Archive for June, 2009

Quiet day, decided to play the $240 game at Caesars at 4pm.  Had no playabke hands and no position for the first hour, then it folded round to my button with blinds at 300-600, and I raised to 1400 woth A7, (with 8k behind).  The small blind folded but the big blind put me all-in.  I thought about it before folding.  The very next hand I got pocket kings, and I made the same raise to 1400, hoping that someone would see that I previously folded to the shove, and put me all-in again.  The big blind did just that, and I obviously called.  He showed JJ, so my kings were miles ahead.  A jack on the flop killed me, and that was that.

So, 3 consecutive tournaments – AQ loses to A7, AA loses to QQ and KK loses to JJ all-in.  Given that this is the only time of year that I really get to play a lot of events one after the other, this is pretty sick, and is now officially my worst run if sickness ever.

Tomorrow is a highlight of the trip, the Triple Draw event at the Grand Series of Poker at the Golden Nugget.  Looking forward to a break from hold-em to be honest, despite the fact that I feel really on top of my game, I have to say that sick beat after sick beat is killing me right now.

So, went into todays $330 event at Caesars with renewed confidence and expectation following the WSOP, in which I didn’t make the dinner break but was very happy with my game.  I started well, playung a few hands and was never down on chips.  During the first break I was pleasantly surprised to find that they sell jelly in the Caesars food court, and you can get cream from the coffee shop.  A new standard snack for the poker is born.

My first table was good fun, with a lot of good guys, including Mike – I haven’t sat at his table since the WSOP Triple Draw last year.  During our game the USA were playing Brazil in the final of the Confederations Cup in South Africa.  USA actually went 2-0 up in the first half, (an almighty shock), at which point I stated that Brazil would win 3-2, and I was confident enough that I would go to the sports book outside the poker room and put money on it.  Sadly I couldn’t do that as we were playing, but shortly after half time Brazil scored.  I reminded everyone that a Brazil win was inevitable, and when they duly got the 2nd and 3rd everyone round the table was wondering what I would have won if I’d placed the bet.  One guy then asked how much injury time there would be, to which I replied, “dunno, 3 minutes I would guess”, just as 3 extra minutes appeared on the clock.  In an attempt to claim a hat-trick I suggested that Fabiano would get man-of-the-match, despite me not having seen the game.  Later we found out that he did.  Thankfully I then found out that Caesars would not have taken my 3-2 bet as they don’t take in-game bets on football.  I wonder what I would have got if they had?

Anyway, back to the poker.  Our table broke – Mike said to the floorman “just do me one favour, please don’t move me to a table full of douche-bags” to which the floorman replied “sir, this is a poker room”   The new table was tough, but I won a good couple of early pots and had established a great image, and had a well-above average of 30k this happened:  Blinds are 300-600, and I am in the big blind looking down at AK.  A fat kid with about a 20k who had just shown a big bluff calls the 600 in mid-position.  A guy who I hadn’t any real info on next to him also called, (he had me well out-chipped).  I duly raised it up to 1800, and they both called.  The flop was 6-K-3 rainbow.  Obviously I felt I should be ahead, and as I tend to do I lead out for 2100.  On that board I’m half-expecting them both to fold, but the fat kid shoves.  The guy next to him insta-calls.  Now I was going to snap-call the fat kid, but now what?  I could call, with 10k behind, or re-shove to get the other guy to put more of his stack in.  Or I could fold.  To be honest, I immediately knew I ought to fold.  I didn’t know what the fat kid had, but the other guy surely had to be really strong didn’t he?  A set of 6’s? Aces?  I agonised for couple of minutes and mucked the hand, and hoped I was right.  It turned out that the far kid had the aces, and the other guy only had K-10!  Right fold, wrong person.  I felt pretty good about the fold tho – maybe you agree, or maybe you reckon it was obvious, but I was quite happy that I took the time.

