Trapped in the poker world

Yep, I admit it. I’ve gotten sucked into the whole poker craze. I think it was Brad Wilson’s fault, originally.

Only two small problems:

1. I tend to prefer tournaments more than cash games, even though cash games are generally much more profitable.

2. When I get into a new hobby, I really get into it. Not in a gamblaholic sense, but in a “I need to keep doing this so I can get as good as I can possibly be at this thing” sense.

So I of course flew to Vegas last weekend to play in a few tournaments.  Not the WSOP events (although I’m thinking about going back to play in one of the preliminary NLHE tournaments), but just some of the regular tournaments. Here’s a quick story from one of them:

First tourney I played in after arriving, at Binion’s, $150 buy-in (2000 chips) + $50 add-on (1500 chips).  108 players.

After about 5 hours of playing, I make it to the final table of 10.  I put out two players in the first 3 hands, who were short stacked enough to have to go all in on marginal hands, and I’m now on the big stack.  2:1 chip advantage over the next biggest stack, over 100K in chips.

We whittle down to four folks.  I’m still on the big stack, but not by much - one other guy is pretty close.  Blinds are 6,000/12,000, antes 1,000.

Guy to my right raises to 25,000 under the gun, with about 50,000 more chips in his stack.  Based on past behavior, this is a pretty weak raise from this guy, and it looks like he’s trying to steal the blinds.  I look down and see A-J suited.  Pretty strong hand for 4-handed, I’m thinking.  So I lay an 80,000 raise on the guy, which would put him all-in to call.

Blinds both fold…and this guy sits there thinking about it for a while.  The longer he thinks, the more I want him to call. :-)  He finally calls, and turns over K-6 unsuited.  I’m thinking a) wow, can’t believe you called with that, and b) woo-hoo.

Darned if he didn’t suck out on me with a 6.

So anyway, I was crippled after that, given the size of the blinds, and ended up going out 4th.  Well into the money, but not nearly as much as 1st place.  Sigh…