The Summer Wind - A WSOP Trip Report …… and beyond!

No hassle from immigration when you leave and then come back just a few days later? I would assume something like that could raise some eyebrows.

Not when you’re going to and from Colombia [emoji6]

No, actually I was a little surprised, they never asked or mentioned it. Just asked me how long I would be here for. I said two weeks, he handed me the passport back and I was on my way.

WSOP
Day 25 - Wednesday July 2nd

Slept late so didn’t get in any pool time, but it wasn’t really pool weather today. Grey clouds with drops of rain. Didn’t expect that!

Last time downtown for this trip:

So before I headed downtown I checked the Nugget’s twitter and sure enough they confirmed the $1,000 Eight Game tournament for 12pm

So imagine my surprise and frustration when I get there at about 12:20pm only to be told the tournament has been pushed back until 2pm.

I think they’re short of players and are worrying about the guarantee. I don’t hang around to find out if it will run at 2pm, although I suspect not.
I eat the $50 round-trip Uber cost and head back to the strip, probably never to play in the Nugget again. They’ve really ruined their reputation this summer.

So I had the WSOP $800 NLH Summer Celebration on my schedule to play flight B tomorrow but we jumped in today instead.

I enter in level 5 and still have around the 40k starting stack in level 6 which is 400 - 800 when I play the following hand:

UTG+1 opens to 1,600
I look down to see A-A and 3-bet to 3,500
To my surprise I get 3 callers.
The flop is 9-8-3 with two clubs.
It’s checked to me so I go all-in for about 30k
The 1 seat covers me and calls with 4-5 clubs for the flush draw.
He gives me the double finger when I take the picture [emoji23]

The turn is safe.
The river is not [emoji30]

NH. GG
At least he was a fun guy. I told him to make good use of the chips.
Rebuy!

No such drama on the 2nd bullet. It was more like death by a thousand cuts.
I had lots of pocket pairs, 88, 99, TT, JJ but the flop always brought a plethora of over-cards and I had to give them up when met with resistance.
I got my last chips in with KQs only to run into KK.
NH, GG.
I won’t be firing it again tomorrow. No more two card tournaments.

So over to Bellagio we head to play some cash. There’s two $80 - $160 mix games running but they’re both full. I put my name on the list and take an open seat in $30 - $60 Stud / Stud 8 in the meantime.

I’m there for two hours and show a small $200 profit when I’m called to the must move $80 -$160 Mix game.

I play on the must move for about 4 hours and am about even when I get moved to the main game.

Dinner table-side from Prime again. Not very healthy but can’t afford to take a proper dinner break.

Had this interesting spot in Badacey:

Going into the 2nd change I have Ac-Ad-2h-6s-xs
What’s the play here?
Draw two, but which Ace to you throw away?
Keep both Aces and draw one for a better chance to make a Badugi but sacrifice my chances to win the low half? (The pot is currently 4-ways)

I went for the draw one option.
It worked out as I got the 3d to make a 6 badugi.
I drew one again on the last change but only got a Q so no hope of scooping but I did win half of a nice pot with the 6 dugi.

That’s the main $80 - $160 mix game and some of the artwork on the wall in the high-limit section.

Another more standard spot from a bit later playing PLO: (blinds are 1 and 2 chips)

UTG (Richard Chufty Ashby) limps
Asian lady in the hijack pots it for 9 chips
I’m in the SB and have AA77
I pot it for 30 chips
Chufty all-in for the cap of 80 chips
Asian lady calls
I call
We agree to go twice for two complete boards.
There’s a 7 on the first board but Chufty who has the other two aces in his AA23 hand makes a wheel
2nd board comes with 3 spades. Asian lady who has KQQJ has a flush.
I know one of my Aces was suited………
Phew. Yes I have the nut flush for half the pot.

We rack up shortly after midnight. The game is still good but we’re tired.
We’re in profit to the tune of +$2,300 after 7 hours.

The pianos still sound like a carnival as we get back to Harrah’s so stop for a nightcap before they finish up at 1am

No more tournaments on my schedule now until Monday which I don’t mind. Going to grind this $80 Mix game and see if I can’t get unstuck for the trip.

