After this morning's post, I fell asleep for a couple of hours, but I knew I needed to get up before we got too deep into the afternoon. I had to run to the bank and deposit some cash--the insurance direct debit hits this weekend and I wanted to make sure I was covered. But after that, I was feeling a bit restless. Lately, because of being under the weather, all I've done is work and sleep. And I was getting tired of lying in bed all day. I was drugged up and feeling ok, so I decided to go play a little poker.
I'm hoping to play in a bigger tourney over at the Venetian or Caesars later next week (something with a five-digit payoff for the top spots), but I felt like I needed a warm-up, just to see if I was up to the task. After that chop two weeks ago at Binion's, I haven't felt like I've been playing my best, so I wanted to work the kinks out in a tourney that didn't cost so much.
So I headed down to Planet Hollywood to get into their 2 pm tourney this afternoon. The buy-in is only $80, they usually get at least four tables, and the structure is fairly decent. Well, when I got there, the poker room had completely disappeared. It was gone, man. In it's place were a bunch of high-limit blackjack tables and a bunch of bored-looking dealers.
So I just kept on walkin'. Eventually, I found the new 'poker room' behind the Heart Bar, almost directly next to the escalators when you come up from the lobby. But it's no room--they just set up nine tables in the middle of a bunch of slot machines. It's awful, absolutely a terrible set-up. I don't know why they moved the room, if it's permanent, or what. None of the dealers seem to know either, and the move is pretty much universally disliked. What once was a very nice poker room is now just a bunch of tables tucked into a low-traffic area off the main floor of the casino. It's a complete afterthought.
Once I paid my registration, I still had an hour or so before the tourney started, so I went over to the main pit and played a little Pai Gow. In about twenty minutes, I was up $22, and walked away when some annoying kid sat down at the table and started yapping. At that point, I just wandered back over to the poker
The tournament started with four full tables, and with re-entries, there were 45 players total. I was doing pretty well at first, building up a nice stack of chips, but then I got crippled. I had pocket tens, flopped top set, and then went all-in over the top of the guy in front of me. He called with just King-high, and I thought I'd bust him out, except he went runner-runner to make a straight.
That chopped me right down to about 50% of the average chip stack, and I was playing catch-up for over an hour, short-stacked the entire time.
It was getting close to push-em and pray time, when I looked down to see pocket nines. There was some action in front of me, so I went all in and managed to triple up when I turned a full house. That got me back to playing with confidence, and by then we were down to two tables.
By then, the blinds were getting unwieldy, so players were dropping like flies. By the time we got our second break, we were down to 14 players, with the top six making money. I was a little nervous at that point, but I managed to pull a sick bluff that I still can't believe worked, and raked a nice pot. If I would've gotten called, I'd have been very short-stacked... But when we got down to the final table, I was the chip leader.
There was talk of a chop, but since I was out front, I said I wouldn't push the issue. Besides, there were a couple of very short stacks at that point, and I wanted to get them out of the mix.
I managed to knock out two at once, and when we got down to seven, I had over $60,000 in chips (we started with $4000 each). But then the game tightened waaaaay up. Nobody would call, nobody would raise, everyone was getting a walk on their blinds. I was card dead, but it didn't matter--I had such a monster stack, I could afford to fold about 30 hands in a row without putting a dent in my bankroll.
Eventually, the seventh person busted out, and we were all happy to be in the money. Again the dealer was pushing six way chop for about $400 each, but a couple of the other players didn't want to.
About that time, I was on the big blind, and the small blind had the third-highest chip stack. He pushed all-in for the fourth time in a row, so I called him with my Ace-Nine of diamonds. He had Ace-Six unsuited, but of course the board ran out Queen-Two-Three-Four-Five, giving him a straight and the chip lead, and cutting me to shreds. Luckily, a couple of other people busted out, and everyone wanted to do a chop which would've given us all $460 or so. I agreed, but the one gal who had been short-stacked and then won the two quick pots suddenly decided that she didn't want to make a deal.
Everyone was pissed at her because of that, and I was ready to go because my medication had worn off and my head was all stuffed up and I was hacking a lung up into my sleeve every few minutes. So when it was her big blind, I found myself with King-Ten suited, so I went all-in. The guy on my immediate left also went all-in, as did the girl everyone was trying to bust.
Whoops.
They both had Aces in their hands, and we all paired up on the flop. But since my stack was the shortest of the three, I went out in 4th place for a $345 payday. Not bad, but I think that being sick cost me a couple hundie--had I not been coughing and sneezing and feeling like shiat, I probably wouldn't have made the all-in push, but I saw that even if I lost, well, I was still up $265 for the afternoon, so I got careless.
But even being sick, I managed to play well, only needed to get lucky twice all afternoon to make it as far as I did. Yeah, for a while there, I thought I would be taking home that thousand-dollar first-place prize money, but that guy who caught the five on the river to make his straight ruined that opportunity.
Anyhow, it was a good experience and a nice tune-up. I think I'm going to wait until I'm completely over my cold before I dive into a big tourney though--I need to make it eight or nine hours straight without feeling like crapola.
Now, it's time for bed. I've got a feeling that my phone is gonna ring in a few hours and I'll be needed at work.
Mikey
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