In honor on Intertops revisiting Vegas again this year thought I would repost our original visit!! It was a blast and hard to believe it was 4 years ago! Lets hope we can have another great trip this year!
I can’t believe how fast the time has gone by! Last year was my first World Series of Poker and it seems like just yesterday! Now, My second World series of Poker is halfway through and another year is almost already in the books! Time sure does fly! Going through these blog posts and thinking about my time last year, the good and the bad, sure was an exciting ride! I didn’t have anywhere near the schedule I attempted last year, but that didn’t mean I was going to miss out on the action! Things were just as exciting this year, but from a different perspective for me at least! Intertops had a great idea to send out two online qualifiers out for their chance at glory! After all who doesn’t want a WSOP bracelet and a million dollars!! The two qualifiers won their seats to the Milli Maker through a $100 buy-in satellite on Intertops online poker site. A pretty good deal considering its a $3500 package and the fields were only about 20 players deep! The deal was to set everyone up at the Rio for a 6 nights stay, so we could make the process run smoother and give the players the full experience of the amazingly fun CHAOS that is the WSOP! lol It also included the $1500 buy-in to the Milli Maker and $500 travel expenses. We also may have had a few nights of cocktails and food thrown on the Intertops tab as well.,,,maybe 😉 but I’m not admitting anything! lol
I met up with the two qualifiers, Barney from West Virginia and Balazs from Hungary for a drink a day before the tournament. They were both excited for Vegas, but it wasn’t their first time out here. Barney had been several times and Balazs once before. It was,however, their first WSOP tournament! Barney thought he had a rough flight, coming all the way from the other side of the country, until Balazs told us it had taken him over 18 hours just to get to LAX and then took a bus ride the rest of the way to Vegas!! While the scenery was probably pretty cool to see, we still had to give him credit for tackling the long journey! It was cool to hear their stories and as usual I told them plenty of my own. lol I kinda have a tendency to ramble on after a “Jack and Coke” lol We had some laughs and talked some strategy and I was happy to get to know them both! I was glad to learn they both weren’t really interested in the craziness of Vegas, they were focused on the Milli Maker and couldn’t wait to get to the tables! So we made our way to the cage for their tickets and their shot at the guaranteed one MILLION dollar first place prize!
The World Series of Poker never learns their lesson apparently and again have most of the big tourneys starting at 10 am! So we had an early start the next day! Luckily the guys both came in a day early to help with the jet lag and try to get use to it before the big day. I doubt either player was real concerned about the lack of sleep and more concerned about the nerves of excitement as they sat down to play.The room was packed full of players and you could literally feel the excitement in the air! While it is chaotic many times at the WSOP, there really isn’t another poker experience like it. It’s truly amazing and if you haven’t ever at least gone to witness it, you really need to. I was pumped to sweat the action of these two guys ! They both handled themselves well midst all the madness and after few orbits, they had settled in nicely. We all had a quick chat on break about just enjoying the experience they both seemed to start not only getting comfortable but crushing their tables! Balazs had started to chip up quite a bit, but Barney was the one on a HEATER! He had a massive pot shipped his way, in i believe level 3, that turned out to be the boost he needed to catapult him to a deep run! I know he’s going to explain it better in an upcoming interview with Rikard from PokerTube, but from what he told me, it went something like this…He had Ace Jack of Spades in the big blind and a super loose aggressive player (coincidentally from my home casino lol) opened from mid position and got a one caller. Barney decided to just flat and see a flop. The flop came 9 high with two spades, a pretty awesome spot for Barney, but he decided to check and let the loose aggressive raiser hang himself, but to his surprise he checked and the caller, who was pretty short stacked, moved all in! Barney had the nut flush draw and two overs, so he called, only to have the original pre-flop loose aggro player check-shove ALL IN! Barney went into the tank, the loose guy had him covered , so this was for his tournament life!! He told me later he thought back to our talk about just enjoying himself and said “screw it”, making the call and taking the gamble! I can’t say I blame him for calling off, knowing the player that made the shove to be very wild and spazzy. He turns over his AJ spades to hear the “good call” from the loose player while he shows K10 of spades for the second nut flush draw and two overs. Well the spades missed the turn and river, but a Jack hit and was enough to seal the deal and ship HEAPS to our man, pushing him to over 3 x average stack in level 3!!! Woohooo!
I’ll leave you hanging on that high note and in suspense! lol I’ll finish up with part two this weekend and hopefully figure out how to add some cool videos on here by then! We had some great moments and really wanna share those highlights! Be sure to check back for them soon and check out all the current events for Intertops here! Or if you want to ask me directly, come stop into our new YouTube channel and see my new Live Stream on there! Say hello, give us a like and see what we have planned for some cool upcoming projects!
Run Good!
Tim
Twitter
Facebook
Youtube