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Comments on Adanthar's blog |
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LakeofFire says
Good call anyway. It was minefield in Vegas for me. Better luck next tournament.
Thursday, June 28, 2025
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Today's also known as "the day I played the best hand of my live poker career and have nothing to show for it". Sigh.
There won't be any good tournaments at the Rio until Thursday, but I made it out there anyway to play some satellites. I jumped into a 1K, wound up making it to third place playing 3 hands (and doubling up on one of them), pushbotted 1 hand as the short stack and ran into AK. It's a shame, because the play was even worse than the average 525 has been lately - we made it to 3 handed at 300/600. Wow.
After busting, I was going to just go home but got a phone call from Vivek (Psyduck on 2+2) inviting me to play at the nightly Bellagio 1K at 8 PM. It's not their typical Bellagio Cup-type awesome structure (actually, this one's pretty terrible, with 40 minute levels and some big jumps), but the field turned out to be pretty soft, and except for Iweargoggles from 2+2 (whom I brought along*) one to my left, I felt that this was pretty much the ideal table/tournament for its size [getting ~112 runners for a 40K first place prize.]
*Warning: It turns out the Bellagio seats people sequentially in the order they sign up. This is a very bad thing if your friends are good at poker :(
So, on to the best hand of live poker I've ever played:
---
With about 6K at 100/200, I raised 9 8 to 550 in EMP. It folded around to the BB, a 35-ish American guy wearing a beret and looking like an extra from the set of a war movie, who had a penchant for slowplaying big hands - he'd already coldcalled AA twice and bet 300 into a pot of 2000 with a set once. He called, and with 1200 chips in the pot, we saw a Q T 7 flop. As soon as the cards were dealt, he instantly bet 800 into me.
I considered my options. Folding wasn't. Shoving briefly seemed good, but this was the first strong bet from him I'd seen all night, and I felt like he had a big, but vulnerable hand that probably wasn't folding. After about fifteen seconds, I decided I was going to call and mentally chant "jack".
Turn: J  . Bingo! He checked, I thought about the pot size/bet size and wound up settling on betting 1500 of my now 4500 chip stack.
He clearly knew he was in trouble and tanked...and tanked...and tanked. For about two minutes, the guy basically thought throuh his options and spoke out loud. "This will be a monster laydown if I make it"..."I can't really call, I have to push or fold"..."This is such a bad board, you can have AK, AQ..."
At this point, he was clearly leaning towards folding and desperate measures were called for. Normally, I try to be as stone faced as possible during a hand, but it was time to Hollywood. "I can tell you don't have AK", I said - "I'll show my hand to the security cams if you want, they'll back me up". If he was thinking on the right level, he would have seen right through this (c'mon, how bad do I want him to call here?), but that just wasn't where he was at, and he...tanked some more.
"Will you show if I fold? I'll show mine." "I'll be honest - no, sorry."
At this point, he called the tournament clock on himself and spent the next minute playing with his chips while I was mentally willing them over the all in line. With exactly 4 seconds to go he...just called. What?
River A . Before I had time to twitch, he instashoved.
@%(@%(@(%(*@%.
As the table cracked up since, of course, it was obvious I didn't have a king and it was now my turn to tank, I thought this through. How could he have gotten there with a king? It could've been the greatest Hollywood job of all time if he had AK, but then the flop bet would be hugely out of character. KQ seemed like the most likely candidate...but would he have spent 5 minutes and called the clock on himself deciding on an action with top pair and a draw? Would he have done this with some kind of K + heart draw combo? Nothing K-related made sense. But why the hell did he love this river so much?
After a minute of this, I made a decision to go with my gut, turned to Iweargoggles, said 'this will either be the greatest or the worst call of all time' and called. Immediately, BB triumphantly spiked his cards on the table as I waited ready to wince and say 'good game'...but wait, no picture on either? What? Aces??? The confused, crushed expression on his face as he saw I actually did have a straight was priceless.
Iweargoggles immediately said "this hand confuses me more than anything I've ever seen." Nobody else at the table could believe it, either. But the fact that nobody even remotely put me on 98, coupled with the fact that I made the right call on an incredibly brutal river, pretty much makes it the best hand I've ever played live.
---
So, of course, after being handed a 12K stack at 100/200, I was out half an hour later.
Hand 1: A3o raises UTG+1 for 600 of his 2500 chips, I reraise TT, he instashoves and the first card on the flop is an ace (hmm, I've seen this before). Fine, easy "nice hand" comment/move on, I still have 10K.
Hand 2: I lose 1800 more chips in a blind battle, putting me at 8K.
Hand 3: 10 minutes later, I raise AK to 600 in EP. The BB, the same guy from the A3o hand, makes it 1600 and I, of course, instashove. He could not call any faster with...TT (keep in mind that he is something like 30% against my range in that spot), I brick, and as it turns out, he has me covered by 25 chips.
Yeah, I run really hot these days (in opposite land.)
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On the bright side...when I finally put together a run good streak and play like this, it'll be a really, really easy tournament win.
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