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

****, too bad I didn't think about this until I got home.

WSOP-C Planet Hollywood
Day Eight - Wednesday January 7th

There wasn’t enough interest today for the $80 Mix at the B, but it’s Wednesday and the $40 O.E. Is a go at Wynn so off we went for a couple of hours before the tournament.

Walking of course. Rio to Wynn, no big deal.

Nice day for a walk.

Hail Caesar!

Almost there.

32 minutes later we have arrived.

My favorite sandwich in Vegas for lunch.

I’m the first one there and take the 5 seat in front of the dealer so I don’t have to use my glasses.(which I have to if I sit in an end seat) A couple of other seats fill up and then Linda Johnson arrives, studies the table, and takes the 6 seat on my immediate left.
Despite her getting on in years she’s still sharp as a tack and a good aggressive player who I’d rather not have on my immediate left. There’s still 3 open seats so I could move but I think that would look bad so I stay put.

I’m rewarded for not being a nit by having a very smooth session. +$1,000 in 3 hours before I rack up to go and play the tournament. No drama. Only lose one hand where I flop trip Jacks, don’t fill up and am out-kicked.

Again we walk up to PH. Getting the steps in today.

First bullet was a bust. Had the 2nd bullet up to about 50k then lost a huge 2-way Stud hand. I don’t remember exactly how it went but there was lots of bets and raises and on 5th we had trip Tens, vs Aces up and a flush draw.
Long story short the flush villain got there on 6th and we didn’t fill up and folded (correctly) on 7th.

The same guy (Duke) finished me off in Hold’em a short while later when his AK beat my QQ when a Ki my flopped. GG.

On deck tomorrow: Not sure. I had the $600 NLH bounty at PH pencilled in but may play cash instead.

WSOP-C Planet Hollywood
Day Nine - Thursday January 8th

One final hotel change for the last two nights. Valley Tower king at Harrahs, fully comped.

Although I would have preferred to play cash today there wasn’t enough people for the $80 Mix which took away any potential decision. Tournament it is then.

That still left me the problem of what to do until 3pm though. My solution? Fire a bullet into the $400 2-7 triple draw at Wynn that started at 1pm and if that didn’t work out then go and late-reg the $600 NLH at PH.

At the end of late-reg it was neither working out nor not working out. Started with 30k and had 32k. Come on Tony, do something one way or the other lol!

Well Leon came over to sweat me for a little bit and immediately brought me some run good.
I got dealt a pat wheel (75432) and got one customer. He drew two, then one, then one again. I was praying he made something as I bet out after the last draw.
Raise he says!
Oh my!
3-bets, says me.
4 bets, he counters!
We 5-bet cap it and show him the bad news after he calls.
He didn’t show but said he had #2 (76432)
Seems legit. What else is he 4-betting me with on the end?

Now we have some chips, and we power on to record a double average 200k on the next break at the end of level 12.

Unfortunately that’s when we started bricking everything and it was all we could do to survive the bubble and limp onto the final table.

We got it all in against Jon Turner with a 2348 draw. He had similar. We both drew one on the last draw. He hit and we didn’t. GG. 6th place for $1,259 and that’s the tournaments done for this trip.

On deck tomorrow: Hopefully the $80 Mix will go and we’ll play that until it’s time to go to the airport. I have the Copa red-eye flight back to Medellin via Panama.

Well done!

Very nice day David

Nice, that means a new Leon TR soon! Craps or VP?

Nice cash, sorry it didn't go deeper. May I suggest chaining leon to your chair next tournament?

Leon walks around in a bubble of rungood. He carries it with him wherever he goes.

That's wild to get 63 people that want to play a Triple Draw tournament when it's not the WSOP.

Nice cash.

WSOP-C Planet Hollywood
Day Ten - Friday January 9th

Good news and bad news. The $80 Mix is a go today, but not until 3pm. Vegas poker players are plain lazy. If I was at Borgata we’d be playing $80 O.O.E. today stating at 8am!

It would have been better if it didn’t go at all. Ran good hands into better ones a lot today unfortunately.

Top full house beaten by quad deuces in O8, set of Aces in my hand beaten by a straight flush in villains hand in drawmaha. (He drew one and made it lol) and lost the cap in Big O missing big low and flush draw not once, but twice after we agreed to go two times.
I guess after all that I should be grateful to only have lost $2,400 in the game after 6 hours.

We did at least have a no sweat winner in the football.

Writing this in the airport waiting for my flight back home. My phone tells me the temperature is only 34 degrees and there’s a freeze warning in effect. Time to migrate South. We don’t do well in the cold. Will write a wrap up post when I’m back home.

Safe travels, Tony. As always, thank you for the excellent TR!

Thanks for the trip report. Safe travels. Looking forward to the next one.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

hopefully the numbers stack up when you do the p&l and another ring is of course an awesome thing

WSOP-C Planet Hollywood
Post-Game

Back home now in Medellin so let’s look at the numbers:

Tournaments

Played: 7
Bullets Fired: 9
Total Buy-Ins: $5,325
Hours Played: 65
Cashes: 3
Final Tables: 3
Wins: 1
Total Prize Money: $14,278
Profit: $8,953

Couldn’t have asked for a better start to the year. Won the very first tournament and achieved one of my goals for the year of a return trip to the Bahamas. I think I played well enough to win another ring as well, but the poker gods had other ideas.

