Early Father's Day Vegas excursion

Took a quick little overnight trip to Vegas last week. This trip was even approved by the wife as it was ostensibly to have a meeting with my manager who was in LV with his family from San Diego. I had a productive meeting and pleasant lunch with my manager and his lovely family. Having taken care of the important things I turned my attention to poker.

I originally planned on playing the Venetian 12:00 tourney but they are in the middle of their Deep Stacks and I didn't quite feel like putting down $550 for a tourney. I had toyed around with the idea of heading out the Rio to play their $200 buy-in 1:00 tourney but instead decided to play the 1:00 Aria tourney for $175 after a positive review of the tourney by the B.W.O.P. I have nothing but positive things to say about the staff and dealers who put on a well-run tournament. With automatic shuffling machines and dealers who keep the action moving along you get a lot of hands in during each 30 minute round.

As I took my seat at the table I recognized none other than the Poker Grump taking a seat (thankfully) two seats to my left. In one of the first hands of the orbit I picked up Kings and got called down all the way by a guy who would bust out a couple hands later with the sucker end of a straight. Just to tip my hand to the Grump that I knew his identity I pointed out that 2-4 would have been a winner (I think the board was T 3 T 5 6) . Unfortunately I would bust the Grump with Aces vs his AKs in the third round when I re-raised the one player who might have been raising light. As he sat in the BB contemplating his move I silently willed that the Grump would fold and the original raiser would make a move but it was not to be. Luckily the Poker Grump stuck around long enough that I was able to formally say hello (right after busting him out of a tourney didn't seem appropriate) to him and Cardgrrl who was also playing the tourney.

After that I managed to stay around twice the chip average for most of the tourney. I used my tight image and imposing stack to push a few players off hands and take a fair number of uncontested pots. It wasn't until we were down to the final three tables that had a suck-resuck when my AQo caught a J on the river to make a Broadway straight against a KJ that caught a King on the flop.

The biggest hand came when we were down to 11 and I raised-called an all-in on a board of 8h 8x 2h with AK (no heart). The BB turned over KJ and the turn and river came 8 -8 to give me quad 8s with an Ace kicker. With that hand I had over 200,000 in chips and almost a third of the chips in play when we got to the final table. When we got down to 6-handed (top 7 paid) we did a chop. With 179,000 in chips and the biggest stack I theoretically took 1st. Not bad for 6 hours of work.