Rolling up a Stake and Going to Vegas

We are now inside of the two-week mark before Dan and I leave for Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker! I’m getting very excited.

I was working this past week in Boston, and I spent the later portion of the evenings working on the bankroll for the Vegas trip playing on Full Tilt. It was a roller coaster week playing online, with me starting the week losing on several tables, then hitting on a bunch of tables, and then losing again at the end of the week. All in all, I ended pretty much where I started while playing those evenings.

The Red Sox were out of town so there was no chance to take in a game at Fenway, but I’ll post some pics here of the area around Fenway. I did make it over to “America’s Oldest Restaurant”, the Union Oyster House, which is set near Quincy Market on the Freedom Trail.

After returning from Boston, I had the opportunity to play in the Coldspring Club’s WSOP. The host of the event, Don, does an excellent job with this event. He even took the time to prepare an “economic stimulus” package for two of the participants that had travelled from a long ways off and were participating in the event. Very nice! All in all, 32 players got together to fight it out in that championship. I don’t know who won the event as I was knocked out somewhat early in the event when I lost a race with AQ against someone’s pair of 5s. That hand wasn’t really the killer, though. The killer was when I got greedy in a pot with a weak flush draw. In that hand I had 8-6suited. I had limped, and so had 4 other players, including a short stack. The short stack made a small raise that I knew would be called by all of the others so I called, too (Mistake #1). The flop brought:

Ks-7s-Qc

After the flop the short stack moved all-in, which I was anticipating. With the flush draw on board I thought I would isolate against the all in player. I thought that by raising the bet would push any other weak hands out of the pot (Mistake #2). The action itself wasn’t the mistake; it was my thinking that it would push other weak hands out of the pot that was the mistake. What happened next was that the player to my immediate left reraised the raise I made. Everyone else folded back to me, and then I went in to the tank. At the very least I thought my opponent had a King, and since the King of spades was on the board that meant he couldn’t be on a flush draw. I really thought my opponent would be holding a hand like King-Queen (two pair) there to be reraising, so after calculating that I was getting 4.5 to 1 on the pot with my 2 to 1 draw for the flush I decided to call. The short stack turned over a pair of 8s, and the reraiser turned over As-Ts, for a gutshot straight draw and flush draw. I hadn’t anticipated that with his reraise. If I had thought he would make that move with spades, I would have had a clear fold since I now realized I was drawing only to a 6, and that was to win the side pot! (I also could hit the case 8 to win the side pot, too) I would need two runners for a straight or trip 6s to win the main pot. None of that happened, and I was left being the short stack. I doubled up once, and thought that I got my chips in good with the AQ, but my aggressive opponent had actually picked up a pocket pair when I got it all in that time.

I also had golf on Sunday, so I didn’t get much online poker over the weekend, and I’ve now cashed out completely from Full Tilt’s site as I eagerly await the arrival of those funds so that I can take that out to Vegas with me! There is a Cream City Poker League event coming up this weekend, so I will have one last chance to get some poker in before the World Series trip.