Played 2 tourneys in the last 3 days - the Bellagio 1080 (uneventful, busto, etc.) and today's $1500 at the Rio.

Long story short, I finally have a WSOP cash in '08 and am heading into tomorrow with an average stack. The reason is a reasonably nice call followed by, literally, the biggest fold I have ever made in my life.

The call:

I arrive at my table about 10 minutes late and head off to the bathroom after a few minutes believing it's extremely weak/tight, with lots of folding around. As I get back into my seat (10) a few minutes later, the guy to my left, Seat 1, is busy showing off his K8-high bluff on a 775x board. I make a note of that - not that it matters, because he raises 7-8 of the next 10 hands and no one plays back at him.

At the end of that orbit, it's folded to me in the small blind and I complete A T planning to reraise his (very expected) raise. Instead, he asks me how much I have behind - around 2800 chips at 25/50 - and says "all in". I take 10 seconds just to make sure I'm not crazy, say "call", and find myself to be well ahead of his A 5; the T in the door seals my double up.

Later on, I raise aces in EP and eventually fold the turn face up to a pretty obvious set/straight. That basically establishes my image for the fold.

The fold:

At 100/200, MP, with about 9K behind, raises to 425. He's a middle aged guy wearing a motorcycle shop jacket and said he was sponsored by them (basically meaning he's the best freeroll player at the club - ie, not that good.) The button, with about 4500 behind, flat calls. Button, a middle aged Brit, got to the table about an hour ago and immediately pushed 1800 chips on his first hand at 50/100. At 100/200, someone else raised UTG; while he was counting out his raise, the Brit checked his cards out UTG+1 and pushed his now 9x stack faster than I have ever seen. The floor got called and ruled the Brit could take his raise back (this ruling is terrible, BTW); however, the Brit said "nah, I shouldn't be able to do that", got called, and obviously wound up holding aces. I looked down on 6 5 in the big blind with 7K; given those two opponents and the odds I was getting, I obviously overcalled.

The flop came 9 7 7. I checked planning to (obviously) shove over any bet, but both MP and button checked behind.

The turn was a very nice seeming 8. I bet 775 into 1375. MP played with his chips, briefly seemed like he was going to raise (whoa), then called. Button...immediately instashoved his stack.

At this point, I was getting well over 2 to 1 to call his shove with a made straight and a flush redraw. This couldn't be more of a no-brainer, except that something - I don't know what, how, or if it'll ever happen again - told me I was very beaten by somebody in this hand. About an eternity later, most of which was spent convincing myself "yes, you do have to do this", I went with my gut, said "this is the sickest fold I've ever made in my life", and mucked.

As I was mucking, MP shoved his chips in just as fast as the button had done with aces earlier. The button, aware that he was getting called but still unaware what MP was flipping over, sarcastically said "yeah, pretty sick" and turned over...uhh...Q 6? Had MP folded at this point, it would have basically sent me on instant life tilt and confirmed I'm horrible at donkaments - except that he was drawing dead, because MP was busy flipping over 99. (No, my one out didn't hit on the river.)

Eight hours of total freerolling and actually playing decently later, I ran the 6K in chips I had left after the Fold of the Century <TM> into 40K before bluffing a bunch off on the bubble. The last 40 minutes (just ITM) were good to me, though, so I'll start day 2 with 33000 chips at 800/1600.

I'll update the blog with my finish and a whole bunch of fun stories tomorrow. Preview: Scotty Nguyen takes a bad beat by losing a $6,000 monkey, then convinces the floor to give him 1200 extra chips. (No, I'm not making that up.)

In the meantime, wish me luck!

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