Good times in Vegas.
Monday, April 20, 2009 - Debo34
My Vegas trip was pretty short, just 5 days but was filled with nonstop action, and activities. The very first day I participated in Doyle Brunson’s 2nd annual beer pong tournament at hogs and heifers bar in downtown Vegas. UltimateBet was represented well with me, Scott Ian, p0ker h0, Tracy Scala, Hollywood Dave, and Wiscomurray all attending. I was teamed up with Scott for the tournament, which unfortunately for us was short lived. In the first round we played 2 bouncers from the bar, who by the way were defending champions and it showed. They started off hot and it looked like we were going to get destroyed. We actually made it close at the end and had a legitimate chance to win it if we had made just 2 more shots. Scott had never played the game before but he was a natural…no surprise that a rock star would be good at a drinking game. It was an awesome time, with a lot of cool people.
The next day I played the $500 6 max circuit event at Caesars. This tournament was a bit strange in the fact that for the first 6 hours of this tournament every single thing I did seemed to work out perfect. I picked up and had to show down so many big hands early, that a few hours in, it didn’t matter if I had cards or not. I won pot after pot building my stack from 8k to 36k with small pot after small pot with nothing big ever risked. Just when it seemed like I would cruise deep into this tournament, it all came crashing down in 1 big hand. With the blinds at 300/600 a fairly aggressive player made it 1800 from second position. I was on the button and looked down to see KK. The raiser had close to the same stack as was a very aggressive player after the flop even when he missed. The player directly behind me was a player who seemed like he was going broke soon. He was sitting on 14k and I thought it was very likely he might squeeze here as well. He had all of his chips in the middle at least 6 times before this hand. So I decide to flat call and try to trap and win a big pot. The guy behind me immediately raised to 6200 of his 14k. When it folded back to the original raiser he thought for about 20 seconds before announcing he was all in. This became a monster pot for this time in the tournament. Part of me wanted to lay this hand down. Not because I thought I was behind, but because everything had gone right with very little risk so far. I really didn’t want to gamble for all of my chips at this point. It reminded me of some of the things I have heard Phil Hellmuth say in the past, that at the time I heard them I thought were absurd. He was talking about not wanting to get all his money in even though his hand was dominant because he knew he would find better spots with less risk. This all made sense to me at that particular point in time. I knew my hand was good but yet I wasn’t sure I wanted to call. I decided to make the call, and the guy who made it 6200 folds with almost half of his money in the pot. My KK was up against AK and I lost the hand when an ace came on the flop. He had me covered by 900 chips. I went to the rail, and he went to chip leader in the tournament with over 80k in chips. I can’t wait to discuss this hand with Phil next time we are together. I’ve never wanted to fold a hand that I knew was dominant so badly in my life. I know this sounds crazy, as it did to me before I was put in a spot where I felt like I had control of the table like I did that day.
The only good news that came about busting from this tournament is that I got to attend the UB dinner at Fix at Bellagio we had for our Bellagio super sat package winners. Miss C put on a great dinner party and we had a great time drinking and eating, and drinking some more as we got to chat with the winners. When we were finished there we all headed over to play the drunken 11pm tournament at Caesars. Luckily for me I was out in the first 20 minutes so I could get some rest for the next day.
The next day I went and played a $2500 satellite for the 25k WPT championship. As it turns out I really didn’t need to get sleep at all for this tournament as I was out within the first hour when twice I flopped top 2 pair, and twice got caught on the river. Grrrrr
My trip overall was an A+ for fun, and a D- for poker. It’s hard to pay the bills with fun last time I checked, but I guess it could be worse. Besides, I’ll have 7 weeks in Vegas starting late May. I’m sure I will get my fill then.
Good Luck
Debo
Tags: Bellagio, doyle brunson, Fix, Hollywood Dave, P0ker H0, Phil Hellmuth, Scott Ian, Tracy "Fatcats" Scala, ultimatebet, wiscomurray, WPT Championship
