2008 WSOP: Trip #1

Tuesday, June 3rd: Event #5: $1,000 NLHE with Rebuys

My passport arrived in time for the $1,000 rebuy. In hindsight, I wish it hadn't.

I was at Joe Sebok and Victor Ramdin's table during the rebuy period. I won a bunch of chips off of Sebok TT > A8 and gave them all away to Ramdin a few hands later AQ < AA. I wound up spending $5,000, which was just $1,000 more than the minimum I knew I'd spend, so can't complain there.

After being shuffled around to a couple different tables, I finally landed in one seat for a while. The table was brutally sick (working from my immediate left): Nam Le, Bill Elder, John Phan, Cory Carroll, and a Russian named "Alexander" who apparently won some huge tournament recently and was playing hyper-aggressive. John Phan busted not too long after I got there. Who came to replace his seat? Erick Lindgren. Told ya it was a sick table draw. FWIW, Lindgren was multi-tabling in the $5,000 mixed hold'em event that was on day two, so he was only at our table probably 25% of the time.

I had 8k during 100/200 when the following hand came up: donkey UTG player limps, I make it 750 UTG+1 with KK, Bill Elder calls, John Phan calls, Cory Carroll calls, the small blind calls, and the UTG limper calls. Note: raise more next time. The flop came 887. It checked to John Phan who bet 2k. Cory Carroll called that. The UTG limper shoved 3k total. I shoved 8k total. Phan and Carroll mucked. Donkey UTG limper's hand? 87, of course.

That dropped me down to 4k. I won a race and doubled up again in a KK vs QQ situation to get up to 15k. Over the next two hours, I literally didn't play a hand. Like... that's not an exaggeration whatsoever. Thanks to the Russian, almost every pot was raised or 3-bet by the time it got to me.

I had 11k when the following hand came up during 200/400/50: Cory Carroll opened to 1,100 (he had been opening a lot), Donkey from before called on the button. I looked down at KQo in the small blind and made it 3,800. Carroll pondered for a while, re-raised enough to put me all-in. I of course called and lost to AQhh.

I was a little surprised he decided to play that hand. All he knew of me was that I had been super tight. The only other time I re-raised preflop, I showed Kings. It had to seem pretty thin to him to make that play for ~33% of his chips, especially given that another player had called his raise and was yet to act. Anyway... thin or not, it worked for him, and I busted.

Not sure when the next trip to Vegas will be. From a financial standpoint, this trip couldn't possibly have gone any worse, so I'll have to look at the schedule and assess what exactly I want to do for the rest of the series. Tentatively, I plan on coming back sometime in the next 7-10 days and staying for about 7-10 days, going back home, and then returning for the Main Event.

That's all for this trip. Thanks for reading.

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Monday, June 2nd

Today has been a long day.

I contacted Continental Airlines to see what I needed to do with regards to flying home without a driver's license. They told me to go to a local police station, file a lost identification report, and bring that report with me to the airport (and to also be prepared for extra security scrutiny). Fair enough.

While waiting for my number to be called at the police station, I called the Rio to ask them how I can play in tomorrow's $1k rebuy WSOP event without an identification. Put plainly, they told me I couldn't. Shit.

I began to consider an idea that Dave Irish texted me: figure out a way to get my passport sent to me. While it sounded nice in theory, it was already 2:00 pm Vegas time at this point. How exactly do you get a passport to go from being in Houston at 4:00 pm to Vegas by 11:00 am local time the next day?

So I called FedEx in Houston and asked them if it was possible to mail something from there and have it arrive in Vegas by tomorrow morning. Totally braced for disappointment, the guy on the phone just said non-chalantly, "yea no problem, as long as we have the item by 7:30 pm." ORLY? This is doable.

There are two people in Houston who I knew had a key to our place: Michael's parents and our landlord. After trying to get ahold of Michael's dad (his Mom is in Europe) for about an hour, I bit the bullet and just called our landlord. He seemed more than willing to help, so I asked him if he could meet Lisa there in a half hour or so. No problem, he said.

So I called Lisa and was like, "you know how Seinfeld has that joke where when people need a small favor, they'll just go right into it like, 'I need a favor, can you pass the sugar?' where when they have a huge favor they'll be like 'I need a favor...' and then kind of wince while they wait for your response?... well... I need a favor..." She laughed and had no problem helping me out. An hour later, the thing was in FedEx's hands. One tiiiiiiiimeeeeee please show up by the 10:30 am guaranteed arrival tomorrow morning.

