The Summer Wind - A WSOP Trip Report …… and beyond!

Better than a $6 cup of coke, I'll bet 😉

ahem...$7!

sticky toffee pudding looks practically free at $19 in comparison to the bread and the Pepsi and by far the best value

LOL, that's awesome!

It's also a noisy one, although much less so than it was a few years ago. It used to be that you couldn't hear what actions were taken at your own poker table.

Was definitely louder than a normal poker tournament with the thumping bass, but you kind of get used to it.

Yea it is a bit noisy. In the poker room it’s not that bad but out on the mezzanine it’s worse and when the Chippendales show is on your hear all that music as well so you get a double whammy. Not pleasant.

WSOP-C Planet Hollywood
Day Six - Monday January 5th

You can’t stay at the Flamingo without wandering out into the habitat to get a close up look at them.

These 3pm tournament starts really kill me. I’m always awake at 8am, WTF am I going to do until 3pm? At least in the summer I can have a swim and get some sun.

I decide to play the $80 Mix at B for a few hours and then late reg the tourney today.

It was a pretty tough line-up today with no easy spots. We started 7 handed and the table was later filled by YourMom after things hadn’t gone his way unfortunately in the Omaha 8 re-start.

Just one interesting spot from the game that I can remember and it came in Badugi.
Villain opens from early position and I 3-bet from the SB with A38J badugi. Villain 4-bets. What to do?
I had villain pegged as a pretty solid player. Obviously he has a badugi so my options are:
5-bet cap it and stand pat.
Call the 4-bet and stand pat.
Call the 4-bet and discard the Jack.
I don’t like calling and patting so it was one of the other two options. I elected to call and break.
Long story short I didn’t improve and villain showed down a King badugi. WTF ?
I obviously gave him too much respect. I know now for next time.

I racked up after 4 hours to go and play the tournament, booking a -$1,000 loss.

I jumped in halfway through level 4 and was happy to see Ari Engel on the table so we could play props. We played baccarat on the flop in Omaha. You each use the middle card and then each player uses the card on his side of the flop to make a two card baccarat hand. Highest wins.
Example:
Flop: 8-2-6
The person on the left as I write this flop would have zero (8+2) and lose to the person on the right who would have an 8 (6+2)
$100 for winning the hand, $200 if you win with an 8, $300 if you win with a 9.
In the end I wound up a $200 winner when Ari busted.

Anyway, onto the serious stuff. I increased the 25k starting stack to 38k at the end of late reg and powered on to 220k at dinner break at the end of level 12.

30 minute dinner break and I just grabbed a couple of slices of pizza from the pizza joint by the sportsbook.

On the next break at the end of level 16 I had 220k with the average being 131k with 13 players remaining out of 68, paying 11 spots and going back to 10k - 20k limits.
I won a big Stud 8 hand to help me get there when I had the low locked up and was free-rolling to scoop which I did making a straight on 7th. Those are the best spots in that game.

We were soon hand for hand on the bubble.

The unlucky bubble boy was Allen Kessler on this occasion who busted on the other table.

After the bubble burst we played one more level during which we combined down to the final table before bagging.

Another day, another bag. [emoji3]

We bagged 254k with the average being 213k, coking back to 15k - 30k limits tomorrow.

This is the final table. 4 short stacks, 2 average stacks including us, and two big stacks. It will be tough to over-haul Casey who is a very accomplished mixed player and always plays very aggro but we’ll give it our best shot.

We’re currently guaranteed $1,315 but there’s $10k and another ring up top if we can run good tomorrow. The re-start is at 1pm.

Ship the sugar so we can tag along to Prague. GL David

Run good!!!

Excellent (so far!) results. Thanks for taking the time to write it up for us.

Go Tony go!

