WSOP 2010 Report 3
Two days, two tournaments, two dinner breaks; unfortunately that's all I have to show for them. It began on Tuesday when I played the $5,000 no limit event at the WSOP. I was put on a late start table so we missed the first level and began at 50/100. I was thrown into the action immediately when I looked down at aces UTG on the first hand:
Effective stacks: 15,000
Blinds 50/100
I hold AsAc UTG 8 handed.
Villain on the button is a young guy in a pink shirt wearing a Titan sponsored pro patch. Pretty safe bet that he's Euro.
Preflop: I raise to 300, folds to MP, MP calls, folds to SB, SB calls, BB folds.
Flop: Qh Th 6c
SB checks, I bet 600, MP folds, SB calls.
Turn: 9s
SB leads 1400, I call.
River: 2c
SB tanks for a very long time, then leads 5525. I think there are a lot more combinations of strong hands in his range than semi bluffs that whiffed the river then decided to bomb over pot after tanking forever. I folded without much thought.
Things didn't improve from there on. An orbit later I found QQ UTG, raised to 300, got 3 bet from the SB to 1200, and folded when he lead a KJJ flop. After playing and watching him for another 90 minutes I wished I could have the hand back so I could snap call flop and turn and reconsider the river, this guy was going real hard with the 3 bets early in the tournament.
The WSOP $5,000 reminds me of a Sunday 100 rebuys. Everyone who is good plays, but there's also an awful lot of randoms that show up due to the field size and potential for a big score. The end result is a tournament with the strange combination of many ultra tough and ultra soft spots at nearly every table. On the plus side, the event is filled is filled with guys I've been friends with and playing against for years, so it was a bit of a social event for the online boys. I was invited out to join the large pot party gatherings out in the parking lot, and found roughly half of online MTT'ers out there. There are many guys who smoke heavily every break and swear by it, whereas other guys smoked often when playing live but later decided to quit because they felt it altered their focus. The jury is still out on whether pot is a performance enhancing or inhibiting drug, but I know many of the top players who quite simply won't play without it. I only rarely smoke and play, and find that although poker becomes more interesting and intriguing, my ability to remember detail is severely impaired.
My 5k event continued and ended without particularly interesting incident. I was so card dead that I barely played a hand past pre-flop and for an event with such an excellent structure, I only wound up writing down six hands, only one of which I felt was worth posting in HSMTT. I busted when a player who had been limping fairly frequently limped in EP and it folded to me in LP with KsQs and a stack of 7900 at 300/600 with a 75. I shoved it in, got called by the limper's 88, and had the board run out K6948. The dramatic sequence of cards doesn't change the fact that I merely lost a flip, and every time someone throws a tantrum over something like that I just roll my eyes. Correction, every time someone throws a tantrum over anything in poker I generally roll my eyes.
I quite simply do not understand the level of emotionality people engage in as a result of poker. It's comprehensible when it's a small time player taking a shot at something that would be life changing, but I routinely watch guys who have been doing this for years or have millions in winnings acting like a bunch of fucking children just because something didn't go their way during the course of the game, online players included (though less so, as apparently half are stoned at all times). For the amount of time the online guys commit to seeking the optimal technical route to playing a hand you'd think they'd strive to reach the optimal mental state and clarity required to keep their in game thought process pristine. For all the money lost to mathematical leaks, how much do they speak off due to tilt and emotional ones? As I tell people who ask whether I even care or not "Maybe I don't care, or maybe I care so much that I realize the optimal route for reaching my desired outcome is by learning to function as if I don't care at all." That and it prevents a bust out from ruining a day that still has hours of potential left in it.
The next day I went over to the Venetian to play in their $1500 deep stack no limit event since the WSOP had nothing on for someone like me that day. The 20,000 starting stack and hour levels provided an excellent structure, which allowed for a couple interesting spots over the course of the day which I have posted on 2+2:
Hand 1: Venetian $1500 deep stack event. It's very early in the tournament, and nobody really has any history with each other. Villain is one of those guys with long hair and a beard who could be anything between 21 and 35, but my guess is mid 20's. He doesn't give off a strong online player vibe, but he could be. I haven't been involved in any large pots yet, and we have no history together. This was also my first three bet.
Effective stacks: 20,000
Blinds 50/100
I hold Kd Ks in MP, 8 handed.
Preflop: UTG folds, UTG+1 opens to 250, I reraise to 800, folds to the button, button cold 4 bets to 1800, folds back to me, I call.
Flop: K Q 4 rainbow
I check, villain bets 2000, I...
Best line for max value?
Hand 2: Early in one of the $1500 WSOP events. Opponent is a guy of perhaps 30 who doesn't look like a full blown internet pro in the traditional sense, but I also saw Ckingusc say hello to him so I'd guess he's not just a total random. The fact that he open limped would also indicate he's almost certainly not some online pro I'm unaware of.
I had been somewhat active but not especially so leading up to the hand, and had not been involved in any major pots thus far, or played any hands against this exact opponent.
My stack: ~4000
HJ: ~3800
Blinds 25/50. I hold Ac8s on the button.
Preflop: Folds around to the HJ, HJ calls 50, CO calls 50, I raise to 250, both blinds fold, HJ calls, CO calls.
Flop: Ah 9c 6c
Checks to met, I bet 550, HJ calls, CO folds
Turn: Jd
HJ thinks briefly and leads 1350...
In other news, the house engaged in a thoroughly entertaining prop bet that cost me $3,000 the other night. Chewy and I were hanging out at the house when we got a call from Aaron about a potential bet; our housemate Ash was going to run home from the ice cream shop they were at within three hours after eating a pound of frozen yogurt and the Naked Fish he'd had at dinner. The run was approximately 15 miles in the heat of the Las Vegas evening, which was in the mid 80's. Every single person in the house bet against him, totaling $22,000 in action, which Ash scooped by arriving home with 40 minutes to spare and at a comfortable jog. Sure, he vomited three times during the course of his run and didn't have any water for the first five miles, but normally obscene obstacles are incapable of impeding someone like Ash. He told us that if we had tried to get him to buy out in the first quarter of the run it would be no problem, but somehow he found a second wind and made us all look stupid. What a sicko.