Vegas November 2019

Day 4 - Another good day at Aria

Last Updated: 2019-11-25 11:49:50

Lunch at Tom's Urban to watch the Eagles while I eat. The Eagles offense was inept at best, no matter what the final score was the Eagle's D played lights out. No defense can win a game when it spends all day on the field and gets no help from the "O". I never bothered to check the final score...

Sat down in the 11am at Aria about exactly when I wanted to - first hand after the break at the start of level 4, blinds 200/300/300.

In that first (for me) level I was winning most pots I played and slowly building up my stack, but early in the next level I ran into a set of deuces with two pair (A-T on a 2-3-A-Q-T board, the perfect river for me to pay him on) and dropped back to starting stack.

Two hands later, still early in level 5, the guy immediately to my right limps into me and I look down at pocket 10s. I make it 1500 to go at now 200/400/400 and get three callers including the guy to my right. Flop comes T-A-6, two clubs. Guy to my right donk bets 2000 into me, I smooth call, everyone else folds.

Ten on the turn. Wow.

He bets 6000 into me. Hehe. I just call.

Alarm bells should be going off in this guy's head right now, but clearly not.

River brings a queen. He finally checks and I push out the rest of my stack, I think I had 7500 left.

He says "well the only thing I lose to is Ace-King so I guess I call". Sorry buddy, you lose to quad tens too! :-) A-7 definitely no good here.

There's a young guy who barely looks old enough to be allowed in the casino in the two seat who was trying just a bit too hard at times, he had a really big stack when I first sat down but was starting to give chips away.

A few minutes after the quads, early to act I look down at KK and make it 1200 to go. The kid min-raises me to 2400.

I think a little and make it 8k. He quickly goes all in, I about beat him in the pot and he flips over A-2. He gets no help and I take him out. I'm around 70k from my 20k chip start. Not bad...

The rest of level 5 and all of level 6 won just enough to maintain my stack, into the next break at 69,900. Final entry tally is 65 buyins paying 7 places, 38 left as we return to action.

3 more levels to the next break and those three levels were mostly uneventful until near the end. I did lose a chunk with AK to A2 to a calling station who flopped his deuce. Grr.

But then I take out a short stack, win a few more smaller pots and go into the third break at 76,900. Make that a massive 77,000 after I finally win a chip race! With just a 9 no less, got the last chip. Average stack at this point about 54,000 so I'm in fine shape.

I win another nice pot with pocket kings and get up to 108K. A little less than a half hour later another big one on a suckout, resuckout hand.

I've got A-J and raise out, guy in the 1 seat was calling about 98% of my preflop raises. I had made it 5500 to go at 1000/2000/2000. Flop came A-X-Q, I make it 7500, he calls.

Turn a ten. I check-call an 11K bet. River is a second queen, we check down. He turns over A-T, he had turned two pair and gotten counterfeited on the river. Jack plays! I dunno if I missed a bet there but I think out of position it was best to check and call if he bet.

At that point we had been sitting at 19 players remaining for what seemed like an eternity. I whine about it to Joann via IM and the moment my finger hit "send" I hear the words "SEAT OPEN" from one of the other tables.

I'm at 128,500 with the average stack 72,222 (that number stuck in my head for some reason).

Only takes about 5 minutes to get down to 17, but then almost half an hour to get down to 16. 20 minutes later we go on break and we're down to 14. I've dropped down to a still comfortable 112,000 with average stack now 93,000.

Two more gone quickly after the break and we're 5 from money. I win 20K on a top pair hand, only get blinds and a limp out of KK tho. Grr.

Two more bust out in quick succession about 20 minutes after that.

Now the worst part of the tournament! Two 5-handed tables. Blinds coming around like rockets. Can't just fold, gotta loosen up the starting hand selection a lot. Yeah I was above average but I was not a monster stack by any stretch, gotta protect the stack as much as use it so close to the money.

But I do manage to win a little more than my share of pots, and it takes me less than 10 minutes to get us to the final table. Woman goes all in into me and I look down at A-K off. I snap call, she only has A-J. A-K holds up and I'm at 242K, average 144K. We all move to the final table to find out that moments after my takeout someone had also busted on that table. We're 8 handed, bubble time!

We agree on $40 each to create an 8th place of $320. 7th pays $577.

There's an interesting dynamic at the table. We basically had four relatively even big stacks in the 200-250K range all in the 1-4 seats with me in the 4. All the short stacks were in the 5-8 seats.

The guy in the 8 seat went all in on a hand, folded around to me and I looked down at A-K off. I call, he has A-T. Board runs out 4-6-8-6-4. Chop it up! Grr!

I don't remember how the bubble busted, it wasn't me who got him. Took about 20 minutes from the time we agreed on paying the bubble 'til he went out.

We are in the official money now! Back-to-back for me!!!

The guy in the 2 seat was relentlessly hammering away at the 1-seat and over time he built his way up to the 400-500K range with me and the 3 seat still in over 200, the one seat now just above the rest of the short stacks. And one short stack wasn't so short any more in the 6-seat.

Well the 6-seat took out the very short 5-seat to get us a money bump and down to 6 players. Then someone else busts to the monster stack and we're at 5.

Then the chop discussions begin. Long story short the big stack had almost exactly half the chips in play at a little over 650K. I was second at 186K, shortest stack was 132.

We get the ICM chop numbers, there's a little more negotiation and we all agree on numbers we can live with.

I'm taking a little over $1900, a little better than 3rd place and more than anyone other than the monster stack who took down $4000 vs an original 1st place of about $4650.

Everyone goes home happy!

The 7pm hadn't been going very long yet so I run over to the Aria Patisserie for a quick bite, run back over to the poker room and buy in for the 7pm.

'Cause that's what I'm here for and that's what I do...

This one was entirely uneventful. Won a few pots, lost a few pots, semi-bluffed a few pots. Got through the first break, but only lasted a few rounds after the break. It got to where I was down to 15 bigs, blinds are about to go up, I'm in the big blind and 4 people limp into me. I decide to try and steal all the dead money with I think Q-T offsuit, original under-the-gun limper thinks a real long time and makes the call, everyone else folds. He had A-J.

His hand holds up, I'm done. Oh well.

So now I've deifnitely locked in a nice profit for the trip. I'm putting my original stake plus $2K in the bank this morning and keeping enough to buy in and rebuy once in each the last 4 tournaments of the trip. But I'm not likely to rebuy so many times (haven't once yet!), partly because I'm registering late a lot, so I should be depositing more. And of course any further cashes also go directly to the profit!

This has already been a good trip and I got two more days!

Now we shift to 1pm starts instead of 11am starts and only $140 buyins for the early ones so I'll have some time to kill in the mornings.