Watts' Poker Blog

Vancouver and Onwards: Prague, Epic #3, etc

2011-11-29T15:34:00.003-03:30

Two blogs in a week?! Crazy, I know. Really it's just because I was tired and got carried away making fun of my friends and forgot to write about some stuff, but I'm going to say it counts. Between rolling around in my purple euros and grinding online I also went to Vancouver for a week after my Eurotrip to visit friends and play the BC Poker Classic. I busted the main very quickly but final tabled the $5k high roller event. I ended up placing 7th when I got AQ in vs KK, but given I won 99 vs KK all-in on the exact bubble I can't complain.

Tonight I leave for Prague where I'll be playing the WPT as well as the EPT and side events. Unfortunately I connect in Heathrow tomorrow morning where apparently there is a 24 hour border control strike. Heathrow is brutal at the best of times and with amateurs working the passport control it's likely to be a shit show. I only have an hour-forty to make my connection to Prague and I'm pretty concerned this going to turn into one of those travel horror stories. If you awake to find a ranting series of rage tweets from me you'll know why. I'm very excited for the trip though as I've heard so many amazing things about Prague and of course the tournaments should be great value.

After Prague I fly straight to Vegas for the 3rd Epic main event as well as the charity event. Not a lot to say here other than if timex can win one I like my chances. After that I'm home to Newfoundland for Xmas, and while I haven't quite finalized my plans for the new year yet I'm probably going to go straight to Australia for a month skipping PCA then come back for the events at Fallsview which are now in February. This is subject to change if I do well in Epic and qualify for the freeroll which is at the same time. The first 10 days or so in Australia a bunch of us are renting a house down the Mornington Peninsula and spending our days golfing the various courses in the area and then hitting the Portsea pub for a couple jugs of beer and some fresh seafood. It is unlikely to suck.

Mike

An Upswing!

2011-11-28T02:52:00.004-03:30

I've been even lazier than usual about blogging lately despite the fact that there's actually been quite a bit to write about. It seems my attention span has continued to shrink to the point I have a hard time explaining what's on my mind using more than 140 characters at a time. Nonetheless I shall do my best to crank out a blog entry that isn't entirely the regurgitation of my last 100 tweets and actually goes into some small amount of meaningful detail on at least two occasions or something. I'm losing focus already so let's get onto it.

Last time I left you just as I was heading to Vegas for the 2nd Epic event. Things were going well for me and with three tables left I won AA vs KK all-in preflop for 10 times starting stack and I must have been top 3 in chips. Unfortunately, after that things stopped going so smoothly and then timex got moved to my left and I punted him a bunch of chips with top pair against an overpair when I played it kinda bad. He subsequently busted me in a standard spot. Here is a picture of me all-in with my 96s against his AK after I wished him terrible luck in the hand. Hopefully that made the TV broadcast.

Don't you still just hate him?

Anyways we'd swapped 10% and he ended up winning so I still got pretty paid and crashed his party and drank all his kegs and told all his friends how awful a human being he is, so I'd say I got the last laugh.

[Ed Note: a certain 4-letter noun has been removed from the last two paragraphs in 4 different locations and the adjective formed with the suffix "y" an additional six. I'm told I'm too vulgar]

Next up was a super awesome Eurotrip that began in Munich for Oktoberfest. Yes, it was incredibly amazing, and yes I am a better person than you because I was there and you weren't. The four us surprisingly survived the three days with merely minor battle scars. No one fell off a table and broke their head or anything. Outside of winning stuffed animals at the carnival games and bringing them to the beer hall with us where we force fed them alcohol no crimes were committed. Our stuffed turtle developed a serious drinking problem he may never recover from. Some drunk bitch grabbed our stuffed tiger and tossed him across the hall. I have never seen Scott angrier I thought he might pimp slap a ho. An extensive search was eventually called off. It is presumed he was trampled to death. We poured one out for our dead homie and soldiered on.

After that we flew to London for the EPT there. I did not sleep well and played kinda bad in the main event. I did however cash the 2k side event for my first live cash in 9 months or so! Then I played a hand even worse. The short version is after a series of comical mistakes I arrived at the river holding T7o in the small blind on a board of 97675. I checked the BB bet 17k, button called and with the game theory optimal hand to bluff with in this situation I went all-in for 50k total. This would be kinda cool if I had like 100k but obviously it did not work here.

Then I went to France and won all the money in Cannes. The final table of the 3200 shoot-out was incredibly tough but I made it heads-up with the chip lead after getting really lucky against Elky a couple times. Not a lot went right in the heads-up though and I bubbled my first ever bracelet at my first WSOP final table. Still I won like 112k euros for 2nd place. I had a decent run in the main event but lost my first all-in despite having the best hand. This worked out ok though, as the next day I beat 58 people to take down the 5k Euro turbo side event for another 105k. I was told at the bar later that I was allowed to be happy I won a tournament! I, however, stake Tony Dunst in poker tournaments so I knew the winnings would be short-lived.

