Monday in Vegas

So, forced against my will to stay in Las Vegas on Monday in order to pick up my check from the Venetian on Monday afternoon, I realized I had the opportunity to stay an entire extra day in Sin City, having just won almost $51,000 in a poker tournament, and with absolutely nothing planned on the schedule due to my not having expected to even be there on Monday. What would I do to celebrate the occasion?

First thing: sleep. Eventually. To be honest, we chopped out the Venetian tournament at around 3am Sunday night / Monday morning, and by the time I got back to my suite at the MGM, regardless of the late hour, I was about as far from being able to sleep as one could be. I was absolutely wired, as you can probably imagine. I mean, after getting back to the MGM I basically went straight to my room, where I proceeded to just sit, smiling, in my bed like Andy Dufresne when he managed to get the beers for all his cellmate co-workers, for literally five hours before finally settling down to close my eyes shortly after 8am on Monday. In between those hours I just sat and thought, taking in everything that had happened over the last 48 hours, in addition to chatting on the girly with anyone who would listen, and eventually towards the later part of that time, calling all of my east coast family and friends who I could fathom waking at that hour.

So eventually I fell asleep, somewhere after 8am, and I didn't budge until the alarm I had set went off around 1pm. I then headed out to do some shopping, in the Studio Walk at the MGM, then to the Bellagio, and then eventually back to the scene of the crime at the Venetian, where I then went and picked up my check. Around a normal person's dinnertime, I returned back to my room at the MGM and watched some baseball, ordered room service (the Grand breakfast really hits the spot, at any hour), and chatted with friends for a while while I prepared to make one final run at the casino for an hour or two before taking a quick catnap ahead of leaving for my 7am flight out of McCarran Airport. My thinking was, after winning 50 large over the weekend at the Venetian, I was going to do something I hadn't done in years, and just head to to play some craps or blackjack at fairly low stakes, with no real need to win and without even caring if I lost as much as, say, 2 grand. Those of you who play craps will understand fully what I mean, but it's just so easy to lose your money quickly if you play it aggressively like I like to -- pass line, max odds, and come bet on every roll, plus max odds on those as well -- that to be able to go down with the intention basically of dropping 2 large and not giving a crap is a really fun plan for sure.

So, at around midnight, I made my first stop at the first open $10 craps table I found, and within an hour or so I had turned my original $300 buyin into a quick $1200 profit, betting the pass line and my come bets, and getting out on all the numbers like four separate times. I just happened to get in at the beginning of a good roll from two separate shooters, where they both made a bunch of numbers and several points along the way, which is just gold for the come bettors out there. At one point a guy muscled his way in to my side of the table and started betting the "Don't Pass" line, which infuriated everyone else around us, and prompted one anti-semitic asshole to proclaim that the guy should just "go get himself a matzoh ball soup and get out of here", which everyone around the table laughed at, including even the dealers and the pit bosses. I was appalled but was in such a good mood that I really didn't feel like doing anything about the idiocy. Eventually the roll got to me, I sevened out pretty quickly and I cashed in for my $1200 profit. On my way to the cashier, I just happened to see an opening at one more $10 craps table, and I decided to take that as a sign from above, where I ended up having another good run where I won another $500 over maybe another hour or so, again leaving for the cashier only when I sevened out myself after another not-great roll from me. Then another funny thing happened on my way to the cashier to get bills and head to bed -- I sat down at a $25 blackjack table that looked not so much lucky as fun, with lots of young people drinking and joking around with the dealer and with each other. There was a spot open in the 2 seat, so I sneaked in there and just used the chips I had left craps with just earlier and started betting a quarter a hand. Well, within an hour or so I was up again, and found myself playing $50 apiece on each of two hands, and as I continued pressing those bets I continued my great winning run. Finally, before I knew it, it was around 4am, I still hadn't slept, and I had won another $1500 at the blackjack table. In all, I just could not lose early on Tuesday morning, and even though I was left severely depleted in the sleep department, I knew I could sleep all the way across the country in the plush first-class seat I had purchased earlier that day for my rescheduled flight. I headed upstairs, took a last jacuzzi and smoked about 45 cigarettes while I sat in there, trying my hardest to remember as best as I could the feeling of winning almost 55 grand over a weekend of poker, then craps and blackjack. It's not often enough that you leave Las Vegas a winner anyways, but to win this kind of money, go through this kind of stress and tension, and to come out on top to this degree is very special, and this is a guy who's taken gambling trips to Vegas maybe 40 or 50 times in his life talking here. From there I changed, downed a beer to help ease the transition to sleep on the plane, and headed to the airport to wait out my 7am flight. That was where I wrote most of my first post this week, sitting in the US Airways terminal, in an absolute fog induced by a total of maybe 15 hours of sleep over 4 days, plenty of beers, smoking and you name it, I did it.

And that pretty much sums up my summer 2009 trip to Las Vegas.

I'll be back on Monday or over the weekend with a number of lasting thoughts I have on Las Vegas -- which has changed noticeably in my view over the past ten years, and even really over the past year or two since I've been going out in the summertime to play poker -- as well as specifically on the incredible tournament run I went on this weekend on my way to the my largest ever poker cash. That post is mostly written already, but I plan to take some time to add in some answers and responses to the most common comments and questions I have received from bloggers, friends and family alike regarding what happened this past weekend at the Venetian.

Have a wonderful 4th of July everyone. I know I will!

Sunday in Vegas -- Venetian Deep Stack Day Two

OK, so where we left off yesterday, I stayed up the rest of the night after reaching Day Two at around 2:30am, so that I could play a little more and basically just get some time in with my brothers and friends for the bachelor party. As it was, I had already missed group dinner at Fiamma, an Italian place with a restaurant in New York City, on Saturday at 6 due to the Venetian tournament, and my brothers were all bummed when I texted them at some point around 5:30pm on Saturday from the Venetian poker room that I had just doubled up again and was not going to make it. So after missing them all day on Saturday other than the quick beer celebration at dinner break in our suite, I wanted to get in some time with them before the last of 'em left at around 8am on Sunday, and after saying their goodbyes, I finally slipped into bed for a quick nap, not setting an alarm since I knew I had until 4pm that afternoon to get back to Venetian for Day Two. And it's a good thing it started at 4pm and not 3pm or 2pm, because I did not wake up until shortly before 3 o clock, still feeling cloudy but at least having gotten sufficient rest for me to be alert enough to play the game well that afternoon. I took a quick shower, grabbed my lucky sunglasses, and I was off, back up Koval Lane to the Venetian to get it on. Quick smoke before the 4pm start time and we were off.

The first thing to note was that we started with five of the top nine chip stacks remaining in the tournament at our newly redrawn starting table, including a guy who had to be the tournament chip leader just two seats to my left. Yippee. This guy had nearly a million in chips or about 80 big blinds, which at this point in the tournament seemed totally insurmountable, and frankly some of the guys down the other end of the table looked to have similar stack sizes themselves. This was especially troublesome for me as I was again starting in 32nd place out of the 48 remaining players in the tournament. My 157k in chips was about 2/3 of the 241k average stack heading into Day Two's action, and I had about 12 big blinds to start in Round 18. Like I said yesterday, I knew I had my work cut out for me, and although I would have some time before I was truly desperate to make a move, the general plan would definitely have to be to make something happen within the first two-hour session (three blind rounds), as blinds would begin the day at 6000-12,000 with a 2k ante to boot. 12 big blinds was barely acceptable for starters, but by the end of the third blind round on the day -- just two hours in -- we would be up at 10k-20k with a 3k ante, and my M would be a paltry 3 or so. So I was definitely looking to take some chances early and either try to double up or get busted.

At 4pm local time, as the dealers tossed the first card to the first small blind of the day, and I peered at my small stack of red and mostly orange chips, which were 5000 and 1000 $T chips, respectively. Whereas, many of my new tablemates from the wonderfully random draw had mostly blues (25,000) and piles and piles of the same reds that I only had like 20 of to start the day. Little did I know that my 157k stack was about to go on a truly inexplicable ride that would swell it to over 1.6 million in chips over just the next two hours of play to start Day Two.

