Just a quick blog today because not too much to say about my WSOP $2k NLHE tourney. Start bank of 6000, I quickly increased to ~8k after flopping two sets during the first 30 mins, but not getting as much value as I would have liked out of either of them due to board texture and low blinds at that level.

I then bled off playing speculative preflop hands like suited connectors / gappers in a number of small pots while never seeing a hand higher than 88/ATs. I received my best starting hand around 2.5 hours of play into the tourney:

My Stack ~4.5k, OTB ~6k, SB ~4k, Blinds 75/150, I hold JJ in the CO

I open for my standard 375. I had opened the previous hand for the same and got 3-bet to 1400 by the middle-aged German guy now OTB. I told him I had folded JJ, but in reality it was QJs. This time he pondered for a while, but just flat-called. The SB then insta-shoved. He was a younger obv online player and I know that JJ is beating his range for such a shove, so I shove and OTB folds AQs face-up. The kid is dissappointed at that as he also shows AQ and we're off to the races. It felt like online as we experienced the following roller-coaster:

Flop JT9
Turn K
River K

I doubled through to ~9.5k, but then the same thing happened to me as earlier as I just kept getting dealt junk, speculative preflop hands, and also had a few blind steals go wrong. By the time we got into Level 5 (100/200/25), I was once again down to 4.5k and had yet to see a hand higher than JJ/ATs.

I finally picked-up JJ again and ran it into another short-stack's KK. He held, just had me covered and it was another failure is my attempt to make a dinner break in a WSOP Side Event. Perhaps I should try entering a Limit event at 5pm...

No worries as we make another attempt at a WSOP $1500 NLHE donk-fest today...

I decided to play live rather than online on Sunday, so this report is about the Bellagio Daily $1k NLHE tourney. I hadn’t felt motivated to play online, discussed it with Rob, who has a significant percentage of my live tourney action here, and he agreed that if my mind was set on playing live rather than online then that was the best thing to do.

So I walked over to the Bellagio and got registered just a few minutes after the 2pm start time. They keep registration open until 6pm, so usually the field grows to double the starting number. When I registered there were only 32 players, but looking around they generally looked like a bunch of tourists, with only one guy I recognised as a Bellagio regular and he’s a kinda so-so player too.

Half of my opening table had decided that a 2pm tourney was the ideal occasion to start getting drunk early and that certainly kept the cocktail waitress busy. I had an apple juice and some tea. I’m not going to describe the whole table, because I got moved after an hour or so, but it was bad with a lot of limping.

A few hands at my first table:

My Stack 10k, OTB ~10k, Blinds 25/50, I hold 7s4s in BB

Limp-fest with five players to a flop of 6s5h2s and I lead for 175. OTB calls and turn blanks. I check-call 525, river blanks and I check-fold. Yawn!

My Stack ~8.5k, Seat 2 OTB with ~8.5k, Blinds 50/100, I hold 8s9s UTG

I limp, three other limpers plus the blinds and we see a flop of Ts7h5s. That looks familiar, another double draw. I decide to try to C/R this time. Seat 2 has already had around three Jack’n’Cokes and makes it 400. I raise to 1200 and he says “OK, time to gamble, I’m all in”. I think for a while and tell him that I know he has the NFD so I’m folding and muck face-up. He says “Nice read” and shows me As7s.

My Stack ~7.5k, Seat 6 ~7.5k, Blinds 50/100, I hold QdJd in HJ. A couple of limpers, I limp and CO makes it 500. Folds to me and it’s a questionable call versus a competent player, but Seat 6 seems to be quite bad and I figure that creates enough value to call. Flop Q62 rainbow. I think Seat 6 is bad enough to bluff multi-streets if he has missed here, so I plan on check-calling. He bets 1000 and I quickly call. Turn is another blank and I check again. There is 3.5k in the pot and he insta-shoves for 5k. That seems pretty weak and I ask him “Why so much?” He says nothing, but looks a little nervous, covers part of his face with his hands and does not look at me. This can sometimes indicate a bluff, but I wasn’t sure. He was breathing quite heavily, his chest distinctly in-and-out. I remember reading that if they’re bluffing to watch their breathing for a minute or two and, if it subsides, that’s indicative of a bluff, whereas if it keeps going they’ve usually got it and can’t stop the heavy breathing due to their excitement at their hand. His heavy-breathing did not subside. I decided he had it and folded. Hmm?

