Borgata 5/20/07 Trip Report

[hamsamich]

I was supposed to play in the 1000+100 250k guarantee at Borgata on Sunday and I’m kind of glad I didn’t. I was delayed in getting there and when I arrived at 12:30 the room was packed tight as a drum and there were around 100 or so people on line to get in as alternates. I think the final number I heard was somewhere around 800 entries which made first place just over 200k. A nice pay for who ever took it but 800 was just too many for me so I bailed on even trying to get in. In a totally uncharacteristic move by a poker player what put me over the top was forgetting my LOL donkaments shirt at home. What’s the point of entering an $1100 buy in if I can’t get a few laughs out of it???
With this many people in the tourney the cash games were far and few between. The lists were probably the longest I have ever seen. With two full tables of waiting players for even the higher games. I got onto the 5/10 list at number 18 or so and started wandering. This might be a good time to point out that since my last visit to Borgata they have restricted smoking on the gaming floor even more than before. Now there are little maps hidden throughout the Casino to tell us dirty disgusting filthy murdering smokers which two square feet of the precious real estate we can foul with our stench. After waiting several hours the tourney tables finally started breaking down in the high limit room and some games were put together. If the 10/25NL guys were waiting upwards of two hours for a dealer and table can you imagine the poor 1/2 guys? At one point I know the list for 5/10 grew to almost 65 people. We finally got a spot and made a new game which was nice (no deep stacks yay!). The table was playing pretty tight except for this one asian fellow who kept calling people down with gutshots and flush draws and of course getting smacked with the deck. I didn’t enter any pots with him but I think he pulled about 4.5k out from the game and then vanished. Most of my hands were not too memorable, except for one where I had to call $350 into a $750 pot with a set of aces on an all spades flop and villain who called my re-raise PF and led out on the flop. He had a mini meltdown berating me for taking as long as I did (which really was only about 3 minutes) to call.
So around 7:30 I am up just over 1k and Rocco sits down and starts doing his thing moving in on the short stacks pulling in chips when it works and just smiling that crooked smile of his when he doubles them up. I decided that with Rocco there and my head POUNDING the way it was this was my cue to exit. Does anyone else get bad headaches sometimes while playing? Any advice to ward them off?
Only other thing of interest that I heard was that someone in the 10/25 game built a stack up to over 30k and then lost every dime all in one sit.


Cliff notes. Borgata was a madhouse on Sunday with 800 entries to the 250k guarantee. Made 1k playing 5/10NL