| $1500 HORSE: Staying Alive |
[Jul. 1st, 2008|05:00 am] |
After a couple relatively short days of play (we've only played 18 hour-long levels), I've made my second WSOP Day 3. In decent shape with $151K. The average is 115K, 20 others remain. Phil Hellmuth, of all people, has the chip lead at, at $287,500. I'll take action on him *not* winning this bracelet, make an offer on the right price.
In most previous events, the ones I've witnessed at least, they've played down to the final table on day two. For the $5K stud/8 event, my other cash this year, they played until 7:15am to get down to eight. I wish they would have followed the same procedure this time around, because I was still fresh and ready to go at 3:20am when we quit for the night, while a lot of the others were falling asleep.
Interesting or pivotal hands, in no particular order:
Day 2, somewhere around 2am
We are down to four tables. I'd recently picked up a few pots to get to almost 140K, near the chip lead at the time, although I'd anted/blinded down to maybe 125K. We are eight-handed, but the adjacent table has just lost its second player and is down to six, so they need to balance. The floorman, who is chatting away and not really paying attention, comes over and moves the player from our 2 seat.
Meanwhile, we ante and deal out another hand of stud/8. I complete with (8A)6 in a decent steal position and get heads up with the bring-in, Victor Ramdin in the 7 seat, who calls with a trey. In the meantime, players at both tables are pointing out to the floorman that the other table doesn't need the two seat filled, they need the seven, and that player has to come from the same seat at the other table. He returns the player in our 2 seat to us, and announces that Victor has to move instead. I joke that they should move him now and kill his hand.
The hand plays out:
(8A)67A4(9)
(??)35J2(?)
I check 4th, he bets.
I bet 5th, he calls.
I check 6th, he bets.
I check 7th, he bets, I call hoping to chop one way or the other (or maybe even scoop).
As he slams down his hand he announces in an annoying nasally voice, "It's called a WHEEEEEEEEEEL sir!"
The hand cost me $40,000 in chips, from one of the leaders back to below average, and it shouldn't have happened - wouldn't have, if the floorman had been paying attention and moved Victor in the first place.
Day 2, very soon after
Tommy Hang raises to $10K from the hijack (button-2) in hold'em, I call heads up in the big blind with KJ of clubs. Flop is Qc 8h 5h. I check, he bets 5K, I raise, he calls. Turn is the 7c. Hmm, now I actually have a real semi-bluffing hand, so I bet out 10K. He raises to 20. Uh oh. Now I have to call for my draw. The river is the 9d, and I check fold. I managed to spew off 100K in chips through these two hands, when an average stack is only 65-ish, in about 20 minutes. At the 3-table redraw I was down to 38,500.
Day 2, late, soon after the redraw to 3 tables
I'm a little bummed about having a puny stack of 30-something thousand, when this razz hand comes up. I have (96)7 and steal (semi-steal? is that a word?) into a 6 and a 9 and some paint cards. Esther Rossi, a tough local player on my right, reraises me to 10k. Everyone else folds, and I call. I have (96)73, she has (xx)74. I check, and she checks. Good news! Did she pair? Fifth street comes (96)73K for me, (xx)74Q for her. She bets 10k. I count out my chips: 23K remaining. I think for maybe 2 or 3 minutes: did she check behind because she paired? Or because she's trapping? Or just to reduce variance in a close situation, when her 4 was actually good. Do I want to commit here? If she's paired the 4 I might get more bluffs out of her depending on how the cards fall, but also run the risk of her catching better later and forcing me out. But the main consideration is: do I want to commit here, or wait for something better than this? I decide the pot is too big and my tournament EV will be much higher playing the hand than not. I count out 20K and bet, marching into what I expect to be another all-in confrontation that's not too lopsided, the kind of thing I'm trying to avoid.
She folds quickly. I think she had to make a pretty big mistake somewhere. She can put me all-in for 13k more to win over 60k. Even if the 4 paired her, she's still got something like 30% equity against my hand. If she was snowing then it makes sense for her to take a shot and bluff on fifth, but then she had to make a snow reraise on third against a short-stacked complete, which is a pretty bad play itself.
Anyway, I'm happy to collect the chips without questioning, and start my comeback. (I used my awesome poker superpowers to quadruple up from 38K to 151K in the last hour of the night, so that's where I stand)
Later at the same table
Chad Brown brings it in with a king. Victor Ramdin raises. Everyone else folds, and Chad Brown calls. On 4th Brown is showing KT versus 36. 36 bets, KT calls. Victor asks, "What game are we playing?" Everyone answers, "Razz!" Fifth has fallen poorly for Brown again. He says, "wait, this is razz?" but then smiles, and shows a 24 unsuited with the rest of his hand. He clearly knew it was razz. What the hell?
A bit later in stud, a short-stacked Chad raises with a K high on board, I reraise with (TT)J, he calls, gets all-in on 4th. He shows (4c9s)Ks4s. Huh? I make tens full on sixth and he's drawing dead, disappointed to be unable to sweat the flush draw he'd picked up with his pair.
WTF? Chad Brown has a good tournament record, but I don't understand how that's possible when he makes plays like this.
Day 1
My starting table was excellent, and lasted quite a while. Good break there. After four hours, most of the players were still trying to remember whether the bet doubles on 4th, 5th, or 6th street in stud games. One woman sat honestly expecting that the O portion would be PLO.
Finally we got broken, right after dinner. I got moved into amazon green, but stayed there for 15 minutes before we got broken again. This time, I sit down and am greeted by Daniel Negreanu "Hey I know you, you're big grapes!", which draws laughs from Perry Friedman and Allen Cunningham, also at the table. Three $50,000 HORSE players, along with three others who seemed to play reasonably well? No thanks. Table change again in less than an hour.
Four times over I managed to avoid the flop games. When I left my starting table we were in the middle of the E round. At my second table, we'd just started stud, and broke at the end of the stud/8. At my next table, we started on razz hand 1, played through part of the E round, and then broke again to stud.
In over three hours the rounds I played looked like this:RSE(break)SE(break)RSE(+1 hand of H, break)SE. Sweet! I'm personally more comfortable in the stud games, while the opposite is true for most players. Take the HO out of HORSE!
I've been from the bottom to the top and back again these last few days. I was down to a single chip late in day one before surviving and bouncing back, then again in day 2. I had been betting a razz hand heads up through 5th and was down to my last $2000, enough for a couple more antes. I checked through sixth, and we checked through seventh, and he won (he probably should have bet, and I would have had to call and be eliminated). I got all-in for the bring-in in razz, in a 3-handed pot, and more to triple up. Lather, rinse, repeat, and by the next break I'm up to 85K, leading the table.
One of the guys at my table came up to me on break, "How did you know? Why didn't you put those last two chips in in that pot? You could easily have just gotten 'em in and gambled, full value!"
I was trying to save my last few chips to use as antes and have a chance to get the ante multiplier "bonus". It's a powerful concept in stud games, one I had in the front of my mind after recent conversations with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) prock, and after having turned 2500 at a level with a 2000 ante) into 65000 in the $5000 stud/8 a couple weeks ago.
Basically, don't give up in stud tournaments! You have a much better chance of winning a few hands and being right back into it than with hold'em.
Alright, sleepytime!
For those who care to sweat along at home, we start at 3pm PST:
http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2008-world-series-of-poker/event-51-1500-H-O-R-S-E/
There could be lots of media hoopla as Phil goes for his record 12th bracelet. How great would it be to get in his way? |
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