Vegas June 2013 (WSOP)

Day 6 - Buffet, shopping and Aria

Last Updated: 2013-06-06 14:18:48

6 tournaments, 5 deep runs. No matter what happens the rest of the week I'm going to come away from this trip feeling pretty good about my poker skills.

We didn't sleep nearly enough after being up until 4am Tuesday night, Joann hit the pool and I typed up the BLOG, we showered and headed out for an afternoon of food and shopping at Caesar's.

Tried out the new Bacchanal Buffet, which is the newest, priciest (I think) buffet on the strip. It was very good, a very large selection and good quality food. One of the newest things we're seeing at several of these buffets is food prepared in small serving size crock's or pans that you need little finger sized hot pads to pick up and take back to your table. Here for example I remember seeing lasagne, rigatoni & sausage and scalloped potatoes. I didn't try any of them, of course, because I try and keep starches down when I'm eating so much. But the prime rib and brisket I had were very good along with everything else I tried.

Among the desserts was a "hot chocolate chip cookie" which was basically take a glob of cookie dough, put it in a little mini crock, bake it and serve hot. I don't think there are a lot of things in this world that taste better than a chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven...

So off to the mall at Caesar's. Joann got some sneakers she wanted at Coach that happened to be on sale (gotta support our favorite stock holding!), we did a little window shopping and headed back up to the room for naps.

Then it was back down to the poker room for another deep run.

Started out slowly, couldn't get anything going early on. I trickled my way down to around 7000 before I finally started to find some opportunities and pick up a few pots. My first double-up came on a great hand.

I'm late to act and I look down at K-J of clubs and raise out. I get one caller, then a re-raise from a loose player and for whatever reason I get stubborn and call. Well, for very good reason actually. I've hardly played a hand, I finally make a rare raise and I get re-popped by a guy whose range is fairly wide. A light 3-bet is definitely in his repertoire and if I hit, well...

So the flop comes A-3-10 two clubs. Dude makes about a 1/2 pot bet, I recheck my hand and shove.

He calls instantly and rolls over 8-3 of spades.

Pop quiz, guess who's way ahead here - the guy with the pair, or the guy with no pair? Ahead almost 2-1 actually (62/38 to be a little more precise). Yup, that would be me, and I caught my club on the turn.

I've been getting a lot of pocket kings this week and this was no exception. Got my next takeout when pocket Kings held up against Queens or Jacks, later I took out a not very good player who apparently just didn't believe me (again, not really playing a lot of hands!) and we got all the chips in after the flop in that he missed with just A-Q. Of course he picked up a couple more outs with a Queen on the turn (so all the chips would have gone in then anyway). Don't know what he was thinking, but I'm not complaining.

From that point it was the usual stack building for a while. Later I got into another all-in with Qs vs A-K, I flopped a Q to end the drama and he got the knife twisting Ace on the river.

Of course there was also the usual assortment of hands I didn't play that would have been monsters. One in particular...and who knows, maybe it would have played out badly after all...I was in the big blind of 2000, someone limped, someone else made it 5000 to go, I had plenty of chips at the time and looked down at K-3 of spades.

I could have seen a pretty cheap flop, I would have flopped a king high flush, and I would have gotten paid by the limper...unless she happened to have the nut flush or was trying to buy it with the ace of spades and hit, I'll never know. And later I had a similar situation where I could have called a raise I probably shouldn't have but I could afforded to call with a small suited ace and would have scored a double takeout at the final table. But I digress...

So we work our way down to two tables, we're around 16-17 left paying 12. I had gone completely card dead, blinds were 2000/4000 but we were on last hand of the level before a break and blinds were about to go to 3000/6000. I'll go from just over 10XBB to just under sitting around 50,000 chips.

I'm in the cutoff and I look down at Q-J suited. I decide to raise, but given that I'm raising to almost 1/3 of my stack I'm very unlikely to be going away.

Button folds, small blind thinks for a bit and makes the call, big blind folds. Flop comes 10-high rainbow, something like 10-6-2. SB checks, I pretend to give it a little thought about what I'm going to do and shove.

Dude thinks about it for no more than 10 seconds, calls and flips over K-J of hearts.

No, folks, no typos there. I basically hadn't played a hand in at least a half an hour I would guess and this guy calls me with king high What a great call.

That was, of course, until the Queen hit on the turn.

Wow.

I didn't stack him but I almost did. He punched a chair on the way out. I feel his pain...I've made a few sick calls in my day and got sucked out on.

That was really all the excitement. That got me up to about 130K, which was about 10% of the chips in play and above average. I maintained that stack for the most part down to 8 players, but then blinds got just huge. When they hit 6000/12000 at the final table (which meant my slightly average stack was barely 10XBB) we all had to gamble a little. I made a raise of 30K with a big ace, got called, missed and had to give it up, eventually got all in w/ A-J with my last 80K-ish and ran into A-Q that held up (the board did flop a pair for me to give me extra outs to chop) and I busted out in 8th place for the second night in a row. This was actually a better 8th place payout with less players because they were paying only 12 instead of the 15-18 in the previous tournament.

So today it will be more Aria. I'm slightly tempted to go down to Nugget and play a Stud/Razz/Stud 8/b mix but Aria is just too juicy to walk away from at this point.