WPT Invitational

This was a pretty awesome tournament. For those who don't know, it's a $200k freeroll with around 400 players who are either WPT winners or celebrities of some kind. Some of the bigger names there included: Paris Hilton, Vince Vaughn, Jason Alexander, Pete Sampras...So there were quite a few pretty big name celebrities.

The tournament was at the commerce and only started at 5 on Saturday. I got in late Friday night (after my plane got delayed several hours because of the weather), so Friday morning I headed over to play some cash games. The games were really good, although more super tight than crazy, contrary to what I'd heard. Anyways, after a fairly uninteresting session, I headed up to the pre-tournament cocktail party. I ran into Ryan Daut and Isaac Haxton (1st and 2nd at PCA this year) and hung out with them most of the time.

Anyways, I sat down at my first table to find out (not surprisingly for a freeroll) that the structure wasn't great: 10k starting chips with 30 minute blinds starting at 100/200. My first table had Linda Johnson (WPT commentator, writer for Cardplayer, etc.), one of the main characters from the show Deadwood, and a bunch of people I recognized. I was there one hand before they moved me but it was a pretty big hand.

Hand 1: 100/200, 10k
I raise KQo utg+1 to 600, only guy I don't recognize cold calls in mid position. Flop Jxxr, I bet 900 and he calls. Turn T, I check, he bets 2500, I push pretty fast and he folds after some thought.

I get moved to a new table that has a bunch of people I recognize, one of whom I later find out won the Bellagio Five Diamond tourney, another is Bill Smith, an actor in a bunch of pretty big movies. Anyways, I do a lot of bluffing at this table which was probably pretty dumb, and my stack moves around between 10 and 15k for a while until this hand:

Hand 2: 200/400/50
Billy Baxter opens to 1200 early, I cold call JJ, sb calls. Flop 887 or something, Baxter checks, I bet 2k, sb shoves 9k, I call and beat TT.

I get moved again to a table that folds a lot of their blinds, and my stack gets up to around 35k or so. Layne Flack is at my table and splashing around a lot.

Hand 3: 200/400/50
Flack raises to 1200 early and I cold call on the button with 7s6s. Flop comes QxJx5s. He bets 1600 with like 15-20k behind. I make it 4k expecting him to fold pretty often. He instacalls. Turn's a spade, he checks and I check behind. River spade, he splashes in a lot of chips, I shove, he calls and is pretty pissed when I show. When I get back to the hotel that night, he happens to be checking out and jokingly berates me for a little bit.

I go extremely card dead for a long time and keep getting played back at and get down as low as 30k with the blinds getting big. I shove at 1500/3000/400 with AJ and run into kings but manage to suck out. Thanks to that, I finish the day with 70k. One other notable hand. Vanessa Rousso (a member of Team Pokerstars) gets moved to my table and ran one of the sicker bluffs I've ever seen. I don't remember exact details, but in a pot with 4 limpers (maybe at 800/1600?), she bets 5k on a J74r board. Loose but not aggressive at all guy makes it 15k and after tanking a long time, she shoves for 12k more. He then thinks forever, and finally folds, she shows 42s. From the look on his face he definitely folded something pretty big.

Anyways, I'm off to bed but I'll put up a post for day 2 sometime soon.

Steve