Vegas done for another year......

Obviously my day 2 of the main event was pretty short live otherwise I would have blogged again before now, lol. i doubled up my micro stack pretty early with AQ vs A6 and found myself on a more playable 14k at 250/500. I'm not the type of player that will sit and wait for things to happen so as soon as i have some flexibility with my stack ill look to start building chips. This ultimately proved to be my downfall not long after when I raise with Q6 suited and the BB defends. The flop comes T high 2 of my suit but I have around 11.5k stack behind and don't want to get check-raised all in as I would be getting my money in bad most of the time. With this in mind I elect to check behind and take the free card which duly arrives in the form of a 7 on the turn completing my flush and the BB checks again. I now bet 2.2k into a 3.5k pot hoping to get check raised all in which also happens, however he tables the A4 flush and I'm heading for the Rio exit for the last time in 2008.

I played 1 more live tournament which was a $5k buy in WPT preliminary event at the bellagio. 15k starting stacks and a 1 hr clock allowed for a fair amount of play but did miss out some blind levels IMO which still made the action pretty fast n furious in the mid-late stages. My first table was pretty soft with 3-4 older guys limp calling raises and giving up most pots post flop, allowing me to build steadily and never risk a significant % of my stack. My first big confrontation came up when UTG and UTG+1 both limped, i completed the SB with 36 clubs and the BB checked his option. The flop was T 6 3 two hearts and me and the BB both checked which prompted a small bet from the UTG guy which was called by the UTG=1 guy, back to me and I check raise the 600 bet to 2400. This gets the BB and UTG out of the way but UTG+1 thinks for about 30 secs before declaring all in for 11k total, this was a baffling line and could only really put him on some type of flush draw, maybe combined with a straight draw. With the money already in the pot I called fairly quickly and he turned over K4 hearts and didn't get there, I was up n running, :-)

I continued to chip up on my initial table, avoiding big confrontations and applying pressure at the right times to the weaker players at my table, when this table broke I had around 55k at 300/600 and was happy. My new table was a little tougher with bracelet winner david kitai (sp) amnon filipi, stuart rutter and we would later be joined by michael mizrachi. I stayed quiet early on the new table trying to get a feel for the dynamics etc..., However when i did get involved nothing went right for me. Kitai opens for 2100 at 400/800 in MP and I call in the next seat with TT, we are both playing 50k+, filipi in the next seat also calls and then the middle aged guy in the next seat leans forward looks at all our 3 calls of 2100 then at his cards and quickly declared all in for around 19k total. Kitai quickly folded and I high fived the dealer and isolated all in, this got filipi out of the pot. The squeezing hero turned over A7s which was a better hand than I expected to see given his obvious body language regarding the squeeze but i was still in commanding position, unfortunately he makes the nut flush on the turn and I'm not amused, lol. My next decent pot comes up when UTG opens for 2500 at the same blind level and rutter goes all in for 12.5k ish in the next seat and I wake up with AA and re-isolate again, everyone else folds and Stuart turns over KK, but a K right on the flop gives me another kick in the balls. I then win a small race with AK vs JJ to knock a guy out then make 2 marginal river calls vs filipi n grinder that were both right and got me back on track a little. I then went super card as the blinds went up again and we started to approach the bubble. I had about 60k and the blinds were 1000/2000 -200 when I misplayed 1 hand pretty badly. I raise KJs in mid-late position and the big stack with probably 200k + flats on the button, the flop is T xx rainbow and I c-bet but as soon as i do it i know it has a super slim chance of working. I know if the roles are reversed and I have that stack I'm flatting stacks like mine on the button and raising them on flops just like this one. I only have to wait for about 10 seconds before he puts it right in my eye and I obviously have to fold, sigh. Even though its weak I think i just need to check fold this flop, check raising all in is an option but not one I'm too fond of given his stack. The very next I get JJ raise and get re-raised all in, standard call for me and he has AK and hits and I leave about 10 places short of the money, blah. I ran really bad on the 2nd table but sometimes it goes like that but a little disappointing as it was my final tournament of Vegas 08, ah well always next year...................

