Hey guys... it's been a pretty long time huh? :) Going to try to commit to blogging alot more frequently, but for this one i'm gonna recap WSOP and then this month (August).
2009 World Series of Poker / Vegas
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Wow, really a sick summer, I played as little poker as possible all summer but had my best experience in vegas for sure, it was a blast. I lived with Skilled_Sox, ShortSharpShock, NemoInDeniaL, and DaPokerGun. My wife was out there with us as well and the household got along super well, which made it awsome, and we also had a ton of guests in and out of the house so what would have been a household of 6 ended up being 10-14 for almost the entire summer. When we wern't playing poker we were gambling on EVERYTHING.
We played Color Yahtzee on the iphone for $1-5 / point, games take about 10 minutes and losses for $1 / point average about $75 / game. We also bet constantly on foosball and volleyball, I ended up winning $3k in a couple hours playing foosball 1v1 which was pretty sick :). We had a household olympics where it was me and my german friend agaisnt ShortSharpShock (SSS) and RumnChess. The events were Mini Golf, Beruit (Beer Pong), 2v2 Volleyball, Pool, HU Monopoly (bracket), Bar shuffleboard, and if need be, a 4-man live HU SNG for a tiebreaker.
We started with pool, which they ran pretty sick in to give them 1-0 lead. Then we came back from behind to win beruit for 1-1, and crushed volleyball and monopoly back to back to give us the 3-1 lead and what looked like a clear shot to victory. (The event was a $500 buyin per person), so $2,000 prizepool was pretty appealing. Mini-golf was close until the very end which they pulled away, and then they easily swept shuffleboard, bringing it allllllll down to HU SNGs. RNC and SSS are typically cash game players, so I thought we might have a decent edge, I beat SSS running pretty well and my friend Al lost to RNC. RNC ended up besting me 2-1 I think for the victory, and their team scooped the $2,000. It was alot of fun, but we were tilted to have lost ;p.
I got to spend alot of time this summer with pretty awsome poker players, we would have alot of nightly games of volleyball at our house and it ended up being kind of a whos who of HU SNGs, games frequently included Skilled_Sox, myself, SSS, Nemo, Livb112/Adonis112, Dibasio, Croixdawg, ScottyBCash, Leo2222, FU_15 (who took 15th in the Main Event this year, sick job Nick!!!), and many others, so it was awsome to have time to bounce ideas of those guys and really get to try to improve my game. I spent some time having liv sweat me which was awsome, and also spent alot of time grinding at Dibasio, Leo2222, and ScottyBCash's place so I got to talk alot of strategy with them as well.
Funniest night in vegas: We all decided to grab dinner and play poker at the Wynn, so we go to this restaurant they have, so dinner happens, good meal, big bill (which another_rack from 2p2 loses the CC roulette on, HUGE beat ;p), and then as we're about to leave, alot of prop bets begin to be discussed about THIS pool:
So the first bet was getting like 20:1 on 1k that you couldn't jump on those balancing balls in the water, you just had to get to the second orb (land one foot on it in any way) and you win 20k, I really though I could do it but was too much of a sally, so no takers.
The SECOND one was for Nemo to jump in the pool, go allll the way to the end of it (at the base of the restaurant), touch the wall, and come back, for $1500. he SNAP accepted, took off his shoes, and jumped in... and if any of you know Nemo at all you have to understand this was the funniest thing EVER, nobody could stop laughing, we were the last group in the restaurant and the waiters all said they were calling security so we decided to leave ASAP... so here is Nemo, standing there entirely drenched, dripping everywhere, with 40k in cash that we then had to move to some ghetto bag you get from shopping at one of the stores.
did it stop us? NO. We decided to go play poker anyways, we get a private table for all of us and play $4/8 mixed-game , we choose limit hold'em, O8, badugi, 2-7 triple draw, razz, and a few others I can't remember, everybody buys in super deep cause it's funny, Nemo is sitting there completely drenched bought in for his 40k... at 4/8 (ROFL), and we end up playing a ton of hours and it was the most fun poker I played in all of vegas, truly awsome night. (even though we got hushed by the floor cause we kept being super loud, and had random people railing our table, so funny ;p)
Anyways, so let's get to the events.