At least now I'll have an interesting story for the ESPN producers if I final table this thing.

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Sunday, June 1st: Online tournaments at Ray's castle

Well I ran absolutely stone ice cold today.

Aside from a baby cash in the Sunday Million, I washed out of everything online. It didn't take me long to wash out either. I busted from stuff so often and so quickly that I would just enter another tournament which I would otherwise normally not play. Today was quite possibly the biggest loss I've had from online poker tournaments ever.

In addition to that, I lost a few thousand more on some sportsbetting rogue lines that I made on baseball games. I mean, there's not much to say on this topic. I found some juicy lines, bet them, and ran like crap.

However, none of this amounts to how I ran tonight: after screwing around Downtown with Michael and his cousin (and her husband, whom were fine dinner company at my favorite restaurant in Vegas, Nobu), we came back to the Stratosphere (which is where I'm staying on this trip). Anyway, after having some late night food, I went to grab my wallet to get some cash out of an ATM. No wallet. Long story short, I have been unable to locate it. It's possible that it fell out of my pocket on the cab ride back to the Strip. I find this theory reasonably unlikely though since my cell phone (and a few other things which in my estimation would have been much more likely to fall out of my pocket than my wallet) were still in my possession.

One undeniable possibility is that I was pickpocketed. I would like to think better of humanity than that, but the truth is: Downtown Vegas is seedy, I was throwing around a lot of cash, and a lot of people who looked like they had a lot of time on their hands were standing around watching.

The silver lining in this storm cloud is that I didn't have a single dollar in my wallet. Literally not one dollar. Even though I've got quite a bit of cash with me on this trip, I left almost all of it in the hotel room before going out tonight.

Currently my main two problems are: how do I board my flight home without an ID and how do I play in the $1k rebuy on Tuesday without an ID? Being the degenerate that I am, I'm much more worried about the latter.

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Saturday, May 31st: Event #2: $1,500 NLHE

This was Day 1A of the largest non-Main Event WSOP Event in history. Even though there are like 3,000+ entrants, my starting table had two pros: Jean-Robert Bellande and David Williams (ironically, both of whom are members of Team Bodog). David was there for two, maybe three hands before spewing off his stack with top pair against an overpair. When I first sat down, my knee jerk reaction was, "oh great... two easily recognizable pros." In reality, having someone like David Williams at your starting table is probably +EV. It was worth it to him to take -cEV spots in exchange for building up a real stack or not wasting his time on a $1,500 buy-in.

Jean-Robert played more solid (solidly?). I didn't play any pots with him, but I did ask him a few questions about his time on Survivor: China. I always sorta assumed that once the cameras are off that the producers probably give them water and maybe even a little food and shelter. He said that not only is that not the case, but that he thinks the show makes it look easier than it really is. For one four day stretch, he went without a single bite of food. I mean... think about that: four days of no food! It might sound easy on paper, but I'm guessing it'd be hard as hell to actually go through.

Uhh... bustout hand: 100/200, folds to kid in gold Full Tilt jersey (it said "Bleu" on the back) on the button who raises to 600. I re-raise to 2,200 from the big blind with Ace-King (leaving myself just 3,500 behind). He calls (weird). I shove on the 994, two diamond flop. He calls with Ten-Eight of diamonds. Fishy. The weird part is, I think you can only get a gold Full Tilt jersey for winning an FTOPS event.

I'm going to spend the rest of the day catching up on some work. Thanks for reading.

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So I'll probably be making three or four trips to Vegas this summer for the WSOP. A lot of people I know are going for the full six weeks. There are a few reasons I'm not doing that.

First, Vegas is kind of sensory overload for me. It can be pretty easy to fall into a lull of only sleeping a couple of hours per night, drinking too much, never exercising, eating too much, etc. For me, that kind of a lifestyle doesn't lend itself to good decision making at the poker tables. I think some refreshing downtime in Houston will be beneficial throughout the series.

There are also some logistical concerns with my dog that make it hard to go for six straight weeks. If I was capable of planning ahead more than, say, one week, I might have been able to deal with this problem. My friend Austin volunteered to watch Scout for the summer, but he lives in Indiana, so it would be difficult to get Scout up there. I still haven't entirely ruled out the possibility of somehow transporting him up to Indiana for the summer so that I might be able to spend more time in Vegas. If something crazy happens like I win a bracelet on this first trip and therefore want to play many more events than I otherwise thought I would, the dog will probably be going up north even if I have to send him UPS Ground.

