Posts Tagged ‘2018 wsop’

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2018 WSOP Main Event – Day 2

July 6, 2018

You know what it is. I’m not going to spend too much time writing this morning.

It’s Day 2 of the Main Event. I’m sitting down with 137.9k coming back to 300/600 blinds, or 230 bigs. Lots and lots of play.

I have researched my whole table and once again seem to be in a very favorable situation. I can’t speak on my opponents’ abilities, but I do know how many chips they have and what their past results are.

I have zero superstars at my table. There is one player with almost $900k in tournament cashes, and he will be on my left a lot, but he only has 41k in chips. That’s still almost 70 bigs though, so I expect him to be a bit of a nuisance.

I have the most chips at the table and the three other players with 90k+ seem to be the least experienced. The three of them have a combined $45k in live tournament cashes. I played with one of them on Day 1 and I’m happy to see him at my table again today. The player on my immediate left has 107k in chips but zero recorded cashes. That doesn’t mean he sucks, but it’s a good start. I would definitely rather have $0 in cashes with lots of chips than the guy with $900k in cashes.

The players on my direct right have the second and third most in recorded live tournament cashes, so I’m happy to have immediate position on them and they only have 56.2k and 24.2k in chips. Even 24k is still 40 big blinds, so everyone has stacks to play with today and nobody can be dismissed.

Tormund is starting the day with 62k and has former WSOP Main Event champ Jonathan Duhamel on his immediate left. That means he will probably get a TV cameo today, as ESPN loves to show former champs. Look for a rugged looking red head when they flash to Duhamel.

Something like this:

Check back here for updates every two hours when we are on break. Cards in the air in 34 minutes. Let’s get it!

Just got word that I’m posting too many pictures of Tormund and it’s scaring away the people, so here’s one of the Pavilion before game time:

12:14 PM: Some notes:

-Tormund said he got crippled first pot he played and that Duhamel already doubled. None of that is good news. He still has 20k+ though, so far from actually crippled.

-There was a 3-way pot at my table that was raised once preflop and went check around flop, bet and two calls on turn, and check around on river. The board was KK9KJ and two of the hands were 99 and AK. 😮

-The player I played with on Day 1 has yet to show up 80 minutes into the day. He did this a bit on Day 1 too, so it’s not exactly alarming. But hey, he has $14.5k in lifetime cashes and this is only a $10k buy in, so…

First Break – 155k

I am a pretty big fan of my table.

The most experienced and successful player seems to be on the nitty side, although that could be because of his stack size.

The guy on my left that has zero cashes is a total noob. He looks like he’s played very little live poker and there was a hand where it folded to my small blind, I called, and he just folded without seeing the flop for free.

The guy I thought would be the worst at the table, in seat 5, is not disappointing. Through 58 hands he’s rocking a 34% VPIP and 22% PFR, but I have him pegged as a punter, not a dangerous LAG. I’ve already played two notable pots with him, in back to back hands.

Hand 1: I make it 1300 with QQ. It folds to him in the big blind and he makes it 4200. We are super deep and I’m in position against a splashy bad player (imo), so I decide to call and go to the streets. Flop is AT8 with two diamonds. He bets 4k and I’m always taking a card off here with the Q of diamonds in my hand. The turn is a 7 and he fires 6k. Now I’m strongly considering folding since I didn’t pick up any extra equity, but after tanking for a long time and watching him stare in my direction, I’m not exactly convinced. I call. River is a king and he ends up checking. I check behind and he shakes his head like he’s losing and then turns over KJo. Okay buddy.

Hand 2: I make it 1300 with T9dd on the very next hand. I’m pretty early and my image might be bruised after that last pot, so this is probably a fold, but I get it through to my boy in the small blind and he reraises me to 3300. I’m practically LOLing as I call this ridiculously small 3-bet, happy to play my hand in position against this dolt. Flop is K82 with two diamonds and he checks it over to me. Since he tried to barrel off the last hand, he probably has something here, so I check back. Turn is a six and he checks again. My read is the same, but I decide to bet this time because I don’t expect him to raise very often and I want the pot to be bigger on the river when I get there and I can show down for free if I make a pair. I bet 3500 and he calls. I’m planning to bomb the river for more than pot when I make my draws and check back my misses because I expect him to rarely fold. I brick, give up and he shows… K4 of clubs.

He’s either setting the whole table up right now or he’s primed to punt later. I hope I’m the one to catch it.

