Arrived in Vegas last Friday. Very uneventful trip compared to last years trek. I travelled with Jason and Daragh but we weren't able to score adjacent seats on the British Airways flight from London. As I took my seat the guy beside me informed me he'd been separated from his wife. I quickly agreed to swap with her on the basis that it didn't really matter which stranger I was beside (in fact a randomer seemed preferable to someone antagonised by separation from his wife). This was a little rash as it turned out the wife was at a section front wedged between two obese people. Not my most comfortable transAtlantic flight ever.
We're staying in the Jockey Club for the next 5 weeks. We got a very good deal on it with the location being so good (it's stuck between the Bellagio and The Cosmopolitan in the heart of the strip).
My first event was Saturday's 1500. After a semi decent start to get up past 5k I went card and spot dead at the wrong time. Unfortunately the first spot that did present itself was my exit. I squeezed an ace over a loose opener and two station callers. Unfortunately the opener had a hand on this occasion and his bigger ace held up. Right move at the wrong time.
Last year I seemed to build stacks effortlessly in nearly every event I played and early on it seemed to be going that way again in Sunday's 1k event I played a big hand to effectively cripple Max Silver that anyone following either of us on Twitter may have heard about. After Max busted Nick Heather took his seat and we played a few interesting small pots. I'd chipped up to 15k without any major setbacks when I raised aks. A short stack reshoved and an aggro kid isolated. There are some players I might consider folding aks to but this kid wasn't one. He had jacks and flopped a jack. I turned a flush draw and a gutshot but missed. It would have been a nice 40k flip to win at a time when the average stack was less than 10k (and even when the bubble burst a few hours later it was still only 27k).
My third event event was a bit like a Joe Pesci character: short and nasty. Got nothing much for 90 minutes and had slid back to 3200 when I picked up queens. The table CAG (clown aggro) who had played every single hand 4xed to 200 utg and called out of position when I 3 bet to 525. He check raised all in on a 9 high flop with j2hh and rivered the flush. Particularly annoying as it was a very soft table I felt I could have run over with any sort of a stack.
Next up is 1500 on Saturday. I feel I'm playing well enough to get a decent run at one of these. Not much consolation to those who have percentages of me in my bracelet events but I did get a bit of a result on my own dime in the Rio Deepstack yesterday when I was 8th in a 1300 runner field. At least it shows I can get through a big field if I run anyway half decent, and also puts me up a bit overall so far on the trip.
Aside from the poker, things have been going very well here. When you room with people on these trips away, it's pretty important to be able to get along without annoying each other, but I've actually had a ball with the lads so far. We're all pretty easygoing and our sense of humours gel. It's pretty much been a laugh a minute. Given that there's far more heartache in poker than jubilation, particularly for those of us sticking to the high variance several thousand runner NLH events, it's important to be able to keep your spirits up, so it's great to be surrounded by people who can help with that.
Given that the three of us are all proven mtt winners both online and live I'm very optimistic that one of us will get into position to make a real run at least one event this summer. So far the star of the house is Daragh Davey. Just after virtually bubbling the first event we played, he late regged for the 1k and ran deep, busting with just over 70 left. He then built another stack in Wednesday's event, before bubbling in sick (but standard) fashion.
When Nick Heather and I were at the same table, an attractive female player was moved into the seat beside Nick. When you're spending 12 hours a day sitting at a table full of men, this is always a welcome development. Nick therefore incurred the collective wrath of the rest of the table when he proceeded to knock her out. A while later, another pretty lady arrived. After Nick had despatched her to the rail, her neighbour who had been flirting ferociously with her whined "Aw man, why did you have to do that? I almost had her Facebook!"
0 comments:
Post a Comment