WSOP Heads Up Finale

Last night i went over to Bellagio and was playing in the 5-10NL for about 5 hours. I had been chatting some with the gentleman 2 seats to my left whom turned out to be Ken "Teach" Aldridge, winner of the $1500NL 6-max event at the 2009 WSOP. When he left he invited me to join him in the VIP seating area at the Rio to watch the conclusion of the main event of the WSOP final table. I of course jumped at this opportunity and proceeded to have a great tiem talking poker with him and watching history be made as Joe Cada became the youngest main event champ in history. Ken was a great guy and hopefully a new friend. I am also looking forward to seeing the ESPN coverage of the main event heads up battle and see if my ugly mug made it on TV. There is a good chance because I was sitting behind WSOP Novemeber 9'er Steve Begleiter, as well as one seat over from multiple WPT winner Jonathan Little and 2008 November 9'er Ylon Schwartz.

As for poker content, my hand of the day is one that I lost. Here's the setup:

5-10 NL at Bellagio, the table is unusually passive preflop, with not a lot of raising and very very little 3-betting going on.

I am dealt A5hh in the small blind. There are 3 limpers, i complete and the big blind checks. The flop comes down Q-5-3 with 1 heart. I decide to lead out with middle pair and an over, as well as backdoor nut flush draw. I bet 30 into the 50 pot and got called by a late position limper. The turn was the 5 of spades. I decide that his range is a lot of queens and all straight draws, so I think betting again was right because if he has a queen then he will likely come along thinking that i likely dont have a 5 since i led the flop. I bet 110 and he called. The river was an offsuit Jack and now I bet 300 for value, because he wasnt the type of player to bluff a missed draw if I check to him. Unfortunately he decided to min raise me to 600. I hated this, but ultimately decided that since my perceived range is heavily weighted towards Qx, and even QJ, that he could be raising any 5 for value, and of course I beat those hands. But as suspected he revealed 33 for 3's full and raked the pot. I still feel like I played the hand well even though I lost, because I thought the hand through and analyzed my opponents each move. It was because of this analysis that helped me recoup those losses later in the session.

Til next time....