Rick Fuller Blog

I’m out. Those are the worst two words in poker. They are usually accompanied by some sort of sob story that nobody really wants to hear because they have heard them all before. I am not going to tell my sob story. During the first two hours I built my chips up from $10,000 to $19,000 without ever playing any big pots or getting myself in trouble. During the next two hours I played two hands really badly, even worse than my grammer in this sentence. I then got really unlucky on two big hands and I was out of the tournament.

As my opponent’s three outer hit the board to knock me out, I slowly stood up. I pulled my earphones out of my ears and switched off my Ipod. I stared at the board some more. I took off my sunglasses and put them on top of my head. I stared at that beautiful three outer some more. I slowly nodded my head and congratulated my opponent on his great hand. I then picked up my chair, informed the table that I was taking it with me, and I walked out of the Amazon room and into the sunset.

I did not win my seat online. I paid the ten grand and I bought in. That means that the chair I was sitting in was worth $10,000. If you had a chair worth $10,000 would you let somebody else sit in it? I don’t think so. That’s why I took it. I took it home and I’m keeping it. Screw Harrahs. They took like $20 million dollars out of the poker community this month. They can pay $10 for a new chair. Sue me.

I’m bummed. I prepared well for this event. I went to the Mirage last night and saw comedian Kevin James, AKA Doug Heffernan, to put myself in a good mood. I have been running 2 miles a day and exercising to get myself feeling good. I’ve been eating right and I got lots of sleep last night. None of that could stop me from playing two hands poorly and getting unlucky on two others. I really wanted to do well to help prove my point to my friend Steve Berman. He is under the impression that the World Series is a crap shoot and the pros should refuse to play it until it is limited to strictly pros. He thinks all of the luck that can be involved really puts the pros at a disadvantage. I disagree with him completely. I think luck is certainly a factor but the huge prize pool more than makes up for the chances of some idiot fish hitting a three outer to knock you out. I also think a true pro should be able to adapt and still perform well amongst this field. My early knockout did nothing but lend credence to his theory and that really bums me out.

I am going to attend the Bluff party tonight and then… who knows. I will probably go home sometime in the next couple of days although, after so much time here I am really depressed about leaving. Experience tells me that the depression will go away and I will recover to be back next year and do the whole roller coaster ride all over again. How many times will I have to say, “There’s always next year”?

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Back to the story…

So, I told the dealer to shut up although I wasn’t rude enough to use those exact words. I eventually made the call, lost the pot, and I was now really on tilt. On the very next hand I asked the dealer not to motion towards me when it was my turn to act as I have been playing this game for a while now and can actually figure out when its my turn to act. She was now refusing to even acknowledge me and I asked her to call the floor over. She refused to call the floor and I eventually had to call a clock on myself to get her to call the floorperson over. They moved her to another table and the entire table started laughing about her telling me that it was a fast paced game and it was her job to keep it moving along. 10,000 comedians out of work and those guys think the dealer is funny.

I will say that most of the dealers here have been doing a wonderful job. This was the day that a bunch of dealers decided to walk off the job and that probably had a lot to do with it as I’m sure the Rio had to scrape bottom to come up with replacement dealers.

Anyway…

My sister brought my two daughters down here to visit since I haven’t had much opportunity to go home to see them. I took almost four days off from poker and we just had a great time. We went out to Lake Mead one day and rented a ski boat and kneeboard package. My parents were here and went with us and we had a great time on the lake. Kneeboarding used to be really popular but you don’t see it much anymore. I haven’t kneeboarded for a long time but everybody wanted me to go first. I picked it back up right away and was showing off doing a bunch of tricks when I had a devestating crash and wrenched my shoulder. It still hurts now two weeks later. I guess I’m not as young as I used to be damnit!

