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#184 – WSOP #33 – Daddy’s Got Chips
I’m up a little earlier than I thought – 9:30 AM – so I thought I’d continue with the business from yesterday. I guess yesterday was an unusual day at the WSOP, and because the events are all multi-day, it will reverberate. The usual pattern is to have a mass event at noon and a specialty event at 5 PM. The noon event was the $50,000 HORSE yesterday, and our Mixed Hold ‘Em (a/k/a Mixed Nuts) was at 5 PM. The restaurants didn’t know what to make of it. Combined, the events took only about 80 of the Rio’s 300 tables.
Today has another pair of bizarro events. Noon is the Senior NLHE. I thought Razz was the senior event. 5 PM is Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo. Other than a couple online sites – including Full Tilt – the game doesn’t really exist. It appeals to only two sorts of people: those with way too much gamble, and those who know how to deal with players with way too much gamble. Between the two, there isn’t anything going today for the player between the ages of 22 and 50.
Back to the action from my notebook from last night.
8:20 PM – 15,800. End of 3A. 3B is NLHE, 50-100 blinds. Barney Boatman sat down at seat 6. The player to my left in seat 4 whispered, “who’s that?” I said, so Barney could hear, “that’s a member of the Hendon Mob. That’s Ram Vaswami.”
8:50 PM – LHE, 100-200 blinds. 18,500.
8:55 PM – Break will now be at 9:20, returning at 10:30. PA announcement: “Hopefully, we can come up with a solution to why it’s so cold in here.”
9:12 PM – 17,000. I’ve folded myself through this level at LHE. I’ve played one hand, AK, losing to KQ.
9:18 PM – 16,525 – 2 minutes to break, just finished the blinds. They broke/moved the table next to us.
They announce we should return a few minutes early from break because the whole room will be moved inside. We’ll actually be in the same BUILDING as the HORSE event!
Walking to dinner, I saw a wedding reception where the women were wearing gowns and the men were wearing personalized Phoenix Suns jerseys and shorts.
10:45 PM – 16,525. Restart. Table 64/seat 3. 75-150 NLHE.
10:55 PM – 20,000. Moved to Table 27/seat 6. I played a big hand against seat 2 at my previous table. They guy is very active and I had a sense I could outplay him. I flat-called a lot of his raises in NLHE and took some pots (though he got at least one off me). He raised in late position, which he did 100% of the time, and I had A-Q. For the first time all day, I re-raised him, his 450 to 1,100. He called. I flopped an ace and bet 2,000. He called. After an indifferent turn card, I bet 3,000. He folded.
I’ve got Randy Jensen to my left and his stack is about as big as mine. During the break, Jen from Pokerpages showed me the leader board which had him at 16,000 as one of the chip leaders. (My name was absent from the list.) I know a little how he plays so I vow not to play any big pots with him because he’s (a) unpredictable, (b) on my left, and (c) able to bust me.
11:06 PM – 25,425. I just played a big pot with Randy Jensen. A few people limped on my SB (his BB) and I had JcTc. I called. He raised to 800. I called. The flop was 2-7-8, one club. He led out 2,000. I knew that I had to fold or raise. Unless he had an overpair or a set, I had 10 outs plus a backdoor flush draw. We had talked a bit and I introduced myself; he had read a lot of the things I’ve written, including about him. He said, “Then you know that I like small cards.”
I just called. It was a weak move but I just couldn’t figure out how I wanted to play it.
It became much simpler when the turn brought a magical nine, making me the nut straight. I checked.
Randy bet 4,000. Again, a large bet. Taking my time, I raised to 8,000. He spent a long time thinking about it, mutterd something about my having pocket sevens, and folded. We both spent awhile after that wondering what each other hand.
Now I REALLY don’t want to play a pot with him.
(After writing the beginning of this on Monday morning, I took a nap until 2 PM, something you can do only in the middle of a poker tournament. It’s now 2:30 PM and we play at 3. I’ll continue this later, hopefully much later because I’m playing to the end of the night … and into tomorrow. And maybe with some more nice news.)
