Back in Vegas

The trip home was a good time. I saw a lot of friends and had way too much fun every night. Plus, no poker for over a week felt really good.

I got back to Vegas on Monday after missing my flight on Sunday. It was really dumb for booking a flight the day after a wedding. I actually caught the same flight as my buddy that was flying out to see me. While he was here I continued to party way too much.

Saw Hoover Dam for a 2nd time and decided I'm never taking the dam tour again. On Wednesday night we went to see the Crazy Girls show at the MGM. It was only 50 bucks and well worth the money. I fell in love with about 3 of the girls and every skit they did was amazing. It felt so good when my buddy left. I'm way too old to be going out 7 out of 8 nights. That much partying probably took a year off my life.

On Thursday I played the 1k Stud 8 or better event and never got anything going. My table had 3 name pros and there was only 1 or 2 weak spots. I played fairly well but got outdrawn a few too many times.

Yesterday I entered the 3rd largest live poker tournament ever, event 49 $1500 buyin. I started out on a very good card rush. Hit a set vs a guys top pair, won a 3 way all in for 1/3 of my stack with 99 vs JJ vs AK, won 2 fairly large coinflips that would've hurt me but not busted me, and got AA, KK, and QQ a couple of times in which I won medium sized pots. I did lose a fairly large pot with AA on a 873 2 suited board. Got it all in on the flop and the lady had pocket 8's. I didn't feel too bad as she was probably the nicest person I had ever played with and had supposedly just gotten out of the hospital after getting a cancerous tumor removed. I managed to recover and got my stack up to 45k at dinner break when the average was 15k.

There was about 600 people left after dinner break and 320 spots got paid. I knew I would money if I didn't do anything stupid but playing just to money is a terrible strategy in these large tournaments where top 10 get paid so much more than everyone else. I went card dead the first hour after dinner. My image wasn't the greatest and with a big stack nobody ever believes you have something so I played pretty tight. Eventually, I picked up 55 in the SB. It folds around to me and I raise to 2400, blinds were 400/800. BB raises to 7000. The BB has been really friendly and is definitely just a casual player there to have fun. He hasn't been too active but he's not the type of player that is afraid to go busto 200 or so before the money. He has about 15000 behind him after the raise. I decide to shove as I think I have some fold equity and winning this hand will really set me up to dominate the bubble. He instacalls with AJ and he wins the race. I would've been up to 66k if I would've won but instead down to 22k. I'm fairly certain I made the right move as even if it was -Cev I think my future equity is much greater with a huge stack as I could've really picked apart all the medium stacks.

After that nothing really exciting happens for awhile. I would pick up a few small pots and then would get knocked down when I raise pf and my cbet gets check raised. Wasn't hitting flops and didn't really pick up any decent cards to play back at anybody. Eventually the bubble burst. I had about 17k and the blinds were 800/1600. Folds around to me and I look down at 72s and shove. With blinds and antes this shove is almost always correct as SB and BB rarely call correctly here. SB and BB fold. Few hands later I pick up KK and raise some 2.5x BB and get no action. I think I win the blinds and antes one more time when my bust out hand occurs. Sitting at 22k I'm in the SB with QQ. A blonde hair kid that looks exactly like one of my friends but has blonde hair and scandanavian raises to 4500. I think for a few moments and shove. He thinks for about 20 seconds before calling with K9s. Vs my range there it's a pretty bad call but I could care less as I now have a 66% chance of getting my stack up above average. Well the flop comes 2 of his suit and the turn brings him the flush and I'm sent packing. So lame.

I get something like 3k for my efforts. Of course, it takes Harrah's over an hour to pay me out. I would've gone home earlier if I hadn't have busted out, bleh.