For this first trip, I will be leaving tonight and returning on Wednesday, June 4th. Here's what I anticipate doing:

Saturday, May 31st: Event #2: $1,500 NLHE

This should be a pretty cool tournament since they're breaking it down into two different starting days. The starting days are Saturday and Sunday. Hopefully Saturday won't be sold out. I guess I should be hoping that the whole tournament isn't sold out. Ray told me last night that he was hearing rumors of this thing selling out.

Sunday, June 1st: Online tournaments at Ray's castle

Ray "Exitonly" Coburn and a bunch of his friends secured a twelve-bedroom mansion (I'm calling it a castle) for the summer. I saw some pictures of it online and it looks truly sick. I'm hoping it works out that I can roll over there on Sunday morning to play all the online MTTs with those guys.

Monday, June 2nd: $500+$40 at the Venetian

If I'm going through poker burnout, I'll probably take Monday off. If not, there's really not much that interests me except for the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza. There's a $2,000 PLHE WSOP Event, but I don't want to play it because making day two would mean I don't get to play the event I'm most excited for on this trip (see below). In fact, for that very reason, skipping the Venetian tournament and just taking Monday off sounds like a pretty good idea since I'm pretty sure the Venetian holds their final tables the next day and my lifetime FT% in their tournaments is like 50% or something absurd like that.

Tuesday, June 3rd: Event #5: $1,000 NLHE with Rebuys

I'm stoked for this tournament. Shane Schleger calls it the "actual beginning of the WSOP". But he's biased 'cause he final tables this tournament like every year. Anyway... the "$1,000" label in its title is a little misleading. This tournament isn't cheap. With a double rebuy and a double add-on, it will cost at least $4,000. Hopefully I don't go broke during the rebuy period, through it would be fun to wind up at Negreanu (or anyone else who will be playing maniacally)'s starting table.

Unlike the Irish Open Blog and the Party Poker Million Blog, I'm going to edit this entry with the newest additions on the top, not the bottom.

WSOP Circuit N'awlins

I'm driving to New Orleans (which is informal for its real name, N'awlins) tomorrow for the WSOP Circuit. Saturday is a $1k prelim. On Sunday I'll either play day two of the prelim or online tournaments. The $5k Main Event starts on Monday.

Some people have asked what I intend to do with the winnings from the Party Poker Million. Certainly, I'll wind up investing a good chunk of it. But truthfully, I don't have a clear plan. I am definitely going to be taking a shot this summer at the WSOP. For this, I'll want a good $30-$40k available with which to risk on more live tournaments. Once the dust settles on that, I think I'll have a clearer idea of where I want to go with things.

I'll update this entry from the lovely city of N'awlins letting y'all know how it's going over there.

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Washed out of the $1k prelim despite turning the 2,500 starting stack into 18,000 by 100/200 (I was tilted for a solid four hours after washing out). Washed out of most everything online yesterday. Up $4.5k on sportsbetting since arriving in N'awlins though (wtg Cavs and Spurs covering).

Made it to day two of the $5k Main Event. 250 players started. 71 remain. I have 29k. Average is something like 35k. 27 places pay. Blinds will be 600/1200/200 tomorrow.

Nothing terribly notable to mention from today. I was only all-in one time and that was in a spot where all the chips went in on the turn and with only five outs for me to fade.

Michael got smacked upside the head by the deck and was as high as 80k during 200/400/50. He spewed some in the last level, but still bagged up a solid 49k. I have a chunk of his action, so hopefully the deck starts smacking him in the head again. :)

Tomorrow plays all the way down to 9 players, so I'll either be elated or out of the tournament in 24 hours. More at that time. Thanks for reading.

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So Michael and I both wound up cashing and both wound up busting out before the final table. He went out in 25th when Kings ran into Aces.

I managed a bit of a deeper run amassing a stack that was probably among the five largest at the time of Michael's departure. I really don't feel like writing about hands that aren't that interesting, and I can assure you that I didn't play many interesting hands, but basically I wound up shoving 10 big blinds with 15 players left from the hijack with Ace-Five and being called by Tim Miles (who will win the tournament tomorrow 'cause that's just how he's running)'s Ace-King.

