The good thing is, this tournament went better than the rest of the weekend. The. bad thing is, I was still short of the money.
The Orleans Sunday Special is a regular feature during the series, with a low buy-in ($300 for 25K in chips, though there’s an $100 add-on of another 25K). Still, for $400 bucks, you’re playing for a guaranteed $100K.
As usual, I was there at the beginning, even after staying up a little late Saturday night (not Vegas late, just well after midnight watching part of The Thing Expanded). I went ahead and got my add-on at the table, since everyone else seemed to bet doing it. The second hand was a little exciting; I looked down at jacks and got a call, flopped an ace, c-bet, got another call, and by the time we got to the river with a decent sized pot, my opponent flipped over jacks and we made no money.
Managed to spread half my add-on around the table in the first hour; not the most auspicious beginning. Unlike the Seniors tournament the day before, I wasn’t catching hands at all (not that it really helped me there). It wasn’t until 90 minutes in that I had a hand I could play, which managed to get me back up to my 50K post-add-on stack, but I was back down to 32K by the first break.
I was still under 50K three hours in when I limped from early position with 5x5x and managed to flop a set. The player I’d split the second hand with raised, and continued betting on the flop and turn with a king and queen on the board. I was all-in on the river and got called, she said “I guess I was right you didn’t have a king or queen.”
I got queens in the small blind not long after I reached 100k and made a 4K raise over several simpers at the 800bb level, only to have there eldest of them re-raise to 18K. I called, then he jammed 32K on the jack-high flop. Calling would have put me back down below starting stack; I just laid it down, though I had to send a message to Brad Press questioning my judgment.
I folded a couple of other hands to the same character over the next ninety minutes, both times where I raised or called a raise pre-flop and then he made a large re-raise or bet after the flop when I didn’t have a pair. Then, I raised AxTx when he was in the big blind, and after the AxQx9x flop, he check-raised my c-bet and made another big bet on the 7x turn. This time I stuck with it, even though he’d put in more than a third of his stack, and he just folded when we both checked the 4x river. That got me up to 150K, about three added-on starting stacks.
Nick Getzen showed up at the table and the table banter picked up nicely, as we caught up a little. I kept climbing slowly, until I opened with 6♠7♠ and flopped a gunshot straight flush draw that I tagged along for about 40K in after one player (A♠K♠) got all in against a set of jacks on the turn.
It took an inordinately long time for the clock to get updated with payouts after registration closed, but finally the numbers. Finally the numbers were posted, 601 entries, with 81 payouts and $35,131 at the top.
After a table change, I went from being one of the bigger stacks at my table to not, and a dearth of playable hands as everyone’s stacks were getting shorter ate into my now-little stack until I was down to barely more than what I’d bought at the start. It was still enough that I was able to pick up some with a shove (K♠J♠ in early position over a raise, I went from 70K to 100K) and I caught a little wind to climb back to 200K, though that was still only about 25bb, and we were 40 places from the money.
Then…disaster! I shoved about 20bb with AxQx from UTG and got all the way through to the big blind…who had AxKx. We were still 20 from the money, there was no way he was laying that down to ladder. He flopped a king and it was more or less over. I was down to 7bb, which only lasted about 10 minutes.
Beaverton Quarantine NLHE Bounty
My live poker n Vegas was done for the trip. It was 8pm, I had a 7am flight back to Portland the next morning so I could go to work. There were still a couple of potential games on my schedule (the $200 Deepstack at WSOP, a Crazy Pineapple tournament at South Point) but I still had to pack and wake up at 5.
But I got a text that there was a special Sunday night game with my Friday online group. It started at 8, but by the time I noticed it after busting out at the Orleans and ordering a rideshare, late reg had almost finished, so I logged in while I was riding back to the Rio and played as I walked to the room (and rode up the elevator), getting a flush in against a flopped set of threes that turned into four of a kind by the river, leaving me with less than 2bb.
Forgot to mention yesterday that I saw Martin Kabrheltwice! between the time I got to the Paris and the time I got registered for the Big O Satellite. If you see him three times in five minutes, it means bad luck.
