Still alive

It has been a little while since my last entry and I wish it was because I was playing so deep in tournaments that I didn't have time to post but that isn't the case. But, when you don't get back to the room until after 9am, have a tournament downtown at noon the next day, and then spend all day there and get back to the hotel at 4am it doesn't leave a lot of time for blog writing.

Tuesday I played the $235 O8 and would have been better served slowly hammering a nail through my hand. Officially done playing live O8 tournaments. It just isn't a good live game and I know my limit game has plenty of holes so those two factors alone make it dumb for me to play any more of them. The real difference between playing live o8 and on-line o8 is just the number of hands per hour that you see. On-line for O8 games you average over a hand per minute in tournaments and even quite a bit quicker once the blinds get big. In live play I am seeing about 20 hands per hour at the most which just does not cut it. You can not play proper poker and keep proper hand selection when you have such a small sample of hands. So, with it not being a bluffing game it becomes a who happens to run better that day game.

After the O8 I went down to the Rio to play the $340 evening tournament. My table wasn't as weak as it was the last time I played there but it was still pretty soft. I was able to double my stack up before the first break and had a much looser image than I normally would. Which was fine with me but just meant I needed to be a little pickier with pushing people around. After the break things go downhill. Guy to my immediate right raises and I look down at QT. Normally this is an instamuck for me but I am on the button and the big blind has yet to return from break and I just have the feeling that the guy is totally trying to make a steal at the dead blind money. I decide to call in position and see how the hand plays out. The flop come T63 and he makes a continuation bet to which I jam all-in. I have him covered and he makes the call with 54. Turn 4, River 7.....and there is your straight sir. Fantastic. I then proceed to lose a race when I get it in with AQ vs JJ....there was other dead money in the pot already and I was happy to see I was racing but the guy flops a set and I lose the hand. I am now playing a short stack and find QJ in late position with only about 5x the blinds so I jam it all in and run into AJ and he holds.

After the Rio I decide I want to go play some craps so I come back to the Imperial Palace and get settled in for some play and drinks. The session is a complete roller coaster and I end up losing a few hundred but definitely have some fun. I meet these two girls from Michigan that were fairly new to playing craps and we end up hanging out for the balance of the night. Wandered down to Bally's and played a bit of blackjack, had breakfast, and called it a night before 10am as I had a tournament to play at noon.

Yesterday, I played a $330 PLO8 tournament at the Golden Nugget. I was really excited to play this event as this is definitely my bread and butter game. There were 134 entrants and probably one of the toughest fields you will ever find for a $300 tournament. The tournament was loaded with on-line pro's and experienced players. It makes sense that casual players aren't going down to the golden nugget to play plo8 and that the people there are going because they know the game. My table was pretty tough. To my immediate right was John Guth, aka sirscoopalot, who won a wsop bracelet this past year. There was another bracelet winner at my table. A Canadian named Colin who is a pro and a great plo8 player. Three local Vegas veteran's with tons of experience and a couple guys who were not that strong. I really have no trouble being on a tough table in this game. It simply means it is much easier to tell where you are at in hands. However, the flip side is that it is tougher to get paid off when you hit hands and tougher to really trap anyone in big situations. Two hands into the tournament I have to make a big laydown to the other guy with a WSOP bracelet. I play KdKhJsTd to a preflop raise. The flop comes QdQhJd and I check the action to the raiser. He leads out with a pot bet for 700 and I really feel that he has nothing but AA here and I can take it down with a check raise representing a Q so I make it 2500. He immediately jams all in and I deliberate for a bit and fold as I now think he has hit a Q or at worst he has AA with the nut diamond draw. There goes 3k of my 8k starting stack. Over the next few rotations the guy who beat me in this pot is playing every single hand it actually gets to the point that he plays every hand until the 106th minute of the tournament. If I see him play like this I probably get my money in with this big two way draw. Anyways, eventually his bubble bursts like it will with any aggressive player surrounded by guys just waiting to pick him off and I have the honour of eventually busting him out.

