Still, South West scramble plus weak American coffee was just enough to set me up for the day ahead - off to The Rio for today's $1500 NLH - event #49 of the WSOP.
Kitted out in new 2008 Team Gutshot track-tops (very stylish on thin people) we got a cab to the poker-venue entrance.
This proved not the best choice as it turned out to be a long walk for both of us to our tables. Barry was billeted in the poker room on the casino main floor. I was in a special 16-table section set up outside the fish restaurant (appropriately).
Slightly late for the start, I still had not missed a blind when I played my first hand from UTG+1. Pocket 7s - nice. Saw a cheap flop - Qd8s7d. I raised the big-blind's flop bet and got called. Turn and river went check-bet-call and I added a useful 1,400 to the 3,000 starting stack.
I did give 1,000 back when the short-stack pushed into my and made a flush in 3-episodes: one each on flop turn and river.
Still, on 5k at the 1st break I was going along fine.
My first real setback came with pocket 9s in early position. I made a raise to 700 (100/200) and faced a shove from the button who pushed in 1,850 more to me (1,700 in the pot before the raise).
I felt I was well ahead of his range, and thought it was worth gambling. Unfortunately, if I was right about his range then his pocket Tens were right at the top of it.
When his hand held, I was back to my starting stack and it was a battle to stay afloat.
In fact, when we were moved to the main room, I had only 2,100 left. We had no tournament clock out in the suburbs, so when I saw that we had less than half the field left, I was pretty surprised. We were not even at the end of Level 4 !!
At the very end of the level (last hand in fact), I finally broke out of my 2 – 2.5k range when it was folded to me in the cut-off. Pocket 6s were plenty good enough to push. The big blind had no real choice but to call with AK-suited. The low flop was good, and the six of hearts opnm the turn was better still.
I enjoyed the break more as a result. On the way back in, I bumped into Stephen Bartley – well known to all of us from his time at gutshot. Now he is reporting for another station. He asked after Team Gutshot and I told him he was safe until Tuesday.
Back at the tables, I moved up to 9k in chips when my pocket Tens flopped a full house (T44 flop – looks familiar !). The big blind was the sole pre-flop caller. He made two pair on the turn and committed all his chips drawing dead. Nice.
However, I soon squandered this relatively solid position (about average in chips with 1/3 of the field remaining) in two key hands.
In the first, I raised with AT and received one caller from a new player at the table (big stack and big headphones). The QT8 rainbow board was simultaneously promising and threatening. I decided on a c-bet of 1,850 which was called. The turn brought a fourth-suit 7.
Presumably this can’t help him too much but I elected to check, and faced a push from big-headphones. I saw all kinds of drawing-dead possibilities and decided to escape with a playable 6,950 chips. Afterwards he told me he pushed with 97 – up and down on the flop and with further outs on the turn.
This put me slightly off balance and for some reason I thought it was a good idea to push all-in from the big-blind with KTo into a MP raiser. Clearly this was a move based on the stacks not the cards. MP reluctantly called with Aces. “No Jack” he mouthed when the flop brought AQQ, until he noticed that I was drawing dead to his flopped full-house. Quads on the turn rubbed it in.
A close-count revealed I had 175 chips left to put in blind next hand. Before I could do so, I had to go through a move half-way across the room as the floor broke our table.
One more hand was all there was, though. Out about 700th out of the 2,718 starters (sell-out) with only 2 last-longers to show for it. I need to do better at this kind of stage of tournaments. Usually I am the victim of self-inflicted pain, like here.
Aaaarrgggh ! Tournaments, I hate them (and love them) (and hate them) (etc.)
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