Posted by Johnnymac 11:00 AM
Well, we can now claim that a reader of our blog went to Vegas and knocked both Mike Caro and Mike Matusow out of a single WSOP event on his way to a finish in the money. Jiminy, the readers of this blog are good. Congratulations to Beau Ryan.

Go Houston poker!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Beau
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:16:16 -0500
Subject: WSOP Event #31
To: Johnnymac

I sent this recap out to a few of my friends and thought you guys might be interested in hearing about my first trip to the WSOP as well...


Event #31 - No-Limit Holdem - Buy-in: $2,000 - 2,050 players - 1st place pays $822k

I flew out Thursday night right after work and got into LV about 9pm, checked into the hotel and took a cab over to the Rio. Once I got inside the pavilion I was stunned with how big everything was and how many players and tables were in there (they were finishing up the first day of the NLHE short-handed $5000 event). Anyway, I registered and paid for the next day's event and then hung out for awhile and watched the Seven Card Stud $5000 event final table.

So... fast forward to the next day...I show up about an hour early and see just about every pro that you can imagine plus several celebrities.
After awhile they announce that the event is about to start, I find my table and take my place in seat #2. The table gradually fills up right before the start, but seats #9 & #10 are still empty. The tournament starts and after about two hands I hear a loud voice coming from behind me saying...Oooh, look at all these fish...ooh, fishy, fishy, fishy.

Yep, you might have guessed it...Mike Matusow was assigned to seat #9 at my table. I was a little nervous about playing in this type of tournament to begin with and this certainly didn't help. To make things worse, a few minutes later seat #10 shows up. He's a younger guy who looks familiar, but I can't place the name. I later find out that he is Prahlad "Spirit Rock" Friedman, a huge online player and also a 2003 WSOP bracelet winner. Not exactly the people I wanted to start playing with at my first WSOP event.

Ok, on to the tournament. We started with $2000 in chips with $25-$25 blinds. I take down the first 4 out of 5 pots and start to feel pretty good. I run my stack up to about $6k pretty quick and then run into a big hand. I have KQs in the BB, get one caller, plus the SB. Flop comes A-J-10 rainbow (Sweet!). SB checks, I check, Seat #8 bets out $500, SB folds, I'm loving it and just call. Turn comes another 10. I decide to try $600. #9 thinks about it for awhile and calls. River brings a blank and I bet out $1000, #9 raises $2k and I get a bad feeling, but call... he flips over Jacks full. Ouch, that's going to leave a mark. Thankfully, that was the last one of those for awhile.

During this first hour or so Matusow does a lot of talking, but not much playing. He eventually takes one of the worst beats I've seen in person. He and another raise and re-raise and end up all-in pre-flop (Matusow with about 600 or so more in chips) both flip over aces. Seat#9 has black aces, Matusow has red. Flop comes 3 clubs, turn a blank and the river - the last club. Aces crack Aces... freakin brutal.

This sets up the next hand. I raise with pocket 9s and it's folded around to Matusow who goes all-in with 10-8, everyone else folds. Flop comes 10-8-2 diamonds, turn a blank, and river a diamond. I knock out Matusow in the first hour with a lucky flush. In the next 10 minutes or so Prahlad Friedman is down to about nothing and is forced all-in against me and I knock him is out as well. (Even though they were ultimately short-stacked, it was a little bit of a confidence booster to send home two pros in the first hour regardless of how it happened.)

(Level 3 $100-$200) Right before our table is broken down I catch the suckout of the year. I am in the BB, UTG calls, everyone else folds, SB calls, I raise $500 with JJ, UTG calls, SB folds. Flop comes A-Q-4. I check and UTG goes all-in for his last $500, I'm definitely behind, but call and he flips QQ. I am almost dead. What's the only thing that could save me? Running Jacks or yep you guessed it, turn was a K and the river was a 10. I need to calculate what the chances of that actually happening are.

I continue to keep catching people with good hands when I have great hands and making well timed bluffs and I am able to run my stack up to $17,000 at the dinner break (6 levels into this).

After the dinner break and over the next 4 hours my luck starts to change, my bluffs on the button are getting raised by the blinds and my stack gets shorter and shorter and every time a table I am at is broken down I am sent to a table that is about to collapse under the pressure of all the chips on the table. However, I am able to tread water long enough to get down to 205 players out of the 2,050 that started. At this point though I have about $6k in chips with $200 antes and $600-$1200 blinds. Because we are so close to the bubble (198th and better get paid) they play round by round. Somehow, I have just enough chips to fold until that is over and they announce that everyone left is in the money. At that point I had $800TC. Because I've made the money and have so little chips (avg. chip stack was about $25k) I don't really care anymore and go all-in and get two callers. I flip over J-10 and hit two pair and take the main pot which came to about $3k. I go all in the next hand with 99 get one caller and more than double up again.
Next hand I look down and see AKs. Seat #3 which happened to be a short-stacked Mike Caro went all-in for about the same amount I had and I called. He had AQ, the board didn't improve him and I had knocked my third pro out for the day. (Funny story about him...as I was right on the money bubble and talking about it to the table, he mentioned that he could care less about the $2800 he'd win now that he was in the money, he had just lost $30k at the BJ table during the dinner break...I really felt out of my league). Two hands later I push all in with A-10s on the button (in retrospect I'm not sure why, probably something to do with playing for my longest stint ever) and get called by QJ (table chip leader), he spikes a Q on the turn and my tournament is over and I am out in 167th place, 14 hours after I had started playing. Getting my money back plus some was nice ($2798), but I'd sure like that last hand back. Hey...but I had a really good time regardless.



Beau

2 Comment(s):

Posted by  Junelli, at 5:24 PM, July 24, 2006  

Great post! Congrats Beau!

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Posted by  Padilla, at 8:18 PM, July 26, 2006  

Nicely done. I'm sure that A-10 had you thinking double-up after that nice run. Sucks, but you could've been #210.

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