Now the poker people reading this will understand what I'm talking about, but I might need to do a bit more explaining to the regular folk who have someone stumbled upon the ridiculousness that is the life of notilt. Summer in Vegas is the center of the poker world. Everybody is there, everybody wants to be the next (insert name of person who luckboxed the Main Event and likely would be a loser in any tough game online), and nearly everybody loses it all. And who's gonna be there to collect all of their losses, well that was our goal.
Unfortunately, goals are made to be broken and no one really made any money this summer. I'm fairly certain that our house made more money combined on the World Cup then we all did combined for the summer in poker. But, since everybody has been asking since I got back, and I haven't really told the full story to anyone, I'll talk about some of the poker tournaments I played over the summer.
Now, something you non-poker people should understand is that tournament poker is about as much poker as Panda Express is fine Chinese cuisine. Sure, all the ingredients are there, but inevitably something is just a bit off.
But this is what's on TV, this is what everyone wants to play, and damn these things are ridiculously addictive. I wasn't even planning on playing many tourneys over the summer. Sure I was going to play the WSOP Main Event, but had only planned on a couple side events. The rest of the time was to be spent grinding out cash online... Yeah, I failed pretty hard on this one.
So without further unnecessary ado (I feel like I used that word completely incorrectly), here's a break down of some of the more memorable tourneys from the summer.
$1,000 WSOP (No-limit-holdem)
I woke up, showered, put on some GT gear (this would become a standard for the summer), and headed to the Rio. I was about to play my first World Series of Poker event of my life. Last year, they decided to add these $1k "stimulus" events to attract a ton of people and hopefully get some more money flowing into the poker economy. I figured it would be a decent place to start, even though the structure was terrible.
As per usual I arrived about 10 minutes late, and found out that there was about 30 minutes of paperwork necessary to even compete in any WSOP event. So 45 minutes after the noon start time of the event I walked to my seat ready to go. Unfortunately, there was a guy in my seat... I was informed by the tournament director that all of the late arrivals would be starting at 2pm in a second wave. This seemed odd to me, but whatever I was here to collect the 600k first prize and a 2 hour delay wouldn't stop me.
When we finally got started at 2pm, I looked down at 3,000 tournament chips. The first level was to be 25/25, so there was still a decent amount of play in the early stages. The dealer shuffled up the cards and announced the blinds were 50/100. What... the... fuck? What they failed to mention to us about the late arrivals is we'd be starting on level 3. Now, this is most unfortunate as starting a tournament with 30 big blinds is about the same as playing the lotto. In fact, the lotto is probably more fun.
I folded my first hand. On hand 2 I opened from the small blind with 86o and the big blind called. The flop came 752 with 2 clubs, and immediately I was in a terrible spot. I decided to check with the intention of check raising, but the stack sizes were so terrible due to the blind level, that my check raise ended up being all in. The big blind snap called with queens, I turned a flush draw and a pair, but bricked the 19 outer on the river.
First WSOP event of my life... busto on hand 2.
The Venetian Deepstack Side Events
The Venetian runs a tournament series at the same time as the WSOP is going on, which is a bit strange. The V tournaments don't get many entrants, and the prize pools are significantly smaller. However, there's something about the place that makes we want to play there, and 2 day tourneys are much better than 3 or 4 days at the Rio.
I played 8ish of the Venetian side events with buyins ranging from $350 to $1050. I believe I spent about 5k total on these events. There was a constant theme in these events, I didn't cash any of them. There was another theme, I busted 5 of them in the first level. Inevitably I would do something stupid, or get bored after 30 minutes, and decide that I really didn't want to be there that day. Then I would get up the next day and do the same.
I actually did go semi-deep twice. In a $350 event I was about 30 spots off of the money and near the chip lead when I lost two big consecutive pots with 33 < AK and then AK < 66 (both all in preflop) and was out. In the other tourney I went deep in (a $550) buy in, I was in the top 10 in chips with about 100 left and the top 40 were paid. Then something went off in my head, I decided I was bored, and I just jammed all my chips in there with nothing and was out.
