3rd Break Update

With dinner break shortened to an hour this year, I barely had time to leave the Rio, order and eat my food, and get back in time, let alone post an update. In fact, I missed the first two hands after dinner, but that’s no big deal. I currently have 30k (starting stack is 50k) after a rough first 60% of the day. Early on I lost a sizeable pot after I flopped a set and my opponent turned a flush. I didn’t have much info on him and a set is one of the stronger hands I’ll have in that situation, so I decided to call him down. I worked my way back up to 42k after that, but dwindled down slowly as nothing seemed to go my way. At 36k I found myself with KK on the button facing an UTG raise to 700 and middle position call. I popped it up to 2800, a standard 4x sizing facing a raise and caller. Both of them came along to a Qd4h3d flop, and only UTG called my 1/3 pot continuation bet. The turn brought a 9d completing the flush draw, and when my opponent checked I decided to check back for pot control, planning to value bet any non-ace non-diamond river if checked to again. I expect my opponent to mostly have suited hands here pre-flop, so I wasn’t worried about protecting my hand against a 4th diamond unless he had a JJ-77 type holding. The river rolled off an Ah and went check check, and my opponent rolled over AdTd for a turned flush that he got a bit tricky with on the river. The flushes haven’t been kind to me today. Hopefully I can get something going here in level 4, this could be a pivotal level for me with the antes and blinds increasing to 50/200/400. I’ll continue to be patient and pick good spots, but I need a little cooperation from the cards too.

As a side note, there are no recognizable pros at my table but no marked amateurs either. Everyone seems to be playing quite solid and not making many significant mistakes. Hopefully I can battle and chip up a bit and pull a softer table for day 2 on Friday.