I have been to a bunch of parties in the last few days. The Bodog party at Tao in the Venetian was the first, followed by the Full Tilt party at Pure in Ceasars, The Ultimate Bet party at the Voodoo lounge at the Rio, and the Doyle’s Room party at the Bellagio. The Bodog party was my favorite, they really spared no expense and the place was packed. They brought in a pool table and a professional pool player, The Black Widow, for people to challenge and that was a lot of fun. Everything at all the parties was of course free, and that really fits with my motto, if it’s free it’s for me.

About a week ago I played in Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak’s invitational tournament at the Venetian. It was $125 buy in with 260 players and the Venetian put up the prize pool of six WSOP main event seats. I have already bought into the main event but was looking forward to a refund of the 10k. I played great poker right up to almost the end and then ran into some pretty tough situations. I went from having a ton of chips with 16 players left to short stacked at the final table and I was pretty unhappy with myself for getting into that situation since I didn’t have to win the event, just had to make the top six. With 8 players left I picked up a suited AK and moved all in. A player with 1010 called me and I didn’t improve and was out in 8th place. Brutal.

The next day I played in the World Series of Roshambo at the Rio. 64 players put up $500 bucks each with the final four getting paid, 10k for first, 7k for second, 5k for third, and 3k for fourth. I love this game and feel like I am pretty good at reading my opponents and knowing what they are going to throw. I whipped through my first three opponents, winning the G bracket. I was in the final eight and just needed to win this match to be in the money. We were playing best 5 of 9 and I had my opponent down 4-2, nearly assuring me of the win. Miraculously he came back with three wins in a row to knock me out on the bubble. I was devestated with two near bubble finishes less than 12 hours apart and I went off to find a corner to cry in.

So, apart from hanging out with family, partying like a rock star, playing some poker, hanging out with friends, tearing my shoulder out of socket, bubbling everything I play, and just relaxing, I haven’t done much at all the last few weeks. I play the main event tomorrow and I am in a really good mood and really looking forward to it. I will have some updates for y’all after the day tomorrow, hopefully I will be explaining how I got to be the chip leader.

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Okay, so I haven’t written a blog in like 2 weeks and I apologize for that. I have just had no motivation to write and the World Series has been dragging me down. It’s hard to understand how difficult it is to be here for this long playing poker everyday unless you experience it for yourself.

So, here is a recap of my last couple of weeks. I have played several tournaments, $2000 NL, $1500 Razz, $2500 short handed NL, $1500 NL, I might be forgetting one, I should be forgetting all of them because they all sucked. Or maybe it was just me that sucked. Either way, I never came close to cashing in any of them so I don’t have much to say about them.

There was one hand that I thought was interesting in the $2500 short handed event. I called a raise with position holding JJ in the early rounds. The flop came Q,5,4 and the raiser bet out. I called the bet. The turn paired the 4 and the raiser bet out again. I flat called again. You might be thinking that I sound like a calling station but here is my theory on calling. I know that I am either way ahead or way behind with this hand. If I am way ahead I want him to put chips in drawing slim. If I am way behind I want to lose as little as possible with the hand. With this kind of board I think calling is the best strategy.

Anyway, the river was a 2 and he made a fairly big bet. To get the drama over with so you can return to your beers, I will tell you right now that he had A,Q and I was in trouble. I had what I thought was a pretty good read on him and I thought, based on his posture and body language, that he was bluffing. I can just tell you that this read was based on two previous hands and the way he had acted in those hands and obviously my read was way off. Either way its unimportant, here is the point of my story.

While I was trying to replay the hand and study my opponent, the dealer looked at me and said, “You have one minute to act on your hand.” This stunned me because I didn’t hear anyone call for a clock and even if someone had, the dealer would have had to call the floor over to put the clock on me, she wouldn’t do it herself. I asked who called a clock and the player sitting next to me told me nobody had. I looked at the dealer and she said these words that I will never forget. “Sir, this is a fast paced game and it is my job to keep it moving along.”

