Bond18
07-11-2007, 09:23 PM
WSOP Trip Report part 22, Top Gun, WSOP ME Day 2a
My whole life I’ve been pretty lucky in regards to health and physical concerns. I’m allergic to nothing; never been seriously ill, fast metabolism, etc. Unfortunately somewhere around my teen years I developed two annoying physical problems:
A. I have a lot of trouble getting to sleep and maintaining a normal sleep schedule.
B. I have an extremely sensitive stomach.
Worst of all, one problem tends to beget the other. If I get under 8 hours of sleep I can count on with about 95% accuracy my being quite sick to my stomach the next morning. I looked it up on WebMD and apparently this is just a consequence for not getting enough sleep for some people. On those days I never know if my next meal will turn my intestines to hell and ruin me for hours. So what tends to happen is on some night where I plan on getting 9 hours of sleep I lie in bed unable to sleep for an hour, then realize I’ll only be getting 8, then realize if I don’t fall asleep very soon I’m going to be sick. Ever tried falling asleep when you’re thinking “man I really got to get to sleep right now”? Yea, good luck with that. Then I inevitably wake up feeling sick for the rest of the day, which if it carries on through the evening makes it even harder to fall asleep. The only ways I’ve found to stop the cycle of insanity is either sleep medication, or having days where I don’t have to wake up for anything. The problem with those days then is that my body tries to catch up by making me sleep a bazillion hours totally ruining my schedule, so next time I need to get to bed at a decent hour my body will think its way to early.
It’s the night before day 2a. I’ve had a quiet evening where I’ve had dinner with friends, watched a good movie, had some food, wrote, taken a sleeping pill, and tried to get to bed early. Unfortunately my schedule got [censored] by our playing until 4am on day 1 and I didn’t wake up until 5pm today. When I finally manage to fall asleep at about 4am my body snaps awake at 8am, my schedule being so [censored] my body thinks that period was a nap and not its proper sleep time. I lie in bed for another 90 minutes praying my mind will click back off, but it’s not happening. [censored] it, I can play on 4 hours sleep, I’m just going to need Pepto-Bismol and Redbull.
I waste time on my computer for a an hour or two then head downstairs to the little shop in the Rio and buy the much needed Pepto. I feel fairly good and awake for 4 hours of sleep. The Pepto does pretty well at making my stomach chill the [censored] out. I’ll just take my annoyance of the situation out on my much short stacked table.
I show up a bit early to the table and have a look around. I had read the list correctly, everyone is quite short and nobody is over 40k. Most of the table is in their 30’s or 40’s as well, with only a couple younger guys. This is very good news. The cards get in the air at 500/1000 blinds with 100 ante and the massacre begins.
For the first 2 hours at the table I find nobody is willing to play with me. At one point I raise J9o and a short stack shoves and I call getting 2 to 1 and beat his 77. That was about the last time anyone screwed with me. My BB got walked about two thirds of the time (seriously) and my open raises were almost never three bet. Eventually another larger stack of maybe 120k gets moved to the table 2 on my right, and he’s a fairly aggressive Euro player. I put my table captain hat on begin making his life miserable with 3 bets. In this period, there is absolutely zero interesting hands. I don’t think I played one hand past a flop, and my C bets were getting an absurd amount of respect. The only other young guy at the table stares at me for a moment then asks
”Where do I know you from dude?”
“I don’t know, have you played a lot of the events?”
”Nah, just got here.”
”Play in Australia ever?”
”Never been there. I don’t know, you seem really familiar though.”
I realize where he knows me from, but I decide not to say anything. It’s to early in the morning to be doing impressions.
About 3 ½ hours into the day I get moved, which is unfortunate because my table was letting me get away with all the murder I’d planned. I arrive at my new table, where the line up goes as follows (and would only change by one player all day) :
Seat 1: Older guy of about 55 or 60. Very very tight weak.
Seat 2: Younger guy of maybe 30ish. Wearing a Ladbrokes qualifier shirt. If the land of Nitdom needed a king, this is their guy.
Seat 3: A tight but at least a little more aggressive English guy of about 35 or 40. He’s a cool guy.
Seat 4: Laggy Asian guy of about 30. He’s not a good sort of LAG though (as you’ll find out) as he often open raises 4 or 5 or even 6X at totally random times and seems tilt capable. I’m 90% sure he wasn’t a famous one either. He is the other big stack on the table with around 250k (I show up with about the same.)
