The Main Event starts today and if you aren't really familar with poker this definatly is the "World Series", "Super Bowl", "NBA Finals" of poker. Everyone in my house has a seat in it except for me :( I tried to qualify for it on-line but wasn't successful, I should have probably tried to qualify earlier in the year. Next year I'll make sure I get it done early. I did have a glimmer of hope yesterday when a friend of mine from Michigan (who won a braclet in the $2,000 NL event a week ago) came up to me and said he had heard I didn't have my seat and was thinking about putting me in. But, I didn't hear back from him last night so I assume that it isn't gonna happen.
I'll update on how all my friends are doing in it as it progresses. I have made a TON of new friends since I've been out here so inevitably at least one of them will go deep into the tourney. It'l be fun to cheer them all on and a have a small percentage of a couple of them, so maybe I'll make a little money from it if they go deep.
I haven't been playing much lately because I was in Colorado Springs for one of my best friends weddings. It was a lot of fun and it made me realize how much fun I we all had together.
I played some on-line today and ran fairly poorly but still made some money, so that was good. I am going to try to get back in the grind of on-line play so that I can re-build my bankroll. As of right now I am not planning on playing any more WSOP events and am going to stop myself at 0 - 11. Not what I had imagined but I'm not going to let it ruin my life or anything. Thanks to everyone for keeping up on the reading and I'll try to do better on updating consistently in the future.
No good, got coolered when my AK lost to QQ in a battle of the blinds. I had a good ammount of chips but it was still early. Today is the $2,500 PL Hold'em event, I love Pot Limit!
well, I played the $2,500 NL short handed event on Thursday and lasted all on 10 minutes. I then went over to the Bellagio with Shannon and Eric and played the $1,000 daily tournament that they have been running during the series. I played really really well and when we got down to 19 people (top 18 got paid) I had an above average chip stack with 55,000. I called a standard raise out of the BB with 66 and checked when the flop came 886 (BINGO!), the original raiser bet 12,000 and have about 25k more behind him. I feel like I did a fairly good job of selling him the idea that I had a low pair, like 77 or 55 and raised all in after thinking for about 2 minutes. He pretty much immediately called with 10's and he seemed almost sure he had the best hand. It was a pretty big pot, over 110,000 in chips and the winner would defiantly be the chip leader. The turn came and 8, so it counterfeited my full house and he won the pot. :( First was $67,000, would have been nice.
I'm gonna take a break from playing the tournaments for a little while, my bankroll is suffering to much even though I feel I am playing better and better each time. I'm gonna focus on playing on-line for a while and try to make something happen.
I had another Pic on CardPlayer.com today, they seem to like me for some reason even though I can't seem to cash. I played really exceptionally well today, maybe one of the best tournaments I have ever played. I ran very poorly however, couldn't win any race and lost alot of hands I had dominated. I made some exceptional reads and great calls and had a lot of chips $35,000 with about 70 people left. I proceeded to lose 2 races and a hand where I had a large draw and busted in 56th place, when 54 got paid. Kind of sucks, but I can't ask to play any better than I did and if I keep it up, I will really make some noise.
The wedding in Kansas was really great, it was a good break from Vegas for a couple days and I'm really glad I got to be there for one of my best friends on his big day. I just got back in town a few hours ago after our flight had to make and emergency stop in Palm Springs... kind of unexpected. Tomorrow is a 1k NL event that I'll play in and I think there is a 2k PL event on tuesday as well. Looking for my first cash is getting frustrating, so hopefully that streak will end soon.
On a good note, one of my good friends Scott cashed today for 18k in the Full Tilt $200 tourney. It's his 2nd final table in a row in that tourney and he's really starting to becoming a spectacular tournament player. He'll be coming out here later this week with Alex Michel to play a few events.
Since I haven't updated in a while, you can usually guess that I have not been doing really well. I am fairly frustarted that I didn't cash in my first five WSOP events and decided to take a break from playing the events. To top off that I also have been doing fairly poorly on-line and am down on the trip since we got to Vegas. So, needless to say poker is not going well at the moment and I don't plan on playing any more events until next week after I get back from my friends wedding in Wichita on Monday.
Non-poker wise the trip is fantastic. My roomates are some really great guys and we all get along really well. We have been having a blast hanging out at our house, lounging around during the day and then going out at night. The night life in Vegas is some of the best in the world and we have gone to several really fun clubs. There are a bunch of stories, all of which would be wasted in writing. One of my roomates did throw his laptop into our pool today after taking a series of bad beats on-line. I will be here tomorrow and then fly out on Friday.
This is really the only event that I have gone very far in so far, so that is the reason I haven't posted about any of the tournaments really. There really just wouldn't be anything very interesting to read about. This tournament looked like it was going to start off the same way after the first 15 minutes. I bluffed off 1/2 my chips in a fairly large pot due to a bad read and found myself down to about 1k. Our table then broke since it was one of the lowest numbered tables and I got moved to a exceptionally soft table. I proceeded to run over this table with my very small stack and worked it up from 900 chips to almost 7,000 without even showing a hand. I played really exceptionally during the second thru fourth hours and the only hiccup I had came right after the 2nd break. The hand went as follows:
A small stack under the gun raised all in for 1,100 chips, I squeeze AK offsuit in 2nd position and call the all-in. I medium stack in middle position who was a fairly tight player re-raised all-in for 1,800 more. I really felt bad about my hand at that point but had to make the call. The UTG player had 66 and the middle position player rolled over AA. Ouch. So that knocked me down to about 4,500. Scott Fischman then got moved to my table and was seated two seats to my right. This made me very happy because I know how he likes to play fairly well and felt that I could exploit him with my position. I stole some hands and re-raised him a couple times building my stack up to 11,000 without still showing another hand. Our table broke after that and I was moved a couple different times, eventually to a very wild, loose table that had a lot of chips. The blinds were 300-600 with a 75 chip ante so it was costing me about 2,000 chips every round. I didn't have any steal opportunities for about two orbits and was blinding down to about 7,000 chips when I decided to push with 55 UTG to try and steal the blinds. It probably wasn't a really good spot and looking back I think I would lay it down next time. I got called by a very loose and novice player who had KK and that was it for me. I feel really good about the way I played am much happier now than I was after the first four bust outs.
I'm not sure if I am playing any events this week before flying back to Kansas for one of my best friends weddings. I'll check the schedule and decide in the next couple of days.