Looking ahead to next week we have 5 tournaments left. 2 x PLO, 1 x TOE and 2 x TORSE. I feel I still have one more deep run left in me.

Sad stuff, I really enjoyed playing at Golden Nugget earlier this summer. But seems like there are some people making decisions there that does not care about their reputation amongst players, at least if all stories coming out are to be believed.

FWIW, they did post on Twitter that the Mix had been pushed back to 2pm, but it looks like this announcement didn't come until around 1pm. Which is obviously not very helpful for those people who had already made it down there.

Sort-of surprising to get 3 callers of course, but it's most likely because you made it way too small. I am thinking at least 5k for the 3-bet sizing here would be better, or at a minimum 4500. The raiser would probably still call, but you make the SPR smaller and thus easier to get all-in (which def is the goal with AA here having 'only' around 50 bb to start).

(finally a hand I can comment on in one of your TRs 😀 )

Mixed cash win after two Hold ‘em tourney losses appears to be a sign! Guessing no interest in the Main?

Thanks as ever for the update and hoping you can run deep soon

How was the gratin?

All comments welcomed. 😀

I guess my thinking with the smaller sizing was that it could be more likely to induce a 4-bet.

No, no interest in the main, it's too time consuming and I wouldn't pony up $10k to enter any tournament.

Gratin was spot on as usual.

I love the blog amazing read, just offering my own take for what it's worth.

Slightly bigger sizing actually more likely to induce/incentivise a 4bet because there is more in the pot to attack

Smaller induces calls because the price just makes peeling pretty much anything +ev and we want to force opponents into -ev situations

WSOP
Day 26 - Thursday July 3rd

Time to change hotels again. I’ve had a lot of comp nights this trip (still have to pay the resort fees) but not on the weekends, so I was surprised when I was able to get 3 comp nights for 4th July weekend here:

Hereby forthwith shall be called the magic castle and never the dirty castle. There was a long line so I didn’t do early check-in, instead leaving my bags at the bell desk as I needed to be at Bellagio at 12pm for the start of the $80 - $160 Mix.

To cut a (very) long story short I played a 14 hour session and ended up with a loss of -$2,000. The table was good but I was only playing my B game at best by the end of it so waved the white flag at around 2am.

Didn’t really make any HH notes but here are some observations from the game:

It takes just under 4 hours with a full table to get through all the 15 games.

It’s hard to scoop in Drawmaha. I couldn’t manage it with 3 aces and a straight flush as the other guy had a full house in his hand.

There were 3 Japanese players in the game today and in general they all play pretty good. Maybe one of them was weaker than the other two. All nice guys with perfect manners of course. The young one is Ryutaro Suzuki who won a bracelet in 2023.

Other players included Ali Nejad, Dariush, Max Pescatori and later on Jeff Lisandro and Richard Ashby.

I ate at the table again. This time Salmon piccata from Lago followed by Tiramisu. It was all really good.

It’s a tough walk back to Excalibur after a loss but seems too short a distance to get a taxi.

I get propositioned outside NYNY and get called boring when I decline.

Finally make it to my room which is a Royal Tower King.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The though walk made me laugh. When we did our first swap between Nomad and Excalibur my friend said that he is not walking in the 110 heat, let’s get a cab to literally across the street. When we checked out from Excalibur and it was time to check in at Nomad again I just told him you do whatever you want, see you in the lobby in 10 minutes and just walked over - 90% of it inside.

How do you find Lisandro to play with? I’ve played a lot with him in Sydney and find him barely tolerable. I prefer him quiet and grumpy because he’s really bad company when he’s cheerful and noisy

I found him fine although I can see why he might be an acquired taste. On this occasion he wasn’t overly loud or grumpy.

