Made the drive up from San Diego this morning and drove straight to the Rio to register! After that, I checked into my hotel, but had to wait for the room to be ready. It took about 1.5 hours, but it was ready before I had to head back to the Rio, so I was happy to get all my stuff into the room from the car, because it's INSANELY HOT here! Oh wait, it's the desert. It's supposed to be...
The tournament started off right. I played well with some aggression and some passivity. There was no need to commit tons of chips pre-flop in this game. I worked my stack form 4500 to just under 9k at one point fairly smoothly, without any notable hands. There were quite a few young successful pros at my table (Ryan Laplante and Joshua Field) and 4 other young guys who looked like pros (wannabe pros possibly).
They were playing terrible hands, at least generally for PLO8. My knockout hand is an example of that, which I'll get to later. But the wheels fell off for me in level 4 (75/150). I lost one pot to get me from 9k to 7.5k. Then a short stack raised in front of me and I reraised him to put him all in: AAcJc4c for me and A357 for him. The flop: 457. He flops as straight, and wins. I lost 1k in that pot (odds here). Now down to 6.5k, I call a raise with KhThQQ and we are 3 to the flop. If comes AhJh6d. I check with my straight and flush draw, then next player shoves and the original raiser calls and I call behind. The turn and river at 9 and 7 and the other two players split the pot (AQJ2 for high, and A348 for low). I was break even against them (33%), but I was putting 2k to win 8.5k, so that's a play I need to make all the time.
Final hand, the second player to acts bets 550, but since it's pot limit and the blinds are only 75/150, he can only raise to 525. By his reaction, I can tell that he doesn't have a strong hand, so I make the call with Kc4c4dAh form the small blind and we see a flop with the BB. It comes down Kd4h3c and I check, BB checks, he bets 1.2k, and I raise him my last 4.5k. He calls with 2x2d3d5x and I'm another 60/40 favorite, but he his a 6 on the turn leaving me drawing to a 2 to take the low, or the board to pair for me to take the high.
I'm disappointed to be out, but I'm not disappointed with my play. I had some good opportunities to earn some chips and they didn't pan out.
For now, I'm going to rest and decompress. Then I'm going back to the Rio to play some cash games. Tomorrow, it looks like the Golden Nugget is hosting a smaller PLO8 so I'll go and play that to get some more experience to be more ready for Friday.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment