Lights out, party, ping pong and steak

The bracelet party for Seb/Martin/Jens was planned for Saturday night and it ended up being at Tao at the Venetian. When all was said and done we were a party of 40+, so it made it kind of difficult to get a big enough table without sacrificing a good location near the dance floor. Though some people were forced to stand, I think most had a pretty good time.

The night was made interesting 2 hours before the limos came to pick us up, when the power in our house went out. We prayed it come back in time to get ready, but inevitably everyone ended up showering putting on the finishing touches using laptops as the only light source. Though it was interesting, I certainly wouldn't want to repeat it, it's amazing how much we depend on electricity these days.

Anyways, back to the party. After picking up some girls on the way there (not those kind of girls, though) we made our way into the club. They were a little slow on getting us the alcohol, but once it was there it was flowing pretty much nonstop until I left at around 4am. I have some pictures on my camera as well, but for the meantime you can checkout Intellipoker's gallery of the party located here: http://www.intellipoker.com/gallery.php?id=98&act=list . Luckily they cut out the inappropriate pictures, which some people I'm sure are relieved about :)

Other than that, I've just been keeping it low around the house. Somehow I managed to lose a mid 4-figure amount betting on the wrong horses at ping-pong. I seriously couldn't win a match, it was pretty sick. I haven't been able to chase those losses yet, but I'm sure opportunity will come knocking soon enough!

Last night was one of the rare times we went out to eat well. In the whole near month I've been here now, I've only made it to Ruth's Chris one time and the rest of the time it's been a random mix of burgers, pizza and chicken wings that I've been shoving down my piehole. Last night we opted for the N9ne Steakhouse at the Palms Resort and Casino. The steak (New York Sirloing) was, needless to say, phenomenal. The wine was right on the money and and price could not have been better either, considering Seb got stuck with the bill yet again after losing credit card roulette. In all fairness, he is running pretty bad in that game, haha.

Event 46, $5k shorthanded

I expected the field in the $5k shorthanded tourney to be somewhat strong and in fact it was probably the toughest table I've ever played at at the WSOP. To my immediate right was ThAY3R, to my immediate left was Shane "Shaniac" Schleger and to his left was Lou Esposito. Luckily Shane was eliminated in level 3, only to be replaced by Ryan Daut.

I built my stack up to 20k or so without many showdowns and then ran a terrible blind-on-blind bluff against Ryan Daut. Had I known it was him, I never would have tried the bluff, but I thought it was some random guy who couldn't stand 3 barrels of heat on a 3s6sJhTcKs board. He snapped me with J8o and I was down to 10k.

I then got lucky for the first (but not last) time against Lou Esposito. He raised and I jammed from the BB with Ad7d. He called with AQo and I flopped a flush draw and turned the flush. He wasn't thrilled to say the least.

After chipping down again I squeezed KQo all-in after a button raise and an SB flatcall. The button folded and the SB unfortunately made the call with AJo. Blank blank blank blank King to the rescue!!!

On the final hand before the break I had around 16k and once again got it in bad, which was kind of the running theme of the day. On a flop of AdJs6s I had Ks7s for the nut flush draw and was checkraised by my friend Lou Esposito. I jam on him and he instacalls with AJ. Well, I guess I'll just have to hit a spade then, which is precisely what I did on the turn. 32k stack now.

I then doubled someone up when my TT could not hold against his A5o, but I certainly was not going to start complaining. After losing a few more pots I was once again down to around 12k when the following freaky hand came up:

I shove 12.6k UTG+1 with 99 at blinds 400/800/100. It's folded around to Lou in the SB, who says loud and proud: "CALL." He then throws 400 in the middle, thinking he was just calling the BB. He then looks over at my 12.6k stacks of greatness I have in front of me and realizes he just got himself in a sticky situation. The floor is called over, Lou is extremely heated and the floor forces him to call the complete 12.6k. The BB folds and it's my 99 vs Lou's 64s for my tourney life. He flops a gutshot but fails to improve, doubling me up and reenforcing his eternal hate for me.

