Vegas & The WSOP

Not gonna bore you with too many details but the trip overall has been really good & also very frustrating.  I have got myself a couple of K up a few times then lost it all in appalling runs of ridic coolers.  Vegas itself is just made for people like me, Gra & Jas.  Its a 24hour city, which is required when you go to bed at 10am & are waking up at like 8pm.  I could definitely live here for a few months at a time.

Being card dead & running pretty poorly myself has been pretty tilting, although i truly feel like i have never played better than these two weeks.  Have had to double & triple-barrel bluff on soooo many occasions just to keep myself afloat some nights. If I had gone on some sort of heater out here, then i could have found myself up by a very tidy profit.  Unfortunately it seems like it was not meant to be, unless the last few days are going to surprise me.

So, while i have been up & down the whole trip, Gra has been on one of the most horrific runs i have ever seen. Two weeks of just missing every draw known to man, and getting outdrawn when he has had big hands.  Painful to watch so must be devastating for him.  In all fairness, none of us have run anywhere near to our EV lines. When any of us have had Aces, Kings or Queens i think we must have lost 85% of the time, and i'm not exaggerating !!  The only bit of real rungood any of us have had has been Gra going deep in WSOP Event 33 ($1k buy in).  Jas bought us all into it & Gra finished 117th out of 2750 players for a payout of $2800.  It was amazing playing in a WSOP event, the atmosphere around the Rio was really electric.  Seen loads of the poker pros that I have only normally seen on the TV.  As for my WSOP, well i check raised on the turn with the nut flush, got called, but the river paired the board. He then bet out quite small so I called & he showed the FH obvs! Left me quite short stacked so eventually got it in with 10's and ran into Kings, siiiiigh!

A few people have been asking about the "best hand i have played" story from the other day, so here goes!  I'm sat with about $270 on a $1/2 table in Planet Hollywood. It was quite a good table to be sat at as it wasnt particularly aggressive & was generally cheap to see plenty of flops & outplay people post-flop. So in this particular hand i have J9o in the big blind & its limped multi-way to me & i check my option. Flop comes down KJ9 rainbow. SB & myself check & it ends up checking round. Turn is the 8c, bringing second club & the SB bets out $11, i decide to just call here with so many people to act behind me as i dont wanna bloat the pot in an unraised hand where the board is so wet & potentially dangerous. I figure if i get to see the river for $11, or not too much more if its raised behind me, then i can re-evaluate then. The guy next to me also flat calls & another guy sat opposite me calls too.  The river brings an offsuit 9 to fill me up with 9's full of jacks. The SB bets $20, I want to raise here but when i look at his stack he only has $33 left behind. If i raise I probably get the rest of his money but i might scare off the other two guys still to act & they are both equally as deep stacked as me. I decide to flat call after a bit of a sigh & some acting (like i'm weak), in the hope that one of the two guys behind me will raise or maybe one or both call.  Guy next to me subsequently flat calls too & then the last guy announces raise, then makes it $120 more. PERFECT. SB folds, i think for a bit then ship it all in! The guy next to me then tanks for quite a while saying he was definitely gonna call the $120 extra but he felt for sure that i was folding & that my all-in had totally altered his perception of the hand.  He eventually folds (later saying he had QT for the flopped nuts).  The guy who had raised the extra $120 then says "well if u have got me beat then u have really played this like a world champion but i have to call" and then shows 89 for a smaller full house.  About 4 or 5 of the players at the table congratulated me on how i played the hand on the river & its always nice to get plaudits off your peers at the table, it felt good!

Going to sign off now to watch the latest match of the NBA Finals, I have started watching it out here & its awesome entertainment.

Viva Las Vegas!!!

Ok, so I'm typing this from Las Vegas. No I'm not dreaming, I'm actually sat in Bellagio in Las Vegas. I know I haven't updated this blog for a lonnnnng time, so what better reason to start than a 3 week trip to LAS BLOODY VEGAS eh!!

So yeh, about 2 weeks ago I get a phone call off Gra about 2 in the afternoon telling me to get myself on Facebook for a 3 way convo with him & Jas. At the time I had just woke up & was therefore pretty confused but I logged on anyway. At this point Jas basically offered to bankroll myself & Gra for a 3week trip to Vegas. WOW !! Everybody needs friends like Jas, trust me... This guy is a legend! (No more smoke to be blown up his arse if I can help it, hahaaaa. But on a serious note, really was an incredible offer by him & I'm so grateful for the opportunity. I hope I have a storming run out here so that he makes some decent money outta me too). 

So this was like the last few days of May & Jas was planning on flying direct from Thailand to Vegas around the 5th of June and he wanted us to get there about the same kinda time!! So off we pop onto all the internet sites looking at deals, and find a decent flight for the 5th. Me & Gra (in our wisdom) decide to just book a hotel for the 1st two nights, then we will just go round to all the hotels while we are in Vegas to sort the accomodation for the other 19nights. 

Fast forward a few days & we are at the airport at 6:30am on the 5th June, checkin in then sat in the departure lounge having a beer & literally giggling and super excited like 2 kids on christmas eve, we are off to Vegas... The thought of the 15hrs of travelling & waiting does ZERO to dampen our spirits!! Banter is flowing & morale is at an all-time high. The first leg of the journey (into Newark) is broken up for me by watchin 21 Jump St, pretty good film which I wud recommend to you all. Unfortunately we have to endure some of THE worst in-flight food I have ever seen & tasted too but nevermind eh!! The 5hr wait in Newark for our connecting flight is broken up by us watching episodes of High Stakes Poker on my laptop while drinkin beers in an Irish Pub. 6 hours later & we are in Vegas, popping down an escalator to baggage claim & we are met by Jas who has a sign saying "Fish" as though he is our taxi driver! I thought it was pretty funny anyway! As we go outside to get a taxi some limo driver says to us "need a riiiide guys?". Before I can say "no its alright, we are just gonna get a taxi", Jas has pretty much accepted this guys offer & we are in a limo heading down the strip!!! 

Despite both being pretty tired, we dropped our luggage off in our room at Flamingo, grabbed a bite to eat & were over in Bellagio waiting for a seat to play. Jas is staking both Gra & myself to play $2/5 but for the first night we decided to just play $1/2. Gra ran up a profit within about 2hrs and headed off to bed! I was more hardcore & managed a good 8 or so hours, more than doubling my buy-in. Happy days & good start for us!

I'm gonna leave it there for now, but I will try to get a blog update out in the next 36 hrs as have only just touched the surface here & have another couple of days to update you all on.