2008 WSoP Post 4 - Another tournament, another cash…
Weird couple of days out here. I actually was having so much fun playing cards that I forgot to eat, anything, from Tuesday at 8pm through Thursday at about 6pm. That's saying something.
I had planned to enter today’s WSoP Event #36 over at the
Instead, I trekked over to the Center Strip stop on the Vegas Monorail; (quick aside – the map saying that the Wynn is at the “Convention Center” stop on the monorail – that’s a blatant lie. The Wynn, and everything else on the Strip near the Wynn is a solid 20-25 minute walk from the monorail stop. Something to be noted, as I made the walk yesterday at noon… in 106 degree weather. Warrants mentioning) and walked into the Harrah’s poker room trying to catch the 11am tourney signup. Missed the last signup by 10 minutes. Figures.
Rather than killing time at the only cash game in the room – a four-handed $1/$2, guh – I walked across the street to the Mirage to see if they had anything spread. Nope. Almost completely dead.
I was contemplating the $10 cab ride to the Wynn for more cash games, when I remembered I was next to Caesar’s and their fantastic poker room. Worth the 10-minute walk.
As I got into the poker room, I saw a sign for the Caesar’s Mega-Stack Tournament Series. I had about 12 minutes left to register, so I jumped on it. 368 players, top 36 paid. Ridiculously top-heavy payouts (first place takes $22k tonight, or just over 30% of the pool).
I was a card rack for the first eight hours of the tournament, running out to over 60k in chips when the average stack was around 32k. And I was still in third place at my table. I eliminated three players, chasing down
Interestingly enough, I wasn’t playing like normal. I tried something completely different in this tourney, and it was working beautifully until I went completely card dead. Really novel concept for a tournament player. Ready for it?
I was patient.
Not just like, wait for a couple suited cards, or a couple big cards, or any ace. I was patient like “I’m not playing anything less than A-10 unless I’m stealing the blinds”.
Damned if it didn’t work. Of course, it helped that for about an hour I was averaging 2 pairs and a big ace every 10-15 hands, meaning I could scoop plenty of pots and blinds.
I also completely altered my betting strategy, opening pots with very big raises – often almost uncallable without a huge hand – choosing to take down almost every pot preflop if possible. In fact, I only got action four times when I raised preflop – three all-ins and two people who didn’t believe me when I raised from 800 to 4800 from middle position (I had Pocket Kings and took the pot after the flop).
Of course, we know all about hot cards, and how fast they can cool off. After breaking from my table, I walked into my first hand (in the big blind) at a new table and picked up pocket Aces. There was a raise from 1600k to 6k and a call to me before I had even taken my chips out of their racks. I re-raised to 24,000 and got no callers. It was the last hand I saw in a very long time.
I eventually got blinded down to about 20,000 chips from my
He flopped an Ace, and I busted out in 22nd place, earning a total of $175 profit for 11 hours of playing. Chalk it up as a wasted day.
Guess I’ll spend tomorrow in cash games over at the Wynn again, since I can’t find a steady $2/$5 no-limit game anywhere else.
Lata.
Labels: Gambling, Las Vegas, poker, Tournament, World Series, WSOP
posted by Big D @ 5:12 AM
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