After a few preflop 3bets I was now up to over 50k entering the final level of the day with around 100 players left, 78 getting paid. I was moved to a new table towards the end and with 3 minutes left on the tourney clock I was dealt AKo in the CO. I raised to 3200 with blinds 600/1200, the button called and the SB makes it 13000. It kind of sucks because I have absolutely no reads, but he does have me slightly covered. Still, he has no reads on me either so I elect to shiperoo with my 45k stack. He tanks and eventually makes the call with QQ. Blank blank blank blank blank busto.

It sucks to play so long for nothing, but that's poker. The Main Event will most likely be my next tourney, Day 1B ftw.

On a side note, congratulations to Martin Kläser for winning a bracelet in Event 43! Ship it!

All kindsa stuff

WSOP:
I haven't played any tourneys lately, my next tournament is the €5k shorthanded coming up on Thursday. After that I will most likely lay low until the Main Event, which I think I'll be playing on Day 1B, but I'm not 100% sure yet.

Big congrats to Seb for taking down the Stud Hi/Lo bracelet!!! It was really fun to be part of his cheering section, it figures that Luckbox would be the first one to ship a bracelet.

€5k Challenge:
With Chris leading 3-1, we dove into table tennis as our next match. After an incredibly long warm-up, he finally wanted to play the game and I took it down 11-8. He was so tilted that he insisted we play mini golf immediately.

We drove to Circus Circus where they apparently had mini golf, which turned out to be a joker course with 17 holes and an 18th hole that could not have been created any stupider. Anyway, he won by 5 strokes (which is supposedly not that much he tells me?) and finally admitted that he might have an edge in mini golf. O rly?

Bowling was up last night and I took it down with relative ease, something like 152 to 125. So now the score is 4-3 with 4 more games: Pinball, Crossbar shooting, Basketball and No Limit Hold'em. It's still all open and I remain optimistic!

Vegas Pics:
They're coming, be patient!

By the way, I ended up getting a Sony Vaio, so whoever Stefan A is, you won $50! Drop me a comment with your email address so I can contact you regarding payment.

$2500 Shorthanded Tourney

We were running a few minutes late getting out of the house on time so by the time I arrived at the Rio and eventually my table, I had missed a couple hands. As I finally saw my table in the distance, I started to walk as fast as possible because I saw the dealer dealing out a hand. As it turns out, it was my BB and I didn't *quite* make it to the table in time, but since the dealer saw me coming, she held on to my hand for me (thanks again, Heather!).

As it turns out, UTG raised to 150 (blinds 25/50, starting stack of 5k) and the button 3bet to 600. I look down at Queens (thanks again, Heather!) and contemplate my options. I opt for a cold 4bet to 1800, obviously committing myself to my hand. UTG folds and the button shoves in for 5k. I make the call and was pretty shocked when he flipped over 55. The words that then came out of his mouth were pure gold:

"Oh my f***ing God. We're playing 6-handed and I'm dealt a pair and you get a higher pair. What are the odds of that? What a cold deck."

I put on a little smile and look over to him expecting him to be smiling as well, but as it turns out he was dead serious. I dodged the two remaining 5s in the deck and doubled up to 10k thanks to the unbelievable "set-up" situation of pair vs overpair (thanks again, Heather!)

I continued to chip up to 15k, playing with the likes of Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and Bill Edler, who by the way is one of the nicest poker players I have ever met. I lost a substantial part of my stack after raising to 550 with blinds of 100/200. The SB 3bet me to 1550 and I 4bet him all-in with AQs for around 7k because he had 3bet me so often. He made the call with 99 and I lost the race. I suppose I could have slowed down and just called the 3bet or even folded preflop, but if I had won that hand I would have been patting myself on the back for playing so well. Results-orientation ftw.

My stack continued to whiddle down before I found myself with just 3800 left and blinds of 100/200/25. The button (most active player at the table) raised to 600 and I shipped my stack in with A9o. The BB reshoved for 4600 and I figured I was drawing to 3 outs for sure. To my surprise, he tabled 77 after the button folded and I had 6 outs to hope for. However, I bricked all 5 community cards and found myself in the taxi line a little sooner than I would have wished for.

Not much else to write about, I'm going to be playing online these next days and stop donating to these WSOP prize pools for a while. I think we're going out partying tonight. If I'm in the mood I'll take some pictures and post those later. Peace!

