Vacation is Well Underway

For those who didn’t see Calmer’s comment yesterday, I didn’t last long at all on Day 2 of the WPT. My table was fairly tough, not that it mattered. There were a few, young internet players who seemed pretty tough, one or two middle-aged guys who were probably the soft spots but weren’t particularly bad, a dealer in one of the local card rooms who played well enough, then Men “The Master” Nguyen and Erick Lindgren.

Blinds started off at 500/1000/100- can’t say enough about the great structure tournament director Matt Savage put together! My 17K chips gave me the perfect stack for shoving over raises. The first time I was in the BB, action folded to one of the internet guys in the SB. I felt like he was probably going to raise any two, because most of those guys just cannot bring themselves to open fold. He made it 2400, which unfortunately told me he was probably good, capable of choosing just the right bet size. But I had 44, moved all in, and got him to fold quickly. “I’m gonna pump your stack up 2400 chips at a time,” he told me, with a hint of disdain in his voice.

“Feel free,” I responded.

My second BB, one of the weaker players opened to 2100. I hate calling raises with such a short stack, but with Q9 I felt like I had to. I check-folded to 4500 on a ragged flop.

On my third BB, action folded to the SB again. He opened to 2400 again. It’s hard to say what his range is here, given that I shoved on him last time. I could see him open shoving some hands that he didn’t want to raise-fold or raise-call, stuff like QJ and suited connectors. But I doubt he was open folding anything, so he probably had a lot of bluffs in his range anyway. I shoved with K3o, but he had AA and that was that.

I’d only wasted half an hour on the tournament that morning, so Emily and I took off for Santa Cruz, where we camped by the beach. There are worse consolation prizes!