Obviously I chipped up so it wasn’t all bad. I had AK in a 3-bet pot and got the AAK flop and two streets of value. I flopped top two with AQ. I 4-bet once with KK and took it down pre.

I am in the pavilion so the tables will be breaking in here, but the break order is good. I’m in the black area and the green and yellow areas break before we do. I want to stay here all day!

Tormund fell all the way to 14.5k but has doubled twice and now has 50k.

1:28 PM: First hand back, buttons opens to 1700 at 400/800 and I decide to see a flop from the BB with 74o getting such a good price. It comes down 773 rainbow. I check, he bets 1200 and I make it 4000. He’s the same guy I flopped the AK full house against and I played that hand slow after the flop, so I thought a check-raise here would look bluffs. He calls. Turn is Ah, opening up a backdoor heart draw. I lead 3000, which looks like a weak stab, hoping to induce a raise, but he just calls again. River is the jack of hearts. He has less than 20k behind, the pot is over 18k, and I don’t think he can fold an ace here, so I put him all in and he snaps with Q8hh.

Sigh.

124.7k

3:50 PM: Pretty dead level for me. The hand I posted already was the only substantial pot I played the whole time. There was a spot where a short stack opened button, small blind called, and I 3-bet AQ suited from the big. Looks like a good spot to squeeze so I thought button could jam a wider range here (and I’m obv snap-calling), but they both ended up folding.

The guy in seat 5 has noticeably tightened up. After rocking a 34/22 in level six, he’s now at 26/20 and I’m a bit perplexed at the random spazz those two hands I shared earlier.

The guy with $900k in lifetime cashes is sitting at 16/8, but he just won a MASSIVE pot on the last hand of level seven when he 4-bet pre, bet flop, and jammed turn on T7dd47d board and his opponent went into the tank for the first ten minutes of dinner break before eventually calling it off with KK and losing to AA. From the sidelines I thought it was painfully obvious seat two had AA and I would have folded QQ and JJ fairy quickly, but KK with a diamond is just a brutal spot. That gives seat two a lot of chips and I’m hoping he continues to play a nutty style, but I won’t be surprised if he opens things up.

Dinner Break

Dark Knight – 133k

Tormund – 50k

Chief Wiggum – 43k

Tormund got coolered by Duhamel with ESPN cameras all over them. Not sure how that works into coverage since it doesn’t start until 5:30 PM, but there’s a good chance this clip gets in there.

6:28 PM: Sitting on 134.5k after 8 levels and coming back to 600/1200 blinds. That was a rocky level for me. I got as low as 80k or so before chipping back up. I have some notes below of hands I’ll try to flesh out but I’m expecting a call from The Leak and that will probably take up most of my break.

After dinner, Tormund followed me into the bathroom and stood directly behind me as I peed into a urinal and somehow thought that would be more awkward for me than him. He told me to let him know anytime I need an escort to the bathroom and I considered going up to his table with my arms tucked inside my hoodie and saying, “I need help peeing.”

I whiffed a big combo draw with KJss in a 4-way raised pot. I was the opener and decided to check flop and I let 88 bet and then showdown on a T97ssT7 runout. I thought there was some chance I had best hand on river and I did consider check-raising flop, but with a bet and a call out there already, I thought it would have been unlucky to work.

One of the weaker players at my table opened to 3000 and the bad player in seat five called and I decided to see a flop with 75 of clubs on the button. I know s4 is going broke with overpairs that get beat and I want to play with s5. Flop comes down QQ5 with two spades. The PFR checks and s5 bets 5000. I actually think s4 has a better pair than me most of the time and s5 can have a wide range here, so I decide to make it 13k. The PFR tank-folds (KK!) but s5 eventually jams on me and I have to let it go.

I was on a bad run already when I opened the J9dd, s2 calls in position and s5 calls from the big. Flop is AT7 with two hearts. I c-bet 4k and they both call. Turn is a king and I decide I’m going to give it one more bullet and make it 12k to go and they both fold.

Whew.

(JJ hand)

(AK 4-bet jam)

Dark Knight – 134.5k

Tormund – 40k

Chief Wiggum – 50k

8:45 PM: Can’t really seem to get anything going today. I 3-bet a cut off open with JJ on the button, he called and called again when I c-bet smallish on an ace high, two flush flop. I gave up after that and folded to a river bet when diamonds got there. I’ve done some studying of this spot and my opponent is going to be very ace heavy here. It would be pretty hard for him to have a lot of bluffs on the river. I suppose he could turn small pairs into a bluff, but I’m okay with my line. Annoyed though.

