You Won't Believe What I Have

Last night, I had my second stud final table in a row. This one was the $1,500 Stud, Event #36. The table was populated with virtual unknowns to me, except Al Barbieri, who took runner up. The guy with the funny laugh, Mike Rocco ended up taking it down. It was pretty boring, barely even worthy of the last three sentences of our time.

I finished up around 11:00pm and set out for the Venetian to play some cards with Dallas. He was sitting $2/5 NL, which is not my preference, but I sat down next to him. Glad I did. The table was actually relatively solid, and I met a good player from Raleigh who was on Dallas' left. There were two juicy idiots at the table though, and I managed to stack one of them on two back-to-back pots. Never did manage to get it in there with the biggest moron though, just never found a spot against him. I was playing quite on the tight side, partly because I hadn't played those limits yet on this trip. I had been playing only $1/2 or $1/3 NL, depending on the venue. No time like the present though. In the first few minutes, I had [Q][Q] twice and got no action either time. An hour or so in, I picked up pocket [T][T] and put in a raise to $30 with a couple limpers in front of me. Three callers, including one of the idiots from the blind, we'll call him Loosey. The flop came [9][5][4], and it was checked to me. I bet $75, and Loosey was the only caller. The turn was a [J], and he checked to me. I checked behind, still pretty sure I had the best hand, but I didn't want to get check-raised. The river paired the [4]. Loosey led out $150, which is exactly what I thought he'd do when I showed weakness on the turn. I was 80% sure I had the winner, and his body language added another couple of percent on top. After a minute, I stacked out the call, covered my eyes with one hand, and slid the chips in with the other. He turned over [A][Q], and I was up $250 just like that. I played a couple more hands pretty well, and made a few mistakes too, but I ended up +$750 in about five hours. I'll take that every time.

I left there around 3:30am. I would have stayed a little longer, but I had to pick up Slippers from the Rio. He wasn't ready to go quite yet, so I went inside to find him, along with Tim, Garry, and Melissa drinking and playing in the player's lounge. It's a pretty sick little room, hidden away behind a partition in the Brasilia Room. They have a couple pinball machines, a putting green, a pool table, a Wii, a full-size virtual golf thingy, and an electronic heads-up WSOP arcade machine, which is pretty cool. We spent a couple hours making side bets on silly shit. I won Garry $60 when I hit a left-handed driver 185 yards to cover his bet with Tim. And Slippers won our little 6-person $10 heads-up tournament. Six because the security guard played too. Good times.

Today, I had another miraculous day off. Days off are the shit. I got up around 2:00pm, did some laundry, got a haircut, and went to Bellagio to sweat Dallas a little bit. He is a fantastic player in the middle of a god-awful run right now. Hopefully on the tail end of one, actually. He had been playing WSOP events for a couple days, but he decided to forgo the usual donkaments and play the $2,000 weekly tournament at Bellagio. When I got there, it was about four hours in, and he had just 3,500 of his original 20,000 chips left. He is Captain Shortstack though, and he doubled up a couple times to have 18,000 a short time later.

And then he ran into Roy Winston. There was a raise to 2,800 from a loose player in early position, and Winston, a full-time Full Tilt pro, called behind. Dallas was in late position and this was the perfect spot for a squeeze play. I wouldn't even look at my cards here, I'd just ship it all in. Dallas had [Q][5], but it really didn't matter what he held at that point. All in for around 16,000. The original raiser folded, and Winston went into the tank for a few minutes.

He asked Dallas, "Will you show me if I fold?"

Dallas said, "I'll definitely show you if you call."

Winston did the cash game thing and counted the pot, making a comment on the good odds he was getting to call. He had about 25,000 left in his stack. Finally, he did commit 2/3s of it and made the call. Dallas hated it. "You won't believe what I have."

Winston goes, "Aces?"

Dallas says, "Queen-five."

To everyone's surprise, Winston cringes and says, "You got me dead," as he tabled [2][5] suited. Dallas knew what was coming though, a [2] right on the flop paired the pro and sent Dallas to the rail. Roy said he's going to write about how badly he played the hand in his blog. But he'll no doubt try and justify it with a lecture on pot odds. I still can't figure out what he was doing calling the initial raise with that trash. It does provide further evidence that my friend is running terribly right now. GG Dallas.

Tomorrow, it's back to the grind for me. I forget which event I am covering, but I do know that I get a late start at 5:00pm. Brilliant!