That's right. 157k to 1.6 million in three blind rounds, or two hours of play at for me at the Venetian on Sunday afternoon. And you know one of the most amazing things about it? I honestly can't even provide many details on exactly how it happened! I mean, I was taking notes on the hands where I won or lost any significant amounts of money, but within maybe 30 minutes of the beginning of play for the day, I was winning so much money, in so many different pots, that I literally just had to give up trying to keep any real notes other than from memory at each break time, generally two hours apart although it got a bit closer as the end neared and the stress levels kept rising. By an hour in, the things I had been writing notes on earlier were so ridiculously far below my new threshold of what counts as "significant" that most of the notes I had taken were already a complete waste. As if the bluff I ran that bumped me up from 310k to 447k means squat anymore when I'm running from 1.6 million to 3.5 million in chips after the break after the first two hour session, that sort of thing. And I know that without the notes I would never be able to capture how this all happened nearly as well as I would like, but im telling you, there was literally nothing I could do to stop it: I was winning too many pots. There was just no time to take detailed notes. So here's what I do have from my breaktime memory sessions:

The first couple orbits of the day saw nothing but rags for me, so I folded a lot and let a couple of the larger stacks at the other end of the table push me out with their bets. It as tough having so many large stacks at the table because they could literally grab just a third of a stack of blue chips -- almost indistinguishable out of their massive stacks -- and bet a guy like me all in for all of my chips. It sucked, but I tried my best to adjust and simply not to play unless I had a hand I could see going all the way with if necessary. About three orbits in, I finally stole my first pots of the day, and then I got caught stealing by one of those big stacks across the table who reraised me allin from his big blind after I had open-raised from the cutoff. I folded KTo, not wanting to get allin dominated with that kind of shit hand, and this put me back down to around 140k, my low point of the last several hours of play, and things weren't looking so great.

Cue the nerdy-lookin guy across the table from me. This was another perfect example of why I have been having such an amazing run in casino poker tournaments lately, and really just a very strong performance in live poker tournaments in my life -- I could just tell, from the look on his face, or the way he would look away and deliberately stare, unmoving, when he was weak, and the way he would just be totally carefree about his mannerisms when he was clearly strong and obviously wasn't crapping his pants at the thought of his whole act being seen through by some soul reader out there. He had a nice big stack, one of the tournament top 5 at that point, and somehow his tells hadn't betrayed him yet, despite being so obvious to me from my vantage point.

First, he raised from late position before the flop, and he immediately froze his head and eyes, clearly nervous that someone would know he was a bit weak. I looked down in my small blind to find ATs, which I quickly reraised with allin based on my cards, my stack size and my read. At this point, down to just 140k in chips, I'm not even sure if I wanted him to fold a pocket pair or just take the race on and see what came of it. In any event, sitting on probably around 500k in chips, the guy made the call and I held my breath as he flipped up? Pocket 6s. Definitely an aggressive call by him -- not one that I would have made, in fact one that I laid down in a very similar spot about 5 other times later in Day Two -- and when an Ace came on the flop, I moved to 4-2 in the tournament in races and managed a quick double to nearly 300k in chips. This was huge for me because within the first hour of play, I was suddenly back right around average and finally had some room to breathe as other players were starting to drop like flies right from the getgo.

Not three hands later, with the blinds having increased again to 8k-16k with still a 2k ante, nerdboy and I mixed it up again, as I raised it up to 60k preflop from middle-late position with pocket 9s, and he called my preflop raise from the button and saw a heads-up flop with me of 552 rainbow. I checked, he bet out for 48k, and immediately I once again got the vibe that he really wanted me to fold this time. So, I proceeded to check-raise him allin, moving in another 200k or so in chips and putting my opponent to the test for more than half of his remaining stack. I think he thought for all of 3 or 4 seconds before sliding his chips into the middle and announcing, albeit timidly, "I call". He showed? Pocket 8s. Another aggressive call from a guy who had a stack and had no need to be calling off 60% of his chips with such am eminently beatable hand, but my ability to be able to decipher what he wanted me to do from the look on his face had led me to another double up, this time to around 375k in chips, now well above average with around 40 players remaining in the tournament.

Still within the same span of maybe 10 hands total, nerdboy pushed allin for his remaining short stack from late position, and I looked down in my big blind to find pocket Queens. Easy call, he showed ATo, and I managed to fade the Ace to eliminate the guy from the tournament, just 10 hands after he had had a top-10 stack. I'm not sure what to say about him, other than that he failed to protect his stack at a time when he had more than enough chips to hold out for a truly strong hand, and instead opted to repeatedly call off his entire chipstack with marginal hands. In any event, this hand jumped me up to around 425k, and more important, left me in great position suddenly at the table, as I had basically taken the entire stack of one of the chip leaders at the table (and in the tournament) over the span of maybe 10 or 15 minutes. He got up from the table, dazed and rolling his eyes as if I had done something wrong (I love it), and walked over to claim his I think $880 cash prize for finishing around 40th place.

At this point, still only maybe 90 minutes in to the Day Two action, I remarked on that big stack two seats to my left -- still probably the tournament chip leader, the way I saw it -- as he very obviously eyed my stack, counting up every chip I had and trying hard to compare it to his own stack to see if he had more chips or how close it was. And from looking myself through my mirrored sunglasses (thus he had no idea I watched his entire eyeing of my stack like he had), we looked pretty close, and it seemed like it really bothered the guy after having been running away with the table chip lead just a few hands earlier. When he immediately open-raised from middle position on the very next hand after overtly sizing my stack up, I put him on a naked steal just trying to ensure that he could build his chip lead against me. I had crap so I folded, and no one else called, so I can never be sure if that was the case, but at the time it was the distinct impression that I had, and I bet it was 100% accurate.

So, just a couple of hands later, when the big stack -- a guy who had won a series of poker tournaments with his friends to win the buyin to this event (sound familiar?) -- was in the big blind, I was excited to find J♠T♠ in the cutoff, which I opted to raise with as I often do with this particular hand, one of my very favorite to play in all of no-limit holdem due to its versatility as a top pair, flush- and straight-making possibilities, and my open-raise usually causes my opponents to remove such a hand from my range when I play it in this way. So I raised the 16k blinds to 43k chips, and then the big stack surprised me by not just calling, but by reraising. But most of all, he only reraised me another 100k, which was less than twice what was in the pot at the time. By leaving me to call only another 100k to see the flop, this raise was basically begging me to call. Unfortunately for him, I could not have planned his raise any better, and I eagerly called with the hand with the most potential in all of holdem to try to hit something big against yet another big stack early on the day, in a situation where I figured my opponent for a genuinely big hand, one that could pay huge dividends if I could just flop to it here.

And flop to it I did, as the flop came down TT6 with two diamonds. I knew for certain my opponent would lead out, with what was probably Aces or Kings or something similarly strong, and I quickly decided how best to play it so as to hopefully appear as weak and beatable as possible. When he put in a substantial bet of 150k on the flop, I went for the absolute instacall, trying to indicate maybe a medium pair or a draw of some kind. The turn brought the King of diamonds, completing a flush on the board as well as pairing up AK if that's what he was holding preflop, and the table chip leader quickly moved out another 200k from his stack to the middle. At this point, I thought for about two seconds before moving very quickly again all-in. I knew of course that the guy could have a hand like AJ and I would be toast, or of course could have hit the flush as well, but he was definitely betting with super authority and trying to give off an aura of strength, in a way that I am fairly sure he would have wanted to hollywood a bit if he was actually holding the nuts or close to it. I still kind of had him on Aces, though I thought Kings were unlikely given the King on the turn (and I would be going home now if that was in fact what he had, a chance I was willing to take), and with his tiny preflop raise I found it very difficult to put him on two diamonds, other than perhaps the unlikely AK of diamonds. In all I decided I was ahead, I figured he might have AK and be willing to pay me off, and I thought I had played the hand just oddly enough on the flop to possibly convince him I was weak.