I will tell you the rest of this incredibly funny story later. Right now I have to run out the door. When I come back I will tell you about the rest of my week and what my plans are for the weeks ahead.

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I flew back into Vegas on Sunday night. Clonie picked me up at the airport and we headed to the Rio to meet up with some of the boys from the Bluff Magazine forums. Greig, Jeremy, TC, Erik, PDParv, and two others who’s names I can’t remember, sorry guys, were there. Kenna James decided to come out with us and then Chris Ferguson also decided to join us. Kenna hooked us up with two limos and we headed to the Hard Rock to go to Body English.

It was after midnight by this time and Body English, which is a pretty big club, was so jam packed you couldn’t move. There was no chance we were going to get a table, even with “Jesus” working his celebrity status. We stuck around just long enough to watch some midget cage fight matches in the center of the room, then decided to get the hell out of there.

We headed over to Wynn to check out Tryst. Tryst was much better, there were still a lot of people there but we actually got a table and there was room to move and breathe. Gavin Smith and John Phan joined us and we had a great time through the night. I had a lost a few dollars on some prop bets enroute to the clubs but I made it all back with some gravy when I crushed Kenna in a little old Roshambo. I also took $200 off Gavin so it was a sweet night for the Rock, Paper, Scissors! Tryst has a pool with a huge waterfall that falls into it. The dance floor is right next to that pool and I tried to get one of the forum guys to jump into it with all of his clothes on. I had the offer up to $1000 and was very close to making a deal with TC until someone told him he would get arrested for it. That seemed to be a deal breaker for him and he backed out.

Clonie and I said our goodbyes and headed home at about 3:30am. She was playing the $1000 NL event which I had decided to skip.

Just a note about the $1000 event. The organizers here at the WSOP have done it again. For as long as I have ever known, WSOP tournament chips have been worth their face value, dollar for dollar. In other words, when you buy into a $2000 tournament you get $2000 in chips, a $3000 tournament gets you $3000 in chips, etc etc. This keeps everything fair and, with multiple events using the same chips, it discourages cheating. You could take chips off of your table in one tournament and use them in another, but with the dollar values being true it would be pretty much just a wash. In the $1000 event, for some reason they decided to start the players with $1500 in chips. This was incredibly stupid. Now I could go to the cage and pay $1000 and get $1500 in chips. If I then chose to take these to another tournament I would be benefiting with $500.

All this does is encourage cheating, something you would think they would want to completely discourage. I have never seen a WSOP event start with more chips than the buy-in, why are they doing it now? I can only guess that this decision was made with the same level of thinking as the decision where they replaced a “lost” bag of chips. Start thinking guys, and most of all, care about what you are doing with our money. I know it’s hard to think about the player’s money when you are taking so much of it for juice that you have to have a team of accountants just to count it all, but please try at least.

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I decided to return to Seattle for two days in order to watch my daughter’s softball team compete in their championship games this weekend. Since I am up here until tomorrow and I don’t have any poker to write about, I thought I would write about something else that has really been on my mind.

Throughout history, British men have been well known for their courage and fortitude. That strength and courage seems to be on the decline though. In 1815 the Earl of Uxbridge, Henry Paget, was sitting astride his horse in the closing moments of the Battle of Waterloo when a cannonball struck him, tearing off his leg. He looked down and then looked at the Duke of Wellington and said, “By God sir, I have lost my leg.” The Duke of Wellington took one look and said, “By God sir, so you have.”

In 1942 while reading through reports of the strength of the German army and the loss of multiple regiments of British soldiers, Sir Winston Churchill “nearly wept” at the apparent hopelessness of the situation.

In 2006 after losing a soccer game, nearly the entire British team sat down on the field and cried.

