WSOP Diary: Day Seven

On Wednesday, I woke up at 7:30 AM, after four and a half hours of sleep. That was just barely enough for me to feel rested enough to play in the $1500 Seven-Card Stud High-Low Split event.

I had two $500 lammers in my pocket from satellites, so I put in just $500 cash to enter. Once again, Debbie bought a quarter of my action.

I got off to a better start than I had in the $2K event the previous Saturday. I was able to get my fare share of chips as time went along, maintaining an average-sized stack until well into the sixth round. The only player I knew at my first table was Max Stern, although the other players had clearly been around the block a few times.

Our table broke in the fifth round. Not long after that I blew off some chips by taking off a card on fourth street and catching just enough to keep me calling to the river, leaving me with about $3K in chips. That's where I stood at the dinner break. Seated to my right was Dutch Boyd, who had made the final table of the $10K main event last year, now playing a very short stack. (He had also sat to my right for a while in the middle stages of Saturday's event, also short stacked, and I had gotten to like him and respect his short-stack play.)

After dinner, the antes and betting limits started getting really big, so I was compelled to shift gears into survival mode – which entails some patience and some gambling. Dutch went out fairly quickly. I survived for another hour, well into the eighth round. Sooner or later, a short stack either doubles up a couple of times into safety or it goes broke. I went broke, when my pair of tens was outrun by Karina Jett's bring-in defense that paired a jack on fourth street. 37th place, out of a field of 213. (Karina put my chips to reasonably good use, making it into the money.)

Once again I walked away feeling good about my performance. I had visions of being able to reach the final table both times; and it's pretty clear to me that I could have reached either one of them, had some breaks broken my way. I belong in that field of players.

After phone calls with Debbie and with Lynn, it was time for me to take a break from poker. Tired though I was, though, I felt it was just too early to go to bed. Instead, I walked straight into the Vegas Zone.

I played some craps for a while at the Four Queens. Unfortunately none of the shooters could make a point to save their lives, and I dropped more cash than I would have liked. I sat at the bar in the Golden Nugget for a while, playing video poker for the free drinks. It certainly wasn't a full-pay machine, but I was lucky enough to spike four deuces playing Deuces Wild, so that made up for my craps loss. I walked up and down Fremont Street. I paid $8.75 each for two beers in The Girls of Glitter Gulch.

At 2:00 AM I took a walk through the Horseshoe, thinking that I should be going to bed. The stud/8 game was going, though, shorthanded. If there's one thing I love more than a stud/8 game, it's a short stud/8 game. I pulled out some money and announced that I was drunk, and that the other guys would eat me alive.

I actually went down $2000 fairly quickly, but I was playing a good game. It got shorter, and I began to get some of my own back. For about forty-five minutes I played head-up with a player named Kim, and scooped enough pots to get almost even.

Then the pot-limit Omaha game broke, and some of the players sat down. Kim and I took shameless advantage of them for a little while, before they began to ask to turn the game into a mixed game, half stud/8, half Omaha/8. I suck at Omaha, but an opportunity is an opportunity.

For a while I blew everything I would win in the stud/8 rounds in the succeeding Omaha. All my good starters got clobbered – my usual story at Omaha. Eventually, I scooped some nice pots, and got $1500 ahead in the game. I picked up at 7:15 AM, and returned to my room to get some sleep.