I’m heading to Vegas with Adrian on Thursday and I’m staying until Monday. The Deepstack is going on at The Venetian and I plan on playing at least one of them either Friday or Saturday or both depending how things go in the cash games. I plan on playing 2/5 cash at the Venetian mostly and maybe Aria.
I will try and keep this updated. I have an Iphone now so that should help.
I got to the table a little before 10 am and bought in for $500 chips in the 2/5 NL at The Venetian. My second hand I look down at AA. Nice. I made it 30 and got one caller. I took it down with a c-bet and no fireworks. The next hand I get AK and make it 30 again and get the same caller. He donk bets me $55 on a 7 high flop so I fold.
Looking around the table the 1st round I only notice 2 players that I probably need to worry about. One was a girl to my left and the other was the guy who called me both times I raised. I’m sure I’ve played with this girl before but I can’t place it. After about 20 min I had built my stack up to almost $700 after winning a decent pot with JJ against the guy who always calls my raises. He again folded on the flop after I c-bet. I can tell he is getting tired of doing that and he has a stack of about $1500 (foreshadowing).
Meanwhile I look down at QQ in the cutoff. There were a few limpers and I make it $45. Girl to my left calls on the button and one of the limpers calls. The flop comes 9,9,5 with two clubs. It’s checked to me and I bet $65. Girl quickly calls and other guy folds. The turn is a non club Ace. Yuck. When she called I really put her on a pair so there is no reason for me to change my mind now. She could have called with the nut flush draw and hit the ace but I think she would have raised on the flop if that was the case. Anyway, after considering everything I think most likely it is safe to check b/c if I’m right I have her drawing to only 2 outs. I also want to lose the minimum if she shows up with 89s or T9s. I check and she quickly bets out $100. I think for a min. and decide I have to stick with my initial read so I call. She has about $350 left going to the river. I have her covered. The river is a blank 2 no club. I check again and she goes in the tank. She is right beside me so I am watching her out of the corner of my eye. I could tell she was trying to decide how much she was going to bet then something neat happened. Her left hand motioned like she was going to check. It was very slight but I noticed it. I know now that I for sure have the best hand. I was worried she was deciding how much to value bet but really she was deciding whether to bluff or not. She then pushes the entire $350 out and is all in. Before I snap call, I went through the hand one more time and decided I had to call. She flips over pocket 4′s and I ship the pot. She quickly jumps up pats me on the back says nice call and books it out of the room.
In less than have an hour in Vegas I have already met my daily limit of $1K a day, but it’s only 10:15am. What am I going to do for the rest of the day. I can’t check into the room until 1pm so I’m going to play at least until then. A couple of hands later I get 66 in middle position so I limp and the guy who just sit down in her seat raises it to $40. An early limper calls so I call. No way I’m going to flop a set? Wrong. The perfect flop A,4,6 rainbow. 1st guy checks and I lead out for $65 hoping that the guy has a big aces and raises me. He is a good player and he smells a rat. He only calls and other guy folds. The turn is another 6 to give me quads. I tried to act disgusted by his call on the flop so now I check the quads. He bets $100 and I decide just to call. Not sure why I didn’t raise but I didn’t want to chase him off. The river is another 4 pairing the board again. I figured that looked like a good bluffing card so I lead out for $200. He thinks for a while and is naturally confused by my line in this hand. Lucky for me most of the time when people are confused they call. He did and I took down another big pot.
Remember when I said guy that I was worried about was tired of folding to my c-bets? Well, he decided to take a stand on this hand. I get KK in late postion and make it $40 after a few limpers. He calls as he was one of the limpers. The flop comes Q,9,8 with 2 clubs. I figure this is about as bad of a non ace flop as I can see with KK. This time he leads out for $65. For some dumb reason and quickly call. Very bad move on my part. I picked up no information and this guy has enough chips to felt me. I’m thinking he could have JT, 88, 99. Why am I seeing monsters under the bed? Anyway, the turn is a 7 non club. I get the feeling he is ready to play for all of his chips. He now bets $150 and I think for a short time and fold my KK face up. He flips up 7,4 for a stone cold bluff. Had I raised the flop he would have folded. He also would have let me know if he had flopped a set right then also. By just calling I got no information.