I can only surmise that the crying of an entire team of men over the loss of what can only be described as a stupid game, where the average score is zero,zero anyway (naught,naught for any British who may be reading this), can only really be attributed to something else. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the British used to rule over nearly a quarter of the Earth and now control only a few islands nobody cares about and a few countries nobody has ever heard of. Perhaps it is the fact that they require an alliance with the United States to hold on to the few territories they still control. Hell, maybe its just that they have worn powdered wigs, makeup, and women’s clothing for so long that they have started to become more emotional. I just don’t know. I can only hope that the crying was not truly over the loss of a soccer game. Because seriously, even though you may call it football, it’s just not football.

This blog is dedicated to my good friend Crispin Leyser, a Brit by birth though he now chooses to live in the good old US of A. I hope reading this didn’t make you cry. Next time I see you I’ll try to say kind things so you don’t fall to the ground overcome with grief.

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Out here on the Left Coast we try to pay as little attention as possible to the happenings of our neighbors to the east. Most of us just consider most East Coasters to be a little screwy in the head. I mean who would actually choose to live on the east coast?

Although we don’t pay too much attention to news from the east, there is one story recently that just has me completely rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. The state of New Jersey, in all its infinite wisdom, has decided to shut down the casinos in Atlantic City. Yesterday morning all Atlantic City casinos went dark. I would never have believed there could be any more stupid politicians than those of my home state of Washington who just made online poker a felony, but wow, was I wrong.

Apparently the New Jersey legislature is unable to agree on a budget for this current fiscal year. Without a budget or some type of appropriation, it is illegal for them to spend money on anything. This means that all government services that are considered “non-essential” are unable to stay open and have to be shut down. This includes the gaming commission and the regulators they employ. No gaming regulators, no casinos, so they are now shut down.

New Jersey was unable to pass a budget because the budget that was introduced contained a deficit of $4.5 Billion dollars. Governor Corzine wanted to raise the sales tax to offset some of that and the legislature wouldn’t agree to it.

I only know two things as a result of this. The first is that this confirms in the minds of the entire west coast population that east coasters really do have some loose screws. The AC casinos generate $1.3 million per day in tax dollars. It sure doesn’t seem that shutting them down is going to help balance the budget.

The second thing I know is that the airport here in Las Vegas should be jammed with inbound flights full of east coast poker players because of this. Excuse me, I believe there is a seat calling my name at the Bellagio. Bring on the fish!!

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Las Vegas is known around the world for extravagant parties and come World Series of Poker time they only get better. Poker players seem to party harder and more often than any other class of person. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why this is but I really have no idea. I know lots of players who play all day long and then go out every single night and party.

The first party I attended this trip was Clonie’s Maxim party hosted by Full Tilt. We had a great time in the Full Tilt Suite hanging out, talking poker, drinking and goofing around. I also got paid on a bet I won about four months ago. I will just tell you that the bet was made with one of the WSOP main event final table winners from last year. I was playing in an online HORSE tournament and there were 33 players left in the tournament. Clonie and I were kind of playing it together while we were at dinner with a bunch of other poker players. We had entered the tournament and it had lasted longer than we thought so we brought the laptop to dinner with us to finish playing it.

I was 32nd in chips and nearly out of the event. He bet Clonie $100 and gave us 17-1 odds that we couldn’t come back and make the final table. That gave us inspiration and we not only came back and made the final table, but we took second in the tournament.

Afterwards he refused to pay saying that he thought he was just betting Clonie and he didn’t realize that I was going to be playing as well.

Anyway, at the Maxim party we agreed to binding arbitration with John D’Agostino acting as the arbitrator. We both told our sides of the bet and John, after much see sawing and hemming and hawing, decided that he would have to pay me $1300 instead of the $1700. I felt lucky to get anything really, but I still took Dags around the corner and thumped on him for his bad decision.

After the party wrapped up at about 10:30 we headed up to the Voodoo lounge for the after hours party. We got a section on the patio all roped off and everybody hung out there drinking and dancing and enjoying the view. The Voodoo lounge is on the roof of the Rio and is one of my favorite clubs in Vegas. The Ghost Bar at the Palms is similar but too crowded and too “twenties.” The Voodoo lounge is perfect.