I then get moved to Seat 2 of another table with around 6k. This is also pretty weak. Notable players are Seat 4 (Bellagio semi-decent regular), Seat 6 (older woman wearing shades) and Seat 8 (youngish American guy plays aggro and has a big stack).

I open with 55 from MP and get 3-bet by Seat 8 from the BB. I give it up. By the time we reach the first break I am down to literally a chip and a chair: I have one 5k chip remaining from my 10k starting stack.

First hand back from the break, I open QJo OTB for 525 and get 3-bet by Seat 4. Another fold, sigh, and he shows me AJo. I manage to win one uncontested pot and then this happens:

My Stack ~4.9k, Seat 6 ~15k, Blinds 100/200/25, I hold 88 in MP.

I open for 525 resolving to call or shove if anyone 3-bets me again. Seats 6, 7 and 8 all call and I think that this would be a good time to a flop a set. The door card is an Ace, but behind that is a beautiful 8, with an offsuit 3 making it the most perfect rainbow flop for middle set that you could possibly wish for. I check, Seat 6 makes it 1500 and the others fold. After pausing for a while, I call. Turn blanks and I check again. She moves-in, I insta-call and she’s drawing dead with ATo. See what I mean about the strength of the players?

After that double through I manage to pull a multi-street bluff versus Seat 4, because I know he’s good enough to fold. I can’t remember the details, but that chipped me up a bit before my next hand arrived and boy was it a classic:

My Stack ~12.5k, Seat 8 ~20k, Blinds 100/200/25, I hold AA OTB.

Seat 8 opens for 625 and I pause for a while and observe him. He looks confident, so I 3-bet to 1900. After the blinds fold, he quickly announces all-in and I beat him into the pot and flip up my rockets. He has 99, LOL! As the dealer laid out a raggedy rainbow flop, Seat 4 decides that this is a good time to announce

“I FOLDED A NINE”

The dealer instantly placed the last remaining Nine on the board and I’m outta there with a “good game” to the table and a “well-played” to Seat 8.

It’s my first real bad beat of the series and I’m happy to go out that way because it demonstrates the huge amount of value in these live tourneys when they want to play 125BB pots with 99.

I went over to the Rio to see how my friends were doing. Luke had made Day 2 of the $1500 NLHE, but managed to bust just out of the money. Rob was early in the $1500 HORSE tourney (he busts late in the evening). I played some 2-5 cash, but once again can’t beat the Rio curse and ended the day down.

Ho hum! On to the $2k NLHE today…

I was looking forward to my first WSOP event of 2009. Even though I have never cashed in a WSOP Event after ~10 tries (and never even made the dinner break of anything except the Main Event), I had a new-found confidence about playing at Rio, possibly due to my fitness regime getting me into better physical and mental shape.

Rob & I arrived at ~11.30am and got a quick bite to eat in the Poker Kitchen. I like to eat something directly before the tourney starts because it is then a long 7 hours until the dinner break. We also had another English friend, Luke, playing and we all arranged to meet up at the breaks.

I sat down to the following opening table:

Seat 1: Extremely bad middle-aged American guy, who Hollywood folded almost every hand until, after a couple of hours blinding/limping off, he finally shoved five times the pot on a Jack-high flop with JT and lost to AA, lol.
Seat 2: Me
Seat 3: Chubby thirty-ish American guy: tight aggressive, never got out of line
Seat 4: Friendly, talkative fifty-ish American guy who generally played pretty bad loose/passive, but slow-played Aces twice before the flop and got paid-off big-time on both occasions
Seat 5: Young, competent, aggressive American, obviously experienced online player: arrived ~1 hour late
Seat 6: Middle-aged friendly American: tight aggressive
Seat 7: Young German guy in shades: relatively tight aggressive, but opened more pots than the average tight live player and probably had online MTT experience
Seat 8: Older American rock
Seat 9: Forty-ish American guy: pretty loose, obviously recreational player (as were seats 1, 3, 4, 6 and 8 if that wasn’t already apparent from my descriptions)
Seat 10: Young American with a seemingly bad LAG style: arrived ~30 mins late

