Wednesday, September 30, 2009

My Epic Vegas Trip - Day 5 (ESPN Appearance!)

Monday July 6 – Main Event Day 1D, ESPN Appearance, Annoying Railbird, 1/2 NL Cash

Introduction

So this was it.

The Main Event…

I rocked up to the Rio about 2 hours early and just walked around trying to take everything in. The atmosphere was buzzing...the corridors were filled with people; the rooms, though empty, were a sight in themselves, with rows upon rows of empty tables, each with a dealer awaiting their players. While waiting to take my own seat I pulled out my iPod and put Forever Young by Youth Group on repeat play - for various reasons it’s now the song I listen to in order to psyche myself up before every tournament and during each break.

Eventually, it was time to take our seats and, as is usually the case for me, at my table I was the first to take mine. I was greeted by my dealer, a beef jerky and a cushion. An odd trio I have to admit. I didn’t recognise anyone famous at my table which was probably a good thing but admittedly a bit disappointing. Right behind me though was Ivan Demidov which was pretty cool because it immediately reminded me of the magnitude of this whole thing. Last year Demidov took his seat just like me, another random in a field of thousands, yet now a year later he takes his seat as a Team PokerStars Pro with a WSOP Main Event final table and a WSOPE Main Event final table to his résumé. Completely crazy if you think about it!

Aside – My ESPN “Appearance”!

Demidov actually got knocked out later in the day and since the camera was pointing right in my direction I did my best to get on TV by pretending to be very intrigued in his knockout hand. It worked!



The Tournament

So we started with 30,000 in chips and 50/100 blinds. I still remember the very first hand of the tournament. I was dealt KTo in the hijack and it was folded to me. I looked around, sized up my opposition, got ready to put in a raise and then thought “screw it” and made a tight fold.

They say that the Main Event is the easiest tournament of the year, with expected ROI’s of around about 200% for good players. But after a couple of hours play with my Day 1 table I quickly realised that these players were anything but easy money. They weren’t “good” because they played very predictably and unbalanced and face-up and if you gave me 200 hours with them on a cash table I’d for sure send them broke. But they weren’t “bad” either because they played in a way that’s very hard to exploit in a tournament setting – very nitty and in a way that makes it very hard to prize chips off them. I went into the day thinking people would be stacking off 200bb’s with top pair, but nothing close to this happened all day. And although I thought I might have just been given a bad table draw, from reading the comments on 2+2 later that night, it seemed like a lot of people encountered the same thing. People really are getting better…damn you Taylor!

Anyway as you probably guessed I had a pretty tough day and couldn’t really get anything going. I started off alright and got up to 38K after the following hand. UTG raised, about 3 people called and I called in the small blind with 54h. The big blind squeezed and just about everyone called so I called as well and we saw a five-way, 6000 chip pot to the flop at 50/100 blinds. The flop came perfect for me…446 with a flush draw. The action was on me and I had a pretty close decision. I generally like to lead monsters in multi-way pots to avoid the situation where it’s a bet and a raise to you and anything you do looks ridiculously strong. There was however a lot of merit checking here as I had relative position on the entire field and if the big blind made a c-bet and got a few calls or raises I wouldn’t really care how strong I looked because I could just raise or shove and win a huge pot. Anyway as I’m mulling this over the big blind checks…WHAT??!! I announce that I haven’t acted yet and am now super pissed because if I lead now everyone will know I’m very strong. So I check and just hope that my check/raise plan still works but unfortunately it checks through and the river pairs the 6…Ugh. I still lead the turn hoping to get value from 77-JJ but unfortunately everyone folds. I look at the big blind and silently want to deck him. The one player (UTG) who did think for a bit before folding later told me he folded 99, which to be honest is a pretty easy fold but I wonder if he would’ve called were it not for what had happened. He said he was worried about JJ though (as opposed to a full house) so he probably does fold regardless.

Another key pot I played I opened A4h on the button and got two calls in the blinds. The flop came K73hh and I c-bet and got a call from the small blind. The turn came an offsuit 2 giving me a gutshot along with my nut flush draw and ace overcard and he led into me for 4K. A really weird line for sure and I had about 18K left. My first instinct was to call since I didn’t want to get knocked out and jamming would be a bit of an overbet. But then I realised I didn’t really feel like calling and missing and being unable to bluff the river and being left with only 15K so I just stuck it all-in there. I remember thinking “WTF, I’m all-in on Day 1, and only with a semi-bluff, how can this be!?” Fortunately he folded.

Aside – Annoying Railbird Epitomizes the Main Event

Throughout the day there was this really annoying railbird railing his friend and he spoke and laughed so deliberately loud that I wanted to put a cloth over his mouth. He wanted everyone to know he was there and that he knew someone who was playing and that he was “in” with the poker circuit. Whenever two other railbirds would talk he’d “overhear” them and throw in his own comment, pointing out where that famous person was in the room, or how many levels were still to be played in the day, or how big the field was predicted to be for this year. It was actually pretty funny because when Fraser came to watch me for a bit in the afternoon, Phil Ivey must’ve come up in conversation because this guy decided to take Fraser to a completely different room to show him where Phil Ivey was. Fraser tried to tell him that he didn’t need to and that it wasn’t that big a deal but he INSISTED - and off they went.