Anyway, I stayed around 30k, still well above average, when this happened:  I got dealt 2 red aces UTG, with blinds at 400-800.  I raised it up to 2200.  A guy in the cut-off re-raised me to 6000.  I re-re-raisd 11,000 more and he shoved, and I obviously called.  He had 2 black queens.  The dealer dealt the cards fast so I can’t remember what they were, but he dealt a 4 card spade flush to the guy on the river, so I was out.  Sick.  Really quite physically sick.  I would have had a 60k+ stack and been well on the way to day 2, and it was a bad, bad feeling.  Particularly bad as I again felt I was playing my A-game.
Still, an hour later and over it now (!).

I have 3 or 4 more opportunities to go deep and cash left on this trip, but to be honest it feels a bit doomed at the moment – AQ losing to A7 in the WSOP, and now AA losing to QQ with a flush, not good ways to go out.

That’s poker folks.

So here we are, somewhat lacking in confidence at the big one and really needing to turn it around and play some decent poker.  I got up around 10am and didn’t actually feel too bad considering the night before, and headed to the Rio…

Entry for Event #51 at the World Series of Poker 2009

I decided to play differently than usual and play the flops and streets more.  In the end, although I did bust out around 6pm, I have to say I was really quite proud of how I played – particularly given how things have not been going my way at the poer tables on this trip so far.  I made some really good reads, value bets, calls and lay-downs along the way and restored a lot of confidence.  At the same time, it was doubly rough to go out because I was so zoned-in I felt I could go a long way.

The main room at The Rio before play begins

I made a very slow start, and when my aces got no action at level 1 I really thought it was going to be another one of those days.  However, midway through level 2, when I was down to about 3k, I flopped bottom-2-pair in the big blind with 5 limpers and managed to make it pay.  I won another very tricky pot with pocket queens, with overcards and a flush down, to work my way to 12k by the break – more than double the average.

The redbull was absolutely necessary

After the break I took a series of hits to my stack – missing flops by a mile, having to lay-down down some good hands and trying to stay focussed and patient.  Down to 3k, I then managed to build back up 10k by picking a few spots and winning a decent pot with pocket 9’s.  At the second break I was down to 8k, but this was still average and I’d have been pretty happy to make the second break with average chips if offered it at the start of the day.

So, back after the 2nd break and looking forward to a long session, I got AQ in the small blind with blinds at 100-200 and a 25 ante.  There were 2 limpers and I pumped it up to 700.  The big blind called, and both limpers.  This was pretty unexpected and unwelcome to be honest, 1 caller would have been preferable.  Anyway, the flop of A-7-2 with 2 spades looked pretty good to me and I very much felt I ought to be ahead of the limpers.  It checked around to me and I fired out 2k.  The big blind folded but the first limper re-raised big.  The other limper folded.  I then had to consider what someone would limp in early position with and then call a decent raise.  I could be losing to a set, but the flush draw felt more likely.  I decided that this was a good time to start to become more active, and I shoved.  The insta-call told me all I needed to know – he showed A-7 for a flopped 2-pair to beat my AQ.  The same player had been playing some funky hands all day, but there you go.

So, the bracelet dream is over for another year, but I take a lot from this event.  I fought hard and made good decisions, (well, until the last one I guess…), and this gives me a lot to be hopeful for as I look forward to Caesars tomorrow and Monday.  Two years ago I came through with some late cashes to get ahead for the trip, and we’re only halfway thru this one, and perhaps my game has arrived at last.  Fingers crossed…

The best thing about Ade’s result was the excuse it gave us to celebrate with a big night out.  I had the WSOP the next day, (today), but hell, I’ve played with a hangover before…  Anyway, Mike hooked us up with a VIP table at Tao, (Venetian), and off we went.  Strangely, last year we were at Tao the night before I played the series, and we actually ended up in the exact same part of the club.  The VIP part of Tao is on the roof, next to a swimming pool, with Bellagio looming over.

Bellagio as seen from Tao

There were a few drinks…

Ads & Ives

I should stand on a box to be photographed next to Mike

Tao is a nice place, but you really have to be on the lookout as the hostesses set out to rip you off left, right and centre.  if you don’t specify what yu want when you ask for another bottle you’ll get the most expensive thing they have rather than what you had before.  That can set you back $700.  They’ll also try to talk you into buying bottles of champagne, and if one of the group says “no thanks”, they’ll try it on someone else.  At Pure, (Caesars Palace), the customer care is awesome and there are none of these shenanigans.  Having said all that, as long as you as you know all this then it’s a great place.