Seat 5: A mid 30’s black dude who according to TheWacoKid is in the music industry and plays not bad. He’s kind of on tilt when I get there and seems unsure of his decisions after apparently blowing off some chips to seat 4.
Seat 6: Me.
Seat 7: A young guy from Melbourne Australia named Tim. When I hear his accent we get talking and hit it off pretty well. Unfortunately for Tim he is playing WAAAAAAY to weak tight, that or the most card dead I’ve ever seen anyone.
Seat 8: A very nice/talkative 50ish guy who is a huge nit.
Seat 9: A 30ish Singaporean guy who got 2nd in the 5k Singapore event to Tony G. He is a little more loose but not necessary loose aggressive.
When I arrive at the table I realize that seat 4 is really playing table captain here and raising a lot of pots. Nobody on the table seems interested in stopping him. That is, nobody until I showed up. A couple rounds in the following hand develops:
Blinds 600/1200 with 200 ante.
My stack: ~250k
Seat 4: ~250k
Seat 5: ~80k
I hold Q5o in the BB.
Preflop: Folds to seat 4 on button, button raises to 5000, SB looks extremely unsure of himself and his decision then calls. I make it 22000, button insta mucks. SB spends more time feeling unsure of himself then folds. I then rip the metaphorical table captain hat off seat 4’s head.
I start raising a [censored] load. Nobody seems interested in stopping me. At some random point I three bet seat 4 again, who calls and check folds to me on the flop. We go on break and I tell people how I’m in the mid to high 200’s and various people insult me for my absurd luck in regards to table draws. When I get back from the break I am absurdly hungry and seat 4 has a box of small cookies. He offers them to me.
“Oh thanks so much man, I am starving.”
”No problem, take all you like.”
”Oh man, you’re my new best friend. I promise, no more pre flop 3 bets.”
“I wish I’d had these cookies an hour ago then.”
The Brit in seat 3 chimes in (who I’d 3 bet once) “I’ll go buy you a box then!”
For about an hour or so everything goes calm. The Singaporean guy in seat 9 massively sucks out the black guy in seat 5 with a totally retarded hand (4 betting all in with AJo vs black guys KK and flopping AJA when black guy was being a huge nit) and eventually seat 5, who has 4 BB’s left, gets knocked out. A new guy gets moved to the table, a quite tight Asian guy of about 30 who has ~150k. Seat 4 and I take turns open raising and crushing the table, and we both move our stacks into the low 300ish area. About an hour in the following hand comes up with seat 4:
Me: ~300k
Seat 4: ~300k
Blinds 800/1600 with 200 ante. I hold Qc Qd on the CO.
Preflop: Folds to seat 4, seat 4 raises to 5000, HJ folds, I tell seat 4 “Sorry man I gotta break my promise this one time. I was good for a while though” and make it 16500 (note: I talk a lot on the tables without interrupting hands or being rude/insulting. I make a real effort to get friendly with everyone at the table. It’s a lot harder for people to pull the trigger on guys they are friendly towards than an anonymous face. Don’t believe me? Try it.) It folds back to seat 4 who calls.
Flop: Qs Js 5d
Seat 4 checks, I bet 21k, he folds. I flip up my QQ and say “hey look man, see I’m honest, it was necessary this time. We’re still friends right?”
He laughs and tells me we’re still friends.
Again for about 20 minutes things are calm and seat 4 and I mop up the table but have no confrontations. With about 10 minutes to go before the dinner break the following hand comes up:
Me: ~320k
Seat 4: ~260k
Blinds 800/1600 with 200 ante. I hold 7s5d on the button.
Preflop: Folds to seat 4 on HJ, he raises to 5000, CO folds, I raise to 16500 and say “alright, sorry man, one more time.” Folds back to seat 4 who calls.
Flop: Tc 9c 7c
Seat 4 checks, I bet 21k, seat 4 insta folds Kd Kh face up. Juuuuuuuuuyah are you serious?
I lost 15k with AKo to the Singaporean who 3 bets me pre flop (his 3 bet range is JJ+ I promise) where I call his reraise and check fold a Q25 flop. We go to dinner soon after and I can’t stop telling people the 75o hand.
We get back from dinner and the table is feeling chatty after having a break. The Brit in seat 3 asks me where he knows me from. Again he tells me I look so familiar but he can’t figure out why. We have the same conversation trying to figure out if it was a pre lim event or the Bellagio but again he wasn’t here.
