A Blog Post!

Hey, I haven't written an update in a while though I figure my tweets should be doing a good enough job keeping you up to date. Obviously the series isn't quite going as well as I had hoped for the third straight year. I've played 17 events and cashed only 2, the $3K HORSE and $5K PLO. The PLO was my best shot by far but alas it wasn't meant to be. I'm planning to play basically everything from here on out except the $50K HORSE. BoostedJ has put up some results so I still have an outside chance of stealing the prop bet against Daniel if I can ship something or if Boosted crushes them in the HORSE. For those who don't know the bet is 20K to win 32K, myself and BoostedJ vs Daniel Negreanu and Eric Lindgren based on total WSOP player of the year points. So far, Daniel has 170, Eric 30, Boosted (Justin Smith) 92, and I have a whopping 15 to put the score at 200-107. A bracelet win is worth 100 though so there's a small glimmer of hope left for me.

OK so the rest of this blog will just be some interesting/important/hilarious hands I've played at the series lately. Enjoy!

$5K PLO Downfall: I had 300K with 27 left average 200K then these 3 hands happened:

3k/6k Open AKT9ss to 16K in HJ CO calls. He is a young Brazilian kid I've seen play aces super passive before and miss an easy river value bet with them. Flop T63hh I do not have hearts. I bet 28K he calls. Turn 2s check/check. River 6c I check he bets 32K I sigh and call since a million draws missed and I've seen hes not really capable of value betting thin. He has JJ and basically told me he thought he was bluffing or something. Great.

4k/8k I have 225K. Young guy open to 25K UTG with exactly 35K behind. Swede who plays a lot of hands quickly calls and I minraise to 42K with KK95ddd in the CO so that UTG's shove will reopen the betting. Except UTG flats with 18K behind as does swede. Flop A63hhh I do not have the Kh. They check to me and I bet 42K. UTG folds and Swede quickly calls. Turn blank check/check and I'm praying the board will pair since it's my only chance to maybe steal this pot. River 3! Swede leads out for most of my stack, I laugh at him for betting any hand there and fold.

Next hand I open KQJ9ds and get repopped by the brazilian with AAKT. Flop a Q stick the rest in and lose.

10K PLO: Fairly deep on day 2 I play this sick pot against Josh Arieh. 2k/4k a bad players limps in EP. Most of the times he has done this in the past he's been trapping with AA. I have 78K and limp button with 9764ss, SB folds Arieh checks in the BB. Flop 778r, Josh leads 9k, UTG makes it 21K. Already this is a pretty brutal spot. I feel like UTG is making a raise to see where he is at with AA a lot since he knows Josh can have a huge range here. And Josh can have all sorts of stuff so I cold call 21K. I feel like my cold call looks so strong it will freeze them up and I should be able to figure out where I stand, but there's an interesting argument for shoving hoping to fold out a better 7 as well. My hand has so much equity against something like AA7x anyways that getting called by that would not be so bad, but if I run into a boat I'm pretty dead. Josh quickly calls 12K more. Turn Q check/check and I check behind. River 4 and I am on a boat. Josh quickly bets 55K, UTG instantly folds and I tank as long as I have the entire series before folding. Unfortunately I busted not too long after this hand anyways getting it in pretty marginally on 854 with AK87 vs QQ96.

10K PLHE: Josh is at my starting table and I ask him what he had in that big pot. He told me he had KQQ7 so I made a good fold, though I could quite probably have won the pot by jamming the flop. Weird hand. Anyways here's my one bad beat story though it's kind of funny.

100/200 I have 33K. Nico Levi I believe it was, one of those french players anyways, opens to 500, I flat 99 in the CO, button calls, Sam Simon creator of The Simpsons calls in the BB. Flop K96hh, Nico bets 1050, I decide to slowplay which I don't normally do here obviously and call, Sam raises to 3500, Nico folds, I make it 11K, Sam sticks it in and I call. He has AK so I'm looking pretty ok. Turn 6 gives him 2 outs. Obviously you know what the river card is but the funny part was how it happened. I'm in the 8 seat and the dealer is right handed so when he deals the river I can't see it right away because his hand is in the way. There is a noticeable pause as he places it on the felt and he's staring at the card not moving his hand. It was like he had frozen up thinking "Oh my god, I have done something terrible". Sure enough, when he finally moved his hand the Ks was revealed and I lost most of my chips and busted on another cooler shortly after that.

The Series has still been a ton of fun overall though, definitely the most fun of my three summers here. I'm thinking I may have to just win the Bellagio Cup at the end again if I can't turn the Series around in these last 5 events or so.

Mike