Played 2 tourneys in the last 3 days - the Bellagio 1080 (uneventful, busto, etc.) and today's $1500 at the Rio.

Long story short, I finally have a WSOP cash in '08 and am heading into tomorrow with an average stack. The reason is a reasonably nice call followed by, literally, the biggest fold I have ever made in my life.

The call:

I arrive at my table about 10 minutes late and head off to the bathroom after a few minutes believing it's extremely weak/tight, with lots of folding around. As I get back into my seat (10) a few minutes later, the guy to my left, Seat 1, is busy showing off his K8-high bluff on a 775x board. I make a note of that - not that it matters, because he raises 7-8 of the next 10 hands and no one plays back at him.

At the end of that orbit, it's folded to me in the small blind and I complete A T planning to reraise his (very expected) raise. Instead, he asks me how much I have behind - around 2800 chips at 25/50 - and says "all in". I take 10 seconds just to make sure I'm not crazy, say "call", and find myself to be well ahead of his A 5; the T in the door seals my double up.

Later on, I raise aces in EP and eventually fold the turn face up to a pretty obvious set/straight. That basically establishes my image for the fold.

The fold:

At 100/200, MP, with about 9K behind, raises to 425. He's a middle aged guy wearing a motorcycle shop jacket and said he was sponsored by them (basically meaning he's the best freeroll player at the club - ie, not that good.) The button, with about 4500 behind, flat calls. Button, a middle aged Brit, got to the table about an hour ago and immediately pushed 1800 chips on his first hand at 50/100. At 100/200, someone else raised UTG; while he was counting out his raise, the Brit checked his cards out UTG+1 and pushed his now 9x stack faster than I have ever seen. The floor got called and ruled the Brit could take his raise back (this ruling is terrible, BTW); however, the Brit said "nah, I shouldn't be able to do that", got called, and obviously wound up holding aces. I looked down on 6 5 in the big blind with 7K; given those two opponents and the odds I was getting, I obviously overcalled.

The flop came 9 7 7. I checked planning to (obviously) shove over any bet, but both MP and button checked behind.

The turn was a very nice seeming 8. I bet 775 into 1375. MP played with his chips, briefly seemed like he was going to raise (whoa), then called. Button...immediately instashoved his stack.

At this point, I was getting well over 2 to 1 to call his shove with a made straight and a flush redraw. This couldn't be more of a no-brainer, except that something - I don't know what, how, or if it'll ever happen again - told me I was very beaten by somebody in this hand. About an eternity later, most of which was spent convincing myself "yes, you do have to do this", I went with my gut, said "this is the sickest fold I've ever made in my life", and mucked.

As I was mucking, MP shoved his chips in just as fast as the button had done with aces earlier. The button, aware that he was getting called but still unaware what MP was flipping over, sarcastically said "yeah, pretty sick" and turned over...uhh...Q 6? Had MP folded at this point, it would have basically sent me on instant life tilt and confirmed I'm horrible at donkaments - except that he was drawing dead, because MP was busy flipping over 99. (No, my one out didn't hit on the river.)

Eight hours of total freerolling and actually playing decently later, I ran the 6K in chips I had left after the Fold of the Century <TM> into 40K before bluffing a bunch off on the bubble. The last 40 minutes (just ITM) were good to me, though, so I'll start day 2 with 33000 chips at 800/1600.

I'll update the blog with my finish and a whole bunch of fun stories tomorrow. Preview: Scotty Nguyen takes a bad beat by losing a $6,000 monkey, then convinces the floor to give him 1200 extra chips. (No, I'm not making that up.)

In the meantime, wish me luck!

Long story short, 0 for the last 2 as well, but there was a third break and a legitimate bad beat or two in there so things were, theoretically, moving forward.

...until Bond busted at a WSOP FT in the way that he did and sent me into more tilt than I would have been in had I simply bubbled some random donkament. How do you make it to the final 8 at the WSOP, bust on a 4:1 bad beat and still owe 50K in makeup afterwards? That's actually almost the grossest thing I've ever heard of.

