Campfire Stories

2006 World Series of Poker

I arrived this morning in Las Vegas for a three week stint at the World Series of Poker. I am planning on playing about five of the preliminary events and a ton of cash games and will be giving an almost daily update of the happenings here.

After I realized that my luggage did not make it on the same plane out of Ontario, CA that I was on this morning, I hopped in a cab and headed directly to the Rio Hotel and Casino where the Series is. I was hungry, and found a Starbucks on the way back to the convention center where the events are being held. Almost nine bucks for a plain bagel with cream cheese (not toasted!) and a venti white mocha. Hey, at least they asked if I was playing in the Series, apparently for survey purposes. Finally I headed back to the tournament room and let's just say that I am impressed. This place is HUGE. I registered for the $1500 NL Tournament on Tuesday, the first of the open preliminary events. I wanted to play in some live action games, and those did not exist. At all. No lists or anything. I am not too surprised since the place just barely opened up at 9am this morning. I decided to play in a satellite, which is a single table tournament, winner take all. I bought in for $225, and ten of us received our first hands of the 2006 WSOP.

In the first hand, a guy in early position pushed all in for 1000 chips with blinds at 25-25. The guy two spots behind him called immediately, and the two of them took a flop with the first guy holding AKo, and the 2nd guy holding AJo. I was quite surprised to say the least. Two terrible plays. Generally if you make a play like that with AK and get called you are going to be a 45% chance to win at best, and usually you are going to be a huge dog to AA or KK. However, this other guy decided that AJo was good enough to call an all-in with. Horrible horrible play. The AK held up, and we were down to nine.

The satellite was pretty uneventful for me. I never won a pot. I finally was busted when my stack was down to 575 and I open-raised from the hijack to 300 w/ATo. I was flat called by the cutoff, and the BB (over-aggressive AK guy) went all-in. I was priced in and called, as did the guy behind me surprisingly who still had a fair amount of chips. BB had A2o, guy behind had 66, and I liked my chances. KQ7 flop, turn 6, river T. Welcome to the World Series.

The play on the table was quite poor. I think I will be spending more time than I expected in the satellites if this pattern holds consistent. I am now sitting in the sports book killing time waiting for Tamir and Andy to pick me up writing this post and playing online. I am very excited for the next three weeks and am looking forward to making up for a slow start this year. Keep checking back here and sweat in my progress as I make my poker life public for the first time.

posted by Devo @ 11:33 AM |