This is going to be a short blog, and it's my first entry in what should become a regular thing I do here on P5s. I'm in the Houston airport, and my connection takes off about 33 minutes from right now, so I don't have time to go too far in depth. I also flew out of Costa Rica at 6:45 a.m. this morning, and I'm working on about 3 hours sleep, if that... Basically...
P5s Live reporter Court Harrington came down to Costa Rica for a few days to hang out and talk about plans for the World Series of Poker this summer. I'm pretty excited about our plans to cover all the events, and Court's the main man for all of that, as on top of reporting, he's the main organizer for everything on P5s Live. I also was glad to see him in general, as we don't get to hang out with him that much, and he's a good guy who does a lot of really positive things for our site.
Most of Court's trip was spent in the office with the rest of us, particularly due to the fact that we launched the redesign less than a day before he arrived, and as is the case with most launches, there have been a lot of issues to work out that have been occupying most of my time.
We finally all had some time to go out the last night he was here, and Cal was in the mood to play some cards. We headed down to the Palma Real, which is the new spot where most of the big games go on in Costa Rica. As has been the case lately, there was a 5-10 mixed game going--50% NLHE, 50% PLO. The game was 5 or 6 handed most of the night...
I basically broke even for the night, and Court lost a little, but Cal was really the story of the night. He got his aces busted in omaha after getting about $500 of his $1k in the pot preflop against a drawing hand, so he was out his first $1k and only had one more left on him. About two hands later (it might have even been the very next hand), he got involved in a hand with the same guy where that guy raised and Cal reraised on his left. Magnus (crazy Norwegian player who owns some gambling sites) repopped from the blinds, and Alex Brenes went all in behind him. The original raiser called, and Cal ended up calling too because of the pot size, so it ended up being a four-way all in.
Magnus was making some sort of move with something like 2 6 9 10, Alex had some pretty crappy hand, the original raiser had AA xx, and Cal had A K 7 7. The board came 7 5 5 x x, and Cal won a $4500-ish pot.
There was a hand later in the night where I limped with KK22 double suited, and Magnus made it $100, which four others called. I tried to bet everyone out with a reraise to $600, but they all called, and when Cal potted the flop of Q 8 3, I had to fold. He said he had 3 3 after the hand....he was up big at that point, and he ended up cashing out for just barely under $10k. The most I've won in a night in these games is about $5500...Cal eclipsed my record and some...
Nothing of any note at all happened in the hold em game. Omaha is where it's at, apparently.
I'll be back with more updates soon. I'm on an 11-day trip to the states, and it's starting this weekend with my girlfriend in South Carolina for the Cooper River Run.
--Adam