After much anticipation, I finally made my way down to the 2009 World Series of Poker last week from Thursday, June 18th to Monday, June 22nd, as I have done for the past four years or so as a way of celebrating my birthday. I’ve been lucky enough to attend the WSOP during the huge expansion years where the attendance has jumped up to unprecedented heights, and although last year was a bit of a let down overall, the feeling around the 2009 Series was that it could once again put the WSOP back on an upward swing in terms of attendance and prestige.
I once again elected to stay at the Rio Hotel, the current home of the WSOP, as it is easily the best way to fully enjoy the event, as you can just walk downstairs from your room at any time and check out an event, play in a satellite or two, and just watch the masters at work.
After a perfect Italian meal at Café Martorano inside the Rio, I headed down to the main WSOP floor to check out the satellite action. I don’t know exactly why I was looking to play in a satellite event since I had zero plans or intentions to actually participate in a large buy-in tournament, but I guess the single tournament format of the satellites appealed to the online SnG player inside me.
I ended up buying into a $125 satellite, with 1st place (all satellites were winner take all) awarding $120 in cash and $1,000 in tournament chips, which can be applied to a normal WSOP tournament. I wasn’t surprised when I sat down at my table and noticed that most of the other players were of the standard tourist fair with limited poker knowledge and almost no single-table tournament experience.
I decided to play the satellite much like I would any of my usual online SnG tournaments, sticking to a fairly tight strategy to begin with and then amping up the aggression and “steal” mentality as the blinds went up. Well, as it turned out I didn’t need to put too much effort into my strategy, as on the third hand I received pocket 8’s in early position and decided to just limp to try and flop big. Three other players limp in behind me and the flop came K-J-8 with two diamonds. I made a pot sized bet and was immediately raised by the player to my left, which was then followed by a call by the player to his right. Figuring I was up against A-K and maybe a diamond draw, I pushed all-in and to my surprise was called by both players.
My first opponent turned over K-J for two pair and the other turned over A-6 of diamonds for the flush draw. With two cards to come I had to dodge a king, jack and any diamond and was lucky enough do so, eliminating both players and tripling myself up very early in the match. From that point on I was able to pick off a number of pots, as simple tournament strategies including continuation bets and betting in position were able to work very effectively against my relatively weak table. Considering that there was never a check-raise throughout that entire satellite, it became very obvious that everyone was going to check a weak hand and fold to a bet.
Overall I ended chipping my stack up comfortably by stealing pots and blinds and didn’t have to show my hand more than twice throughout the entire game, just when I tripled up and then again when I knocked out the 8th player from the table with my pocket 4’s against his Q-10. Once it got to heads up the other player and I decided to make a deal, which ended up resulting in us each taking home $60 in cash and a single $500 tournament chip, which I then quickly sold for $400 on my way out the door.
One satellite down, and I have more than $300 in profit to show for my efforts. Not a bad way to start my WSOP weekend!