$1500 No Limit Hold'em events x 3:
All 3 of these were a joke, I didn't make the break in any of them, you start pretty short and I got coolered in all of them, was very frusterating.
$2500 Razz
AWSOME event, my table was stacked with famous people, Doyle Brunson, Sam Simon(creator of the simpsons), Barry Shulman (owner of Cardplayer), Chad Brown (PS Pro), Barry Greenstein's GF, and then 2 people I can't remember. did really well in the event for first 12-14 hours, had alot of laughs, really funny table, Doyle was hilarious to play with, talked a ton, told jokes, made fun of Jerry Bus (Laker's Owner) who was next to us, and traded me for candy bars (My skittles for his almond joy), rofl, it was super cool and funny. This was one of my most fun days, spent the day at that table chatting with all the big names and crushing them most of the time, went out to dinner with Dario Minieri on break and we just hung out and discussed both of our recent marriages, but then came back from break and got brought back down to earth, I had the table pretty tilted with my play and ended up having a guy call down with a 666 on his board (in RAZZ!!!!) vs my 248 on my board, and hitting perfect perfect to make a 7-6 low (to beat my 8-6 that I made), for a HUGEEE pot, so that was really brutal, and I ended up busting out about 5 minutes before the end of day 1, but a great event and I will def. be playing it next year.
$10,000 Heads Up World Championship
Sick event, my draws were ridiculously hard, but I REALLY played the best i've ever played in this event as far as my live game goes.
Round 1: Unknown, I crushed him, we barely played any large pots, I just chipped him down to 1/3 his stack and got him in when he was dominated I believe to make short work of him.
Round 2: Live Pro, Will 'The thrill' Fallia, has about $1,000,000 in live tournament winnings, including a $300k win for taking down a live HU MTT, he played OK, but I made a sick call down with K high and kept applying a ton of pressure to him, got him frusterated so he limp/called 3x w/89, flop 8 6 2, he jammed over my cbet and I had AA, GG
END OF DAY 1
so wake up early the next morning to look up our draws, and LOOK who it is, I draw ADAM EWENSTEIN... A.K.A. SKILLED_SOX ... my roomate, on the bubble round, SICK! I draw the #1 HU SNGr in the world, who is also my roomate and good friend, and it has to be on the bubble!
Round 3 vs skilled_sox: I played pretty aggro, there was a spot where he 3bet me and I flatted QQ and flopped quads, but he had nothing so I didn't really win that much, he played aggro and didn't run into alot of hands, and I knew we knew a TON about each others games, so I had him to about 35% of his chips, and he MR'd 20bb deep and I had AA, I decided he knew I would jam here wide as I often do online, and would call me pretty wide and it would a) look alot weaker than just 3betting, and b) be more +EV than flatting, so I jammed and he called 66 and I held, ship it into the $$$, my first WSOP cash... it felt great!!
Round 4: Brock 'tsoprano' Parker... Obviously a sick MTTr and great player, he had already won 2 WSOP bracelets this WSOP alone so I knew it was going to be a tough match. He played very tight and solid, but ran some bluffs and picked some off, it was a really tough match and he got me down pretty low and I got it in w/ TJ on 89x and hit, and then we got it in where I had a gutshot + overcard + flushdraw vs middle pair and also hit, and then I had him kind of low and won a big hand where I was actually ahead, but man, winning 3 all ins I guess I have to count my blessing, great player and tough match.