The guy agonized. I actually found a lot of respect for him as a player as you could just tell in his eyes that he knew he was beat. But he was pissed, and clearly he did not want to fold his hand. He started talking to me. "What, you hit this flop, huh? You're not scared of the King, and not even of the diamond huh? What, did you call another preflop raise with AT, didya (I assume this was a reference to my earlier hand with nerdboy where I reraised him allin with my AT, he made a bad call with 66 and doubled me up)?" He was getting increasingly pissed with every second that rolled by, and at some point it occurred to me that he was going to fold, that I had played the hand too strong to get the rest of his chips, and I would have to be content with only about 60% of his giant stack. Eventually, the guy got this totally disgusted look on his face, and folded face up. Ace-King. So he folded turned TPTK to my action, which like I said I really think is a major league fold in that spot. It's only one pair in the end, but the fact is that I instacalled on the flop and then pushed on the turn card, which helped him, and I am still really surprised that he found the fold where he did there. In retrospect I think it was the third diamond that prevented me from fully doubling again in that spot, as my instacall on the flop compared with my allin reraise on the turn gave him plenty of reason to suspect I was on two random diamonds (I was after all playing two soooted cards, just not in diamonds, so his read would not be off there at all).

With this hand, I not only jumped to nearly a million in chips, but I was at or close to the chip lead in the entire tournament, and I had completely demoralized the (former) table big stack all in the same process. The look on that guy's face was absolutely priceless. He could not believe he had lost most of his stack on that hand, and deep down he never even knew if he had laid down the winner in so doing. I certainly wasn't about to tell him, as I figured it's all good if the guy is steaming like mad over me, my play, my donkey calling or whatever other transgressions he wanted to ascribe to me. At this point people started commenting to me about the incredible run I had gone on in the first two hours, and I couldn't deny it. I had played great poker during the run, but I also got myself into a whole bunch of good situations, whether it was pocket winning a key race with a pocket pair over AT, 9s over pocket 8s on an all raggy flop, or my JTs hand calling a small raise against AK. Adding more fuel to the fire, on the last hand before the first break, I reraised a late position raiser preflop with my own AKo, he pushed for another 100k or so and I made the instacall and saw AQs. My AK held up and I had added another several hundy large to my stack. At break time, I had nearly 1.6 million in chips, far and away the tournament chip leader, with 24 players left and an average stack of 478k in chips. I was absolutely on fire.

Over the next two hours and three blind rounds, we slowly inched our way down from 24 players to the final table, which began 9-handed just a minute or two before the second break. I not only maintained my chip lead but was able to increase it, as the shorty players continued to push into me light, and I had the freedom to call a little light as well since I had such a huge stack. All the action on my table revolved around me, and as the second session of the day wore on, and my chip stack swelled, I was "that guy" at the table who everyone wanted to see and watch. Railbirds were constantly lining up behind me and trying to figure out what my secret was. People across the table kept suggesting that I needed a whole other table just for my chips, and eventually a whole table just for my blue chips. At some point near the end of the fourth hour, the TD came by and switched out 5 stacks of blue 25,000 chips for five snappy fluorescent yellow chips with the number 100,000 written on them.

Sometime during the 5th blind round of the day, I picked up pocket 9s in late position and put in a standard raise of the 40k big blind to 140k, and a mid-stack repushed on me from the big blind for around 350k more. I hesitated briefly, sized up the guy's stack in comparison to mine, and figured I had an easy call. He showed pocket 5s, and I was up over 2 million in chips. I climbed up to nearly 2.5 million when I raised a preflop aggressor in a pot where I flopped a King with my own KQs, and he folded, giving me the blinds, antes, his preflop raise and his flop c-bet. Then my last 500k or so chips before the break came when I busted the same guy two to my left who had started the day as chip leader before giving me most of his stack on the AK hand where he showed the fold with TPTK. The guy was still pissed at me even some two or three hours later, and he had consequently called pretty much every time I had raised before the flop since that fateful hand, which he did again in this spot. Only this time I held pocket Aces. The flop came down Jack high, I c-bet weakly, hoping to get him to raise, and that's exactly what he did. I paused for maybe 2 seconds, made sure I wanted to do this, and made the call. His head sunk immediately when I called, and when I showed my hand, he slapped the table hard and flipped up QJs. I dodged the five remaining Queens and Jacks, in addition to the flush draw he picked up on the turn, and I was up to 3.1 million in chips.

Within minutes -- at 8:45pm local time -- we made the final table, where the average stack among the 9 remaining players was 1.2 million, and where I had a massive chip lead. There were only two other stacks at the final table of more than a million in chips, and only one over 1.6 million other than myself, so I was way way out in front to star the FT, just as I had been for the past several hours non-stop of Day Two. The final table had three euro types, easily the coolest guys there (other than yours truly, of course), one from Denmark, one from Norway and the same nice South African guy from Day One, who spoke with a very British accent and totally had the look of a Brit as well, from his clothes to his haircut.

Fast forward a really annoying hour and a half, and we were still sitting with the entire final table intact as of the 10:25pm dinner break which would last 40 minutes. I had gotten two-outered on the turn just before the dinner break by the nice Danish guy to my right when my AJs made top pair on an A64 flop, he pushed on the turn, and I called his push with my top pair, with him flipping up pocket Tens, a hand this same player had already two-outered me with earlier when down to two tables left. The turn card was another Ten and I lost about 600k in chips. Still, however, I remained the chip leader at the final table thanks to the huge stack I had amassed, but I would live to regret those two two-outers before all was said and done.

At this point I should take a moment to discuss what happened during the dinner break. At only 40 minutes, there was not enough time for me to get back to my suite at the MGM, so instead I headed up to the new food court in the Venetian and ended up grabbing a quick burger from Johnny Rockets. I ate it, it was good, but suddenly I realized that the stress and tension of playing poker for such high stakes was really getting to me, physically speaing. Let's just say that I'm really glad that the Venetian has such clean bathrooms, because I ended up spending most of the dinner break in there instead of out smoking like I would have liked to have been doing. I mean, not that I specifically realized this at the time, but playing in that situation had to be without a doubt the most tension-laden poker I had ever been a part of, and I imagine it was the same for everyone else at the final table on that night. I hadn't felt sick before the dinner break was called, but it was almost like as soon as my body realized it had some time to relax and take in what was going on, it took on a mind of its own. Anyways, not to belabor the point, but I thought it would be interesting for you all to know that I was physically ill for no apparent reason other than stress during the final table, still sitting with 9 players remaining as we neared 11pm, another 7 hours of play into Sunday's poker action.

There's not a whole lot to say about what happened at the final table, truth be told. Our first final table elimination happened to a short stack about 5 minutes into the next round, and the next guy actually got busted by me when he pushed his own short stack allin under the gun, and I woke up with AK in the big blind, getting in dominated against him. One general trend to note, however, was that, in stark contrast to Day One, there were absolutely zero flops at the final table. Even after starting off with such deep stacks and such a favorable structure on Day One, by the time Day Two came around, the Venetian had given up trying to offer a big stack event and instead was basically doubling the blinds every 40 minutes in an attempt to end this much quicker that we saw on Day One. The result? We saw literally three flops over the entire final table, more than five hours of play. Three flops. It was just as much push-and-pray poker at this point as your standard online donkament by the time the final table is reached, and this in general left me feeling very uneasy about my dwindling chip lead. Shortly afterwards, this feeling was validated when the short stack at the table pushed allin from under the gun for at least the fourth straight time when first to act. Having played in the WSOP and seen how often some guys like to do their stealing from UTG in the later rounds because it appears so strong and legitimate, when I found pocket 9s again on the button, a hand that had been very good to me so far in the tournament, I opted to call and take my chances that the guy was stealing again. He disgustedly flipped up AJs when I called him, but my 9s could not hold up as he flopped a Jack (4-3 in races overall in the event), and suddenly I was no longer the chip leader.

Maybe 15 minutes later, I once again found myself in the big blind against the player in the small blind, the nice Danish guy who at the time was the short stack at the table, who pushed allin from the small blind for what had to be the 8th or 9th time in the previous hour of sitting on his short stack. This time I found AQs in the big blind, and of course I'm calling with that, and of course the guy flipped up AKs. I could not suck out -- I didn't lay a single suckout on anyone in the entire 27 hours of poker -- and before I knew it, my chip lead was gone, my huge stack in general was gone, and I found myself in 5th if not 6th out of 8 players remaining. Luckily, I was fortunate to find AKs not long afterwards, and one of the other bigger stacks called my allin reraise with his pocket 7s -- again a hand that I must have laid down in similar spots 9 or 10 times during the two day tournament -- and I managed to survive the race (5-3 now) when I flopped an Ace instead of being eliminated in 8th place. A couple of stolen pots later and I was right back up at 2.5 million and in a solid second place, but the Dane whose AK had bested my AQ retained the chip lead over me, this after 2-outering me not once but twice in just the previous couple hours of playing.