Becky & Steph – new friends from London

Ads ended up completely off his face

Hoodster chills out

Becky

I ended up leaving the club somewere around 3am to get some kip ahead of the Series at noon today.  The others actually went on an absolute tear-up on the cash tables at Venetian and all ended up over $1,000 up – a huge amount for a $1-$2 game.

Next stop, The Rio…

Today at Caesars Ade took a deal on the final table of the $330 Mega-Stack for $8,800.  He played top stuff throughout, tho he did get a massive piece of good fortune when his pocket 6’s beat 7’s after an all-in and call…

Ade at the final table

Ads also cashed for $1,350 and had 25% of his brother for another $2,200 – a good day for them, and much needed.  It’s Ade’s 2nd final table of this trip, he should definitely be playing more tournaments.  On my side, I played the 4pm turbo at Caesars and didn’t do too much to be honest.

Well, yesterday’s event was about as bad for me as they get – no cards, no position, no table image and at the end of it all, no chips.  I won an early hand and after that it was all downhill as I was raised off pot after pot after pot.  I tried to mix it up, a few checks, some c-bets, some check-raises, some limping, some calling – all to see if I could get some momentum going given that I was getting nothing I could play with confidence pre-flop and then sadly nothing I could progress with post-flop.  The only opportunity I felt I had by the end was to have a premium hand that could stand the re-raises it would inevitably get and bring me back into the game.  That didn’t happen.  Nevermind, playing in the smaller Caesars event tonight at 7pm, and then it’s the WSOP tomorrow – definitely do not need that to go like yesterday did…

On the other hand, Ade and Adam are still there with only 18 left on day 2, which begins in an hour or so.  They both have around 135k stacks, with the average at 170k, so both still well in the game.  This would be a huge one to take down and you have to feel really confident that at least one of them will be there or thereabouts at the end, so without a doubt this is the biggest day so far for the gang.  A win in the Mega-Stack would easily be the best yet for them.

Watch this space…

A much needed day off today, despite the fact that I was supposed to be playing in the 6-handed tournament at Binions.  Having got up at 3pm and actually managed to crawl out of the apartment at 5pm, we decided to head to the Rio to check out the WSOP for the first time this year.  We were pretty lucky in our timing, because when we got there the final table of the World Series Razz event was drawing to a close and it had come down to heads-up between Jeff Lissandro and Michael Craig, with Lissandro having a massive chip lead.  Winning one WSOP bracelet is very cool, winning 2 in the same year is an amazing feat.  Lissandro had already won 2 this year, so this was a chance for a historic 3rd bracelet in one year – a truly rare occurrence.  His other 2 wins in this series have both been in Stud disciplines – Stud High and Eight-or-Better.

Heads-up for a bracelet – Lissandro is in the black, Craig in the white

Well, Jeff Lissandro duly delivered and won his 3rd bracelet of 2009, a great achievement and must make him one of the best stud players of all time.  I have to admit, I can’t hack playing stud…

Jeff Lissandro wins the Razz event

So enough of stud and Jeff Lissandro, what next for me?  Well, it occurred to me while at the Rio that my WSOP event, a $1500 no-limit hold-em event, is only 3 days away and I need to be playing.  A day off for a huge hangover is fine, but I need to play tomorrow.  Ironically, I pencilled in a day off tomorrow, but a bit of looking around reveals a $330 event at the Caesars Mega-Stack, so I will definitely be playing in that and hoping to do well.  Caesars had a shaky start to their series – they were taking $10k off the top prize and giving the winner a seat in the WSOP Main Event.  This was wildly unpopular and they lost a lot of people to the Venetian Deep Stack Series, but they’ve stopped that now and the fields are increasing.  Hopefully they’ll get 250 or so, and the prize pool will be decent.  The starting stack and structures are excellent.