Of course I'm pretty disappointed to have made the final two tables of this tournament two years in a row only to not have cracked the top 14, but I feel like I'm playing really well at a time of the year when that sort of thing can be worth a lot of money (the eve of the WSOP).

Signing off.

$160,000!!!!!

Too jubilent and excited to write much of a "real" entry about the final table today, but: I finished 3rd for $160,000!!!

Things went so great for me. I mean... I told Michael before the final table started that, "I feel like 7th place should be the most emotionless finish for me." So the fact that I got 3rd is like super sweet.

No fantastic suckouts or anything, but two hands I definitely needed to win to finish this well:

9 left. Only guy who I cover shoves MP. I have 99 in small blind and call. I win versus A9. That loses, I'm left with like 3 bbs.

6 left (6th was $67k), I shove KQs for 14 bbs. Only guy I cover (who had like 10 bbs) says, "I guess I have to call." KQx on the flop... never bitching about losing a race again.

Bustout hand with three left. I had 15 bbs. Two German guys each had 50+ bbs. Clearly, 3rd was in my future. Button folds. I have Ace-Three suited in small blind. Raise to 4x. Just before he looked at his cards he says, "that's a big raise... you must be playing for all your chips here." After looking, he said, "all-in." I smiled, said, "nice hand... I have to call," and lost to his Ace-Jack.

Overall... couldn't be happier with how things went.

Sweeeeet!!!!

Party Poker Million VI Blog

So I’m on the Party Poker Million cruise. The tournament hasn’t started yet, so I don’t really have anything to say. I mean… it’s cute and all that you came to this site hoping to find something to read… but I’ve got nothing for you.

Right now we’re at port in Bari, Italy (wherever the hell that is). The tournament starts shortly after we leave port. I’m pretty happy about the structure, I think it’s going to be sick. To characterize it, there’s a 250/500 level between 200/400 and 300/600. That’s pretty hot.

What’s not hot is that I think the field might wind up being better than I figured it would be. I sorta pictured a bunch of fish from Party Poker (“oooooooooh! Party Pokah!!”), but it seems that most of the people here are younger guys who one might assume have a reasonable set of poker skills. The good news, at least, is that there aren’t many “pros” here. In fact, there aren’t really any at all. I heard someone say that J.J. Liu and Dan Alspaugh are the two biggest “pros” on board. Supposedly, Michael “timex” McDonald was supposed to play, but I haven’t seen him, and I probably would have by now if he’s on board. Maybe he’ll roll in big pimpin’ style on a helicopter fifteen minutes before the tournament starts with a harem of fine bitches. God that’d be so pimp. Seriously… if that kid charters a helicopter to take him to this boat just for the tournament, that’ll pretty much be the most ballin’ thing I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying something, too. One time I saw some Indian guys at Bollywood (a Houston-area club that serves as India’s answer to strip clubs) throwing money handful after handful at belly dancers. But those guys might have been props to try to get us drunk, jackass white boys to do the same. I think it almost worked on Michael. Also, the bills were just ones, so it really wasn’t that balla at all.

Told ya’ I had nothing.

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Day One Recap

Today was day one of the Party Poker Million. I bagged up 7,775 chips (started with 10k, blinds are 150/300/25 tomorrow). I’m pretty disappointed with how things turned out today. My table was pretty weak. The best players at the table were just “not bad”. The worst were fairly awful. It was kind of painful watching these nitty old guys bag up 15-25k.

There weren’t too many interesting hands, but I’ll mention one. Basically, I had between 12-14k almost the entire day. With ten minutes left in the last level, I raised to 550 with Queen-Jack offsuit in middle position. One of the nitty old guys called in the cutoff. A younger German guy shoved 3.5k total from the small blind. This would have been a pretty easy fold against almost anyone at the table except him.

A little background: He busted a shortstack a few hands before by re-raising and calling an all-in with King-Four. I mean, he was pot committed to call the all-in, but three betting was pretty reckless. The shorty was pretty tight. There’s not much he was raise-folding with. So after that hand, I noted that the German guy, while generally competent, also had some spew tendencies.