Good luck tomorrow

WSOP-C Planet Hollywood
Day Seven - Tuesday January 6th

How do you know CES is in town? Everyone is walking around wearing lanyards, and hotel rooms are $300+ per night. Even places like Excalibur and Flamingo, which is why we’re checking out of Flamingo today and will be staying at the Rio for 2 nights for the bargain price of only $99 per night. Don’t want to have to get multiple Taxis though so won’t head to Rio until the end of the day.

Pre-tournament lunch at Cafe Americano in Paris. Fish and chips. Solid, but not spectacular.

O.E. Day Two. Let’s go!

Level 19: 15,000 - 30,000 limits (45 minute levels today)

Resuming on hand #4 of Stud 8

I knock Alan out on the 3rd hand of the day. He was short and got it in with a pair of Aces. I called it off light but made Aces up on the runout.

The very next hand Phillip eliminates Ron and we’re 6-handed.

Have a bad Omaha round and bleed some chips to shorter stacks.

Casey cripples Phillip in a Stud pot where they both have Aces up to leave him with only a couple of antes.

Won an Omaha pot off Casey. He tried to bluff me off a full house. I didn’t have the best full house so made a somewhat crying call.

Level 20: 20,000 - 40,000

Joseph finally eliminates Phillip who had survived about 6 all-ins, in 6th place.

Scoop an Omaha pot against Casey with nut low and a ten high straight

I knock Michael out in 5th in an Omaha pot. He was really short.

Scoop a Stud pot against Joseph making a flush and a low. He makes a good fold on 7th.

Level 21: 25,000 - 50,000 limits

Alec eliminates Joseph in a Stud pot scooping with aces up against a smaller two pair

3-handed now and we switch to 6 hands of each game instead of 8. Casey, Alec and myself. Somehow I knew it would be the 3 of us. Nothing easy now. A bloody battle to the death!

Lose a Stud pot to Alec. His pair of Jacks is good as I miss everything. Any hand lost now costs at least 150,000

Win an Omaha pot against Alec.

Then comes the hand that would define my tournament:

Still playing Omaha, Alec raises the SB and we defend the BB with TT63
Flop: A-7-T
Alec bets, we raise, he 3-bets, we 4-bet, he 5-bets to set himself in. We call.
He has A748 for two pair and a bad low draw.
We have him dominated with our set and a better low draw:

We have 77% equity. We scoop 65% of the time, chop 24% of the time and only get scooped 11% of the time.

There’s only one way we can get scooped. One of the two remaining Aces comes and we don’t make the low. And that unfortunately is exactly what happens. [emoji22]

I feel sick. I had been dominating up until that point and would have been heads up against Casey with a healthy chip lead if we would have held.

Then when we switch to Stud we lose a big Stud pot to Alec with Jack up vs Kings up.

Break at the end of level 21

Even after losing those two pots we still have a slight chip lead at the break:

Yours truly: 700,000
Alec: 500,000
Casey: 500,000

Nothing in it really and the limits are so high now that whoever runs the best from here on out will take it.

Level 22: 30,000 - 60,000 limits

Get revenge on Alec first hand back after break. Scoop in Stud with low and two pair

He gets me back first hand of Omaha. I have to fold on turn. Huge swings now at these limits.

Alec is the chip leader now. I’ve been getting garbage hands.

Start 456 in Stud and brick out. Lose to Alec. He’s running hot.

Win an Omaha pot against Casey. Now he’s short.

Level 23: 40,000 - 80,000 limits

Won a Stud pot against Alec making a great call on 7th with only a pair of deuces and scooped.

Casey doubles up through me in Omaha. I can’t call on river. Round and round we go.

Lose another Omaha pot to Alec with A246 no low. Can’t call river again.

Same thing again vs Casey. Now I’m the short stack. Such huge limits

Win 3/4 of Omaha 8 pot vs Alec

Lose huge Stud pot with Aces up against Casey he makes flush in 7th

Miss low draw and flush draw against Alex. Have less than one big bet left now.

I couldn’t spin up my crumbs and was left to rue what might have been.

