WSOP Main Event Day 2a

I had an incredibly lucky table draw for Day 2. To my immediate right was Tim "Tmay420" West and to my immediate left was Kevin "kice32" Iacofano, but other than that I didn't recognize a single player. The play was very loose throughout the day and it really didn't surprise me that the three of us made it through all 5 levels of play as the lone survivors of the table.

Of all the live tables I've ever played at, I've never seen so much 3betting as I did yesterday. 4bets were quite scarce, but 3betting was completely out of control. Not surprisingly, 3 of my first 4 openraises were then 3bet into me and each time I had to fold. Also, I got the sour end of a blind battle with Tim after he opened the SB and I defended Q8s. He check called a T52 rainbow flop and the turn paired the 5, which I then fired again because I think his hand range contains a ton of hands that can't stand 3 barrels of pressure. He called again and when he donked into a rivered King I changed my plan and cut my losses. He later told me he had KK.

I had now lost 30% of my stack and was down to around 40k when I raised 96s from MP. The BB, a guy who had a huge card rush in the first level, defended. The flop came down 9s6c4d, schwoops. He check called the flop, check called the Ts turn and check called the Qs river. Though the board kind of went to crap, I still felt like I could get decent value out of my hand since he had displayed the desire to make light calls in earlier play.

That catapulted me back to 60k when the following hand went down: Blinds 400/800/100. I raise Th9h to 2100 from the CO and Andre Boyer defends his BB. He had been played hyperaggressive which isn't bad, but he had chosen some poor spots to do so imo. Anyway, I flop the effective nuts: 8cJhKh. He check calls my standard 2600 cont-bet and the turn blanks out a 2d. He checks again and I opt to fire another bullet, though taking the free card certainly would also be a viable option. I fire 5200 and he tanks for a solid minute before throwing 20k in the middle.

At this point I am hating myself for not taking the free card. I count out my chips and had 50k left, meaning his 15k raise + 35k still to work with. I thought it through and decided that it was possible he could just be tugging, plus it was really hard to put him on a hand that would justify that play other than 88. I stick it all-in, he gets an oscar for his Hollywood performance and finally folds.

A few rounds later (stack ~100k) we are at 500/1k/100, I pick up AA and raise to 2700 from MP. The button calls and the BB squeezes to 8400. He has me slightly covered and I go for a smallish 4bet to 20k. The button folds as expected and the BB folds as well, schade :(

We now enter the final level of the day, 600/1200/200. At this point stealing is sooooooo incredibly profitable, as each pot is 3600 by default. As an added bonus, the floorman comes over and tells us to rack up our chips, we are the new TV table! The "star" of the table was Jason Young, the recent $1500 WSOP shootout bracelet winner. Unfortunately we would only be featured for the final level of the day and I'm not sure if any of the hands will make it to TV, because nothing too interesting happened.

There was one hand with 2mins left to play where I raised AKo UTG to 3200 and Jason 3bet me to 9k from the cutoff. We were each 130k+ deep, so a 4bet would make the hand very awkward for me. He insisted I fold, assuring me he would show me his hand and he seemed very sincere about it. Still, I made the call and we saw a flop of Ac6h7h. The action went check/check and the turn was a Qs. I fired 13k and he looked disgusted before folding KK face-up. I showed him my hand because at this point it didn't matter anyway and that pretty much concluded the action for the night.

I'm going into Day 3 tomorrow with 147,300 chips.