Day 5: $1500 WSOP 1
I get up and head over to the Rio where they hold all the WSOP Events. Today started my first WSOP tournament in almost 3 years; the last time I played one must have been in 2006 during my first summer in Vegas while I was still playing Limit Hold’em. We start with 4500 chips and blinds at 25/50 and 60 minute levels; I’m pretty happy with their blind structure and it seems to move the tourney along fairly well too.
Nothing much happens in the first two hours for me, I steal a couple blinds and I basically just chip down and enter the first break with 4000 chips with blinds going to 75/150. I met an old friend Maxxscam from FTR (Chris) outside the room and caught up with him for a while, as he explains to me that he knows a guy at a table who is a complete donk (he didn’t have to tell me haha). This guy apparently won 800,000 Euros in Austria and since then buys in to every live event; he’s absolutely horrible but more on this guy later (referred to as Donk).
One thing that I would like to say is that the players and dealers on my table were all very friendly and they made the time enjoyable. I think there was a live female pro but I have no idea who the heck she was; she played fairly straight forward but it seemed she paid off way too much when it was obvious she was behind.
The first hand of consequence did happen at 75/150 blinds though, with around 4500 effective stacks. The same lady raises it to 450, Donk from above calls as does Aggro-Asian. I wake up with AQo in the big blind and have no idea if I should reraise or just call. Frankly, I know calling is a +EV play because I’m sure I have a ton of equity against all of their opening ranges. I’m a little worried though on stacking off; the last thing I want to do is turn my hand into a bluff by reraise/folding preflop so if I were to reraise it would be to call the all in. I’m still up in the air on whether I should stick it in or not, but I decide to just call and the flop bricked everybody, including the lady who raised which tells me nothing. So, I spent about an hour debating whether I should have reraised that hand and it would have cost me about 1000 chips on top for value so I hoped that it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the end lol.
So after the first break I raise up AQo in EP and it folds around to the aggro-asian; I feel like I have a pretty good set of reads on him and fortunately I both have position on him and he’s a deep stack so I could eventually get my chips from him. Here’s the hand, we’re about t4000 deep at 100/200.
Hero raises to t600, 8 folds, BB Calls (He had earlier called me in the same spot with 85s and played two pair passively on drawy board when I checked down ace high, my guess is that he was inducing)
Flop: 9c 8h 3d (Pot 1275)
BB Checks, Hero Checks
Turn: 9d (Pot 1275)
BB Checks, Hero Checks
River: 3s (Pot 1275)
BB Bets 1200, Hero Calls
BB Shows 22 for two pair, Nines and Threes with 8 Kicker
Hero Shows AQ for two pair, Nines and Threes with A kicker
Hero wins t3600 pot.
It’s not exactly the hardest of calls as I feel like we split this a lot but I also feel that he would have value bet me on the turn with a marginal 1 pair hand, like 8x or even 77 or something. Secondly, his big river bet was fairly polarized and it seemed like he didn’t want me to call, so I did. I was thinking about this hand afterward and I don’t know of a good amount that he could have bet that would have made me fold, except for maybe a massive overbet or a shove but that would be retarded too. With this hand I’m now up to around 6500 chips.
The next hand I get I call in the bb with a set and enduce a bluff from one guy that got me an additional 1500 chips or so. I then raised up 88 and flopped a set and slow played the flop, resulting in an additional value bet of 1000 chips on the turn.
An aggressive opponent makes it t475 to go at 100/200/25 and I thought this was a ridiculously small sized raise so I cold called in position with QTs. Luckily several other guys came along too which added profitability to my call but at least I was in position (if he made it t600 i probably insta-muck it). The pot on the flop is 2400 or so and it comes QT9r, giving me top two pair. The SB with 3000 chips open shoves, the original PFRer folds and I call; I’m shown JJ for the OESD + 2 out set draw. I couldn’t express joy for too long as he turns the J for the set but luckily I river the K for the split pot. I didn’t ‘lose’ chips but I feel like I lost 4k in value there from the suckout, but I played it pretty well and there isn’t much else I could have done. After these I’m up to 9900 chips and that is as high as I would go as it wouldn’t be long until I busted.
Blinds remain 100/200/25 and I’m in MP and open raise it to t600 with KTo, not exactly the tightest of ranges but it plays fairly standard and I normally raise this up in this spot with my chip stack. I get called on the button from the guy who had JJ earlier and I get called in the BB from the donk I mentioned earlier at the beginning of this post. Here’s how the hand worked out:
Hero in MP Raises to 600, Button Calls, BB Calls
Flop: Tc 7d 2s (Pot 2250)
BB Checks, Hero Bets 1200, Button Folds, BB Calls (t5000 behind)
Turn: Jh (Pot 4650)
BB Checks, Hero bets 3000, BB Raises AI, Hero calls remaining 2000.
BB Shows J9o for Top Pair, Jacks
Hero shows KTo for Second Pair, Tens
River: 3c; BB Wins t12000 pot
After this hand I was down to only 3100 chips, or roughly 16 big blinds. This guy was pretty bad though, three times had he called an all in on the turn with only a draw and he got there 2/3 times too which was just gross. The Jack certainly isn’t a scare card or anything as J9 was the last hand I put him on. My only problem would be my small flop bet but I forgot to add in the antes into the pot size when doing the calculation. I would have liked to have made it 1300-1400 otherwise but I don’t think that is going to effect him folding the flop or anything.
Five hands later I’m in the BB and down to 2800 chips with 66. The donk open raises in MP and he gets two cold callers and I try and find a reason to not resteal/squeeze. I was worried that one of the guys would have cold called with a higher pair but I wasn’t getting correct odds to set mine and I figured I was getting a good enough price that I could make the resteal. Well, the Donk rather quickly reshoves Allin to isolate and he shows AQs for a coinflip. The board comes KJ78T and he hits the broadway FTW and I’m busto.
In all, I’m pleased with the way I played the tournament. The 1000 chips that I might have missed in the first hour didn’t come back to haunt me at all and if I was going to lose a coinflip there wasn’t much I can do about it. No more tournaments for me until Monday so until then I’m out! I’ll continue to update my blog though with non-poker related aspects of the trip.