Orleans Summer Open $100K Guaranteed NLHE Seniors
Got up bright and early to get ready for this one. Since I was a late arrival to poker (at least in my current incarnation), I’ve been playing seniors tournaments as long as I’ve been coming to Vegas for poker. My first Hendon Mob entry is from a Seniors tournament at Caesars.
Maybe I did see Kabrhel three times, because somehow despite having kings three times and flopping quad sevens once, I never managed to get over the starting stack in more than three hours of play.
I was seated across from Bill Stabler, whom I’d never met but whose name I was familiar with, as he’d been a feature of various write-ups here over the years, including where he’d finished second in the WSOP Seniors event. Bill mentioned that he’d driven up to the Orleans with someone who pointed me out from behind and referred to me as “Simpsons”, presumably because my card cover is modeled on an accessory to a Professor Frink figurine.
Bill busted out, I made a bit of a recovery from 1/4 starting stack, ran what may have been an unknowing bluff, then immediately blew it all with a nut flush draw vs. a set of kings.
Something that was on my radar was the WSOP Online #9 PLO PKO 6-Max bracelet event at 3:30pm, which had a satellite at 1pm. But I could not get the WSOP NV app to run. Issues with the servers? There was no indication what the problem was. I didn’t want to schlep over to Paris/Horseshoe just to find out there was a systemic problem, but it did occur to me that there might be an issue with other players in close proximity, which I know Caesars exempts for their own properties but maybe not Boyd?
I got a sandwich and planned my next move. Which ended up being re-entry into the Seniors tournament. I signed up just before a break and found myself at a table two seats from Bill again, only this time he had a stack that must have been over five times the starting stack.
Again, things just didn’t go well, and I was out in about 90 minutes when I shoved J♣T♣ and was called by ace-rag from a big stack who caught an ace on the flop. Didn’t even make the end of registration.
Orleans Summer Open $10K Guaranteed Big O
There were only about 20 minutes before the start of the Big O, so I signed up for that. Things were going on reasonably well. I watched a hand where a player potted on a KxKx6x flop and was re-potted. She folded, showing a pair of sixes and her opponent showed he just had trip kings, which led to some self-recrimination. Not long after, I flopped a set of jacks on a QxJx7x board and pushed hard on the flop. On the 5x turn, I was all-in and she called for less, making an 8-high straight and low on the river, leaving me with about 10bb.
I did manage to run that up to about half a starting stack before the end of things. I headed back to the Rio.
WSOP.com #9 PLOSSUS PKO 6-Max
When I got back to my room, I checked in on the status of WSOP NV, and, indeed, the app was running just fine, so my guess about why things weren’t working at Orleans appeared to be right. Fortunately, I was able to use my debit card to add some money to my account and jump right in, though perhaps that’s not the best thing to do when the average stack is already double starting stack in a PKO. My table had one player with a 4x stack, and in the half-hour I was in the tournament, players were dropping like flies. Eventually, I fell, as well. Fun format, though.
And that was it for the day. I made calls back home, got a chocolate shake, and came back to the room just in time to catch the last 30-seconds of fireworks over New York New York celebrating the Knicks championship win.
My options for making it to the World Series of Poker this year were narrowing. Stuff at work. Family stuff. Was it really worth it with the increased cost of flights and everything else? But kind of at the last minute, I decided to take a flyer on a weekend trip.
Because of the aforementioned stuff, I was looking at the middle of June, and noticed that the $10K Big O Championship had a Friday evening satellite. Figured I’d give it a shot. So I made that my tentpole for the trip, scavenged the schedule for all my backups if I didn’t make it, and booked the flight.
Got to the airport on time, only had to wait in the TSA line for 10 or so minutes, had all my metal off and pockets emptied, but the scanner warned about something in my groin area, so I got a very thorough pat-down—I was worried that without my belt on that I was going to be pantsed in front of a couple hundred people—then my bag got shuffled into the examination line, and it turned out that what set off the x-ray was the metal card protectors I’ve been using and taking through airport security for 14 years.