After I eliminated the South African guy to my left and we got down to 7 players, the older Asian dude across the table started lobbying the rest of the players hard for a chop. Personally, I loved the idea, given how pushfesty and luck-based the entire final table had played for a good three hours or so already, but there was a crucial problem with the plan: at the time, there were five big stacks (I was one of them), and two stacks much smaller than all the others. Predictably for this situation, the shorties had no interest whatsoever in accepting anything remotely close to the 7th and 6th place money payouts for the tournament -- which were 11k and 14k and change, respectively. The Asian guy started a pretty nasty fight with one of the shorties, saying he was an idiot for demanding significantly more than what 7th place would pay already, while the shorty's point was that since he was guaranteed that 11k anyways, why would he accept something like 14 or 15k when he could just randomly shove all his chips into the middle on the very next hand, take the 11k if he busts, but be in a much better position for himself with just one double-up. Personally, I tended to agree with the short stack, and even though I definitely was interested in a chop to eliminate some of the massive luck involved in playing this kind of final table, my real feelings were that I did not have any intention of sitting around and listening to douchebags negotiate for a chop that some portion of the players involved would obviously never agree to. As soon as the short stack let us know that he would not be satisfied with the 11k payout already slated for 7th place, but that he would be willing to deal for no less than 30k, the Asian dude lost his shit, and that's when I withdrew from any discussions for a deal. Like I said, I didn't come here to mediate a hotly contested negotiation. That's what I do during my real job on all the rest of the days of the year. I came to play poker, and I told the rest of the table that's exactly what I wanted to do. And, since the decision to chop has to be unanimous, as soon as I withdrew, they shuffled up and dealt out the next hand. Funny enough, as we had been first considering a chop, we asked the TD to run the numbers for each of our payouts based on our proportion of the total chips outstanding, and the tournament must have stopped for close to an hour as the TD frantically ran back and forth to each of our chip stacks in an attempt to discover where his count of each of our chips kept going wrong. As I had flashbacks of the WSOP Main Event recently where some number of chips were found added to the prize pool and nobody could every figure out when, where or why, at some point it suddenly dawned on me: the 75k in chips that was removed from the tournament late on Day One when the idiot with the big stack swiped all the chips off the table and got himself and his stack eliminated from the tournament and from the casino in general. Once someone at the table reminded the TD of this fact, he totally calmed down after having been pretty much in a panic for the previous half hour or so, and he was then able to complete our calculations, using as the denominator in the chip proportions the total number of chips in the event (15,000 starting chips times 772 entrants), minus 75k in chips removed from the tournment late the day before.

Fast forward maybe 15 minutes, 99 ran into JJ, and we were down to 6. Once again the Asian guy broached the subject of a chop, but once again the short stack -- the same guy who had objected the last time (guaranteeing himself 3 grand more in the process as another player had busted while he still remained in the event) -- made the exact same request for 30k payout, while still 6th place was only slated to win 14k. Things started to get heated again, really illustrating I think just how much tension there really was in the air as the stakes progressed higher and higher, and again I responded by withdrawing from all talk of a deal, even though I made it known that I was actually quite interested in making a deal if one could be reached that would be workable for everyone.

We tried to chop again with five players left, when the shortest stack remaining at the final table was eliminated after he allowed himself to blind down to just over 100k remaining and then was forced allin with ATC. This time, with the last of the really short stacks out, and with over $231,000 of prize money to be divided up among the last five runners, I thought we might have a chance of actually agreeing to a chop. But this time it was the big stack, the Danish guy to my right, who resisted, insisting on receiving a payout of at least 70 grand even though his chip stack indicated a payout of no more than 62k and even given the ridiculous pushfest that the final table had become. I was not about to pay the chip leader even a dime more than his proportion of the total chips in play times the total 261k left in the prize pool, and most of my opponents agreed, so we were forced to play on again.

Now I'm not sure exactly what changed between when there were 5 left and when we got down to 4, but when the chip leader Danish guy happened to be the one to eliminate #5 as well from the tournament, suddenly he found himself with 5.1M in chips, to my 2.7M, 2.8M for the old man to my left, and 1.3M for the new short stack across the way. At this point, this was the first time that I became actively involved in discussions for a chop. I thought that with the new and improved chip stack he had, the chip leader might be willing to accept the number that his new stack corresponded to, in particular because with his latest win I figured he would be up somewhere in the 70-75k range, which had been what he was requiring just a few hands earlier. After some quibbling back and forth over largely irrelevant numbers, we reached unanimous agreement between the final four players, and we stopped the tournament for good.

In the end, here's where we ended up. Again, the chip stacks were 5.1M, 2.8M, 2.7M (me) and 1.3M. There was around $212,000 in the prize pool to be divided up amongst the four of us, with the tournament payouts scheduled to be 26k to 4th place, 35k to third place, 50k to second place and 101k to first. As the TD calculated our exact payouts based purely on the percentage of total chips outstanding we each held, I just kept thinking how we had only seen literally three flops at the entire final table, which at this point was going on five hours long (counting several stops along the way to discuss chops, plus a couple of extra breaks thrown in for good measure), and how much I would really like to chop this thing up now rather than just take a luckshot at either doubling up and surviving, or buting out and getting the "paltry" 26k payout instead of securing something much higher here. When the TD came back with the numbers for us, I was realy psyched to see that both myself and the old man with just slightly more chips than me could each be , paid essentially 2nd-place money of 51 grand if we could just chop it now. The short stack was an easy sell on the chop, because 4th was slated to pay only 26k, and he was being offered 37k based on his 1.3 million in chips at the time, so he was very happy to chop. Both me and the other man with 2.7 or 2.8M in chips seemed satisfied with payouts in the 50k - 51k range. I turned to the big stack, with whom I had been quite friendly despite him 2-outering me twice over the preceding few hours of play, and I asked him to just level with us, was he willing to accept the $70,536 the chip counts suggested for a chip chop. He mentioned that the number he had had in mind was 75k. I told him again that I wouldn't consider giving him any more than the amount that his stack dictated, and he reluctantly stated that he would be willing to agree to the chop for 70 grand even. Upon hearing this, the old man with 2.8M in chips jumped on the Dane's exact words, insisting that he (the old man) be paid the last $536 from the big stack since the big stack had said he would chop it "for 70k" despite having been awarded $70,536 by the casino's tournament computers. The big stack said he didn't care about the last $536, so I let the old man know that it was "totally asshole" of him to insist on the last $536 going to just him since there was absolutely no logic whatsoever other than sheer, stupid greed, but that I was not about to hold up a 51k chop for me based on $536 going from player #1 to player #2. So we all agreed, the TD secured a written agreement from each one of us, and the tournament was over.

I'll have more on this in tomorrow's post, but I really could not believe it when they tried to pay me out my $50,800 and change in casino chips. Essentially, cash. Apparently, they expected me to walk right out the front door of the casino with $51,000 in cash, from a tournament where probably hundreds of people had been sitting and watching the final table play out for the past several hours, and not worry about getting mugged or killed for the money that so many people had watched me win. Plus, I guess I was just going to throw 51k into my bags and fly across country with it as well, huh? Even though I am well aware that there are tons of rich-ass people who regularly walk around the casino with more than 50 grand in cash, I'm not one of them, and I wasn't even about to think about doing it in this spot either. I asked them to give me a check for the proceeds, which they agreed to do, but soon after I was informed that there was a problem with the Venetian's check-requesting process, one that could not be fixed right then at 3am, and that if I wanted a check I would need to come by on Monday afternoon after 3pm to pick it up. I thought it over and quickly decided that that's what I wanted to do. This would mean missing my flight out of Vegas early on Monday morning, which would mean missing all flights leaving Vegas at any level of convenience on Monday, which would ultimately mean extending my trip one more day and taking the 7am flight out of McCarran on Tuesday morning, a flight out of the desert which I have taken many many times in my day.

This would end up leaving me with a whole extra day in Vegas, which will be the subject of my Friday post, in addition to some general thoughts in retrospect in what ends up going down as the best poker weekend of my life. So far.

Saturday in Vegas -- Venetian Deep Stack Day One

As I mentioned, I woke up very early on Saturday, sleeping just under 2 hours before my body forced my ass awake to deal with registering in time to miss the pre-tournament crush for WSOP Event #51 as I have done in past years. It's old news by now, but that tournament filled up the night before, and even though I arrived at the WSOP registration counter at the Rio before 8am this thing was already long gone. Even crazier was the fact that there were a bunch of people actually sleeping over on the floor in front of the registration counter from the night before, just on the hopes that the Rio would get it together at some point before the tournament's noon start time and add some more tables, which I imagine they did (it looks like they did add a whopping 81 more entrants, or 9 more tables before closing off registration for good for Event #51, wtg Harrah's!). But, knowing already that a tournament series like the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza was going on, in what I think is probably the nicest poker room in Las Vegas as it is, and that a $560 buyin event was already scheduled for noon on Saturday, I opted to just try to fix my problem right away by registering for that event instead of standing around in a closed, not moving registration line based solely on blind hope that some of us might get in at some point. That was definitely not how I planned to spend my morning, so I quickly jumped back in a cab and went straight to the Venetian, got a players club ("Club Grazie") card, and bought my way in. Then I headed back to the MGM, hung with my brothers and friends for a couple of hours, and then when they left to hit the pool, I jumped back in a cab and headed up Koval Avenue down the back road to the Venetian. Thanks to some traffic, I rolled in to the Venetian poker room just a couple of minutes before noon, not even leaving me time for my usual pre-poker smoke (there would be plenty of time for this later, as it turned out). I took my pre-assigned seat at table 75, Seat 10, and soon the cards were in the air, with eventually 772 runners each ponying up their $560 to take a crack at what would be a 101k first prize.

I should mention briefly the structure of the tournament, which was broken down into two-hour sessions followed by a 15-minute break. This Deep Stack
event started us all with 15,000 in chips, and blind rounds were 40 minutes, meaning that we would play exactly three blind rounds every two hours, and then take a 15-minute break, which left me just enough time for two leisurely cigarettes outside in the desert heat, followed by a bathroom break to help eliminate the roughly 2.5 cokes an hour I was drinking all through Saturday's action. The full schedule for the day was 3 rounds, 15 minute break, 3 rounds, 15 minute break, 3 rounds, 10 minute break, 1 more round, then a one-hour dinner break scheduled for 7:45pm or so, and then return for our 3-rounds-then-a-break schedule until the middle of Round 18, tentatively scheduled to occur somewhere between 2am and 3am.

Anyways, not much happened for me for the first couple hours of the tournament, as I did not receive much in the way of good starting cards -- the one QQ hand I did get in the big blind actually folded around to me for an unfortunate walk. Or fortunate, given my track record with pocket Queens. I took a couple of stabs at flops that looked harmless, but for the most part I either folded preflop or had to fold these few stabs on the flop to any kind of pressure from my opponents. Generally speaking, I only saw a few flops and did not flop top pair one time through the first two hours of play on Saturday. It was an annoying start to a tournament I really wanted to excel in, but tight play is right play in the very early stages, in particular in this Deep Stack event where that would be all the more true.

Anyways, near the end of the third blind round -- this was around 1:45pm local time -- I had my one and only early chance to chip up, as I limped in to a 5-way pot with AJo and watched as AAJ hit the board for the flop. I checked, someone bet out a reasonable amount, which I just called on the theory that I had the flop completely covered and did not want to bother forcing him to fold with a raise at this point in the hand. I was desperate to do anything I could to get some chips out of my only good flop of the tournament so far, so I checked the raggy turn card as well, hoping either to induce a bluff or to get someone to pick up a better hand, but my lone opponent by that point also checked behind (like I said, I had the board completely covered unfortunately). When another rag hit the river, I once again went for the inducement and checked, but he again checked behind, and I meekly flipped up my flopped boat and raked in the very small pot. Oh well, what more can you do, right? It was very clear to me that he would not have called a bet from me on any street anyways, so I don't think I lost anything and it was probably just unfortunate for me to have flopped so big for the first time in two hours but simply have no chance to get any chips out of it.

As of the first break, when I finally headed outside to a secret smoking area that Chad showed to me, I was down to around 12,500 chips (Chad had 14,500 or so at breaktime, and Aposec, another blogger who was playing this event thanks to the WSOP snafu, I think said he was down a bit from the 15k starting stack as well). Cigs, bathroom, and then back to the poker room for Rounds 4-6 before another 15-minute smoke break. Shortly into Round 4, I called a stealy-looking preflop raise from the cutoff with my K♥Q♥ in the big blind. The flop came down A♥9♣2♥, giving me the nut flush draw and only my second chance to actually play an actual flop in this thing. The cutoff led out with a smallish, half-pot bet, and he had about 9k in chips behind, making this a trivially easy call for me with 9 outs to the stone nuts on this board and a bunch of chips to win if I could hit. My flush filled on the turn, and I checked again to the preflop raiser and flop bettor. He bet out again as I had hoped, and I raised him bigly for most of his remaining stack. He insta-pushed on me, I autocalled for just another 1500 or so into a 20k pot, and he turned up AJ, drawing dead, and he proceeded to mouth off about my call on the flop with just a naked flush draw before getting up and leaving after nearly doubling me through. As I said, #1 he held only AJ, so calling an allin raise with top pair Jack kicker says all that we need to know about this guy's true nlh tournament prowess, as does his horrible half-pot bet on the flop with an Ace and a draw on it, and most of all his apparent complete lack of understanding about implied odds and how uber-sensible it is for me to call a small flop bet on the chance that I might win his entire stack of I can just hit my draw. This was the first example of several over the ensuing couple of days of some poor play in the tournament, from players who, although facile with the rules of the game, clearly did not all understand the vagaries of things like implied odds and protecting one's hand on draw-heavy flops. So this bumped me up to around 23,000 in chips, and got me out of the bottom half of the field and into a position where I could feel like I had some chips to burn and some room to make some moves and know that I could still fold if necessary.

I stayed right around the 20-30k level for the next few hours, ranging up a bit when I would complete a few steals or win a pot with a preflop raise and a flop c-bet, etc. I was dealt pocket Kings once, which I took down preflop with no callers of my 3x raise, but at least I was able to maintain my stack and even grow it little by little over the next several blind rounds just by virtue of having some room to make a move here and there and a little confidence boost from having found a way to double up after more than two hours of slowly bleeding down from the 15k starting stacks.

My first big hand of the tournament happened shortly before the third break, so this is somewhere around 6:30pm after a noon start time, with blinds of 600-1200. I was in the big blind, sitting on a stack of 26k in chips when the average stack size was probably close to 40k, and I was dealt pocket 6s, my third or fourth pocket pair of the tournament to that point. Surprisingly, the UTG player limped in, which was probably the first open-limp at our table since the first or second hour of play. While I pondered the significance of a rare limp, the next guy limped, then the next guy and the next guy, and before I knew it, the entire table had limped in, including the small blind in front of me. With 9 players in to see the flop, and me having 66 in the big blind and a stack only around half of average, I figured this was a great opportunity to add about 40% to my stack with all those big blinds as well as antes sitting in the middle, and that it was unlikely that someone would limp-call with a pocket pair above 6s. So I pushed. A couple of guys folded, and then someone in middle position agonized before deciding to make the call. Not good for my 6s for sure. Everyone else folded to the two allins, and the MP guy flipped up? ATs. That my friends is what we call a bad call, or at least a highly speculative call especially since so many other players were still to act behind him. I actually can't believe that ATs calls an allin in middle position there with 5 players still to act after him, but he did it, and I won the race when no Ace or Ten hit the board. Right there was the first time I was allin with my tournament life on the line, and just a 51% favorite to win at that, but win I did, and I not only survived but I doubled up in a big way. The MP caller mumbled "fucking bullshit" for a good five minutes after the hand went down, and presumably he was not aware enough to understand that the real bullshit was the call he made with ATs and not the fact that his 49% hand failed to hold up. In any event, there I was with just over 50,000 in chips, now about 20% above the tournament average for the first time in hours.