I finally left there at about 3:00am and had to leave Clonie’s car and get a ride home. I definitely fulfilled my alcohol quota that night!

Last night we again headed up to the Voodoo Lounge, this time for a party being hosted by Morgan Machina. Some of the poker players who showed up were, Chris Bell, Chris Ferguson, Chip Jett, Kenna James and Amir Vahedi.

This time I was really in the mood to gamble and I found some sick young kid named Jason who was liked to gamble almost as much as I did. I was already on tilt because I lost at Liar’s poker earlier in the night against Morgan Machina and had to pay the dinner bill. That was like the fifth time in a row I have lost at Liar’s Poker and had to pay for dinner and it was really pissing me off.

Jason and I started making prop bets on such things as, the next person to walk through the door, male or female. Over/ under on the number of planes to take off from McCarren Airport in the next five minutes. Over/under on the number of people to walk through the door before an African American walked through. Number of minutes before a person of Middle Eastern decent walked through. For this one, Clonie had just called Amir Vahedi and he told her he would be there in less than 10 minutes. I waited 3 minutes and then bet Jason, taking the under at nine minutes. That bastard Amir was late and cost me $50.

We bet on the over/under for amount of time it would take before a host came under the ropes to check on us. Jason set the line and put it at 4 minutes. I immediately took the under and stood up and yelled for service until a host came running. Sucker.

We bet on everything we could think of and I think I came out ahead by about $50. Sick. I then suggested we start playing some Roshambo. I played with literally everyone there, crushing most of them but losing $500 total to Kenna James, it was just ridiculous how badly he played the game and was still able to beat me. I was down as much as $900 to him but was able to come back a little. The sickest part of that whole thing was that Kenna showed up with like $204 total in his pocket. I almost felt sorry for the guy until I remembered that he’s won something like a million dollars in the last year. It really pisses me off that he showed up almost broke and left with his pockets bulging with my cash!

One other sweet bet that I made was with Chris Bell. I overheard he and Morgan talking and Morgan told him he had just turned 40 years old. Now Morgan looks like he’s about 30 so I knew this was going to be good. I walked up to Chris and told him I wanted to gamble on something. He asked me if I wanted to bet $100 on Morgan’s age. LOL, I thought I was going to have to trick him into coming up with that bet and he came up with it on his own immediately! He set the over/under at 37 and I hemmed and hawed for a while, pretending to study Morgan carefully before reluctantly taking the over. Thanks for the Benjamin Chris!!

The parties here are great, the company is good, there’s easy money to be made, and we’re only just getting started!

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The $5000 NL event was one I was for sure not going to miss. I hate tournaments where you don’t start with a lot of chips because I have a style of play where I really like to throw the chips around and try to double up early. Having a lot of chips lets me take chances which are necessary to winning tournaments. Anybody can play tight and hope they don’t get bad beat or cold decked and make it into the money, but finishing in the top three spots of the tournament just one time can be worth 100 or more “in the money” finishes. My style is one that has been proven successful and one of these days I’m going to be able to say “I told you so.” I hope.

Today pretty much sucked though. I had Eli Elezra and Stuart “The Donator” Patterson at my table. The Donator is an internet poker whiz kid who is a fantastic player, despite the self imposed nickname. He is also a really nice guy. If you ever have the pleasure of meeting him you’ll know what I mean.

