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April 20, 2006
Bellagio Day 3
Wednesday was a slow day. I woke up with an Excedrin headache but got over it pretty quickly. Chris F wanted to see the condos I had told him about, and Chris T was down for just about anything, so we all cabbed it over to the MGM Grand, grabbed some lunch at Wolfgang Puck, and then went to see Colleen at The Residences. She gave us the royal tour, and I think Chris F fell in love with the place.
On the way back we had the craziest cab driver any of us had ever seen. First he asked us if we knew what Vegas shiatsu was. We said no and he replied "well, you're probably not interested." Chris said "yeah", knowing where that conversation was heading and not falling for his reverse psychology, but then, not taking the not-so-subtle hint, the cabbie described it in detail to us anyway. He offered to take us to one of them (it's an Asian massage parlor for the uninformed) and we politely declined.
A cabbie seeing three young guys and offering to take them to a whorehouse is not so unusual in Vegas. The fact that he did it while staring at Chris T (who was unfortunate enough to land shotgun) the way Phil Ivey stares at someone who just pushed all-in was. And I don't just mean when we were parked either, he was driving down the road looking straight at Chris. I quickly found and buckled my seat belt.
Then Crazy Cabbie started asking why we were in town and Chris told him it was for poker. Unfortunately Cabbie was a poker player too and started asking Chris questions. "If you have the ace of diamonds and the three of clubs, would you tend to fold it more or play it?" Chris said fold and Cabbie said "Wow, you are good. What if you have the ace of clubs and the three of diamonds. Really? You'd fold? You are good. What if you have the king of hearts and the four of clubs? Really? Man you're good." On and on it went, followed by some questions about our best tournament finish "Really? You've won multiple tournaments? How do you do that when it's just a total crapshoot once you're down to four players? Man you guys must be good."
The whole time Chris F. and I were torn between being creeped out, scared for our lives (since the road seemed to be an afterthought for Crazy Cabbie), and trying as hard as possible not to laugh. Fargis later suggested that we might later find ourselves on some candid camera show, but I noted the lack of waivers releasing our image for use on television and decided that the guy was just insane.
After we miraculously returned to the Bellagio in one piece I decided to kill time by playing a couple satellites. In both I jumped out to a huge lead early and then fizzled, taking 3rd and then 2nd, making me a few hundred dollars poorer and a few minutes late for dinner with Richard at the Stratosphere.
Reservations were at the Top of the World, an excellent restaurant 800 feet above the otherwise dumpy casino. The food was excellent, and the rotating floor gave us a panoramic view of Las Vegas. The 15 minutes of strip view alone made the ambience remarkable, and while I wouldn't put it at the top of my list of restaurants in Las Vegas it's definitely a very good one and well worth a visit.
After dinner Richard and I decided to go down to the poker room to goof around for a bit. The cash games were full when we got there but they a $50 single table tournament getting ready to start. The prize pool was only $400 to begin with, making the rake $10, but after we had all bought in they announced that we could more than double our stacks with a $10 dealer tip. That made the rake effectively 50% of the buy-in, which meant that even Phil Ivey likely couldn't average a long term profit if he tried to. We tried to explain to them that all optional rebuys should be announced before the tournament starts but they insisted it was standard practice. I'm waiting to see if the WSOP offers a surprise 15k chips for a $2,000 dealer toke in the main event this year. It is standard practice, right?
Normally that's the sort of thing that sets me off, just on general principle (that's happened to me before in much bigger tournaments) but we were just there for fun anyway, so I decided to just go with it and raise every hand. It turns out that's easy to do that when you only play one. That's right, I went out on the very first hand of a $40+$20 sit and go at the Stratosphere. That had to be the low point of my poker career.
You could say that I got unlucky and ran into aces held by a guy who flat-called the raise preflop, then check-raised the flop, then check-raised the turn. That sort of play is just too confusing for me. Or you could say that I raised 10-7 offsuit from early position, hit third pair, and went broke like a donkey to a guy who couldn’t possibly have less than top pair. Both would technically be true. In either case you would have to say that it was a $40+$20 satellite and my heart really wasn't in it. Richard's was though and he went on to win it, beating the lucky pocket aces guy heads up on the end.