Now onto the epic hand of the day. The hand these guys will all go home and tell their buddies about. There were 5 limpers and I almost muck my 3,3 but then decide what the heck maybe I’ll flop another set. 2 more in the pot made it 8 handed to see the flop. The flop is Q, 4, 3 with 2 clubs. A guys bets $20 and another guy calls the $20 and I raise it up to $105. Everyone folds to the intial better who goes all in for a total of $120. Before I get a chance to put in my $15 the caller says reraise and makes it $320. All of the sudden an easy pot has turned into something I better decide what to do here. This guy had not played a hand since I had been at the table and I had already shown down some big hands and caught a big bluff. Taking all these things into consideration I’m starting to believe the only hand this character can have is 4,4. It’s possible he has the nut flush draw I guess but why would he raise with that? Obviously the intial better has a hand and it’s pretty obvious I have one. He can’t be bluffing. He wouldn’t do that with A,Q I don’t think and there is no way he lets all of us see the fop with QQ. The only hand that makes sense is 4,4. I check to see how many chips he has left and it is $675. I know it’s all going in if I decide to play this hand. Do I really want to give back all my profit on bottom set? I decide I don’t and I fold the 3,3 face up and the table goes bezerk. Are you crazy! To my credit the guy turns over 4,4 and I made a great laydown. I saved almost $1,000 by folding a hand that I only had one out with. The guy was so impressed he stood up to shake my hand. Then everyone started asking me questions about how did I know and how they have never seen anyone fold a set on the flop before. I knew it was time to leave.
Anyway, I lost a couple hundred by playing Q,j out of postion and vow not to do that the rest of the trip. I cashed out for a profit of $1,274 in 3 hrs. Not bad for the 1st day.
I had to come to McDonalds to get Wi-fi to post this. I will write about the rest of the trip when I get home.
I am leaving for Vegas on June 5th and I will be there until the 18th. I am staying the 1st 3 nights at The Flamingo and the next 10 at Harrahs. My goal is to win enough money to play in the Main Event in July. I am going to focus on playing the Venetian Deep Stack events and the Ceasar’s Mega Stack events. I plan on playing the noon tournaments everyday. When I bust out I will most likely play the $2/5 cash games at the Venetian.
I will do my best to post the results here to this blog. I think this will help me reflect on my play while I am there.
Billy Brown
I played very little poker this month. I had 2 sessions at the zoo and 2 sessions in Shreveport. My first session at the zoo started with a $110 tournament. I finished 5th which was the bubble. I then played 2/5 for 1 1/2 hrs and made $600.
In Shreveport we got there late Friday night and I had a huge up and down session to cash out for $13 profit. I got there about noon Saturday and played 2/5 until almost ten and cashed out up $471. I was down 1,000 at one point. I did win a $2,300 pot with QJh when I flopped open ended and a flush draw against a middle position raiser and the button called after me. It was $40 to see the flop. The flop came 9,T,5 with 2 hearts. Original raiser bet’s $60, I call, then button calls. The raiser is a very tight player and the button is an inexperienced high roller. The turn is a non heart 8. Raiser checks and I bet $100 and the button raises to $210. I have a little over $1,000 left. The original raiser goes in the tank and then folds. I re-raise it $300 more. The guy then asks me how much I have left which was a little more than $900. He thinks forever going back and forth between what looks like folding to pushing in all of his chips which was more than $800. He goes from his chips to his cards and peeking and then looking at me. He finally pushes in all of his chips and of course I call. The river was a deuce and he mucks when I show him the nuts. He said he had a J so he was just open ended? Not sure, he might have had JJ or J7 but we will never know.
