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It's been an eventful enough first weeks in Vegas and overall I'm fairly happy with the way things have started. Before Vegas, I'd played about 10 tournaments this year with pretty much no success whatsoever.
I know that isn't really a cause for panic, but I have to admit it was quite a big relief when the bubble burst in the 5k PLO event and I recorded my first tournament cash of 2009.
I got off to quite a good start in it, winning a few medium sized pots, one of which I got pretty lucky in, although in a pretty unconventional way. I'd been dealt rubbish on the big blind, but I got to see the flop for free after a few players had limped in. The board came Qh 8h 6c - 5d - 5h, in that order with the flop and turn both being checked round. I'm not even sure exactly what my hand was as I had completely given up on it, but it contained an 8 and a 5, so I'd been allowed to back-door a small full house with all the checking that had went on.
Nobody had shown any interest in the hand at any point so I decided to throw out a small value bet of 600 into the 1200 pot, after the small blind checked to me, hoping that I might make a little bit if someone had made a flush or the smaller full house. When Nick Gibson called fairly quickly after me I was pretty sure that he had either the same hand as me, or else Q5 or 56.
Nick's a very good player and he knows that I'm pretty tight and he would have recognised that I was value betting some kind of full house. Really, the pot should have ended here and Nick should have won a small pot as he did indeed have Q5 for the higher full house.
This is where I got a little bit lucky and Nick got unlucky. The guy on the button obviously sensed some sort of weakness and decided it would be a good time to make a pot sized bluff. Maybe I'm being naive here, but his play on the river looked like a pretty obvious bluff. For it to be a genuine hand, I would have had to believe that he had checked a flopped set of Qs or 8s, which seemed unlikely as he was last to speak and it was a very dangerous board.
It still wasn't an easy decision for me as I thought Nick probably had a full house too, but I think I had to make the call, as it could just as easily have been 56 or 85, as Q5. Nick passed fairly quickly and I can fully understand why. If I believe the re-raise to be genuine, then I'm only going to call with better than Q5 and Nick wasn't to know that I was only calling because I thought the other guy was bluffing. All-in-all it was quite a strange hand and I was a bit lucky with the way it played out.
Things went reasonably smoothly throughout the tournament and I was able to maintain my stack at somewhere around 3/4 of the average for most of the time without taking too many risks. I wasn't intending to fold my way into the money and I would have been quite prepared to gamble approaching the bubble if I got any kind of decent hand, but I was pretty card dead for the hour leading up to it and Omaha isn't exactly a game where you can steal blinds, so I was content to play tight and stay out of trouble.
36 players got paid and I exited in 29th place in a hand that I don't think I could have gotten away from. With the blinds at 2.5k - 5k, a short stack raised to 15k leaving him just 1k behind. He was called by the button and small blind and I called the extra 10k off the big blind with A763 (suited ace). The flop came 764 rainbow and the small blind checked to me. At this stage the pot was 60k and I only had 80k behind, so I'm pretty sure that I had to stick it in there if I was to have any aspirations of winning the tournament. I bet out 60k (not 6k as was reported on Pokernews) and got raised all-in from the button, who had flopped bottom set. I wasn't actually in terrible shape, as I also had a live inside-straight draw and a back-door nut flush draw, but I failed to get lucky this time.
As I write this I have about 10 hours left as WSOP PLO champion, with Barry Greenstein and Josh Arieh among the remaining 9 players looking to take the crown. I'm not overly disappointed to be knocked out of it, but I'm a bit disappointed with the way I played. I'm actually embarrassed by how I played a couple of hands, but never-the-less I'll put them up on the blog next time, as I'd welcome any advice on them.
Comments (2)
WP Marty, great to see you in you in the cash again. Hope you kick on from here.