Vegas: June 2011
From left to right: Jeff Howell, Chris Simone, Dusty Marvin, Derek Lopez
Almost 3000 people participated in Event #32!
Here's the report:
Hosting the Simone Team Poker promotion continues to be a lot of fun. Thanks to all of you, I get the perfect excuse to give Francine as to why *I* need to go play in the World Series twice a year! :)
The following people came with me to Vegas in June for $1500 World Series of Poker Event#32: Derek Lopez (Dlopez3397), Ryan White (ryanodo), Jeff Howell (jmh_pt). Also joining us to play in this event was Dusty Marvin, winner of a year-long satellite that some of us play in. My Dad also decided to join us in Vegas (...poker runs in the genes I guess).
We arrived on Friday and got registered into the event. There ended up being 2828 players with 1st prize being $668,000. It paid the top 297 players. The Rio was buzzing with the usual World Series of Poker excitement. For those that have never been there, take a look at the attached picture above...it shows what a room full of 3000 poker players looks like. It's a pretty big field to get through! (...the tables/players just go on, and on, and on...!)
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When Saturday at noon rolled around, we were all ready to play. Here's a summary from the different players...
From Derek:
My WSOP experience was awesome. I never expected that poker room to be so big. It was kinda intimidating at first but once I sat down it was just like any other tournament. I started off cold in the beginning by getting no cards and it ended up going that way until the first break. It didn't help getting moved 2x in the beginning, overall a total of 4. Right when I was getting the hang of playing with certain people they split us up. The hand right after first break was a monster. I double up with AA over KK. After that I lost little pots here and there, not really much action at my table. Everyone seem to play tight and pots were small. After 3 breaks (6 hours) is when I busted. I had about what we started the tournament with ($4500) and got dealt AQ suited. I was at the cutoff position and made a standard raise. The big blind 3 bets so I push and he turns over pocket Jacks. Flop comes and its all blanks, the turn and river = no help. He had a slightly bigger stack then me so he ended my tournament. There were a couple things I think I would have done different while playing but overall it was a great experience. I didn't sit with any pros at my tables but I did see the Grinder walking around the tournament area so that was pretty cool. I also saw Phil Hellmuth outside the poker room walking down the hallway. I didn't realize how tall this guy was...he must have been like 6'4" or something. Overall I can't say enough about the experience.
From Jeff:
We started with 4500 in chips. I was only able to make a small run in round 3 getting up to about 9500 in chips. But then the cards went south and the turn was not my friend. In round 5, with an ace Jack I decided to make my stand. The flop gave me an ace. Another ace on the turn gave me the confidence to get my chips all-in. Unfortunately, I ran into a guy with a pocket pair (6,6) that turned a full house (AA666). That was all she wrote for the wsop! My biggest win for the week was in 3 card where we had a $600 winner with 666...the hand that knocked me out of the Wsop put some change back in my pocket in 3 card!
From Chris:
From the moment I sat down, I knew I was going to have a tough day. 5 of the other players were talking (as if they knew each other, or at the very least knew some of the same people/pros). They discovered that several of them were using the same CPA to handle their poker tax reporting! A strange thing to come up, but certainly let me know that they were all at least semi-pro. I recalled a famous quote...."If you cannot identify the fish at the table, it must be you!" lol.... I was able to get off to a decent start and built my stack up to about $8000. Then the cards went dead for a while. I was getting some hands good enough to play, but not good enough to win with. At about the 4th hour I flopped two pair. The
hand looked pretty good with a board that didn't have a flush or straight developing through the turn. Unfortunately, I ran into a guy that had hit a set (always a little tough to see). That knocked me down quite a bit. After another 2 hours or so I decided to make my stand with AJs. I end up getting all-in preflop against a big stack that called me with KJ. The
flop kept me safe, but on the turn he hit the King (3-outer) and it sent me to the rail. I never really got much traction in this event. Looks like I'll have to wait until Tahoe for another WSOP cash.
Ryan made it to somewhere around hour 4 or 5 before getting eliminated. Dusty held his own for about 6 hours before getting knocked out. In the end, none of us really made a deep run in this event which was unfortunate.
The highlight for me personally was watching my Dad play in WSOP event#30 ($1000 buyin, 3 Day Senior's Event). It had a record field of 3752 players, paying the top 395 finishers. He made it through Day#1 with a better than average stack. They started with $3000 in chips and he managed to build his stack up to ~$70k in Day#2. He cruised into the money.
He held his own for ~9hrs on Day#2, making it all the way down to 85th. He was eliminated at about midnight on Day2 (his AJ suited vs QQ). He cashed out for over $4000 and was the big winner for the weekend from our group. Nice job!
TheSimoneTeam Poker Promo#9 will be starting up very soon. It will be a shorter promotion starting in July and ending in October. We'll be sending one lucky winner to play in several World Series of Circuit events in Tahoe in early November. An invite will be sent out soon. Hope you can join us!
As always, we hope that you keep us in mind for all your real estate needs, or whenever you hear from one of your friends, family members, co-workers, etc that they are thinking about making a move. Your referrals are always appreciated!
Regards,
Chris