Break

I'm in Kansas until Sunday evening so there won't be any updates as I won't be playing any poker. I'll be back in the groove of things on Monday, my new computer and 30" monitor are all set-up for the rest of my time in Vegas!

$5000 Shootout

It took me a while to finally motivate myself to write something and even now I really don't feel like writing much. My shootout table was full of no-names and it only took a couple hours for Phil Tom (father to Scott Tom, the founder of Absolute Poker) to eliminate 8 of the players on his own and begin heads up plays vs me. He started with a 4:1 chip advantage and throughout the whole 3.5 hours of heads up play I was never able to build up my stack to over 30k in chips.

Because I was so shortstacked I was forced to limp most of my buttons in order to not invest too much money with raises and cont-bets. This worked pretty well against him because he played relatively ABC, check-folding most flops when he missed and rarely getting out of line. Unfortunately I ran like cancer during most of heads up play and he continued to run like Jesus.

With blinds of 400/800 and a 14k stack I limped the button with 6s8s, planning to make a move if he raised as he had raised the last 3-4 times I limped the button. He did indeed make it 2400 and I shoved all-in, which he instacalled with 66. Just to be sure, the case 6 came out on the flop and I was toast.

As fate would have it, he went on to win the tournament and is now a proud owner of a WSOP bracelet and an additional $477,000. Well done, sir. Maybe he can take some of that prize money and pay back some of the millions that his son stole from innocent Absolute Poker players.

WSOP $1500 shorthanded

I must say, shorthanded is soooooooooooooooooooooo much better than longhanded and I think that gets magnified even more when it comes to live poker. You get to play so many more hands because each hand doesn't take 3 minutes like it does at a longhanded table and because each player is forced to play so many more hands it really increases the edge that good players have against their less-skilled opponents.

My first table started with Ted Lawson on it and other than him it was a real cakewalk. A few old guys and one really young guy were playing incredibly passive and not surprisingly all 3 of them donked off their chips early in the tournament. They were then replaced by better players and the table became a little tougher but luckily it was broken and I was moved to a new table. Again, people were not able to make the proper adjustments to shorthanded and ended up folding way too much, meaning stealing blinds and antes became almost like stealing candy from a baby.

At this point I had around 6k (3k starting stack) when I lost half my stack with an overpair vs flush draw situation. Still having 3k with blinds of 100/200/25, Kevin "Belowabove" Saul raised to 600 from the CO (he had been raising between 70-80% of his hands) and I find 6d4d in my BB. The combination of my hand's equity, my perfect resteal stack size and Kevin's tremendously large hand range I decided to push. He thought for about a minute and called with A9o. The flop was TT7, turn 3, river 4 and I doubled up.

Once again I was moved and was able to build up to 11k without a showdown. After getting played back at a few times I had around 9k when the following hand went down: Blinds 150/300/25, button openlimps for 300, crazy chatterbox in the SB makes it 950 and I make it 2950 from the BB with QQ. Button folds and crazy guy thinks for a while and calls. At this point I have him on something like TT or JJ with the slight possibility that he's slowplaying something even bigger. The flop comes down K62 rainbow and he checks. At this point I have just around a potsize bet left but don't think I'm ever getting called by worse, so I decide to check behind for pot control / to be able to catch a bluff on a later street. The turn is another K which is a pretty good card for me. At this point he bets 3200, almost exactly half my stack. There's no real difference in me shoving or calling here, so I elect to call because there's no real danger of giving off a freecard and maybe I can get him to bluff off his last barrel on the river if he's crazy enough. The river is a 9 and he shoves, I snapcall, he shows KTo ftw.

Today is the $5k shootout which I will most likely be playing. Should be a good tournament. Ciao!

In Vegas

My trip to Vegas went over smooth as can be. The house is amazing (pics to follow), the people are all easy-going, so the next 6 weeks should be a really good time for everyone. The house is now stocked with electronics and groceries (over/under for the food bill was set at $1150, the bill came out to be exactly $1111) thanks to stops at Frys and Albertsons. Today will be my first tourney, the $1500 shorthanded NL event. More updates to follow...