WPT 500 80/20

Trip Report

Table

I spent the whole day on a table which didn't fit with the description I was getting about the field from everyone else. There were very few 4bs, no 5bs, noone showed down a crazy random bluff, it was actually a reasonable standard of play. I had Kev Houghton to my right, but otherwise noone else I recognised. Unfortunately, to my direct left, I had a guy called "Kane" who is apparently friends with Ludo and was bordering on the spewey side of aggressive post-flop at times (although the hands didn't show down, so he may have just had it every time, and noone seemed to adjust to how he was playing). Two to my left I had Morten Mortenson, who is just good. I ended up having to play a little tighter than I would have liked, and for the most part we left each other alone.

First Break

The first two levels were pretty boring, standard stuff. Everyone was folding a fair bit, noone was getting too ool, we barely played a hand. Antes kicked in at level 3, and lead to our first big hand. We open

utg to 450 at 75/150/25, and get 4 callers. We continue on a board of

to 1200, and get one caller. We continue on the

turn for 2500, get called again, and bet 10k on the

river and get paid by

.

We also played a pot vs Kev where we 3b AKos from the button vs his late position open from 350 to 950, and see a flop of

. Checked through the flop, checked through the

turn, and I called a bet of 1500 on the

river to lose to KJos.

Second Break

Nothing worthy of note happened until about 20 minutes before the break. I open AKos utg to 1000 at 200/400, and get called by the button. Flop came

, we c-bet to 1.5k, he calls. Turn is the

, we continue for 3k, he calls. River is the

, we value bet 5k, he thinks for a bit and makes it 10k. This was a pretty weird one, had the guy tagged as being on the loose passive side, and didn't seem to have a particularly great handle on bet sizing and pot size, standard live player really. Bet the river for value from any K, which I'd be surprised to see fold and is going to make up a large amount of the villains range. After i folded, he told me he had a K with a shit kicker, which made me feel better about the fold assuming he paired said kicker at some point.

Third Break

Pretty much nothing remarkable happened for the first two levels. Was pretty card dead for most of the next two hours, lost a few small ones where we opened/3b and caught bad flops, attempted a squeeze with A10os to a loose early position opener who got a bunch of callers, ended up getting back-raised by Morten and just gave it up. Then won a small one BTN vs BB where I made a small hero call with third pair on a very wet board that bricked out and was good to be even for that session. Then, on the next orbit, I played another pot BTN vs BB where I opened

and bet two streets on

(or something like that), and decided at the break that I probably check back most of my showdown value hands ott and bet most of my draws, making it quite easy for Morten to call turn pretty wide. Also given our stack size it allowed him to check/jam his draws and force us to fold a bunch of really good hands. We checked back the river and lost to

, but should have lost about 4k less by not betting the turn, or attempted to win the pot by jamming the river. Still feel a river jam is completely unnecessary given the fact that this is the only name on the table, and going crazy on him where there were going to be a bunch of softer spots seemed spewey. So, bad turn bet from me. This took us down to 15bbs territory.

Got a few jams through, then found the double when I jammed around 17bbs utg with JJ and won vs AQ. Last hand of note in this level saw us call an early position open on the button by a guy who was playing a little too tight and very ABC with

. I called a c-bet on

, a board which just doesn't hit him at all, he's not going to suddenly go sick on, and one where we have backdoor everything so if he does happen to have something huge we can still find ways to win. It goes check/check on the

turn since we no longer need to bluff to win the pot, and I put out a small river bet on the

and wasn't called.

Fourth Break (getting into brag territory)

Got QQ in vs a short stack pretty early on and held to go to over 60k, and then basically failed to pick up a hand or a spot for the rest of our time in the tournament. Rather stupidly stuck a guy in who opened off 7bbs when I had KQ and unsurprisingly lost to AA, where anything other than folding is bad. Then opened

utg, got called by the SB who had been tight and played fine in the few hours he'd been at the table. Unfortunately he'd chosen this moment to get uncharacteristically optimistic with

, and we didn't win on 58QKQ after betting the turn pretty big. This took us back to being short, and our bust out hand involved us jamming 15 or so bbs with 88 from the co and losing to the button's QQ.

Probably the most fun hand I saw of the day was one that happened in the last level I was at the table, and I wasn't even involved. Guy on my left opened utg, got called by the sb. Flop came

, I think the action went check/bet/raise/call. Turn was the

, action goes bet/raise/jam/call and when the cards get turned over its

for a straight vs

. Dealer duly pings the

for the two outer, and the pain from the guy on my left cheered me up an awful lot :p

Anyway, unfortunately all those shenanigans resulted in us not making day 2. Just want to thank everyone for investing again and say sorry for not doing better, really really wanted to pay out on this one, especially after I got so much support. Flame away on the HHs, and good luck to everyone left in!