Re: Vegas Trip Report: IN and OUT of teh WSOP (100% No Risk to You)
It’s the first day of the world series of poker, and I’m on table 221 seat 1. Against my better judgment, I’m wearing a shirt that reads Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win. I can’t decide, as I crowd with the rest of the sweaty men that are going to play today though the minimum security into the cavern silence soon to be clattering with cheap-feeling chips, whether the shirt is a joke about the earnestness of people’s estimation of their own chances in what is essentially a crapshoot, or a dead serious message about dreams or controlling your destiny. In any event, I have a long sleeve shirt underneath it, which isn’t that cool, but it certainly is warm—a plus in the frigid auditorium. I put bag under my chair and wander away down the aisles looking at the spectacle. There isn’t much spectacle actually. Mostly older white guys in nascar hats, mostly mustaches, mostly Poker Stars shirts, a few genuine weirdos but little of the LOOK AT ME nonsense I’d seen last year as a railbird. No monkeys, which, take that as you will.
When I get back, I’m still in seat 1. There’s one guy on my table who looks familiar, and who gets interviewed before we start. I connect him with some random final table in, oh, say 2004, and he talks about playing 25-50 PLO so he’s some kind of pro. He plays like a pro too, limping in constantly, calling raises from wherever whenever, trying to flop big, only raising/re-raising with monsters, getting shortstacked and then playing well shortstacked. When he eventually busts, he’s replaced by another guy I’ve seen on TV somewhere or the other…a genial but cagey older fellow who wears sunglasses over his regular glasses. He plays the same way.
Some hack, oh the comedian George Wallace, tells some crappy jokes and then says: shuffle up and deal. What the point of that was I don’t know. Nobody really laughs. 1500 scared weird gambling addicts at 11:30am are possibly the worlds worst comedy audience.
The other members of my table include a guy with a nascar hat who only gets dealt giant starting hands (sitting on my immediate left obviously), an asian lagtard in female form (my utter nemesis as a stereotype), some taters of various ripeness, and tourney-donk-guy1, my only source of chips, since he will muck to any reraise preflop, thank heavens. The first hand of the tourney I fold Ax suited in MP and immediately feel bad. As we started I realize we are in fact six-handed. SH+T! Nothing tilts me more that playing SH. I get crazy, since my online experience playing this form is limited I often start misapplying scraps of strat I’ve picked up in SSNL—raising every button with sh-t, repopping with K9, calling with 89x, just being way too loose and then calling down because everyone is bluffing shorthanded so I’ve heard. Determined to control this, I try not to get mixed up in anything until we’re more full.
About ½ hour in, I have TT in the BB. Asian laglady raises from UTG+1, I am pussy so I call. Flop is 9 high and I call her pot on flop and fold to her 1.6k blankturn bet. Looks like a real hand, but based on her shi77ty play later I dunno. Preflop I raise this all day in FR NL, but wtf this is the WSOP TOURNEY LIFE ETC. Everyone is scared it seems. My hands are almost shaking when I pick up a monster like AK and win the blinds…
That TT proved to be the only made hand I would have for the rest of the day. Here is a list of hands I did not have in the tournament: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK wherein the flop has an A or a K, a set, a flushdraw, a straight, or top pair. Well, I did have 88 once which was an overpair, but I folded. More on that later, sadly.
My first (and only really) big hand comes up in the second hour. I raise some limpers OTB with KJ. The BB called, everyone else folded. He’a a middle eastern looking dude who seems pretty decent, but who knows? (Turned out to be ultra passive and donkish which I wish had been floating under his stupid face as a red graphic wtf). Flop is 249 two hearts. He bets out ½ pot 500. That looks stupid, and the table had been totally straightforward, so I raise to 2k. He tanks and calls. GAH. Turn is something like a 7c. He checks and I pause for a sec before checking behind. River was a black A. He checked and I made an incredibly stupid 4k bet. I thought he might fold 9T or J9 or 89 or whatever, but he clearly didnt have that doh. He tanks and calls with A8hh obv. I play so bad. Way to bluff off most of your chips douchebag. ROARtilt. The level ends and I’m stuck. Stuck stuck stuck in the wsop total BS. It doesn’t help that I’m still pretty drunk from the night before. I haven’t really slept at all in the three nights I’ve been in vegas and it REALLY doesn’t help that I was in this area not 6 hours before trying to switch my day to Saturday, bombed drunk eating a stale pokergrill sandwich and spilling my beer on the carpet telling some old woman how to play “loosh aggresshive…that’s me. I’m just gonna play lak another tunnament, ya know? Jussht another tunnament this is…I play LOOSH AGRESSHIV!” I feel like hell as I steam out into the big red hall with the other dorks and winners and giant Swedes and call my friend who was cool enough to buy a piece of my action despite my insistence that I am terrible and tell him the bad news, I am down down down. But WAIT! What’s this text? Is it “Tali” the stripper who tried to get me to come to her house last night? Awesome it is! The text: “Good luck, im goin 2 bed when shd i cum visit u?” I have a new goal…fk the dinner break, I’m just trying to make the scrippa break dog. LET US GOGOGO!
2bcontinuedwhenimosberlol
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07-23-2007, 09:58 PM
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