WSOP Circuit: Lake Tahoe Edition

Tomorrow I am going to play my 1st WSOP Circuit Event at Harvey's in Lake Tahoe. It is the smallest event ($300), but depending on how I do at the tournament and on the tables, I hope to play further events. I've been practicing the structure using Poker Academy and I feel really psyched.

I was in Vegas last Friday night and ended up seeing David Spade. That guy is not very funny. At least, he has no funny orginal material. The warm up act was much, much funnier. After that I checked out the Ceasar's room for the 1st time and man is it nice. I played in a 2/5 NL game with no cap and had a good time. Game was not very hard though I got off the a bad start! Not that I was losing, but I wasn't showing down any hands! I was getting monsters, flopping bottom set on an AQ board and not getting ANY action in a 5 way pot, flopping the nut straight and this weak tight player folding the Ace after I give him a moderate raise.

While this is all fine and dandy, it's not how I like to start out. I like to develop a tight image and then loosen up later on. On the plus side it meant that I was going to get paid off on my great hands eventually, but that hinged on the fact that I did get great hands!

I had sat down with $700 (which covered the table when I got there) and when I ran it up to $900 by chopping at pots. and middle aged Asian man sat down on my immeadiate right with $1000. It was all that I could do to not smile. In my experience, asians with a lot of money equals overaggresiveness and I could trap this guy for a big pot. Of course, I ended up being both right and wrong.

He started out aggresive, but slowed down a lot after one pot. I wasn't quite sure about him when this pot came up. UTG with about $130 made a raise to $15. The asian gentleman called and so did I with pocket 10s. I thought about reraising, but I wanted to keep the pot small and smack the Asian guy around if I hit big.

The flop is the beautiful T53 with the 53 being diamonds. UTG bets $30, Asian guy calls, and I pop it up to $130. I figure the short stack will call all-in since he's being seeing my aggresive play and I could have anything. I put the Asian guy at beat on a flush draw, though I figured that he would have raised with it. UTG calls all in after thinking for a few seconds and the Asian guys reraises $300 more. Now I am almost sure he has the flush draw, but I don't like it because he's going to go all the way with me now. I push all in for $440ish more and he hesitates. He has the classic "ouch I stubbed my toe" look on his face. He eventually calls.

Turn and river are offsuits 8 and Q. I flip over my set and rake in a very nice pot. The asian guy later confides that he had 55 for middle set. By the end of my session, I realize that contrary to my 1st impression, he is playing a but more passive than I thought he would initially. I think that there is a 20-25% he had the flush on that hand.

After that pot I count the money on the table and realize I just have under half of it. I almost leave, but I am in such control that I decide to see how the table develops. Some big pots go down and some fresh blood comes in and and the money on the table doubles. After 40 minutes after the monster I rakes in, I decide to leave because I am getting tired and table conditions were less than optimal if I am going to be an active player with a big stack. Plus I play super loose when I am tired and have a bigstack, which always equals money lost.

WIsh me luck tomorrow and I'll try to give a blow by blow account of it.