Bellagio Bust

Unlike June's wsop weekend, this month's poker experiment went horribly wrong. First off, our flight into Vegas was delayed, so I wasn't able to play the Friday Bellagio tourney. No sweat, that just meant more time to get to know my new friends Drew and Suzie. Of course I'd enter the Saturday tourney. Still a $1,000 buyin, still filled with strong players.

After 2 hours of light sleep, I got into the Bellagio around 11:30 on Saturday. Just in time to sign up for a sit-and-go single table satellite tourney. All for the low low price of $240, I could win one of two entries into the $1,000 event, awarded to the 2 finalists. If I can outlast nearly 2,800 World Series of Poker players, I could certainly beat 8 or 9 guys, right? Nope. I sucked, and busted out in 7th place. Pfffffft. I'd be paying full price for the big tournament.

So 2pm comes around and I sit down for the main event. About 50 entrants total. Once again I didn't stick to my "tight is right" strategy for the first 2 rounds, and things went badly. Within the first 10 hands, I picked up AQ in early position and raised it up. One callers, an overly-aggressive postflop player. Flop comes Queen high and I get excited. Here's the plan: I check, he bets and I come over the top just enough to squeeze a reluctant call out of him. Then of course I bring down the hammer on the turn, unless it's a King.

I check, and as planned, Mr. Aggro bets about half the pot. There's now about $700 in the middle of the table, and instead of sticking a callable raise into the pot (a $400 bet for instance), my hand inexplicably throws in $600 in chips. It's now obvious that I'm holding AA, KK, AQ or QQ. Mr. Aggro thinks for 10 seconds and mucks. I shoulda made more with this hand, but maybe panicked at the last second. Uncool.

Anyway, that was the only notable hand of the tourney, except for my final hand. After mucking 1/2 hour's worth of crap hands preflop, I found QQ from early position. I raise 4 times the big blind and a big stack reraises from the button. Bad news. He knows I'm playing tight and raising out of position. He can only have AA, KK, QQ (highly unlikely) or maybe AK suited (also unlikely). But I'm feeling unloved by the poker gods and convince myself that I need this pot to be a contender. Besides, this guy has played about 12 hands in a row. He can't always have good cards, right? Anyway, I push all-in, he insta-calls, and flips over KK. Bam. My first Bellagio event and I'm out within an hour. Someday I'll be good enough to fold the QQ preflop. But not on this day.

More on the big weekend to come...