Vegas and other stuff

Got back from Vegas about a week and a half ago. Was glad to be leaving by the end of it as I ran pretty badly in anything I done over there. Tournaments were a total disaster, I played the $1k wsop side event, got it in with KK vs AA and then got knocked out with my AK getting outdrawn by AJ allin preflop. Next tournament up was a Venetian deepstack with me getting a decent stack in against a very aggro Euro who 4b shoved on me with K3s against my 99 and I couldn't hold. After that it was a satellite for the WSOP main event were my AK ran into JJ allin pre again, so was on to the last mega satellite were I first got 4 outered on the river by some old American guy and then just to finish me off with live poker in Vegas another old American guy does the 1minute slowroll on me with the AA when I had put all my money in preflop with the KK.

So enough of the bad beats, the rest of the trip was really good with my mate Nelius coming 6th in the Sunday Million for $48k. Was a pretty funny story as he called over to my hotel room to rail me as I was doing well in a few Sunday tournaments. He brought the laptop with him and decided to play a hyper turbo for the Sunday Million and he just finished up the satellite 1 minute after registration and the poor lad had to play it then as it was too late to unregister. He had only planned on winning some $T as it was 4th of July and the plan was to go out in Vegas So another one of the lads called over and we had a few beers and room service arrived with the dinner as it was about 8 hours into the Sunday Million and no sign of him getting knocked out at all, Final table came along with the first few pay jumps being $15k so it was pretty exciting stuff. Unfortunately his 55 couldn't hold against AQ and we missed most of 4th of July but ended up having a pretty good night after that.

Before I left I had finished up with my job of 4 years, handed in my notice for pastures new when I cam back from Vegas. Was a pretty big move and who knows if it will pay off. Luckily enough I have managed to get a temporary 5 week job which will give me some very good experience in an area that I really want to get into. Poker has also being going really well since I have got back with me re cooping all my Vegas losses and some more. Maybe I just spoke to soon, just lost heads up as I wrote this for a €2k tournament in France. Oh well!!! Could be worse won my biggest pot ever earlier though were I sucked out pretty badly against 1 player in a pot that was worth €2.5k. My 22 was too good for AJ and JJ on a 264J board with a magical 2 on the river!!

Anyway that's enough bad beats for 1 day

Vegas time

Arrived in Vegas very late on Wednesday night, left Dublin at 12.30pm and it was 12.30am (Vegas time) when I eventually got to my hotel. Turned out to be a pretty nasty journey with our flight getting delayed and spending almost 6 hours in JFK as a result. Thankfully the hotel was amazing when we got here. Staying in one of these, the room is just pure class and have a pretty decent view as well up on the 42nd floor.

So far results wise I have got off to a pretty terrible start, I played the $1k event today which started off really well. I was playing super tight for the first 45mins or so when I opened 69s in MP and the button and BB called. The flop came down Q55 and I cbet 200 into the 300 pot, both players called me but the button looked in real pain when calling. The turn then came a 7 giving me a gutshot so I decided that I was going to take another stab at this one as both players seemed pretty weak. I bet 600 and the button tank folded and the BB called. The river was a magical 8 and he put me allin for my 1.8k, I duely called and he said you are probably good. His QJo was no match for my straight.

So was up to about 6k then when the blinds have just gone up to 25/50, I raise KK to 150 and I get 3bet to 450 by a pretty tight player. The guy with the QJo from earlier shoved the last of his chips in and I raise to 1.1k and got shoved on by the tight guy with the AA!! He turned a flush and I was drawing dead. So then had my stack put down to 2.7k and played really tight again for another few orbits, when the guy to my right min raised to 100, I made a pretty big 3b to 425 and he shoved allin, my AK was no good though against his AJo and to the rail I went. Not much I could have done different. I have % in 2 others players so hopefully one of them can take it down for me!!

Have played some live cash as well which I am also down in, playing just ok at that. Standard is pretty bad so hopefully can win some back in that. Also played a bit online which went well. Paddy Power brought us out last night to a very nice restaurant in the Wynn. SW lived up to its reputation as the best steakhouse in Vegas. Had a 4 course meal there which was very nice indeed. We had a private room just off the main restaurant free drink all evening so turned out to be a pretty good night out. Feeling it today though!!

I plan to play some more tournaments over the next few days, the deepstack games in the Venetian look good so will play some of them and also will try some of the megasats for the WSOP main event. Will probably play some more live cash, playing 1/2 at the minute, will stick to that until I can build up some cash as I am waiting for money to come in from Neteller which is taking its time to say the least. Anyway time for some rest!!

Early night

Was planning a late night picking up multiple WSOP packages but just after busting out of 4 satellites. I played Cake, Betfair, ipoker and PokerStars. Was planning on playing Full Tilt as well but it was going to depend on how I was doing in the others. Seeing as I had busted the rest of them before Full Tilt started I just had no interest in playing it then. Not going to rhyme out my bad beats for the night but it would have been nice to run like normal and win a few allins but wasn't to be. Will try 1 or 2 live satellites when I get to Vegas as a last ditch effort.