A little while into the level I am again of course playing absurdly aggressive. I am raising my button/CO with a combined 95% frequency when folded to. My button especially is absurdly easy as Tim will never shoot back in the small and the BB comments every time “one of these days I’m gonna find a hand worth that raise and call you.” That’s a less than intimidating threat when I know his plan is to check-fold most flops. About a half hour into the level, the BB finally gets his wish when the following hand develops:
BB: ~150k
Me: ~310k
Blinds 1000/2000 with 200 300 ante. I hold Kh Qh on the button.
Preflop: Folds to me, I raise to 6500, SB folds, BB says “I finaly got a hand worth 6500, I call!.”
Flop: Kc Qc Ks
I want to laugh so bad. I mean jesus, how [censored] good do I run. I keep my face stoic behind my sunglasses and wait for his move. BB says “I’m gonna go ahead and shoot first here” and throws out 15k. I call.
Turn: Ah
BB thinks and checks. I bet 25k. BB considers his options and calls.
River: 5h
BB checks. I think I screwed up here a little and didn’t bet weak enough, as I fired 50k (which is only half pot, but this is live people.) The BB mulls it over and folds, telling me had Ac7c. A bunch of cameras are on us during the hand, and considering I want to keep things nice on the table and the BB giving me credit when I raise I lay my hand down face up next to the KQK on the board.
”Just a full house! Hahaha!”
I grab the cards off the table and pull them up in my hand 5 draw style “I’m keeping these dealer, now lets play 5 draw people.”
The table is in laughter and the BB finds this all very amusing (especially feeling good that he made the right fold.)
“How am I supposed to win when I’m playing a hand vs Tom Cruise?”
Suddenly the light bulb goes off over the Brit in seat 3’s head.
“That’s where I know you from! Top Gun!”
I smash the table with my hand “THAT’S RIGHT! ENGLISH…MAN. I AM DANGEROUS!”
The table is rolling in laughter, the dealer is enjoying the spectacle to much to even keep dealing.
“You can be my wingman any day!” says the Brit.
”[censored]! You be mine!”
Finally the dealer begins sorting up the cards and taking my full house away from me and we keep playing. At this point almost everyone on the table is laughing and joking with each other except the extremely quiet Asian guy in seat 5 with his ipod. His days are numbered.
In the next couple rounds I lose 30 or 40k back when I raise pre flop and get called by the Singaporean. I C bet into him and he min raises me and I have to give up. He had been doing this occasionally, though sometimes he also folded to my C bets. I’m not hitting flops very well. The Asian guy in seat 5 is playing very tight and I am playing very loose aggressive when the following hand comes up:
His stack: ~110k
My stack: ~300k
Blinds 1000/2000 with 300 ante. I am UTG+1 with AA.
Preflop: UTG raises to 7000, I reraise to 21000, folds back to UTG who considers his options and goes all in, I call instantly. “SHiiiiiiiiiiit” says UTG. Wow this feels familiar. UTG flips up………….AcQc. He’s drawing dead by the turn and walks off remorsefully. “I don’t get it, that guy played super tight for hours. What the hell?”
”I guess he just got tired of all your raising Maverick” says the Brit.
”Huh, I tried to tell him I am dangerous, guess he had his Ipod on.”
At this point my stack climbs to a massive 410k. A new dealer comes to the table, a woman of about 35-40. I’m not sure how it gets started, but the Brit says something flirtatious towards her. She playfully shoots him down (though in a manner that expressed some interest.)
”Don’t worry Brit, you’ll get her. The accent always does, I found that out in Australia.”
“Maybe, but I don’t have your slick clothes and glasses Mav.”
”Yea? Okay here you go take em.”
I rip off my jacket and sunglasses and hand them to him. The dealer gets in on the act and tells me to take my shirt and pants off as well. The Brit now continues playfully hitting on dealer. The event was reported on Cardplayer as follows:
“Dunst Helps A Brother Out
Tony Dunst, who is almost always sporting a coat jacket, slacks and a button down, offered up his sharp duds to a smooth-talking british tablemate who was hitting on the dealer. Dunst was joking with the brit, who he described inherently smooth due to his accent, when he offered his shades and jacket up so that the brit might have a better shot wooing the dealer. Dunst is probably in such a good mood due to the fact that he has climbed above $400,000.”
After this little incident I play perhaps the most mind boggling hand of my poker career. It was vs Seat 4 again, and went down as follows:
My stack: ~380k
Seat 4: ~300k
Blinds 1000/2000 with 300 ante. I holds Ad8d UTG+1. (The raise will seem a little loose and small, but I can assure you at this table, it was all that was necessary.)
