Out of nowhere I ended up having a sick day 2. I won two key huge pots in the last level to vault my stack over 400K. I finished with 427K which must be top 5 in chips with 125 left. The payout structure for this tournament is weird, as it pays 100 spots but there were only 445 runners, so over 22% of the field makes the money which seems really excessive. I have no problem with paying more spots in such a big buy-in tournament but wow. Anyways, here's a rundown of how I got my chips. My table draw was excellent as I recognized almost no one at my table. In level 1 I didn't do too much though and lost a few chips from my 36K starting count. In level 2 I was able to double up without showdown when I kept picking up hands like TT or JJ after a whole bunch of people limped and throwing in a big raise. People either folded preflop or called then folded to my flop bet every time. Level 3 I chipped down slightly again without too much happening.

Hand 3: I'm down to about 55K at 800/1600 a200. I open black AA to 4800, a shortstack calls all-in for 4500 and then the BB makes it 17K. I shove and he calls. The BB shows red QQ and shortstack has KdQ. Can't ask for much better than that. Flop: Jd9d8d. GG Vegas it's been another fun summer. Turn small black card. River small black card. Holy crap.

Hand 4: There is a Russian guy on my right who has been playing very sporadically all day. He's limped or raised and called huge reraises several times with weak hands like suited connectors and then just got it in when he flopped draws. More often than not he hit and he has a lot of chips. He's played extremely passively when he has big hands though and failed to get value with them whenever he's leading the betting.

1k/2k a300. Russian limps in the HJ and I make it 7K with A9o next to act. The SB calls and the Russian calls. Flop A84 rainbow. Both check and I decide to check behind. The turn is the 2d, putting two diamonds on board. SB checks and the Russian bombs out 30K into the 25K pot, and immediately I just thought this doesn't make any sense. He's never bet this hard with a big hand, and all of the big hands that are possible on this board there's a good chance he would have raised with preflop in late position. It seems overwhlemingly likely that he's limped in with another suited connector that he loves to play so much and is now just semi-bluffing with a big drawing hand when he picked up a flush draw on the turn. I count down my stack as I think and realize I only have 53K more after his 30K bet so if I go with my read I'm going to have to commit my stack and move in to get maximum value from his draw. That's what I finally decide to do and he calls quickly and shows 8d7d. OK now I just need to fade a third of the deck again, and when the 2 pairs on the river I do just that and have a 200K stack.

Hand 4: After that the Russian seems to just be on massive tilt for whatever reason and is moving all-in preflop around 2/3 of the hands even though he still has plenty of chips. He loses another race to drop to 50K but people keep folding to him for some reason when he shoves on their raises so he builds that back up a bit. It folds to him on the button and he open shoves probably somewhere in the 80-100K range. It would be a good time to find a hand I'm thinking as I look down at QQ and shove in. The BB, with a bit over 100K or so I guess, thinks for a bit and then makes the overcall with JJ. Wow. Yet again I fade all the bad cards and bust two players to increase my stack to around 400K.

Hand 5: The very next hand a shortstack moves all-in UTG for 25K. I find AJo on the button and make the call. I flop a jack and hold against his KTs to bust my third player in two hands. I end the day with 427K.

Hopefully my table draw for tomorrow will be as good as it was today, but the field in this tournament is fairly tough so I doubt I will be so lucky. I'll start calling in some updates to TwoRags tomorrow during the breaks to keep you all up to date. The only place doing live reporting for this event seems to be www.worldpokertour.com so you can also check in there to see how I'm doing.

Mike

Today was a really fun day at Bellagio Cup, but I finished with a sour taste in my mouth when I lost a bunch of chips in the last orbit, which is really unfortunate because it was probably the most fun I've had at a poker table in a long time before that. Devo was on my right (MaverickUSC), shaniac on my left and Raymond Davis 2 to my right and we cracking jokes the entire day, I've never laughed so hard at a poker table. We started with 45K in chips and the structure is obviously very good. I didn't do much in level 1 before I played a couple really weird hands in level 2.

Hand 1: 100/200 John Pham raises to 625 UTG, one call, and I make it 2625 in the SB with AA. Shaniac cold calls in the BB and both others call. Flop JT5 two diamonds and I decide to check because betting out and getting raised would make me cry a lot, though I'm not sure this is any better. It's definitely the type of board I have to be a bit worried about a set on though. Shaniac bets 5500 and Phan calls. I also call because I still don't really know wtf is going on. Turn Ad. I decide I probably just have to bet and protect my hand even if it might cost me action so I fire 20K and both fold.