Would be nice to qualify obviosuly but if I don't there are still plenty of other great tournaments on while I am out there so intend playing a few of them anyway. Only 9 days to go now till I fly out. Can't wait!!

Finished

Well I finished the promotion earlier in the week. Took me almost $98k hands and over $12k in rake to finish it. Ended up winning smallish in the end at the cash games. Was up almost $10k with about 3 days to go but ran extremely bad last Sunday especially at 3/6 and 5/10. One particular bad 5 minutes was losing with AA on an A35K5 board to 55!!, getting AA and AK both beaten by AKo allin preflop with both making 4 flushes. But that being said I ran pretty well overall, I don't think I'll ever take on such a promotion again as it took me 177 hours of play in about 7 weeks which is far too much poker for me to be playing. Took up a hell of a lot of my free time and I am really glad to have that back again.

So after it all now I have the seat into event 54 in WSOP, 6 nights in a 5star hotel, $1.3k in spending money and picked up $2.7k in bonuses along the way also. Now I still have 67k points so have the option of getting to 70k and getting a $750 bonus or else I can get to 100k and have a ticket for the Irish Winter Festival which is on next October I think, the ticket is much better value but its also hard to turn cash so not 100% sure what I will do there yet. In rakeback % terms it wasn't as much as Paddy Power had advertised but don't regret this too much as it worked out at a pretty good incentive to play as there isn't a chance I would have played as many hands otherwise and probably wouldn't have went to Vegas either unless I was to get a ticket in the supersats so the incentives were good.

Tomorrow night there are a number of mega satellites for the WSOP main event so will be playing 3 or 4 of them and fingers crossed can pick up a ticket for that. Failing that I will try 1 or 2 live satellites in Vegas for it. If I don't make it there are plenty of other tournaments on while I am there which are pretty good value.

Swingy graph of the whole promo below, some strange enough stats as well. The amounts I won and lost at the different currencies is weird. I guess its probably just to down variance rather than the games being tougher at £ and € tables at 200nl. Even though the winrates are pretty small I can probably put some of this down to not table selecting enough and always playing 12 tables or more. I am looking forward to just playing normally again and not having to grind out hands so much. Hopefully now this can help me get up to playing at 2/4 more often again as I had decent enough success in the small sample that I played there.

92%, almost there

92% done with 1 day left to go!! Probably won't get it finished tomorrow as I would have to play about 8 hours to get it done. From what I hear if I can get it finished in the next few days it will be fine anyway but would really like to finish it tomorrow. Will depend on the weather I reckon!!

Today went well with me getting about 4% done and winning about $3.5k, played some €10/20 when there was a good spot in the game but didnt run all that well and lost a small amount in this game. At one stage I had €3.5k on the table and a couple of players had me covered, was playing fairly tight and not getting out of line at all. €3.5k is just way to scary for me to lose so took the cautious approach by flatting with AK a few times against the better players but ultimately it came down to a flip when I put my money in vs the fish. Pot was over $3k which is by far the biggest pot I have every played and ended up losing it with my JJ not holding vs AK. I even flopped a clean flush draw but couldn't hit my J or heart and the the fish got some more money which he eventually gave back to the table. Was a good experience for me and hopefully sometime in the future I can play there again but be actually rolled for it and not a scared pussy cat like I was today!!

70% there

Good enough week $ wise but really finding it tough to get the hands in. Played 10k hands since I last updated on Sunday. I have won every day I have played since so at the end of the day that is more important than just getting hands in.

Off to Donegal now for the weekend, can't wait to take a spin on the new M3. Will bring Donegal a lot closer to Dublin now. It really is great to see all these new roads getting opened up, one good thing about the Celtic Tiger era!!

I probably won't get a chance to play now until Sunday evening but with Monday being a day off I will try and make up some time there, basically only 8 days to go now!!!

60%

Disaster this weekend as I din't get to play a single hand. Friday was a decent enough day with me playing 2.3k hands but was hungover on Saturday morning and then went to Cork in the afternoon. I got back up about 8ish this evening and had to do a few things to was around 9ish when I got on the PC. I opened up my buddy list and scanned the tables but the games seemed pretty poor. Combined with the fact that I was tired and didn't really feel like playing I just said I will let it go tonight.

In spots like this I normally just play anyway but I think I made a good decision and watched Sopranos instead. I know if I had of played for an hour and lost 1k or so I would just have been thinking "Why the hell did I bother playing?", last thing I want is it to cost me $1k just to make an extra 1% or 2% of the challenge done. Instead I will feel more refreshed tomorrow after haivng a 2 day break.

So now I have 26% of the time gone and 40% to get through which is approximately 40k hands in 13 days or 3k hands per day. This is going to be almost impossible at this stage to get finished on time as next weekend I have to go to Donegal and will find it pretty tough to get many hands in while I am up there. Going to be really tough going over the next 2 weeks!!!