I did fold a set on the flop in another hand that drew ire from everyone at the table when I showed it. It was an A,4,5 flop with 2 spades. I had 4,4 utg and 7 people saw the flop. I was about to bet but the woman to my left was arguing with the gentlemen to my right and she check out of turn and the next guy bet $20 so I said I guess I check then. Turned out to be a blessing b/c a couple of people called and raised it up to $80. The guy(Bill from Austin) then reraises it to $220. The others fold and I ask him how much he has left. He pushes out $400 more like it’s already in the pot. He was very confident. Normally I would take that posturing as a bluff but in my experience when old guys do that it means they are not bluffing. I can rule out AA since he didn’t raise preflop after 3 limpers. 2,3 is out of the question. So it’s A,5 or 5,5 and I’m leaning towards 5,5. Of course there is no way of knowing for sure. He might play A,5 or A,4 the same way. I decide there will be better spots so I fold my 4,4 face up. He gets angry and asks me why I would check a set and I say it was b/c they acted out of turn and he claims he only had a weak ace but was tired of me pushing him around. He is visibly upset so now I know he had 5,5 and was mad b/c he didn’t get paid off. I saw him later and he told me he had 5,5. The table couldn’t believe I folded it and one guy said, “you folded the best hand!” I said maybe but I just didn’t like the spot. I turned out to be right.
So the lesson is saving money is the same as winning money. I saved about $600 on that hand by folding.
In my last session at the zoo I played for about 4hrs and made $265
My final session for the month at the zoo was a loss of $579. I lost most of it when I flopped a pair and a flush and gut shot draw. Mr. Lott turned the str8 and my flush didn’t come and we were allin on the turn. I didn’t play well and most of the table was short stacked and I don’t feel that I adjusted well to that.
My 1st day on my quest to be an Ironman on Full Tilt. I must accumulate 200 pts/day for 25 days in April to qualify. Today I accumulated a little over 350 pts playing over 900 hands playing $.50/$1 NL four tabling. I was up about $90 with 20 minutes to go in my session and ended up being down $70 for the session. My AJ lost to AT aipf when he hit 2 tens on the flop. I did win a $90 pot aipf with AK vs. KK by hitting an ace on the flop on my last hand of the session.
I started this evening on step 2 again after finishing 3rd last night so that means I stay on step 2. I finished 4th so I had to go back to step 1. Then I lost so I had to put down another 7.50 and lost again. I bought in again and won so on to step 2 again. When it gets down to 3 of us I am chip leader by 4 to 1 over the other 2. I am staying out of the way letting them 2 battle it out and it is bad beat after bad beat with those 2 and they pretty much stay even until one of them catches trips against me and doubles up. The blinds then start getting out of hand and 400/800 so it is an all in fest which I lose so out in 3rd and I’ll try step 2 again tomorrow.
I did try a $12 180 man SNG and was basically blinded out without ever getting a decent hand.
My goal this month is to qualify for the Main Event in the WSOP. I deposited money on Pokerstars and I’m going to try to qualify using the steps. I won the 1st step so now it’s on to step 2.
http://www.pokerstars.com/wsop/qualify/steps/
I play in $55 rebuy live tournament every Sunday at my local game. This used to be a really good tourney with 3 tables and $2,000 guaranteed for 1st but lately it has only been 2 tables. Today there were only 15 players. Payouts were 1200, 600, 300 for 1st-3rd. I had to rebuy early when my AA got cracked by 65. After the rebuy period I had a better than avg. stack. I lost a couple of hands early and got shortstacked. I pushed with K6 and the BB called with 55. He hit a 5 on the flop while I made 2 pair and I was out 8th.
On U.B. I played the $1 turbo rebuy tourney. I really like this tourney. I’ve played it 4 times in the past 2 weeks and finished 4th last week. Tonight I was the chip leader at the 1st break after I tripled up with AA. My stack never went down from there. I didn’t stay the chip leader long and actually got down to 30th or so even though I was steadily building my stack. This tourney is crazy b/c the blinds escalate every 5 min. There were 239 entries and 1st place was $273. I was in for $4 b/c I rebought at the very beginning to have double stack and then I doubled added on at the end of the rebuy period. I was able to move through the field picking up mostly uncontested pots. I played pretty tight but I did steal from some limpers preflop a few times by pushing pot sized bets to make everyone fold.
