Goodbye WSOP 2009

My own experience of the main event was a little bit frustrating. I think I played ok, but overall I had reasonably easy tables and I kind of feel that I’ve missed a good opportunity this year.

On day 1 I started off badly, losing a few small pots and then a biggish pot when I check-raised with top two pair on the flop and followed though on the turn, only to pass on the river when the worst possible card appeared leaving me with about 17k out of my 30k starting stack. After that, things went quite well though and I managed to work my way up to 46k by the end of the day.

I had a tougher table on day 2 and every time I got a decent stack together I would take a hit in a big pot shortly afterwards. I finished with 56k which was a bit on the short side, but still a very workable stack given the small blinds. I was still a bit disappointed though, as I lost 20k in the third last hand of the night.

On day 3, I only really played two pots of note and busted in the second level of play. The first big hand I lost happened when I raised from one off the button with K5 off-suit. The button and the small blind seemed fairly tight, and the only hand I could remember the guy on the big blind playing, was when he called a raise with AK, then quickly passed it face up for a continuation bet on a Queen high flop.

Apart from that, he had given up his blinds to a raise most of the time and since I had been playing pretty tight too, I really thought it would be very wimpish of me if I didn’t take this opportunity to try to steal the blinds.

I made a standard raise to 3500 (the blinds were 600-1200 with 100 antes) and the BB was the only caller. The flop came 843 with two clubs, he checked to me, I bet 6500 and he called very quickly. Given his play up to this point, I felt he would only have called me pre-flop with some kind of decent hand, maybe a big Ace, a pocket pair or possibly QK suited or something.

So once he called on the flop I had narrowed this down to a small to medium pocket pair or possibly nut clubs or king high clubs. I didn’t think he had flopped a set as he would probably have check-raised me or if he did decide to slow play it, then at least he would have tried to look weak when he called instead of insta-calling.

The turn was the 9 of clubs and we both checked to see the river bring a red ace. He checked to me again. I was pretty sure now that he hadn’t made a flush and tried to trap me twice by checking the turn and river, so I was pretty sure in my head that he had a small or medium pocket pair. I fired out an 11k bet and was pretty confident he was going to throw in his cards. Instead he insta-called again and turned over A3 off suit, which I didn’t think was part of his pre-flop calling range at all. I know I read this situation completely wrong, but it was a pretty strange one and I’m not going to beat myself up too much about it.

I busted shortly after that with AA, when a guy who had just joined our table raised under-the-gun with 74 suited. He raised to 5k (the blinds were 800-1600 now) and I decided to flat call, since there were six guys still to act after me and I really wanted to try to win a big pot. No one else called and the flop came 544. Obviously I could have raised all in preflop and taken down the pot but I had about 32k at this point and the average was over 120, so I still feel that it was the right thing to do to take a chance and slow-play it in an attempt to get back into the game. If I had just pushed all in and everyone else had quickly folded, then I’d have been feeling pretty silly that I wasted a pair of Aces when I was so short-stacked.

Anyway, I’m done with poker now for this trip. I still have a few days left but I’m just going to be taking it easy. If Nicky’s still in the main event at the end of tomorrow then I’ll probably head round to the Rio to watch for a bit. If he’s knocked out then I’ll try to separate him from some of his winnings on the golf course before we go back, although that hasn’t exactly been working out well for me on this trip!