[Target] Bob's TARGET trip report

[Bob Jones]

My first *RGER sighting Friday morning when Russ spotted me when I
walked into the Venetian poker room. We played a little NL before
heading over to the Mirage. It was nice to shake the rust off a little,
since I haven't been playing much live poker lately. Won a couple nice
pots, so the weekend started off well. 

Once TARGET started, I
quickly dusted off about half my stack making bad plays, although I
can't really remember any specifics. I've been reading Negreanu's book
on "small ball", so was doing a little of that. It didn't work well.
But, the cards bailed me out and I got AA against Rich Strauss' JJ for
the double up. From then on, I played better. I built my stack without
ever getting super short again, which was nice. I won a couple of races
(66 vs AK and AK vs 66) along the way, and then managed to crack Len's
QT with my J4s when we were three handed and bingo, Ken and I were in!
I had planned to play the $1500 NL event regardless of the results of
TARGET, so it was pretty nice to not have to pull the money out of my
pocket. 

BTW, I lied on Friday, I actually had 86o, not 82o
when I folded to Steve's shove. I just didn't feel like blowing off the
extra $800 because I was getting the right odds. Someone smarter than
me could do the ICM calculation to see how bad it was. IIRC, we were at
$400-800 and he had $1400, so yeah I was getting 4:1 and should have
called. It may have been $300-600 which would be a little more like
3:1. Either way, I'm okay with it. I forget how many chips I had at
that point.

Anyway, TARGET was a lot of fun, and the Mirage was really cool with the play by play and the framed photo was a nice touch.

After
going to the Rio to buy in to the big event, Friday night I played a
bit more $1-2 NL over at the Venetian won a few more nice pots, so I
was feeling pretty good about my game. After grabbing dinner with Russ
and Aaron at the Grand Luxe, I played some video poker to try to keep
the free rooms coming from the Venetian.

Saturday I got over to
the Rio in time to grab some lunch with the gang from Denver. I had
played in a season long satellite with a dozen others and this was also
the event the winner was going to play. I started (and finished) in the
Brasilia room. There was nobody famous at my table, at least not famous
enough for me to recognize. One guy did know Bobby Belande who was
roaming around and another guy knew the pokernews.com reporters.

The
first 1:45 was awesome. I think I had about 8 pocket pairs in that
time, along with AQ once and AJ twice. I won the first four pots. I was
on a bit of a roller coaster, one guy in particular was killing me by
playing any two against me and getting there (K4o=full house, for
example). I got up to 7000, then down to 3000, then up to just over 10k
when I had JJ and the board was KJ9sss and the chip leader bet into me.
I raised and he tanked. If he had shoved, I'm not sure I can lay it
down, but would not have been happy. That was my peak. I bled off about
$1500 in a few orbits after that.

Right before break, I had 54o in the BB. Four limpers,
flop was QJ5, checked around, turn is a 5, putting two flush draws out
there. I bet, short stack guy calls, small blind jams for $2.5k (I
think). I talked myself into the possibility that they both had draws.
They didn't, the SB had Q5, so I was drawing dead when I couldn't find
the fold button. The shorter stack had T9o for the bottom end of a
straight draw on a double suited, paired board. He was awful. He also
miss-called his hand for a nice pot for me on the 2nd hand. 

So
I was down to about $6k by the first break. Then our sweet, sweet table
broke. I got a horrible seat with the big stack two to my left. I made
a couple of ill-advised blind steal, then continuation bet plays that
did not work and I was down to about $3500 and slowly bled down to
$2600. I was getting horrible cards. Finally, I picked up A9o in the
$150-300 level. I raised to $900, got called, he checked the raggy
flop, I jammed, he couldn't find the fold with middle set and IGHN. I
should have just shoved. Wouldn't have mattered, but not sure what I
was thinking. 

