Omaha cash! HORSE crash!

WSOP blog

by ‘Hollywood’ Dave Stann

Well its been one helluva rollercoaster this week for me at the Rio. After coming just shy of the money in last week’s $1500 Omaha hi-lo, I finally popped my WSOP cash cherry by finishing 26th in the $2000 Omaha hi-lo! Which of course was followed by a spectacular bustout in record time in the $3000 HORSE tourney….ah, poker gods, why are you so fickle?

First to the good stuff: Omaha, baby! Just like in the first tourney i played, i quickly established myself as the chip leader at my table on day 1 and remained there for a good 6 hours, just cleaning up on the inexperience of most of the competition. To be honest, I was really surprised by how weak the field here was; most of the 5/10 games online are harder to crack than this WSOP field of Omaha hopefuls.

But of course in typical fashion i ended up in serious trouble at the end of day 1, plummeting to 2100 chips by the last level of the day after spending the whole day flirting with the 10k mark. I basically doubled up every single shortstack at the table in one amazing hand after another where no matter how dominating a hand i got all their money in against, they always managed to draw out. But i held on and, with barely 20 minute to go in day 1, finally had a few solid hands actually hold up (imagine that) and rode the express elevator up to 19k in chips (chip average under 13k) to end the day.

Day 2 was even more of a whirlwind. Barely an hour into the action, i had taken my 19k stack and upgraded all the way to over 48k!! it was truly amazing, and despite obviously going on a rush of strong cards, most of the $$$ came not from having such great hands, but the incredibly soft field that insisted on paying me off with severely marginal holdings nearly every time. My day 2 table was even looser than day 1…pretty sick. But of course playing such loose players meant that eventually they’d draw out and draw out they did, knocking me back to 30k and then i went card dead for the rest of the day….

Even though my 30k was pretty far ahead of chip average, without playing many hands i didn’t accumulate much the rest of the day & eventually the field caught up and passed me. And of course the loose donkeys who had so generously built me up finally busted (for the most part) and were replaced by better and better players. By the time the money bubble burst, there was hardly a loose chip on the table & i was stuck nursing the same 19k stack i had come into the day with.

I gotta say, despite not really being able to take much credit for getting paid off so many times earlier in the tourney, i’m really proud of how i played my short stack late in day 2. For about 4 hours i somehow managed to squeeze every last drop of +EV out of my ridiculously short stack, refusing to bust and picking the perfect spots to jump in and stay alive amidst the very solid remaining players in the field. I used every trick in the book to maneuver myself from 60th place all the way down to 3 tables, busting in 26th only after i got my money all in 2 spectacular hands in a row where i was such a sick monster favorite to scoop & ended up getting quartered/scooped myself. I’m not one for bad beat stories but check out these last 2 hands & you’ll know why i was so disappointed to go out in such a dirty fashion after playing so well for so long:

Riding 21k in 2k/4k blinds, i raised an UTG caller to 8k with AA35 double suited (hearts/diamonds) and got a late position caller & the original UTG player as well. 3 way action saw the flop: 26Q, 2 diamonds. UTG player bet, i raised, late position folded, and UTG reraised so i could go all in heads up. He flips up A346 rainbow, so my aces are already gin & he’ll need to a pull a miracle here just to avoid getting quartered for half the low — not to mention my sick AA high with nut flush draw and gutshot straight draw. Well of course he rivers the miracle 5 to give him the straight, no diamonds hit for my flush, and suddenly I’M the one quartered all the fuck the way down to 9k.

The next hand is even sicker. Now i’m UTG and i pop it up to 8k with AKQ4, and get all in vs the BB (the former UTG caller who just quartered me). He flips up A58K an i flop an incredible 944!!!! it looks like a virtual lock for a double up until he goes perfect perfect 3-4 to make the wheel with his A5, cracking my flopped set and sending me to the rail. A really, really dirty end to an incredible battle. And did i mention the dude who sucked out in both hands went on to win the bracelet?!? Nice guy, good player, but god damn, man!

So…..i took a day off, did some yoga, and got ready for the $3000 HORSE yesterday. Well, lets just say that I didn’t think it was even POSSIBLE to bust out of a limit event before the first break…but now i know differently. Remember all the big hands i told you i got paid off on in Omaha? Well, i swear to god i had no less than a dozen big hands in HORSE & i lost EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. Not only that, but in the split games i didn’t even pull off one chop — got scooped every time. I’m talking aces and kings cracked in holdem, strong highs/lows in Omaha cracked by nut/nut, 6 lows in razz cracked by the wheel, top pairs/flushes/straights in stud cracked by boats & bigger flushes/straights….the list goes on and on. In fact, in the hour and 48 minutes it took to play my 6k stack down to 0, i only won a single pot for about 2 bets. Never won another pot the whole time, not even the blinds. Absolutely horrifying.

So, the lesson this week is: poker giveth, and poker taketh away. Needless to say, my next event isn’t til Saturday’s $1500 so i got the hell outta vegas for 48 hours. Yup, that’s right, i came all the way back to LA just to sit in this coffeeshop and write this blog. Then i’m gonna turn around tomorrow and go back. Gotta stay spontaneous, baby!

Alright bitches, i’m out –

-hd.

badboy of blackjack online!

www.HollywoodDave.com