Preflop: UTG folds, I raise to 6500, folds to seat 4 in BB, BB calls.
Flop: Th 8h 5s
BB checks, I bet 8500, BB calls. I table is still in a joking mood so I say to the dealer “no heart! For the love of god no heart!”
Turn: Jc
BB checks, I check.
River: Ac
BB checks. I figure it’s going to be very hard to get value from him so I bet really tiny, 13k. The BB quickly flips his cards face up towards the muck but not in the muck. I look over, yep I was right, two hearts. NO WAIT. THAT’S THE QUEEN OF HEARTS AND NINE OF HEARTS. I think for sure the BB must have misread his hand.
“You folded a straight???”
The BB replies in the most calm and serious of manner
”That’s right. I folded a straight.”
All over the table, heads ASPLODE. I look over at Tim and seat 8 on my left, and we are all giving each other the most “WTF!?!?!” look I can imagine.
Strangely, after this hand, it seemed like seat 4 refused to fold to me ever again. We played a pot or two before break and he’d either raise and I’d flat call, then he’d check min raise me on the flop. Or I’d raise and he’d call, and raise my C bet. It was pretty annoying and started depleting my stack a little, but not too much. Still, his mentality verse me had clearly changed.
We go on our final break of the night and are told that when we return we’ll be playing to 350 players and calling it quits for the evening. I decide that my table will likely be feeling very tired and just want to make day 3, so I’ll step up the aggression. Unfortunately, I’m also feeling very tired as the running on 4 hours of sleep and Redbull is beginning to catch up to me. When we get back seat 4 is really doing his best to run over the table with a lot of open 4-6X raises. I’m trying to find hands to 3 bet him with or good ones to cold call, but my hands are god awful. He is also assaulting my BB from his button with vigor. Finally about 45 minutes into the level I post my BB and knowing button will raise, I decide if I have anything even slightly playable, I am going after him. The cards are dealt out and I peek down at Kd2d. Good enough damn it. The action goes as follows:
His stack: ~310k
My stack: ~380k
Blinds 1200/2400 with 300 ante. I hold Kd 2d in the BB.
Preflop: Folds to button, button makes it 10k, SB folds, I reraise to 35k. Button calls.
Flop: A Q Q rainbow with a diamond.
Here I make a big mistake. Since he’d been fighting back with min raises a lot and I’d been unable to stop him post flop, betting here is just asking to get min raised. If I want to try and take this pot I should check raise. Unfortunately at this point in time I am very tired and not thinking clearly, and lead out 40k. He quickly pops me to 80k. [censored]. My. Stupidity. I give up the hand and cost myself 75k and the table chip lead.
I manage to rebuild my stack into the mid 300k’s with aggressive open raises. At this point in time if seat 4 folded, it was probably +EV to open raise any 2. The table line up was still the same, Tim on my left nursing a short stack he refused to move in, seat 8 playing ultra tight. Seat’s 1 and 2 are still super nits. The only guy giving me trouble is the Singaporean in seat 9 who sometimes will cold call my raise and raise me on the flop when I C bet. I decide the next time he tries to do that I’m going to give him a taste of his own medicine with a check raise and hopefully freak him out since I hadn’t taken that line before. With very little time left in the day (seeing as only like 360 players were left) the following hand comes up:
My stack: ~340k
Singaporean: ~240k
Blinds 1200/2400 with 300 ante. I hold Q4o in MP2.
Preflop: Folds to me, I raise to 7500, folds to Singaporean on button, he calls, blinds fold.
Flop: 767 rainbow.
I check, Singaporean bets 15k, I make it 40k, he instantly min reraises me. God damn it. I debate 4 betting all in, but I haven’t had a chance to see what he’s min raising with ALL DAY (and believe me, I had been watching and waiting carefully, but when your at a table that only knocks out 2 guys in like 5 hours you don’t get a lot of showdowns) so I decide not to take that huge risk. I fold.
For the remainder of the day I continue aggressive play without getting in any more trouble, as it begins seeming clear to me that I’m so exhausted that my thought process might not have its full clarity. When everything is said and done with I sit with $292,500, which although still a large stack, isn’t quite the amount of advantage 400k would have given me. I’m not sure how I feel about the two moves I made near the end of the day, I know for sure the lead vs seat 4 was a mistake but given his assault on my BB I’m fine with the pre flop reraise. It’s a lot to think about, but at least I have enough chips to raise hell on the day 3 bubble, when we really fly into the dangerzone.