Given that a.) it was a squeeze play which younger balla’ (or wannabe ballas) like to do a lot, b.) the old guy didn’t re-raise me (which he absolutely would have done if he had something strong enough to shove after I call the German’s shove), and c.) I only needed around 37% equity against the German’s range for it to be a good call, I went ahead and called. His hand was disgusting for me: King-Queen.

So basically I get to go to bed on tilt for turning a totally decent stack into a totally mediocre stack at the very end of the night after playing all day. Oh well… I’m anything but desperate.

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Day Two Update (Dinner Break)

We’ve played four levels so far today. I managed to squeak up to 13,000 (without ever being all-in) despite being at the toughest table I’ve probably ever played at. To give you an idea of how tough it is, four of us are direct buy-ins (Mike “timex” McDonald, Tony “Bond18” Dunst, this German guy who plays HSNL online and said he lived with yellow sub (amongst others) during the WSOP in Vegas last year, and myself). Before the tournament started, I asked how many of the 171 entrants bought in directly. I was told there were a total of 12. Now, four of us are at the same table with just 55 players left.

Well, it’s 400/800/50 after dinner. We’ll see how it goes. I intended to write about this interesting hand that timex was involved in, but that will have to wait. Dinner calls.

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Day Two Recap

I made it to day three with a stack of 41,100. The first level tomorrow is 800/1600/200. There are 34 players left, 24 pay. So far I’ve been all-in once in this tournament, that was with Ace-Nine against pocket threes for a 24k pot during 500/1000. Aside from that, I’ve just been building chips without any showdowns. This will probably be a fairly long entry because I think there are a couple of interesting things to talk about. I’d recommend skipping the rest of this entry unless you care to read meticulous details from two hands I want to write about: the timex hand I mentioned earlier and a hand in which I did something I virtually never do.

Timex Hand

I can’t promise to get each and every exact detail of this hand correct. It happened like six hours ago, and my memory might be a little foggy. Hopefully I can get the main point across.

Timex raises under the gun (during 250/500/50) to 1,400. He had about 30k chips to start the hand. An extremely tight player immediately after him called the raise. This player started with about 20k. An aggressive German guy in the big blind also called.

The flop was Queen-Jack-Five rainbow. Timex checked, the super tight player bet 3k, and the German guy called in the blind. Observing this action, I put the tight player on a very strong hand. Ace-Queen at the absolute weakest. The German guy could have had something like King-Queen or perhaps a straight draw.

When the action was on Timex, he raised fairly substantially. I think his raise was to 10,500. The tight player almost immediately shoved all-in. The German folded. Timex called (he had to) and turned over Ace-King. I was very surprised that he thought he could buy this pot. The tight player had pocket Jacks and dodged a ten.

I’m not sure what his thought process was there. Clearly he had to think he had a significant amount of folding equity in order to justify making that play. But I don’t know how he could have thought he had much folding equity. Like I said, I think the worst hand the tight player has there is Ace-Queen. So basically, Timex is having to hope a.) that’s exactly what he has and b.) he’s capable enough to realize that Timex is representing an overpair and fold.

I don’t think I’m crossing any lines in saying that he played that hand bad. Mike’s clearly a sick poker player and I’m guessing he probably agreed that he could have played it better. Anyway… I thought that ws an interesting hand.

Side note about Timex and Bond18, both of whom I played with almost all day: very, very cool guys. They were enjoyable to be around. I honestly enjoyed being at that table even though it was brutal to my expectation. Timex, in particular, displays an admirable disparity between the degree to which he could justifiably act as if he is "better than everyone" or choose to be totally down to earth. For an 18 year old, he is exceedingly humble amidst every right not to be. It's hard not to root for him, [so I was genuinely disappointed for him when he approached me on the morning of Day Three to share with me the details of his bustout hand from the last level of the previous night (note: he had recovered from the aforementioned hand to amass a stack that had me thinking, "shit... this kid's actually going to win another one.")]

Fold I Never Make

During 500/1000, I had around 22k chips. An aggressive German player who had been opening a ton raised to 3000 in early position. Another guy who had recently been moved to the table (but generally seemed aggressive) called his raise from the cutoff. I looked down at King-Queen suited and new I had to squeeze here. I raised to 8,500 total which I hoped would look strong enough to get them to fold. The German didn’t waste much time to say, “all-in” (he started the hand with somewhere around 55k). When he said that, I knew I had to snap call when the action got to me. Then, much to my surprise, the other player said “call”.

