blackmagicz
Vegas Trip Update....day 2 and 3....
Yup its 8am in vegas as I write this trip report (part 2) and guess what....as you have all followed on twitter I am at some final table of some event at the Venetian. LOL . Damn all of you for investing in me making me play 24 hours of poker which has numbed my brain to nothingness....LMAO :)
Ok so here goes....Day 1 of the Venetian 2100.00 deepstack event. Get over at the Venetian around 11ish to register after having a Cinnabon for breakfast (keep note of my dietary requirements for future run good sessions as pointed out by Betrthanphil). Arrive and meet up with Betrthanphil, who I must say is an awesome guy to hang out with and talk strategy with. He made the last minute decision to play the 2100 as well, and we joke about having to play heads up for the money. (Which I would be sure to cut a deal ASAP as we all know he is a tourney beast :))
The day starts off relatively quiet (follow my twitter for posts), run into Phil Laak and Jennifer Tilly, see Tony Dunst, Jake Cody (who actually sat at my table for 2 hours - see twitter for fun updates).
The caliber of play in this tournament on day 1 ranged from 4-5bets pre by aggro players to limp call "I have no clue what I am doing but it worked in some lifetime so I will continue to use this strategy"
My approach to this tourney was pretty straight forward, play TAG....seems to work, don't get out of line and use my image to my advantage. Which I did, made some nice timely bluffs and was able to steal at keep up with chips. I really didn't get much going and I had a few sweats (as per twitter) but I made it to dinner feeling good.
At dinner break I grabbed food with Betrthanphil and because my phone had died had to book it back to Aria in 1 hour to get back in time for the start. Let me just say that was quite the adventure. It took me 25mins to weave through people on the street, got back to my room, grabbed my crap....got in a taxi this time and told the cabby if he could get me back to venetian in 10 minutes he had 20 bucks coming to him. Dude did some crazy taxi shit on the service roads and we were back at Venetian in 6.5mins. I missed 2 hands of the start of the next level. He also said he would look for me today if I made it....LOL
Throughout the rest of the tourney I ran into people who just can't fold and it killed my chip stack so I was left on life support for the last 6 hours of the tournament scrapping away with bigger stacks, playing a lot of position and basically trying to keep up with the blinds and antes...which for the most part because its a deep stack with a good structure allowed me to squeek into day 2 with 32K....after my last table of the day decided that anytime I shoved with my stack it wasn't worth calling because clearly it was important for them to keep their 400K stacks...which moving on to day 2, quickly evaporated.
So that night I retire back to my room with the completed goal of making it to day 2. Fresh start tomorrow, get a goodnights sleep, talk a bit with Gamblor and make a deal with the Run Good Wizard across from the Mirage. Easy peasy.
The next morning the gf (ANGEL) who is on this board, and has told me I need to make sure that I re-name "the gf" part of my trip report to something more prominent so we discuss that fact and head over to the Rio to meet up with Steve Kerr, Betrthanphil, Krazykoby, and a few more OPT players to eat a nice breakfast buffet at the Carnival Buffet.
Once again take note...run good breakfast includes, orange juice, eggs, bacon, and 2 danishes, and a slice of apple pie.
We finish up breakfast talk about our war stories and enjoy the buffet. We then all decide to head over to Phil Galfond's "seminar" on PLO. I think we missed the slide show as when we walked into the room he was answering questions from people. Pretty interesting, I took away a few things, like AAXX isn't ever 3 betting live in PLO OOP. Thanks Phil, I will use that (looks like he is having to transition from online 6max to live ring as well). I guess he will post some more insight on his site for discussion. Nice to see we will get some live coaching too :)
After that everyone is off to the 1500NL event....Angel and I hang out with the boys as my re-start wasn't till 2pm, we listen to Bruce Buffer do the opening "shuffle up and deal" and we stroll through the WSOP rooms and fanboy people like Phil Laak, and a bunch of online pros....woohoo...