Looking forward to getting back to poker action…

The annual Las Vegas Hoodster Birthday Party for 2009 was at Pure, the big club at Caesars Palace.  The Pure night is Tuesday, and as anyone who has ever been there knows, there is a huge line and crowd outside wating to get in, much bribing etc.  Fortunately, we have some contacts, and when we arrived a quick phone call brought our friend Antoinne down to escort us thru the crowds to our VIP table on the roof of the club.

Mike, Ade, Hoodster, Ads, Ives and Vaheets

VIP’s

The roof of Pure is awesome, it’s obviously a very warm night, it has a view down the whole of the strip, guest DJ’s, a nice roomy roped-off area for us behnd which the hordes other people are dancing and going to the bar.  We have table service of course, and our own bouncer…

The view from our table

John, our very own bouncer – a top man

Mike’s wife Jill came up for a while and various ‘guests’ were invited over for drinks by John, and by the guys who went on reconnaisance thru the club.  We had a few bottles of Grey Goose with various mixers, and cigars were in full force as well.  We got there at 11pm, and by 3am it was getting pretty messy.

The very awesome Bearded Mike and his wife Jill

It’s always good to make new friends

The Real Adamoondogp21711 & The Legendary Vaheets

Ade & me, with The Mirage in the background

I’m under there somewhere

Believe me, there are plenty of photo’s of the gang which may only see the light of day on their facebook profiles, (but I doubt it), and certainly not here. I ended up in bed around 5.30am, a couple of the guys actually went to play poker (!) and were repeatedly warned by the dealers for falling asleep at the table and being loud and generally disruptive.  And many more legendary stories for us to recall in the future, that will not be recounted here…

Event number 2 for me was the $225 no-limit event at The Golden Nugget, downtown.  It’s a great room – I’ve never played there before but it’s a really nice place to play, plenty of space, big room, massive projector showing the tournament progress and amusic playing in the background, whcih does help when you;re a few hours in, getting no hands to play and becoming fidgety.  This tournament also has a great structure a massive 12k starting stack.

$225 No-Limit Hold-Em at the Golden Nugget Grand Poker Series

I was very up for this and feeling pretty confident.  Early on I hit a few hands in the blinds, calling small raises, hitting the flop and betting right out into the early raisers.  It worked out for me and I put a bit of stack together when I got dealt aces in the big blind.  Here’s how it played out:  The blinds are still only 25-50 and the first position player raised to 150.  It folded round to me and I pushed it up to 400.  UTG, a women who was playing pretty tight, flat-called.  The flop was J-2-3 with 2 diamonds.  It;’s a pretty safe board and I led out for 350 to see what I was up against.  UTG raised me to 1000.  Now I had to think about what she could have to raise me on that flop having raised UTG pre-flop, and the range occurred to me as kings down to 10’s or AK diamonds.  I’ve got all those crushed except JJ, which would have hit a set.  I decided to re-raise to find out just how big a hand she really had, and I made it 3500.  She flat-called me, and now I decided that JJ was a definite possiblity, plus KK or QQ.  The turn was a brick, and my thought process now was that the pot was big enough for me to be pretty happy with, so I wasn’t going to risk too much more at it and would check-call the rest of the way.  I checked, she bet out 1000.  Now that’s a tiny bet into an 8000 pot and she knows I have to call it, so she thinks she is trapping me.  I call and the river is a brick.  I check, she checks behind, which surprised me, and she showed QQ so I won the hand.  Now it could be that I should have bet out and not feared the set of jacks, but it definitely felt possibe to me and I was happy to play it cautiously after she flat-called my re-re-raise on the flop.

After that I had a pretty good stack, but I was almost completely card-dead for the next 2 or 3 hours and everyone caught up to me.  With blinds at 200-400, the following hand happened, which is pretty sick:  A pretty loose, talkative Irish guy had come to our table and played a lot of funky hands, winning with J8 etc.  I was in the small blind with 98-off and preparing to fold again, but there were 3 limpers so obviously I had to complete for the extra 200.  However, the big blind raised to 1200 and I prepared once again to fold.  I didn’t tho, because the Irish guy, (who was wearing a baseball cap bearing his nickname, “The Clamper”), called.  Now I had to put in another 800 chips with 3800 in the pot, so of course I had to call.  Now the flop was J-9-8, all spades.  Great and horrible all at the same time.  I felt that I had to bet this out with my 2-pair, because anyone without a big spade would have to fold.  The BB folds, but the Irish guy shoved all-in, and had me covered.  There are a few positions I can be in here, and none of them are particularly good.  He could have one big spade, probably a queen or king, and have a big flush draw.  He could have a 10 for an open-ended straight draw.  He could have both.  Or he could already have either the flush of the straight.  Basically, I am either in trouble, or needing to dodge a lot of outs for my hand to hold-up.  Having said that, if he was drawing I would be a small favourite and if he already had it I would still have outs for a full-house, (less than 20%).  I had 12k left in my stack, and there was now 24k in the pot.  You have to be prepared to gamble a bit to wibn one of these things, so aftet taking a couple of minutes to think about it I called, knowing that I had to dodge a few bullets or re-draw on him.  He showed Q7-spades for a made-flush with an inside-straight-flush draw, and I announced that I had to hit an 8 or 9 to win.  The turn was a 10, but thankfully not of spades, and the river was the beautiful 8 of hearts for my out-draw to a full-house.

Unfortunately these lengthy stories don’t really lead anywhere, because I was then card-dead for another 3 hours and the combination of me blinding away and other people catching up meant that once more I had slightly less than average chips when I foubnd pocket kings UTG.  I raised, a guy with AJ shoved, I called and once more my kings failed to win and I was crippled, going out shortly thereafter.  I went out 60th of 200, and didn’t cash.

So, 2 tournaments, deep-ish runs in both but no cashes.  I think I’m playing well and am feeling very confident, but on 2 occasions now I’ve lose with KK vs AJ, and it dawned on me that for all of my confidence, if I keep losing these mammoth pots when I have such a dominating hand then the grim spectre of not cashing at all is definitely a possibility.  My strategy is generally to play big pots with big hands, and this thought has tempted me to change that strategy a bit and look to try to see more flops in these situations and make decisions from there, (a bit like the aces story), but we’ll have to see.

A day off on Tuesday tho, due to a huge, huge night out with a VIP table at Pure, (Caesars Palace).  Got up at 3pm today.  Later I will post some pictures from Pure, which was the official Hoodster birthday bash.  It got messy…

So, after a pretty heavy saturday night of white russians, wine and various vodkas, it was time to get the poker started today in the $150 no-limit hold-em at Binions.

The gang arrive in Las Vegas

To be honest, it was very difficult to get up today and I was in something of a zombie state for much of the tournament.  There’s great value in these – today there were over 300 runners, and a first prize of around $9,000 – but the blind structure is very fast, and there wasn’t a great deal of poker finesse on display.  For the most part it was a case of waiting for a big hand and then calling other people’s all-in shoves.  In these cases I just kinda zoned out while the dealer dealt out the five cards and then just waited to see who was given all the chips to see who had won.  Most of the time that was me, and I was cruising on around 30k with less than 75 left, (30 got paid), when I called a guy’s all-in with JJ, for about 2/3 of my stack.  He had A5, so I was in awesome shape, but he hit a flush on the river and that crippled me.  I ended up going out around 50th.  Not a bad start to the trip, but would’ve been nice to cash in the first event.  I can’t honestly remember too much about the hands themselves, I wasn’t exactly feeling on top form…

As I type, Ade is still in with 15 left, and he has about 100k, which is average.  He could do with a score having been on a losing streak since he arrived, so a few grand here would be a great result.

The rest of us ended up playing Pai Gow, which is a particularly stupid table-game.  I lost a few bucks, then doubled the stake to get it back.  I don’t recommend that as a strategy, but it worked in this case.  Big game tomorrow – the $225 game at the Nugget will get a huge field as you get a 12k starting stack, and good blind levels, so there will be a lot of play involved.

Now to bed – it’s about 1am and I could do with feeling better in tomorrow’s event that I did in today’s…