Complete Recap of Bellagio 2000 Final Table Part 1

I arrived 15 minutes late to my starting table for this tournament because I was sweating the OU/UT game in the sportsbook. When I got there, I found a table where I recognized just John Gale and James Hoeppner. I really liked the look of my table.

I nutpeddled as I always do for the first hour or so in shallow tournaments. Then, a crazy hand that I already wrote about came up when I had about 6700 chips 90 minutes into the tournament. We started with 6000. A guy limped up front, a newly arrived Tommy Vu limped, and an amateur who seemed very tight but had exploited some limps already raised to 500. I found QQ in the BB and cold called. I think this is the only option. The others called. Flop 872r. I thought about bet/folding, but ended up checking. The others did the same and the amateur instantly bet 1500 into 2050. I puked on my shoes and finally decided to go for 6200 total. I'm not exactly sure what the correct play is here against this guy. I almost called to see what happened on the turn. I think you can make a good case for this. It was folded back to the amateur and he thought two long minutes, turned two kings faceup in front of himself and then tossed them in the middle of the muck! I was shocked and felt I absolutely had to show the Qs. I usually think people who do this kind of stuff are assholes, but I intended on nitting it up for a while longer and thought it might help (even thought it wasn't a bluff, lol).

Later, I full doubled through a fold button-less kid with 66 vs his AQdd on 679 with two diamonds. Turn and river were lovely bricks, and my table broke that instant. I got moved to a table with Arnold Spee, Tom West, Gioi Luong, and some unknowns. One of the unknowns was some know it all kid who loved to analyze every single fucking hand at its conclusion. People reading this: Don't do this kind of stuff. Just sit in your seat, play poker, don't educate people, and enjoy yourself. Poker is very boring, and there is no reason to talk about the game. Just play.

Later, I won a huge 3way AI with AA vs JJ vs Gioi's Q8hh on T327 with two hearts. This propelled me amongst the chipleaders with 27 left at 95000. I now found a table with Nick Binger and Paul Lieu. I lost a sick, sick pot to Binger where I got set over setted against him. I raised red 99 up front. Nick just called in MP. Flop A63 wif flush draw. Check-Check. Turn magic 9 but two flush draws now. I bet 4900 into like 8000. He called. River offsuit K. I valuebet him all-in for 21000 into like 18000. He snapped so fast my heart sunk even with the 3rd nut and of course showed me AA. My hat is off to Nick for how he played this hand. Most people close to the money will just try to take down the pot but Binger played it for absolutely the most value.

Nick took one more nice pot off of me as we went to dinner break, and I took 49000 to dinner with average around 42000. We were at 21 players with 18 getting paid.

I 3bet AI once with AJo for a bunch against a Binger open with 20 left and then 3bet with the intention of calling AI with AQo against another Binger open on the exact bubble. Thank God he didn't wake up with monsters because it would've been a long, long flight home if I bubbled. I hung around as we entered the money. My redraw table had Justin "robert07" Young, Binger, Kelly Samson, and David Peters. I battled hard for this entire table and made it to the ten handed final table as either the shortstack or next to shortest.

On the very first hand, a guyy named Mark Kuhlmann opened in EP for a scary large 7500 at 1/2000 and I found a T first then actually rooted against sweating out another T. Alas, I did have TT and decided to go for 42200. I just don't really fathom folding here. Maybe I would if I was just trying to fold to the final table. It was folded back to MK and he called with JJ. As I mentioned in my blog the other day, a few of the other players started celebrating as if the night was over, lol. The dealer quickly spread out a board of x x x x T. I rivered perfect to prolong the night.

We took a 15 minutes break. We came back and the first hand back I found JJ and raised to 8000. This amateur player who was kind of an asshole sat up in his seat asked me how much I was playing (I covered him by 8000), thought, and then raised to 20000 total. This is a really disgusting spot for me. I decided to call 12000 more. Flop 644 rainbow. I checked and the guy insta bet all-in for about 60000 total. I pressed call. The guy screamed, "Shit!" and then turned over two tens. heh. Turn x. River x. I had him covered by just 8000. This propelled me to co-chipleader with Nick Binger at the end of the night at 180000.

SS