Hand 2: I open 97hh to 700 on the button. Ray Davis defends his BB. Flop T52 two hearts. I bet 1150 and he checkraises to 2500. I call. Turn Jc, he bets 2500 and I pussy out and just call. River As, he checks and i don't think I can really represent anything credibly and he's kind of a station so I check behind and give up. He table Q8o and wins and I want to kill myself.

Hand 3: I busted a guy with AQs vs A7 who clearly was a weak player looking to get out of there and then I won a bunch of small pots to get as high as 70K. I'm down to about 62K before the last level of the day when these 2 hands happen:

Hand 3: 300/600 a75 Richard Lee opens to 2000 in MP, I make it 6K with AKs and he instaships all-in. WTF. I just muck my hand since as suspicious as this looks I can't imagine I'm ever in good shape against his range here.

Hand 4: I open AJo to 1800 in EP and Lee defends his BB. Flop AT9 I decide to check behind. Turn T, he checks I bet 2500 and he makes it 7500. Siiiiiiiiigh. i've seen him so some spazzy stuff today so I call. River K he bets 11K and I pay it off, QTs is good. So I finish the the day with 36K and I am just enraged.

After that we go to Fix where we wait for 15 minutes to get a table we had reserved. I am already on megatilt from donking up the last hand before the end of the day and that just makes it worse. The service is really bad but at least the food is pretty good. Throughout the entire meal I am just furious though. As much as I know I have to be realistic about my skills in poker, to not have an ego, and to not get upset with myself when I make a bad play, there is still some part of me deep down that holds myself to impossibly high standards. I always expect the best of myself and anything less is unacceptable. That and being up chips all day until the final hand just really really pissed me off. I'm still kind of livid. I guess those high standards/expectations are a big part of what has made me successful at a lot of things, but at the same time as mellow and relaxed as I typically try to be there is a huge part of me that can not accept making mistakes and failing when it's my own fault and I should know better. Bad beats roll off me like nothing, but fucking up a hand the same way I've fucked it up 5 times before and still never learned drives me crazy. Oh yeah then I lost credit card roulette but it was only a $400 meal so whatever.

In other credit card roulette related news a bunch of us went to Prime Friday night, the steakhouse in Bellagio, to celebrate gobbo's big win and our general awesomeness or whatever. I had some ballin Kobe beef sampler of 3 different cuts of steak and it was exceptionally delicious. The servers were extremely professional and knowledgeable, and everything about the meal was just top notch, easily one of the best overall dining experiences I've ever had. This time I managed to not lose CCR for the $3K bill, so no complaints there. Anyways tomorrow/today I'm doing the usual Sunday online tournament thing. The guarantees are all doubled on Stars so it should be a fun day. Then Day 2 of Bellagio on Monday where my 36K is still plenty of chips.

Mike

Well as I'm sure most of y'all know by now I busted early in Day 3 well short of the monies. Here's how that went down.

Level 1: Noting happened and I chipped down to 100K. No one calls my raises and the few times I called raises I missed the flop and gave up.

Level 2: I've been pretty tight so far so I decide to pick it up a notch. I open several pots with marginal holdings winning the blinds and even mix in a resteal against a semi-active asian player who opened in MP. I've already chipped back up to 115K when this hand happens.

Hand 1: 1k/2k a300 I open KQo in MP to 6k. Old guy who seemed kind of tight but I've seen do some weird stuff as well calls in the CO. Flop KT9 two hearts. I check and he bets 10K, which I call. Turn 2c, I check and he bets 20K. I kind of think he has AK or a set or something here a lot but I've seen him do some weird stuff like I said so I decide I should call one more time, especially as I have some outs when I'm beat. River 5s, I check and he thinks a bit then checks behind and tables AA. Damn.

Hand 2: Asian guy who I restole already opens to 5800 in MP again. I find AKs in the SB and make it 18,500 again. He thinks a bit and calls. Gah. Flop Q87r, there's about 40K in the pot and 53K in my stack so I decide to just check and fold when he quickly bets 60K. I think stack sizes are too awkward to bet the flop, I don't want to commit 53K here but bet/folding is pretty gross too so I don't really like betting. I could have reraised bigger preflop so I can just shove any flop but I wanted to make the same bet as when I was stealing to maximize the chances of him doing something stupid preflop.

Hand 3: 1200/2400 a300 I've since lost a couple other small pots and am down to ~40K. French guy opens in EMP to 7K, asian guy calls in MP, his range here is really wide, and I find TT in the BB and shove. French guy calls a bit too quickly for me to like my chances at all and his JJ is good.