I was pretty happy when I saw my opening table (before Seats 5 and 10 arrived), as they were all recreational players, except for the German kid. I got involved in the first hand of the tourney:

Everyone’s stack 4500, Blinds 25/50. I hold ATo in BB

MP position limp, Seat 9 calls, SB completes, I decide to just check because in the first level of live tourneys every limper calls a raise from the BB and there is no point building a bigger pot before I see how well my hand flops because I’d prefer to play deeper-stacked poker after the flop versus these players. Flop A74 rainbow, SB leads for 100. I decide to just call for pot control because any random hand can have got there for 2-pair or a set here, original limper folds and Seat 9 calls. The Ts turn gives me top-two and offers a potential spade flush draw for my opponents, SB checks, I bet 400 into 500, Seat 9 thinks for a while and calls, SB calls. There’s now 1700 in the pot, which is certainly a bigger pot than I’d ideally want to play on the first hand, and Seat 9’s call has me worried, whereas Seat 1 seemed pretty weak. Turn is an offsuit 5, SB checks and I feel that betting here is just asking for trouble this early so I decide to check-call any reasonable bet from Seat 9. He confidently bets 700, SB thinks for a while and calls the 700. Man, I feel sick at this pot. There is 3100 in the pot and only 700 to call, but I have a strong feeling that Seat 9 has me beat. I hold the 700 bet above the table and tell Seat 9 to show me the bad news as I reluctantly drop it into the pot. He shows me 8s6s, SB tables A7 and I muck without showing. Nice to lose 1/3 of my stack on the first hand. I tell everyone that now it’s just like last year for me with a 3000 chip start bank.

I look up and Rob’s on the rail, sigh. He’s bust already set-over-set and is off to play 5-10-25 PLO, the sicko. Shortly afterwards Bond18 enters the tourney area looking super-smart in suit and tie and I say hi. I like dressing reasonably smart for live tourneys and today I’m in smart white jeans, white open-collared shirt and a blue suit jacket, but even I feel that Tony is just a little over-the-top in the full suit and tie get-up. Amusingly he also busts very soon and is on the rail near my table looking like he’s thinking about hitting on some cute girl. He calls someone else and arranges to meet them. I imagine it’s a girl. Jealous, me? As if! I’m happily married and done with chasing girls a long time ago, but living vicariously through Tony’s blog is what I imagine many other readers do too ;-)

After my turbulent first hand, I chip up in a few small pots, then chip-down in a few more before my next big hand arrives:

My Stack 3k, Seat 6 ~3.5k, Blinds 50/100, I hold AA in MP.

Folds to me and I make a standard bet of 300. Seat 6 is OTB, confidently makes it 800 to go and it folds back to me. After over an hour’s play, I feel like I’ve got a reasonably tight-aggressive image and my opponent has also played pretty snug. As such, he must have a big hand, but he likely also knows that if I call or raise I’ve got something tasty too. I feel like the stack sizes are still big enough relative to his bet that there is a chance he might fold some of his range to a 4-bet, whereas he will almost always pot-commit himself with a c-bet with my chosen play of calling and checking to him in the dark. The flop looks pretty raggedy something like 875dd and he quickly bets 1200 into the 1750 pot leaving himself ~1000 effective versus my stack. I obviously move-in, he snap calls me and I hold versus KK. Clearly we’d have got it all-in preflop anyway, but it also showed the table that I can take unusual lines.

I chip-up a little, Seat 6 makes a bit of a comeback to ~2500 and then opens a pot for 350 from MP and it folds around to my BB. I look at AQo. It’s obvious that Seat 6 has something good and that if I go with my hand I’m playing for a 50BB pot and over a third of my stack. I feel that in a spot like this in this kind of tourney it’s not worth taking a high-variance gamble with AQo so I fold it face-up and he shows me AQo. We smile and the clearly competent online player in Seat 5 agrees with my fold.

Last hand before the first break:

My Stack ~7k, Seat 9 ~7k, Blinds 50/100, I hold AA OTB.

