Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarah11778
This is one of my favorite Stud forum threads of all time. Great job in the retelling, Chips; great comments/discussion from the crowd; and of course Chainsaw's appearance is just gravy.
Threads like this make me realize our forum has the best community feel of all of 2+2. Can't wait to me some of you guys in person next summer.
/gushing
sjc
Thank you!!!
So, sorry, I wasn't really around this week, and I don't want to rush/half-ass any part of this, but here I am again:
Dinner is always a struggle at the WSOP. Typically (?), 12pm tournies, of which I've played one, give you a 90-minute dinner break. That's plenty of time to go to one of the Rio's restaurants, sit down, have dinner, relax, and come back. Historically, 5pm tournies have had a 60-minute dinner break, which is really pushing it. The two main actual restaurants close to the poker area are Buzio's (seafood) and All-American Bar & Grill, which is exactly what it sounds like and has pretty good meat. However, AAB&G is typically excruciatingly slow during the busy periods to the point where you might be a favorite to make dinner in under an hour if you've called ahead for a seat, and order everything when the server gives you the menus. However, this year, Day 1 of the 5pms have had a 30-minute "dinner" break, intending to get players out before 3am, but c'mon, 30 minutes for dinner is absurd. Typically all dinner breaks on day 2 are 60-minutes.
There's this other crap-ass restaurant, the amazon cafe, which is one of the standard Denny's-type places that all casinos have if you want something pretty cheep. This is actually much closer to the poker area, but, it sucks. So I always try to get some actual food on dinner breaks, though the poker kitchen has markedly improved over the last few years (burritos ftw!).
So during day 2 of the 8/bament, I call ahead to Buzio's and get a table for 4. Only Ceegee and Mustafabet come, and Ceegee after much arguing about that we should go to the amazon cafe instead. He's 100% right that that maximizes the chance we'll eat a full meal on time, but, I hate that place, and Buzio's is typically pretty quick if you had called ahead. I'd rather eat like a crab cake or pasta or something than a burger or chicken fingers from the amazon cafe. I would just go to the Whopper Bar at that point I guess. Obviously the Indian restaurant is completely off limits.
So we get to Buzio's and sit down after 5-10 minutes even though I called ahead and order stuff right away. On the way in, we see one of the Russian guys my table sitting down with his wife and daughter. About 40 minutes to go at this point, ez game. Then, they come back to ceegee after a bit, and say something ridiculous like they're out of chicken. wtf? So he orders something else, but I don't think they'd put any of our stuff in in the meantime even though we indicated we were in a big hurry. Well, ~20 minutes go by with no sign of our food or waitnress, and we're getting increasingly antsy.
Finally we get the manager over and she doesn't really know what's going on, and we're kind pissed. Eventually our food is ready but we don't have time to eat, so we get the bill and have to have our food boxed up. On the way out w/ our boxes, I see the Russian guy still having dinner and doubt he's going to leave anytime soon. We get back to the amazon room w/ like 5 minutes to go, scarf down the food at our tables, and start playing again.
Luckily, at my table, there were like 3 people who showed up late. At this point, I went on a super nice rush, stealing a lot of pots w/ people not there to contest them, which is awesome! Obviously in any tournament, you have to run well at some point, well, this is where I ran well. After I chipped up w/ the absentees (Russian guy came back at least 20 minutes late, I think), there were like 3 hands where I had buried KK and it stood up for the whole pot.
I eventually got moved to a table with PearlJammer and I dunno some other people probably, while Ceegee was at the table w/ Phil Laak. Phil of course is very entertaining, and he was talking with ceegee about coaching and videos since he had been reading 8/b books the whole tournament while trying to qualify for the Annie Duke whatever league. He was also talking about the Feng Shui of chip stacking. There seemed to be a lot of laughter and stuff at the table behind me, which was way more fun than the table I was at. PearlJammer insulted me at me during an FTOPSament one time, so he's on my **** list.
One massive, massive hand was jammed early and gave me a flush on 6th street vs. something like xx7AQK and xx8738, though he may have caught the door pair earlier. 8738 checks, 7AQK checks, i bet, 8738 raises to iso the low draw, he calls two cold, I 3-bet, and 8738 four-bets, and I explode b/c I'm seriously concerned he's full given how passive people play and don't jam people in. I tank and call instead of capping, and then the river goes check/check to me. I'm entirely confused, and am concerned about getting c/red by a full house, or, if he did have just a low made and a pair of 8s, he will call and the 7AQK that didn't make his 7 low will fold. So I don't see any value in betting and flip up my flush.
I scoop the entire pot, because the guy was jamming with 888 and a low draw. no made hand at all. The 7AQK goes berserk, even though he was a really bad player, too. I was just stunned, and then was livid that I missed some value there. I was seriously more angry after I scooped what had to be the largest pot so far in the tournament b/c I thought I didn't play the hand right. Obviously online the 8738 would just be jamming a low and if there were 5 bets to play, I could easily cap it.
I tell the hand to Ceegee on break and I think I caught him off guard w/ how agitated I was and he, thankfully, calmed me down, but also told me I played it right except for he would be the river when checked to. w/e, that wasn't the part I was concerned with… I guess I only missed .68bb of equity given the hands were what they were; I have no idea why I was so mad but I really wanted to read people extremely well in this tournament and thought I had failed at it…
We finally get down to 3 tables, and ceegee and I get drawn together, Erik Siedel is to my left, I think Ali Eslami was to my right, and Chris Tryba was across the table. I continue winning a bunch of pots and am trolling ceegee hardcore, not because I want to troll ceegee, but because I want to troll the whole table, and doing it to the guy I know makes me not look like a jackass since hey, friends give each other **** all the time, while everyone can obviously hear and is going on tilt as a result of it.
At a certain point, I have more chips than I know what to do with, more chips than I've ever had on a table at any point in my poker career. I ask wtf I should do with them and the fen shui stuff comes up again and ceegee tells me to add a swimming pool to my castle. Unfortunately, I get colored up a few times since I have way too many chips to put into a bag, I guess [(THINLY?) VEILED BRAG!].
http://twitpic.com/5e926l
One awesome hand has me opening 9A9 utg into a bunch of paint and two aces. None of the paint is playing w/ the aces behind and me opening a 9 anyway, I presume. Chris Tyba 3bets me w/ one of the As, and I happily call. He ended up starting with 66A, and his board came down 66A6Kxx. Mine comes down 9A93Q9x and he's like pissed I somehow sucked out on him after I started w/ the best hand and we both hit a 2-outer.
I lose a few hands and then win a few more, and end the day as chip leader w/ $695k (avg. stack is $280k) with 18 left. There's a big discussion near the end of the night about playing down to the money regardless, but floor says that they can't do that. I told the PLO hand-for-hand extension I described here earlier, but I was told they couldn't do that, either, not sure why since it already happened. Quite a few people were pissed, I think, that we didn't cash on Day 2. Whatever, we bag up.
So time to get in the Elantra w/ ceegee, stop by Carl's Jr., and call my wife to tell her to fly out out to Vegas since I'm chip leader going into day 3 of the $10kament.