HD Conquers Caesar’s WSOP Circuit Event!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - HollywoodDave
Thaaaaaat’s right! A few days ago yours truly took down my very first WSOP Circuit event, baybee! Along with the official WSOP ring comes a bundle of cash and yet another first place notch on my growing list of poker creds… after years in the blackjack trenches, its nice to continue the conquests on the poker felt.
For some reason, I’ve always done well at Caesar’s. Don’t know why — have yet to cash in a Venetian deepstack event, but seem to do well in most every tourney I play at Caesar’s. Last year i went deep in 2 events there, so to finally win one feels awesome! Its been awhile since I’ve won a live tourney (too much time cleaning up online!) but I def have been playing more live lately to get ready for this year’s WSOP (which starts in only like 4 weeks!)
Sooooo….here are all the gritty details from my win! After buying in at Hellmuth Time (read: last possible second before they closed registration 2 hours in lol), I proceeded to ship away 60% of my chipstack in the first 2 hands, going from 6k to 2400! Both times I ended up with open-ended straight draws in multi-way pots that I had odds to stay in, but none of the draws hit and I ended up just blowing chips unnecessarily. We’ve all been there — just cheap enough to stay in the pot over, but not something you feel good about!
From there I just locked it down and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Til I found the double up with pocket Jacks that got me close to being healthy again. And so on — all the way to the dinner break, playing super tight and waiting for those few key hands to keep me floating right around chip average. At dinner I knew with the blinds going up as quickly as they were, even having chip av was not going to cut it soon, so I was gonna have to make some higher variance plays after the break to take a shot at pulling in some chips. The good news here was that my super tight image was starting to pay off, as I could now steal with impunity 
Well, I didn’t have to wait long. First hand back from dinner, my QQ cracked 99 and I was off and running. The next hand my JJ took down some blinds. And a few hands later my KK took care of more bizness! But the big coup came when my QQ cracked KK in a monster pot not too long later, sending me near the top of the chipleader pile, where I stayed for pretty much the rest of the tourney.
Patience was a huge watchword for me this tourney — first, without many chips it helped me wait for those key double up hands. And 2nd, when I DID have chips, the patience to keep from doubling anybody ELSE up! What surprised me was how often i was actually FOLDING my marginal hands in late position (as opposed to constantly attacking the blinds) — playing in so many aggro online tourneys has def made me much more aggressive in this arena, but folding as often as I did in that position meant that when I DID raise to steal, my marginal hands were given tons more respect.
Eventually I worked my way to 3 players left, once of them Paul ‘Eskimo’ Clark. I was pretty much tied for the lead with the other player (Jack Andelman), but with Eskimo not too far behind and the blinds pretty much out of control, we decided to save 15k apiece and play for the ring and the remaining 8k. 5 minutes later, I was kinda regretting the decision as I had over half the chips in play!!! But then in standard poker fashion, Eskimo ran a badly timed bluff into Jack’s KK and suddenly my 1.2 million chips were being challenged by Jack’s 1 million chipstack. Normally I love to fight all the way to the end, but with the blinds so high (20k/60k with a 5k ante) we both had less than 20 BB and that took most of the play outta the game. So I locked in the win, the ring, and we chopped up the rest of the money right then and there. Not bad for 2 day’s work!!
Of course there’s been plenty of celebrating the past few days, but now its all about gearing up for the real thing: the WSOP! What a nice way to warm-up, but I am more than ready for the real thing….
rock on –
-hd.
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Tags: blackjack, Caesars Palace, Hellmuth, Venetian, WSOP
May 6th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Congrats Dave
I enjoy watching you play & always look for you when your online it’s nice to see you score a big one.
Keep up the good play