Vegas trip a bust

Looks like I'll be leaving tomorrow heading back to Seattle without playing a final table. I played the WSOP $1500 NLHE on Saturday. There were 2628 players. You start out with 3000 in chips with 25/50 blinds. I wasn't having much luck with cards and ended up playing only about 3 hours before busting out. Last hand I had about 10 big blinds left. It gets folded to me on the button. I have pocket 4's. I push all-in. The small stack calls. He has pocket A's and I'm out.

Today, I played the $1000 Venetian Deep Stack NLHE tournament. This is actually a pretty good tournament I'd consider playing again next year. You get T10000 chips (the T stands for Tournament) to start. Blind rounds are 1 hour long and you start at 25/50. However, by the fourth level, they introduce a 25 chip ante. I started out pretty good, getting up to T13000 chips. Then had a few bad hands and was as low as T4500 but fought my way back and the most I had was ~T55000 chips. After 11 hours of play (with a 1 hour dinner break in there) I had ~T30000 in chips. This may sound like alot, but by that time, the blinds were 1000/2000 with a 300 chip ante. Which means that every round you pay 300x10 (players) + 2000 + 1000 = 6000 chips. So you can't wait for a good hand, or at least you can't wait too long. The average stack size at this point was ~T70000, so I was less than half the average stack. The tournament started with 367 players, there were 49 players left and top 40 get paid. Top prize was $100k, 40th place got $1250.

I get moved to a new table and the first hand I have is Ah Qh. I'm in middle position and raise to T6000 when it's folded to me. It's folded to the small blind who thinks for a bit and calls. Big blind folds, flop is Td 9d 6s. Small blind checks, and I go all-in. He folds. I now have ~T45000. A few hands later I'm under the gun with AK offsuit. I raise to T6000 again. Folded to someone in late position who reraises to T18000. Folded to me and I push all-in. I could have folded here and try to get into the money, but I wanted a better chance to win it all, and to do that I needed chips. If I doubled up here, I would be relatively safe. He thinks for a few minutes and finally decides to call. He shows 88. It's basically a coin toss, but his eights hold up and I'm out. Since he took so long to decide I figured he had a small or medium pair or AQ. From my point of view, the worst case scenario is a coin flip. From his perspective, the worse case scenario is he is dominated if I have a bigger pocket pair, and the best case scenario is a coin flip. I don't think it was a great decision on his part to gamble most of his chips on a coin toss, but he was almost committed to the pot when he reraised. Oh well, there's always next year.

Here's a picture of me at the WSOP this year taken by the WSOP staff. Yup, I decided to wear sunglasses. However, I'm going to stop doing that. I find that I actually play better without the sunglasses on. Partly because it's easier to see the cards, and I think people play differently against me if I have sunglasses on versus not wearing them. I do look cool though.