Archive for June, 2007

Another noon $200 freezeout at the Palace and another blow-out, in pretty much the same style as before. I’ve now played 5 tournaments at Caesars and I’ve seen A-K once, and then it was a split-pot with another A-K. Other than that I haven’t seen any kind of decent hand in nearly 15 hours of tournament play here, which feels like something of a record, tho it probably isnt.

So once again I ducked and weaved my way thru the first couple of hours and then had to make moves to stay in the game. I played a fairly high-risk strategy of waiting for someone to make a standard raise and then pushing all-in with any two cards that had some potential, on the grounds that winning the blinds wasnt going to do me many favours, I needed to win a race or two. This worked well initially, the table didn’t know whether to raise or not in case I banged it in over the top. I managed to get to a playable stack at $6k, my best hand having been 10h-7h, which made a straight. I then found pocket 10’s, (my first pair of any substance at Caesars all week). The short-stack shoved for $2k, and I pushed all-in over the top, as I don’t want any callers with Q-J, A-rag or whatever. Sadly for me, the guy to my left move all-in with pocket queens, and then the big stack moved all-in over the top of him with aces! Didn’t spike, and headed out. I’ll play it again tomorrow, they have to deal me a real hand at some point surely???

On another note, Ade won the 11pm $120 freezeout for $2,700 last night, which is another great showing by him. Ads bubbled it, which is a shame. I busted fairly early, which is standard at Caesars for me this trip. Interestingly, the lack of cards is making me play better poker, but it catches up with you in the end and you crash.

The cardroom at Caesars is awesome, and definitely my favourite place to play alongside the Venetian.

Played in the $200 freezeout again and missed out in the same way as before – played a lot of flops early and built a stack, only to be card-dead during the crucial period when the blinds increase a lot and ended up losing with K-J against 9’s. My best hand in 2 days there has been A-K and I split that with another guy with the same hand, so I’ve done ok.

Played cash in the evening, and this was much more interesting. Card of the day in the tournament was a 5, just kept seeing them, and they are not much help. Card of the evening was a king, and thats much more fun. Time after time I would see K-5, (the hog…), K6 etc, and then get both together. I got K-K 4 times and made a set twice, and was handily $200 up in an hour. The 4th time I got cowboys however, I got stone-cold bluffed out of a big pot, and learned a valuable lesson:

So I have the K’s, and a very good Irish guy has a live straddle in play, (a blind double of the big-blind). I double this, and he calls, (as he must with any 2 cards really – its this that screws me over) . We’ re heads-up. It’s a rag board, 6-5-2 or something, and he bets out $20, which I flat call, feeling pretty good. The turn is a 10. He checks, I bet $25 expecting to take it down there and then, and he raises to $75. This is unexpected, and sets of some alarm bells. Has he flopped 2-pair? A set? This is the problem, if I’d raised his straddle more I’d have been confident that he couldn’t be playing the rags, but now I feel I must be ahead, but there’s a horrible doubt. Anyway, I call the extra $50. The river is another 10. This should make me feel much better, as I now have a better 2-pair than he could have had on the flop, and the only hands that can be beating me are pocket 5’s or 6’s, with a set on the flop. However, crucially I missed this detail.. Fatally, I checked. He bet $120. Had I thought through the details above I would have called. He had bet the flop, and would probably not done so with a set. However, all I could see was that he had bet the flop, re-raised me on the turn and fired out big on the river, and in the games I play I haven’t come across anyone strong enough for that play. I thought about it, (but I didnt think the hand thru clearly, I just couldnt believe he could do that), and then I mucked. He showed queen high. To be honest, I know I should have called now I have analysed the hand, and any really strong bet from me would have taken it down, but I don’t mind having lost in this way, I thought it was strong play by him and I what I take from the hand will strengthen my cash game in future – that $150 lost will be money well spent. I really must properly analyse the hand properly, and not be blinded by the strength of the bet.

Anyway, I fought back and ended up ahead by about $150, which paid for all the shopping I did during the day ) Dan – go you some Copags…

Going to play cash all day today. Playing poker every day, and particularly playing cash games like this is definitely giving me a lot of confidence and insight, can’t wait to get back to the table.

Played cash at Caesars Palace today, met a sound guy from England who introduced us to a new hand – “the ladyboy”, aka A-4. You know when you get dealt this and when you peel up the corners of the cards it looks like aces? So there you go, A-4, the ladyboy, coz it looks like something it isnt.

Maniac from Tel Aviv joined our table early, talking incessantly, “money is no object” etc, lying about not looking at his cards, flashing an 8 quickly on a board with two 8’s, only to have someone call his raise and have to reveal it was a 7… Not a nice guy, and absolute rubbish at poker. He came to the table with $300 and about $180 of it was in my stack in about 5 hands. I raised it to $7 UTG with aces, (it was a $1-$3 no-limit table), and he claimed he hadnt seen his cards and made it $100 to go! Obviously I called – thanks very much ) He showed J-J, (hadnt looked? i dont think so…). What an idiot. Would have liked him to stick around longer )

Didnt move much from there but at least what i won paid for my ticket to see Penn & Teller at the Rio that night, which was outstanding. They tend to show how their tricks are done as well, and its equally amazing when you see that. They also dispelled all the myths about psychics and mind-readers, which was nice. Theres a picture coming of me with Penn Jillette – he towers over me, he must be at least 9 feet tall… I’ll put it up here for your amusement later. Bumped into Daniel Negreanu, who decided not to have his picture taken with Ads.