My whole life I’ve been pretty lucky in regards to health and physical concerns. I’m allergic to nothing; never been seriously ill, fast metabolism, etc. Unfortunately somewhere around my teen years I developed two annoying physical problems:
A. I have a lot of trouble getting to sleep and maintaining a normal sleep schedule.
B. I have an extremely sensitive stomach.
Worst of all, one problem tends to beget the other. If I get under 8 hours of sleep I can count on with about 95% accuracy my being quite sick to my stomach the next morning. I looked it up on WebMD and apparently this is just a consequence for not getting enough sleep for some people. On those days I never know if my next meal will turn my intestines to hell and ruin me for hours. So what tends to happen is on some night where I plan on getting 9 hours of sleep I lie in bed unable to sleep for an hour, then realize I’ll only be getting 8, then realize if I don’t fall asleep very soon I’m going to be sick. Ever tried falling asleep when you’re thinking “man I really got to get to sleep right now”? Yea, good luck with that. Then I inevitably wake up feeling sick for the rest of the day, which if it carries on through the evening makes it even harder to fall asleep. The only ways I’ve found to stop the cycle of insanity is either sleep medication, or having days where I don’t have to wake up for anything. The problem with those days then is that my body tries to catch up by making me sleep a bazillion hours totally ruining my schedule, so next time I need to get to bed at a decent hour my body will think its way to early.
It’s the night before day 2a. I’ve had a quiet evening where I’ve had dinner with friends, watched a good movie, had some food, wrote, taken a sleeping pill, and tried to get to bed early. Unfortunately my schedule got [censored] by our playing until 4am on day 1 and I didn’t wake up until 5pm today. When I finally manage to fall asleep at about 4am my body snaps awake at 8am, my schedule being so [censored] my body thinks that period was a nap and not its proper sleep time. I lie in bed for another 90 minutes praying my mind will click back off, but it’s not happening. [censored] it, I can play on 4 hours sleep, I’m just going to need Pepto-Bismol and Redbull.
I waste time on my computer for a an hour or two then head downstairs to the little shop in the Rio and buy the much needed Pepto. I feel fairly good and awake for 4 hours of sleep. The Pepto does pretty well at making my stomach chill the [censored] out. I’ll just take my annoyance of the situation out on my much short stacked table.
I show up a bit early to the table and have a look around. I had read the list correctly, everyone is quite short and nobody is over 40k. Most of the table is in their 30’s or 40’s as well, with only a couple younger guys. This is very good news. The cards get in the air at 500/1000 blinds with 100 ante and the massacre begins.
For the first 2 hours at the table I find nobody is willing to play with me. At one point I raise J9o and a short stack shoves and I call getting 2 to 1 and beat his 77. That was about the last time anyone screwed with me. My BB got walked about two thirds of the time (seriously) and my open raises were almost never three bet. Eventually another larger stack of maybe 120k gets moved to the table 2 on my right, and he’s a fairly aggressive Euro player. I put my table captain hat on begin making his life miserable with 3 bets. In this period, there is absolutely zero interesting hands. I don’t think I played one hand past a flop, and my C bets were getting an absurd amount of respect. The only other young guy at the table stares at me for a moment then asks
”Where do I know you from dude?”
“I don’t know, have you played a lot of the events?”
”Nah, just got here.”
”Play in Australia ever?”
”Never been there. I don’t know, you seem really familiar though.”
I realize where he knows me from, but I decide not to say anything. It’s to early in the morning to be doing impressions.
About 3 ½ hours into the day I get moved, which is unfortunate because my table was letting me get away with all the murder I’d planned. I arrive at my new table, where the line up goes as follows (and would only change by one player all day) :
Seat 1: Older guy of about 55 or 60. Very very tight weak.
Seat 2: Younger guy of maybe 30ish. Wearing a Ladbrokes qualifier shirt. If the land of Nitdom needed a king, this is their guy.
Seat 3: A tight but at least a little more aggressive English guy of about 35 or 40. He’s a cool guy.
Seat 4: Laggy Asian guy of about 30. He’s not a good sort of LAG though (as you’ll find out) as he often open raises 4 or 5 or even 6X at totally random times and seems tilt capable. I’m 90% sure he wasn’t a famous one either. He is the other big stack on the table with around 250k (I show up with about the same.)
Seat 5: A mid 30’s black dude who according to TheWacoKid is in the music industry and plays not bad. He’s kind of on tilt when I get there and seems unsure of his decisions after apparently blowing off some chips to seat 4.