Another gross fact: We have six people playing the WSOP in this house. Three of them have final tabled an event. Two of those people still owe 50K in makeup each (that'd be more than I have, and I'm now 0 for 10 with no particular rungood in sight) and the third will probably keep about 70K for finishing second. Why do I play donkaments again? [Trick question: I actually put in a bunch of hands of PLO and razz recently. I might even be a winning player at low to midstakes PLO now. Whee!]

But nobody particularly cares about random poker hands, so here's an update that may actually be interesting to people: 60 Minutes did drop by and film a whopping 15 minutes of me playing poker, in advance of interviewing me (I guess that's this August now, which means the story should be September-ish) in addition to people who aren't nearly as cool, like Greg Raymer and Annie Duke. If UB and/or AP get their shit together by then and manage to somehow convince everyone involved that they're now a legitimate operation, the story should wind up being very good for poker. Alternatively, they can keep on doing what they're doing now, which will not result in anything nearly as nice. I'll update more if I hear anything from the grapevine that's printable, as, unfortunately, the number of things I've heard that I can't talk about now would fill a very long binder.

Taking tomorrow off because there's nothing going on/back on the grind Thursday or so.

PS: I don't care if you guys don't wanna read this. Comedy bustout hand from today:

I lose a flip, leaving me with ~2000 chips at 100/200, and immediately get moved to another table, where I'm on Joe Tehan's left. "This ought to be fun for an hour or so until I bust - at least Joe's a good guy", I think.

The dealer tosses out the cards, and with one limper, I look down at QQ in MP2. Instead of shoving, I make it 700 and listen to the table laugh about the internet kid raising light. Naturally, the 70-something SB, who's laughing the loudest, calls for 1/3 of our effective stacks, as does the limper.

Flop J72r. Old guy checks, limper bets 800 into my 1200 stack ("I have the nuts"), I shove, old guy...instacalls ("I no longer have the nuts"), limper overcalls. Well, there's a chance they both have jacks, right? Turn A, old guy bets ("no, not really"), limper folds, 77 is very good.

"Nice seeing you again for one hand, Joe". Poker is funny.

As expected, I was mostly fine the next day, but wound up skipping the 5K event (which a friend of mine won - congrats) to hang out at home and watch a movie. I definitely recommend Kung Fu Panda; it's a nice brainless way to spend a couple of hours not thinking about poker.

I did play an event yesterday, where I continued my tradition of second breaklessness. This time, it was on a pretty generic hand - a shortstack raises to 525 of his 2600 stack in MP at 100/200, I make it 1650 of my 4400 stack with AKs next to act, and the SB pretty quickly shoves. Although I make some G-bucks on the shove, I still lose to his jacks. Starting at 80 BB in a 2K event (which goes down to 20 BB in 2 hours) and having no room to play leads to a lot of hands like this, which is really annoying when you don't win any.

That led me to the razz event today. I came into it with high hopes, and for about two hours, the results were spectacular; the hand after the first break, I'd run a 3K starting stack to 8K and probably had the chip lead in the tournament, playing very well, making thin value bets in all the right spots and pretty much destroying the incredibly soft field. Then, as seems pretty standard for me these days, the bottom fell out; I made one 765-low (that chopped) and 3 87's, *all of which I made on fifth and had to fold on sixth street!!!*, in the next four hours, and simply never won another hand worth any chips. I'm reasonably sure I played my A game for the whole tournament, but when you don't make any hands in a stud format where the blinds move up fast, it doesn't matter.

Sigh.

There are a bunch of NL events coming up from Saturday - Tuesday, in addition to a really good Sunday (lots of WSOP packages up for grabs. Did I mention I managed to bubble one of those a week ago via a 3 outer? ...yeah, it's been that kind of series.) I'll be playing at least 2 and probably 3 of those. Everyone I know has seemingly won a bracelet (Scott today, Vanessa yesterday in PLO), so it's definitely my turn now or something.

