First of all, I have to say that I got sick for the second time during my stay in Vegas, and this time I was really sick. For four days I couldn’t (and didn’t want to) leave my hotel room. In the meantime I’m on the road to recovery. – four fever blisters on my nose are the last reminders of this unpleasant period.
But now to the H.O.R.S.E event. We started with 100,000 in chips; the first level was 300/600, limit 600/1,200. In the beginning my game was not very exhilarating. I got up to 115,000, then it went down again to 90,000, then back again to over 100,000, so a real rollercoaster ride. My table was also not really what you wish for as a poker pro – a lot of good players, a rookie just once in awhile. Around the end of the day my game reached a low point and I lost every hand and had to end the day with 82,000. That didn’t really worry me that much, since the structure of this tournament is just fantastic. Without exaggeration, it has the best structure I have ever played.
As badly as it went for me on day 1, I started off the second day well. In just one and a half hours I was able to build my stack up again from 82,000 to 160,000. I played five hands and won all five. What’s more is that there was a lot going on at my table, since I was, after all, sitting with the ex-champion Doyle Brunson, and young star David Benyamine. The two of them had quite a few prop bets going. Most important is that they always have a look at the flop or, during seven card, the first cards of the opponent. David dozed off for awhile, which cost him about 16k, but also the highly concentrated Doyle let himself be distracted by Gus Hansen, which, at 14k, also cost him dearly. Anyway, these Las Vegas boys never get boring. David told me that Barry Greenstein once ignored a prop bet for 180k; that has to hurt.
Back to the game: following my excellent start, a pause set it and for two levels I took over a more or less stationary role at the table. I just didn’t get any hands and also never got into the position of being able to take a pot and so my pot shrank down to 110,000 again. Actually I don’t want to bore you here with bad beat stories, but I just have to tell you about one pot because none of the players at my table understood it, probably not even the winner himself. So, Dario Minieri had just come to our table. At the time we were playing Hold’em limit. Dario forgot the big blind of 3,000 and passed his cards. Now I raised the player at the cutoff to 6,000. About that, it has to be said that this player had proven himself in the no-limit Hold’em as a very aggressive player. The button re-raised to 9,000. I was in the small blind and got jacks in the hole and because of that made a re-raise to 12,000; both players called. The flop brings 2♠-7♣-9♠. I match and the cutoff calls. The button player makes a raise; I re-raise and again, both players call. Now at the turn comes an 8♠. I didn’t like this card at all and so a face off was out of the question for me. So I check and then both my opponents check. The river brings an ace, however that didn’t scare me and so I shifted to a value bet with the thought that if someone had a pair, I would get a payout, and if someone had a full nuts flush at the turn, they would raise my bet at the river and I would pass. Since both players were playing very aggressively, I didn’t really worry about the ace, since someone must have already have A7 – A9 or A2 in their hand. So after this move, an AK, AQ, AJ, AT could be 95 percent ruled out. Now I was called by the original raiser, who showed me A♠-4♥. During a 50k H.O.R.S.E event, how do you get to the river after the pre-flop and flop action with this hand? Every player at the table asked themselves that, while the winner of the hand didn’t come back to the table for five minutes so he could share his feeling of success with his friends and acquaintances. That was the only hand I got, if I started in razz or seven card stud with 3 low cards, the next two cards would be two face cards, guaranteed. And that’s how I just went down, helpless and without a life preserver – I didn’t even have one on board. I had to leave the tournament as the 97th player out of 147 – without money. Nonetheless it was a nice experience to have played in the tournament. Congratulations also to the winner, Scotty Nguyen.
Now I’m resting up for the main event, but I haven’t decided yet what day I’m going to play on. Of course I will report back to you about that as soon as possible.
Bye for now
Your Markus Golser