I am tracking tournament hours played this year in order to get a true hourly number to be able to compare more accurately with cash games.

Cash Games

Hours Played: 21
Profit: -$1,200

A slower start to the year in the cash game streets but nothing to be too concerned about at this stage.

Expenses

Flights: $690
Hotels: $709
Taxis: $93

Hotel costs overall should be less this year now that I’m Caesars Diamond and MGM Gold but doesn’t reflect on this trip as we stayed on 3 of the most expensive nights of the year.

I’m tracking taxi / uber spend as well this year.

Summary

So a net profit for the trip of just over $6,000 which I have to happy with. The tournaments were well run overall at PH although the quality of some of the dealers let them down a bit.

The $80 Mix cash game went only sporadically this time and we didn’t run well in it. There are a couple of other games that I might try next time I’m in town.

On Deck

We took a shot at a higher buy-in event in the Bahamas. It didn’t work out but that was only one shot and I have to give myself more chances, which Is what I’m going to do on the next trip.

I’ll be heading back to Vegas on February 1st to play the opening two events of the Poker Go Tour Mixed Game Series which are a $5,100 HORSE and a $5,100 Eight Game.

I’m looking to sell 60% of my action and already have commitments for 45%, leaving 15% still available if anyone wants a piece.

I had to chop a 3/4, 1/4 pot in the o8. This guy just couldn't get it right no matter what we told him. We had three in a row that were just clueless and then it seemed we finally got the A team in there.

Yea, it was clear that some of them had never had any training on spilt pot or stud games.

What did they look like?

I chopped the pot for a 20 something, portly, Hispanic guy. I remember one young female dealer who was also clueless. Can't remember the third.

Wonder if your portly "hispanic" guy was El Diesel.

I forgot to mention I had El Diesel deal a down at my table in one of the tournaments. (Although I don’t think he could be mistaken for Hispanic, and portly is a hit harsh as well.) I think it was the table with Norman Chad that he talks about in his vlog where he doesn’t like Norm’s routine. I personally like playing with Norm and find him funny and like the fact that he keeps the table in a light hearted mood. There’s too many players that take it far too seriously.

As far as El Diesel dealing goes he seemed solid enough, no mistakes, but perhaps a little disinterested in what he was doing.

The bad dealers that I had were Asian and female. And even if you tried to help them it did no good as they couldn’t understand what you were saying as they spoke almost no English.

Yeah, harsh to portly people 😀

El Diesel’s greatest contribution to tpt was his long running animosity/feud with 11t

PGT Mixed Games Series
Day One - Sunday February 1st

After the luxury of three straight weeks at home I’m ready to hit the road again.

To use a Boxing analogy, If the $600’s that we’ve been playing are like the middleweight division, then we’re stepping up to the heavyweight ranks on this trip.

We’re going into the Poker Go Studio to see if we can score a knockout, or at least go the distance, in the opening two $5k events of their Mixed Games Series which are a HORSE and an Eight Game.

Although the buy-ins have increased, the structure is pretty much the same pace as a $600, maybe even a little faster, which I think is in my favor having played literally dozens of them over the past twenty months.

150k chips starting at 2k-4k limits means you start with 37.5 big bets, compared to the $600’s I usually play where you normally get 25k chips and start at 300-600 limits which is 41.6 big bets.

Another point in our favor, having watched every available second of Poker Go mixed game coverage is that I have an idea how a lot of the top pros that I might come across play, whereas we’ll be pretty much an unknown quantity to most of them.

The only slight disadvantage we might have is due to the size of the buy-ins, we’ll only have one bullet in the chamber so will have to make it count. There is only four hours of late reg though which somewhat lessens the advantage for those with deep pockets.

After the $5k’s the buy-ins only increase; two $10k’s, two $15k’s and a $25k championship event. I do have a contingency in place that could see us play more tournaments, but that would depend on having a nice score in the $5k’s.

For these tournaments I have exercised prudent risk management and sold 60% (with no markup) of my action. I am as ever very grateful to those that took a piece and will be doing my best to provide a positive return.

So off we go. Flying Copa via Panama and both flights were pretty full. The pasta on the Panama to Vegas leg was actually edible and not like rubber which was a pleasant surprise. No wine or any type of alcoholic drink to go with it though unfortunately.

The magic castle will provide us shelter for the first night, after which we’ll be staying with our pink feathered friends again.

Resort tower this time, although I really can’t see any difference in the rooms compared to the Royal tower.

On Deck Tomorrow: $750 Eight Game Satellite in the Aria poker room. Seats won can be used in either of the $5k’s.

GL. I am unqualified to give advice on $5ks, especially $5k mixed events.

With that disclaimer out of the way, my advice would be not to psych yourself out or deviate too much from your usual process just because of the stakes/venue/player pool. You've been in plenty of big spots before and should be very live in these fields. As another prestige TV character once said, "I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger!" Hopefully you bink a nice payday or two. If not, just playing in the studio is a merit badge in its own right.

Enjoy the trip and run like Bolt.