Funny thing - it seems way worse than it is. Not cashing in 8 events is so amazingly standard that nobody even cares; it's just the stage on which this is taking place that's making this worth life tilting over. Oh yeah, and running TPTK into the nuts repeatedly kinda sucks, too.

'K, enough bitching. Some good poker coming up soon, and at the very least, I managed to make certain I still know how to play it.

Still not an actual Day 2, though. Quick update because it's late: today's event went better than the ones before it and I'll post some hands later, but I wound up shortstacking it up for about four hours and busting the first time I actually pushed a 10xBB stack. Nonetheless, I played well and made some good reads/got into one or two pretty interesting spots.

While I was doing that, though, my roommate was busy getting 2'nd in the S8/O8 event (grats Tom, you've earned it) and my friend Leo (Unamuno on 2+2) was busy final tabling the shootout (ditto).

My turn next :p

Last entry, we left off with me accidentally turning top two pair into a bluff. Yesterday, I followed up on that with this hand about 45 minutes into the 6 max:

LAGgy Asian guy who's already 4 bet once preflop open limps on the button. I make it 200 with AKo in the SB with about 2600 behind. BB folds, he calls.

Flop 665r. I bet 275 into 450, he calls (standard).

Turn A. I check, he bets 525, I call planning to lead the river, since he's going to check behind a bunch of hands and I'd rather he hero call stuff.

River 7. There's about 2400 in the pot/effective stacks 1800, so I bet tiny - 750 - to encourage said hero calls or maybe induce a shove. He takes 15 seconds, fiddles with his chips, then flats the...86.

Sigh. *Really?* I think I'm overly good at making villains think I have the nuts.

After that, I pushbotted back to 2200, then busted hero calling TranquilChaos (a good CR pro) on an AQ52T board with QJ after I defended PF and he nearly potted the flop/checked the turn. On the one hand, his shove seemed pretty ugly; on the other, I was 100% certain he didn't have an ace and I was beating him on the flop due to his bet size, which means he was only repping one hand/two flush draws both missed. Unfortunately, he was actually repping two hands, since it turns out he hit a set on the turn. I'm not particularly regretting the call much (unfortunate outcome, but I think I can defend it), but hands like the first are beginning to annoy me. Needless to say, not making the first break *again* is/was, too.

---

On not quite actual tilt but determined to make a second break at *some* point, I then entered the O8/S8 2500 mixed game event. On the one hand, these two aren't my best games in the HORSE rotation; on the other, I was still sure I was +EV in the field, which, seeing the play, was true.

The results were mixed; for the last four hours, an average stack could play less than 2 hands to the river, so everyone's stack, including mine, fluctuated wildly. At one point, I was at 1800 chips at 100/200, then at 12K at 200/400 after winning a grand total of 3 pots.

I did eventually bust towards the end of Day 1 with about 1/3 of the field remaining and feel like I played too passive overall, but going over a bunch of hands with my roommates, there was only one decision in one hand that cost me a lot of chips, and it was simply a bad preflop call in S8 that, it turns out, I played well postflop/at least my instincts are good. Everything else was simply a cooler (topped off by AA33 < A345, then AKK5 < AA33 within a 5 minute span...but these things happen in split pot games with lousy structures.)

So, the bottom line is, I got enough poker in last night to make sure I'm not playing terrible, though I'm still getting coolered a lot. There's only one event left before Wednesday that I care about being in - tomorrow's $2500(?) NL, with some newly deep stacked Bellagio events - they doubled buyins and tripled starting chips in their daily tourneys and are apparently getting quite a crowd, too - possibly thrown in. Sans that, I'll just be taking a break from making Wafflecrush effectively pay me $1500/hour to get owned by people making the nuts somehow by playing online.

C'est la vie. For some reason, I still don't mind the outcome of any of this stuff. "That's poker" sounds a lot more plausible when you can't ever be on the bad side of lifetime variance again.