Seat 9 open-limps and it folds to my button. He has limped quite a lot and always called raises. Seat 10 has made two or three position raises over his limps and this has clearly annoyed him, but he has got the better of the pots. As such I feel I can confidently raise to 400 and get a call from him 100% of the time, while making sure I don’t bet so little that the blinds feel priced-in to call with Ace-buster type hands like 89. It goes to plan and we see a flop of J86hhh. He checks and I peek at my cards and feel much better when I see that I do indeed have Ah. I feel that making a weak-looking bet here induces a raise from worse flush-draws a lot of time, so I make it 525 into the 950 pot. He looks like he’s about to raise, which I would be very happy with, but he finally decides to just call and the turn is 4d. He checks again and I’m not sure where I’m at with his check-call on the flop, but I’m thinking that he likely has a flush draw with something like Kh or Qh, although it is possible he has either a flush or a set already. I felt that pot-control was a good idea, given that I had a draw to the Nuts, so I decided to check-behind. The 9h completed my flush and he checked to me again. I can get good value from flushes here, so I made it 1500. Everyone else had left for the break by this point and I could see he had a tough decision, I sat stony-faced and he tanked, but finally folded showing me a Jack. Damn! The river actually killed my action. In hindsight, I should be betting the turn and be more prepared to get my chips in here, but still I ended the first session at 8k, after being down to 3k after the first hand and thought that maybe I could break my WSOP Side Event curse and finally make a dinner break.

I met Rob and Luke at the break and the latter had ~6k. Rob was enjoying his PLO cash table. He has a piece of both Luke and me, so was happy to hear how well we were both doing. After the break, nothing much happened to my stack for the 75/150 level and then this hand came up in Level 4:

My Stack ~8k, Seat 7 4.8k, Blinds 75/150, I hold 99 OTB.

The young German guy in Seat 7 had played fairly tight, but had opened more pots than the average tight live player and from his age and nationality, I figured he was an online player who knew a fair bit about MTTs. He had been opening pots for 4X, which was a little strange, but maybe he was just adjusting his bet-size to live conditions where you generally get more callers than online if you make it 3X. He had opened the previous pot for 600, met resistance from the BB, but had taken it down with a post-flop c-bet of what I think was just over 1k (maybe 1025 or 1050 into the 1275 pot). He opened this pot for 600 from UTG+2. The stacks are obviously not deep enough to set-mine here, but with my position, a reasonably strong pair and his apparent propensity to c-bet any flop, I felt that there was value in calling here and seeing a flop. The blinds folded and the dealer laid out 884dd. Interesting! He made it 1200 into the 1425 pot, which seemed a lot last his bet-size on the last hand, so I didn’t feel that it indicated any particular strength or weakness. He had 3000 behind and if I move-in here, he is calling to win a 6825 pot, so he is close to the point where he is pot-committed with hands like two unpaired overcards and definitely priced-in with any flush draw. I think I’m generally ahead of his range here and getting a great price to win a significant pot (betting 4200 to win either 2625 without a showdown or 5625 with a showdown; even with zero fold equity I only need 43% to make this a profitable play and my 99 is better than 50% versus his range here). So I make the play and he tank calls and holds with JJ. Meh!

This drops me right back to 3k again and soon our table breaks and I get moved to a new table. I’m very card-dead and can’t find a spot to 3-bet all-in during the remainder of the 75/150 level due to table activity and blind-off to 2200 in the 100/200 level when it five-way limps to my BB with 82cc. The flop is A92cc and I shove my 2k into the 1k pot, get looked-up by A9 and can’t bink a flush. Sigh!

Another early bust-out and my Rio curse continues. I have a similar story in Rio cash game sessions having never won a session in the ridiculously soft 2-5 NLHE games there. I sat down with $500 and promptly lost $100 in each of my first two pots played. After drifting down to $200, I topped-up to $500 when this monster occurred:

A few limps and I make $30 OTB with TT, 3 callers and I’m praying for a set: JcTc7d. Bink! Old guy in MP bets $55, loose young guy who generally chases draws and gets there calls and I’m looking at a $250 pot with both of them covering me. I think for a while, announce raise, put my $55 into the pot and then $220 more, leaving me with less than $200 behind. The old guy tanked forever and then moved-in for like $500. Wow! The young guy then tanked for even longer than the old guy, said something like “I can’t believe I’m folding this” and mucked. I snap-called, tabled my TT and the old guy turns over Ac7c. The young guy says “I folded the straight flush draw, I knew one of you had the nut flush draw” (Qc9c) and cried-out in anguish as an offsuit King hit the turn and the river blanked. Phew!

