The Long Awaited Trip Report

My original plan was to only be in Vegas for two nights as the bankroll took a massive hit when I made the trip to the circuit event in St. Louis back in April. Alas I had a couple rungood weeks both live and online and I was able to scrape enough cash to go out for 5 fun-filled nights in Vegas.

I arrived in Vegas bright and early at 10am and headed off to get the rental car. Based on my experience back in February I expected to be tilted after waiting for ages to get the car. I was lucky enough to be out of the facility within 15 minutes. I stopped to get a quick bite to eat and headed off to the Rio to rail @teelea in her $1500 event. Wandering around the room in the first two levels is always fun. Some of these people shouldn't even be playing in a $20 freezeout let alone a $1500 WSOP event. I guess everyone has to chase the dream.

My first session of the trip I went back to the scene of the crime from my last visit. Back to where I believe the worst players in Vegas play, Excalibur. After about a five hour session I was up $152, just shy of what I wanted to win and take to the Golden Nugget HORSE event the next day. After looking at the structure I opted against it and called it a night and checked into what has to be the worst hotel on the strip, the Imperial Palace. At $20 the first night and $17 the next night, as long as it has a bed, a shower and a toilet (preferably working) you can't go wrong.

Thursday I started off playing at the Bellagio. Of all the times I have been in Vegas I have never played cash there. I have only played Bellagio Cup events in the Fontana room back when I actually had money. I ended up losing $90 after I was up as much as $155 on the session. All of the old nits tilted me constantly asking to square-up the table when it was already fine. After that I wandered over to the Rio and played a $125 satellite. No cards, no luck and I was bounced with 4 people left. Next was the Venetian where I dropped $100 at 1/2 and another $100 at 4/8 HORSE. To end the night, like an idiot, I played more 1/2 at the IP and dropped another 2 buy-ins before I quit at 2am.

On Friday I opted to play the 1pm $200 deep stack event at the Rio. These events were getting 700+ entrants in the days leading up to this one but the Seniors event drew over 3k runners and was limited to 200 entrants. I played this one like a wild man, bouncing between 12k and 18k from the 15k to start through the first three levels. I ended up busting in level 4 in a set over set situation. I think it was possible to get away from it if I played it differently but its just a cooler. I was happy with the way I played. After that bustout I was dangerously low on cash. I went back to the Excalibur that night and had a +329 session which I so desperately needed.

Early Saturday afternoon I went to play at ARIA. My first attempt to find the parking garage was an epic fail. Attempt #2 was more fruitful. The poker didn't go too well and I dropped $140. Later I played yet another cash session at Excalibur and won nearly a buy-in and decided to play in their $50 Strip-n-Go tournament. You started with 3k and blinds at 100/200 weeee. I was out fast. In attempts to win the buy-in for the tournament I dropped some decent cash in the pits.

Time to cut this off for now. Next will be the last day in Vegas, a trip to Commerce in LA and some other must post items.

Recap Coming Soon

Work has kept me pretty busy this week but I hope to get something thrown together by the weekend, maybe even tomorrow.

Quick Recap So Far...

Wednesday: Arrived and only played at Excalibur for about 4 hours. Won 1 1/2 buyins.

Thursday: Disaster day for me. Dropped 4 buyins, lost a single table sat at Rio.

Friday: Played $200 Rio tourney and busted level 4 with a bit of a cooler, it happens. Lost single table sat at Venetian. Rallied end of day and won 2 1/2 buy-ins at Excalibur.

Saturday: Lost 1 buyin at Aria. Won almost a buyin at Excalibur. Donked-up a $50 tourney at Excalibur and dropped about $100 in the pits.

Today: My plan is to play the $200 Rio and 1-2 single table sats and that will be the end of the trip.

#hilarityensues

Anything interesting happening over the next 6 days will be on Twitter. Follow @snuffypoker and @gadzooks64 . If anything amazing happens or if I am bored I will post it here, otherwise I just plan on a recap post. Too bad Snarf couldn't make it. Guess we will have to superimpose him on the pic from the Vegas sign.

PokerSlut Tour XVIII $1+1 Rebuy!!!

This is the last event of the season.

The next season will start after Labor Day weekend in September!

Ship The Nana or Peanut Butter Jelly Time

Zooks said that both of my title options suck so I will give both of them to you. I was finally able to win a Nana last night in AIPS Limit Holdament. LHE is certainly not the most exciting form of tournament poker. Tourney had 44 runners with 7 spots paid. The early game is not a whole lot of fun. I did have GapBand85 dust off his whole stack in less than 30 minutes. Pretty hard to do paying 10/20 and 15/30 with t2k to start. Not sure what was going on with him last night. At the first break I was all the way up to t3900 good for 2/43.

The first hit I took was about 15 minutes into hour 2 when I raised K10 off from the cutoff and barreled the whole way on a 7J3JA board and was called down by 66 in the BB. Over the next 15 minuted I folded all the way down to t1500 before I finally won a pot with AQ to get back to t3k. The big pot of hour 2 was when I called a 3bet from the CL with QQ in the cutoff and the short stacked button 4bet and CL called along with me. I call flop turn and river bets on a board of 74729 and am good. CL had JJ and short stack hand AK. That kicked me up to t7700. I was able to pull one more big pot before the 2nd break when I raised KJ UTG 7 handed and was 3bet from the BB. I call on a flop of JJ5 and raise the turn when I boat up. River brings a 3rd heart and betting is capped. BB had 32hh. At the end of hour 2 I have t16,330 and the chip lead with 14 left.