I'm taking today off and Bond and I are playing Day 1b of the $15K WPT event at Bellagio tomorrow. Unless I bust out tomorrow this will be my last live event of the summer (there's a $5k at the Venetian starting Sunday if I'm busto). The Bellagio events have been going really well for my friends thus far though. Bond won a $3K event for $193K and gobbo won a $5K event last night for $443K, so big congrats to him! Hopefully I can be next on that list of winners at Bellagio. I have had a moderate amount of success there in the past, and now that the tournaments are moved back to the Fontana Bar it's a great venue to play at again.

Mike

First Report:
First Report

Busted:
Busted

My basic game plan on Day 1 of "Flop set, bust donk" turns out to not work as well when you don't flop 6 sets in one day. I basically was miserably card dead almost the entire day and watching my chip stack slowly but consistently decrease. Fortunately, Brandon Adams doubled me up in the last level of the night and I finished with 112,900 which leaves me in fine shape for Thursday. Here are the few interesting hands I can recall:

Hand 1: 250/500 a50. Folds to me on the button and I make it 1500 with K7o. Both blinds defend. Flop K62r I check behind. Turn Q they check and I bet 3000. SB calls, BB folds. Turn K, check I bet 6500 he calls and mucks.

300/600 a75: I'm fairly certain nothing actually happened.

Hand 2: 400/800 a100 I open to 2400 in MP with 99. Young Scandi on my left who likes to call and then fold when I bet the flop calls and mman_status makes it 9200 on the button with only ~15K more behind. I eventually decide to fold as much as I hate it since Mike is usually very solid, but I can't help but feel like a pussy. Mike told me had AA at the end of the day though, whew.

Hand 3: 500/1000 a10. OK so I'm down to 95K here coming back after dinner break and in this level I really start to bleed them off faster. I open J9s in the HJ, scandi calls again and mman_status calls in the SB. Flop K65r, well I think this is way too good a flop not to bet so I fire 6500, scandi folds and mman shoves so I lose 10K this hand. The rest of this level not much happens. I see a few flops here and there and miss and check/fold. One of my raises gets repopped and I'm down to 60K by the end of the level.

Hand 4: 600/1200 a200 I open 55 on the button and scandi on my left repops me. This is the first time he has reraised preflop the whole day but I still feel like he is fos. I eventually decide not to tilt shove. Then I open KJhh in EP a few hands later, the SB flat calls and JasonGray in the BB reopops. I know he has a monster so I obviously fold, but I'm visibly getting upset with how my day is going as I mucked pretty angrily. The thing about me is though that I don't really tilt like other people. I'm aware that my image is now terrible and no one is going to give me much credit. When I tilt I actually end up playing nittier since everyone seems to expect you to start overplaying your hands and spaz off your chips to them. I'm not sure how much my "tilting" has to do with what happened in this next hand since Brandon Adams is pretty insane to begin with but it's possible it has something to do with it.

Hand 5: I open AJs in MP to 3600 with around 50K more behind. Brandon Adams calls in the SB. Flop AJ9 two diamonds, he checks and I bet 6600 which he calls. Turn Td, not exactly my favourite card. He checks and I have a decision to make. The T shouldn't really have made his hand. He's certainly capable of floating the flop with KQ but it's not a likely holding. It could, however, have easily made him a worse 2 pair. It seems very unlikely that he has a flush. Most flush draw hands would also have a pair or straight draw of some sort on the flop and he would have played those more aggressively on the flop almost always. So unless he has something like 86dd, 56dd, or 57dd he shouldn't have a flush. With that decided it's now obviously extremely likely that I still have the best hand so I need to bet for value and to protect my hand. Of course with so few chips I can't fold to a checkraise so I have to be willing to commit my stack vs a raise since he could checkraise me with a lot of worse 2 pair, semi-bluffs, and possibly other stuff. So I make what I guess is actually a really easy bet of 15,600 (I should probably actually bet a lot bigger), he moves me in relatively quickly and I shrug and call. He says "I don't have much" and I table my hand. "Ya, I'm dead". He doesn't want to show his hand but he's required to in a tournament all-in situation so he's turns over his A6hh. Lucky for me since the river is the 8d.

I won and lost a couple small pots after that and finished the day with 112,900. Hoping for the super soft Day 3 table draw as I'm pretty sure my table today was likely the toughest in the entire tournament throughout the last half of the day. I recognized 3-4 people as very solid players and the other guys were not playing poorly at all either. In the World Series of Poker main event on Day 2 that's just extremely unlucky.

Mike