Borgata takes care of Big Fella, $1,500 Deep Stack Trip Report, and Sick PLO hand

As you all know I love the Borgata. It is, along with the Venetian, the best card room I have played in bar none. The games are plentiful and juicy, the poker room is comfortable and spacious, the facilities and food choices are great and I have had a lot of successes in their tournaments. In addition, ever since I won the tournament in January they have stepped up their treatment of me. When I returned for 2 nights the week after that win my room was comped both nights and I have been back for a total of 8 nights since April 15th and have paid for 4 of those nights (all at deeply discounted poker rates). Well this trip was even better as I was upgraded to a 1,500 sq. foot Piatto Suite. This suite was pretty sick and featured floor to ceiling windows, a multi-media entertainment center, whirlpool and huge living room area. Here a couple of pics:






































I ended up spending more time than usual in the room since it was so nice!

As far as poker goes, I played a lot of poker over the first few days of the week. Sunday was the Main Event for PokerStars SCOOP and Full Tilt's Mini-FTOPS but since both started at 5:00 p.m. and I was going to be out of town for a few days I didn't play either. I did, however, play a good bit after the kids went to bed and actually went fairly deep in 2 tournaments for medium type cashes. Both had started around 9 p.m., however, so I was up until about 3:00ish. Back up at 7:00 a.m. to get my daughter to school and then off to Borgata. Got up there in plenty of time and found my seat. Won't run through a lot of the early hands but I played my normal, just playing really tight and solid and waiting for others to make mistakes. That strategy works very well in these tournaments that have a lot of satellite players and casual players. Anyway I ran my initial 30k stack into ~135k at the end of Day 1. With 120 players making it to Day 2 I would start the day with a Top 15 stack. 36 players would cash and the plan was to play down to the final 2 tables.

So after finishing Day 1 I went up to my room to set up my laptop to watch a buddy of mine who was in a tournament to win a WSOP Main Event package and help him. He ended up not winning but still won $3k so that was good. While this was going on (at about 11:30) I fired up a PLO tournament on PokerStars figuring I would donk around until I busted. It was a $10 rebuy so if I got tired or whatever I could just shutdown and go to bed. Remember I got abt 3 1/2 hours of sleep the night before. Well fast forward 5 hours and we are at the final table playing for about $1k. Not bad for a $30 investment (I was in for one rebuy and an add-on). Anyway the final table took forever (like 90 minutes) which is very unusual for a PLO event. Lo and behold at 6:00 a.m. I shipped it and then just flopped into bed exhausted. Not a bad night.

Dragged myself out of bed on Tuesday morning in time for the 11:00 a.m. start on Day 2. I had a pretty good run of cards early and was up to ~150k when a good spot came up for me. An older man opened the pot at 800/1600/200a to 5,000, I call with TT and BB calls as well. Flop comes 778 with 2 diamonds. BB checks, Old Man bets, 12k into ~18kish pot. I call and BB folds. Turn is the Td. He checks and for whatever reason I don't even consider a hand like AKdd or AQdd. I am locked in on him having a big pair for some reason. Anyway, river is the case T and I have quads. He then pops up and bets 20k into 42k pot. I tank a bit and figure he likes his hand so let's raise it up. I make it 55k and he calls pretty quickly to show AQdd. Blah if I had that hand in his range I need to bet the turn and if I do I get all of his stack. Oh well. Stack up to ~220k. His bet-call is abysmal on the river. I mean what could I possibly be bluffing with on the river with a 778TT board. But whatever, I'll take the chips sir!

An orbit or so later he shoves from the SB into my BB for 32k at 1/2k/200a. I squeezed an A and called without looking at the second card and turned out it was A4cc. He tabled some trashy hand like T3 and I flopped an A to end the drama. Stack up to over 250k. I then was able to run the stack up to about 325k without really showing down any hands. At 2k/4k/500a a pretty tight player open shoved 39k and then the player behind him tanked FOREVER and finally reluctantly called. I put him on like 77-99 type of hand. So it folds to me in BB and I have AJdd and decide to shove. I had the caller covered by 150k or so so even if he woke up with a big hand I really would have a lot of chips still. But I am 99% that he is folding and the dead money he put in was too attractive to pass up on. Anyway he folds as expected but original shover had AQ and scoops a nice pot.

That seemed to really be the high water mark for me as I ran into a lot of resistance later. About 15 players or so before the money bubble was burst two big stacks got moved to my immediate left. One seemed to be a solid thinking internet player but the other was an older calling station type. This is horrible for me as my stack has drifted down to ~220k and they have about 550k each. So if I open a pot at least one of them is calling and then they have position on me for the remainder of the hand. So the adjustment I have to make is to play a bit tighter and bet made hands aggressively. Unfortunately, I went utterly card dead with a steady stream of A3, 94, Q2, T5, etc. hands. I did raise a few middle pairs only have to check-fold on flops like KQ9. Finally the bubble burst and the action folded to me in the SB. I peeked down at Q7 suited. With a bit over 10BB and blind vs. blind this is a shove 100% of the time. I bomb it and BB wakes up with A9 and makes the call. He holds and I am again out with a min-cash of ~$2,500. Oh well, I keep going rather deep so soon enough another good score is coming.

Finally, I love PLO and this hand is pretty wild. Both of these players are obviously studs and Patrik in particular is an insanely good PLO player. Andrew Robl was one of the first internet young gun sickos 5 or 6 years ago and plays on-line under the handle good2cU.



Andrew is clearly trying to represent AAxx when he 3 bets the pot on the flop. Unfortunately, Patrik wakes up with one of the hands Andrew is behind even if he had AA. They decide to run the board 4 times. This is often done at higher stakes cash games. The pot is simply divided into 4 separate smaller pots and each run out of the board is for one of the 4 smaller pots. PLO is so sick as PA has no pair and yet is nearly 3-1 to win the hand. As is Andrew is less than 1/2 of 1% to win all 4 pots!