From: "C. Meck" Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 14:17:17 -0500 Subject: Re: [Target] Official 2016 TARGET Report Here is the TomBayz TARGET report, with bonus badugi content from "Old Town" Las Vegas. Incidentally, WTF are with these people that are starting to call downtown "Old Town"? You can't even get a cheap shrimp cocktail or a deep-fried twinkie in "Old Town" anymore, although overpriced cocktails in plastic cups are plentiful. Today is TARGET today. This is another ARG tradition; it=E2=80=99s a satel= lite for WSOP events. This year had 25 entries (including late entries who paid $15 extra for the right to inconvenience QB--BTW FTR I sent in my check weeks ago!), paying 4 $1000 spots and some leftover cash for 5th and 6th place. Before the event starts is the traditional trip to the buffet at the Mirage, where TARGET is being played. It=E2=80=99s just standard mediocre = buffet food, and not what I=E2=80=99m into for the faux-foodie part of my trip rep= orts. I go to be social, especially with a chance to see some people that I=E2=80= =99m not otherwise seeing on the tournament poker season trip. Event starts. Win an early pot from Gillian with 66 after firing a couple of barrels. Have AQ and get called by QB. Flop is Q5x, bet and he calls, I bet the turn as well and get called. River is a K, I check and he shoves. I think he has KQ, say so, and fold. He shows 55 from flopped set. Presto! Open A7 UTG (HAY IT WUZ SOOTED), Dean defends his big blind (shocker). Flop is A97 and end up getting 3 streets of value from his AQ. In a blind vs blind with Kluchman, I have my favorite hand JJ in SB, raise, he defends. Flop is QQ2, bet and he calls. Turn gets checked through. I check river, he bets, I call, he says =E2=80=9Cnut low=E2=80=9D and I win. Get down to near the final table, QB opens, I ship AJ, he calls with AQ but I suck out. This creates a final table of nine and guarantees I will be treated harshly in his trip report. I am chip leader, Bill has 2nd most. I think this was the seating arrangement #1 Rod Chavez #2 Pete Segal #3 Kevan Garrett #4 Barry Kornspan #5 me #6 Dean Kerl #7 Bill Chen #8 Russ Fox #9 Kenny Shei Early, I open in EP with JJ, Russ shoves, Kenny shoves, and I end up folding. Russ has KK and Kenny has QQ, flop is AKx, turn J and I am happy to not suffer further damage. Six handed ended up being Pete, Kevan, Barry, me, Bill, Russ. Pete gets the $90 6th place (I think the prizes that are < buy-in are silly). Barry shoves a short stack on button, I call with 99, Bill folds A4, Barry has KK and wins on a AAx flop. I=E2=80=99m thinking this is probably a satellite = bubble fold. At some point, Russ shoves Q2 from SB, Kevan calls from BB with some good hand, and Russ gets there. Russ does have an inner backpack kid. Tedious bubble play, finally Kevan and Barry are both short and get it in against each other. Kevan=E2=80=99s A9 versus Barry=E2=80=99s A5. Five on= the flop but a nine on the river brings an outburst from Barbara (Kevan=E2=80=99s mom) and= Barry is the bubble boy. Kevan, Russ, Bill, and I win seats and will be sharing some equity with the other TARGET players. I go to KoMex for second time on the trip with David Kluchman and Kenny Shei. I get Fusion Sliders (bulgogi beef), pork belly taco on corn, calamari taco in lettuce wrap. We all drink Korean beer, which tastes just like standard =E2=80=98Murican corporate beer. I then go downtown to late register the Binion=E2=80=99s $250 Badugi tourna= ment with several friends. Players included Dean Kerl, Becca Kerl, Jeff Deitch, Doug Grismore, Bob Gilbert, Randy Collack, along with some reasonable people (not that my friends aren't reasonable people) and some horrible =E2=80=9Creggalos=E2=80=9D; this is my term for local small-stakes cash and= tournament regulars, as they are a weird sub-culture much like "The Gathering of the Juggalos" (meth-and-Faygo-abusing white trash superfans of Insane Clown Posse) are a weird sub-culture. Eventually Rich Bremer and David Low come as well (just to hang out). I=E2= =80=99m at Becca=E2=80=99s table again. Some miserable prick in #1 seat keeps thro= wing cards and goes off on Klaus (the excellent German dealer). I turn a starting stack of 30K into 15K by the end of late registration, so I obviously still signed up too early. The guy between Becca and I is a nice guy and decent player, mentions how he can never beat me in hands that end up being decided on a three-card. Dinner break is at Nacho Daddy. I don=E2=80=99t eat a lot, but do graze on= some of the several plates ordered by others. At one point I made a few hands, knocked Bob G. out, and got up to 100K with 2 tables left (33 players, 4 spots paid). I end up finishing 11th, as my pat eight doesn=E2=80=99t