Got through security thinking I had plenty of time to get to the gate, then found out I really had a lot of time, because a text had apparently come though just after I’d left the house that the plane was an hour behind schedule getting in from San Diego, so my carefully-crafted plan of getting into Vegas with enough time to get to Paris/Horseshoe, get WSOP-verified, and try to figure out where the satellites were taking place was all in the crapper.
I was traveling light, so I got to the rideshare, then the Paris. The Verification table just had one guy when I got there, but there was nobody in front of me, and it went pretty smoothly except for the part where I had to actually register for something with my card before I could get it verified. Fortunately, there was nobody behind me except for Micah (also registering for the satellite), and another staff member showed up just in time to take care of him.
Got to the Bronze section of the Horseshoe Events Center (I still don’t know exactly where) as they were reading out instructions and got the first hand. Unfortunately, one big hand where I flopped a boat TxTx on a TxAxAx flop went south when the 2x hit the turn, and I never managed to recover (though I wasn’t the first or the second person to bust from our table. Went broke on a double-aces hand where I flopped a set and was all-in, but a backdoor low draw and a spade flush draw got there. Not even rebuying into that. It ended up with 353 entries, 34 $10K/seat prizes. At the time I busted only 70 minutes in, I could see Micah, Adam,and Mopar all still there.
Off to the Orleans in the morning for the $100K Guaranteed NLHE Seniors event. 10am start!
We’re in the run-up to another Poker Summer Camp in Las Vegas. It was 10 years ago when I worked at the World Series of Poker as a live reporter. Fifteen years since my first time playing in Vegas. I haven’t been there every summer, and skipped several years since working there entirely. Missed last year, and it’s going to be a stretch to find the time to get down this summer, even after a couple of decent cashes this spring. At least my most recent game there was a win! I’ve got some ideas…
Online
My Chainsaw experience continues to be mostly negative. Not because I’m not enjoying it, but because the player field includes a lot of people who are actually good at mixed games. I thought I was—and around Portland that may have been true at one point—but throw me in the water with people who’ve won bracelets and maybe not.
I stepped up the pace a bit this month after the cash in April’s PKO. 20 tournaments, which started off with a nice second place in a Limit Hold’em. Then it was 19 more tournaments (Pot Limit Omaha, 7-Card Stud, Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo (2), 7-Card Stud Hi- Lo (2), 8-Game Mix (5), 5-Card Pot Limit Omaha, HORSE (3), Limit Omaha, more Limit Hold’em (2), Limit Omaha Hi-Lo) with only a single cash from a small LHE game and four stone bubbles. That was painful.
Because I was stepping up my non-home game play this month, I only participated in one of the Beaverton Quarantine games, placing in the middle of a single-table PLO Bounty tournament.
Live
My former work colleague Ben—who’s made a couple of trips to Las Vegas with me—is back in Portland and wanted to get together to play a little poker. We headed to Milwaukie’s Stadiums Sports Bar, the remaining outpost of the One Good Hand Oregon Poker Club for their Friday night $50 No Limit Hold’em tournament. We had a couple beers before joining in, then I lasted about two-and-a-half hours before busting halfway through the field. Ben made it to 4th place, though!
Portland Meadows Poker Classic
Middle of May was the Portland Meadows Poker Classic.I popped in for Monday’s 5-Seat Guaranteed NLHE Main Event Satellite, pumped in a couple of buy-ins, then missed one of the 9 tickets by three places. I regmaxxed the PLO Double Board Bomb Pot tournament on Tuesday and only lasted 35 minutes but with all of the early rebuys still ended up in the top half of the field.
Since I didn’t win a satellite seat, I bought in directly to the series’ $100,000 Guaranteed NLHE Main Event. I’d entered the time into my schedule as noon but realized things had started an hour earlier when Devin Sweet looked at me disapprovingly, so I sat down in the middle of action. Not long after I sat down, owner Brian Sarchi looked up from a conversation and called over that he’d just been talking about not having seen me for a while (we had a nice talk ourselves during a break later) and I’m attributing everything after that to good ju-ju from this incident.
