Vegas Day 3 and 4

Vegas Day 3 and 4 were a blur. One thing I remember from Day 3 was playing at a table at the Palms that had a guy with the last name Beer, Head and Glass. Pretty fun table too.

Earlier in the day I played in the $60 Freezeout tournament at Mandalay Bay. It's a pretty fun tourney, 30 players max and no juice. They open it at 3:00pm and it fills up around 5:15 for a start at 6:00. Starting stacks of $500 with blinds that start at $10/$20, rising every 20 minutes. That sounds fast but they go to $15/$30, $20/$40, $25/$50....etc. I got knocked out when I raised the $50 blind to $200 in position with 77. Early limper called and the flop was 953 rainbow. I went all in and he called with A5. Turn was an ace and I went out 9th.

Luckily I was freerolling because I won my entry at a ring game while I was waiting for the tourney to start. No Foldem Holdem takes on new definition at small stakes strip games. The table was full of guys who had McDonalds Franchises and were in Vegas for a convention. One guy called a raised pot on the river with Jack Three unimproved. I only won 2 pots the entire time I was there and almost doubled my buy-in. The hands were not notable, maybe two crappy pair. But when there's half a dozen callers at the river, you don't have to win a lot of pots to stay ahead. Just play a lot of hands that can hit big, and you will make money.

The second successful hammer dropping came at the Palms that night. Off strip so it was slighly calmer than the Mandalay Bay game, but you still saw some really silly calls on the river. I didn't have a high degree of confidence in the play, but I raised under the gun and bet the flop. The turn brought an outside straight draw for me, but the board obviously didn't hit high cards and the only caller left at the turn folded to my turn bet. So I am 2 for 2 in hammer plays for the trip. Bloggers represent!

Day 4 was the WSOP tourney. I don't want to talk about it.