WSOP - Round 2

I spent the last couple of days playing smaller stakes poker, golfing, and relaxing. The golf was great, but poker outside of the WSOP has been a bit disappointing thus far. I seem unable to get into any real rhythm in the smaller tournaments I’ve played and never really accumulated any chips. In cash games, I have found myself quite unlucky, losing some large pots on the river when I was a large favorite. Anyway, I figured I would just have to turn things around with my next WSOP tournament…

I picked Sarah up from the airport Wednesday night and we headed over to the Rio to complete her registration for Thursday’s WSOP event. We watched a bit of World Series action, and then headed home early to get some sleep for the event.

So after 3 days, it was back to the Rio poker room for my second crack at a World Series event. This time it was Event 9, $1,500 buy-in, No Limit Hold ‘Em, 6-person tables, and there were 1,236 entrants.

We again started with 3,000 chips, and given that it was a short-handed tournament (6 players per table instead of 10), I was expecting a lot of aggressive play. Fortunately, I wasn’t sitting with any pros today (except for a handful of young “internet pros”), so I didn’t feel too overmatched at any point. Besides an early hand where I made a flush and eliminated a player, I did not get involved in any large pots for the majority of the day. I was never able to get my chip stack above 9,000, but this didn’t seem to be a problem, as every time I found myself low on chips, I picked up a few hands and bounced right back to keep myself in the game.

I made it through nearly 6 hours of play without putting myself at risk too many times, and we were about 1 hour away from the dinner break, when I picked up pocket queens under the gun. I had about 5,000 chips, and with the blinds at 150-300, I raised to 850. The player immediately to my left re-raised to ~2,400. With the blinds about to increase and my stack getting smaller, I decided to make a stand. Besides, the only two hands that would be favored against my QQ are AA and KK. So, I pushed all in, and was instantly called by the opposing player. I knew what he had before he even flipped his cards – the dreaded pocket aces. I would need to catch a queen to stay alive, and unfortunately, I didn’t find any luck on the flop and was eliminated. I ended up finishing about ~270th out of 1,236 – a drastically better result than my first event – but still short of cashing (the top 126 were to be paid).

I wasn’t as frustrated with my exit today. Picking up QQ when someone else has AA isn’t exactly fun, but it certainly isn’t as brutal as flopping a flush and losing to a higher one.

Sarah didn’t have much more luck than me in the event, and despite amassing a solid stack of chips early on, she slowly came back to the pack, and was eliminated a short while before me.

I came to Vegas with the goal of cashing in at least one of the WSOP events I play, and I still have that goal. However, with two events under my belt, my odds are certainly decreasing, and the realist in me would suggest that the level of competition has been tough enough that I definitely can’t expect to ease my way to the money in any event.

By the way, the guy who eliminated me from my first tournament (Robert Lipkin) ended up finishing 4th in that event and taking home a pretty nice little paycheck.

Sarah is here until Monday night, so we will be playing some cash games and smaller tournaments, as well as enjoying a little Vegas nightlife over the next couple of days. She has a couple of friends in the poker world who are out here, so we may be meeting up with them at some point as well.

Also, sorry about the lack of pictures – I had hoped to post some of either Sarah or me playing or just the Rio poker room full of players, but we were both so busy playing and then depressed after being eliminated that we didn’t get any good shots.

My next WSOP event isn’t until next Thursday, but I will try to update you all on my Vegas goings-on before then. I am quite confident that I will be able to report on some winnings at some form of smaller-stakes poker over the next 6 days!