Anyway what I realised was that, annoying as this guy was, it was people like him who made the Main Event what it was. The Main Event truly is the tournament for everyone. Every Tom, Dick and Harry can play it, or at least they can say they know someone who has. Annoying railbird’s friend wasn’t very good at poker, and I doubt annoying railbird is himself much of a player either, but because of the Main Event, they, and other people like them, were all gathered here together.

I don’t really know why I wrote that, but I thought it was a pretty cool and humbling realisation at the time.

The Tournament (Continued)

The rest of the day I hovered around the 30K mark. Late in the day I called an all-in for about 8K with KJs in the big blind when the short-stacked small blind open-shoved. He showed 78o and the flop came like 958ss to give him a pair and a gutshot but me a flush draw. The turn paired my jack so now I was well ahead but the river paired his 7 without giving me a flush so he doubled through while I fell to around 23K. Fortunately two orbits later he open-shoved again and I woke up with AK in the big blind and held to win with A high against his Q high.

I then played another key pot which could’ve easily ended my tournament on Day 1. The hijack opened, I 3-bet KQo from the cutoff and the button flat-called. The hijack folded and the flop came as good as it could come for me: Q73r. I was a bit scared of my opponent’s flat preflop but with only 2 PSB’s left I couldn’t see how I could get away from this hand. The pot was about 6K and I had about 20K. I initially thought that bet flop, shove turn would be the best line but then I thought “what on Earth is he going to call the turn with that’s worse than my hand?” so I thought I’d go for a check-raise or a double check-call to try and open his range a bit to bluffs and whatnot. So I check and he bets and I’m deciding whether to call or shove. And then I give myself a reality check. His preflop range is JJ+ and AK – why the hell would he bet JJ here? Suddenly it seemed like a very clear fold. Yet there are a lot of spots like this in tournaments where you should probably fold but it’s like “if I fold I’m still in really bad shape, if I shove and am wrong I’m out but who cares I can go and do something else, but if I’m right… man, I’m going to be going great guns and right back in it!” This was definitely one of those spots and part of me just wanted to stick the rest in, suck out if necessary and just try to get back above average. If I got knocked out I figured I could always just soak up the Vegas sun for the rest of the week. But then I realised I’d travelled half-way around the world for this tournament, dragged five friends along with me and had honed my skills for three years for this moment. I wasn’t going to throw it all away now. So I folded and he told me he had AA. Whew!

The last hand of the day a really loose player opened UTG and it was folded to me with AQo in the SB. This is usually a fold or a call but I’d seen this player call 3-bets out of position after raising UTG with hands as weak as KJo so I thought I could definitely be ahead of his range here and even get called by worse. He did call and the flop came K84ss. I bet and he called. I thought he’d have TT-QQ here a lot so I decided to barrel the turn but it came a J which fills the JJ and I just chickened out basically. I had just gotten my stack up to about 35K and didn’t want to blow it all immediately. He checked back and the turn brought the flush. I thought about shoving here as a bluff since he should very rarely have a suited connector here that can make a flush but again I decided “meh, whatever” and gave up. I checked, he bet and I folded. He said he had A8s for the nut flush and I sat there cursing my luck at how good my preflop read was and how sickly bad I got outflopped…

So I finished Day 1 with 32800 in chips, a not-so-productive day of +2800…not exactly how I had hoped Day 1 would pan out but I was happy to at least still be in it. As they say, you can’t win the tournament on Day 1 but you can definitely lose it, and I easily could’ve been knocked out a few times throughout the day.

Bellagio 1/2 Cash

I returned to the Bellagio completely exhausted at about midnight. Fraser and Pete had played a $300 tournament at the Venetian that day and although I knew Fraser had been knocked out (since he had come to watch me in the afternoon) I was wondering how Pete had gone. When I got back he still wasn’t there so Fraser and I were imagining what we’d do if he won the $50,000 since we each had about 5% of him. Unfortunately about half an hour later Pete storms in and told us he’s only min-cashed. We heckle him that he’s just spent a day in Vegas making $12/hour, but he is over the moon that he can now call himself the second best poker player in the room having beaten Fraser in the tournament. He then promptly falls asleep.

Fraser and I then decide that we should give Bellagio’s 1/2 NL games a good shake up before we switch hotels and leave for the Mirage the next day. So we go down and find ourselves in the craziest game ever – there are 3 or 4 Europeans there who are obviously high stakes players themselves and are just messing around at 2AM in the morning like me. So we’re all playing like 99VPIP and having fun and the two older nits there look like they want to drown themselves (rather than adjust properly and give themselves a windfall). Anyway one fun hand went as follows. The older player open limps in the cutoff, I min-raise the button with 27o, the small blind bumps it up to $6, the big blind makes it $20, the straddle shoves for 200, we all fold to the big blind who snap-calls with KJ high or something similar and gets the shock of his life when the straddle slams down AA. Good times. We end up leaving at about 4AM when Fraser gets in AK preflop versus 77 for a $1000 pot and doesn’t hit. In the lift back to our rooms he’s mumbling about how good the game was and how his AK has like 100% equity against his opponent’s range. I can’t share his misery though since I made a solid $200 profit!

And so ends another day in Vegas…

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