WSOP day2: The Golden Nugget's Grand Poker Series

The Golden Nugget is running a series of poker tournaments in parallel to the WSOP, but with much smaller buy-ins.  I happened upon this series after I had planned my trip and the link I had listed today as a PLO8 tournament, so I figured I'd play if I wasn't in day 2 of Event #48.  You know what happened, I didn't make day 2, so I went over to the Golden Nugget to play.

It turns out, today's tournament was changed at some point to a Big O tournament.  That's simply PLO8 with 5 cards rather than 4.  It's an interesting game but for the most part, structurally similar to PLO8.

I started out roughly.  We had 15k starting stacks and within the first hour I was down to 6k after getting quarted for a pot.  I had nut low and a set with A377J on a 247Q board, when my opponent and I got all our money in.  He had the nut low as well with A3 but had a club flush draw which he hit on the river.  So rather than I getting 3/4 of the pot, he swiped it out from me and I took only 1/4.

What I'm most proud of is staying calm at that point.  The blinds were only 50/100 and with 6k, I still had plenty to play with.  I slowly and surely worked my way back up to 12k, then 15k, then before I knew it, I had 21k.  All without notable hands.

Then, with AJT97 on a board of 268T4, I was able to guess right that the other two players in the pot were going to low and I made them pay.  That got me up to 28k.

Then, I really wish I had the breakdown of how it happened, but I got into a 3 way all in, where they had 15k combined.  I had nut low, with wheel and diamond flush draws and I scooped the pot when my diamond hit on the river.  That was my high point when I hit 45k.

With a stack that high, I should have been able to make it further in the tournament than where I did, but this is where I started to falter, and my tiredness started to kick in.  I started to make some loose calls pre-flop, and my stack started to dwindle down to 30k.  I managed to work it back up to 40k when a couple of new players arrived at our table.  One of them had me covered and was to my right.

I limped first to act with AQT46 double-suited at 300/600 level, and got a few other callers until the big stack raised to 3300 from the SB.  I called as did one other player.  My first mistake was not giving him credit for as big a hand as he should have in that spot.  Even if he didn't have that big a hand, I still have to give him more credit for that possibility.  And that's what happens when I'm tired.  I saw my "pretty" hand, which shouldn't have looked so pretty anymore given the action, but I didn't analyze properly.

So now comes the flop of AQ3, and the raiser bets 11k. Warning flags should have been going off in my head.  Instead, I saw that I had top-two and surmised that the odds of him having AA were very small now.  So I raised.  This was a huge mistake.  So the first call mistake, led into the second raise mistake, and that is what happens in pot-limit games,  The pots grow very fast, but you are never getting worse that 2:1 on your calls, so you have to call often, which is which bad calls early, create situations where you have to make calls later that you would rather not have.

In the end, he had a great hand for that flop, A2457, but I was technically ahead for the high portion of the pot.  He needed a 2, 4 or 5 to hit a straight and me not hit an A or a Q for a full house for him to win the high portion of the pot.  He needed 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 to win the low.  That gave him 18 card for low and 8 cards for high.  I needed anything 9 or above for the last two cards to scoop the pot, which gave me 20 cards.  Here are the odds:

Pre-flop
http://www.propokertools.com/simulations/show?g=o85&h1=Aqt46&h2=A2457&s=generic

Post flop
http://www.propokertools.com/simulations/show?b=Ah3d+Qc&g=o85&h1=A2457&h2=AQT46&s=generic

He's a slight favorite because he has those 2 chances (turn and river) to hit one of his 8 scoop outs. But, in this exact hand, my play wasn't terrible, but the real analysis should have been pre-flop, with his best possible scenarios.

Aa2**:
http://www.propokertools.com/simulations/show?g=o85&h1=Aqt46&h2=Aa2%2A%2A&s=generic
Aa***:
http://www.propokertools.com/simulations/show?g=o85&h1=Aqt46&h2=Aa%2A%2A%2A&s=generic

My odds decrease significantly when up against AA...

Again, my mistake was not absorbing the declaration that he had a strong hand, and that is what happens when I'm tired. So even though I didn't feel that physically tired, that was proof that I was mentally tired.

So why am I up at 11:10 writing this when I should be sleeping? That's because I'm hoping that this write up will help me organize my thoughts, absorb what I did wrong so that I don't do it again:

Accept responsibility for the past
Control and focus on the present
Prepare for the future