After an amazing and emotional summer, I got to come back to my old stomping ground at The Borgata for their annual WPT Open. I always love coming back to The Borgata. This is one casino that knows how to treat and listen to their players. It was obvious that they'd heard our pleas, as this most recent Borgata schedule was jam packed with tons of amazing re-entry style tournaments. These tournaments are so nice because they allow for a bit more wiggle room to play more creatively and aggressively in the early stages of the tournament/s.
As per usual, I found a comfy rental home not too far from the casino, unpacked my life, set up Boozer's(the cat) kitty bed, and rested up for the big series. I came into event #1 feeling great and ready to go! The Borgata pulled in a record-breaking field of just over 3,700 entries in their opening $500 re-entry $1,000,000 guaranteed prize event. I built up a sick stack on my second bullet in the event, running my initial 25-30k starting stack up to over 300k by night's end. I came into day 2 with 310k at 2500/5000 blinds.
The first hand off the deck, I peel back two aces. Without wonder as to why, a gentleman and myself got into a massive all-in preflop hand with my AA up against his KK. He hits a king on the flop, I turn a nut flush draw, but the river was of no help. My 310k stack was instantly crushed down to 160k only one hand into the day. A few hands later, I found myself in yet another decent sized pot in a battle of the blinds. I hit a straight vs my opponents straight flush... and I'm now down to 95k. 95k is relatively short-stacked as I'm sitting on less than 20 big blinds. I reshove all-in a few hands later after a gentleman opened from late position. He folded and I scoop the pot. I open shove the next hand blind vs blind and take down another.
I find 3 more spots to open raise pots over the next 5 hands, and didn't meet any contention. I ran the stack back up to 160k. With 160k at 5k blinds, I look down at 9c8c after I've been open-raising about 70% of hands at my table since the start of the day about 40 minutes earlier. I decide that if I raise and get 3bet by any competent player, that I was 100% of the time 4bet shoving all in, expecting my opponent to fold with a high frequency. I expect that since they will be 3betting me with a wide range since they think I'm opening any two cards probably. So, I go ahead and raise with my 9c8c, and go figure, I do get 3bet, and it's by the young internet-y looking guy at the table who is the table chip leader at the moment. I snap 4bet shove all in and he obviously insta-calls with kings(WTF!!! He's never supposed to have a hand here!!!). Flop Tc6cQx... giving me an amazing amount of outs with a double gutter straight draw and the flush draw. It goes running red deuces and I'm busted within an hour of day 2's restart.
Aside from that deep run, the only other run worth mentioning is a 10th place finish in the $1650 8/7/6 max event. This event offers a unique format where part of the tournament is played 8 handed, then it goes down to 7 handed, and then eventually it goes to and plays out as a 6-handed event. This tournament was the largest buy-in prelim that Borgata ran for this series, thus it yielded the toughest field. It was a small, dense field of regs. I ran a stagnant stack up to heaps before dinner break on day 1. I came back from dinner break and 4x'd that stack before the night was through. I had the chance to play at a sick as fck table with Chris Bell, Dan Buzgon, Jeff Papola, and Alex Bolotin. I found my greatest successes at this table.
While it was likely the toughest table draw I had to deal with of the entire Borgata series, it was one of those moments where I feel I really stepped up to the plate and TURNED MY GAME ONNN! I played some sick aggressive poker at that table, getting in several repetitive light 3 bets vs Papola, and getting into a sick 5bet pot with Chris Bell where I had the chance to show him the random 4 of spades after he had mucked his cards. Table play and interactions such as these help me feel more comfortable and confident to play pots with players who I once may have been more timid and fearful to play pots against. My eventual bust hand was again another cooler when I got in JJ vs 77 all-in pre-flop in a battle of the blinds. My opponent hits his 7 on the turn to send me packin'.
It turned out to be one of the few losing series I've had in my stint playing live poker. I knew there would be lulls and downswings, and it's something that my close-to-the-vest bankroll policy has mostly safeguarded me from. Hopefully we can pull through with a strong showing in whatever it is I end up playing next!!
I'll have updates coming up on my future travel plans as I make my way around the circuit for yet another year on the live grind.
Thanks for visiting and cya'll soon!
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