August 4, 2009

• Back from Hiatus! – WSOP/Vegas Recap

   

             OK!  I apologize to my dedicated readers for basically taking a two month haitus from blogging while I was in Vegas.  While I was living out there I was pretty busy everyday and didn’t really have time to even breathe.  I probably lost a lot if not all my dedicated blog readers but I notice when I stop writing in my blog I’ll stop for a long while but when I start up again you can expect daily blog entries, so hopefully some of you guys stumble back upon my page.  I am back home and grinding online full-time once again.  During the duration of my time living in Vegas I actually played a very minimal amount of online poker than I expected, I think overall for the whole two months I only had 4 or 5 good online sessions.  The rest of my time mostly comprised of playing a lot of live tournaments, partying on the weekends, eating, working out, and playing video games with my friends.

            My living experience out in Vegas was definately an interesting and different kind of life.  If you didn’t know already I lived in a hotel room on the 16th floor of the Rio Hotel & Casino.  I was a little nervous prior to my trip about actually being couped up in a hotel room for two whole months but as time went by I adjusted to it and actually became really comfortable there.  The cost of the stay was actually higher than I expected but thats only cause I did a lot of room service, drank all the beer from my stocked fridge, and even signed up for a very pricey gym membership.  Other than that, I would definately consider staying there again next summer.  My room was pretty big and was equipped with my own fridge (thank god!), two queen beds, a decent couch, coffee table, crappy box TV, decent bathroom, and a view of the pool and strip that I was very happy with!  Upon arrival of my trip I was very dissappointed that I had a shitty TV that I couldn’t even hook up my Xbox to, but was saved from a very good friend that lived in Vegas. 

  Funny story:  My friend just ordered a 42′ LCD monitor and had no where to keep it, so he made a deal with me that if I bought a PS3 he would let me borrow the monitor for the two months.  Definately took him up on the offer and bought a PS3 that same night.  We carried the huge monitor through the casino and got stopped by security and asked for the receipt, which my friend left at home.  So we left the monitor at the security desk and went back to his house to get the receipt.  Show them the receipt and then they started to give us excuses about why we couldn’t bring something that big up to my room.  They made us carry the monitor back to my friends car and take it back home.  I went back to the security desk and asked to speak to a hotel manager.  I gave him a whole little speech about how I’ll be staying here for two months for the WSOP and if pleased will be a dedicated guest every summer.  Another incentive for making me happy was that I was a pretty big player at the table games and of course casinos love that.  The manager told me he would speak with operations about the situation and get back to me.  He called me back a few days later telling me that I could bring the monitor to my room   My room was finally complete when I hooked up my XBOX and brand new PS3 to the huge monitor, which really came useful when I wasn’t playing poker and just wanted to hang out with my friends and play video games or even just watch blu-ray movies.

  My eating situation went good for the first month I was there when I just kept sandwiches in my fridge and tried to stay away from bad casino food.  It got more difficult later on to go grocery shopping considering I didn’t have a car the whole time I was out there, so for the second half of my trip I ate kind of bad.  I did keep a pretty consistent schedule for working out at the hotel gym so that kept me in shape.  The biggest advantage I had staying at the Rio and will be the main reason I would stay there again next summer is the convenience!  The majority of my tournaments where held at the Rio, the World Series of Poker, so I was hardly ever really late to any of my tournaments and a big plus was that I could pre-register the night before the event and all it took was an elevator ride and a short walk.  Laundry wasn’t that big of a deal since I had a good friend let me come over his house every few weeks to do laundry.  Overall my experience living in a hotel/casino was a good one and wouldn’t mind doing it again next summer.

  Now the juicy stuff, my tournament/WSOP experience.  I was pretty busy right when I landed in Vegas as I had my first tournament two days after my arrival.  I think in total I played around 15 World Series events and spent around $65k on buy-ins.  I only cashed in two events out of the fifteen and they were for min. cashes (double my buy-in).  It was a very disappointing WSOP for me considering I played almost all the No Limit Holdem events, never really had a deep deep run.  My whole goal was to make at least one final table but I didn’t even come close.  In my opinion, I know I played well for the most part in all my events and could only remember one or two events when I knew I wasn’t playing my A game due to being hungover and not having much sleep.  I do remember running pretty terrible in a lot of my events and by terrible I don’t mean getting bad beats or running into coolers but I just remember going on long stretches where I would not get any good cards or momentum throughout my tournaments.  I won’t get dealt big pairs, not flop sets, and blank off on my draws.  You need these situations to make it deep in tournaments and I was just deprived of all of them.  I would never acquire a huge chip stack going into Day 2 and all the chips I did have was hard-earned by picking up small pots and picking right spots to bluff.  So overall, I think I just ran pretty terrible during the WSOP.  I did gain a lot of experience especially in live play, I played with and met a lot of the best pros in the game both live pros and online pros.  I was sat next to Erik Seidel in the $5k event twice and played a lot of pots with him both times, had good conversations with David “The Dragon” Pham, played with gboro and shaundeeb (#1 and #2 ranked online tournament players in the world, respectively), hungout with Colonel Mustard and uuhhhicall from FullTilt, played with I Pay UR Rent, blizair, Wretchy, sketchy1, bhanks, Roothlus, and many many others.  I feel like my live game got 10x better when I was out there, so that was something good that came out of playing in the WSOP.  I did also play a lot of the Venetian Deepstack Series events when I wasn’t playing WSOP events.  I was able to make a final table in one of their biggest turnouts for their $330 buy-in event and took 3rd place in the event for $25k, not bad considering I was an alternate and missed the first two levels.  That was pretty much the highlight of my trip poker-wise since it was the only final table I made and also the biggest cash of my trip.  As I said before, I didn’t play much online but when I did I actually had really good results.  I won two more $12k prize packages to the Main Event while I was out there for a total of six packages!  Pretty sure I’ve won the most $12k Main Event prize packages on FullTilt.  A few sundays before the end of my trip I took down the $109 buy-in $85k guart’d Turbo Rebuy for $41k which recovered a lot of my losses while I was out there.  Definately could expect another shot at it next year and hopefully a better run and deep finishes.

           Now that I’m back you could expect to see me tearing up the virtual felts on a daily basis like I was doing prior to moving.  The win in the $85k Turbo Rebuy a few Sundays catapulted my ranking on www.officialpokerrankings.com to being 15th best player in the world for 2009 on FullTilt, so let’s hope I can keep climbing the ladder from here on out.  I have FTOPS coming up in a few days which I’ve managed to win most of my seats via satellite for all the events I will be playing in.  Surprise, surprise!  I’ve also started on my Pot Limit Omaha Hi game and will be participating in the Omaha Hi FTOPS events, so we’ll see how I bid in those.  Let’s see if I could finally score my own FTOPS jersey avatar.  I’m also in the process of trying to get some funds in my PokerStars account just in time for the WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) that’s running all of September, some really big events in that series!  Maybe even win a seat to Asian Poker Tour in Maccau, China at the end of Sept..  I’ll be back in Vegas for a few weeks in November for the Venetian Deepstack once again.  That’s the pending schedule for myself in the next couple months.  Plenty of opportunities for a big score, let’s make it happen!  Go here or follow my twitter for updates.  Good to be back!

   

   

  • 8:14 am
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