Round 5: Yevgeniy Timoshenko (A.K.A Jovial Gent / BBaller88), also a TOP HU SNGr, top cash game player, AND has $3,000,000+ in live tourney winnings to boot... WTF, sick draws! I played really well against him and know his aggro style, I ck/raised middle pair (A4 on 2 4 T) and called his 3bet on the flop on the very first hand of the match, board went brick brick and he showed 97o and when he saw my A4o you could just tell he was like "@!$%! , this guy isnt gonna let me run him over". Match went on being aggro, I bluff-reshoved his ck/raise w/ A8 on a K 9 K flop and he folded. Then finally I got it in w/2 pair against his 25ss on like As 4x 8s (I think I had A8, but I might have had A9 for 1 pair, dont remember), and I held, but again, I had him under 60% of his chips at this point so I was comfortable getting it in.
Round 6: Wow... down to the final 8... myself, johnny chan, john duthie, and 5 unknowns more or less, I was def. a favorite to win this event at that point IMO because none of them were experienced HU players. I get Nathan Doudney, an unknown who plays live MTTs and is staked by Erik Lindgren. He played super straightforward and nitty and I ran him over and he was getting obviously tilted. I had a huge rail of all my friends and alot of online HU SNGrs so it was an intense match, we were mic'd up and at the second 'TV' table for ESPN 360 and it was going really well, he was getting visibly frustrated at being run over, so we started with 960k chips and I had him down to 350-400k, blinds 5k/10k.
I have AQo
He raises to 30k, I reraise to 115k (an oversized 3bet) basically setting up a go n go, but mostly expecting him to shove or fold. He FLATS.
Flop 2h 6d Th
He had been really tight up til this point and I didn't expect him to bluff the flop much, so I checked to him, planning to ck/fold to a shove, but he took his time and bet 50k (into 230k). I run it through my head, taking a decent amount of time, he never does this w/ TP or a set with how he's played... thats for sure, I also am 100% sure he never has an overpair here, so maybe a draw, or a pair like 77-99, so I decide to jam. he SNAPS J7hh (LOL @ him calling the 3bet preflop for 1/3 his stack) and gets there :(. So then we get back to even-ish in chips, and even after that pot he is still visibly tilted, he knows he is getting outplayed and getting very frusterated. I end up 3bet/calling a shove w/ AQs... he also has AQs and ends up hitting a 3-flush on the board to lucksack me... SICKENING, $92,580 payout when it would have bumped me all the way up to $220,000. I didn't have 100% of myself, I sold alot of action, but it was still a great score and an awsome tourney. If I could do something differently I would probably play both AQ's differently, I would shove the first one because I was crushing him so much post-flop there isn't any reason to setup a small edge go n go, I know jamming is +EV so I should have just done it. And the second one, again because I had such a huge post-flop edge, he played SOOOO straightforward post,I would have just flatted and not 3bet and then I could have folded the flop and still had a full stack... oh well
$10,000 Main Event
Awsome event, a great atmosphere, and I was in the Amazon Room, so it was a great feeling, I had a pretty soft table with alot of french players, but one very aggro 25/50 cash player and the announcer for some poker show, Lacey Jones, who was cool. I got down from 30k to 22k, then up to 55k, then got in a sick spot with the aggro cash player, I c/r the flop and he flatted, I had a gutshot and a backdoor FD, turn brought me a flush draw, and the river brought my flush making Q J 9 8 on the board and he ck/shoved all in to my river bet. He had already ck/shoved one river against me, and I thought he could do this with a T trying to push out chops, he would DEF. do it w/ KT, etc., so I called w/my 85cc for the 8 high flush, using both cards, and he had A4cc... FML, busto day 1 :(
Well... I feel like that's been a ridiculously long recap, so I will keep the August Recap short.
Great month, took 3rd in Razz FTOPS for about 17.5k profit, and had a 30k month before rakeback. Really happy with the month and I hope to keep on doing well next month. Here is the graph for August:
Hope you all had an equally good month, look forward to more blogs in the near future!
-Primo
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