After busting, I caught up with one of the
Denver guys and sweated Ming Lee's final table for a while, but I got
bored and he had to go find his wife who had just hit a nice slot
payout and he wanted to rathole some of the money before the one armed
bandit took it all again. So, nothing else to do, I jumped into a $2-5
NL game. I'm not a fan of the Mississippi straddle that the Rio has,
but whatever. I donked around a bit and got down about $75 when I had
A9s in the cutoff. I made it $30, got the button to fold and was just
called by the big blind. Flop was 862 with one of my suit. He checked,
I continuation bet $50. He called. Hmmm. Turn was a nice pretty 7s,
giving me an open ended straight draw and nut flush draw. I suppose I
should check here, but what the heck, I bet, he shipped. Oops. Guess he
does have that set. I started the hand with about $425, so I was
getting really good odds for the call. So much for small-ball! I call
and hit the 5 for the straight. Ship the cheese to the fish!

Nothing
too exciting happened after that, so I went back to watching
Ming/Ivey/Mortenson on one table and Alan on the other. I ran into
Kenny Shei and Bob Lauria there. After a while I headed back to the
Venetian to try to track down the other guys from Denver. Turns out
they were off consuming many beer units, so I ended up signing up for
the 7 pm Venetian tourney. I decided it was time *I* started consuming
many beer units. I think I lasted four beer units in the tourney. Not
having had enough yet, I decided to go play $1-2 NL. OMG. Best table
ever. Two newbies. Two very wealthy business types who had played but
hadn't found a clue. Kid trying to impress his girlfriend. Really,
really drunk off duty floor guy from another room. Four hours later I
was up about $700 at my peak, without having won any really big pots,
just a lot of $75-150 pots. I bled off a couple of hundred and then got
involved in a hand that got a little out of control and I found myself
calling an all in with KQs on a K high board on the turn. Small-ball is
dead to me! I was way ahead, as he had no pair, no draw with a way over
played AJo. An ace on the river and ship the cheese to the other fish
and I was back to my starting stack.

By now, we had gotten
fairly short, I think we were at 5 or 6 handed. They broke our table a
little after 2:30. I was, uh, not sober by this time and the smart
thing would have been to just go to bed. I was in no mood to do the
smart thing. So I went to my new table. It didn't seem as fishy, but I
was just generating chips. Things are a little hazy here, but again I
didn't win any huge pots, just a lot of $75-150 ones. By six am I was
done and racked up $680 winner. Dingz!

After five hours of
slumber, I got up, got some noodles at Noodles Asia and was ready for
some poker. I had run into Aaron on my way to the noodle bar and we
talked about playing, but I couldn't find him, so when the Denver guys
called and said they were playing the 2 pm Planet Hollywood tourney, I
couldn't resist. There were 70 runners and about three hours later,
five of us chopped up the prize pool. We were all essentially even in
chips as we headed into the $3-6k level after I sucked out with QQ vs
AA (live poker is so rigged). So, when someone suggested deal, we all
took it since we all had an M of 5ish. Afterwards I played a little bad
$1-2 NL, and racked up down about $20.

We went back to the Rio
for the seafood buffet and then checked out the action in the Amazon
room. No BARGers in sight, and then I checked my phone and found out
Ken had busted. The guy who busted me was still alive, so my chips swam
upstream. After we headed back, there was talk of playing the Harrah's
12:30, but I didn't have it in me and headed off to sleepy land since I
had to get up early for a flight. Tornadoes didn't start until after I
landed, barely. I was still on airport property in my car when the
tornado warning went off on the radio. I didn't see the funnel, but I
could see the area where they were reporting them. I'll post a picture
later.

So all in all, a great trip. I'm running so over
expectation lately, I'm a little concerned about how ugly it will be
when I regress to the mean. It was great catching up with Russ, Patti,
Peter, Ken, and the other ARGERs. I was disappointed with my play in
the wsop, but I'll get over it. Winning two tournies while there did
soothe the pain a bit.

Congrats to Ken Kubey for his great job! 

Best TARGET evah!

Bob



      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.conjelco.com/pipermail/target/attachments/20090616/78f9318e/attachment.html>