I was like “holy shit… do I actually fold here?!?!” I mean… I can’t think of a single instance where I’ve put in 35% of my chips preflop only to fold. I shrugged and said, “I guess I’ll live to play another hand,” and folded face-up. I was pretty pumped when I saw their hands: Kings and Queens. Of course, the one outter queen came on the river to give the German guy a swelteringly large stack.

Anyway, that hand was clearly uncharted territory. I asked Timex what he thought about the play, and the impression I got from his answer was something like: “well it sucks pretty hard to put in a third of your stack and fold, but I think you played it correctly.” At the very least, that made me feel good.

What made me feel even better was rallying back from that to end the day at 41,100.

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Port Update: Izmir, Turkey

I suppose it’s pretty common in life to under expect or over expect things. But usually the target will miss its expectation by a somewhat marginal degree. Like, maybe something you’re dreading turns out to be mostly bearable or something you’re really excited for turns out to be “just okay”. However, it’s kind of rare to have a scenario where expectation and reality are on entirely different ends of the spectrum. Today, Izmir, Turkey was just such a scenario.

Michael and I woke up around 9:00 am right about the time the ship was docking in Izmir. This cruise is making stops in Italy, Greece, Croatia, and Turkey. Of all these countries, I entirely expected Turkey to be the “most interesting”, but not for any particularly positive reasons. My expectation for this Turkish port was something of an uber-religious culture where the people are generally in a “take first, give second (if at all)” type of mentality. I mean, I guess my expectations for Turkey probably weren’t that much different than what I would expect out of, say, Saudi Arabia: generally kind of a backwards culture where you never feel quite comfortable or safe until you get the hell out of there.

I turned out to be entirely wrong.

Izmir, Turkey wasn’t just “okay”, it was absolutely fantastic! Like, aesthetically, I think I probably enjoyed Copenhagen more, but that city aside, there’s not one place on this side of the globe I have been to that I enjoyed more thoroughly. Granted, my image of Izmir might benefit from the fact that we were only here for four hours, but I’m confident that was long enough to get a pretty good grasp on things. The country is absolutely gorgeous, the women are gorgeous, the people were hospitable, friendly, quick to smile, and the goods were cheap! When Americans go to Europe, they usually cringe at the increase in day to day expenses. Turkey was the exact opposite. As one shop owner managed to convey in broken English “to you, one Euro is nothing, to me, it is a fortune!”
I bought more clothes in this city in four hours than I buy in America in four months.

After today, I am a huge fan of the country of Turkey. I mean, I didn’t see this coming whatsoever. What a pleasant surprise. I hope our time in Istanbul tomorrow doesn’t reverse this bullishness. Assuming it doesn’t, I’ll probably sprinkle a little money in a Turkish ETF when I get home, if for no other reason than to show support for truly underrated nation.

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Day Three Update (Dinner Break)

We’ve played two levels so far today. They’ve been good to me: we’re in the money and I’ve chipped up to 66k with little resistance. There are 23 players left with blinds of 1,200/2,400/400 (note the huge ante!) The money bubble turned out to be entirely painless because a.) I was fortunate enough to hit the ground running which meant my stack was never precariously thin and b.) players busted out faster than I thought they would. Before today began, Tony “Bond18” Dunst surmised that it would take 2.5-3 levels before we were in the money. It wound up only taking 1.5. Unfortunately for Tony, I believe he was among those who helped expedite the bubble process. Another player who fits that description was a man named Ralph from California. The two of us came into the day as the only remaining Americans. (Note: I realize Tony Dunst is American, but he was billed as representing Australia in this tournament which is where he now calls home).

I sense (perhaps incorrectly) that much of the staff is sort of pulling for me. While all remaining contestants aside from myself are European, the staff is composed almost entirely of Americans. Not the least of these is Matt Savage who deserves the utmost compliments for his capacity as a tournament director. This is undoubtedly the most well-ran live tournament in which I have participated. In a sense, this should be expected. As Tony Dunst pointed out yesterday, they have the benefit of a.) a small field and b.) working a light schedule since a tournament that might otherwise take three days has been stretched into five to accommodate the port schedule.