I got moved into the Brasilia room with about a half hour left in level 8. It’s an unfortunate move. I really liked my old table even though good things hadn’t really happened yet. I have zero info on my new table but there’s a 370k stack on my immediate left, and three other players wearing poker patches, including Liv Boeree.

I got word just before the break that Tormund has busted. Not really sure what happened but he was having a rocky day.

Chief Wiggum is up to 70k.

I guess I just made a cameo on ESPN, walking with my bag to my new table.

One hour left tonight.

10:46 PM: Liv Boeree attracting the cameras:

12:30 AM: What a rough day. I never had any real momentum to speak of and the chances I had to chip up didn’t really work out. I was handcuffed after my table move by going card dead and by having a huge stack and a super short stack on my immediate left. Both of those factors made it unwise to try and open wide. One guy can call and 3-bet with impunity and the other guy is too short to raise-fold against. I did end up busting the shorty when I opened the button with AJ and he jammed with A4.

Because of these dynamics I had absurd stats of 13% VPIP and 7% PFR after my move. Granted, that’s only a 75 hand sample, but it was pretty brutal. The big stack on my left was at 36/27 and Liv Boeree was at 25/17, but the rest of the table had VPIPs between 11% and 17%. That’s an extremely tight table.

This tournament is amazing. What kind of poker tournament can you be card dead for basically ten hours and have things not go very right and still be in there? It was a rough day, but I’ll be starting level 11 with 51 big blinds and hopefully I will snap off another good starting table draw. It looks like there are about 2800 left and I believe around 1200 make the money. I think there’s a decent chance that could happen tomorrow.

See you then!

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WSOP $1500 8-Game & My First Cash of the Summer!

June 9, 2018

No, not in a WSOP event. After my super disappointing finish in the $1500 HORSE, I just went back to my condo and stayed there the rest of the day taking it easy and relaxing.

I was planning to play cash games all day yesterday but I heard The Orleans had a $150 8-Game tournament in their series and it sounded like the perfect warm-up for my next WSOP event.

The Atom and myself showed up for the start of the tournament and The Joker and Tormund made appearances a few hours later. With 80 players (of 133 entrants) remaining, I was the only one left standing – far away from the money at 18. Nice showing, fellas!

I don’t have much to say about this tournament until the very late stages, specifically with four tables left, roughly six spots off the money.

I had a pretty healthy stack at this point, but even so, chips can disappear quickly, especially if you have big confrontations. We are playing limit hold’em six-handed and I open with 44 under the gun. Honestly, it’s a bit loose. I don’t know that I would consider it standard and I think folding here is pretty defensible, possibly even recommended. For instance, if I was in a loose, six-handed cash game, I would always fold 44 under the gun. But in a tournament, with most of my opponents playing on the tighter side, I think it’s okay. So I open the 44 and the lady on my direct left does a little bit of a stutter step like she is considering raising me but winds up cold-calling instead. We go heads up to the flop.

It is very, very sexy. KJ4. I bet. She raises. Oh sweet baby Jesus, it is my lucky day. No need to get coy here. I can eyeball her stack and see that she will be very close to all in if we play this hand out, so I go ahead and re-raise, knowing she’s going to have to call me down basically all the time if she has a hand. She calls my 3-bet.

The turn is a 6. I bet and she calls.

The river is a ten. I bet and she says “I’m all in.” I thought she had less than my bet, so I just snap-roll my hand without saying anything. And she snap-rolls her hand.

She has AQ for a rivered straight.

How? We put in three bets each on the flop! How does she have a straight? What in the world? I mean, I sort of get it. It’s a reasonable hand to bluff with on the flop. I might fold smaller pairs and some other hands, plus she usually has decent equity when called. Maybe she takes a free card when I just flat. But when I raise flop and bet turn it is just max pain for me on the river. There are 5.5 small bets after the preflop betting, so after the flop action there are 11.5 small bets. On the turn, she is getting 6.75 to 1 to call with what looks like four outs. My hand looks a lot like AK, KJ, and sets – and my combos of KQ are reduced by her holding, plus I might not play that hand so fast in such a critical spot. Seems like a pretty standard fold on the turn for her.

But she didn’t fold and instead I’m losing this insanely important monster pot nearing the bubble to a rivered gutshot.