On hand number three I called a raise with (Ah)(Jh) and The Donator called as well. The flop came (As)(3h)(5h), a monster flop for my hand. Stu checked, the original raiser checked and, while I almost always bet in this situation, for some reason I decided that checking would hide my flush draw and if it hit I might be able to win a big pot. I really want to play big pots with big hands early in the tournament and normally a flush draw would bet this flop with two checks to him, so I decided to check. This turned out to be a big mistake. The turn was the (7s) and now Stu bet out $600. The original raiser folded and I raised him to $1600. Stu called and the turn paired the board with the (3d). Stu now bet out again $1200 and I flat knew he had made a set of sevens on the turn. I thought about it for a while but knew I couldn’t really beat anything but a bluff and there was no way The Donator was bluffing this early in the tournament. I finally said, “Set of sevens huh Stu?” and mucked my hand. He showed me pocket sevens and took the pot. The worst part about it was that he held the (7c)(7d) which meant that the (7s) was his only out on the turn since the heart would have given me the flush. Of course, then again, if the heart had come instead of the spade, with the board pairing on the river, I might have lost an even bigger pot.

Anyway, I lost $1800 there which was a large portion of my $5000 starting stack. Two hands later something even worse happened.

I limped along with four other players with the (Jc)(8c). The flop came down (Qd)(Td)(9c), a great flop for me. The turn was a blank and the river paired the queen which probably saved me all of my chips since my opponent had (Kc)(Js) for a bigger flopped straight. I lost about $2000 chips there leaving me with about $1200.

I doubled up to about $2100 a half hour later when I pushed all in with an over card and the nut flush draw and won the race when the flush got there. Twenty minutes after that, The Donator raised, I looked down at (Qh)(Qc) and pushed all in, and the guy to my left immediately pushed all in over the top with (Ad)(Kd). The Donator folded and I loved the flop of (Jh)(Jc)(3s). A nine on the turn left my opponent with five outs (The Donator threw away an ace) and left me in a great position to double up and be almost back to even. The (Ah) on the river was a killer for me though and I was out of the tournament.

As I was leaving the punk who caught the ace made some comment about me deserving to lose that pot because I should have been knocked out earlier. I promptly grabbed him by his scrawny little throat and threw him across the table. I then sat down in his seat and proceeded to donk off all his chips to the other players. Okay, not really, but what the fuck? You knock a player out of the tournament on a pretty bad river card and then make a comment to him like that? That’s not just poor etiquette, it makes you look like the biggest jerk in the world. The guy was one of Men The Master’s crew though, I’m not sure which one he was, but I guess poker etiquette is not one of The Master’s instructional topics. When you knock someone out of the tournament have a little compassion for the guy. Odds are you’ll be taking that walk as well at some point that day and I’m sure you would appreciate the same.

Anyway, I am taking the next couple of days off from the tournament. I will have some live action reports, as well as some reports from the party scene here in Vegas as I’ve already been to a couple of good ones.

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Today the World Series of Hold’em finally took a brief break and allowed another type of poker game to be played for one day. For just one day we got a respite from the boredom of another hold’em event and we played Omaha hi/lo split. I consider this to be my best game with NL hold’em a close second. I have had a lot of success in Omaha split events and I was looking forward to this one. Even though I was looking forward to it, I’m telling you right now this is one brutal game.

I didn’t have a real easy table with Kirill Gerasimov, Joe Tehan, and Mark Tenner who wrote the book “Winning Omaha Eight or Better”, all playing at my table. I held my own though, played for ten hours and got knocked out maybe an hour out of the money. That in itself is enough to make anybody feel punchy. Today though, I really feel like I got beat up all day long. I think I understand now what it might have felt like to go 3 rounds with Mike Tyson. I can only remember one hand where the river card made my hand. Every other time it went against me or it was a non-issue. I was repeatedly in there with scooping hands and had the river give my opponent half the pot. When that happens time and time again it really feels like you are fighting all day long.

A couple of really key hands happened today and here is a rundown of them.

