Rincon WSOP Circuit Event

On Monday night I drove down to Harrah’s Rincon Casino in San Diego to play in the WSOP Circuit event there.  After I got checked in I went down to the tournament room to see my friend, Beth Fischman, who I hadn’t seen in forever.  Since I stopped playing WPT events I just don’t get to see my poker friends as much as I’d like.  We were hanging out catching up while waiting for her boyfriend, Jason, to finish the super satellite he was playing before we went to dinner.  Jason was at the final table and 5 seats to the main event were up for grabs. 

When they were down to 6 players Jason got knocked down to 800 in chips so it looked like he was going to get 6th and bubble the seat.  Beth and I got up to watch his demise when this hand came up:

The blinds are 800-1600 and the antes are 200.  After Jaon antes he only has 600 left so he goes in blind, as he should.  He doesn’t want to look at his hand so he shows it to me instead and he has K-8 off.  The guy next to him who is the chip leader calls 1600, another guy calls, the small blind calls and the big blind checks.  Now normally in this situation where there the same reward for 5th through 1st everyone will just check the hand down to give the best chance of Jason getting knocked out.  That is the proper strategy here. 

So the flop comes K43, two hearts, a good flop for Jason.  But the small blind moves in for about 40K which is a really bad sign since he is not supposed to move in without a huge hand, certainly a hand that beats Jaon’s Kings with and 8 kicker.  The big blind folds and the guy to Jason’s left calls the all in for half of his chips.  Now Jason can’t possibly have the best hand, right?

Wrong! The guy who moved in has a Jack-high flush draw, no pair and the guy who called had AJ off, no pair!  That was so totally impossible I couldn’t believe it.  Neither guy had to risk a chip in this spot.  They could just check it down and try to knock Jason out.  The guy who called had enough chips to walk away from the table and get his seat, which would have been a fine strategy at that point.  And the guy in the small blind had no reason to risk 40K, which should have been enough to get a seat as well, on Jack high. 

The turn came a blank, the river came a blank and Jason won the pot.  The guy with Jack high went broke to the guy with Ace high and Jason got the seat.  That should have been impossible but I saw it with my own eyes.  I asked the two guys in the pot with Jason if they had just attended Phil Gordon’s seminar but they didn’t get my joke.  It was pretty amazing to see.

The next morning I got up early for an autograph session with Phil Gordon, Robert Williamson, Scotty Nguyen and Chris Ferguson.  It was really fun meeting all the people down there.  And the Harrah’s staff was awesome.  Really nice people.

I started playing after that and drew a pretty good table.  I was pretty card dead but even so was holding steady around 20K when average chips was like 14K when this hand came up:

The guy in the one seat, who has a lot of chips, raises to 1100.  I look down at KK in the two seat and reraise him to 3500 or so and he calls.The board comes AA3 and he bets out 2K into me. I flat call.  The turn is a 9 and at this point I feel something bad.  I feel he has me buried so I am done with the hand.  He checks and I check.  The river is a 3 and he checks again and I check.  He turns over the four aces and I fold and the kid starts complaining about the hand moaning that I didn’t value bet the river.  That would have been a weird value bet since I had the worst hand!

Anyway, he went on what my friend, Hollywood Dave, calls winner’s tilt which is when someone wins a hand and starts getting pissed at you.  He was still talking and moaning about the hand 15 minutes later and I had kept totally quiet up till that point.  When he turned his hand over I had just rapped the table and said nice hand.  When he was complaing I said nothing.  But finally after 15 minutes of him bringing it up off and on I said, “Hey you won a big pot.  Isn’t that enough?”  That seemed to get him to be quiet about it.

Shortly after that I got moved to a new table and only had like 10K.  I was card dead as hell at my new table which really sucks when you are short stacked.  Then this hand came up:

Another short tacked player moves in who has 500 less in chips than me.  I look down at AQ and am pretty sure I have the best hand so I call.  Everyone else folds and he says, “uh oh”  That is always a bad sign cause it means they are going to suck out   He turns over A7 of spades and I am in really good shape.  The flop comes J9X one spade, a good flop for me.  But then a spade came on the turn and river and he got almost all my chips.  I could not recover from being down to 500 and was out on the next hand.  Oh well.  I sure got my money in good which is what matters to me anyway.  I only get pissed when I blow myself up in a tournament.

That all happened really late in the tournament and afterwards I had dinner with Max Pescatori who I haven’t really gotten a chance to hang out with in a long long time.  It was really really nice to catch up with him and we had a really nice dinner.

The next morning I did a morning radio show called the Mikey show before heading back to LA.  The crew there was really fun and I had a great time.  I will definitely go hang out with them again the next time I am in San Diego.  That was one of the more fun radio shows I have done.

As soon as I was done I drove home to LA, took a nap, then made tacos for the kids.  After dinner we all settled in and watched the boys perform on American Idol.  Lucy and Leo love watching that show with us and we love hanging out and watching with them.

All in all it was a pretty fun week.