Vegas Yes, World Series No

First of all, kudos to me for not entitling this blog "Vegas, Baby, Vegas". Even though it'd clearly be weak, I felt a strong urge to do so. Just like, after any amount of time off from touring, I'm always strongly tempted to entitle the returning newsletter or blog "On The Road Again". Obvious and lame, yet it feels so good.

But moving on. I came down here intending to play in WSOP Event #4 and Event #7. Here's a quick recap of how neither ending up happening.

Got in around 10am Sunday morning, and had already heard that #4 was sold out. Went down there anyway, and found a guy willing to sell me his seat. But the dastardly WSOP officials would not allow it, and so I was no go. I've heard some people online saying these events should never be capped, they should find run for whoever wants to play. And while a nice thought, that's obviously ridiculous. If enough people show up, they are going to eventually run out of room/resources/whatever. I mean, they can't host infinity. But what I do really wish they would do is make preregistration easier. Have a phone number you can call, accept credit cards (add the merchant fee to the price the entrant pays), and above all let people guarantee their starting day when events have multiple Day 1's. I preregistered last year for an event like that, and they did not give me the starting day I requested. It was okay cause I was already in town, but for this event I was only in town for the second start day, so I didn't want to risk being assigned the first one and just completely throwing away the entry fee. I understand the WSOP is a huge undertaking and I think overall they do a good job, but I think making registration a little easier for out-of-towners would be a nice goal.

So I registered for Event #7, which starts today (Tuesday), and as I had Monday to kill I entered the Caesar's Palace deep stack event. It's like ~$500 to enter and they got 163 entrants. Details on the tournament follow, but as for how it pertains to the World Series? I did not know this when I entered, but technically it's a two-day event. At 2am they cut it off and you come back and finish today. We got in the money around 1am, and at the cut off there were 14 left. I can't be here to finish this tournament and at the World Series at the same time. It would be pretty baller to just let myself be blinded off over at the Rio and show up when the Caesar's event is down, hoping to have enough chips left to work with. But I just can't bring myself to potentially (probably) just burn World Series entry fee. I considered just giving up on the Caesar's event, because there's no way near the upside financially, and I did come here to play in the WSOP, and I could be out in five minutes at Caesar's. But in the money is in the money, and I could be out in five minutes at the WSOP too. So after they bagged our chips at Caesar's I took a cab over to the Rio and got my entry fee refunded (it was just me and Howard Lederer in the registration room, btw).

So, yeah, I'm not gonna bag some $x00,000 first place prize this time. But I feel pretty good about the way things turned out and my main goal was to get in some live tournament hands just to increase that skill set, which I definitely did. You know, when I hear live tourney grinders complain about the long days, how hard it is and whatnot, I feel like it's ridiculous. Like, try a prison camp on for size, mofo. But we played from noon-2am and I'll admit I felt pretty crushed by the end. I did make a couple brain malfunction errors (like throwing in an oversized chip intending for it to be a raise, thinking the word raise in my head, but not actually saying it out loud, making it a call). I think I have a cold/flu bug anyway, but I was just feel rough and achy for the last few hours. I would try to run outside for a breath of fresh air on the (ten-minute) breaks, but even late it felt as stuffy outside as it did inside.

We started with $18,000 in chips. I got a few hands early, and everybody folded, so I just kept going with that, was table captain, and built around to around $30k pretty quick. Slowly grinded it up, no interesting hands, until around 4pm when two big hands happened.

First one I was at around $50k, only one other guy at the table had a similar stack. He was a guy, maybe around 30, and quite a common type at these tournaments. Obviously obsessed with poker, reads books and probably runs a home game, watched all the shows, you know. So knows some moves, is willing to try some things, but just doesn't have the experience to quite know when it's a good idea (not like I always know, it's a sliding scale). One thing I've noticed about these guys is they can be super nitty in one hand and then make a crazy move in another, and it doesn't really compute. This guy had built his stack by doubling up with 66 on and 652r board. Preflop Raiser had bet, he raised, and PFR shoved. My guy tanked for ever, even though PFR was an elderly gentleman who played 100% predictable and would not open 4-3 in a million years.

So I open with A9 on the btn and villain calls in the bb. Flop is 952r, and villain check calls. Turn is the ace, giving me top two, I bet again and villain min c/r's. Now all of a sudden I'm worried. If I hadn't seen buddy just tank with top set it'd be a pretty easy decision. But I really want to put him on 55 or 22. I probably only think about it for 15 seconds or so, and finally decide the guy's too erratic to fold in this spot. I reraise and he shoves, which feels sickening, but I'm definitely committed. He turns over AJ, river bricks, and I've got $100k. I don't blame villain for how he played the hand up until my turn 3bet. He knows I'm playing aggressively and so I don't hate the float, and when hits the turn ace he's gotta think he's good. But when I reraise him? He could and shove have easily gotten away at that point. Needless to say I'm glad he didn't.

Second big hand, I have AQo in the cutoff. SB and BB both call. Flop comes Q73 all clubs, I have the A of clubs. I bet out, SB raises, BB calls. I made a big mistake in this hand in that I didn't get chip counts. I knew I had the guys covered easily, but they did both have reasonable stacks. SB was an overly aggro spewer (and cocky prick) who thought he really knew the game, and I guess kind of did know it. Just didn't play it well. BB was new to the table. I just shoved. SB showed 33, BB showed KJc and I was in trouble Turn bricked, river was 2c, and I was in trouble no more. With a stack of over $200k I was probably chip leader by a ratio of 2 to 1 over the next big stack.

What's sickening, is when I bagged my chips at 2am, a full 10 hours later, I had $189k. So I basically treaded water for ten hours! I did my best to rock the big stack, but it just didn't work out. I probably never got over 300k, or below 150k. We had the tournament director's longest ever cash bubble (he's been working there for three years). 18 got paid, so we played hand for hand on the final two tables for at least a couple hours. It was, as one player noted, worse than watching paint dry. It was more like watching people watch paint dry. Tried to amuse ourselves by making prop bets on whether the extreme short stack on the other table would fold his blinds, but even those attempts at amusing ourselves were thwarted as we always pushed (when nobody raised the guy).

So it starts up again in a couple hours. I have slightly below average chip stack, it's full on luck mode now. It's not a ton of money anyway, first place is like $25k, and right now it's only around $1400. But it'd be nice to take it down just cause that's why you enter, no?