The next couple of hours went by pretty uneventfully, and eventually we neared our third break right around 7pm local time. I had chipped up a bit more, being able to use the stack I had acquired on my raise-the-limpers hand to chase some people out of pots and steal with little fear of damaging my chip position if I am forced to abandon a pot after putting in an early raise. As the TD called that this would be the last hand before the third break, which was scheduled only for 10 minutes (don't worry I can still squeeze two smokes in there) because it is just one more 40-minute round afterwards and then the one-hour dinner break at 7:45pm, with me sitting with around 55k, suddenly there was a massive commotion about 3 tables away to my left. First there was a lot of yelling, followed by a big crowd congregating around the table and what looked like a big commotion, and eventually tons of security people running over to try to decipher what had gone wrong. Eventually, this story came out: a big stack at the table, who at the time held 75k in chips, probably good for top 15 or 20 stacks in the tournament at that point out of maybe still half the field left, had been dealt pocket Aces. One of the players across the table mucked his cards before the flop, but I guess accidentally mucked them right on top of the big stack's face-down pocket Aces. Somehow this caused the big stack guy with the pocket Aces to have his hand mucked, and he lost it. Completely lost it. He screamed and yelled, he insisted for the floor to make a ruling, so they called over the TD. When the floor ruled against the guy and said that unfortunately he failed to protect his cards, the guy got physical. After pushing by one of the other players, he apparently stuck his arm out fully outstretched (imagine a "clothesline" for you old-timer WWF fans out there) and proceeded to swipe the chips completely off the table and all over the floor in a ridiculous mess. Every. Single. Chip. Like, I'm not just talking about his stack here. Everyone's stack. All the chips at the table suddenly forced onto the ground in a random distribution from whence they came.

After taking a few minutes to grab the guy and escort his ass from the building, the TD decided to begin the one-hour dinner break immediately, 40 minutes ahead of schedule, and the poker room staff would work with surveillance during the hour to recreate the chip stacks. The guy's 75k in chips were removed from play (remember that for later), and his top-15 stack was done for the tournament. Everyone was left shaking our heads as to why a guy gives up a good stack like that over what is admittedly a very bad break in the tournament. But he didn't even lose any chips on the play; he just failed to win some chips that he otherwise would have. Anyways, he was gone, and suddenly I had lasted to dinner break! Goal #1 achieved. Can't win the tournament if you don't last till dinner.

Aiming for some good mojo from my last cash in the WSOP a couple of years ago, I quickly opted to do the same thing I did during that year's dinner break, and jumped in a cab, back down Koval Lane to avoid the Strip traffic already building at 7:15pm on a Saturday night, and back to my suite at the MGM (more on that suite later in the week). I texted to my brothers and we all met up for a quire debrief and pep talk plus a couple of beers, and I was back on Koval heading up to the Venetian. This time I did leave myself time for a pre-smoke, and we were off to play blind round #10, with 800-1600 blinds and 200 antes.

Two hands in to the new round after the dinner break, I almost tilted everything away myself when I too was dealt pocket Aces. An aggressive french player across the table from me who did not like to stop betting once he had started in a hand, raised a couple of early limpers from middle position by a significant amount -- to around 11k in chips as I recall -- and I just called from the big blind, because, you know, that's just how I roll. We saw a heads-up flop of Q97 with two diamonds. This time, knowing how this guy will not fold once he starts getting involved in a hand, I went ahead and donk-bet into him, leading out for around 13 grand into the pot which at that point was a little under 20,000 chips. He responds by verbally saying "All in", and trust me when I tell you, he would do this with any Queen whatsoever, even Q3. Before I have the chance to announce that I call, the guy suddenly says "Hey! Where are my cards?" It turns out the idiot dealer fucking mucked this guy's cards as she picked up the rest of the folded hands following the preflop betting round. He goes ballistic, calling for the floor and demanding to be given his cards back. The TD came over, exhausted from having just dealt with the bullshit from the other pocket Aces clothesliner table and taking the past hour to clean up that mess, and I sat quietly because I knew exactly what he was going to say. The other guy failed to protect his hand -- in this case, he did not cover his cards with a chip or anything else to indicate he was still in the hand -- and this was going to be a muck, instead of me doubling straight through to over 100k in chips. While I was stewing inside, the french guy was going absolutely apeshit on the TD and insisting he wants 100k in chips, how could they screw him this badly, etc. Finally I couldn't take it anymore, and with steam coming out of my ears, I flip up my pocket Aces to show the guy that it was he, not I, who was saved by this bullshit. He looked down at his own cards, got kind of embarrassed, and then more or less stopped arguing, at least with the fervor he had had previously. But coming right on the heels of the other mucked pocket Aces hand, I was beyond pissed. Sure, I had still climbed up to around 75k on the hand, but this was about a 95% shot of me straight up doubling up to over 100k, and instead it was all gone. I was so furious at the turn of events that I had to get up and take a walk around the outside of the poker room just to calm myself down. I know I texted the details to Chad and received some helpful advice not to tilt and ruin my chances, but god DAMN if I was not royally pissed off at losing out on the almost sure opportunity to make an extra 30k or so in chips. Still, this got me up around 75k, and I was slowly but surely climbing up the leaderboad, at a time when the average chips were around 50k or so in the tournament.

The next two two-hour sessions didn't see a whole lot of crazy action, although I managed to chip up nicely as the tightass Harringbots were finally finding themselves in situations where they needed to just push and pray. First, I called down a late position preflop allin raiser with my 99, and he flipped up 44 and I held. This got me up over 100k around 9:15pm local time. A good friend of mine from law school who happened to be in town for her first visit to Vegas then stopped by to say hello around 10pm, so I sat out after my blinds for 4 or 5 hands just to chat briefly, jumping back in to the game shortly before it was my small blind once again. I remember this only because the plan was for her to stop back by the poker room after a short walk on the Strip with her boyfriend, when I would be able to spend some more time with them if I had busted, but then maybe 20 minutes later I managed to nearly double up again and shoot up to near 200k -- now surely in the top 20 or so on the leaderboard -- when I just couldn't find a fold against another aggro guy who overpushed allin on a raggy 995 flop with two to a suit. I held J9s, which I had called a preflop raise into a 4-way pot with, and I could not possibly put the guy on the case 9 in the hole. I called, he proudly flipped up pocket Queens, and my trip 9s held for the huge pot. Here was another guy who went off on me in the live chatbox for a few minutes before leaving the tournament area, but what can I do. I love to call raises in multiway pots with J9s specifically, and in this case there were already two other callers to his preflop raise by the time the action got around to me, so there was no way I was even considering folding at that point. Once again it was clear to me that I understood general no-limit tournament theory -- implied odds, playing hands that could win you huge pots, etc. -- better than most other players in this event, even for a $560 buyin in a live casino.

Around midnight, we started getting very close to the money cutoff, with the tournament paying 72 spots out of the 772 who had started some 12 hours earlier. I was still over 200k in chips, and I started taking serious advantage of my shorter-stacked table, turning around J.C. Tran's bullying from the WSOP bubble two years ago and trying my best to be the abuser instead of the abused here on the bubble. I raised, raised and raised some more any time I felt like I sensed weakness and/or had any real strength in my hand, and it worked well. I managed to climb to over 300k at one point just as the literal bubble was reached at 73 players and we started playing hand for hand. Luckily, unlike the WSOP a couple of years ago, hand for hand play lasted all of three hands, when two players busted out at once and suddenly we were in the money. Making the money in this tournament really doesn't mean much as far as I am concerned -- in the Deep Stack, even less so than in other events, since the payout schedule is really weighted towards the top few payouts. I think the first 30 or 40 of the 72 cashers made $800 or less, meaning a profit of just a few hundy for our efforts. So there was no reason to be excited, but I distinctly remember the feeling of pride and just generally of having "been there before" as I looked around at all the players among the 73 remaining who followed the action at every table, every time someone was allin, running around the poker room like donkeys hoping for their $300 payday. Whereas two summers ago, I was that guy during hand for hand play, this time around I was just sitting at my table, not caring much about the lousy couple hundred I could win at this point, chatting it up with a really nice South African guy to my right who had a very similar outlook on how to play the game as I did in general. Eventually after three hand for hand deals, the money bubble broke and we were down to 70 in no time.