After that a short handed $1/$2 NL game broke out and I hopped in. Again I was raising every hand, though in this case it was a much better strategy. I stole a hell of a lot of blinds and small pots, but then I flopped two flushes and a straight and got sucked out on each time. It was pretty amazing, as I had basically been living the poker dream (everyone folded every time I had nothing and put all of their chips in every time I had a monster) but the river robbed me every chance it got and turned it into the poker nightmare. Sessions like that are exactly why I hate poker so much. I can outplay people so badly that it's almost mind boggling and then get unlucky and lose anyway. No sane person would willingly and repeatedly subject themselves to that.
Fortunately in this case the stakes were irrelevant and the table was lively so it wasn’t so bad. Nobody but me had bought in for the full $300 and I had stolen so much money when not getting rivered that I was only down $250 even despite having the worst luck humanly possible over that short a time period. And more importantly the session actually bordered on fun before the spate of bad beats, as I was playing every hand (and playing them well post-flop) and ragging on a couple guys for being from Pittsburgh. Fun is a rarity for me in poker, though I would have a few more shots of it, without the bad beat chaser, on two other occasions in the coming two days.
After I'd had enough bad beats for the day I called it a night, cabbed back over to Bellagio, and went to bed.
Posted by themaroon at April 20, 2006 3:48 AM
Comments
Can you take some constructive criticism? If so read on, if not ignore this post. I started reading your blog when you first started and you would greatly entertain me. Tales of trash talking, poker triumphs, some bad beats, and even a bit of poker strategy would dominate your posts. Now all I read about is how bad tournaments are, how bad players are, and how you can't win. That's if you talk poker at all.
Where's the old Matt with the cocky bravado? I miss him. See if you can find him and try to start making some money off poker again and write about it. I'm sure I speak for many others as well. Worlds are colliding. Independent Matt is dying, I miss independent Matt.
Posted by: Les Murphy at April 20, 2006 10:52 AM
Posted by: Matt at April 20, 2006 2:24 PM
I agree with Les. Lately this blog seems like it should be linked to the Travel Channel's website. How about switching gears and trying high stakes NL for a week? That should produce some entertaining blog entries.
Posted by: Bill at April 21, 2006 8:28 AM
Again, HCGS. In this case it should probably just be SCGS, as the idea of playing a high stakes game just to have something to blog about is pretty damn Stupid.
Posted by: Matt at April 21, 2006 12:54 PM
I am glad you have found a way to marginalize any criticism that comes your way, Matt. I am not trying to "straighten you out", I am merely pointing out to you in a civil manner that your blog has sucked for the last few months and I am about done with it as are many others, if they haven't quit reading it already.
Good day.
Posted by: Les Murphy at April 21, 2006 1:57 PM
Yeah, jump in the 4000/8000 game so I have something interesting to read about.
Better yet, jump in a HU game with Andy Beal. Nothing short of that can possibly entertain me.
Posted by: Scott at April 21, 2006 2:25 PM
some posts on trash talking would be fun...
Posted by: Bill at April 21, 2006 2:55 PM
Lol. Any attempt to tell someone that you don't like their creation is inherently marginal. It needs no help from me. I have over a thousand readers, and the number is constantly growing. Obviously some people will stop reading. And HCGS will take its course.
If you don't enjoy my blog go read the 872 blogs out there where people post their $1/$2 NL results in 3rd grade English. Just don't waste time telling me about it, because I really don't care.
Posted by: Matt at April 21, 2006 3:32 PM
Matt, instead of giving you unsolicited advice on what you should be doing with your life and this blog, I'd like to instead inquire about your plans for the World Series. Specifically, do you anticipate entering the $5K 6-max NLHE event on July 20th and/or the $1,500 Limit Hold 'em Shootout on July 24th?
p.s. If you don't start playing high-stakes NLHE, I'm going to stop reading your blog. [grin]
Posted by: fun160 at April 22, 2006 11:32 AM
I'm hoping to play a hell of a lot of WSOP events this year. Not sure which ones exactly, but a lot. That or none at all seems to be the way to go.
Posted by: Matt at April 22, 2006 11:41 AM
Seems to me as if you should be playing every limit holdem event you can make it to.
Posted by: andy at April 22, 2006 3:22 PM
As long as we're telling Matt how to write his blog, I suggest following through on the "Nice Hand Donkey" post from March 21st: "I think some time in the near future I'll talk about losing. Maybe I'll give you my perspective on why it is so tough to deal with, what I do (other than whining to friends on instant messenger) to deal with it, and why I think that most of the advice that even seasoned veterans give you on the topic is bad."
Thanks in advance for such a post, Matt. I think this would make a great blog entry.
Posted by: fun160 at April 28, 2006 10:08 AM