 Vegas April 2012 |
| Day 2 - Caesar's weekend Mega, Aria |
| Last Updated: 2012-04-23 08:46:10 |
| First I need to digress back to last night a little. I failed to mention that while I was playing in the 7pm at Aria an interesting table started up directly behind me.
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| $10,000 buyin (at least the stacks I counted) cash table featuring a very obnoxious guy, a guy who was very frustrated with the obnoxious guy, Huck Seed and Hasan Habib (sp?). They were playing limit mixed games in rotation including Badugi, BadAcey, Omaha 8/b, Razz, etc.
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| I didn't get to watch too much of the action b/c, well, I was playing in a poker tournament but also because they spent as much time arguing (f-bombs flying everywhere) as they did playing. If obnoxious guy was trying to get under other players skins, it was working well on the guy next to him. Those two were just going at it non-stop. Then again he was losing so it wasn't working too well for him...more about this later...
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| Didn't sleep great, I never sleep great the first night in a strange bed. Up early, hit the Paris buffet for breakfast then went to the Caesar's sports book to watch the Flyers advance to the second round.
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| While I was there Leon and Paul showed up. It was not long after 9am, Paul had already bought into a 10am because noon was too far off for him to wait. Paul should have saved his money.
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| But we all agreed to play in the 2pm at Caesars, a $235 buyin Mega-Stack with 15,000 starting chips. Poto, who I haven't actually seen yet, texted me that he and a friend were going to play in the $340 bounty at MGM. After the second period the Flyers had the game well in hand so Leon and I walked down to MGM to get a structure sheet for the HORSE tournament Wilke and I plan to play in on Tuesday. Looks like a very good format, first time I'm going to play in a live tournament that involves "5" denomination chips.
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| More time killing and finally we get into the tournament. Leon and I are at the same table, and that started out bad for him. Second hand out of the gate I believe Leon raises out and I look down at pocket 10s. Flop rag-Q-10. Uh oh. I'm in trap mode...well long story short Leon ends up giving me only about 1/3 of his stack after rivering two pair with his A-Q. How he didn't go back over the top of my reraise I'll never know.
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| But a little while later I gave most of it to someone else when I had J-J, never saw an over-card on the board and ended up running into Ks. Leon hung around for a little while but eventually busted out when a flop came K-3-2, he shoved, got called, turned over A-K and ran into 3-3. Ouch.
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| I was up and down for a while, then card dead for a while but hung on as best I could. Eventually the blinds were going up and my stack wasn't and when I got to where I didn't have enough to go around the table more then 4-5 times I ended up going over the top of someone with 8s and ran into Qs. Hit my 8 on the turn and doubled up.
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| After that it was all gravy for a while. Every time I would take a hit I'd get it right back and eventually built my way up to an average stack at 3 tables, paying 12 places. I was feeling pretty good about my chances.
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| For some reason my trap vs bet radar was a little off. During the up and down stretch I mentioned above I had a big hand that could have doubled me up. Raise in front of me with two callers and I look at K-Q off and call. 5 handed I get a flop of Q-K-K. Wow! And someone bets into me so I decide to trap. Well the board runs out scary and all I can get out of the guy is a total of about 5000 from his K-10, which isn't bad at 100/200 blinds, but still if I go over the top after that flop no way is he getting away from his trips. I know, 20/20 hindsight.
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| So fast forward back to me having an average chip stack, I take a hit but then this hand comes up:
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| Big blind, woman who hadn't played a lot of hands raises out, monster stack calls, I look down at A-K of hearts. I decide I don't want to risk flipping with the big stack so I just call.
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| Flop comes A-10-8 w/ two hearts. Can't ask for a much better flop. I check, she bets half her stack, big stack folds. I mentally count up her remaining chips, decide she can't possibly get away from the hand and put her all in.
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| She got away from the hand. Showed A-Q w/ I think Qh.
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| Argh. Surely if I just call she shoves on the turn. I suppose it's possible she draws out on me, but still I want her whole stack, not half of it.
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| But the good news is that we're down to where half the players will be in the money and I'm a little above average stack. I'm feeling pretty confident at this point.
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| Unfortunately that was the end of my good fortune. Twice I call short stack all-ins with Ace-Face, the other person had only A-10 both times and both times flopped a 10. In between I was fairly card dead and didn't win a pot bigger than blinds and antes. The second one happened when we were 5 from the money (paying 12) and crippled me, then a few hands later it folds around to me on the button and I look down at a pair of 5s, I shove and the BB wakes up with 88...and they hold up.
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| Dammit. So close. 17th out of 98 players.
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| So I rush down to Aria to buy in to the 7:00 and this time they have two mixed game cash tables behind us. One table had Habib, Eli Elezra and Jennifer Harman plus one guy from the previous night, the other table had obnoxious guy, a guy I didn't recognize and one of the Asian guys that, if you watch A LOT of TV poker like me, is good friends w/ Negraneau to the point where Negraneau likes to imitate their very broken english.
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| Well apparently it was a "must move" setup because obnoxious guy spent half an hour bitching about the fact that he couldn't move over onto the other table. Harman was having a very good night, I would guestimate she had about $100k in chips in front of her.
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| That unfortunately was more interesting than my poker experience. When I got there both Paul and Leon had big stacks of chips, but I was pretty well card dead the entire tournament. I started out at Paul's table, when they eventually broke us down to two tables Paul went to the other table but I ended up with Leon. Unfortunately I remained very card dead and short stacked the entire time, after a number of all-ins w/ small pairs or big aces (OK I did make one shove w/ K-4 off when I knew a min-raiser would fold and it worked like a charm) and eventually I shoved with my biggest hand of the tournament - pocket 7's - and Leon of all people woke up w/ Jacks. The board was all around 7s but I didn't hit and I was done.
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| I decided to finally get dinner (it was about 10:30 and I hadn't eaten since breakfast) at the 24 hr cafe in Aria. Not bad, could see eating there again when we're out in June. Went back to see how Leon was doing...he had gotten crippled shortly after I busted out, but had doubled once and while I was standing there he shoved a few times and got no callers to build his stack back up. I left when they broke down to one table and Leon texted me that he busted out 10th place w/ A-K running into A-A.
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| Ouch. I feel his pain.
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| Paul's stack appeared to be getting shorter when I left, I have not heard if he made it to the money or not.
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| So today it should be the 1pm at Aria. They were getting around 125 each day over the weekend, something tells me they won't get that many on a Monday but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. |
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