I’d played against one of the table young guns (at this point, almost everyone is a young gun compared to me) before and had noticed how he battered at early betting pre flop with massive raises, so when I called a small opening raise with 5x5x and he raised to 10x, once the original raiser had folded, I made the call. The flop came 4x4x2x, there was a chunky c-bet, then it went check- check on the 3x turn and 2x river. He showed AxKx, my fives took the hand and he seemed a little annoyed, but that might just be me.
A couple of hands later, he opened from seat 8 with a normal raise, got called, then the player who’d opened in the previous hand (seat 2) 3-bet, the young gun 4-bet, and the guy who’d called him (seat 9) shoved all-in. Seat 2 re-shoved, and all three players got it in pre-flop with kings (seat 2) vs. tens (seat 8) vs. jacks (seat 9). The flop was Tx8x8x, and it’s luck like that you need to have to win.
A couple hours after I registered, I was moved to one of the upstairs tables. I’d never been upstairs at the club—it’s not usually opened up to the public—but people came from all over the Pacific Northwest for this tournament, which promised to have one of the largest prize pools in region for the year (hey, it’s why I was there!). With only three casino venues in Oregon and Washington running tournament series these days, there are just a handful of events per year this big. Anyway, the upstairs is everything you might have been expecting—and more! Seriously, though, I did hear a couple of people saying they missed the hubbub of voices and clatter of chips in the first floor space where there were more than 20 tables.
By the end of hour four, the prize pool was more than double the guarantee, and there was still half an hour of registration. After a couple levels of stagnation, I was slowly starting to climb, especially after getting someone to call an overbet on the river when I held ac7c and there were four clubs on the board. I was up to three times the starting stack (about 150% of the average) at six-and-a-half hours in, with more than half the field gone
Our table upstairs broke at the seven-hour mark. Got aces in the small blind and squeezed over a raise fromTam Nguyen and a call. Showed it to establish a little table cred. Then I lost a significant chunk drawing against him when it was a big blind defend I should have just tossed.
Beat down another Tam open with queens in the small blind, then AxKx on the button against the table chip leader who called my 3-bet got me back up to 200k.
Blind vs. blind, I open-called Kx8x from the small blind. The big blind raised to just over three big blinds, and I came along to see a Jx7x4x flop. We check, and it’s 8x on the turn. I bet about 3bb, he called, and a Kx on the river gave me two pair. I opened with a bet of 6bb, he quickly called and shows 8x4x, then says “Wow”. Will it stop him from raising that hand on the big blind again? I doubt it.
Halfway through the ninth hour of the tournament, we’re down to 72 players, with half of the remaining field getting paid.
A player from out-of-town who’d been at my upstairs table with a lot of chips had had some things happen since I’d last seen him, and he shoved his short stack after seeing a A♥Q♥6x flop. one of the big stacks at the table made a large re-raise, and the biggest stack shoves, with the other big stack calling all-in. The biggest stack has a set of sixes, the other large stack has K♥J♥ for both Broadway and nut flush draws. It’s a Tx on the turn, and more than half a million chips transfer between the players, making what I think is one of the first million-chip stacks in the tournament.
My caution gets the best of me sometimes. A player on my right shoved for almost all of my chips, I fold8x8xwith four to act behind me, including the monster stack, who calls. AxTx for the all-in player, TxTx for the big stack, flop of AxJx8x, and I missed a chance to triple up, but it was the right play.
Opened J♣9♣ and got a couple of callers with a flop of K♣Q♣Qx that got checked through to a T♦ turn and even better 6♣ river (though the T♣ would have been nice). For comparison to the big stack, that got me to 345k. Oh, and I got aces next hand.
By the time we were hand-for-hand a little more than eleven hours into the tournament, I was just below the 25bb chip average. Hand-for-hand lasted about 40 minutes, I was under 20bb by the time we got there. I managed to double up in the next half hour AxQx vs. KxJx to 27bb.
