 Council Bluffs 02/2010 (WSOP Circuit) |
| Day 1 (drive, Omaha 8/b) |
| Last Updated: 2010-02-24 09:39:19 |
| Unfortunately something happened on the website and this day's writeup was overwritten with the day two writeup...so I'm rewriting this from memory quite a few days later...
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| The original plan was that Matt and myself were going for the weekend to play in the WSOP Circuit event. There were four tournaments we were potentially looking at playing in, a $550 NLH tournament Friday at noon, Omaha 8/b Friday at 4:00, NLH Saturday at noon and HORSE Saturday at 4:00. The last three all $345 buyins.
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| Matt unfortunately couldn't make it but Rich (a.k.a. Mr Reliable) said he wanted to go. Rich and I decided to skip the early Friday NLH and play in the 8/b tourney. And I gotta give Rich credit, he texted me about 10 minutes to 4:00AM that he was on his way to pick me up.
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| So the two of us headed out, and it was all of 20 minutes into the drive that we ran into snow. For about the first half of the drive it was one clear lane and one snow covered, but driveable lane. Very little traffic up I-25 and I-76, but once we got to I-80 there were a lot of trucks and we ended up spending more time on snow than on pavement.
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| That was until we came up to a turnaround in the center median a little past mile marker 200 in Nebraska. Before we got to it there were all kinds of tracks on the other side of the road where cars and trucks had gone into the center median. Just past that turnaround heading east the road was completely cleared, even a little into the shoulder. Obviously on the other side of the road folks were getting the opposite treatment, driving along on clear roads and suddenly finding themselves on snow. Apparently the folks in charge of the roads in Nebraska care more about the eastern half of the state than the western half 'cause it was rather odd...
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| The only other item of interest on the drive was that when we were about 3/4 of the way there Rich mentioned to me that he had a cut on a finger that had gotten infected and was a little concerned about it. He showed me the finger, it was a rather nasty looking shade of purple.
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| So because of the snow we didn't get to the hotel until about 2:30. Rich found an urgent care online, dropped me off at the Horseshoe and left to get his finger taken care of.
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| I bought in and had 45 mins to an hour to kill so I wandered over to a craps table ... where I won back my poker buyin and then some. So I'm playing Omaha 8/b for free today!
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| Good thing...
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| Hand #1 was a great hand. I was playing an A-3-X-X hand with a suited ace in spades. Flop gave me four to the flush and a 2nd nut low draw. Someone bet out, I decided to just call as did a few others. Turn a blank, another bet and calls, river was the beautiful deuce of spades giving me a nut-nut hand. I ended up chopping low because someone else was also playing an A-3 without even a pair.
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| But after that things went downhill for a while. Seemed like I could do very little right even tho I felt I was making solid poker decisions. For example I'd fold a nut flush draw with a pair on the board only to watch the flush come and see someone with a much worse flush than I would have had take the pot. Or I'd draw to a nut low with 5-6 people in the pot only to have it get counterfieted or miss. It was very frustrating.
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| At one point I was very low in chips, maybe as far down as 1200 from my starting stack of 6000, when I did finally get a run of cards. Unfortunately it's been so long that the day two hands are all in my head and I really can't remember the hands I chipped up with. But I do recall catching broadway once and having it hold up against a couple of two-pair hands for a nice scoop and a couple of big pots where I was nut on one end against two other players and quartering them both.
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| I do recall getting up to a solid size stack of 12-14K chips when they moved me to balance tables. Second hand out of the gate was the beginning of the end.
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| I get A-A-2-9 rainbow in the small blind and only one limper in the pot. I raise, big blind who was one of the bigger stacks calls and the limper folds. Unfortunately for me I get about the worst possible flop - K-2-6. My low is now dead, best case I'm playing for half. I bet out hoping the other person just called me with A-2 but they go over the top. I make that call hoping to catch on the turn but another low card comes and I have to give up the hand because really at that point I have no low and I would be playing just a bare pair of aces for high. Ugh.
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| So that was about half my stack gone, a few hands later I get K-K-3-6 with one suited K I think. Generally one of the biggest mistakes hold'em players make in this game is overplaying kings. But these are the kind of kings I like because if I'm up against an A-2-X-X hand I'm actually in good shape. If an A comes, their low is going to be counterfeited so I have the low to fall back on and if its all high cards not including an A I'm going to win the pot. And certainly on a very short stack (again!) I'm going to get all my chips in with this hand.
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| Unfortunately it didn't work out so well. The other person turned up J-J-A-2, exactly the kind of hand I wanted to see in that spot, but the flop came 10-A-10 and I was down to a two outer for high and runner runner low and neither came for me.
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| Rich, meanwhile, had gotten treated but got to the casino too late to play in the 7:00 second chance tournament. He had a staph infection and was given some horse-pill antibiotics. He wasn't feeling well however, so I played a little more craps, won a few more bucks, he played some slots and we decided to call it an early night.
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| Hopefully things will go better in Hold'Em or HORSE tomorrow (oh, wait, I already know how it went, don't I...) |
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