hold up when Dean makes a six on me. Final table has Dean, Becca, and Jeff, along with some questionable "reggalo" characters including Steve Diano (very fat guy on scooter, local scumbag, just Google him). He=E2=80=99s been rude to me and other BARGErs = during cash games in the past and is a jerk at all the events he plays (he tends to play limit, especially stud & razz). Steve wants to do bubble saves with six players left and proposes a crappy deal. Dean refuses, mostly to screw with Steve. They get down to 4 and cash. Dean gets lucky when his all-in opponent misread his hand and had a 3 card jack rather than a badugi. Dean ends up finishing third and Steve & the other guy left in the event chop before Dean can even get out of his chair. From: "C. Meck" Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 15:55:19 -0500 Subject: Re: [Target] Official 2016 TARGET Report This is the bonus TARGET $1500 eeeeeeeee Lek Trick Day Zee Carnivale Weekend Warrior Bet All Yer Chipz Whenever U Want Holdem event, or the WSOP $1500 NL Holdem Event #29. The other TARGET players had 10% of my action in this event (spoiler alert; 10% of zero is zero, you can stop reading now). In case Keith is reading, this is where I predictably remind everyone that I am not old enough to play the $1000 Old Fartz No Light Three Betting Event quite yet (will debut in 2020). Here are some of the characters from my table (I never moved). Seat #1: Vaguely Racist Young White Guy: First dealer was Asian woman, he asked her something about if she gave massages. Really? Then we had a Mexican man and he said that he wanted to move to Mexico and marry a =E2=80=9Csenorita=E2=80=9D because he=E2=80=99s tired of white women. OK, = let's take out the word Vaguely, and just call him Misogynistic Racist Young White Guy (MRYWG). He looked like a standard Midwest/Southern boy (not deep South accent, so maybe from somewhere like Missouri). He also talked about Trump being in Vegas. I should have said the Mexicans were building a wall to keep guys like him out. (sorry, move this post to TARGET Rel-Pol). Seat #6: Friendly Hoodie Guy (talked about my NP hat which stands for Nitty Player/Nice Play/No Pickles/Non-deterministic Polynomial), then Young Frenchman in Wheelchair. Seat #7: me Seat #8: Self-Described Best Holdem Player In The World. No, I wasn=E2=80= =99t at Phil Hellmuth=E2=80=99s table, just some 30ish douche from Detroit with an = =E2=80=9C88 Bad Boys hat=E2=80=9D. He seemed like a standard $2/$5 NL grinder with delusio= ns of grandeur to me. When I said he should play with Hellmuth, he pretended like he had never heard of Phil. Seat #9: Twenty-ish Brazilian guy. Seemed very good. All-American Dave delivered food, and I used my patented All-American Dave Lunch Bag Name Trick (pro tip: the player's name is written on the bag) to identify him as Luiz Duarte. http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=3Dr&n=3D407669 I also used the AADLBNT to identify a good young player in the triple draw event as Daniel Zack. The guy next to him was also named Daniel but he brought his own vegan lunch so I couldn't utilize the AADLBNT. Fortunately someone else at the table recognized the vegan dude as Negreanu, who busted and was replaced by Andy Bloch, who I then had the herculean task of trying to bluff in a limit tournament in a huge pot when I paired eights on the final draw when it went 1/1. Andy isn=E2=80=99t exactly who one has in min= d when =E2=80=9Cvillain who folds too much=E2=80=9D is needed and his Queen was g0= 0t. So two WSOP tournaments in a row for me with a very very good player two to my left; I had Old Man Earl Grey Tea (OMEGT, a variant of OMC) two to my left in Millionaire Maker who ended up being the very accomplished and talented John Gale (who lost the minimum against me when I had a straight flush and he had the ace high flush). By the way, I played in 3 bracelet events this year and played against a grand total of ONE female player (she was a 40ish Asian woman, cash game player from LA who busted me in the Millionaire Maker). It=E2=80=99s reall= y too bad for many reasons that the WSOP is such an effing sausage-fest. We start with 7500 in chips. I was extremely card dead (in a RussFoxian way) in the first two levels, not getting a hand better than AT and no pairs in the first level, and nothing better than AJ in the second level. I finally got a pocket pair on the penultimate hand before the first break. Deuces. Saw flop, A23, but win small pot as apparently no one had an ace. 6200 at first break. Fade down to 3300 at my lowest, but just before second break I get all-in with my favorite hand JJ against Friendly Hoodie Guy and Luiz, both holding AK off-suit. I hold and triple up to 13K at second break. Friendly