Las Vegas 2017 Trip Report
We had a good crew of people who we brought along to Las Vegas to have some fun in the World Series of Poker. Anthony Gaglione (UPSPWNAGE) was the winner of our Simone Team Poker promo #18 and so he won a spot into the $1500 WSOP Monster Stack event (…it had almost 7000 players entered!). First place finisher would win well over $1,000,000… Anthony’s trip report is below.
We also had the pleasure of bringing Ben & Shanna Brewer along, as well as Antonio & Jessica Gudino to play in the Monster Stack event as well. I’m sorry to say nobody came back with the golden bracelet and $1,000,000….but everyone had a great time!
Anthony Gaglione’s trip report:
First off I would like to thank Chris for the wonderful opportunity to be able to freeroll such a huge event. Thank you for putting it all together and giving people a chance at a gold bracelet!
For me this is my 8th WSOP. I am primarily a cash game player but every summer I play a few side events and a few WSOP events to gamble it up for the huge score.
I was coming of a decent cash at the Aria classic (14th place… I'll save the bad beat story for another time) and felt pretty good going into the Monster Stack.
Started off really well as my table draw seemed very favorable. Unfortunately we were the first table of the whole tourney to break! LOL.
Was pretty card dead the first 2 levels (they are 1 hour each) and had to kinda pick and chose my spots to get up to 16k. Interesting hand was, we were 7 handed at the time and I raise with 2,5 suited under-the-gun on the last hand before a break. Both blinds called and the flop was 10s3c4h. Both checked to me and I put out a continuation bet for about 1/2 the pot. Both players called. Turn was an Ace…giving me the straight! I decided to bet a little over 1/3 the pot to see if I could get some weaker hands to call or to get a turned 2 pair to overplay their hand. Nope. They both still folded. It was a nice pot.
From there I wish I had some kind of cool story to tell but I literally went card and spot dead as I got stuck at an extremely tough table. Without any decent spots, I was seeing raises and 3 bets in front of me for 6 hours, there wasn't much I could do and was able to just maintain around the 15k mark.
The final hand was a good spot. With 15k in front at 300-600 blinds and 75 ante it folded to the small blind who had been very aggressive. He raised to 1300 and I looked down at 77. with about 25 big blinds left I decided if I re raised him back small I'd get him to shove almost 100 percent of his range. I made it 2800 and he did what I wanted and shoved. I called and he showed k9. Well..... flips ain't my thing and board ran out xxxx9, and that was it. Killed on the river!
On a side note, for those of you ever playing events at Rio that have an hour and half diner break, I highly recommend you uber about a mile away to Rollin Smoke BBQ. Food is amazing and you have plenty of time to get there eat and head back with about 20 mins to spare.
I can't say enough again how much I'd recommend playing in Chris's free WSOP promotions. Was a great overall experience and will definitely try to win a seat again!
-Tony
Chris’ trip report:
We arrived on Saturday night so that we’d have enough time to meet up with everyone and get registered for the Sunday WSOP Monster Stack event. The WSOP seems to just keep getting bigger and bigger every year. They seem to be taking up more and more of the convention rooms and space every year.
$1500 Monster Stack Event: In this event, players start with $15,000 in chips (instead of the usual $7500 in chips…that’s why they call it their “Monster Stack” event). The blind structure and duration of the levels is the same as their regular $1500 events. It’s a fun event and if you are going to play in one of these events you might as well play in the one that gives you more starting chips…twice the fun!
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I experienced a little too much excitement early on…in the wrong direction. My KK ran into AA (ouch!) Fortunately I was able to get away from it after the flop but it cost me a fair amount. Next, my King high flush ran into a player with a set who hit a full house on the river! Before I knew it I had dropped about half of my stack and we were only 2 hours into the tournament. Soon after, my luck seems to start to turn. I flopped top 2 pair and it held up for a pretty nice pot. Then my pocket 7s flopped a full house and I was back to the starting stack of $15,000 chips. Unfortunately, not long after the first break I found my stack starting to dwindle some. I think I might have overplayed the hand that ultimately knocked me out. I was holding A,10 suited and called a small raise preflop. The flop came A,10,7 with 2 to a flush (not my suit). The pre-flop raiser led out with a large bet. I thought about it for a bit. It was unlikely the guy had AA or 10,10 since I had one of each of those cards. He could have very easily had KK or QQ or JJ or AK and his bet could have been to simply see where he stood. He could have also had a hand like KQ or KJ suited to the flush and a gut-shot straight draw. I decided I was most likely ahead. I shoved all-in hoping to take it right there. Unfortunately, he was holding another hand that I didn’t think too much about….pocket 7s! He had flopped a set. Unfortunately my hand didn’t improve and I was eliminated.
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I played in a couple other tournaments while in Vegas. I did manage to get to Day2 in a $700 event at Planet Hollywood, but I was eliminated on a classic AK vs QQ coin flip early in Day2. I made up for some of these losses by doing alright in the cash games. I’m already counting the days until the Tahoe WSOP circuit rolls into town (Oct 26th – Nov 6th). Hope you can join us!
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Our next Simone Team Poker promo is about to start up....Tahoe WSOP circuit here we come! You can REGISTER HERE.
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