Seat 6: Me.
Seat 7: A young guy from Melbourne Australia named Tim. When I hear his accent we get talking and hit it off pretty well. Unfortunately for Tim he is playing WAAAAAAY to weak tight, that or the most card dead I’ve ever seen anyone.
Seat 8: A very nice/talkative 50ish guy who is a huge nit.
Seat 9: A 30ish Singaporean guy who got 2nd in the 5k Singapore event to Tony G. He is a little more loose but not necessary loose aggressive.
When I arrive at the table I realize that seat 4 is really playing table captain here and raising a lot of pots. Nobody on the table seems interested in stopping him. That is, nobody until I showed up. A couple rounds in the following hand develops:
Blinds 600/1200 with 200 ante.
My stack: ~250k
Seat 4: ~250k
Seat 5: ~80k
I hold Q5o in the BB.
Preflop: Folds to seat 4 on button, button raises to 5000, SB looks extremely unsure of himself and his decision then calls. I make it 22000, button insta mucks. SB spends more time feeling unsure of himself then folds. I then rip the metaphorical table captain hat off seat 4’s head.
I start raising a [censored] load. Nobody seems interested in stopping me. At some random point I three bet seat 4 again, who calls and check folds to me on the flop. We go on break and I tell people how I’m in the mid to high 200’s and various people insult me for my absurd luck in regards to table draws. When I get back from the break I am absurdly hungry and seat 4 has a box of small cookies. He offers them to me.
“Oh thanks so much man, I am starving.”
”No problem, take all you like.”
”Oh man, you’re my new best friend. I promise, no more pre flop 3 bets.”
“I wish I’d had these cookies an hour ago then.”
The Brit in seat 3 chimes in (who I’d 3 bet once) “I’ll go buy you a box then!”
For about an hour or so everything goes calm. The Singaporean guy in seat 9 massively sucks out the black guy in seat 5 with a totally retarded hand (4 betting all in with AJo vs black guys KK and flopping AJA when black guy was being a huge nit) and eventually seat 5, who has 4 BB’s left, gets knocked out. A new guy gets moved to the table, a quite tight Asian guy of about 30 who has ~150k. Seat 4 and I take turns open raising and crushing the table, and we both move our stacks into the low 300ish area. About an hour in the following hand comes up with seat 4:
Me: ~300k
Seat 4: ~300k
Blinds 800/1600 with 200 ante. I hold Qc Qd on the CO.
Preflop: Folds to seat 4, seat 4 raises to 5000, HJ folds, I tell seat 4 “Sorry man I gotta break my promise this one time. I was good for a while though” and make it 16500 (note: I talk a lot on the tables without interrupting hands or being rude/insulting. I make a real effort to get friendly with everyone at the table. It’s a lot harder for people to pull the trigger on guys they are friendly towards than an anonymous face. Don’t believe me? Try it.) It folds back to seat 4 who calls.
Flop: Qs Js 5d
Seat 4 checks, I bet 21k, he folds. I flip up my QQ and say “hey look man, see I’m honest, it was necessary this time. We’re still friends right?”
He laughs and tells me we’re still friends.
Again for about 20 minutes things are calm and seat 4 and I mop up the table but have no confrontations. With about 10 minutes to go before the dinner break the following hand comes up:
Me: ~320k
Seat 4: ~260k
Blinds 800/1600 with 200 ante. I hold 7s5d on the button.
Preflop: Folds to seat 4 on HJ, he raises to 5000, CO folds, I raise to 16500 and say “alright, sorry man, one more time.” Folds back to seat 4 who calls.
Flop: Tc 9c 7c
Seat 4 checks, I bet 21k, seat 4 insta folds Kd Kh face up. Juuuuuuuuuyah are you serious?
I lost 15k with AKo to the Singaporean who 3 bets me pre flop (his 3 bet range is JJ+ I promise) where I call his reraise and check fold a Q25 flop. We go to dinner soon after and I can’t stop telling people the 75o hand.
We get back from dinner and the table is feeling chatty after having a break. The Brit in seat 3 asks me where he knows me from. Again he tells me I look so familiar but he can’t figure out why. We have the same conversation trying to figure out if it was a pre lim event or the Bellagio but again he wasn’t here.