Pretty gutted as I played great and did all I could but it just wasn’t to be. Both Casey and Alec also played really well and are super tough competitors. Casey eventually went on to win it.

So what now? Well there’s one seat open at the B. Off to the office we go.

Unfortunately the game only lasts another 2 hours but we manage to turn a $700 profit in that time, largely thanks to getting half of a 3-way capped Big O pot with the nut high.

As well as the $2 per hour comps, we also get $25 each day for playing in that game which helps off-set the $9 ppphh time collection.

In that game rather than everyone paying their own $9 which wastes a lot of time with the dealer having to make change, we do a time flop, so if your seat number is the first card on the flop or the first up-card in Stud games (we use the stub for draw games) you pay the time and tip for the whole table. Time is $72 if the table is full and we also pre-tip the dealer $25 for the down so it’s $97 total per half hour.

After the game breaks I get the floor to print off my comp balance and head to Lago for the Filet.

It doesn’t say it’s valid at Lago but it is. You can use it at any of the restaurants.

The Filet as it should look on a plate, rather than in a to-go box eaten in the poker room.

Belly full, time to head to our new home for the next two nights.

Masquerade Tower King

These rooms although spacious, seem very dated now, but it was the cheapest option by a long way, so it will have to do for two nights.

On Deck Tomorrow: $600 HORSE

Good run regardless of the bittersweet finish. I played with the winner in a RW nightly during summer 2024 and he was a bulldozer for sure. He won that one too.

For better or worse, the Rio is a living (or at least undead) piece of poker history. I hope the ghosts of WSOP past bring you good fortune.

Awesome day, great write up.

Thank you and well done

GG WP, although it's always bitter sweet being so close to a win. But that's tournament poker for you.

If Rio means business they seriously need to update the Masquerade Tower as well. The renovated rooms in the Ipanema Tower looks great from what I have seen.

There's a place in PHo that's similar, but I can't remember the name. It's a little bit nicer but not crazy expensive. I stayed there a few months ago.

Sorry about the tournament finish.

Congrats on the tournament finish.

I'm sure you felt lousy at the time, but you'll probably feel better when you spend the 4 grand.

I still remember my first WSOP, also my first time in the Rio. I was checking in, and Robert Varkonyi was also. I think he had won the Main Event either the year before, or two years prior. He's one of the few pros I could recognize at the time. There I was at my first WSOP and I was talking to a Main Event winner before I had even checked in to my room. Pretty cool.

They actually started renovating a block of Masquerade rooms first. I stayed in one a couple years ago, I think. There redoing them slowly. Right now they have to give people a reason to stay there instead of the Strip. CET used to run a shuttle to the Strip. That's gone now. They should find a way to get that going again - maybe partner with Orleans, who also used to run a shuttle. The Strip is whale-centric now, with everything super expensive and the managements of the Strip hotels unashamedly admitting they don't like low-rollers. They need to realize they aren't going to find a couple three thousand whales to fill Bellagio and Aria every week, but that's another argument for a later time.

Great run. Keep it up!

unfortunately, this went as badly as possible and I was out 10th in about 25 minutes.

A3KJ all in pre vs a short stack. I make a king high flush and lose to his ace high flush.

A3JTds 3 ways on J76 flop. Turn is a 6 and lose to A286.

A2J9 blind vs blind. I make jacks on the flop, turn an open ender, and brick the river vs Kings.

Then a couple other smaller pots where no money goes in on turn or river and I get scooped in both.

Then I'm all in blind vs blind with QQxx vs AJ44. Ace on river, as usual.

A lot has to go right to win one of these things, so kudos to David for winning three and having many other deep runs. Back to the online cash games I go for now.

It won't help this trip, I imagine, but if you run into crazy room prices in the future you might want to check in with MyrnaFTW in the "roommate" thread in LVL. He's a local who hooks people up with great rooms via his comps.

Thanks for the write-up, Tony. Got it in great, disappointing runout on that big hand.

Thanks, will bear it in mind. Always good to have more outs for rooms.