Around the World in 150 Days, Day 21, The French Connection
April 27th, Las Vegas: In order to buy into the Caesar's $5,000 I've had to take one of the 5k Bellagio chips that Shaundeeb gave me via Charder to the cage. He gave me $69,000 in chips in total, $5,000 to use towards the event and $64,000 to give to Gobbo to hang on to. Naturally at the cage they give me some trouble about where I got the chip and who in the hell Christian Harder is (you people don't know who the fuck Charder30 is!?) They tell me to take it over to the poker room cage instead, where they wind up giving me far less trouble and quickly peel off a stack of $5,000 in cash and hand it over to me.
I walk over to the Caesar's poker room after having been delayed over 20 minutes by the chip exchange, making me 10 minutes late for the tournament. I buy in with my wad of Bellagio wrapped hundreds then find a seat on a table that appears to be a very soft line up. After watching a couple orbits I realize the French guy in seat four does not fold for any reason. No pair? No draw? No problem! Call! My first hand of relevance is against the French guy and another random old guy who is a huge aggression nit:
Effective stacks: ~25,000, blinds 25/50, I hold 8s6s in the SB.
Preflop: UTG folds, UTG+1 calls 25, the French guy in MP1 raises to 175, MP2 calls, folds to me in the SB, I call, BB calls, UTG calls.
Flop: Jc 7s 4d
Everyone checks.
Turn: 5s
I like that card only slightly. I bet out 625, the BB folds, UTG folds, MP1 calls, MP2 calls.
River: Td
I bet 1600, MP1 folds, MP2 min raises to 3200. I know I'm going to reraise, I'm just trying to think what to and what I do if he instantly crams or thinks for a bit and crams. I feel like with this guy I should be more worried about an instant cram, but really I think I should call anyway because he may be the type to over value his hand. I reraise to 7500 and he thinks for a bit and calls with a set of tens. Kind of wish I'd raised bigger now.
A single orbit later I get involved in another large pot, this time directly against the French station:
My stack: ~33,000, French guy: ~25,000, blinds 25/50, I hold 5c5d on the button.
Preflop: UTG folds, French guy raises to 200 UTG+1, MP1 folds, MP2 calls, folds to me on the button, I call, BB folds.
Flop: 8s 8c 5s
French guy bets 200, MP1 folds, I raise to 1000, French guy calls.
Turn: 2d
French guy checks, I bet 2500, French guy calls.
River: Kd
French guy checks, I bet 6000, and now the French guy sort of slaps the table is annoyance and makes a frustrated call. QQ I guess? I table my 55 and he shows his pair of aces and mucks. I can't believe he didn't stack off with the way he's playing; even if we are 500 BB's deep.
I find a small card rush and do quite a bit of preflop raising. The guy on my immediate left three bets me a number of times, but every time he does and we get to showdown or I fold he shows me some monstrous hand, so it seems he's just running hot. With this history we wind up getting involved:
My stack: ~40,000, UTG+1: ~40,000, blinds 50/100, I hold AsKd UTG.
Preflop: I raise to 300, UTG+1 reraises to 800, it folds back to me, I call. I think folding isn't absurd here, because his reraise range his like TT+/AK, but we're also 40,000 deep and I have AK which last I checked is the nizzles, so we're seeing the flop.
Flop: Kc 4c Js
I check, UTG+1 bets 1000, I call.
Turn: 7h
I check, UTG+1 bets 2000. I call, but when I think about his range that double barrels here with the preflop 3-bet I'm pretty confident I should actually be folding.
River: Ah
I check, UTG+1 quickly bets 5000. Now I go into the tank, and when I think about it I'm really just calling for a chop here. QQ and TT don't triple barrel here from a guy like this, and I'm losing to AA/KK/JJ and in a tie with AK. He didn't even have to think about his river bet, and he's had it every time. I groan a bit and fold, then he flashes me AKo and I feel dumb for not just folding the turn.
I continue to beat up my table for a bit throughout the level, but unfortunately for me the table is broken and I'm moved to a much worse seat. The table has Danny Wong on my right, Scott 'Mastr' Seiver on my left, and Todd Terry a few seats over on my left, plus another young online guy across the table. I'm hopeful that at least Scott will spend his time entertaining me with his hilarious Seth Roganesqueness. Unfortunately he soon pops in his Ipod headphones and starts owning fools instead.
Not long after I arrive I find myself in a large pot with Todd Terry:
My stack: ~35,000, Todd Terry: ~30,000, blinds 100/200, I hold JdJh on the button.
Preflop: Todd raises to 500 UTG, folds to me on the button, I call, SB folds, BB calls.
Flop: 2s Ts Jc
BB checks, Todd checks, I bet 1125, BB folds, Todd calls.
Turn: Kd
Todd checks, I bet 2900, Todd thinks briefly and calls.
River: 5c
Todd checks, I think about my bet size for a while then fire 7000, Todd goes into the tank and folds. He says he had AsKs.
Then for a very, very long time nothing happens. I go massively card dead and with a slew of good players on my left rarely bother to get particularly out of line. Level after level passes without the slightest eventful hand, and after several hours of play on my table of boredom I finally get moved to one with a softer line up, though there is still 'BKice' and 'Sketchy1' on my left, but not immediate. Near the end of the day I get involved in a hand with a straight forward middle aged Asian guy:
My stack: ~33,000, Asian guy: ~50,000, blinds 400/800 with 100 ante. I hold 9s9d in the BB.
Preflop: Folds around to the HJ, HJ raises to 3500, folds to me in the BB, I flat call because 3 betting against this type of player with nines here is definitely a bluff, though a go and go isn't crazy, but I prefer that with unpaired hands and I expect this guy to play pretty straight forward post flop so I like the call.
Flop: T 6 3 rainbow
I check, the HJ bets 5000, I call.
Turn: J
I check, the HJ checks.
River: K
Bleeeeegh. I check, the HJ thinks briefly and bets 8000. I smirk at Sketchy and say "Perfect turn/river for 99 huh?" and fold
"That's exactly what I thought you had" he says.
After that I spend the rest of my day folding, and when things draw to a close I find myself with 25,700 in chips, meaning over the course of my 10 hour day I've managed to increase my stack at less than 100 chips per hour.
After the tournament finishes a friend and I go over to Panorama and meet up with some other friends. Naturally we smoke up and take a dip in the hot tub and discuss our respective days of poker. Then we go to order food, but it turns out in Vegas your delivery options after midnight are surprisingly few. I always figured Vegas and New York City would be the two places that you'd have an infinite amount of options when it comes to late night delivery, but apparently that's only true of one of them. How annoying.