Articles / John Tabatabai / 24 October 2011 /

Hello again! I forgot to mention in my previous post that I actually played in the Omaha event but it turned out to be a really bad idea. I had been drinking all night so turned up about two hours late then got my chips in with top set against the flopped straight of Johnny Chan, so I was there for literally half an hour, thankfully I lasted a little longer in the Main Event.

My starting table was pretty good with four or five weak players to my right and the tougher players to my left, including Yevgeniy Timoshenko to my immediate left. This created a weird dynamic because you want weak players to your left and strong to your right but this was the complete opposite, but I was just happy to have weak players there because some tables did not have any. The way the table was set up meant I had to play a lot out of the blinds and play out of position against the weaker players.

A fun hand came up early on (blinds 50/100 with 30,000 stacks) when the cutoff opened to 250 and I made it 600 on the button with Kh3h and the cutoff called. The flop is 8c-4c-2d, he checks, I bet 550 and he quickly calls without thinking about it. The turn is the As and again the guy checks, I bet 1,000 and he immediately check-raises me to 2,200. After thinking about it his line made no sense so I called with king-high and a gutshot. The river is the Ad and he quickly bets 1,850, which really confused me. I expected him to bet 4,200 and I'd probably never call but this bet was really small. After three or four minutes I still didn't believe him and called and he goes "I've got king-high!" and turns over king-jack off for a complete bluff but it beats my hand. I'm thinking FFS I've just butchered 7,000 but I think I did everything right except three-betting pre with Kh3h!

When Will It End?

I then proceeded to run queens into a set on a 8-5-4 board then nines into jacks on a 7-2-3 board and at the end of the first level I was down to 16,000, not a great start. At the start of level two I begin to play more pots by three-betting the weaker players even more suddenly I'm on 40,000. Then at the dinner break I get to 60,000 and things are looking really good but when we get back they break our table, which wasn't the worst thing that could have happened but it soon turned into that.

After a couple of orbits a long-haired guy I thought was a donk (no a confirmed donk) opened from the hijack to 1,500 with blinds at 200/400. I am on the button so I am obviously raising and I three-bet to 3,200 with Qs5s, he calls and the flop comes Js-Tc-6s. He checks, I bet 1,400 and he calls. The turn is the As and I think "at last I have finally hit my hand, let's stack this monkey!" He checks, I bet 4,200 because there are so many hands he could call with and after less than 30 seconds he moves all of his chips forward with both hands and goes all in! I bet 4,200 and he shoves for like 45,000 when the average stack was 38-40,000! He did look super relaxed but after about four minutes he picked up one card in his left hand, one in his right and picked them up to look at them in such a way the dealer saw them and the guy to his left did and I almost saw! I thought that he would never be like that with the nuts, plus he had long hair! I call and he jumps in the air shouting "Nuts! Nuts! Nuts!" and turns over KsXs, which was incredibly tilting.

Chilling in Cannes

I spent the next few days lounging around, went out a few times and met some fun people. One of the nights five of us went to this small club in town and ordered a lot of drinks, like three bottles of champagne and some vodka and out table was that big they turned it into a dance floor and all these girls were dancing away on it. Then the staff came around with lighter fluid and set fire to it so we were sweating and I asked if they could turn the air con on but instead this guy came out with a pressurised nitrogen tank and blasted everything, so for a few seconds you were freezing then boiling again! This tank was so powerful that it actually blew two of the girls off their feet! It was a fun night.

I also had a lot of fun betting on a game I have no idea about that was played by some old men! A few of us saw them playing this game where they threw a larger ball in the air and tried to get it close to smaller ball, or at least that's what we though they were doing. We decided to give them names, one who was very analytical was called "Timex", one with ridiculous shorts was named the very imaginative "Shorts," a guy with patches became "Patch Adams" and one who kept throwing far too hard was affectionately known as "Super Aggressive." We didn't know the rules but we gambled for about four hours on the person to get closest to the smaller ball, which is probably not what the game was about, but it was fun anyway.

So that was basically my WSOPE. I'll leave the story about shopping roulette and the €1,000 shoes until my next blog post, which should hopefully be published by the end of the week.

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