I have a less than ideal table draw right now. To my immediate left is a middle-aged Swedish guy whose presence as a relatively unspectacular poker player is made up for by a chip stack capable of funding fearlessness. Two to my left is Johannes Strassman. I have mentioned him several times in this blog, he was the player who spiked the one outter Queen in the “Fold I Never Make”. He is the tournament chip leader and is very, very aggressive. On the very first hand of this table draw, he raised to 3x under the gun and had to call a small all-in. His hand? Seven-Five suited. To characterize how things are going for him: he handily won a race versus pocket twos.

It’s really not too bad having these players to my left with just 25 big blinds. If I possessed a bigger stack, it would kind of suffocate me into playing tighter than I would otherwise care to. But my current stack is small enough that I’m going to be playing tight anyway. Plus, my reputation in their minds seems solid enough that they won’t play back at me light.

Today will finish after four more levels or when eight players remain. My chances of reaching this checkpoint are uncertain enough that of all readers, I’m probably the one most excited to learn of what the next entry contains. ;)

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Day Three Recap

I want to preface by saying that I am exhausted beyond belief, so there’s a good chance this entry will lack grace.

Well I survived day three and made it to the final table. I have 90,000 chips with the next blind level set at 3,000/6,000/1,000. While I don’t have a particularly large stack, fifteen big blinds is certainly familiar territory. I mean… I haven’t had more than 25 big blinds since the early levels of day one. One player has 44,000. I’m second to last. From there, someone has 123,000. Beyond that, everyone has at least 150,000. Payouts go something like: 9th - 21k, 8th - 40k, 5th - 92k, 1st-353k.

I wish I could say that I was never all-in since I made the last entry. That’s true with the exception of one hand. I don’t even remember what level or how big my stack was, but basically it folded to my small blind where I had 12 big blinds and looked down at Queen-Five. I’m not entirely polished on the mathematical ins-and-outs of this hand, but I figured at the absolute worst, a shove was just marginally bad. It’s worth noting that the ante was like enormous. Whatever… that’s enough defending a shove that’s probably totally standard. Anyway, the big blind (the Swiss guy with quite a few chips who played pretty well all day) called with Ace-Eight. I mean… I’m like… what?… at worst like a 38% dog there? The fact that I won the hand was particularly thrilling since the board came: Nine-Nine-Ten…. Four…. FIVE!!!!!!! A rough calculation of my equity on the spot said that river card was worth about $65,000 to me. Ship it!

We played two tables of five handed for literally close to three hours. I mean, it was awful. The Swede and German to my left were super aggressive. Still, I managed to increase my stack (admittedly not by much at all) over the course of our five-handed play without showing a single hand. Like… that‘s not an exaggeration: three hours of five handed play and I managed not to show one single card the entire time. It was a particularly brutal stretch of being cold decked. I feel there’s one hand worth mentioning from this stretch:

During 2,500/5,000, it folded to the button who raised to 15,000. I had 75k in the small blind and Ace-Jack suited. The standard play here would be to shove, but there were two things that made me think otherwise: a.) this player folded to such re-raises constantly… (for example: he laid down Ace-Queen face-up in two separate instances after raise-folding from the button in a scenario where I would have snap called in his spot) and b.) I figured he was bad enough to be oblivious of stack sizes such that I could re-raise, get him to call instead of fold or shove, and then get him to fold when I shove the flop. I mean… I know that all sounds pretty extravagant… but it turns out I knew what I was doing because it worked to absolute perfection. I re-raised him to 33,000. Right after he called he said to me, “do you have aces?” (read: he thought I was hella strong). I shoved the flop (which incidentally was Jack-Five-Four… but that hardly mattered) and he folded. I felt like a pimp after that play since I increased my stack by 40% without turning over a card.

The five handed play was notably frustrating since it lasted way longer than it should have. At the other table, short stacks survived Threes all-in against Nines (three on river), Ace-Queen all-in against King-Queen (after a tease of a Jack-Ten-x flop), and Queen-Nine all-in against Tens when the board ran a five-high straight.

Well I’ll close this update by saying that the final table actually isn‘t until Thursday. There’s no poker tomorrow. A part of me is happy about that since Istanbul will be easier to enjoy when there’s not a final table looming in the immediately future. But a larger part of me hates the thought of having to wait like 36 hours to play the final table. I guess I’ll just remind myself that WSOP Main Event final tablists will have to wait 2,808 hours.

This entry was needlessly long. Cliff Notes: I made the final table… SHIP IT! (FWIW: not accounting for skill whatsoever, just chips, I’m worth about $60,000 right now).