That got me to +$200 and I had around an hour until a planned dinner with Rob. Sadly I steadily bled-off chips and ended at -$65. The curse continues…

Playing online today to try and bink a seat in the big qualifiers. Next live tourney is the $2k NLHE at Rio on Monday.

Due to jet lag, I woke up super early and got stuff done: good healthy home-cooked breakfast, workout at the gym, processed my wire transfer receipt at Rio, got registered for Saturday’s $1500 NLHE (Amazon Orange, Table 95, Seat 2, which is right by the rail if anyone wants to pop by and say hi) and headed over to Caesar’s Palace (CP) for what was planned to be the $550 NLHE Mega-Stack Series (MSS) event.

As I’d seen from online reports and my own scouting trip the day before, the MSS fields were smaller than expected, but also very weak. In my opinion they give me a great shot of making an FT and playing lots of interesting poker due to their deepstack nature.

When I got to the registration desk the lady told me it was $340 buy-in for 15,000 chips. What??? CP had changed the MSS to daily $340 tourneys plus one $1070 “Championship” event starting on 7th July.

That was disappointing – I had only planned to play $500+ tourneys on this trip - and I thought for a second about going over to play the $500 PLO at Binions or even the Daily $1k at Bellagio (I have personal reasons for eschewing Venetian this year). I decided, however, to stick with this MSS event as it should give me good practice for Rio events and be a nice gentle introduction to a long summer of tourneys.

The structure had also been improved, starting with 25/50 blinds, with antes starting in Level 4 (100/200/25). They actually got 154 runners, which was a big improvement on earlier MSS tourneys and perhaps indicative of the higher number of poker players in town as we build-up to the Big Dance (Bellagio also got 100 runners today – which looked like a motley crew of 35 remaining tourists and amateurs when I popped over there during the dinner break - and I’m now even more inclined to add some Bellagio Daily’s to my schedule).

My opening table looked like this:

Seat 1: Middle-Aged typical American guy in shorts, polo shirt and cap: total fish
Seat 2: Fifty-ish American guy dressed reasonably well: kinda decent, but uncreative/passive
Seat 3: Older American rock
Seat 4: Thirtysomething American: weak-tight/passive
Seat 5: Middle-Aged American lady: weak-tight/passive
Seat 6: Older American rock
Seat 7: Me
Seat 8: Late-20s/Early 30s typical American sports-betting fanatic: loose aggressive, who also happened to be a total card rack for the whole day, getting AA/KK/QQ several times and hitting flops for fun
Seat 9: Young Danish typical Scandi LAG: probably the only other competent player at the table
Seat 10: Young American: kinda spewy, preflop way too loose/passive and postflop loose/aggressive, who thinks he’s much better than he is and has no fold button.

It was an active table with big pots brewing frequently and made it a fun day for the most part. I didn’t take notes (and don’t plan to for the whole series), but I think it is good to recall hands from memory, even if I might sometimes get the action/chip-counts wrong, I couldn’t be any worse than Pokernews.

My Stack ~13.5k, Seat 1 ~22k, Blinds 25/50, I hold 22 in BB

Seat 1 has already shown a propensity to throw a lot of chips into pots, but has been lucky and chipped-up nicely. He opens for 325, three callers and I call from the SB in an obvious set-mining spot. Flop comes the close to perfect AK2dd (perfect would be rainbow). I figure either Seat 1 or one of the callers has to have a big Ace a lot of the time here, so with this board I lead 1025 for value and to protect my hand . Seat 1 calls, others fold. I figure he must have something like AQ/AJ/AT to just call here, as I expect this particular villain to raise AK. Turn offsuit 10. I don’t mind that card as I feel that QJ is a highly unlikely holding for this fishy villain. Figuring he still must have a big Ace, I lead for 2525. He calls again and the river is an ugly offsuit Jack. I don’t think there is any thin-value here, whereas there is a risk of getting raised and folding to hands that I beat such as AJ, so I check intending to call any reasonable bet. He quickly checks behind and tables AK. Damn! I’m amazed I didn’t get more value here, but I guess the river killed my action.

My Stack ~18k, Seat 8 ~5k, Seat 1 ~18k, Blinds 25/50, I hold Q3cc in SB.

