Monday, May 23, 2011

SCOOP is the worst

I'm really not sure why I get so excited about this every year, I mean I'm basically guaranteed a mid 5-figure score at some point but it's only going to be enough to get me even. I did have some close calls this year including 4 exact bubbles, and an 8th, 9th, and 2nd in H events. In the end that wasn't enough to get me anywhere close to even given the volume of big buy-ins I played. The 2nd was for $38k in the $3k 8-game and got me basically even as of the last Thursday of the series. Then I proceeded to brick the hell out of the final weekend and lose a nice chunk. Sunday was looking very promising as I ran hot the first few hours of the day including an early 2.5x up in the $10k. Then I lost AA vs Duhamel's KK to get back to starting stack and went on a stretch where I lost basically every major pot for two hours in every tournament and got massacred.

Anyways, I leave for Vegas Saturday night and according to my favourite fallacy I am due to absolutely crush the WSOP this year. Possibly even more due than when I binked my WPT. The good news is I do feel I played well the last week or so of SCOOP for the most part and I feel good about my game. I can only hope I get off to a hot start for once and ride it from there.

Mike

Friday, May 13, 2011

Early SCOOP and such

Yo, so SCOOP has started and I am getting crushed so far. I think I have one cash in an M event, 2 exact bubbles in M events, and no cashes in H events (or the few L events I've played) which hurts. Luckily I binked a 5th in the Party million for $46k before I went to Florida so still doing fine on the month overall. I'm pretty jealous of all my friends partying and hitting big scores in Europe though. Not that spending a week in Florida golfing was so bad!

This Black Friday thing has gotten a little annoying. I was counting on being able to withdraw online funds to wire to the Rio, but most of my online roll is on FTP and they don't seem to be processing withdrawals for the moment. I'm still not worried about FTP being unable to pay out but I'm not sure what the timeline will look like. As I understand it the account they would use to pay out is frozen because of this whole situation, and while they are still printing like a bazillion dollars a week it's going to take a while to build up enough to cover the demand. On the plus side I can apparently withdraw $500 a week now from AP! I can do like 4 of those pre-WSOP and then I guess I just pray that the company is still in business when I get back. Not thrilled. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Tony had a lot of his liquidity frozen as well and needs a lot more money for the summer. I'm planning to just win a SCOOP or two and take care of it, but as I said in my opening rant that is proving difficult.

In other Black Friday fallout it appears our attempts at getting a reality TV show about our summer in Vegas are dead. I'm not sure if that was really the main factor or what but we were supposed to have meetings with some other networks around the time all that was happening and then they went away. It might be for the best anyways (my parents are relieved) as I'm generally a more private person when it comes to my personal life, but it sounded like such a ridiculous fun opportunity I was willing to go for it. Too bad, as everything seemed to be going really well for a while there and it really seemed like it was going to happen. It would have been awesome TV and a lot of fun for us.

In other recent news I have apparently been granted a 3 year pass to the Federated Poker League, a new pros only league being planned where a lot of the advertising and sponsorship money would be added to the prize pool in some way instead of just put into the pockets of the casino. I'm not terribly optimistic the league will do well/be viable but I guess it's a cool accomplishment and would be great for me obviously to play tournaments with a bunch of free overlay even if the fields are super tough. I guess only time will tell but I'll likely be making an effort to play these events if they end up being as advertised.

Anyways, ten more days of SCOOP and then a week off before WSOP. I really want a big score or two to get out of this run of mediocrity I've been on lately, but I've got to stay patient and keep my head together. Already I can tell the long hours of SCOOP every day are tough on me. Gotta find and keep my head in that tough grinder mentality.

Mike