Macau Trip Report

First of all let's start with the beginning, the plan was to take the express link from Macau to China mainland for 2 days of relaxation and degenning before we would actually start working. Me and Dave finally managed to find the correct link and the bus stopped us at the border, however according to the wikitravel we could get a visa on arrival, but the immigration said that the visa office was closed, so we got send back to Macau. We took a cab back to the tourist center and asked some questions on how to get a visa, but alas, nothing was possible so we just gave up and just booked in our hotel at overprized prices ofcourse :p Meanwhile Kane a friend from Singapore was already in mainland China and was waiting for us, and was walking around waiting for my confirmation, because I booked the hotels already in China in advance (yep another 160$ or so thrown away). He was in all panicking mode until I managed to catch him on MSN while he was in some random internet shop :) Told him to get back to Macau :p

Since the tournament started already, we decided to take a look and I found out that I could actually enter the first day already although, I couldn't register online. Just needed to pay the entry fee in cash. I was playing pretty well and got pretty deep until one hand that busted me out in a dramatic way.

I was on the BB and got dealt 5h2d and a few limpers, so I checked and the flop came T52 rainbow
I was second chipleader and the chipleader bets out (he only covered me by about 2000 chips though), I decided to flat his bet there, turn came a 6h, now there is a backdoor flushdraw. He decided to barrel it again, I tank for a bit, looking down again to see if I had the blocker heart on the flushdraw and shoved it in.. he snapcalled with QhTh, having top pair and now the backdoor flushdraw. Sadly enough the river came a 7h which terminated my first day. Still got a nice photo and mentioning on the pokerstars blog though :p which you can find back here: http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/pokerstars_macau/2011/macau-millions-day-1a-levels-11---15-bli-079959.html and the chipleader ended winning Day 1.

I thought I played very decently throughout the whole week though, but I just ran very bad, during the tournaments I lost keymoments like 77 vs A2 preflop all in and there was a hand on the second day that was pretty interesting I think. Blinds were 600/1200 with 100 ante.
UTG made a minraise to 2.4k , UTG+1 made it 6k, I peak down on the button and I see AKo, so I decided to shove 26k into a now 11k pot, I think even if I didn't have a premium hand, it would have still been a good move with all the dead money inside. Sadly enough the UTG+1 guy who had the same amount of chips as me, decided to gamble and couldn't let go of his TT and won the flip. I think if I would have won that flip, it would have been again a totally different story..

Same things went on on the cash game tables, just a ton of coolers and sick beats. I had this pretty nasty hand with TT on a KT8 flop, turn came an 8, river came an A, which made the flush complete, and yeah sadly enough he had the QsJs to complete his straight flush versus my turned full house. Ran against a few flush over flushes and a few set over sets also, pretty much the story of my life at the moment.. same thing when I got back home and started playing online, I lost AK vs AK preflop all in, then KK vs AK, then AA vs AK and then set over set and then flush over flush... lol talking about having a bad run :p Anyways, I still feel very confident about my current play level though, think it will turn around eventually and I definitely got some life upswings during the macau trip, had great fun and gained a ton of experience :)

Ryu Dang