Limp-fest as 8 players saw a flop of AKTdd. I check and it checks-around and the dealer peels off an offsuit Jack. Bingo! I have the Nuts and I lead for 300 to try to get some value from flush draws/two-pair hands. BB raises to 800, then Seat 1 makes it 8000. Yes, that is not a typo, 8000! Obviously I have the nuts here, but I’ve only put 350 into the pot. I FOLD THE NUTS. Why? Well, I figured that at least one and probably both of my opponents also has the Nuts AND one of them, most likely Seat 1, must also have the flush draw, meaning that I must commit a hefty chunk of my stack for a very small chip gain and the chance of getting rivered and losing. So I folded the Nuts. Seat 8 called and they both showed Qx without a flush draw and chopped the pot. I’d held on to my cards and showed them I’d folded the Nuts. They couldn’t believe it. I’m not sure what I gain by showing here, and maybe it was just a bit of showing-off my superior level of poker thinking (which isn’t a good thing to do at a table of fish), so in future I just do it quietly, but folding the Nuts here is absolutely the correct decision and I’d do it every time.

My Stack ~18k, Seat 1 ~15k, Blinds 50/100, I hold A3ss in SB.

Four players limp, I call, BB checks. Flop QJTsss. Bingo! And this time I’m much happier about my spot than the last time. This is such an active table that I feel there is value and deception in leading here, so I make it 525 and it folds around to Seat 1 who makes it 1500 and folds back to me. I figure villain is a little on tilt from playing me in so many pots plus losing all of the chips he gained early on. The correct response to such thinking was probably to 3-bet here, but for some reason I felt that calling would give me more value. In hindsight, what I failed to consider was that the turn card could kill my action, and the Ah did just that. I’d checked in the dark (another questionable play, but I was just trying to induce some action from Seat 1) and he quickly checked behind. The river blanked and I led for 3250, but he folded 89cc face-up, sigh.

I then had quite a long quiet period. The original Seat 1 busted when he 4-bet 55 all-in versus Seat 8’s KK, before this beauty of a spot came-up:

My Stack ~22k, Seat 8 ~40k, Seat 1 ~25k. Blinds 100/200/25, I hold TT OTB.

Seat 1 is a thirty-ish American in a Pokerstars jacket and shades. Looks fairly competent, but haven’t seen too much of him so far. He opens for 525 from EP, I call and Mr Aggressive Card Rack quickly and confidently makes it 1750 from the SB. He had had it every time he made 3-bets and had gained a lot of chips. Seat 1 also looked pretty confident. He played with his chips for a while, counting them out and making one smaller pile of 5000, which looked like what he might raise to. I really felt from his demeanour that he was very strong here and I’d already narrowed his range to AA/KK/QQ/AK before he finally decided to just call the 3-bet rather than raise. I then had what I considered to be a fairly tough decision. There was ~4200 in the pot, 1225 to call with ~20k behind. So I can win ~25k for a bet of 1225. I really felt that TT was behind one or both hands and that I was simply set-mining if I called. Did I have high enough implied odds to call? I tanked for a while doing the maths and someone called clock on me (in a live game it can sometimes take quite a while to count the pot, your remaining chips and then calculate the pot odds; and I find that doing this accurately leads to better decisions). I finally decided that although it was somewhat marginal, I had just about enough odds to call and if I missed it wouldn’t be too painful. Flop AT2dd. Bink! Seat 8 led for 3500 and Seat 1 went into the tank, but once again looked confident. I started to think maybe he has AA and slow-played it preflop. Is that possible? Certainly it is. Is that probable? By the time I was pondering the second thought he had called the 3500 and it was over to me. Once again I counted the pot and my stack, ~12500 in there and I had 20k behind, covered by both players. Although, AA is possibly in both villains’ ranges, I think the probability is low enough to gamble here. There is a potential flush draw and straight draw out there, so if I think I have the best hand here (which is what I thought was most likely), I need to raise. Any raise is going to commit me to the pot, so after some thought (and having the clock called on me for the second time in the hand – this time by the Scandi who wasn’t even involved), I decided to simple move-in. Maybe it was the pressure of the clock, because a raise to ~12k might have been a better bet-size (offering 8.5k to call for 24.5k). Seat 8 insta-folded what he later said was AK. Then Seat 1 went into the tank. I knew that as soon as he tanked that he did not have AA and that I was ahead, so I adopted the stony silence staring at one spot demeanour that I often do when I know my opponents have a tough decision. I do this same pose whether I am bluffing or have it. He finally folded showing AK.

