Trip Recap Part One

Trip Recap Part One

I started this post as a day one recap, but I never got a chance to finish it. Before starting the recap, thanks to everyone who was following along on Thursday and Friday (Crackhouse, represent!). The trip certainly ended well (see supra), but getting there was tough.

I started off playing a few hours of NL 2/5 at the Rio. After learning that I should not bother trying to bluff the players on Sunday night (-$364), I put that lesson to use for a couple of hours on Monday morning to make back $280 of the losses. Monday night was the $2500 triple draw tournament at the WSOP. My starting table was tough - two online pros who knew what they were doing, Billy Baxter (one of the two greatest lowball players of all time), and an aggro European player (who was first to bust). CK was also there, and with David Sklansky and Barry Greenstein at her table, it was a rough start for both of us. I pretty much had to play my best, but a combination of poor play and busted draws resulted in an early finish in either level 4 or 5 after the dinner break.

On Tuesday, it was off to the Venetian for the $330 deep stack event. They had 982 runners for a 75-table tourney (they took alternates through level 4). After taking a stupid beat early (paying off the BB with JJ after he flopped top two with 9h5h), I managed to chip back up to the starting stack in the first few levels. I was able to maintain the starting stack until the blinds started getting high and tables were being broken down. I drew tables poorly and ended up paying the blinds back-to-back. With about 8k left and the table being broken down again, I (rather frustratedly) pushed over the top of an EP raise with KQ from the BB and was called by AK. A pretty dumb play, as I probably had an another orbit before being truly desperate; but to the extent one can be on table-break tilt, I was on it. I went over to the Wynn for some NL 1/3 after the tourney, and after bluffing off my first buy-in (it doesn't count 'til the second), I managed to grind my way back to just above even at the cash tables.

On Wednesday, it was off to Binions for a $220 tourney and NL 1/2. The tourney was more of a typical casino tourney. Players weren't nearly as serious, and everyone seemed to be there just to have fun. Unfortunately, that meant folks would call all-in re-raises pre-flop early in the tourney with QT (I had AK and thought he was stealing given how much he was raising), and I had a fairly early exit.

I played a slightly profitable cash game for a couple of hours after the tourney until F-Train gave me a call. We decided to meet for dinner and mixed games. Sadly, we couldn't find any mixed games and ended up playing NL 1/3 at the Wynn. It was an interesting game in large part due to the presence of Roxy -- a former "5/10 player" who supposedly couldn't deal with the variance of bad beats. She was probably the most aggro player I have seen in a while, and raised between a third and a half of the hands pre-flop (and would then push folks around after the flop if they stuck around). She had a very high variance playing style, but her ability to get paid off (and general ability to avoid paying other people off except in one hand where she was clearly beaten by a solid player's flush). I tried to pick my spots carefully, but my reluctance to re-raise with jacks out of position resulted in missing the best opening to chip up.

Ultimately, it was a disappointing -$75 session, which meant that after four days of poker through Wednesday night, I was down around $90 at cash games and over $3k in tournament buy-ins -- not a good first half of the trip. Part two to come with the tale of a dramatic change of fortune (and maybe even a noteworthy hand or two -- which were pretty much absent the first half of the week).