A little while into the level I am again of course playing absurdly aggressive. I am raising my button/CO with a combined 95% frequency when folded to. My button especially is absurdly easy as Tim will never shoot back in the small and the BB comments every time “one of these days I’m gonna find a hand worth that raise and call you.” That’s a less than intimidating threat when I know his plan is to check-fold most flops. About a half hour into the level, the BB finally gets his wish when the following hand develops:
BB: ~150k
Me: ~310k
Blinds 1000/2000 with 200 300 ante. I hold Kh Qh on the button.
Preflop: Folds to me, I raise to 6500, SB folds, BB says “I finaly got a hand worth 6500, I call!.”
Flop: Kc Qc Ks
I want to laugh so bad. I mean jesus, how [censored] good do I run. I keep my face stoic behind my sunglasses and wait for his move. BB says “I’m gonna go ahead and shoot first here” and throws out 15k. I call.
Turn: Ah
BB thinks and checks. I bet 25k. BB considers his options and calls.
River: 5h
BB checks. I think I screwed up here a little and didn’t bet weak enough, as I fired 50k (which is only half pot, but this is live people.) The BB mulls it over and folds, telling me had Ac7c. A bunch of cameras are on us during the hand, and considering I want to keep things nice on the table and the BB giving me credit when I raise I lay my hand down face up next to the KQK on the board.
”Just a full house! Hahaha!”
I grab the cards off the table and pull them up in my hand 5 draw style “I’m keeping these dealer, now lets play 5 draw people.”
The table is in laughter and the BB finds this all very amusing (especially feeling good that he made the right fold.)
“How am I supposed to win when I’m playing a hand vs Tom Cruise?”
Suddenly the light bulb goes off over the Brit in seat 3’s head.
“That’s where I know you from! Top Gun!”
I smash the table with my hand “THAT’S RIGHT! ENGLISH…MAN. I AM DANGEROUS!”
The table is rolling in laughter, the dealer is enjoying the spectacle to much to even keep dealing.
“You can be my wingman any day!” says the Brit.
”[censored]! You be mine!”
Finally the dealer begins sorting up the cards and taking my full house away from me and we keep playing. At this point almost everyone on the table is laughing and joking with each other except the extremely quiet Asian guy in seat 5 with his ipod. His days are numbered.
In the next couple rounds I lose 30 or 40k back when I raise pre flop and get called by the Singaporean. I C bet into him and he min raises me and I have to give up. He had been doing this occasionally, though sometimes he also folded to my C bets. I’m not hitting flops very well. The Asian guy in seat 5 is playing very tight and I am playing very loose aggressive when the following hand comes up:
His stack: ~110k
My stack: ~300k
Blinds 1000/2000 with 300 ante. I am UTG+1 with AA.
Preflop: UTG raises to 7000, I reraise to 21000, folds back to UTG who considers his options and goes all in, I call instantly. “SHiiiiiiiiiiit” says UTG. Wow this feels familiar. UTG flips up………….AcQc. He’s drawing dead by the turn and walks off remorsefully. “I don’t get it, that guy played super tight for hours. What the hell?”
”I guess he just got tired of all your raising Maverick” says the Brit.
”Huh, I tried to tell him I am dangerous, guess he had his Ipod on.”
At this point my stack climbs to a massive 410k. A new dealer comes to the table, a woman of about 35-40. I’m not sure how it gets started, but the Brit says something flirtatious towards her. She playfully shoots him down (though in a manner that expressed some interest.)
”Don’t worry Brit, you’ll get her. The accent always does, I found that out in Australia.”
“Maybe, but I don’t have your slick clothes and glasses Mav.”
”Yea? Okay here you go take em.”
I rip off my jacket and sunglasses and hand them to him. The dealer gets in on the act and tells me to take my shirt and pants off as well. The Brit now continues playfully hitting on dealer. The event was reported on Cardplayer as follows:
“Dunst Helps A Brother Out
Tony Dunst, who is almost always sporting a coat jacket, slacks and a button down, offered up his sharp duds to a smooth-talking british tablemate who was hitting on the dealer. Dunst was joking with the brit, who he described inherently smooth due to his accent, when he offered his shades and jacket up so that the brit might have a better shot wooing the dealer. Dunst is probably in such a good mood due to the fact that he has climbed above $400,000.”
After this little incident I play perhaps the most mind boggling hand of my poker career. It was vs Seat 4 again, and went down as follows:
My stack: ~380k
Seat 4: ~300k
Blinds 1000/2000 with 300 ante. I holds Ad8d UTG+1. (The raise will seem a little loose and small, but I can assure you at this table, it was all that was necessary.)