I was up ~33k and in a very comfortable spot. I managed to chip up to ~35k before going extremely card-dead and situation-dead for a long period where my stack just dwindled down a little when this live-play situation arose:

I’d opened the pot with A8dd and got called by the kid in Seat 10. We saw a flop of AQx rainbow, I bet, he called. Turn was a blank, I checked and he bet. I thought for a while and figured he must have me out-kicked. So I gave-up on the hand, stated “I’m folding the best hand here” just hopefully get him to show, but before I even had a chance to move towards mucking my cards, he mucked and started to collect the pot. I was kinda surprised by this and wondered if he had made a mistake. Perhaps fortunately for him, the dealer had not put his cards into the muck and seeing my surprised reaction, Seat 10 was able to retrieve his cards. Once he’d retrieved his cards, I knew that I’d lost the pot, but I was curious as to what the ruling would be in such a spot, so I asked for the floor to clarify. Others accused me of angle-shooting, but I can say with my hand on my heart that I was simply confused and wanted a ruling for my own edification. The floor ruled that my verbal declaration was sufficiently clear to be binding, but that if I had said something like “I’m thinking of folding the best hand” my hand was still live and if my opponent’s hand had hit the muck I’d have won the pot. Interesting lesson for the future, but it did unfortunately cause some unwarranted ill-feeling towards me at the table.

Next key hand:

My Stack ~28k, Seat 8 ~60k, Blinds 300/600/75, I hold AQo in BB.

Seat 8 makes it 1600 UTG and it folds around to my BB. This was his standard open bet size and he had opened UTG a few times. He was playing aggressive big-stack poker and accumulating chips. He was also getting hit by deck. He didn’t appear to be a particularly good player, so I felt confident of being able to outplay him after the flop OOP, although every time I tried he had had the goods and I’d had to fold to his aggression (he showed way too many of his hands and told me he hadn’t bluffed me once, which I thought was questionable, but possible). The flop was 652cc. I checked and he bet what looked like a very weak 2000. While a C/R might sometimes be the play versus what appears to be a typical c-bet on missed overcards (such as AK), I felt like a reverse float to take it away on a later street would be a lower risk play. Turn was an offsuit 10 and I checked again with the plan of leading any river if he checked behind, but folding to a bet. He checked behind, which seemed to confirm my read that he had unpaired overcards and the river came a beautiful 3c. I couldn’t have asked for a better card on which to bluff the river and I confidently bet a single 5k chip. I chose this bet-size because the single large chip bet can look super-strong. He groaned. I adopted my stony stare demeanour. Then he said “You know I’ve got AA again”. I did not respond and tried to stay as motionless as possible. He thought for a while, but finally…reluctantly…called with AA. Damn! I really thought I’d taken a perfect line in that hand, but I hadn’t put him as strong as AA.

That knocked me down to below 20k and nothing happened to enable me to chip-up after that point. I then lost half my chips to an 8BB stack AJ < KK and finally got them all-in with ATs < AKo during the 600/1200/100 8th Level.

It was a fun day, apart from the floor-ruling incident, and I enjoyed the deepstack play for the first several levels. The field was as weak as I expected and there is definitely value here. I’m hopeful they’ll start to get 200+ runners as the series progresses, but a little disappointed that they’re only running $340s. I’ll probably play fewer MSS events than I’d planned earlier, because the Bellagio Daily 1k field seemed to be very weak when I’d checked it out at the dinner break, so if that gets 100+ runners I feel there is more value in it than MSS.

Well that killed two hours from 6-8am (thanks jet lag). Now it’s time to get prepared for my first WSOP event of 2009…

After leaving Spain and spending the night at a hotel at London Heathrow Airport, I finally got on my flight to Vegas. Well, almost, actually it was a British Airways flight to Los Angeles. I’d booked this several months ago using my frequent flyer miles and, taking advantage of a special offer, I was ballin’ big time in First Class, baby!