WSOP
Day 27 - Friday July 4th

Bare minimum of sleep and no pool time as it’s off to work go. We have to be at Bellagio at 12pm again.
Maybe this photo is appropriate for today. Happy treason day to my ungrateful colonial friends [emoji3]

Limited myself to just a 10 hour session today in the $80 - $160 Mix. Only really 1 hand of note that I can remember:

The game is PLO
We call a pre-flop raise of 11 chips with AQJJ
We’re 3-ways to the flop.
Flop: K-J-9 with two spades. (We have one spade)
We check, 3rd player checks, pre-flop raiser bets 20 chips.
Important to note that the pre-flop raiser was losing and tilting at this stage.
I was first to speak and checked the flop fully confident he would continue, and with my mind already made up to raise him with the set, gutshot, and 1 straight and 1 flush draw blocker.
We raise, capping it at 80 chips.
3rd player folds.
Tilted guy calls.
We go twice.
First board runs out with two blanks.
Second board comes with a Ten to give us broadway. Not a spade to be seen.
We scoop.

Also we’re joining in playing Ari now. Having watched for 3 days I’m confident enough to play it, albeit a little cautiously. Scooped a nice pot with a straight and 8 low.
The community card was a 4
My hand finished up A2358

Dinner was once again table-side from Prime. No point posting more pictures of the same thing.

Nice looking pyramid we assembled. This was my high point of 15k having bought in for 10k today. (4 racks of orange and a stack of black)
We dropped some before eventually cashing out $13,100 for a +$3,100 session.

Despite not having had much sleep and played long hours the last couple of days I still feel good. Cash games don’t seem to take it out of me as much as tournaments do. Does anyone one else find that?

Beautiful!

[emoji857][emoji857][emoji857][emoji857][emoji41]
#chipstack

WSOP
Day 28 - Saturday July 5th

The poker room at the Bellagio in Vegas is the center of the poker universe ……the legends consider it their office

Don’t worry I’m not having delusions of grandeur, but on the table next to where we play the $80 - $160 Mix, Crazy Mike has his game which is $150 - $300 Mix and there were some legends in attendance in the form of Eli Elezra, Jen Harman and John Hennigan. Tough lineup.
They were probably slumming it at lower stakes as there was no game in Bobby’s Room today.

Meanwhile, we reported for work in our game.

We were going along steadily, if not spectacularly up about $1,800 when an Indian gentleman joined the table.
He was very loose and I’m not entirely sure he knew what he was doing but he was 3 and 4 betting everything and creating some very large pots. I had some great draws against him in some of the games but I just couldn’t hit anything.
I never seem to catch these spewy fishy players. Instead he gave a lot of chips to the tightest player on the table who everyone else knew had nut - nut.
Then he actually started catching some hands (not against me thankfully) which had some of the other players mumbling under their breath.
In the end I called it a night down -$400 grocery dollars after an 11 hour session.

Rigatoni a la vodka with chicken from Lago for dinner. Very solid.

Last day at the office tomorrow before we get back on the tournament merry-go-round on Monday.

WSOP
Day 29 - Sunday July 6th

I wake up around 9am and discover that the $80 - $160 Mix is still going and has been running all night.
I shower and get dressed quickly and head over there with my suitcase as I have to change hotels again today.
I get the last seat in the game and there are 4 people still playing who were there when I left last night which is good news.

The game is good and I quickly get ahead around $2,000 but I can’t kick-on. If you run good in this game you can easily win $8-$10k but I can’t win two pots in a row. Win, lose, win lose and I stay between level and +$2k the whole day until I lose the cap in Big O and decide to call it a day. I don’t have the energy left to try and run it back up.

Guy called my cap bet on a K-T-9-4 board with top two. I was bluffing with JJ blockers.
I still could have won the pot with a J, Q or 7 but no joy.

So another 12 hour day for grocery dollars. This time in my favor. +$200 but pretty frustrating.

I wheeled my suitcase over to the Paris which will be my home for the next 5 nights.
The luck of the draw this time gave me the Versailles Tower.

The rooms are nicer than the Bordeaux tower as they’re refurbished but it’s miles away. It’s like I’m staying at the Horseshoe, not Paris.

On deck for tomorrow
Venetian $1,100 PLO Monster Bounty

Don’t take no for an answer[/b]

So the Versailles room they put me in is on the outside right at the end of the corridor and I can hear all the music booming out from Drais. This won’t do.

When I checked in the guy told me they had nothing available in the Bordeaux tower. I even flashed him 40 notes but still nothing available.

Undeterred I went back down to reception and got a different guy and told him he could earn a hundo if i could get a quiet room in the Bordeaux tower.