I play for hours and am building chips but I never am able to get a nice setup hand against the weaker players at the table. I go card dead for about two hours and am getting a bit short when I quarter Colin and am back to a below average but healthy stack. When we get down to about 40 players I get moved to another table. I had already said to Scoop earlier that when our table broke I would likely move into a weaker table and get busted up quickly. Well our table didn't break but I did get moved to level the tables. It took about 4 hands for me to go bust and this is really the only hand of the tournament that I would like to have back. The blinds are at 500/1000 and my stack is at 16k with average tournament stack nearing the 30k mark. There are two middle position limpers and the button raises it to 5k and I am in the small blind and look down at As2h3sJh which is a very premium hand in this game. The guy who raised to 5k is an asian guy with a ton of chips and I just get the sense from him that he is pretty loose and just looking to make a play at the pot in position. I think for a bit and decide to jam all in for my 16k. I think if in fact this guy is just pushing some trash I still have some fold equity and he can lay preflop or if I do get called I have a premium hand anyways and just hope to hit something. Well, he calls quickly and rolls over a2qq...not at all what I want to be up against. I would rather be against a hand like AA with a crap low or something like a278 but this is one of the few hands that has me in some trouble. The flop comes 996 and I am drawing to a backdoor low or backdoor flush. The turn brings a J and I and I am drawing completely dead and that is my tournament life. Now, a lot of people go broke on this hand. A lot of top players go broke on this hand and my play really isn't that bad for the information I had at the table. However, I am a tight tight player and I know I can come back from a short stack so with a hand like A23 I should call the 5k. If the board comes high then I can just dump the hand and live to play another day. If I flop any kind of touch or draw I can jam into the pot as first to act. The real point is that as pretty as this hand looks it still is a drawing hand and I should have left myself an escape valve in case the board came trash like it did.

Earlier in the day the tournament director announced that they were going to run a $125 plus $50 unlimited rebuys for the first hour plo8 tournament at 10pm. Awesome!!! I love it, I am definitely going to stay and play this. In the mean time I play some 2/5 plo8. I am sitting beside a guy known as "worm" who is one of the THE top players online for the game. He plays under Deady12 or Game Over 73 and will play any size of plo8 game available. He turns out to be a super nice guy and I really enjoy chatting with him for awhile. Anyways it gets close to 10pm and we are all ready to shoot it up in the rebuy but before we do someone suggests that we all toss in $100 blind and we will have an o8 roll'em hand. We get 10 guys to toss in $100 and they deal everyones cards face up. I have a4j8 and out of the 10 hands the a4 is actually the early favourite for best low draw. The flop comes 887, I hit trip 8's, awesome...oh wait Worm has flopped a full house with 87.....boom A on turn and I have the nuts and take half of a 1k pot with the other half going to a low. I am awesome, this is the only way I can win at poker when it is all left up to the cards. :-)

The rebuy starts and I am prepared to crank up the action to build a stack. The very first hand I take a guys stack and am off to a running start. Two hands later I get another guy all in on the turn in where I am scooping a 20k pot and should be huge....well boom here comes the 3 out scoop card for him. sigh...in a few mins I get another guy all in when i have a set of aces....boom running flush for him. I was wanting to ramp the action up regardless of my hands but I am getting hit in the face with the deck be dealt monster after monster but none of them are holding. I do ok though and have about 12k at the break when we started with 5k. Two hands after the break I bust out, yeah awesome......rebuy tournament and you last 2 hands past when rebuys close.

Here is the hand. I have AdAcQh2d and I pot it preflop out of the big blind and get two callers. these idiots have no clue that I only played loose during the rebuy period and that I am playing premium cards now. The flop comes QT3 with two diamonds. I lead out pot and get called. I think the guy must be on a draw with a hand like KJ9 maybe with inferior diamonds. The turn is a 2 giving me Queens up with the nut flush draw so I go all-in thinking I am winning and going to take the pot down right there. Well, the guy calls and has QT for top two pair. He is so clueless that he actually plays his hand to perfection. A good player would have repopped me on the flop but this guy just smooth called thinking his top two is a monster not realizing the vulnerability of the hand. So, that was awesome....two more tournament no shows.

I did have a nice on-line session after my Caesar's debacle. After playing for 10 hours at Caesars and netting $43 I come back and play a $110 turbo sng and net $375 in 40 mins. Hmmmmm, why do I play live poker??? Tuesday morning I had a really good online session where I made $1900 in 3 hours. I made about $1k on cash and played 5 sng's on full tilt with finishes of 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd and 8th.

Today, I am really toying with the idea of playing the $2500 Pot Limit Hold'em//Pot Limit Omaha WSOP event. I would love to play this tournament as I think it is something that would be a good structure for me. However, when I am stuck money dumping this kind of coin into a tournament is tough to do for me and my bankroll. My buddy Travis Brown has offered to buy 50% of my action if I decide to play so I may do that. I still have 5 hours to decide as it is a late afternoon start for this event. With it being an afternoon event this makes me want to play it even more as there are going to be a bunch of hold'em players that get busted out over the course of the day that decide they want to slam some money into this event. I really like pot limit games and think that over time this would certainly be a +EV tournament for myself.