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 5x 5x and he raised to 10x, once the original raiser had folded, I made the call. The flop came 4x 4x 2x, there was a chunky c-bet, then it went check- check on the 3x turn and 2x river. He showed Ax Kx, 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 Tx 8x 8x, 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 from Tam 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 Ax Kx 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 Kx 8x from the small blind. The big blind raised to just over three big blinds, and I came along to see a Jx 7x 4x 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 8x 4x, 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 fold 8x 8x with four to act behind me, including the monster stack, who calls. Ax Tx for the all-in player, Tx Tx for the big stack, flop of Ax Jx 8x, 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 Ax Qx vs. Kx Jx to 27bb.
At the 13-hour point, I picked up Kx Kx and shoved my sub-average stack, managing to get called by one of the larger stacks holding Tx Tx 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 with Jx Jx 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 3x 3x 2x 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.
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). Shoved Ax Kx on 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 6x 8x 9x 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 Ax 8x 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 8x 4x. There’s a four on the flop.
This is poker.