At this point we were about three and a half more rounds (two and a half hours) from stopping play for the day, and the TD announced that we would be foregoing the first half of Round 17 which is usually when they play until for this tournament, meaning that we had almost exactly two hours remaining until breaking for the day. With me sitting over 300k in chips, I was in great shape, with the tournament average at the time generally right around 160k or so, so I figured there was no reason to get too involved in any more big pots unless I was clearly getting the odds or knew I had a shot at really chipping up once again. Shortly before the end of our last round of the day -- Round 16, with 1000 antes and 4000-8000 blinds, down to around 55 players remaining in the tournament -- I did get involved in a hand that I think actually shows what is so great about a deep stack tournament like this as compared to most other tournaments you would ever play in, and certainly anything you ever run into online, other than maybe on UltimateBet. Someone opened the pot in middle-late position to 25k, and I looked down to find my third or fourth AK of the night, this time sooted in diamonds. I went with my usual strategy of reraising preflop, putting in enough at 80k or so to get rid of the preflop raiser if he is not on a middle pocket pair or better, but then the small blind -- a nice young kid from Tennessee with a serious southern drawl working -- pushed allin for his last 150k or so, and the original raiser agonized for a while before finally folding his hand. Having to call just 70k to win 276k, obviously I called, but I was very clearly not happy about it. The kid from Tennessee would never, ever be pushing allin this close to making Day Two with that size of stack still to play with, against a preflop raise and a reraise, with AJ or AT. No, he had a pocket pair, probably Queens, and that is the only hand he would ever risk being eliminated from the tournament with at this point in the day. I knew he had a pair, and, assuming it was not the unlikely Aces or Kings (given the AK in my hand), I knew I was racing, but again calling 70k to win the 276k in the pot made this a must-call for me despite the fact that I really did not feel like racing for a third of my hard-earned stack at this point on the day. But I had to call at those odds, and Mr. Tennessee flipped up pocket Jacks.

As I proceeded to lose the race -- making me 3-2 in races overall for Day One -- the original raiser was clearly pained when he saw our cards, and while the dealer finished out the hand with our cards face-up, the OR told me that he had folded AK after my reraise and then the allin from Mr. Tennessee. And that got me thinking -- see, this is why I love to play in a deep stack tournament. Because here we are, through over 90% of the field in a major tournament, down to just 60 remaining, already well into the money positions, and yet a guy with only around average chips still had the chip position to be able to raise preflop with AK and then lay it down without pushing in the rest of his chips. The simple fact is that you could never do that with only 15-20 big blinds like most players when youre through 93% of the field in most tournaments, especially on line. Think about it -- have you ever folded AK preflop on an average sized stack after already putting in a standard-sized raise in the last 60 runners of the 32k or some other fonkfest online? Neither have I. Because in most tournaments, just that one standard raise before the flop is generally enough to get you into a position where you know you have to call to race or risk folding after puting up a third of your stack with AK before the flop. It just doesn't happen very often, but the fact that this guy was willing and able to lay down AK against two other players after having raised before the flop at this late stage in the tournament is exactly what makes deep stack, large starting stack events like this so good to play in.

In any event, that hand sucked for me, and it knocked me back down to around 170k from where I had been closer to 300k immediately before the hand started, and yet I don't think I would play it any other way even if I could live it again. I like the reraise with AKs, and I know I couldn't lay down to the race even for another 70k out of my stack, not into that pot anyways. It just sucked feeling like I was forced to call off almost a third of my remaining stack on what I knew -- absolutely knew -- was a race with near zero chance of me actually being ahead dominating AQ or AJ or some similar hand. Nonetheless, I was still alive, and by the time the action closed for the day around 2:30am, I had dropped a slight bit further thanks to some steals gone wrong, with me closing the day sitting at 157,000 in chips, with a tourament average of 241k and just 48 players remaining.

I had made Day Two! This was my first Day Two in any live poker tournament of all time, out of maybe 4 or 5 chances I have had, so even though I had been so much above average shortly before breaking for the night, I was still overjoyed to have attained Goal #2 and lasting through all of the Day One festivities. You can't win a tournament if you don't last until dinner break, and you can't win it either if you don't make it to Day Two. I would be starting on Sunday at 4pm PT wth 157k in chips, good for 32nd place of the 48 runners remaining, and at about 2/3 of the average stack. So I knew I had my work cut out for me tomorrow, but I figured that was something I would just worry about tomorrow.

I headed back to the MGM at around 3am, and after catching up briefly with the bachelor party crowd, I picked up Chad at the MGM poker room who was happy to dump his four racks of reds from the 2-5 table he had been busy crushing in my absence and go head to the Studio Cafe for some debriefage, and some dinner since I had spent my dinner break celebrating and resting with my friends instead of eating (I don't usually get hungry during live tournaments, I have found). We both got breakfast (my favorite meal of the day), and chatted about his exit from the tournament (flopped top set and lost to a straight I think), my chip stack and some of the big hands. I got some good advice from a live tournament veteran on what to expect for Day Two, and just generally had a very good time coming back down to earth, eating some good food, and talking poker with someone who really gets the game and the nuances of the tournament format. After that, I bid goodbye to Chad and then met up with my brothers and the clan, who were (of course) in the private high roller blackjack section, and ended up staying up with them for the rest of the night, because they were all leaving between 7am and 11am on Sunday to head back east to the Real World and leaving the fantasy camp that is Las Vegas. In a way I was kinda sad that everyone was leaving and I would be staying behind after what had been a super fun weekend for all, but to be honest this was always the plan, and there had to be some reason I had originally decided to stay until Monday instead of leaving on Sunday like everyone else. Well, this was that reason. So we rallied all night, I had a few more drinks, and eventually I said goodbye to first my younger brother and best friend from growing up, and then eventually to my older brother and the rest of my crew who were out of town by around 8am. Then I went to sleep alone in my fatty suite at MGM, setting my alarm for 1pm to give me a solid five hours while still leaving me plenty of time to get rested, shower, eat and strategize before the 4pm start time of Day Two at the Venetian.

More on Thursday on my incredible rise from 159k in chips to over 3.1 million at its height.

Recapping Vegas -- Part I

So here I sit in McCarran airport as I type this shortly before 6am on Tuesday morning, trying fruitlessly to arrange some thoughts in my cloudy, murky head as I look back on yet another annual Vegas trip, replete with the usual bouts of debauchery, degeneracy, and just general excess as I always seem to fall into whenever I come out here these days. I feel this exact same way -- this feeling of not being all there -- every time I depart the fantasy universe that truly is Las Vegas to return to the Real World every summer. It's just the last rite of passage that I really need to go through if I want to truly live the Vegas experience to the fullest. I drank far more this weekend than I ever drink in a year outside of Vegas. I smoked more cigarettes this week than at any time since, well, Las Vegas last summer. And, something I didn't believe could ever be possible: I actually slept less on this trip than I have probably over any four-day period in my entire life, including prior Vegas trips.