I raised preflop with (Ah)(2h)(Kc)(Tc) and I got called by three players and we saw the flop. The flop came down (3h)(7h)(5c), a pretty good flop for me giving me the nut low and the nut flush draw. I bet out and got two callers. The turn card was the (Qc). If you’re following along at home, I now have the nut low, the nut flush draw, and a second nut flush draw. This is such a huge hand in Omaha hi/lo that I decided to check and try to trap one of the opponents. I wasn’t disappointed as one opponent bet, the other folded, and I raised. He called and we saw the river card. Now, before I tell you the river card, here is the hand that my opponent held,(As)(Ad)(6d)(9d), not a bad hand to start with. Right now my opponent is ahead for the high with a pair of aces and I am ahead for the low with the nut low. There are 40 unknown cards still left in the deck. 20 of them give me a scoop, 9 hearts, 9 clubs, and the other two fours. 18 of them are random cards that will give us a split pot. Two cards give my opponent the entire pot, the two of spades and the two of diamonds. Of course, the river was the (2s), counterfeiting my low and missing all of my high draws.

On another key hand, I held (As)(2c)(5s)(7c) on a board that read (Ad)(3c)(Qh)(4c) after the turn,. I put in four big bets here with my opponent, putting myself all in with the nuts and a redraw to clubs or a six for a bigger straight. I knew my opponent probably had the same hand but I thought there was a good chance I was freerolling with 12 outs to take three quarters of the pot. It turns out she had the same deuce five with a bigger flush draw so she had 7 cards for three quarters and I only had 3, the offsuit sixes. The river was of course the (Qc), and she quartered me.

I had two aces cracked by two nines three times, had aces six times, four of those times having a two to go along with it and only won the entire pot one time and half the pot one other time. These types of hands are the ones you have to be able to scoop with or you just can’t win the tournament.

Just so you don’t think its all bad, I did hold a couple of really good hands. I held pocket (Jc)(Jh) and two random cards against pocket (2s)(2d) and the flop came (Jd)(Js)(2h). I won a pretty big pot with that hand. I also made some good hands on the turn several times and these hands were the reason I was able to survive to take all of the brutal river beatings.

I finally went home when I made it five bets pre-flop and got all in with four other opponents, making it a huge pot, with me holding (As)(2d)(3c)(6d). The flop came (Ad)(Kd)(Jd). One opponent bet into the dry side pot and all the others folded. I thought I was probably in big trouble, having to catch runner runner to make a low for half, but he rolled over(Ah)(Ks)(Js)(Jc) for a set. I had a flush and with most of his outs to a full house in both of our hands I started feeling like I might actually win this huge pot and quintuple up. I didn’t have to wait long though as the turn was the (Kh) and I was drawing dead.

I played good, took my beatings like a man, and slinked over to the cage to sign up for tomorrows event. You guessed it, NL hold’em, $5000 buy in. I tend to do much better in bigger starting stack events like this one so hopefully I’ll have good news at the end of the day tomorrow. Until then, ding,ding,ding, Rick loses by knockout!

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Today was the $3000 limit suckout event here at the World Series of Hold’em. I used to play nothing but limit hold’em but I really haven’t played all that much lately. I actually like limit hold’em but I really hate limit hold’em tournaments. Nobody cares about the chips, everybody just wants to gamble, and you have to be able to survive for quite a while before skill really becomes a factor. The last limit tournament I played was about 2 years ago and I won the thing so I decided I would give this one a shot.

At the first break I had increased my starting stack of 3000 in chips to about 3400, a modest increase at best. I felt like I was playing pretty good though and I was looking forward to building my chip stack. As soon as we came back from the break I went on a bit of a mini rush and quickly won several pots increasing my stack to about 7500. From that point on it was all downhill though. Several times I flopped a big hand or a big draw and I kept either getting sucked out on or missing my draws. In limit hold’em draws are key and if you make your draws you will do well. If you miss them you are probably not going to survive very long.

At the second break I had 3200 so I had actually gone downhill. I lasted for about another hour and wasn’t able to put anything together. I went out at about 180th out of 420.

Tomorrow is the $2000 limit Omaha Hi/lo event. In 2004 I took 3rd in this event and last year I didn’t make the dinner break. I am hoping to have a year like 2004 again this year and am really looking forward to the event.

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