Went to Vegas for a long weekend with the old Cal Poly crew and was able to get plenty of poker in.
Thursday :
Tourney at Paris with a $65 buy in. I limped in with 68 and got a flop of 6 5 4. I bet it pretty hard and got called by a short stack who goes all in with 67. I was pot committed and I call. He's got just seven outs, but hits his 3. This now puts me on the short stack. I get knocked out with a kq suited against 55. It is a race, and I ended up losing. 20 started in the tourney and I ended up 11 with 0 cash.
I played 4-8 at The Venetian for a couple hours and came out ahead 19. Not much of interest really happened. It is a nice room and it was a fast game. Mike Caro was in the house and they tried to start a 75-150 game going but couldn't get any takers.
Down $46 for the day
Friday:
I checked out all the other poker rooms while my fiends were sleeping and wound up at the Mirage at 7:00 am. I played $3-6 for a couple hours and wound up $5. Then Nora, Chris and I went back to the Paris to play another $65 tourney. Before we started, the three of us agreed that we would split any prize money 60-20-20. Remember that, since it comes back to haunt me later!
There were about 30 people and I was able to wind up at the final table, but pretty seriously on the short stack. It gets a little healthier over time, but still not in great shape by the time there are only 6 of us left. There is $1500 in prize money, and someone at the table suggests that it gets split $400, $400, $200, $200, $200, $100 since our stacks really were about that size. We all agree to that, but hit a snag at the cashier. It seems that Paris pays out the top 4 places and the top is $650, thus requiring someone to fill out a tax form. The obvious choice is that one of the top two should do it, but they balk since they didn't actually get all of that money! One of the $200 winners says that he'll fill it out if we each give him an extra $10, and after some arguing we settle on that. So I'm up $90. However, I promised to pay 20% to each of Chris and Nora, and that's about $20 each. That leaves me with $50, but my buy-in cost $65 so I'm down $15! The reader will note that we should have agreed to spilt the money AFTER the entry fee was subtracted, but we weren't that smart. We agreed to that for later tournaments.
I then played $1-$2 no limit for a couple hours and had some great cards. A couple sets and a boat left me up $77. I didn't get as much cash as I would have liked since it was a very tight table, but I'll also need to think about how to maximize my return.
100 buy in tourney at harrah's 30+ people and I ended up in 20th place. With a medium sized stack I raised with AJ. I get a couple callers, including a fellow with a short stack who hadn't raised pre-flop. The flop comes J, 9, 7 rainbow and the short stack goes all in. I figured him for a J and called, but he had 8, 10 and flopped his straight. This really hurt. And just like at Paris the night before I go all in with K,Q against 44. I hit my queen but he made a set. D'ohh! Down 100
But the big event of the trip was the 11:00 Saturday tourney at Harrah's. I bought in for $90, including the optional add-on. There were 83 people in the tournament and Nora and Chris also were playing. The game started off pretty shaky and I was down to half of my stack in just the first 20 minutes when I played a couple medium pairs pretty aggressively, but wasn't able to get people out and they started betting when the overcards hit on the flop. But I was able to translate a couple decent hands into some good pots and by the time the break hit I was the big stack at my table. Of course that wasn't saying too much since there were 7 other tables, but it put me in a good position. Over the next couple hours things went really well. I was playing pretty tight but still had some excellent starting cards that held up well. The tables started dwindling and people starting moving around, and the next thing I knew we were down to 2 tables (about 16 people) and I was about third in chips. The blinds were such that they didn't affect me very much at all but others were going to get blinded out. Accordingly, I (and the other big stacks) just sat back and let the blinds perform their attrition, only playing good hands in position. Twice in a row I had AA when the big stack to my right made it a big raise. I went all in both times (since it was big enough to not fool around but to actually take the money) and he didn't call either time.
I wound up in seat 7 at the final table and was in the money and still in excellent shape. My cards had slowed down some, but the blinds were still taking people out. I played a couple hands and was able to knock out a couple smaller stacks when I was in position. But finally the blinds started to get to me and I had to make a couple moves, but nothing was happening. Finally, when the big blind was 10K (we started with 2K in chips), I only had 16 K total so went all in with my 10,7 unsuited. a big stack opponent called with 6,8 unsuited. The flop was 4,7,K. Of course he hit his 5 on the river. So that was it, I wound up 4th out of 83 and got $481 for my efforts!!