Vegas November 2014

Day 2 - Seniors Deepstack

Last Updated: 2014-11-10 11:31:52

Let's see if this post ends up being as short as I expect it to be...

No big lunch Sunday, had to be at the tournament by 11 and I also had to walk a fair distance from Luxor to Venetian. Quick bite at Starbucks while I finished off the last BLOG entry, then on to the Aria sports book to make my parlay bet and then over to the Venetian.

That offensive pass interference call on the hail mary at the end of regulation against the Saints might cost me a nice payday. My other two teams came through, I would have A LOT of interest in the Eagles game Monday had that touchdown stood. But I digress...

Somehow I put in 11.5 hours playing poker at Venetian (9.5 of actual playing time if you subtract the breaks) and I have almost nothing to talk about. For me it ended up being ABC poker all the way through. I don't think I had more than 6 pocket pairs in all that time. 3's once (didn't play, would have flopped a set), 6's once (see below), 8's once, 10's once or twice, kings once. THAT'S IT!. I might be forgetting a pair or two, but I think I can say with great certainty I never had JJ, QQ and definitely not AA.

I did have A-K several times and A-Q a few times. That's a lot of poker with not a lot of cards.

I really had to pick my spots, but I managed to. A-K was my friend for a change. I won almost every pot I played it in, probably about 50-50 hitting vs c-betting (as you would expect!).

I made the most of what I had and I had a very deep run. At the first break I was up from a 12K start to 16K (breaks every 2 hrs), second break up to 18K with half of the 121 player field eliminated, 38K at the dinner break, peaked out at probaby 50-55K between that and the final break of the night, but probably only 40-43K at that last break. I generally stayed in the 20-40 big blind range once blinds got big, at least until we got close to the money and I had to scratch and claw. So I was always comfortable, but not so comfortable that I could try and run over the table at any point.

The most interesting hands were the hand where I raised preflop with 66, flop 6-10-Q, short stack with Q-J goes all-in instantly after the flop and I took him out. Awesome how I used my mind control abilities to get a short stack to go all in after flopping top pair, right?

Then there was the gutshot straight I hit because a guy bet 1000 into about a 6K pot on the flop, another guy called and I called, they gave me a free card and I hit the gutshot on the river. Other guy bets into me, I min-raise, he calls and isn't happy when he sees I hit a gutter. I got the right pot odds, I made the call, it worked out. Takes a lot of moxie to call getting 8-1 on your money with everyone acting so weak and then taking a free card off, wouldn't you say? My min-raise on the river was brilliant, eh?

And then there was the takeout when I raised out with K-Q, flop was K-10-rag, short stack goes all in, I call, he has K-J.

That's all I got, folks. No interesting bluffs, no opportunities to try and goad people into giving me more chips than they should. I was probably turning the best hand into a bluff on a fair amount of the bluffs I tried. Like shoving on a J-Q-rag board with just A-10 'cause the other guy looks very uninterested in the flop and I gotta take a few chances to try and make the money.

Well I made the money! 14th place out of 121, tournament paid 15 places. My bustout came when under the gun, a guy who often limped and made small raises only to fold to any pressure, limped in, it folded around to me in the small blind, I looked down at pocket fours, pushed all in and ran into the limper's pocket queens.

Obviously I would have like to have gotten deeper. But I am always very happy with myself when I can play poker that long, have so few cards and still eke out a cash.

So Monday I'll finish up the trip with the daily tournament at Aria. Hopefully only one, since that'll mean I had a good 1:00!