Took a walk up to the Bellagio with Rob Garfield as other than two comps in Ceasers i hadn't left the Venetian!!!. It was surreal, walked up to the bar & Freddie Deeb was buying himself a whisky & ice. Whilst i left Rob to buy the drinks for us i wandered around the card room and sat there was Patrick Antonius, Phil Ivey, Clonie Gowen & Barry Greenstein casually playing a small cash game
In Bobby's room was Eli Elezra and David Benyamoune and some random donators. A very strange experience to see people in person that i had previously only seen on TV.
Since my last update i played 3 further tournies and a satelite. Firstly the satelite. A 10 handed affair for $130, top two get 'lammers' for $500 and $70 cash. 1500 chips & a 15 minute clock, great fun too with some truly awful players. 2nd hand, a guy who i had played with earlier in the day, who took great offence to anyway re-raising him or attacking his blind, so much so that he would call someone's all in blind even if it was for half his stack!!!! anyway with the blinds at 25-50 he makes it 125 to go, i look down in SB at KK so decided, with my knowledge of how he reacts to re-raises, to push for 1450 more. He says if i have u covered i call. He counts out his chips and sure enough he has 1500. so he makes the call leaving himself 25 chips and turns over
. I somehow manage to outdraw his monster and he seemed genuinely aggreived that he lost the hand ffs!!!! Nothing else of note until we get 6 handed. The blinds are 75-150 and i'm in the BB. UTG bets 700 of his 750 stack, 2nd to act makes it 1700 (he has 5000) 3rd to act pushes for 2600. I haven't looked at my hand yet but i'm praying for
so i have no decision to make. 4th to act folds as does 5th. So it's down to me to act. i look at my first card and it's the
. Feck i thought, lets hope it a deuce to go with it!!, look at the next one...
Jesus, better look at these again just in case. and sure enough they were both red aces. for a split second i did consider folding, then came to my senses, who would fold AA in this situation?, even if they were gonna be played 4 ways. So i was brave and decided to re-raise the moody chinese guy who had originally re-raised the utg raiser, who insta-called. Anyway on their backs times and it was Q 10 (utg was making a move.... talk about timing!!) v AK V KK V AA. AA stood up and wiped out 3 players. Live poker is so rigged IMO
Next up was the $540 deepstack tourney, 15000 chips, 40 minute clock and just 250 runners. Managed to luckbox my way to 11th for a $1500 score. Not the biggest amount of money but was more pleased by my ability to grind it out from about 60 out. In the last 4 hours of this comp i had AQ twice, once outdrawing AK and the other time i had to fold pre-flop. A final table would have been nice with 1st prize of $34k but it wasn't to be sadly.
The next day i played the $540 deepstack with the intention of gathereing a lot of chips or getting knocked out as i was leaving on the thursday. I would have happily changed my flight if i knew if in with a shot of coming back for the final the next day. Arrived fashionably late, and played my first hand, with the blinds at 50-100 i raised to 400 on the button with
and the BB called. The flop was
Nice i thought. The BB checked and i bet 600 trying to make it look like a c-bet that had missed, he re-raised to 2000, i gave it a massive hollywood and flat called. the turn was
again he checked so i bet 1200, to which he made it 6000!!!! At this point it was obvious all his chips were coming in so i put the rest of my stack in and he called and flipped over
. He had trapped me, or so he had thought. No my friend i have trapped you. Well at least that's what i thought!!! I turned over my 10 J and he was nearly sick, but don't despair, this is live poker, its fixed and the
duly arrived to house him up and i was on my way ffs.
The night time tourney was a bit of a wash out too unfortunately, got it all in with AK which was instantly called by mid-position man for half his stack with
and two hours of trying to build a playable stack was wiped out in 30 seconds. And that was it!! No more poker in Vegas.
It was midnight and too early for bed so me, Rob & the sicilian took a walk up to the Bellagio so the sicilian could see it. unfortunately for him there was no big names for him to see. Only Mark Telscher but no sign of his equally if not more talented sister
so we got into a cab and headed for our first trip to the Rio. For those of you that have never been then all i can say is WOW!!!! We watched the closing stages of day 1 of the $1500 Omaha re-buy, still in were Eric Seidel, Layne Flack, Marc Goodwin & Barney Boatman amongst others. We then went to have a look at the other rooms were they hold the satelites etc sat there was Mick McCool. I like Mick and had a chat with him and i'm glad he seems to hopefully be recovering from his recent illness problems. Fingers crossed he makes a full recovery. Also spotted in the Rio were the Hit Squad, Joe Hachem & half of Tikays's great friends Hinge & Bracket.
So that was that, time to go back to the Venetian for the last time. 10 days of poker, poker & more poker brought to an end. Its been a great 10 days. I've met some great people over the last ten days, Dominic Kay, who has a great game and will do well in poker, will definitely meet up with him again. Tom Middleton sp? and his mate Boz? from Leeds, Adam Vinson, only met him on the last day but seemed a nice guy, Kim Phuc (CrazyKamikazeePhucker) on ipoker who has gone from $2 sit n go's 2 years ago to having a $100k bankroll. ECOOP omaha champ last time round. Have known him for a couple of years but finally got to meet in him in Vegas!!!! Thanks to Rob & Kevin O'Leary for their advise before & during the trip, and thanks to the sicilian for putting up with my trainers and waking me up in time for the early midday starts!!!!
And a big thank you to the person that made it all possible!!!! It has certainly given me a taste to go back and thats what i will be working towards from now on.
Thanks for reading.
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