WSOP
2003 Days 27 & 28:
If This Was Baseball, I'd Be A Star
When
last we spoke I had just won my $50 parlay
into a Super Sat. I should have mentioned
that these $50 sats are a great deal as
the field is fairly weak and you only
need to win one in four to make it worthwhile.
My table had a player who had never even
played holdem before, he kept trying to
'check' before the flop, not quite getting
that you have to pay to play. He went
out seven hands later when he called all
the way, including the river, and turned
over king high, unfortunately I wasn't
the lucky recipient. When we were down
to four an interesting situation came
up. There was an all-in raise, and a reraise
from the big stack. The problem I had
was that if the big stack won there would
now be two huge stacks to my small stack,
and I'd have a lot of trouble getting
into the top two. I looked down to find
the dream hand so threw in all my chips.
I was up against A6 and QQ, no problem,
the 5 on the river sealed their fate when
I hit my set, presto r00ls, and on the
next hand it was all over and I had my
seat.
On
to the super sat, five seats were being
given away. The deck hit me early on,
I had an amazing AA four times and hit
four sets, giving me an early chip lead
with no rebuys and looking like I would
coast in. But right when it mattered with
the bigger limits I hit a couple of major
bad beats and down to 11 was getting short
stacked. It was checked around to me in
the small blind and it should have been
an obvious all-in. Blinds were 300-600,
I had 1800 behind, I could have shoved
in and taken my chances, but the big blind
was a big stack (5K) and also a very loose
player so I wasn't sure he'd fold. Instead
I decided (maybe wrongly) to fold and
instead attack the big blind two hands
later, another short stack who I was pretty
sure would fold. The deciding factor was
that if one more player went out in the
meantime I'd be at the final table, so
it seemed worth it to not risk it right
away. Two hands later I shoved in with
a poor hand. And ran into AK and AA. ighn.
Yesterday I played my two $300 satellites
to try to get my seat in today's pot limit
holdem. I played bad, in both of them
I had a great hand, but refused to give
it up when I got raised on the flop, and
both times took an early exit. No pot
limit event for me. ighn.
The only thing to do when you are losing
is to go out for an expensive meal, this
time it was to Delmonico in the Venetian,
one of Emeril's two Las Vegas restaurants,
and supposedly the best steakhouse in
town. It wasn't. The place was very nice,
the service was excellent, the food was
very good, but it wasn't great. The bill,
that was great.
Tonight
I tried another 11 p.m. tourney, you really
need to build chips early in this as the
blinds go up so fast at the beginning.
I took my last shot with AQ and ran into
JJ which held up. ighn.
One
more $175 satellite tonight, made another
mistake. ighn. I seem to be going home
a lot lately, if this was baseball I'd
be a star, instead I'm down 3K for the
trip.
Today's
Pot Limit Holdem had 218 players with
225K first place, but other than the 3K
No Limit the next few days are expensive
and weird events (like 2.5K Pot Limit
Omaha with rebuys and 1.5K Triple draw)
so I don't think they will have too many
players, but I expect the supers to go
insane with 10 or 11 seats per event.
I think they are adding an 11 p.m. super
starting on the 16th. in place of the
$225 tourney. The 10K looks like it will
be huge, it may even reach 700 players.
My
plan now is to stick to the $50 sats and
get into as many supers as I can, if I
win two million that will put me ahead
for the trip.
Paul Westley
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