Clueless Wonder

So on Saturday I decided to take a shot at the $500 deepstack tourney at the Venetian since by this point I had made some of my money back but not really enough to hit the WSOP event that I was originally slated to play in. I was doing pretty well, having hit the nut flush against somebody with the 2nd nuts and not getting too crazy. So right at the end of level 4 I decided to give all my chips to the worst player at our table. He played almost every pot, bluffed constantly, etc…. I had top pair, middle kicker on a board that was double suited. He had limped in EP as he did basically every hand and then had called my raise out of the BB. So I fire out a pot sized bet, not really minding if he calls as I knew I could milk some chips out of him. Of course the flush came on the turn and for the life of me I don’t know why I did this, but I overbet the pot by a large amount. My mind had frozen as I KNEW he would have called me on the flop with even a 3 high flush draw. Of course he came back over the top for only like $1k more and I had to call just in case he was attempting another stupid bluff. He had Q4 s000ted and crippled me. Right after the break I pushed trying to triple up with 57s, hit a pair on the flop, only to lose to A5 that was also in the hand. So not a good tournament for me really.

That night it was back to MGM for some of the lovely 1/2NL competition on hand. I had proceeded to run over my table almost exactly like the day before, getting my stack up to about the $800 mark. At this point, the other bloggers were ganging up on the tourists with big stacks at a table opposite mine. I thought about sitting down but with the stack sizes over there and me having to take my entire stack over with a move, I decided against it. I should have just gotten up from my game and put my name on the list again. I know that some folks out there weren’t thrilled that I was staying at my table trying to make money. But after the start of my trip I didn’t really want to sit with 4x the buyin against a bunch of people I knew to be good players especially when I didn’t have much more than they did. Next time I will not err on the side of caution and just try to have fun!

Sunday was just a nice lazy day lounging by the pool with the better half. That night though I decided to show her my newfound craps skill and play a little blackjack too. Who’d have guessed that there would be a monster roll about 15mins after I show up to the table and I walk away up more than $300 thanks to learning the art of ‘pressing’ from Bayne. Thanks dude!

So in summary, the trip ended up being fun in the end and I got some great gamb00ling karma after Wednesday night, winning at every damn thing I did (other than $20 in slots). For the winter WPBT event, I plan on doing less poker, more drinking, and more hanging out with everybody.

Well I’m back home sitting in front of my Mac writing this after a long and draining weekend. Most of you that were in Vegas already know about my trials and tribulations while on this trip. For those that don’t, I was held up at gunpoint my first night in town. Already having dumped about $700 in the 2-5NL game at Bellagio, this fine fellow proceeded to liberate me of the rest of the funds on my person, which happened to include my WSOP buyin money. So after filling out a police report I was in Vegas for less than 10 hours, minus all of my liquid cash for the trip, and feeling mighty fucking sorry for myself for being so damn stupid as to walk at night with that much cash on me.

I called my girlfriend who was very upset at my predicament but said, ‘At least you’re ok.’ And dammit she was right! So the next morning I got a $800 advance from my bank and put 4 $100 bills into my pocket. I had decided to at least try and have a bit of fun on this trip. So I met up with Jon and Alan over at Caesars for their noon tourney on Thursday. For $200 I don’t think you will get better value or play in Vegas. Levels are 40 minutes and you start with 4500 chips. I also have to say that I love the poker room there. It’s actually a separate room unlike the other rooms around and so you don’t get all the hubub and noise from the rest of the casino. I lasted for awhile and busted somewhere on the north side of 50th I think. Both of the brothers Penner finished much higher, with Jon taking down a nice payday for 7th place! After busting I proceeded to head over and play some 1-2NL, which I had already won about $100 in before the tourney.

This cash game was pretty typical of what you’ll see in Vegas. One or two old geezers who for the most part play pretty tight and like to grumble about aggressive young ‘internet’ players, a couple of younger guys getting wasted, and some that you can tell are just there to play some cards. I had a fine run at the table that night, mostly betting at pots which were uncontested and being aggressive when I did have the cards. Near the end of the session, one of the old geezers that had been whining about me overplaying my cards and betting with nothing raised to $10 from the button after 3 limpers. I thought this was kind of weird for him as he had been betting big when he had good cards. I look down at AJ in the SB. My immediate instinct was to pop the old fart back but decided to see a flop. Two of the limpers tag along and we have 4 players looking at a flop of A 3 5 rainbow. GIN! A check-raise was in order I thought so I check and so do the two preflop limpers. The old guy bets out $25 and I take a few seconds before raising it to $75, which was about half his remaining stack. The limpers bow out and he immediately starts grumbling about ‘internet players’ and people ‘raising with nothing’ before he pushes the rest of his chips in. I beat him to the pot as I knew I held the best hand. He held A7, didn’t get any help, and stomped off saying ‘Go back to the fucking internet’ to my back. Ah yes, that was fun!

Friday I decided to just go across the street to play some more cash at MGM. Hopped into a game sometime around 11 and proceeded to run it over for the next 4 hours until I needed to meet up with Stephanie when she got into town. I hit flops with my bad cards, got action on my good cards, hit the very few draws I was on, etc…. It was just a stunning fucking run when all was right in the world. Here’s the results:

The top one was my tower of power that I was working on while playing while the bottom was me getting ready to hit the door with an $1100 profit. I can’t remember ever being up this many buyins (max was $200) in such a short period of time. Was I on a good run due to my earlier bad karma? I guess I was about to find out.

To be continued….