So PCA was awesome. After that, I went back to LA for a few days. On Tuesday, I flew into AC for the WPT at the Borgata.

First I played the $2,500. We started with 12k chips. I lost a ~20k pot when someone turned a higher set against my flopped set. I rebuilt to 16k according to some text messages I sent, but I can’t remember how I busted after that. Not important – didn’t get far.

In the 5k we started with 15k chips. Again, according to text messages, I dropped down to 8.5k, then rebuilt to 30ish. The final hand involved me getting AQo all-in against Bill Edler’s T9ss on the ATxx turn that had 2 spades. He’s Bill Edler, so obv. he hit.

But no one cares about that. People only want to read about folphins and main events, that’s right, folphins.

But anyway, let’s get to the main event. As always, Borgata has the best structures for 10k events. We start with 30,000 chips, and the structure includes every level known to man, including the fabled 325/650 level, which is followed by the 350/700 level. They add those in because normally the jump from 300/600 to 400/800 is too big. The 375/750 level might be a bit too much, but I don’t mind it.

Ok, not really, but it’s a REALLY good structure.

So I’m a donk, and I bluffed off ~7k chips pretty early on. After another bluff, I was down to 17k about 3 levels in. I don’t think either play was bad, but sometimes you get called.

I remember listening to an interview with Mike Matusow. He was asked about a play he made where he bluffed and he got caught. He said something to the effect of, “It was a terrible bluff. I thought it might have worked, but you need to be 100% sure that your bluff is gonna work before you make it.” I couldn’t disagree more. If you never get caught bluffing, you aren’t bluffing enough.

I caught a couple of fortunate hands and rebuilt back to 30k, and then 60k, but I really started to accumulate chips later on. Everyone knows I bluff, but there are some people out there that don’t know that I actually make hands too. I won 3 big pots where I just value bet the bajeezus out of 1 pair.

In one hand, I raised T9o preflop and got one caller. The flop came 962, so I bet, and he called. The turn was a queen, which is very unlikely to hit his range, so I didn’t have to worry about it much. I bet again, and got called. The river was a 4, and I bet once again, and got called. The river bet was somewhere around 10k, even though the biggest blind level on day 1 was 250/500.

Two other hands involved AQ, flopping an ace in one, and turning a queen in the other, and getting 4 streets of value (including preflop) from both.

I ended the day 4th in chips with 149,000.

Today start off terrible as well. Actually, I did have one suckout early on against a short stack. I got 88 in against K9 against some random donk after the flop came 993. Ship the 8. He was way too short for me to not get the money in, and who calls a raise with K9o anyway? I think my high point of the early day was 188k. Then things turned to shit.

I found a wonderful spot for my signature play. If you read this blog regularly, you should know what my signature play is: running kings into aces. At 300/600, I lost a 150k pot with KK all-in pre vs AA. There are certainly times when you can get away from KK, but this was not one of them given how the action went, and the play up to that point.

There was another doozy after that one. I raised 96 of hearts from early position, and Arthur (loose, but good cash game player) called from the small blind, and the big blind reraise to 7k. I called because we both had deep stacks, and I knew Arthur would come along to increase my implied odds without much of a downside.

The flop came A87, all hearts. Not only did I flop a flush, but I had TWO outs for a straight flush redraw. The big blind led for 18,000, and I called. Arthur moved all-in for 28,000 (only 10k more), and we both called. I would have reraised, but the raise was not big enough. Borgata requires a full raise to allow a reraise.

The turn was ugly, the queen of hearts. The preflop reraisor asked me how much I had (he was the only one at the table that had a stack close to mine since he had just doubled up his aces through my kings). He started hemming and hawing and playing with his chips, but then checked. I checked behind. The river was a 7, and it went check, check again.

Arthur made some comment like, “wow, I’m actually going to win this hand?”. He flipped over 87 for the rivered boat. The preflop reraisor mucked AK of diamonds face up, and I pushed my 96 of hearts face down into the muck. There was almost 120k in that pot, and my opponents had 4 outs between the two of them combined.

I hit a low point of 50k today, but I didn’t let that stop me. I came back from a break during 500/1000 and raised 87 on the button the very first hand. There was no small blind (he had been knocked out during the last hand before the break), and the big blind was a very weak player. The big blind called. Flop 876. Check, Bet call. Turn: 7. Check, bet, call. The river was a 5, and all the sudden the blind moved all-in. I called, and my full house bested his T4. The guy flopped a double gutter with T4 (which is very hard to do by the way), and just check called decent sized bets on the flop and turn like it was nothing. Oh well, ship the boat.

I grinded from 100k to 200k over a few hours before hitting the mother load. Michael Gracz got moved to my table. The very first hand he was here, I raised from early position, and Arthur reraised me from a blind. I hemmed and hawed, and folded.
I raise the next hand to 6500 (blinds were 1200/2400), and this time Mike reraised me from one of the blinds to 22k. Mike probably thought I was trying to run over the table and got frustrated that Arthur played back at me since the previous hand was all he had seen. I thought my implied odds were huge, so I called with my 74 of clubs.

Jackpot: the flop came Q44 with two hearts. Michael led out 27k, and I wanted to get paid off, so I raised to 65k, expecting a reraise to be very likely. Mike hemmed and hawed, which actually got me a little worried that he had QQ, but he shipped it in, and I called, and his aces were no good. Send the 400k pot.

I ran into a couple of minor unfortunate situations after that. For example, someone in EP raised to 5k, exitonly4 called, and then I called. One of the blinds shoved for 22k, and it folded to me, so I was getting the right price to call with QJo. I called, and the blind flipped over AA. QJ no good.

I ended the day with 334k. I’m starting to think I wrote the amount down because Cardplayer.com and Worldpokertour.com both have me at 377. Oh well. The chips are bagged, so the counts on the bags don’t make a real difference. Maybe next time I’ll just ask what the chipleader has, and write an amount 1.5 times as big as that.

-Time for sleep. GL to me! Hopefully I can ship a WPT this week.