Preflop: UTG folds, I raise to 6500, folds to seat 4 in BB, BB calls.
Flop: Th 8h 5s
BB checks, I bet 8500, BB calls. I table is still in a joking mood so I say to the dealer “no heart! For the love of god no heart!”
Turn: Jc
BB checks, I check.
River: Ac
BB checks. I figure it’s going to be very hard to get value from him so I bet really tiny, 13k. The BB quickly flips his cards face up towards the muck but not in the muck. I look over, yep I was right, two hearts. NO WAIT. THAT’S THE QUEEN OF HEARTS AND NINE OF HEARTS. I think for sure the BB must have misread his hand.
“You folded a straight???”
The BB replies in the most calm and serious of manner
”That’s right. I folded a straight.”
All over the table, heads ASPLODE. I look over at Tim and seat 8 on my left, and we are all giving each other the most “WTF!?!?!” look I can imagine.
Strangely, after this hand, it seemed like seat 4 refused to fold to me ever again. We played a pot or two before break and he’d either raise and I’d flat call, then he’d check min raise me on the flop. Or I’d raise and he’d call, and raise my C bet. It was pretty annoying and started depleting my stack a little, but not too much. Still, his mentality verse me had clearly changed.
We go on our final break of the night and are told that when we return we’ll be playing to 350 players and calling it quits for the evening. I decide that my table will likely be feeling very tired and just want to make day 3, so I’ll step up the aggression. Unfortunately, I’m also feeling very tired as the running on 4 hours of sleep and Redbull is beginning to catch up to me. When we get back seat 4 is really doing his best to run over the table with a lot of open 4-6X raises. I’m trying to find hands to 3 bet him with or good ones to cold call, but my hands are god awful. He is also assaulting my BB from his button with vigor. Finally about 45 minutes into the level I post my BB and knowing button will raise, I decide if I have anything even slightly playable, I am going after him. The cards are dealt out and I peek down at Kd2d. Good enough damn it. The action goes as follows:
His stack: ~310k
My stack: ~380k
Blinds 1200/2400 with 300 ante. I hold Kd 2d in the BB.
Preflop: Folds to button, button makes it 10k, SB folds, I reraise to 35k. Button calls.
Flop: A Q Q rainbow with a diamond.
Here I make a big mistake. Since he’d been fighting back with min raises a lot and I’d been unable to stop him post flop, betting here is just asking to get min raised. If I want to try and take this pot I should check raise. Unfortunately at this point in time I am very tired and not thinking clearly, and lead out 40k. He quickly pops me to 80k. [censored]. My. Stupidity. I give up the hand and cost myself 75k and the table chip lead.
I manage to rebuild my stack into the mid 300k’s with aggressive open raises. At this point in time if seat 4 folded, it was probably +EV to open raise any 2. The table line up was still the same, Tim on my left nursing a short stack he refused to move in, seat 8 playing ultra tight. Seat’s 1 and 2 are still super nits. The only guy giving me trouble is the Singaporean in seat 9 who sometimes will cold call my raise and raise me on the flop when I C bet. I decide the next time he tries to do that I’m going to give him a taste of his own medicine with a check raise and hopefully freak him out since I hadn’t taken that line before. With very little time left in the day (seeing as only like 360 players were left) the following hand comes up:
My stack: ~340k
Singaporean: ~240k
Blinds 1200/2400 with 300 ante. I hold Q4o in MP2.
Preflop: Folds to me, I raise to 7500, folds to Singaporean on button, he calls, blinds fold.
Flop: 767 rainbow.
I check, Singaporean bets 15k, I make it 40k, he instantly min reraises me. God damn it. I debate 4 betting all in, but I haven’t had a chance to see what he’s min raising with ALL DAY (and believe me, I had been watching and waiting carefully, but when your at a table that only knocks out 2 guys in like 5 hours you don’t get a lot of showdowns) so I decide not to take that huge risk. I fold.
For the remainder of the day I continue aggressive play without getting in any more trouble, as it begins seeming clear to me that I’m so exhausted that my thought process might not have its full clarity. When everything is said and done with I sit with $292,500, which although still a large stack, isn’t quite the amount of advantage 400k would have given me. I’m not sure how I feel about the two moves I made near the end of the day, I know for sure the lead vs seat 4 was a mistake but given his assault on my BB I’m fine with the pre flop reraise. It’s a lot to think about, but at least I have enough chips to raise hell on the day 3 bubble, when we really fly into the dangerzone.