When we got down to 2 tables I hit my rush. I won a couple of big pots in a row knocking out 4 players to become the chip leader once again. I had 4 times the chips that #2 had. By this time the blinds are like $20K and $40K and I have $850K in chips so it’s all in or fold for most of the stacks. We get to the final table rather quickly. From there we got down to 3 pretty quick and the stacks are fairly even with me having the slight lead. I get QQ on the button and make a pot-sized raise and SB calls and BB folds. Flop comes 457 rainbow and I bet the pot after he checks to me. He reraises all in and I call. He is open-ended with A6. Hits his A on the turn to double up. I am now down to $200K while he has $1.6mil and other guy has about $700K. Looks bad for me after cruising this entire tourney. To make a long story short I double up twice in a row then #1 knocks out #2 and heads up lasts for maybe 3 hands and I took him out on the last hand with A7 vs. AQ when I hit my 7. Yea me.
That gets me closer to my goal of $1,000 by the end of this month on UB. I better win a big one tomorrow or the next day to get there.
I got a day off from baseball b/c of the weather so I thought I would take the chance to play some live poker. I went to a local game here in Austin. First there was a $210 buy in tourney that had about 20 people in it. I catch a lot of hands early but they always seemed to be the 2nd best. Either that or I was being bluffed but I wasn’t ready to mix it up yet b/c I felt like I was the best player at my table. Finally, I pick up AA and more than double when a guy pushes a J high flop with AJ. When we get to the final table the blinds escalate quickly and I’m under the gun with about $5,500 chips and the big blind is $600 and there are 8 people left. I decide to limp in with 77 and 2 after me raises it to $1500. I call and the flop comes 4,3,6 rainbow. The villain has me covered. Only top 4 get paid. I am pretty short so I decide this is time is as good as any to put my chips in. He calls with JJ and I’m out.
There is a 5/5 and a 5/10 cash game going on and that’s the reason I came to play anyway. The 5/10 game is full so I sit down at the 5/5 game to make it 9 handed. Long story short I tried to catch too many draws and none of them hit so I was down a couple hundred fairly quickly. Then the most aggressive player at the table who was stuck for about $1500 already makes if $45 to go and I look down at KQ of spades. He is a terrible player and he is on tilt so I make the call hoping to catch something. This was my mistake the entire day. Why just call? I should have reraised if I am going to play this pot with this guy. Because what happened by me calling? It invited the button to call. Now I don’t like my KQ near as much versus 3 people. Anyway the flop comes down Q,Q,J with 2 clubs. Original raiser is 1st to act and he makes it $100. I think for a minute. If I call then button guy may have 2 clubs or even possibly a str8 draw and I will let him in too cheap. I only have $400 behind so what would be the point of raising to just $300 so I decide to push knowing that original raiser is probably going to call from what I know about him. Well, here’s the problem. The button insta-calls. Not good, b/c he can only call with a better hand than mine. The original raiser loses it. Starts cussing and slams his AJ face up in the muck. The button guy shows AQ and I’m dead to a K and of course.
Of course most people would chalk this up as bad luck but while it may be it was still a bad play on my part. I was in middle position and I invited other people in the pot by only calling. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but my reason for being in the hand in the 1st place was to get the tilter’s money. I should have isolated him by reraising. AQ on the button would have folded. Most of the time AJ would fold to a reraise but not this guy. He was stuck and steaming and wanted to catch up quick. I would have took his stack b/c he wouldn’t been able to get away from that flop, but instead I lost my stack.
Our game broke up pretty quickly and I moved to the 5/10 game which was really a 5/10/20 game b/c most everyone was straddling. I lost my stack here when I semi-bluffed a tight player. I raised preflop with QJ of hearts and the BB just called. I flopped a flush and str8 draw with A,T,8. He bets the flop and I push all-in. He thinks for a long time and finally calls. He has KK. Very surprised he called with that knowing him. I guess me pushing set him off that I might be on a draw, but I certainly didn’t put him on KK with him just calling preflop, but it didn’t matter what he had if I hit. I don’t hit obviously and he apologizes for what he calls a terrible call. Something told him to call so I told him I thought he made a great call.
Anyway I’m down $2K for the day in cash and didn’t make anything in the tournament either. Too bad it rained otherwise I would have been coaching instead of donking money away. Lesson for today? Well here I am thinking that I’m this world class player, but yet I am still making amateur mistakes. I have to get better and not lose my focus if I want to become a millionaire poker player.
I am starting this blog for self reflection. Hopefully in the process my game will continue to improve. Maybe in the future I will share it with others.