Out of the $200 at Caesars today about halfway. Got some cards early and played a few hands to get a good stack and then went card-dead over the next couple of levels leaving me well short. Nevermind. Back to the $330 at The Venetian tomorrow…

The heat here cannot be understated. You feel like you might just burst into flames, it’s incredible, but then we are in the middle of the desert at the height of summer. Its unreal tho, never experienced heat like it before.

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After the WSOP I headed back to the strip to get proper food since the first time I arrived, then crashed out for a bit. Ads phoned around 10pm – he was pretty wasted and was playing $2-$4 limit like a maniac at Harrahs. I joined him down there and we left to get a drink or two. Ads decided to get a couple of cocktails from a bar on the street – they come in these huge plastic bulb-glasses, like the things you get a yard of ale in, only about a foot-and-a-half long. Ads told the barman to put in whatever he wanted and I had a vodka-redbull, which I thought would wake me up. The guy emptied about half a bottle of vodka into this thing, filled it with ice and then tipped 2 cans of redbull into it. You couldnt taste the redbull. So then we headed into TI and at Ads insistence we went to play $2-$4 limit again. By this time I can hardly focus I’m so gone, and we proceed to play pretty much blind and betting on every street. The whole table was full of the worst players in the world and they all tilted. I actually took a bad beat playing this way when my A-4 was rivered by a guy with A-3 who made a straight after calling me on every street! Ads managed to win a load of pots by calling down to the river without looking at his cards – it was hilarious. I left after about an hour and left him to it.

He isnt in good shape today…

At the stroke of noon the cast of I’ve never heard of were introduced to announce “dealers – shuffle up n’ deal!” and we were away.

This one is a bit of a crap-shoot, much like £10 nite at the Grosvenor… lots of guys looking to double up several times quickly or go, so you need to get busy early and hope for the best. I was ok early on, semi-bluffing with half-hands and doing ok until my pocket Q’s go cracked by pocket 5’s, which was pretty sick. Down to half a stack and blinds going up, we then got broken up and I was moved to a table of very active players and had few chances.

People were dropping like flies all over the place, it was all-in city, and then there was an announcement that all of the alternates were in, which meant at least I wouldn’t bust out before everyone had started playing!

My table had a couple of guys who played in the underground card houses of NYC, (where poker is illegal), and then a dealer joined who was from the same crew, and they had a lot of funny stories of being raided, ridiculous escapes, strange people and the like. A very famous player was from their crowd as well, and there was one ‘apocryphal’ story involving him, a safe and a lie-detector test that I shouldn’t put down in writing… )

Did manage to get back in the game when my AK beat QJ all-in, spiking the ace on the river after he made the Q on the flop. A guy said: “did that one get the heart pounding?”, to which I replied: “don’t know, haven’t got one” to some amusement.

Blinds increased rapidly – I guess they want to reduce that 3,000+ field pretty quickly, and I had no spots to move, but managed to stay alive until eventually I called an all-in with AQ and lost to pocket 4’s. Gotta win the races. “So where do I go to cash out then?” was my parting shot from the 2007 WSOP. In future I think I’ll be playing bigger events here, with full starting stacks that enable some play. The deep-stack tournaments at Binions, Caesars and The Venetian have shown how cool it is to play in big fields when you have a chance to get into it.

No bracelets for us this year, but good fun all the same.

So the big news of the day is Ade’s final table for the $330 event at the Venetian – he took 4th for $10k, very sweet.  Ads & I take $1k each, also very sweet )   Ade will have something to say about it on his page at some point, but needless to say, its a hell of an achievement.

At Binions I was free-rolling in the $100 freezeout in their “Classic Series” due to cashing at the Venetian the day before, and I proceeded to outlast 510 of the 540 runners to cash again, around $150 – not much, tournaments are pretty top-heavy and you have to get to the final table to be in the serious money, but nonetheless its 2 out of 2 cashes for me in Vegas events so far, both with 540+ runners, so I’m very happy with the performances if not overwhelmed by he cash.  Ade’s $10k more than makes up for that tho )  So far the trip is paying for itself, so no complaints, it would be easy enough to have failed to cash in anything given the depth and strength of the fields here, but so far we have a combined total of 7 tournaments, 4 cashes, 1 bubble and 1 final table – better than a kick in the teeth eh.