Didn't get up to a lot after that tournament, took the whole house for Kobe steak that i had to pay for since i lost the PLB bet to moorman, $2100 in my eye. Some heavy drinking sessions in the house and a little bit off online play rounded off the trip. Online I had lots of last 2 table finishes but was either getting unlucky or blowing up falling short on more than one occasion. I did manage to win the $30r on UB for about $5.4k busting my housemate allinstevie 3rd in the process which was sweet, :-).

I am now back in the UK for the 1st time since June 2007 and its good to catch up with family n friends. I plan on attending the GUKPT festival at luton in early august which should have a pretty good social side to it as well. There is a blue square online festival running at the moment, and I hope to play the $500 main event on Friday. They have odds on the blue sq website, I believe I'm 50/1 and will be playing as Bobvance if any1 wants to waste some money, lol. Moorman may be playing as 1namroom and is joint 40/1 favourite. Congrats as well to moor who is now number 2 in the pocket 5 rankings and is only a matter of time b4 he gets to number 1 imo. Shame he doesn't run as good at life washing his passport 3 days before leaving Vegas, lol

That's about all for now, pretty jet-lagged and keep falling asleep at random hours hopefully that will change soon and ill get into a routine again.

Drinking, playing online and main event day 1

So, since my last post there has been a few mammoth drinking sessions, a few online sessions and i completed day 1 of the main event, just. The first drinking session involved going to the Orleans and playing 1/2nl while ordering White Russians at record pace. The night became super messy with shots of sambuca coming into play later in the night. There were too many funny pots to recall them all but stevie was stuck like $5k in the game, I lost a $2.8k pot to moorman with 2nd pair and moorman had over $3k on the table and managed to lose it all before we left. We headed to the rhino at 7am on Tuesday morning so wasn't exactly busy and somehow made it back home for about mid-day via KFC drive through. The rest of the day was obviously a complete write off with me occasionally moving from my bed in order to get water.

On Wednesday I played online and had a pretty sick day, playing 3 tournaments on stars and making the final of all 3, as well as an 8th place finish in the 100r 6 max on F.tilt. My best result of the day was a 2nd place in the $300 f/o 150k on stars for just shy of $28k, I had massive stack at the business end and played it really well IMO but went a bit card dead at the end and entered heads up with a pretty big deficit. I managed to make the stack a little bit more even with my 800k playing his 1.1m when the final hand occurred. I had JJ and he had A4, basically he called my bet on the flop with a gutshot, then called my big check raise on the turn before binking it on the river, pretty sickening but a nice result nevertheless.


Thursday saw me play day 1a of the main event at the Rio. confidence was high going into this tournament after several good showings so far over the course of the trip. i had a nightmare start dropping from the initial 20k starting stack to 9.5k at the first break mainly from 1 big move where i check raised the turn with and up n down str8 flush draw and put in a pretty big bet on the river when I bricked. I was pretty quickly called by A- high, sigh, and that was a pretty big set-back. I grinded all day long, never getting back above 10k stack until mid-way through the last level of the day when my QQ doubled vs KQ to take me to around 14k. From there I quickly built up to 23k as the guys on my table were playing pretty tight and with 5 mins to go before the end of the day i looked like coming back with a playable stack for day 2 when the blinds start at 250/500. However the most disappointing hand of the day then arrived when I raised KJ UTG and then randomly fired 3 barrels vs some old guy with no pair no draw and left myself with a mere 7450 going into day 2. I have no excuses it was poor judgement and terrible play on my part and will need to get lucky at the start of day 2 in order to have any chance of progressing.

Thursday night after the main event turned into another drinking session including multiple jager bombs. Sunrise swimming then ensued and multiple injuries were incurred but no-one knew until they woke up the next day. Stevie has a massive gash on his foot, and I have 6 or 7 big cuts on my arm as well as several on my feet, o well, nothing too serious, all good fun. Friday was spent recovering again before waking up early today (Saturday) to play the bigger buy in online tournaments. I was really tired after a terrible nights sleep and was really unmotivated and got nothing going early doors and tried to tilt shove out of my last few and go back to bed. However in the $50r I got a lucky treble up and hit a 20k stack at 150 bb and was chip leader so decided to play properly. I one tabled this for the rest of the afternoon and eventually won it for $7.4k or so. That's about all for now, I plan on playing a full Sunday session before a day off on Monday then short-stack my way to glory on day 2 of the main event on Tuesday.