In fact, our house played a lot of these events, probably 20 in total, and no one cashed a single one. Even the day we all wore suits to the tournament ended up a failure. Oh well, we looked sharp. Amy actually cashed one of the $350's that I had some of her action in, so that was the only positive note of the V side events.
The worst part about these events, is that after I would bust, I would go play 5/10 or 10/20 cash games at Venetian. Still tilted from busting out of the tourney, I lost lots-o-paper in these side games. Worst of all, I wasn't grinding online and falling further off of SNE pace every day.
WSOP Event #56 ($2,500 No Limit Holdem)
This one took place on the 2nd of July and I was not in good spirits. I was coming off June, which was one of my worst months ever as a pro, and on the actual day of the event, I had my worst day ever online losing about 5k. I laid on a raft in my pool, and decided whether of not I wanted to play the 2.5k WSOP event that afternoon.
I decided that I wanted to play, but I didn't want to put up the entire $2,500, so I called up a friend Jim who has backed me before and he decided to buy 60% of my action. Horstman came over before the event and gave me a little pep-talk about how I'm notilt and all these other busto ass clowns are inferior to me, and I was in good spirits heading to the Rio. Pat was also playing this event, so I had someone to hang out with on breaks and discuss the absurdity that is live tournament poker.
Day 1 went extremely well. Everyone started with 7,500 chips and by the time my first table broke I was up to around 20k and feeling good. I was moved to a new table with a bunch of old guys (good sign) and a couple young guys, one of which was wearing a Team Pro patch for PokerStars. He looked vaguely familiar and I finally placed him as Juan Macieras, who I actually play against on a daily basis. Anyway this table went very well, I got a bunch of chips from the old dudes, and eventually busted Juan. It was nearing the end of the night and I was moved to my final table of the night which included another Stars pro Andre Akkari. We played one significant pot which I won, but not much exciting happened and I ended the day with 70k in chips, good enough to be in the top 20 of the 250 or so remaining.
My day 2 table was really bad. Everyone was around my age and understood tournament poker. This was most unfortunate as there were multiple soft spots still left in the tourney and I happened to draw a table full of internet pros. I swung up, swung down, was basically never outside of the 50k-90k range of chips and nothing super exciting was happening. With about 5 people to go until the money bubble burst I looked down at two black kings and reshoved my last 40k or so over someones initial raise. He called rather quickly with red queens. The flop came King high and all hearts, so he actually picked up a ton of extra equity, but the turn and river bricked and I was over 100k for the first time of the whole tournament. Unforunately, that would be the last pot of the tournament I would win.
The bubble burst and we were all $5,000 richer, and I was completely card dead. A couple friends showed up to rail, but I literally folded for an entire level or 2 and was down to about 80k in chips. An older dude got moved to our table with a massive stack of around 300k, and a few minutes in he opened from somewhere in the middle to 11k and a shorter stack on the button moved in for around 40k. I looked down at two jacks in the big blind and decided it was go time. I moved in for my last 80k and the chip leader went into the tank for about 2 minutes. I was feeling pretty good after all this time, surely he would have called instantly with a better hand. After about 2 minutes I look at him and say, "if you're taking this long, I'm feeling pretty confident" to which he replies, "well, you shouldn't." And then he calls with Aces.
Awesome feeling, getting slowrolled this deep in a WSOP event with an 800k first prize. Anyway the entire table is rooting for a jack after this d-bag's antics, but karma doesn't do it for me and I bust in 103rd place for a little over $6,000.
If you see this man, do something bad to him.
Well this is getting really long, so I'll leave it here. I still have 2 tournaments to write about (the WSOP $10k main event and the Venetian Deepstack $5k Main Event), so those will have to be for next time.
- Daniel
