Slow Start in Vegas

I’ve been in Las Vegas now for two weeks, but in that time, I haven’t spent as much time on the felt as I would have thought. Catching up with mates, running around taking care of stuff and hanging out with the girlfriend have all occupied my days at one point or another, but with Halloween now upon us, I can report on how I’ve been fairing on the felt.

I’ve played all my cash and tournament sessions at the Venetian so far – mainly due to the convenience of having my girlfriend work there in the Grand Canal Shoppes at Kenneth Cole. So far my five cash game sessions have yielded just under a buy-in of profit, which is quite annoying because I’ve felt that the games have been fairly weak in comparison with the games during the WSOP. To be honest, my sessions have been fairly short with only 16 hours of play time total and with my last three sessions seeing me forced to top-up, managing to get even or record a small profit have affected my overall ability to net a big accumulative profit.

I have had to make some adjustments to my game since the majority of the players are tight locals. When top pair repeats and they raise or bet hard – they normally have it etc etc. On one instance I saw a lady limp in after a bunch of players with aces. I bet out with top pair on a ten-high flop and she raised small. I called and we both checked the turn as it repeated top pair giving me trips, and when the river landed an ace I bet for value only to be virtually min-raised by the lady and her aces-full. I flatted and lol’d at the sight of her hand. That same day saw me fold ace-queen on a Q-3-5-7 board after I bet the turn and an old guy shoved. Couldn’t reasonably put him on a worse queen, so had to put his range to a set or some retarded two-pair or a straight and consequently folded. I would eventually grind back a negative $300 start to the session by going on a heater making a straight, flopping a set against top pair, flopping another set and then getting top two over top and third pair.

Although there have been a heavy number of tight players, there have been the occasional young kid that I feel is probably decent, but also some really bad fishy players that I’ve been trying to target. In one instance I stacked off with T♣8♣ against pocket fives on a 5♣4♣2♠T♠ board, but on most occasions I have been getting the better of the bad players.

However cash games aren’t my focus, just a way to keep a stable bankroll while here … my focus is definitely on tournaments!

I put together a package for 16 events at both Caesars Palace and the Venetian, but so far I’ve only been able to knock off one event mainly due to schedule conflicts and no drive to play a full-blown MTT. The one that I did manage to play at the Venetian went horribly!

It was Day 1b of a $350 No Limit Holdem event where you started with a 12,000-chip starting bank and played out 40-minute levels. There were a few young kids at my table as well as Shawn “sprstoner” Glines and a lady that I had seen / covered during the WSOP a few years ago. On one of the first few hands a lost a small pot with ace-jack against ace-queen with me being the aggressor before my king-queen lost to A♣8♣ on a Q♣3♣4♦4♣9♠ board. As the level came to a close, there was a raise to 250 and a call before I three-bet to 775 from the hi-jack holding Q♠Q♣. Both players made the call as the flop landed T♥9♦4♦ and the action was checked to me where I bet 1,025. The original raiser called before the player in the middle made it 3,025 to go leaving himself 5,050 behind. I had around 10,000 total and was put in a pretty tough spot here.

The way this guy had been playing was that on numerous occasions I had witnessed him call raises or limp-call raises – so my overall vibe on him was that he was a fairly weak player. Obviously his range to make this check-raise include tens, nines and fours and then a bunch of combo draws as my half-pot bet might look suspicious to him as being some kind of bluff with ace-king or an underpair. I felt that any picture flush draws, queen-jack and top pair hands would make this kind of raise – and although I’m flipping against the strong combo-draws I felt that I should take a gamble to get it in as people from the previous flight were bagging around the 300,000-chip mark.

I raised the action up to 8,500 as the original raiser folded his pocket kings (he said later) and the player in the middle committed the last of his chips holding top set. A king came on the turn to give me more outs before an ace landed on the river. I eventually busted several orbits later three-bet shoving 13-bbs with king-queen only to lose to ace-ten, but I was still beat up about the hand with my queens. Although I took my time in coming to a decision, it definitely wasn’t the best one. I shouldn’t have let the previous flight chip counts affect my decision, and if I really thought deep about his range, I probably would have found a fold.

Oh well, onto the next tournament … but not before a three-day Halloween party involving us dressing up as Pandas!