Y voila …….







Quelle surprise! They did have something available after all. Sleep has no price. Bonne nuit.

A well-placed hundo has the ability to grease quite a few skids in this town.

WSOP
Day 30 - Monday July 7th

So I decided not to play the PLO Bounty at Venetian after all. I took a closer look at the structure and didn't really like it. There's too much money allocated to the bounties. There's $200 bounties from the start, even before you hit the money, then when you're in the money the bounties increase to $500.

Compare that with the WSOP PLO Mystery Bounty where only $300 from each buy-in goes into the bounty pool and the bounties don't start until day 2.

I much prefer the WSOP version and will use the bullet saved from the Venetian as an extra bullet there if needed.

Which leaves us with another cash game day, but I wake up to bad news.

Seems a lot of people want to play today and I didn’t even make the starting line-up for the must move game.

Most of the higher stakes cash games are semi-private and are organized by the players in conjunction with the floors/hosts.

For the $80 - $160 mix there is a WhatsApp group. Everyone posts if they want to play then Caroline who organizes it uses a randomizer to draw the tables. Today there are two full tables (8 handed) and I’m 2nd on the list [emoji30]

Undeterred I go over to Bellagio at 12pm anyway in the hope that a couple of players don’t show up. The seats are held for 20 minutes then given to players on the list. I’m in luck as 2 players don’t show and I get a seat in the must move.

I get the only open seat which has Robert Mizrachi on my immediate left. Not ideal, especially as he’s 3 betting my opens at a high frequency, but we’re not one to back down from a challenge and soon play a big pot with him in Big O where we 3/4 him for the cap.

Hungry not only to win chips but also for food I order Rigatoni with Salmon from Lago for lunch.

We’re steadily building a pyramid again a take a little walk to get some gelato.

Then as in the previous two days we hit a wall and start going in the opposite direction. It’s like I’m stuck in a Groundhog Day or something.

Most of the damage was done in a PLO pot.
I open for 7 chips with QJT8ds and get 4 callers.
The flop is Q-8-3 rainbow
I continue for 20 chips (about 2/3 pot) and get 1 caller.
The turn is a 3
I’m sure villain doesn’t have Aces or Kings so think this is a safe card. I pot it to take it up to the cap and villain insta-calls.
He has Q3xx having called me on the flop with top and bottom no draw and hit his 2 outer.

That drops me down to be about level after which I start to grind it back up and then I’m called for the main game.

The main game isn’t as good as the must move. In fact it’s a lot worse and when I lose the first two pots I play in Omaha high double board in pretty sick fashion I decide to call it a night.

At least I still have an okay profit today. +$1,000 after 9 hours.

On deck for tomorrow
WSOP #86 $1,000 PLO Mystery Bounty - Flight A
2024 Stats:
Champion: Sascha Wilhelm
1st Prize: $282,290
Entries: 4,280 (total over both flights)
Paid: 631
Starting Chips: 40,000
Players Remaining EOD: 463
Avg. Chips EOD: 370,000
Avg. Chips ITM: 271,000

$1k a day keeps the bailiffs away!

WSOP
Day 31 - Tuesday July 8th

Tournament day today, first one for a while.

First two levels of the PLO tournament are 100 - 100 / 100 and 100 - 200 / 200 which are pretty meaningless with a 40k starting stack so I got some extra rest and waited until the start of level 3 to jump in.

I won’t bore you with beats but I fired two bullets and was never above starting stack.

As it wasn’t that late when I busted I headed over to the Orleans and jumped in the $600 O.E.

There I did manage to increase the 30k starting stack, but not by much.

Hopefully I can run better tomorrow.

let's go Tony...LVL's hopes rest on your broad shoulders now

WSOP
Day 32 - Wednesday July 9th

Tournaments really are no fun when you’re running bad.

Fired another 2 bullets into the WSOP PLO Mystery Bounty with nothing to show for it. Did not win one pot of note in 2 days and 4 bullets.

Also fired 2 bullets at the Orleans in their TOE Championship. At least I did win a few pots there before the deck remembered who I was and crushed my above average stack in 1 level just short of the money.

Not much more to say.