Then the dealer counts out her last bet and realizes it is a few thousand more for me to call. He looks at me, expectantly and I’m like “what?” He says it’s “xxx more,” and I say, “Okay, I never said ‘call.'”

Is this my classiest moment at the poker tables? No. No it is not. I’m not proud of it. But I have to say I was pretty devastated at the moment and having already lost a huge pot in horrible fashion, I wasn’t eager to put chips in the pot I never committed to.

A floor gets called over (the actual TD is on break) and the situation is explained and I am still refusing to pay the last partial bet and some dick at the table pipes in saying I should get a penalty for exposing my hand out of turn and the floor actually listens to him and issues me a one round penalty.

I was so thrown by this decision that I was rendered speechless and didn’t even bother fighting it because I was so mad I wasn’t sure what I would say in the moment. It didn’t even occur to me until later that my opponent also exposed her hand with action still pending. There is no logical way to give me that penalty without also giving her one.

Well, I had about 11k in chips and the big blind was 4k and I had to sit out a full orbit. When I was able to play again, my 11k had turned into less than 4k, which was less than one big blind.

Somehow I managed to spin that up and eventually had as many as 160k in chips.

I played a stud hand extremely poorly and a razz hand quite questionably and those two hands essentially cost me a very deep run.

Instead I busted in 11th for $380. Crumbs. But it is my first cash of the summer.

My friends and I went to The Saw Escape Room last night and it was a blast, but a little overpriced since I requested a private tour. We sucked though, getting through less than half of the rooms in time, although two rooms were basically buzzer beaters we were on the wrong side of. Lots of fun though! Check it out if you are in Vegas and a fan of the films.

Joker and I are about to head to the Rio to play the $1500 8-Game and I feel really good about it. It’s nice to iron the kinks out in a $150 event so I don’t make the same mistakes when the stakes are 10 times bigger.

Leggo.

3:05 PM: Walking towards registration on our way in, I spot Rep Porter a few strides ahead of us and ask if we can borrow his diamond card real quick (to skip the line). He actually stopped and started looking for it! What a guy. I told him I was kidding though.

A little bit of a late start here. Only three players at my table at the moment and one of them is Miami John Cernuto. I’ve actually played with him a decent amount. He’s not really someone I expect to put me in many tough spots.

We are 4-handed now and this tournament plays 6-handed. I’ve scooped a couple smallish o8 pots already.

3:34 PM: New player at my table: Sandeep Vasudevan. I recognized that name from the HORSE tournament and, sure enough, he went deep in that, finishing 6th for a career high score of $33k.

He also has two WSOP Circuit rings, including one last month in pot limit Omaha (the other was a no limit hold’em ring in 2013). So he’s fresh off two of the biggest scores of his life and I imagine his confidence is riding high.

3:48 PM: Scott Blumstein, the latest Main Event champ is seated directly behind me.

3:59 PM: Dang. Guy was getting a back/shoulder massage with his ass crack totally exposed and the masseuse with a direct view the whole time. I wanted to snap a pic but I couldn’t do it discreetly.

4:14 PM: Just got absolutely abused in no limit hold’em. I started with over 8k and I now have a touch over 4k. I think I opened four pots and for 3-bet every single time. I flopped two pair with KJ suited when my opponent flopped the nut flush. He slow played it and check-called flop and turn so I was able to check back on river.

I also defended my blind once and I started to think: I’ve folded some hands and I can think of five I played. We did the math: we played nine hands of no limit hold’em – you’re supposed to play six. Pretty cool, especially since it was such a profitable variant for me.

First hand of Stud high I start with a four flush and brick it. I did pick some chips back up with AA-K and rolled up jacks, but I didn’t get past 5th street either time.

I have a sad 4225.

4:52 PM: Sigh. PLO. Sandeep bluffs off his whole stack the hand previous, so he’s pretty short to start this next one. He opens to 200 at 50/75 blinds. I make it 675 with AKKJ one nut suit and he calls.

Flop 642. I bet pot (1425) and he’s all in for 1625 total. He rolls QQ75.

Board runs out 642A3 and he wins.

Down to 2550. Pretty stoked.

5:08 PM: 2850 on first break.

5:31 PM: Joker had 1000 in chips on break and we set the over/under on number of us surviving to the next break at 0.5.

We both liked the under side.

A few hands of 2-7 left and I will definitely be looking to get all in and double up in no limit hold’em.

5:50 PM: Joker has tripled up. I played zero hands of NL. I am down to 1550.

6:11 PM:

6:16 PM: Busted.

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