O-Poker

I got to the Rio around 2 PM on Monday, checked in with no problem, showered and made my way to the Amazon Room.

About halfway down the 2 mile long corridor between the casino and the Amazon Room, I overheard someone leaving the Amazon room on his cell phone, "....The flop came J88. He bet and I raised......" I didn't hear the rest of the conversation, but I knew what was to follow. It was a sure sign that I was at the WSOP. I hadn't even made it to the poker room before encountering my first bad beat story.

I made it down to the Amazon Room, got accustomed to the layout, purchased a safety deposit box, and made my way to the SNG satellite line. I wanted to ease back into live poker and figured that the sng sats would be the cheapest, easiest way. About 1 1/2 later, I chopped a $225 with two other people for $800. It was great to start off with a win. There weren't any real exciting hands, but the play was horrendous. They are total crapshoots. In the $225 and below sats, you start with 1k in chips and the blinds go up every 15 minutes. On the 1st hand, 3 guys limped for $25, the SB raises to 300, the blinds fold, one of the limpers folds and 2 cold call 30% of their stack on the 1st hand after limping. The flop comes Q,rag,rag and the SB shoves. The other 2 players fold and he shows Q10. As we got deeper, players were opening for 3x BB (60% of their stack at times) and folding to re-raises. When we were 4 handed, I shoved 4 times in a row without getting called. I could go on and on, but take my word for it - the lower sng sats are extremely soft, but high variance.

After the satellite, I went and grabbed some quick dinner and headed back to the Amazon room for some 2/5NL. My table was fairly tight for most of the night and I walked out up $180 after 4 1/2 hours.

Yesterday, I met weakplayer for lunch at the Venetian and then we sat down at the 2/5NL with $1k max buy-in. He left shortly after the start of the NBA Championship game up around $500. I waited until halftime before cashing out up around $380. (hand details to follow in a future post)

After watching the end of the game at the Rio bar, I went up to my room to look up Bayne's phone number and headed to the Amazon Room to see if I could catch up with him. I ran into sprstoner as I was walking by the bar and we hung out there until Bayne and CK joined us. It was great to finally put some faces to (screen)names. CK ran pretty deep in the WSOP PLO tourney, but can up just short of cashing. Bummer. :(

After several beers, I headed back to the satellite room and played a $525 sng sat. I had brutal luck and eventually went out with AK vs KQ all-in preflop. I'd rather get those beats out of the way in sng sats than cash games.

It looks like I'm playing the $2k WSOP tourney tomorrow. Hopefully, I can play well and run well.