Vegas: the journey begins - Boylepoker Blog

I always intend on keeping a diary when I make my annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker (WSOP): this year I managed it. You've read Paul Spillane's blog, so you know what the WSOP is like from the point of view of a Poker manager: this is a Vegas diary from the hope-filled eyes of a poker player.

I'm not the sort of person who likes to set goals as to what I want to achieve, be it out of one cash session, monthly or yearly targets, or any given tournament or series of tournaments. I kinda believe that all you can do is play to somewhere close to the best of your ability and you don't really have much control over the other stuff that decides whether you win or not. But since I'm going to be keeping this diary of sorts, I've been thinking about what I'm going to do poker-wise while I'm out here.

I wanted to invest a good portion of my yearly Boylepoker.com budget on WSOP tournaments, with $10k of that definitely going on the Main Event. With the rest, I intended to play five or six small tourneys in the first couple of weeks and one or two larger buy-in tournaments later on. Some friends from Belfast are coming over for a holiday around the middle of June so I want to cut back on poker around then. Depending on how I've been doing and how I'm feeling, I may play a couple of the rebuy tournaments as well.

I've played about eight or nine WSOP tourneys before this year and haven't cashed in any -- a fairly dismal record. Although I said I don't like to set targets, I'd be very disappointed indeed if I went home this year without a single cash. If I made the money in two or three events and made any kind of profit in cash games, I think I'd be fairly happy, and it would be nice to make a final table or get some kind of run deep into the Main Event.

At the time of writing, I've played four events with a total of $8k in entries, and have cashed in one, the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha. I gambled early and quadrupled up inside the first two levels. I caught a big flop in a pot that had been reraised preflop, then shortly afterwards won a 50/50-ish situation when my top set held up against an opponent's big draw. I managed to run my 3k starting stack up to 44k and finished Day 1 at the same table as Vanessa Selbst who went on to win the event. Truth be told, she dominated it the whole way through. She had a big stack and was easily the best player at the table and I realised fairly quickly it might be prudent to avoid her when at all possible.

Unfortunately, however, I was eliminated quite early the next day, finishing 39th for $3,833. The damage was done when I held A743 on an AT7-A-Q board. I was on the big blind in an unraised pot and when the small blind checked the flop -- with ATxx as it turned out -- I checked behind. I suppose it's a fairly unlucky spot to find myself in and I was always going to lose some chips, but I think I should have passed when he bet the river and I was a bit annoyed with myself afterwards. I was hopelessly short-stacked after that and was forced to go all-in off my next BB.

The other three events I played were the $2,500 PLO/NLH mixed tourney, a $1,500 NLH event -- I ran pretty cold from the off and never really got going in either -- and yesterday's $2,500 NLH 6-seater event. I got off to a really good start in the 6-seater game and motored up to 17k early on when the average was only around 6k. I was feeling very confident and playing very well when I got moved to a new table with three other stacks bigger than mine. I didn't recognise any of the players but two of them seemed to be very good indeed and I kept either running into big hands with them or getting outplayed by them (I suspect a bit of both). By the time I left that table, I was down to about 10k, but by now the average was about 25k and I had to play the short-stack game. My next table wasn't nearly as tough but I was running cold and with the chips I had, I only had one move. In the end I went out around the 200-player mark with 108 getting paid.

I was feeling a bit deflated after that. I don't often feel out of my depth at a table but I did yesterday at that second table. I don't think I'll be playing for a few days at least, which suits okay as a couple of other friends from home have arrived and I'm looking forward to a few nights out.

On the plus side, I'm ahead about $10k on cash games after two sessions on the $5-10-25 PLO and more importantly, I've managed to win a golf bet against good friend and Vegas housemate Marty McCabe, who wagered that I couldn't shoot under 100 by the end of the year. I went round (admittedly quite an easy course) in 92 which is the only time in my life I've got below 100 on a par-70-or-above course. I'd put this down to the better conditions and better clubs that I'm used to back home as well as the sneaky lesson I had before I came away.