With that in mind I set off on my journey out here Monday. With dreams of bracelets dancing in my head I wedged my large frame onto the Monday afternoon offering of Greyhound in the sky (Southwest). All looked good as it appeared the asian fella in the window seat and this big fella would have the only empty seat on the plane between us. Sadly another "bigger" fella found his way onto the plane just before push off and shoehorned his way into the middle seat. Less than 5 mins later he was fast asleep and fortunately invaded more of the asian dude's seat than my own.
Any way 5 hours later I arrived and immediately caught a cab in time for the 4 p.m. playing of their Mega Stack Series $240 6 max Big-O event. Big-O is a bastardized 5 card version of PLO8 that is played exactly the same as PLO8 except for an extra card. The game tends to play super fast and is a ton of fun. My table draw was an absolute dream early with a ton of limping. I quickly combated that by raising virtually every other hand after the initial level or two. Employing this strategy my stack began to swell and swell until I had increased my starting stack from 20k to over 50k with very little resistance. The make up of this tournament was pretty interesting. A mix of old nitty O8 players, young hyper aggressive internet players who maybe didn't understand the nuance of O8 and experienced O8 regulars. I had a few conversations with guys whom I had played a lot of hands with on-line or was at least familiar with their screen names, etc.
Anyway I rode a fairly average stack from about 40 left to 25 left when I dialed up the aggression. At this point the money was in site (18 players) and many were tightening up to sneak into a paying position. I chose a different strategy of bulldozing and built my stack from roughly 65k to over 150k while we awaiting the eliminated bubble boy. Finally it happened and we redrew for seats. Right away it was apparent that my new group of table mates were more aggressive and less willing to allow me to run them over. I did successfully 3 bet an aggressive player and get him to fold but other than that my relentless aggression slowed down considerably. Whatever; fast forward an hour or so and we are at the final table and I am probably 3rd in chips. The final table is played 7 handed in most 6-max tournaments and once the 2 shortest stacks were eliminated the play slowed down considerably. I finally busted someone when my flopped 2 pair and low draw went runner runner into a backdoor flush to beat his same flopped 2 pair and I had a mountain of chips.
A few mins later a HUUUUUGE hand popped up. A guy with 300k full potted the button at 20k/40k blinds. I 3-bet the small blind with over 1M in chips holding A24QJ suited in hearts and spades. He gets in and shows AA599 or something. Flop comes KTx with 2 hearts and weeeeeeeeeee it looks like the Big Fella will have mucho chips; only to see running bricks for one of the sickest holds in a while. Blah.
A few mins later the blinds went up and were starting to get silly. I told the table that if i could get 2nd place money (I was 2nd in chips) I would chop. Although first paid $7500, 4th only paid $2k and with very little room to "play" I was fine with $4.5k or whatever second was. A deal was reached and BOOM a few more $$$ in my pocket.
Yesterday I busted the $1,500 in rather standard 2011 poker playing style. Got all 4k in holding KK at 50/100 vs. AK only to see the board run out JTTxQ and the monkey scooped a big pot. Last night I positively destroyed the $5/$5 PLO8 game and really should have made a lot more. Unfortunately, the play was so bad in a few spots that I made a few REALLY thin calls simply due to the "retardation factor".
So good start to the trip and today is the Venetian HORSE event.
2 comments:
great job buddy! Where this Big O MTT at the Rio?
No it was at Caesar's. Think they are having one or two more later in teh month if you are going to be here. A lot of fun.
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