Event 5: $1500 PLO

The condo snafu is somewhat rectified, Wes and I got our place across the lot but it'll probably be another few days before we know if we're staying for the duration here. Still on a few hours of sleep a night because everyone's up early and on slightly different schedules but Liam and Ryan are flying home tomorrow and we're all taking the day off so maybe we'll heal up. Today was pot-limit omaha. I don't think this poker variant lends itself well to tournament play and last year I really mangled this event but I went in with a strategy that worked really well so long as I had a semi-deep stack. I limped everything, from all positions, regardless of previous action. If I couldn't get all in on a flop than I would never open pot or re-pot preflop. I wanted to keep pots small on the flop, esp. when I was out of position. This, combined with a very soft first table, let me build a huge stack in the first level from 1500 chips to 9000. I then flipped it off with a guy and lost the 18k pot. We had 'addon' chips (3) and I used them instead of getting all 4500 up front, as like cap-game buyin's so in case I flipped it off, I could reload to flip again :). Anyways, I had QT98, he had QT68 (with diamonds) on a QT7(two diamonds board). So we both flopped top two, i flopped a 6-out straight draw, he flopped a 9 out flush draw. Anyways, you know the end of this story, his freeroll came and mind missed.... big pot, stumble backwards, whatever. I rebuilt and our table broke after I busted absolute poker pro, mark sief. My new table sat me right in front (out of position against) a true poker cash monster, alexander kostritsyn (postflopaction on ftp). He's a really nice guy, struggles with English but we had a great time, joked around a fair bit, played lots of pots together. This second table was tough and I took a few beats but ended with 12k there when that table broke. My last table of the day came after dinner. Action table with a lot of young, seemingly in-experienced players who appeared to come from a no limit hold'em background. They had lost of chips and were spewing them wildly. I ended up doubling up through one of them with bad aces, then the very next hand I got busted. Blinds 300-600, I start with 12k roughly. Under the gun makes it full-pot open to 2100, my buster calls the 2100, i call 2100 and reraise it 6800 more leaving me 3000~ behind. Original raiser folds, the last guy tanks and sets me in. Now, my hand, AcTcAh7d is a favourite over almost any hand in a vacuum. What you don't want to try and play against my hand is one with an ace in it because you have roughly 33% against it hot/cold. Of course he tables the Ad3d5h8h.... total dribbler poker and instead of stomping his spew he knocked me out around 80 from the money. I tried to stay away from high variance spots in this tournament and really just play in position and stab a lot... but this spot preflop in plo is about as good as it gets. This was just a very sick way to get knocked out of a plo tournament and speaks to the inexperience of the field. Good for the value, bad for the outcome. Should have been up to 27k and fighting for some dough.
Anyways, rant over, next tournament looks like it'll be on Wednesday at 12noon. $1500 no limit holdem 6max. It's probably 76,523 people's bread and butter game but I can't wait. It's going to be a bloody one but it'll be enjoyable. Thursday is the big one for me. the $10,000 8-game mixed event.
Not too much else going on, saw Jamie Gold playing 5-10 no limit hold'em at the rio. Sort of depressing but then again, maybe not.