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The next day was a rest day and then I had to play Day 2 of the Main Event on the Tuesday. There had been a redraw for seats and when I checked out the players on my table on the Hendon Mob database, I found that most of them had a bit of prior experience and a few cashes here and there.
I got off to a terrible start and lost 17k in the first hand I played. If I had played it differently, as I almost did, then I could have been almost bust or I could have won the pot. I had raised in mid position to 2k with AdJd. A guy directly after me re-raised to 4K. In my experience a minimum re-raise like that is usually a very strong hand like QQ upwards. But still he had given me a tremendous price to call and I thought that if I could outdraw him then I could win a big pot. I called and the flop came 842 with 2 diamonds. I know that betting out here is not going to make him pass, so I check. He bets 6k and now I have to decide if it is worth raising to try to make him pass given that I had some outs if he does call me.
The only information I have on the guy is that he has qualified through 888.com, which doesn't tell me that he is a bad player, but it does make me think that he may be less likely to pass an overpair on that board than a pro who had bought in himself, especially if it is a very high pair. Also, if I raise a decent amount then I am committing myself to the pot and he was playing about 50k, so I decide just to call. The turn is a 5, which now gives me a gutshot as well as my overcards and flush draw. I check and he bets 7k.
My immediate instinct is to quickly make a big raise as his bet looks weak. Then I rethink and talk myself out of it and tell myself to just call as he is letting me draw very cheaply and I think I have 15 outs. The river is a total blank and it doesn't cross my mind to bet out as it looks like an obvious bluff. I check and he checks and shows TT only. I say only, as if I had put him on TT and not QQ/KK then I would have had a go at trying to make him pass. Whether or not this would have worked, I don't know.
The rest of the day I ran totally cold. I didn't get a bigger pair than 77 and didn't connect with any flop -- don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about this (I know in the omaha tournament I got way more than my fair share of hands and won more than my fair share of flips). But basically, it wasn't to be for me in this year's Main Event. I became fairly short-stacked and went out on a move which made sense to me at the time but probably wouldn't seem like the most intelligent move in the world if I were to recount it to you now. So I won't. Apart from saying that my exit hand was Q2 offsuit and I got it in preflop.
We had another couple of relatively tame nights out again after that, I changed my flights to come home early and I didn't play any more poker for the rest of the trip. On the day before I came home, I met up with Paddy O'Connor to get my bracelet back, or more than likely, to get back the cheap replica of my bracelet that he had had made in the week or so that it had been in his possession, and then stopped by the Rio to get a cheque for my winnings.
It was here that I bumped into "Mad" Marty Wilson. I got talking to him and he told me how he and Jesse had just spun up $200 to $15k the night before on table games and that he was using the $15k to play the Bellagio Cup main event the next day. Mad Marty accompanied me to the cage while I got my cheque and proceeded to wreck the heads of the two poor girls behind the counter who were doing their best to be polite.
"Are you Mexican?" he asked the girl who was dealing with me (and who was obviously Hispanic).
"No, I'm American," she replied.
"Do you know that George Bush said that any Mexicans can come to live in the USA as long as they are prepared to do the jobs that Americans refuse to do?"
I cringed and she was obviously getting a bit annoyed at this point. There was silence for about 20 seconds, then he continued...
"Do you know there's a new show opening in the Mirage next week?"
"No."
"Yeah... It's called Sigfried and Pedro the Bandit!"
Genius.
She didn't seem to get it, and if you don't get it either go to this link and you'll get the gist.
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