I’m writing this a couple of days after the event and I accidentally deleted the few notes that I made in my phone during play, so it’s all a bit hazy, but here goes for another $1500 NLHE WSOP Event at the Rio.

I got a nice, friendly table draw with mostly straightforward middle-aged guys, not too tricky, except for Seat 5, two to my left, who was a young guy with a few moves. Later a young Scandi moved into the busted Seat 9 and he made a few standard internet plays, such as shoving 10-15BBs over limpers and re-raising all-in over a LP raise with 15-20BBs.

I got-off to an unusually good start, winning a few pots during the first two levels, including getting paid-off nicely with KK on a K55xx board versus a guy who said he had A5. I had over 10k at the first break, which is the first time I’ve ever had a five-figure chip-stack in a WSOP Side Event.

Unfortunately things cooled-off in the second session and I bled-off a little to ~8k at the second break. During the session before dinner, I was completely card-dead and every time I tried to steal a pot opening from MP or LP, I got 3-bet either by Seat 4 or Seat 5. I went to dinner with just under 6k.

Coming back with blinds at 200/400/50, the Scandi opens for 975 from the HJ seat. Although he does not play like a maniac, he has been fairly active and has opened a few pots from LP. I might have been suspicious of his bet size into my obvious re-stealing stack, but with AJo my hand was too strong to ever consider folding. So I got it in and he snapped me with AK and held to knock me out around 30 minutes after dinner, which is just about as long as I lasted earlier in the series.

It’s another year of failing to cash in WSOP Side Events. The structures are much better than previous years (with the extra chips) and I’ve had a lot more play than before, but I was never able to get my stack going into the 15-20k+ range where I could comfortably get through Day 1.

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