Counting today, my last day in the desert, the earliest I went to sleep on any day of this trip was around 4am, and that was my first night into town after a long and draining trip when my other friends were still just straggling in for my brother's bachelor party and everyone was not quite geared up for the true Vegas experience. Friday night saw me playing cash poker at the MGM with Chad, CK and Blinders until sometime after 3am, and even then I ended up staying up gambling and then pondering whether or not I really wanted to play the WSOP that I had been hoping to play on Saturday. On Saturday I headed to the Venetian at noon local time to start the $560 buyin Deep Stack Extravaganza, and little did I know I would be playing there until around 3am before heading back to the MGM, where, once again I couldn't sleep. In fact, I was so wired from the Day One action, and so hungry from having been firing on all mental cylinders for so many hours straight, that I ended up meeting up with Chad for a very late-night meal at the Studio Cafe, a place I've been frequenting in the MGM since I was nearly a teenager. It was a great opportunity for me to debrief about the day, to pick Chad's brain about some thoughts and questions I had heading into Day Two, and just generally to decompress after what had been a very draining day or me to say the least. But I watched the sun turn the mountains to the West of Las Vegas pink with its first rays out my hotel window before I even considered being able to actually fall asleep on Saturday night, so abuzz was I with the anticipation of playing in my first ever poker tournament Day Two. And then on Sunday night I once again ended up at the Venetian blasting my way through the rest of the DSE field until sometime after 3am. And if you think I could sleep after winning almost 51 grand in far and away my largest ever poker tournament score, then you haven't been picking up what I've been putting down over here for the last several sentences. After the big win, I couldn't have kept my eyes shut with staples, glue or any other adhesive known to man. I'm not sure I had ever been that far from sleep in my entire life. But believe me, I didn't catch a wink of sleep after my Sunday Venetian score this weekend until after 8am on Monday morning. By then I knew I would need to pick up my check from the Venetian on Tuesday afternoon due to a technical error they were having with their system on Sunday night, and thus I had already rescheduled my flight back to the beach and my family for Tuesday morning super early. So that left me with one more surprise night in Sin City to actually get some sleep for a change, and what did I do? Well, I'm here at the airport waiting to board my 7 o'clock plane back to the east coast, and I haven't slept a single wink yet today, thanks to a late-night gambling session that happened purely on a whim, but which I did not want to let go after I started winning money hand over fist and I was having such a blast playing a bunch of table games that I haven't really played since I used to frequent Las Vegas in my former life. Before I knew it, three quarter blackjack tables and three hot craps setups later, there it was, 5am, with a flight outta here scheduled for just minutes after 7, completing the circle of me not getting anything that even resembles a good night's sleep on any of my nights in town.

But of course, the total lack of sleep or any kind of rest at all that seems so hard not to do basically every time I'm in town contributes in a big way to my feeling the Day After, or even the Morning Of, of just a general in ability to function as a productive member of Real World society after three or four days in fantasy camp. Throw in the drinking, the smoking and just the general partying that goes on every time I'm in town, and it's no wonder that I'm sitting here today having a good deal of trouble even putting together coherent sentences at all, and certainly not doing a good job of capturing the essence of what makes one of these Vegas runs so very special in my life.

As I look back on this particular trip to Vegas as compared to my forays in recent years, it certainly ranks up there as the weirdest of the trips I have had. From a purely poker perspective, I began the poker portion of my trip as I wrote about earlier by putting in a hideous session of 1-2 nlh cash at the MGM with Chad and CK, losing one and a half buyins and basically calling every value bet like a fonkey on the river as I managed to accumulate a host of second-best hands in spots where it was very difficult to put my opponents on a winning hand. Amazingly, I can read myself the post I wrote very early on Saturday morning just after that crappy cash session where I remember seriously considering not even playing the WSOP the next morning. Of course, cooler heads prevailed in the morning and I realized that I was letting my performance in an unusually unlucky cash session cloud my feelings about playing in a poker tournament, and that just didn't make sense to me. Of course, as I wrote previously, I was unable to register for the Saturday WSOP event, as I and probably about a thousand of my closest friends were all turned away thanks to the geniuses at the WSOP who couldn't even plan sufficiently ahead to make extra space for more than 2700 entrants, even when they had filled all of those 2700 seats more than 12 hours before that event was scheduled to begin at noon on Saturday, and you already know the rest of the story that ended up with me at the Venetian to play the Deep Stack Extravaganza event. It's just really funny to me that, for the first time ever since I've been making an annual summer poker pilgrimage to Las Vegas, I actually had reservations about even playing in any poker tournaments shortly after arriving, and then of course this ends up being the time that I record my biggest tournament score. It's just funny how life works some times I guess.

Along those same lines, I will admit here that one of my initial reactions to hearing about sprstoner's and then LJ's incredible WSOP performances this summer -- other than elation mixed with a healthy portion of jealousy at my fellow bloggers' tournament success of course -- was that it, too, left me looking forward that much less to my own upcoming tournaments in Vegas. I know I complained to a few of you out there over the girly how now, even if I went on a sick run and managed to make it deeper than ever before into my WSOP tournament, there was just no way it was going to seem great to anyone, or even feel great to me myself, after seeing these people I know and like have such deep runs, make WSOP final tables, etc. I just remember specifically feeling bummed about that turn of events, solely from my own perspective, because I really felt like I was suddenly thrust into a no-win situation for me, where even if I made it to, say, the top 100 again and cashed for say 5 grand or something in the WSOP, I still simply wouldn't feel like I had accomplished all that much in light of others' recent serious triumphs. And again, this is not to suggest for a second that I was not thrilled to see these guys running so deep on the grandest of scales -- I think my body of work over the last several years makes it quite clear that I am probably more excited about any blogger's grand-scale poker accomplishments than anybody else out there -- but rather just to highlight the fact that I recognized that one of the effects of this great news was going to be the diminishing of what I considered to be even the most optimistic of expectations for my own performance heading into my trip. And, just like my previous point above, I just think it is really interesting and coincidental that this trip was the first time I have ever felt like I simply did not have the ability to do anything at this point that would really feel like a major accomplishment to me given the incredible job some friends had been doing already in the WSOP this summer, and then of course this ends up being the trip where I kick the most ass I've ever kicked in any poker tournament. Again, life moves in mysterious ways I suppose.

I should also mention that I saw without a doubt the weirdest thing I've ever seen happen in any poker tournament happen near the end of Day One of the Venetian DS event I played in. Rather than spoil that one with the details now, I will leave that for Wednesday's post all about Day One of my tournament. But suffice it to say, there was in fact more than one thing that went down during my tournament that were truly new experiences for me -- mostly not
positive ones, mind you -- and overall it leaves me also feeling like the actual poker tournament I played in was also quite weird when it all comes down to it. And that's not even counting how sickly I rallied on Day Two from 2/3 of the way down the leaderboard to the very pinnacle over the span of just a couple of hours, which in itself was really pretty amazing and weird.

One other thing that was different about my gambling experience in Vegas this summer was that I also dabbled this trip in both blackjack and in craps, also things which I have not normally participated in in past Vegas poker trips. Back in the day, when I was a young, single guy going to Vegas with friends and family 7 or 8 times a year, I was Mr. Craps, and since even before that I've been playing blackjack in casinos all around the country, so it's not that I don't know how or don't think these can be profitable over the short-term. But the very fact that these games are by definition not profitable over the long term is what has kept me largely away from those games since I had an epiphany about my gambling proclivities sometime around Y2K and really stopped gambling altogether until getting back in to poker a few years later.

In all, it was an exciting and really amazing trip, far and away the most fun I have ever had during a short weekend in Sin City, influenced largely of course by me playing probably the best poker of my life, certainly on the largest stage and in the most significant spot I have ever played in. I learned all over again in a major way how incredibly draining a poker tournament can be, and after putting in probably 40 hours of poker in a 3-day span counting my marathon cash session on Friday night plus the next two full days at the Venetian, I can say with confidence that my mind hasn't been as worn down in as long as I can remember as it was when this thing was finally done around 3am on Sunday night / Monday morning. Every time I close my eyes -- even still, now 36 hours later -- I see pocket Kings, pocket 9s, J4 of clubs, etc. I couldn't even come close to playing even reasonably good poker at all on Tuesday, even though I had originally expected to do nothing but play poker tournaments from start to finish on this trip, and when I tried to log in to full tilt for some quick online satisfaction, I found myself donking away by not even being able to focus on the hand, the community cards, anything. I will just need a few days away from the game to clear my head, as that much high-stress, high-tension poker really threw me for a loop. But it goes without saying that this weekend will not be one I will ever forget, and I look forward to spending the next couple of days posting all about my performance in the $560 buyin Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza tournament, following it up with a recap type of post at the end of the week about my post-trip thoughts, and my impressions in general of Vegas and of the trip as a whole.

I plan to be back on Wednesday with my recounting of Saturday's action in Las Vegas, which mostly means Day One of the Venetian Deep Stack event. See you then!