First Class on BA is pretty special. At Heathrow’s new Terminal 5, BA has a massive lounge complex, but it’s all designed for layers of exclusivity and luxury. The Terraces Lounge is for plain old Business Class passengers and Silver Card Holders and is pretty much like most other airlines’ lounges, with free drinks, snacks, etc.

Then there is the Terraces First Lounge, which includes a Champagne Bar and a Library, but this is not yet the height of luxury because as well as First Class passengers, this lounge also offers access to Gold Card Holders. Many of these are just frequent business road warriors and I’m sure BA makes this distinction to keep these oiks out of the true oasis of decadence, which is the Concord Room (CCR).

The CCR is reserved exclusively for genuine First Class passengers and no level of frequent flyer status will ever get you in here otherwise. It is an amazing place with its own complementary restaurant (where I enjoyed delicious Eggs Benedict for breakfast), a travel spa where I relaxed with a massage, and a high-end champagne bar where I sipped some quality bubbly.

You’ll almost always see someone famous in the CCR and today was no exception as one of Britain’s most high-profile celebrity couples, Ashley and Sheryl Cole, were ushered into a quiet corner before flying off for some exotic holiday. Ashley plays Left Back for the England and Chelsea football teams, making over $100k per week, and is commonly referred to as Cashley because if his move from Arsenal to Chelsea for a pay rise. I’d watched him the previous night on the telly, playing in England’s 6-0 thrashing of hapless Andorra and now his season was over and he was off for his hols.

Sheryl is absolutely lovely. She is, of course, very beautiful and sings in the talent-show band, Girls Aloud, but she always comes across as a very nice, genuine person and has done lots for charity. God only knows what she sees in Cashley. He looks pretty scrawny in real life (like most pro footballers do), has been the subject of many tabloid stories about sleeping around during their marriage and, recently while Sheryl was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro for charity, got arrested for a drunken incident in a London Nightclub.

He’s a scumbag and rightly one of England’s most hated footballers, while Sheryl is a national treasure. Everyone knows the correct decorum in the hallowed halls of the CCR, however and not a soul disturbed them for the hour or so that they were there.

After that it was off to my flight and the pampered luxury of flying First, including a sleeper suite, fine dining, more champagne and a trouble-free journey to LAX. The immigration official joked with me about winning the Main Event and after a short transit with Southwest; I entered the Dragon’s Lair.

I’ve called Las Vegas the Dragon’s Lair for a few reasons. Firstly, like a dragon, Vegas seems like a mythical creation. How could such an oasis of ostentation arise out of the Nevada Desert? Secondly, as a tourney player, winning a big poker tourney can be as difficult as slaying a dragon. Finally, the Dragon’s Lair is where he keeps all of his treasure and, if you can slay the dragon, the treasure is yours.

I arrived at around 7pm and got a cab to my apartment as The Meridian Suites. This is a condo complex just one block off the strip at Flamingo and Koval, walking distance from Caesar’s Palace and Bellagio.

I met my room-mate Rob at the entrance. Rob’s already been in Vegas for two weeks staying at Bellagio. Not only that, but he’s already managed to bink a WSOP FT in the $1500 Limit Omaha Hi-Lo for a cool $73k. I wish I’d swapped a piece with him now, but unfortunately he just bought a piece of me and not the other way around.

It will be fun staying with Rob because we have a lot in common: we’re English; we enjoy poker; and also nice meals. He knows far more about Omaha and cash games than I do, whereas I feel I’m more of a NLHE tourney specialist, so we should also be able to discuss and learn from each other.

Our apartment is ballin’: massive living room/diner, two ensuite bedrooms and a balcony overlooking the pool. There’s also a gym in the complex where I can hope to stay in shape during the series. Since writing my fitness post, I already feel that the upheavals of the last several days have got me out of shape and I need to get back to the routine. After writing this post I am going to gym. That’s a promise!

We went out for a quick walk to the strip (10 minutes, nice), had a look in Caesar’s to see how many entrants they got in the $330 Mega-Stack (102), then popped over the Bellagio for a quick bite at Fix and checked-out the field size of their $1K daily tourney (55). I want to play smaller field tourneys outside of my WSOP events at the Rio, so these two seem fine for me. The fields at Venetian are huge (500-800) and I’m likely going to stay away from those on this trip.

Man, I’m ready for some poker…