At the 13-hour point, I picked up KxKx and shoved my sub-average stack, managing to get called by one of the larger stacks holding TxTx and doubled up to over a million, with 21 players remaining and just about 14M chips in play. Three-quarters of an hour later, we were down to two tables. The pace picked up a little, and we lost six players in 40 minutes.
It was on the final table bubble where I made my big mistake. An active player with a big stack immediately to my right raised and I just called withJxJx when the right thing to do with my average-sized stack was to shove. I started the hand with just over a million in chips, the big blind was 60k, I had less than 20bb, but I was in early position and was cautious of the folks behind. With a 3x3x2x flop, I thought I might be safe, and as the player was fairly aggressive, I just called on the flop and turn, then he put out a bet of almost 10bb on the river and I called that, too, because I had an over pair to the board. As it turned out, he had pocket threes, and I was dead from the flop (well, technically, the turn, but…) Anyway I was out in 10th place a couple hands later shoving less than 10bb and just missing out on the final table photo and the potential of another $40K that went to first place. Congrats to everyone who made it.
Photo from Portland Meadows Poker Club Facebook.
Final Table $10K GTD NLHE (x2)
I haven’t played a lot of the Friday night $10K GTD NLHE tournaments at Final Table Poker Club since I poker-retired (I played 20 of them in 2018), preferring to save my poker hall passes for the First Friday $20K GTD, but since it’s late May, the run-up to the World Series of Poker, I decided to hit the last two weeks.
Friday after the $100K at Meadows, I late-registered about 90 minutes in (roughly a half-hour before the end of reg). ShovedAxKxon my first hand and got a fold from the original raiser (starting stack was around 50bb at that point). Then I lost a big hand to the same player for more than I’d won on my shove. A few hands later, I raise 6♠6♣ and Dave Tragethon in seat 1 limp-calls the raise. The flop is 8♣7♣5♣. The turn is inconsequential, and Dave puts me nearly all-in. I shove my open-ended straight-flush draw, he calls with J♣Tx and gets the better flush with Q♣ on the river. I rebuy (there’s a single live rebuy in this tournament, you can’t leave the table and re-enter).
Blinds are up to 300/600 with a big blind ante. Starting stack is 20K, so I’m starting the second bullet with 33bb. On the button with aces. Dave starts to put out a raise from seat 1 before seat 9 has had a chance to act, then 9 puts out a raise of 2700. Dave calls. I shove my brand-new stack. Seat 9 calls, Dave folds and shows sixes. Seat nine has jacks. The flop is 6x8x9x and Dave would have made the set; the turn: 7x, and, of course, the river is Tx. So my rebuy lasts one hand. At least I’m out before the add-on.
The next Friday, tables are turned for a while as on the fourth hand of the night while we’re still 200bb deep I get it in with queens against aces and flop a queen. I’ve already won a hand, so the other player is covered and does not rebuy.
There was a kind of wild hand at the table that I wasn’t involved in where two player got all-in pre flop with 9♦9♥ vs. A♣A♠. The flop was J♦9♠7♣, flipping the script, but then the turn was A♥, which had everyone wowing and winded by the time the 9♣ landed on the river. It’s stuff like that that makes poker such a great game.
The rest of the tournament’s unremarkable, I call a shove for half my stack and lose a flip, then get cut down to half a starting stack, work my way back up to start, and make it to the end of registration. Got the add-on and after some consideration the re-buy, so I start the next session with slightly fewer chips than I would have if I’d max late-regged and just bought all that I could.
Four hours in, I was down to 10bb and shoved Ax8x from the hijack. The blinds were in an animated World Cup discussion and the small blind says “Call” but just puts out enough chips to call the big blind, who just checks. The dealer points out there’s an all-in and asks if small blind wants the floor after the big blind folds. Small blind looks at my meagre stack and shakes his head, turning over 8x4x. There’s a four on the flop.
