Stargazing and Playing Passively

The OM Rounders crew is back from the Borgata and overall it was a great trip. Unfortunately, I was one of the few who came home stuck.

First the highlights:
We drove up on Tuesday morning in the minivan which allowed thebmorekid, soooted42 and quedog to watch Rounders on the way up. Monseiur Frank was kind enough to ride shotgon, so I wasn't completely chauffeuring everyone around. Interestingly enough, the trip from Baltimore to AC is just long enough to watch the movie.

When we arrived we went to check in and Bill Gazes (who had busted out the day before) was checking out right next to us. Then, as we headed up to the rooms, thebmorekid decided to hang back. The main event was on day 3 and was just about to get going, so he saw a number of pros (I'm sure he'll say who on his blog). When I joined him I saw Lee Watkinson, Gavin Griffin, and a few others.

We all registered for the $300 event on Tuesday and then went up and watched the pros get started. They were down to about 85 players, which made stargazing pretty easy. The way I relate it to non-poker players is that it was like going to your favorite sports team's fantasy camp and seeing not only the big names that everyone knows, but also a bunch of other people that you have followed at one time or another.

Continuing with the highlights, I have to give a big congratulations to quedog for making the top 25 in the $300 event. We all had a tiny piece of the action and I think that paid for my lunch on Wednesday. Nice job quedog and welcome to the Card Player database club.

We also had another friend of ours who chopped in the 20k guarantee on Wednesday. On top of that, thebmorekid, soooted42, and quedog all had winning trips overall. Which then leads me to the lowlights of the trip.

I played pretty well in the $300 event. I slowly built my chips up from the $8k starting stack to about $13k before the following hand was played out. I was on the button and picked up AJ. I had been playing very tight early on and my raises had gotten a lot of respect. With the blinds at 200-400 with 25 antes, there were a couple of limpers when the action got around to me. I made it $2k and everyone folded around to a guy two to my right. He hadn't been doing anything special and he decides to push for another 7k or so. I went into the tank for a while trying to figure out if he'd play AQ or JJ that weakly pre-flop. I had already ruled out the other hands that would have me dominated (AA, KK, QQ, and AK). I finally decided that he had a small pair (at least a pair below JJ) and that we were racing. I thought it was a good opportunity to pick up some chips, so I called. He turned over 55. I felt good when the flop brought an ace, but he hit runner runner to make a straight and I was down to about 4k in chips. The blinds went up shortly after that, and when I lost another race, I was sent to the rail with about 400 players still alive in the tourney. I'm actually very happy with how I played in the tourney and feel like if I continue to play that well, another good cash is out there somewhere in the future.

Then the real carnage began. I went downstairs (the tournament was in the event center) and sat down at a 1-2NL game with $200. I don't remember a lot of big hands, but by the time I got up at 2 am, I was stuck quite a bit. I came back on Wednesday morning and played some more 1-2, losing another $230 or so. I'll make another post about the cash games later. I'm waiting on some feedback from thebmorekid and mulling it all over in my head before I put anything in writing.

All-in-all it was a great trip with some great people. We saw tons of pros, including a drunken 1-2NL game with Sebok, Gavin Smith, Layne Flack and some others. Congrats to Gavin Griffin for taking down the tourney and becoming the first person ever to pick up a WPT title, an EPT title, and a WSOP bracelet!