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Over to the Rio for another attempt at a $1500 NLHE my opening table is not as tough as the last one, with some soft spots:

Seat 1: Fairly loose young Dutch guy
Seat 2: Very loose youngish African-American guy
Seat 3: Fairly loose youngish Asian-English guy
Seat 4: Me
Seat 5: Middle-aged Asian-American
Seat 6: Can’t remember
Seat 7: 30-ish loose American card-rack guy from Tourney #1
Seat 8: Fairly loose young English guy
Seat 9: Can’t remember
Seat 10: 40-ish conservative-looking American

We start with 4500 chips at 25/50 with one-hour levels. The table is very loose and there are a lot of preflop 3-bet pots. For most of the first level I just splash around in a few small pots, winning a few and losing a few, but nothing major and I end the level just under my start bank. First remarkable hand comes up in Level 2:

My Stack ~4200, Seat 10 ~4500, Blinds 50/100, I hold AKo OTB

Seat 1 opens from MP for 275 and I 3-bet to 800 in order to either take-down the pot or isolate him in-position without letting the blinds in cheap with random hands. He pauses for a while and looks like he’s going to make the call, which I don’t mind, but at the last moment he adds a 1k chip and makes it 1800 to go. That seemed pretty strong. I figure he has to have QQ+/AK to make this 4-bet and I let the hand go. He shows me QQ like he thinks it’s the Nuts. Personally I don’t like his 4-bet there with QQ, but whatever, he won the hand, so I calm myself down and try to focus. Just before the first break:

My Stack ~3k, Seat 7 ~3.5k, Blinds 50/100, I hold KK in SB

Seat 10 limps, 3 more limpers and I’m holding a conversation with Seats 1 and 5 about something. When I peek at my cards, I make a deliberate decision to just naturally continue the conversation. If a player is talking and then suddenly stops when they see their cards this is a huge tell that they have a big hand, so I didn’t want to give the game away. I finished what I was saying with a smile and looked at the action in the pot. There was already 550 in there, so I made it 525 to go. BB folded, Seat 7 jammed all-in, others fold and I manage to hold versus pocket fives to more than double-up going into the first break.

Key hand of the tournament happened in Level 3:

My Stack ~6k, Seat 2 4350, Blinds 75/150, I hold Th9h in the CO

Seat 2 has played very fast and loose and his stack has roller-coasted up and down. He recently tripled-up from a short-stack and has continued to splash around in pots. He’s certainly capable of bluffing-off his whole stack. He opens for 300 and I make somewhat speculative call. There is perhaps not enough value to cold-call with my hand versus his stack, but I’m quite confident that my call also prices-in at least the BB to come along for the ride, which it duly does.

Pot 975
Flop 9d3d3h

Checks to me and I make it 750, BB folds and Seat 2 insta-jams all-in. I calmly ask the dealer to pull in my bet and give me a count: 3300 to call for ~5800 in the pot. I deliberately take my time on this tough decision. If I call and lose, I’ll be left with only ~1500. I look at Seat 2 to try to get a live tell, but he’s one of those cool-as-a-cucumber African-Americans in shades, cap and hoodie and there’s really no information there at all. I ask him if he wants a call. No response. I ask him want he wants me to do. No response. I wait a little to observe his breathing: a little heavy. I do remember him shifting position during this interrogation and putting his hand over his mouth. I know this is sometimes a tell that he is bluffing, but I can’t be sure. Maybe there is an overall slight inclination from his body-language that he is bluffing, but I don’t feel it is strong enough to influence my decision too heavily, so I then consider what kind of hands he might be bluffing with: almost certainly two overcards to my top-pair and sometimes with a diamond draw. I then consider what shape I’m in if he already has me beat: pretty bad with not much chance of sucking out. Overall I feel that I have to put him on a bluff most of the time in order to make this call (analysing it later, it is actually more like 40% of the time, but that is for breakeven equity and I want to have a big enough edge to make the call). I reluctantly make the laydown and he tables the QTo bluff.

