Buuuuuuuusto ~54'th for 29K (which, minus staking and makeup, means I made 1K on the series. Ship it?)

There were a bunch of hands, but the key four in a nutshell:

-Up to 200K by chipping up and never seeing a showdown, I raise QQ at 2/4K. Loose/bad Asian guy calls 1/3 of his stack in the BB, then stop and goes me all in on a J86 flop with the mighty 98o. It's good, so I lose 70K.

-Back to 200K by chipping up and never seeing a showdown, I eventually win a big flip with tens vs. AK, get up to 330K, then raise AJ from MP to 22K at 4/8 with a very tight image. Folded to the BB, who's been playing worse and worse all day as he's gotten drunker and drunker; he calls. Flop K J 3, he checks, I bet something like 35K to try to induce a shove, he snap shoves, I snap call and his K2 wins (sigh, way to CR your bluff catcher). This drops me down to 140K while he gets about 300K. Over the next hour, while I chip up one hand at a time, he defends his BB again with 64s and flops a boat vs. 99, calls a 9x shove with K3o and wins, and generally luckboxes a million chips or so. Well, okay then, at least I'm still in.

-Back to 190K when the following hand happens: MP3, who has been raising my BB from the button all day and generally trying to be aggro (it would work better if he didn't keep running into monsters behind him or I wasn't 3 betting him light; as it was, he'd steal my blinds 2-3 times, then I'd reraise him light and win them back so it would even out), raises to 24K at 4/8K. CO, who's new to the table, calls, I find ATo on the button and run my second squeeze of the day to 65K. MP3 tanks forever and (apparently) folds AQ.....but CO actually thinks and shoves?? Now I'm getting 2:1, can't really be against aces and eventually wind up making a pot odds call against 99 on the last hand of the level, then win the giant coinflip when the doorcard is a T. The rail berates me, etc., but they're bad at poker, and I've got 436K going into 5/10 at the best table in the tournament with a couple of really bad players, one of whom has a million chips. Also, my image is shot, which is perfect because the plan is to nit up the last 90 minutes and hit homeruns when I actually get hands.

-So, obviously, on the first orbit of 5/10K, the drunk guy raises to 30K, the button (MP3 from the last hand) calls, and I look down at AK in the big blind. Options: 1)just shove, 2)go for massive value because I'm "obviously squeezing", make it some really large number and PSB shove most flops (check/folding horrible ones like 876 or something). I pick option 2 and make it 150K, MP3 takes 15 seconds, says something like "I've got you figured out, you're squeezing, blah blah blah" and splashes a bunch of 10K chips into the pot.

Flop Q98, pretty perfect. I shove. He turbocalls with...JT; turn brick, river brick. Yes, that's right, he put 1/3 of our effective stacks in with jack ten soooooooted and flopped the nuts in a 900,000 chip pot (average stack at the FT will be 2 million). Then, with his new 1.5 million chip stack with 50 people left, he gloats and says how he knew I was squeezing.

I swear I've never been more tilted or pissed off while playing this game as I was for the next five minutes. I could deal with the bad side of a coinflip or a generic bad beat. This was above and beyond. I usually try to act with as much class as possible at the table, but the sarcastic "well played sir, you definitely had me figured out" I came up with was the least of what I actually wanted to say. If he'd been sitting next to me and not across the table I might have wound up arrested.

When play ended for the day, forty five minutes and two very well timed calls to my wife later, I was beginning to unwind while sitting with Vivek (who's still in) at the buffet when an older guy, who was sitting with me during a bunch of Day 1, totally randomly came up and complemented me on my play at the time. That helped, and I calmed down enough to grab another plate of food when Devilfish Ulliot, who'd also been at my table for the last hour or so and at a couple of my WSOP tables, also came up, told me 'nice play, unlucky' and the more important 'Gus Hansen got the guy to do the same thing you did with the nut flush draw and won a million off him - he's down to 300K now'.

And that's the story of why Gus Hansen is now the chipleader, some drunk asshole is almost busto and I'm blogging this at 1:30 AM instead of getting some sleep. Amazingly enough, I'm not even bitter or pissed off anymore - I played so well in these three days and got myself in perfect position to final table a huge event, was all in for all of my chips a grand total of four times and just wound up in the unluckiest possible spot the last time out after I got the guy to make a giant mistake. I'll be back; he won't. In the meantime, there are a bunch more tournaments to play.

In conclusion, lol donkaments.

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.