Hoodie Guy was crippled and shortly thereafter eliminated and replaced by Young Frenchman in Wheelchair. I get QQ in a hand versus MRYWG, flop is AKQ all hearts, turn and river are running tens, he ends up reluctantly folding the river, complaining that he flopped Broadway. This was my biggest pocket pair of the day. Luiz had chipped up pretty well=E2=80=94never seemed out of line although h= e plays lots of pots, but then he ran bad. The Greatest Player In The World had his KK cracked by the Wheelchair Guy=E2=80=99s QQ and had a mini-Hellmuth m= oment about how only luck will beat him. He busts shortly afterwards. I then lose a big hand against MRYWG from my big blind=E2=80=94bluff the tu= rn on a board with two kings, make a pair of aces on river, but pay off his trip kings. Down to about 6k. I 3-bet allin with 98 diamonds against some Backpack Kid, he had AQ. Flop AT8 but another 8 on the turn keeps me alive and I make dinner break with 11.4K. Race to Sports Deli, I=E2=80=99m pretty early in line but I couldn= =E2=80=99t outrace Allen Kessler, as the Chainsaw is the master of all of the nuances of the structure sheet and gets his food first. I got the =E2=80=9CTahoe= =E2=80=9D sandwich (turkey & brisket). Table keeps getting younger and younger for most part, except we did get Older Rich Florida Guy in Seat #2. He had what looked like a lot of chips but it was almost all low-denomination. He played a very long-ball style. We also got like 3 last-minute late registrants at our table. A short-stacked backpack kid shoves, I reshove with tens and hold over his A9 to get to 22K. In the immortal words of Twitch legend Jason Somerville, PEAKING!!! (Incidentally, the word PEAKING should never appear in Day 1 of your horse's WSOP tournament report.) Make the next break with about 17.2K, coming back to 400/800. Run into Kenny Shei & Bill Chen, both still in the $10K No Choice In Bet Sizing Holdem Wizards event (Bill ends up final tabling with our small TARGET equity!, Kenny 12th for a cash), along with Derek GoGoGomez. Back from break. Antonio Esfandiari storms off, quite pissed (haha, get it, he=E2=80=99s pissed) after a presumed bad beat that he took at an adjac= ent table. One of the late registrants ships, I reship with AQ, run into his jacks (hate that fucking hand) and he holds to cripple me. Last hand, I=E2=80=99= m big blind with 800 of 5100 already in, folds to Wheelchair Guy in SB, he ships. He was quite active, especially in position, and I think he thought I=E2=80=99d fold too much, so I call with J8 OF THE SAME SOOT and have two = overs as he has 65 OF DIFFERING SOOTS. But a six on the flop ends my night. Go over to the Amazon and sweat Kenny & Bill for a while. Saw that other Chris with long hair and beard and advanced degree walking around (Chris Ferguson, who apparently has un-exiled himself from the poker world). Eventually go over to Pavillion and end up playing a Donkey & Friends $125 single table satellite. #1 Duncan IDon=E2=80=99tKnowYrLastName (Old Man Chowdah, Boston guy who bag= ged for Day 3 of Seniors) #2 Rich Bremer (WSOP Late Stayer-uppeR ) #3 David Kluchman (Roomie on Tilt?) #4 Becca Kerl (who let her in the He-Man Woman Hater=E2=80=99s Clubhouse th= at is the WSOP?) #5 Steven =E2=80=9CCrunch" Daniel (modeling and running simulations on the single-table satellite structures) #6 Dean Kerl (short-haired corporate tool) #7 Larry Bierman (Pride of Phoenix) #8 Todd Bryson (Bee Jay Pee Ell Oh Play Uh) #9 me #10 Dan Goldman (second oldest player at table, he=E2=80=99ll probably be tight-passive) We played silly, including BARGE style clapping for bust outs (drawing furtive glares from the super-serious Backpack Kids and Reggalos grinding satellites and spinning deals around us) and a $5 per player seven-deuce bounty. I finish 4th after calling Dan=E2=80=99s shove with 72 because I w= anted to make $40 more than I wanted to win a lammer or two, but both his hand and the flop somehow contain an Ace. Dan and Duncan end up chopping. Then it=E2=80=99s just before 3AM closing time food at Ping Pang Pong next = door at the Gold Coast, since that dowdy locals casino somehow has better late night eating options than the Rio, which hosts huge conventions including one that last six weeks with people carrying tons of cash that is in action 24/7. I still shake my head every time I walk by the Hash House A Go Go that closes at like 1 or 2 PM, since no poker player in Las Vegas would want to eat breakfast food at any time of day other than the conventional breakfast/brunch hours. Bill, Kenny, Sabyl (fresh off 4th place finish at the Aria Omaha/8 tournament), Larry, Rich, Todd, and I. PPP is good as always. Kenny wins CCR again! Sorry, TARGET doesn't get any of my Eating With Kenny equity.