All is Well that Ends Well

I’v just spent four days in Vegas and am just about to check out of my hotel room. I played three live tournies while I was here. I played a $1,000 freezeout where I got all my 23,000 stack in on J 10 6 flop in a single raised pot at 200-400 with a 50 ante with K K versus a pretty spazzy kid who had 8 6 and managed to bink a 6 on the turn to pretty much draw me dead. It could defiantly be bad to get all the monies in there with just K-K, but the kid seemed pretty wild, so meh.

Second tourney was the $1,000 rebuy. I was in for $3,000 and played really solid after the rebuy period at a pretty tough table. With 17 players left I lost a huge pot for close to twice the average. During 1k-2k with a 300 ante, I open in MP to 5,000 with A K playing 115,000, Sam Stein flats one to my left and covers me. A fish on the button with a tonne of chips also flats and the BB who I think was Chris Bjorin shoved, for what I thought was around 80,000. I pretty quickly shoveled my whole stack over the line and the other two guys folded. Chris showed A-9 and after his stack and mine were counted up, it seemed he had closer to 120,000 (nice shove!). The flop came king-high but I managed to get done by his flush. I was pretty disappointed, as I felt I’d played very well at some tough tables all day. Also given the fact there was $75,000 ftw helped towards the pain.

Yesterday I played the $1,000 freezeout and lasted about four orbits. I was still pretty steamed over my bust out in the $1,000 rebuy I guess. I managed to go down from 10,000 to 6,000 in the first two levels without doing much. My bust out hand was pretty meh. 100-200, folds to a middle aged dude in the SB who’s been pretty active and he makes it 600, I have A-7o and call. I have position and for sure will make a move or two if the situation calls for it. Anyway, the flop comes 5 5 4 and he insta c-bets 1,100. He just looked very uncomfortable to me so I shoved. I figured I could get him to fold out his better Ax combos for sure. WRONG! He called with A-Ko after little thought and managed to hold.

So after three unsuccessful tourneys you would think I would be hating poker. No, I went straight back to my room after busting and loaded up a tonne of online tourneys. This proved to be a great idea as I won the FTP $200 turbo for $16.5k. I played very solid and ran pretty well. It felt great to win a tourney again. I had a few other small cashes in the session, totaling about $17.5k. So as I leave Vegas for Augusta National, I have had a winning trip to the tune of about $10,000.

Next for me is the Irish Winter Festival. I have a good feeling about it. I would love to have a deep run in this, given the fact it’s in Dublin and also sponsored by Paddy Power Poker. For those of you who haven’t already qualified get onto Paddy Power and play in some of the huge seat giveaways they have.

I’m off to Augusta National to play golf for a bit, it is a tough life.