We ended up reaching the final table about 20 minutes into the third hour. Stacks looked like this:

Seat 1: ownthedream (3510 in chips)
Seat 2: BerniceQ (6255 in chips)
Seat 3: reraise1986 (6241 in chips)
Seat 4: pkt1078 (4659 in chips)
Seat 5: scottc25 (16730 in chips)
Seat 6: choker13 (9910 in chips)
Seat 7: McCordPoker (12779 in chips)
Seat 8: Sparky823 (17280 in chips)
Seat 9: PokerGeekMN (10636 in chips)

Still 9 handed at the final table I was able to take out both 9th and 8th on one shot to get us in the money:

(click through for replayer)


Pretty brutal little one outer on the river. I like to think of it as a 56% favorite pre-flop. When we were down to 5-handed this was the hand where I have no idea how PokerGeek loses the minimum on this one:

(click though for replayer)


I really should have won a boatload of chips on that hand. PokerGeek was absolutely pwning me at the final table. Every single significant pot I lost was to him. When I had it he folded, when I didn't he called down with ace high. I was really getting frustrated. When we reached 3-handed stacks looked like this:

Seat 5: scottc25 (18259 in chips)
Seat 7: McCordPoker (47497 in chips)
Seat 9: PokerGeekMN (22244 in chips)

We traded stacks quite a bit 3-handed. With blinds at 500/1k playing 1k/2k I was all the way down to t4700 when the comeback started. I doubled in back to back hands to get back up to t17k and was back in it. From there it was a steady succession of winning hands. PokerGeek turned down the aggression a bit and I was able to take down a ton of pots. When we reached heads-up I had a 57k to 30k chip lead and I would close it out soon after that. I won hands 8-12 heads up for 11k, 2k, 10k, 2k and the final hand:

(click through for replayer)

Overall I was really happy with my play. I was able to get a stack early that allowed me to take a couple of beats early in hour two. Ship the Nana and I will see you in the TOC!!!!

McLovin'

Bloggers and a good cause.  What more could you want?

Sluts, Prop Bets, WSOP and Other Stuff

Have an absolute shitload of random content for you today. First off, congrats to Zooks for actually having a post on the site Yeaaaaa. Sunday night I made my 8th final table in 9 events of the Pokerslut Tour Sunday night. Not exactly exciting a massive run when you consider the size of the fields (15,13,15,14,24,18,18,11 and 12) but I am happy with the results. I bet I am even showing a profit this season. I have a near lock on the season as I am up 25 in the standings. Only way I lose is if ELM wins next week and I fail to final table (or unless 19+ show up). I will have the honor of being one of the longest standing winners of the tour since it looks like we are going on hiatus until the fall. Too much stuff happening in the Summer and the number of entrants always drops. Hopefully we can pick a random regularly scheduled MTT to play during the off time.

Hefmike and PinkyStinky you can go ahead and ship the $10 to me.

My WSOP trip is less than two weeks away and I can't wait. Being there only for two days is gonna suck but I will just have to make the most of my time. I have enough to play around 5 single table sats. Depending on how those go I may or may not play a Venetian or Binion's event on Sunday.

As Zooks wrote yesterday it was fum playing the $0.25 satellite with everyone. It was even better that we all won a seat. I played in one of the $1 main event satellites before. I think it guaranteed 5 seats and had an overlay of nearly $20k. They weeded through the 30k entrant field in something like 4 1/2 hours.

I'm gonna try and remember to play AIPS on Wednesday which I think is LHE.

Winner, Winner, Winner, Winner!

I donked out of the PokerSlut Tour rather early last night.  I trolled for something else to do and decided on a Rush Poker SNG.  It became clear that wasn't going to go so well so I spied a link in the chat box for a $1 WSOP ME event. 

Hmmm.  That doesn't sound too bad.

I clicked the buttons and was able to do late registration.  All the usual suspects where in Skype chat and before I knew it they had all registered for this with me.  I was still in the Rush SNG for a while so I wasn't able to see what exactly I had signed up for: a .25 + .05 satellite.

Turns out this was a SATELLITE to a $1 WSOP ME event.  Oh joy!  A donkament to a DONKAMENT!  What was I thinking?

After I figured out what was going on I realized this was a lot like the Token Frenzy tournaments I used to love.  I was really good at winning tokens and really bad at converting them to anything resembling cold hard cash. 

It was looking good for me after I doubled up the first hand with AJc v K6c.  It didn't take long before Snuffy, Blaz and Loser all had decent stacks as well.  It was looking a little iffy for Snuffy and I as the bubble approached but we managed to survive and earn our tickets into the $1 WSOP ME event this coming Sunday.

Will any of us actually play it?  Who knows.  But it sure was fun to donk it up with my friends.  It has been a long, long, time since we've played poker together that wasn't a PokerSlut Tour event.

PokerSlut Tour XVIII Stud Hi/Lo