcalls on the button, BB folds. At this point, I have his range narrowed to exactly 3 hands - 44, 22, and 53. You may notice there is a fourth hand I'm not mentioning - I did too, except I couldn't figure out what it was. Seriously, I knew there was a double gutshot here, but couldn't place it. I'm pretty sure this is what Alzheimer's feels like, complete with general "WTF?" feeling!

Turn 5. I check because I think this card hit him but can't figure out what the hand I am thinking of is other than randomly trying to rule out 76 or A3. He bets 2K, I call. Seriously, I have a brainfreeze like you can't believe at this point and do not CR solely because I can't figure out what the hand is. looooooooool.

River 7 (obv). I quickly bet 3K as a blocker, he makes it 10K, I finally remember the hand I'm missing ("oh yeah, 65 got there just now, didn't it") and fold. /kill self.

2)Where do I even begin here? This may be the weirdest/dumbest hand of all time...

Flashback one hand earlier: It's 300/600, and BKIce, who's decent, makes it 2K UTG. The button, who's played okay to this point, makes it 6200 with about a 25K stack. SB, the guy to my right, now tanks and eventually makes it exactly 11,200 (lol). Obviously, button calls his K9 sooted (loool) and they wind up all in when he flops a flush draw but SB's AA somehow holds up. Okay, no big deal.

At the end of this hand, though, it turns out that the tournament has to pause - we've played as many hands as the other guys did on Day 1A, so there's a five minute break while they figure out how many more hands we need to be equal to the other guys so everything's fair. It turns out the answer is five, so once the donkament resumes we've got exactly five hands to play before bagging up. In the meantime, while this is going on, the table spends the entire five minutes talking about how obvious the minimum 4 bet was, etc.

The very next hand, MP, an Asian guy with a 60K stack, makes it 2K to go. Button, the SB from the previous hand who now also has 60K behind, thinks and makes it 5200. While he's doing that, I check my hand in the small blind...

...and I have aces, with a 75K stack, out of position to the second consecutive 3 bet, with the Asian guy closing the action if I just call. So I have to 4 bet. To what? I don't know, but I'm working on 4 hours of sleep and 8 hours since breakfast, 15 minutes to dinner and no clue how to play this that doesn't involve tablewide ridicule.

So, umm, I take 20 seconds and then just shove hoping they put me on AK. Yeah, I dunno, my brain froze a second time. Amazingly, if either of them calls with kings, the shove isn't even that horrible!

There are a bunch of other hands, most of which I didn't even play bad, but I'm way too fried to post them now. I'll talk about them along with Vivek's hand next entry.

in conclusion, apparently, I get there and/or donkament better when I'm sleep deprived.

(and now, let us never mention the aces incident again)

I'll have more about Vivek's hand in my next entry since he still hasn't posted it online yet. In the meantime, here's a brag post about the satellite tonight:

When we're standing in line to buy into the sat, an early middle aged guy ("MAG") behind us standing in line with his girlfriend/wife asks if we have some spare casino chips he can buy (because the registration cage only takes chips and not bills for some reason). We sell him a couple of hundred; he pays us from a giant wad of bills he's taken out of his pocket. This guy is plainly a regular, maybe a semipro or pro, and at least decent at poker, but he's over 30 and his SO is here, which means he's not nearly as LAGgy early on as some random 18 year old in the same spot. Anyway, thanks to a dumb Bellagio rule of seating all the people in line in order, all three of us get seated at the same table.

About one orbit into this (3K chips, 25/50 blinds), some guy to opens to 150 in MP; he's called by the old nitty guy on the button (nitty here means that he's got a pair or two big cards.) I look down in the BB, see black queens and am thinking of what to reraise to when I see MAG counting out chips in the SB. He eventually makes it 525.

I think 20 seconds, the first 5 of which involve actual thought and the next 15 are spent basically talking myself into this. Then I fold QQ, 60xBB deep, without putting a chip into the pot.

Some action happens between MAG and the original raiser and MAG eventually shows black aces. I rule.

Oh yeah, then I didn't get a hand to play for an hour and pushbotted into queens and lost, but the point is that I read souls. Wheeeeee.

Today counts as a weekend because I say it does and because it equally went nowhere, heh. I didn't play either of the Bellagio 5K's (under the weather on Saturday, too sleepy on Monday) but did play a full Sunday schedule plus the satellite at 10 PM tonight. All of them were pretty much totally pointless, with no real deep runs to speak of except an FTP 750K bubble where someone jammed 66 for 16x BB, I overjammed tens for 17x and got called by QQ behind me/managed to somehow whiff both of my outs. I also managed to not win a single hand in the satellite today - it had a pretty lousy structure (3K chips, 40 minute levels starting from 25/50), so I played four hands in 90 minutes, lost all of them and was busto so fast that I'm actually going to get enough sleep for the 1 PM sat tomorrow.

There are three or four more sats left (I plan on playing them all, even if I win a seat in the first one; despite the structure, the play is terrible enough to be worthwhile) and the 15K ME (I may or may not play this if I don't sat in, pretty much up to my backers and how I'm feeling about it.) I'm still feeling very positive about my game/results (in fact I lost the absolute minimum on a hand today that I might have gone broke with online), and feel that I'll end the year on a good note no matter what happens at the Bellagio, but it'd certainly be nice to win a bunch more cash this week.

Vivek played a weird hand in the 5K that I'll post/comment on here after he posts it on 2+2 himself tomorrow or the day after. Usually, we agree on hands pretty quickly, but I really disagreed with him here and think it's worth discussing. I'd rather not comment on every decision/the outcome yet, because it's a multistage hand, so I'll start with PF, which may be the most important decision here, anyway:

At 800/1600/200 9 handed, Vivek's got ~23K in the BB after posting. It's folded to good2cu in the CO, who makes it 3700 with ~30K behind. He's made several of these tiny raises before, once each in EP and MP and once on the button, where he eventually showed down T8o. The button is a middle aged Indian guy who seems fairly aggro, and the SB is a tight older player; both have g2cu covered.

Good2cu is actually a very good cash game pro and one of the biggest winners at 5/10-25/50 NL online, but Vivek didn't know this at the time. Regardless, Vivek looks down to find J9o. There is 7900 in the pot and Vivek would have to call 2100 to see a flop. He could also fold, or shove 23K as a resteal.

My questions for my readers (other than "fold/call/raise", obviously):
-What do you think about g2cu's range here?
-Does knowing he is a very good cash game player alter what you want to do?