Vegas WSOP Trip 2010

Brief summary of my trip.

Flew BA from Heathrow where I eventually recognised John Tabatabai in the queue for the extra security checks at the gate, but only when the security guard tried to pronounce his name. Checked in to the Rio and went to bed, but slept quite bad, like I did for the whole week. No fault of the Rio, room was fine, clean, bed was great, just on the wrong timezone.

Got up next day and registered for the $1500 PLO8 along with 850 or so other players. My first table was quitean interesting, mixture of players, all of whom seemed to know at least the basics of the split pot game. I was in seat 2, Brandon Cantu was 2 to my right in seat 10, guy on my immediate right was a $2-4 PLO8 cash grinder who plays on Stars.

Early action saw a lag in seat 6 get felted a couple of times, he tilted quite bad when Stars grinder rivered quad 9s to scoop a pot. This led to my first competitive hand, when I called his ep raise with A26K and got all in on a Q8x flop. He had A29K, which was exactly the kind of hand I was expecting to see. I had better lo draw and a backdoor flush, which duly came in on the river for my first 1k+ pot. Got some more chips from seat 3 on my button when I turned a set of 9s and no lo came in. Eventually worked my stack up to about 4k or so and felt comfortable.

Critical hand for my whole tournament happened about 1/2 hour from end of Level 4, I raised pot pre from cut off with AA56, small blind called with 9TJQ. Flop was 38J rainbow and we got all in with my expectation about .61. Turn 3 improved this to .68 but the river 10 gave him his straight and the scoop. Hit that and I would have been approaching a 10k stack. As it was I was down to 3k having not used any of my rebuy chips at all.

Table dynamic immediately changed, previously I had raised UTG and seen the whole table fold to me. Tried it was A246 later and got called 5 times. This was lucky as I got quartered for the lo and still only saw my stack go from 3.5k to 3k. Took out the Stars grinder just before the table broke with another rivered flush and moved with about 7k stack. This was not enough on 150-300 blinds, especially when you are card dead and moved to 2 tables with player who had mega stacks and raised every hand.

Looking back at the second table, I can't think of a better hand than A48J , but to stay in with it would have meant calling 20% of my stack. Third table I was dealt and raised A234 from the button, but the flop was 2 hi and that was the last hand that would have potentially given me any returns. Of the better players, there were no hands that stood out that I thought I would have played differently to the way they did.

Also played a couple of $200 hold em tournaments, less said about these the better. I have completely forgotten how to play hold em tournaments and might as well have tried some $1-3 or $5-5 cash with the buy-ins I dropped.

Anyway, back in the UK for 24 hours before I fly out to New York on business on Tuesday. Then I will start focusing on building up my bankroll so I can go back next year.