I get out of bed on Saturday, happy to be playing another DSE event at the V, and especially for free. I was still a little annoyed with my play from Friday, but I felt ready to move on and take down a DSE title.
The tournament started as pretty much all have this week, not really getting any hands to start the day. Generally this isn't terrible, as I don't like to get too involved early...but watching another parade of donkeys throw their chips away with marginal hands and me not able to do anything about it is getting frustrating. I got enough small to mid pocket pairs to call preflop raises with, but just never spiked anything. This slowly but surely decimated my stack over time. There weren't really any memorable hands the whole tournament; I was just kind of chopped down over the course of 7 hours. I bust out right before the 7pm dinner break and immediately sign up for the nightly 7pm $120 tourney. In retrospect, I think I should've taken a break and played a later tourney, if at all, but I took my seat in the 7pm within minutes of busting out of the DSE. I again watch players throw their chips away, get frustrated, make a move, and promptly bust out in the 4th or 5th level. This leads to me cussing at myself all the way back to my room early, wondering what to do next. I decide the only thing that will shake the bad mojo off of me is...another tournament.
I walk across the street to Ceasars Palace. I hadn't been in there all week and I wanted to see it anyway, but they also have a nice little $80 tourney at 10pm. I was able to get in around 10:45, not missing much. I take my seat and hear, "What the hell you doing here, man?" in a British accent. It's my new young London friend, Michael. He asks why I'm slumming the $80 tourney and I tell him I needed something to do after getting smacked around all day at the V. Besides, it's something like 3k to win and it's not a strong field. Most of my table were novice players, and looked a bit intimidated, so I kept trying to lighten the mood with jokes and messing with the dealer. It's not working...these poor guys are playing this thing like their lives depend on it, and they're not really sure what they're doing. After about an hour of attempting to lighten everyone up and have a good time, I decide to just strap on the ipod. A couple minutes later, Michael starts asking about the Main Event, and when I'm playing and such. He and his friends want to come sweat me for a while if they'll be there when I'm playing. This really tightens the table up, as hearing this scared the crap out of more than a few of them. As before I was trying to stay loose and have a good time, now I decide to use this fear against them and become an aggressive player. I had intended to wait and let someone overplay a pair and trap them to accumulate chips, but now I have a ton of respect and I just start running over the table with preflop raises and Cbets all the way through. I was putting them to the decision for their chips and relenquishing a ton of small pots.
Michael's friend Pete was sitting across from me all night, and made a particularly good laydown against me. I was allowed to limp in the BB with Q5 offsuit. Q59 flops me two pair. I lead out a small bet, and he fires almost half his chips at the pot in a raise. I pine for a minute and shove, putting his chips at risk. He goes in the tank for a while, trying to figure out what just happened to him, but eventually lays the hand down. I told Michael I know he taught him how to lay that hand down, and I showed him that he made the correct decision. Pete never did get over the initial raise, and kind of lost his head and got put out a couple hands later, but he's young and will figure it out if he can make those kinds of laydowns. Most players will see how much they committed to the pot and insta-call, but he took his time and made the right move.
Once we were down to about 50 players out of 168, I was moved to another table. I had a reasonable stack, but not overwhelming. Almost immediately a girl to my left shoves under the gun. It folds around to me in the BB, holding AJ suited...again. To call would cost me about 30-35% of my stack, and I say I'm not happy making this call because I know she has a big pair. She flips over KK and I don't catch up. A kid across from me asks if I really think that was a bad call and I explained to him that I was sure she had a pair, or maybe even AK or AQ, all in which case I'm screwed....there's not much outside of suits or a J that I can win with. I go completely card dead right in stride with this move and am eventually forced to shove A6 suited against AK. I go out around 40th. I wasn't terribly upset with the way I played and left for the night.
Three tournaments in one and not a single good result...this has been a crappy day. It makes me wonder how I could do this professionally if I can't even cash 1 tourney out of 3, all at progressively lower levels. Maybe I need to take a break. No, there's a DSE event at the V at noon, and I'm now pretty focused on taking one of these down...
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