 Vegas June 2009 (WSOP) |
| Day Four - WSOP |
| Last Updated: 2009-06-17 09:44:54 |
| What would you do?
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| You are playing poker with 1500 of your closest friends. Your goal is to take a 6000 starting chip stack and increase it to about 9 million chips. You figure you at least need to survive to where the average chip stack is about 60,000 to get into the money.
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| You raised preflop and got called. You flopped a two-way straight draw and have two overs. You bet to try and take the pot with such a strong drawing hand but someone went all-in over the top of you. You've already committed 1/3 of your chips to this pot. You are convinced the other person has top or middle pair.
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| If you are right, you have 14 outs twice and are a small favorite. Call and lose and you're out. Fold and you are alive, but you've lost half your starting stack and are the short stack at your table (albeit with 20 times the big blind). Call and win and you will have doubled your original stack and are among the chip leaders at your table...
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| What would you do?
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| I hardly slept the night before my day at the WSOP. As I said in the previous blog, it was a very daunting task. "Only" 1500 signed up for what Mike Matusow would call the "donkament". But somehow I wasn't feeling the effects of lack of sleep. Maybe had I made it a little deeper...
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| Got to the table and a LOT of people were late. We played just two or three handed for the first 10-20 minutes. And while heads-up, the other guy at the table had A-10 first hand, AA second hand, AK third hand, flopped top pair fourth hand, flopped top pair and caught top two pair on turn on sixth hand ... and basically had an ace or a pair, which he kept showing me, for all but one of the first 20 hands or so. It was ridiculous. One of the two pots I won in that stretch he had K-Q and I finally paired my ace and check-raised him.
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| But eventually the table filled up. Dutch Boyd was at my table. Joann chatted with his girlfriend on the sidelines. Tiffany "Hot Chips" Michelle and Joe Seebok were at the table behind me, and we spotted Shannon Elizabeth and Matusow also at nearby tables.
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| Dutch was first out. He tried to bust out with just top pair on a scary board and ran into a straight, only to catch a three outer and make a better straight on the river. But after that he just kept calling people down presumably with top pair/worse kicker and gave all his chips away. Including calling me down when I had an ace with a 10 kicker and I guess he just didn't believe me. He actually gave me my biggest pot win of the night on that hand.
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| Other than that, not a lot was happening for me. I stayed generally between 5000-6000 chips (6000 starting stack), but it seemed like every time I'd win a decent pot I'd run into bad luck and give some back.
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| So we are well into the third round and I'm at about 5000 chips. I get K-Q and I'm in the cutoff (just before the button) and everyone folds to me. I make a standard raise to 400 (75/150 blinds) and two loose players call. Flop comes J-10-rag rainbow. Check-check so I make a pot sized bet to try and take down the pot, so I'm 1600-1700 into the pot, and next to act shoves immediately.
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| Third person in the pot goes into posturing mode, which gives me plenty of time to think about what I'm going to do. But I really didn't think too hard.
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| Pot is about 7000-7500 and it's my last 3500 to call (actually it turned out to be 3325 of my last 3500 but I thought he had me covered). I firmly believe this person has top or middle pair because if he had a very strong hand he would have just called and let me bet at it again based on his previous play. If I'm right I've got 14 outs twice, any 9, Q, K or A wins the pot. If I'm wrong and he's stronger than that I'm probably a 2-1 or 3-1 underdog. So 2-1 on my money and I truly believe it's a coin flip...
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| Sigh.
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| Well I made the call. I was right, he had top pair but also had an ace so he had one of my outs. I was 13 outs twice, the odds calculator puts me at a 47-53 underdog. Basically a coin flip and I lost. I got blinded in about 4 hands later and in spite of flopping top pair I ran into two people who caught two pair. Ugh.
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| Believe me, I slept well last night. At some point you're going to get all your chips in on a coin flip. I could have waited longer to take that coin flip, but why? Is busting out after 10 hours and out of the money any better than busting out after three hours and out of the money? So I took my shot earlier rather than later and it didn't work out.
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| That's poker, folks.
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| Cody had gotten to the Rio about 20 minutes before I busted out so the three of us had a late lunch at the Rio buffet. Cody got us a "locals" discount to go with my $10 voucher for being a WSOP participant.
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| After that we parted ways briefly but got back together with him, Hans and Maria for the 7pm "second chance" tournament at Venetian. Joann got into her first poker action. Unfortunately she was card dead pretty much the entire time and couldn't really get into many pots. She finally shoved with slick and ran into Kings. Ugh. I lasted a little longer but took a shot with what ended up being the third best hand with only one live card and it didn't work out for me...
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| Maria at one point was down to a single, yellow 1000 chip but won a bunch of pots in a row and ended up taking 13th out of about 225 players. Good for her!!!
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| I made money in each of two sessions at the craps table just before and just after the tournament, tho, so not counting my WSOP buyin I'm back up for the trip.
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| So that was our day. The plan for Tuesday is the $340 Deep Stack at Venetian at noon, and I need to get in the shower so I'm not late ... so that's all for now. |
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