First off, apologies for a lack of any posts since June, I
have been a little busy and haven’t had much time to dedicate to writing, but
finally I have finished a short account of my Vegas voyage from a few weeks
back (although it seems years ago now!)
I was hoping to be able to write a blog about some successes
during my recent trip to Vegas, but alas there were none, I had a solitary cash
in the all tournaments I played during my 12 day stay, this was a 9th
place in a $125 re-entry tournament at the Aria which only yielded a min cash.
I took a notepad with me hoping to jot down some notable hands for inclusion in
this blog but quite frankly there were none and any that were vaguely
interesting would involve a bad beat story, I am not one to encourage the
posting of bad beat stories anymore so will not discuss any specific hands in
this blog in any great detail.
I will however give a typical example of the kind of play I
found myself up against, this happened in the WSOP Event # 53, a $1500 buyin
with a starting stack of 4,500 chips. We were in the 1st level so
the blinds were 25/25 and I get dealt JTcc in mid position and open to 75 and
pick up two callers, at this point we had only played an orbit or two and this
was only the 2nd or 3 hand I played. The flop comes down with a
rainbow 2 3 9, the SB checks and I bet about half the pot and get one fold
behind but the SB calls, I had seen him call continuation bets before then give
up on the turn so I planned to fire any turn which was a 7 giving me a gutshot.
He checks and I bet around half pot again and he calls me again, the river
brings an ace and he checks to me, I think at this point I should have given up
but I bet another half pot and he called and showed K3 and I lost a chunk of
chips triple barrelling into a calling station.
As we played more hands it became apparent that the 3 guys
to my immediate left were good but the rest of the table was weak but it was
difficult for me to isolate the weak players and I was out of position in pots
with substandard holdings so I quickly decided that I was going to have to play
value hands only, which was a distinct problem as I had very few hands at all,
while I looked on in horror as opponents failed to value bet 3 streets with
hands such as 2 pair and sets against the calling stations. I eventually bust
in level 5 losing AK to AQ and 88 to AJ, both were standard plays for both
players due to the short starting stacks, most players were by this time having
to 3 bet shove. The other WSOP event I played in (59b, a $1000 buyin which I
qualified for via PKR) followed a similar pattern.
The standard of play throughout my trip was pretty poor,
with the majority of players being calling stations and very little 3 betting
going on. This means it can be difficult to put players on a range of hands a
lot of the time but in general against stations the best approach is usually to
bluff infrequently and value bet thinly. The main problem I had here was that I
rarely had any hands to value bet with, in the middle of my trip I went over a
week without seeing AA or KK, and only had queens once, the times I had medium
type hands I often ended up value owning myself by betting 2nd pair
for example against a calling station who happened to have top pair, or who
rivered a second pair and checked / called the river. I could count the number
of flopped sets I had out there on one hand so I found a lot of my time was
spent folding which invariably left me having to play shove / fold poker a lot
of the time and the various races I got into rarely fell my way.
During the latter part of the trip I picked up a cold and
this put me off playing some of the bigger events at the Venetian (by this time
it was apparent that the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza was better value than
the shallow stacks at the WSOP) so my poker plans didn’t go to plan. Regardless
of this (and feeling under the weather) I still had a great time and am eagerly
looking forward to returning again but with more of a focus on some of the deep
structured games that allow some play early on without putting a large
proportion of your stack at risk.
Aside from the poker I had already done the tourist side of
Vegas but still enjoyed evening walks and watching the Bellagio fountains and
the like. I attended PKR parties and met friends, both old and new, although I
didn’t feel up to a couple of them and had to miss them out I did catch the
latter part of the Wet Republic Pool Party, I was delayed due to railing
Eleanor on the final table of the Venetian $1,100 Deep Stack, which she
finished 8th for a very tidy $9k, well done Elz J.
Overall, despite the poor results on the poker tables and my
cold, I enjoyed myself and hope to return next year, in the meantime the online
grind is my main focus with some live tournaments thrown in during the year.
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