So 2pm rolls around and we are approaching the re-start....it takes literally 1/2hr to walk from Aria to Venetian...the side walks are too damn narrow. I get there just in time and Angel lets me know that I will do good and I have nothing to worry about. Usually when she says "she has a feeling" it ends up working out well. Oracle....possibly...and yes feel free to PM her or ask her questions on her thoughts when anyone else is playing a tourney...it may save the lot of us many headaches if we know we are going to get blown out before it even starts....LOL
Right away at my re-start Dennis Phillips sits down at my table. Sweet...I get to play with a pro. He is a really nice guy, we chat, I really appreciate a great ambassador of poker and I let Dennis know that we should have a good time at this table and let's play some "friendly" poker.
Well no sooner do I mention that my stack goes from 32K to 150K....2 double ups...feeling good...including one from Dennis himself. I cracked his AA with 66....really weird hand. I had 66 I opened, call from MP and Dennis min raises??? Really weird and I thought he would have at least made it a little tougher for me to call. Anyways I spike my 6 and CR him all in after he fires out a continuation bet. Turns out the MP had AK and didn't re-raise....ok.....so once again we are in bizaro poker 2100.00 buy in that looks like a 100.00 home game....
Having adequate chips and some breathing room I go into "peacful grind" mode where I sit and watch larger stacks battle with 4 and 5 betting. It was quite entertaining, I picked my spots and chipped up. (as per twitter).
The money bubble took forever...there were 3 short stacks (under 50K) and they were all struggling, including the gentlemen beside me who litterally folded every hand (hmmm 5BB please be shipping it when folded to you) only then to tell me how he would have made 2 pair, a flush, a straight, basically he would have 1M chips....(side note..he is now the shortest stack at the final table with 150K...so go figure)
Meanwhile on the other tables Carter King, (online pro) is racking up chips and is having a grand ole time. Finally the bubble bursts and I min cash....sweet :) BAP will be paid again to all....hahahaha...
At this point because there are money jumps at 19,17,15,12, I decide to play for those....as you saw from twitter I got really short when we were 13-15 handed and just sat patiently and asked for Run Good and it seemed to help.
When we got to the final 10 we merged to 1 table and I broke the action for the day after opening with AK only to get shipped on....and obv I snap call. Dude had KQ and I held :)
So here we are folks, day 3 of a 3 day event, I have played 24hrs so far, playing great poker during this whole tournament, great reads, not really getting too lucky but having hands hold when i need them to for the most part. But I have put my money in ahead all but 1 time (K10 vs A10...I spiked a King, like on Family Guy, Spiderman says "everyone gets one")
I got to talk to Carter on the way back to Aria as he was going back to Panorama to drop stuff off and then sweat Shawn Deeb at the final table (they are room mates). Took a few pictures with Run Good Wizard Gamblor (see twitter or FB) and he loved the name Gamblor so much he is now using it. I did tell him my story that I passed him by the night before walking back and silently asked for Run Good. He laughed, I gave him a generous tip and went to the Skybox Bar where I drank too much Yager, man I was hammered last night....LOL :)
Re-start is at 4pm today, I feel really good, little in awe of the whole thing (making a final table never loses it's lustre). This officially is my biggest buy in tourney to date and according to all forums, is usually one of the tougest events.....so I am happy that I am there, got a healthy 599K with Carter (chip leader) having 933k. Blinds continue at 5K 10K with 1K ante.
The table itself is pretty tough filled with online pros so I will let my cards speak and see what can materialize.
Just one note for BAP. Sorry I missed the GN/Caesars tournies on Sat and Sun, I hope you all can forgive me, I will return the BAP accordingly when I get back to Toronto. I just ran into a problem with this 3 day tourney.....as you can see....Final Tabling ain't easy.
On that note, I may try to squeeze in a tourney tomorrow for one of the two values that people bought in for, I will post here and on twitter tomorrow if I decide just to see if I can get some more BAP for PFC .
Thanks again for the support guys, I really appreciate all the encouragement and I hope we get more BAP stories in the weeks to come as the group that is down here right now is doing awesome (but I will let them tell their story :))