Played very differently today, as I wanted to play as much post-flop as possible, so I was throwing small raises in with connectors and small pairs, bluffing and check-raising etc and getting busy, as opposed to doing most of my work pre-flop at the Venetian.  It worked pretty well and I had a pretty big stack about halfway thru, but then the blinds & antes got pretty exceesive pretty fast and I got few cards, and the all-ins before me stole any position I might have had, and I was well below average by the bubble.  Survived a scare when I go caught pushing K-4 on the button but drew the K on the turn to beat the A-Q, but eventually busted when my A-7 was called by the pre-flop nuts, the Koje and I was history in stunning fashion after a flop of K-K-J D

So I’m on a hat-trick of cashes, and the next one is the big one – the $1,500 WSOP is tomorrow…

What a day.

The $330 freezeout at Venetian, with a 1st prize of $50k, had 540+ runners and started at noon, paying the top 40. After over 11 hours of solid, tough poker I busted out in 35th and took around $600. The money is handy, pays for this and tomorrows tournament entries, but the main thing in outlasting a huge and tough field – there are so many players in town for the WSOP that all of these events are stacked with good players. The even more stunning news is that Ady has made he final table, about 2 hours later. He is on a minimum of $3200, and of course we have 10% of each other. He played stunning poker to come back from having just 1500 chips at one point, and has a legitimate shot at the $50k. is final table is at 4pm later today.

A few hands… My first table was soooo tight – in the first 2 levels with small blinds i had aces twice, AK and AQ and on each occasion only took down the blinds, very frustrating. I tended to sit back and wait for opportunities to raise big with big hands over limpers, and it paid off pretty well. However, the main talking point for me is this hand: With the blinds at 1000/2000 I have 30,000 and wake up UTG with kings, and raise to 6000-to-go. The woman next to me flat calls, and another guy doubles to 12,000. Obviously I push it all-in, for 17,000 more. The woman passes, but the guy thinks about it and then calls, (he had about 30,000 left at this point. I turn over the KK’s and he says “oh, u really got me” and turns over 8-4 spades! i mean, wtf? Clearly he misses everything and I more than double-up. Free money )

The bubble was frustrating, with $600-ish for 40th and nothing for 41st we went hand-for-hand and the blinds and antes were seriously big. The short-stacks kept winning and it took a long time to get one out, in which time I was ante’d down to only about 20,000. I’d like to have been more aggressive in this period but I didn’t really get the situations and there were some monster stacks around as well.

So all 3 of us have cashed in our first 2 days, in tournaments with very deep fields, giving us a lot of confidence going into Saturday’s WSOP event. Tomorrow is Binions while Ady plays his final table at the Venetian, and we’re all hoping for a monster cash ) I’ve had a 30-hour day the day before, and then played over 11 hours of poker after only 6 hours kip, so I’m pretty happy. Ady and I have just celebrated his final table with a couple of drinks and a big fat cigar )

Arrived – it’s like coming home )

1st order of business after arriving at 7pm was to get down to Binions where Adam was down to 3 tables in an event that started with 320 players. He finished 23rd, having bubbled at the limit tournament at the same venue yesterday, so he’s running pretty hot.

Then on to the Rio…

Theres a poker table under every light – its a vast cavern of World Series Poker. We saw Daniel Negreanu on the last 2 tables of a 7-stud event, with Howard Lederer and Mel Judah on the other table. Daniel was telling a story about a guy who had no use of his arms and was wheelchair bound, sitting next to some rich guy, and beat him when he cracked his pocket kings – the rich guy shouted “you are so damned lucky!”. It was a tale of perspective…

And then…

Yep, Saturday is the day, 8pm UK time.

Playing today in a $330 freeze at the Venetian – apparently this had hundreds of runners a couple of days ago, finished in the early hours and paid the winner $70k…

It begins.

Not!

Technical fault on the plane. Sat on the runway for 3 hours then they kicked us all off. Putting us on a flight tomorrow afternoon, so effectively losing 2 days worth of the holiday, which sucks more than i can find words to describe.

Means i miss one of my warm-up events, the $150 freeze at Binions, but I do get to play the $330 freeze at The Venetian and then another Binions event before the WSOP on Saturday, so all is not lost. I do lose out on a couple of days to chill and acclimatise tho (

Its also my birthday today, just to add a frisson of poignancy to the occasion.

On a positive note, the WSOP event on Saturday is being covered by “WSOP Poker Live” which is something to do with http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/

So, more tomorrow, if & when I finally do arrive in Sin City…

During my 14 days in Vegas there are a number of events to play in, not just the WSOP. Both The Venetian and Binions, the spiritual home of it all, have very good poker festivals on – very affordable and with a variety of different games.   Its a great chance to play some games other than Hold ‘Em, such as Omaha or 7-Stud, without putting too much into it given that i’ll have no chance whatsoever of winning a hand )

So… I’ll be playing in two $1500 WSOP NLH events, several Binions $200 events and several $350 events at The Venetian, which has a beautiful card room and great tournament structures. Ironically, the WSOP events are quie short-stacked, while both Binions and The Venetian have large starting chips and plenty of play.

Just seen that the first $1500 WSOP event had a record number of entries – nearly 3000! The winner took down over $700,000 – I hope the fields & cash are as big when I’m out there, no reason to think they won’t be…