Vegas Challenge Day 1: Voodoo Ninja Magic?
October 31, 2007
I wasted no time getting started on the challenge after landing in Vegas. With only $500 I was pretty limited to what games I could begin with. I wanted to find a very soft game with a buy-in of $100-$200, so I could build up a little padding in order to take some bigger shots over the next day or two.
The Imperial Palace $1/$2NL has always been the fishiest game I could find, plus they have by far the fastest drink service of any poker room I’ve been to. They’ve raised their buy-in to $300 max, but almost nobody buys in for more than $100. I went in for the full $300 just to make sure I had the table covered. If more people had full stacks I would have went in for like $100 of $150, but I wanted to have a little intimidation factor on the short stacks. Even though I can easily dominate this game risking the more than half of my $500 challenge money would be a good way to fail before I could even get started.
Only one guy had more than $100 on the table, and I though a reader might be using some voodoo ninja magic on me as he flopped top set vs my bottom set twice in the first hour. At this point I only have a little over $100 left of the original $500, and it was looking like I’d be hosting a $500 tournament putting up much less of a fight than I would have liked. Luckily the players were pretty terrible and I was able to pound on the limpers to build back up. At one point I rivered quads on a 9A989 board and got $100 on the river from someone with 33. After about 4 hours of play I had worked my way back up to $420. It’s not where I wanted to be after day 1, but I still have plenty of room to maneuver.
The game plan for today is to hit up the IP game again, and when I work up to $800 jump into the $2/$5NL game. Hopefully I can get something going today. If I don’t I’ll have to take some shots sooner than I’d like.
Vegas Challenge Bankroll: $420
Red Bull Vodkas Consumed: 15 (I wish that were an exaggeration)
Comments
Got something to say?
