Kara Scott: LAPC Heads Up

On Thursday I headed into Los Angeles to play the $345 Heads Up tournament at the LAPC. It was my first trip to the Commerce Casino and I’d been looking forward to it for a while but sadly, I  didn’t last very long.

It was kind of a frustrating day right from the start. After the 2 hour car ride up there and an hour and a half wait at the casino,  I drew a seat in the second sitting for the first round and had to wait 2 more hours to play. I drew Shan Jing for my first opponent and realised pretty quickly after googling him that he was going to be a good player. The match started out well and I had quite a few good starting hands which I played aggressively but it went downhill from there. I managed to get my chips back after spewing a bit on missed draws and a straight vs his full house, only to flop top pair against his bottom pair and get called every street to the river where he made 2 pair. Ouch. That was pretty much it for me.

It was a good experience for me as I’ve been working on my HU game and wanted to road test a bit of it without risking a huge buy in. Shan was definitely a better player though, so it’s no surprise he won. He seemed like a nice guy too. A bit bemused by the antics of one of the players in the match next to us; a young guy who seemed to like standing up and yelling the word ‘donkaments’ at every big hand. And it really did seem like every hand was a big hand for him. Gotta be honest, it was a little annoying and distracting.

I’ve just arrived in Las Vegas where we’ll be filming the Premier League very soon. It’s going to be a full couple of weeks out here with work and I’ll be blogging pretty much every day once it starts, hopefully with a few photos to make it more interesting for you guys!