Replaying the situation afterwards in my head, the tells were stronger than I’d given them credit for. By not responding he showed weakness. By shifting position and covering his mouth he showed weakness. By not being impatient with me he showed weakness (i.e. if he had been impatient and/or called the clock, it’s more of a sign that he wants a call). I was a little annoyed with myself for not picking-up on these tells better than I did, as this is usually a strength of mine, but I think it was the pressure of the situation, given that I’d be close to crippled if I called and lost. In hindsight I probably should have the balls to make the call, but sometimes when you’re running bad it’s hard to make hero calls with cards to come. My hand was easily dominated and easily beaten by bad turn and river cards. You could say it’s a kind of Hellmuth-like laydown, but I don’t generally like his –EV laydowns and I should be making these calls when I’m on my A-game. Lesson learned.
Shortly after, I find myself in this spot:

My Stack 4500, Seat 1 ~6k, Seat 2 ~6k, Seat 8 4100, Blinds 75/150, I hold AKs in the CO

Seat 1 opens for 400 and Seat 2 calls. Seat 1 has been fairly loose and opened quite a few pots from MP and Seat 2 is pretty loose and calls here with a fairly wide-range. So with my stack I’m happy to gamble that my AKs is good here versus these two players. Considering the stack-sizes and the pot, I’m committing myself with a raise here and obviously an all-in move is fine, but I think that such a move is too revealing of my hand. Basically, I wouldn’t move-in here with AA-QQ, so why would I do that with AKs and turn my hand face-up to a thinking opponent, who might then call me with any pocket pair. So I make it 2k resolving to get the rest of my chips in the pot in any situation. Just my luck as Seat 8 jams his 4k from the BB and I know he has a monster. Seats 1 and 2 quickly fold and I reluctantly call. The pot is just too juicy as I can only correctly fold to exactly AA here and with his stack and somewhat loose image, his range has to be wider than that. Unfortunately he does have AA and I can’t suckout even after sweating a K-high flop.

I soon lose my last 400 chips and I head over to the Bellagio for a double dip. I did this once last year after busting early from a $1500 at the Rio and ended-up final tabling the Bellagio’s $1k daily. I get in at the Third Level (100/200) with the full 10k starting bank and there’s currently 70 runners (finally grows to 88 runners with $28k for First).

My table was super-soft with the usual crew of recreational players, a couple of competent online kids and, drum-roll, the one and only Mr Dennis Philips of November Nine fame.

As an example of the play there was a hand where the kid in Seat 5, older guy in Seat 6 and Dennis Philips in Seat 7 saw an all-heart T82 flop and all three built a big pot to see the Jd turn. Seat 5 checked, Seat 6 bet, Dennis called, Seat 5 jammed, Seat 6 jammed and Dennis tank-folded Qh9d for like 5k into a 15k pot with over 10k behind after he’d covered the other two guys. Seat 5 showed 22 and Seat 6 showed AhTd. Dennis was like “oh no, I folded the best hand, I thought it was something like that.” The dealer peeled-off the Ts on the river and Seat 6 is like “Yes!!!!!” (lol). Seat 5 calmly told him that his full-house beat trip-tens and he was like “ok…..no…..wait a minute, I have tens and twos, I have you beat” (more lol). Finally he accepted his fate, but managed to run his remaining short-stack back-up before losing AA to the other online kids KK (definitely not where I wanted the chips to go, as these recreational guys are such dead-money in these tourneys).

My 10k went from 8-12k without any big pots or notable hands (biggest pot won was with AA taking down a 3-bet pot on the flop for ~3k). After two more levels, I found myself in this spot:

My Stack ~8k, Seat 10 ~4k, Seat 1 ~10k, Blinds 200/400/25, I hold AA UTG+1

I open for 1025 and Seat 10 cold-calls. I knew he was short-stacked and I’m thinking WTF is that cold-call all about, don’t tell me he’s trying to flop a set on me with no odds like the retard from the Rio a few days ago. Seat 10 has just sat down as a very late registrant with 25BBs and is a young Scandi. He also calls and I absolutely detest the 875dd flop. Scandi checks and even though this seems like the perfect flop for a Scandi’s calling range he doesn’t look too interested in the pot, so I take a stab at it for 2500 into ~3500. Seat 10 insta-jams, Scandi folds and obviously I call the last 500 knowing that he has me beat. He shows me 85s. OMFG! He cold-called for ¼ stack pre-flop hoping to hit with that piece of cheese. I’m getting a bit tired of these stack-size unaware retards as I naturally brick out, but I guess we want these game-theoretically blind players to keep giving us Sklansky dollars with their calls. Shame we can’t spend them though.

I get my last 10BBs in with 66 < K7 and figure that my run-good has got to come soon. It’s coming. I can feel it all storing up for me and I’m remaining positive about my game as we get closer to the Main Event.