Next up was EPT San Remo and I fought my way into the top 128 players who made the money yet again! I then busted the next hand to finish exactly 128th. I had a lot of chips in the 2k side event at one point but I kinda got velocitized and spewed them off. Velocitized is some term Driver's Ed people made up for the feeling of when you get off the highway where you were driving real fast onto city streets where the speed limit is lower but you still want to drive fast because you're now accustomed to it and it doesn't feel fast.

I am now coining the term in poker to mean when you've just played a bunch of hands against some euro tards and gotten the money in semi-light and been right a few times in a row because they're idiots and never have anything but still try to win every pot, but then you get in a pot against a solid player and you forget that you can't just 3b/call it off against his early position raise with TT for 40bb. So that happened and I lost a flip and I bubbled. Then I left and went back to Canada because San Remo sucks, especially when you've already been eating pasta and/or pizza for half your meals for the previous two weeks.

Since then I've spent most of my time rolling around in purple euros and playing online a bit. PLO cash has still been going really well overall though I haven't played as many hands as I should have, and I even had a decent Sunday score one week. Tony has a lot more work to do if he's still going to try to bankrupt me.

Mike

PLO, WCOOP, Epic

2011-09-05T13:01:00.004-02:30

It's been a really crazy summer since I got back to Toronto. In the recent weeks a lot of my friends from Vegas have moved here to keep playing online poker which has made the city even more fun. While my bankroll may have taken a hit from Black Friday my social life at least has improved.

I've gotten back to grinding a good amount of PLO cash, by my standards anyways, and have run really hot. Unfortunately this has all been at 5/10 and not 25/50+, but nonetheless it's been a good run. I've never been good at grinding a huge amount of cash hands as my game tends to slip after a couple hours and I need to take a break, but my success has definitely made me want to play more. I'm pretty good at 6-tabling and I'm trying to work up to 8-tabling more when I feel relatively focused. This is all 6-handed games.

WCOOP started yesterday and I'm definitely planning to grind as much as possible. I'm going to miss a lot of days for things like Epic (which starts tomorrow), family visiting, etc... but that's really not a big deal. My plan will likely be just to play WCOOP and maybe a couple other bigger tournaments while continuing to grind PLO cash on the side since it's a lot more profitable. Between the waking early(ish) to play some of the events on the new schedule and long days it will be good to have days off anyways to avoid getting burnt out. WCOOP tends to be very frustrating in that the events have really long structures but huge fields. Often you end up playing for a very long time just to bubble an event or get 12th or something that is kinda close but doesn't actually pay much.

Epic Poker League main event #2 begins tomorrow as I mentioned earlier so I'm flying to Vegas tonight. Hopefully I'll still be there on Friday. Other than Sundays I basically haven't been playing any online tournaments. I won an EPT London package which was nice, but other than that just have a 10th and 12th in medium-sized events to show for myself. I've run really hot at building stacks and in the money percentage, but very poorly deep. Oh well, hopefully just saving my luck for all the huge live events in the coming months!

Mike

Epic Trips

2011-08-08T14:22:00.003-02:30

Hey guys it's been a while since I wrote! There hasn't been a whole lot positive to write about with regards to poker lately and my tweets seemed to be getting negative enough. I didn't feel any desire to write what surely would have degenerated into some negative rambling piece of prose, or maybe one of those annoying entries where I write all kinds of positive stuff I obviously don't actually feel to try prove to everyone/myself I'm so above the variance and I'm going to keep fighting my best every day. I was pretty frustrated, I'm not proud of it I'm supposed to be better at dealing with it. It turns out after all these years grinding I'm still a real person who can't completely control his emotions 100% of the time. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Anyways, final numbers: I went 0-for-29 and Tony went 0-for-26. Bricking 55 events is pretty remarkable even for fish like the two us. You don't need to know the $$ figure but it wasn't small! Between that and me being dumb and not moving all my money off FTP when I had the chance it has been a pretty awful stretch financially (I'm still somewhat optimistic FTP will come back however). That's in the past now though and it's time to look forward. Tonight I'm flying back to Vegas for the inaugural Epic Poker League main event. $20k buy-in, invitation only event with no rake and $400k added to the prize pool. For more details check out their really cool website that is now full live: Epic Poker League.

It will be really interesting to see how things go with this new league! The idea of invitation-only tournaments is slightly against the spirit of the game but the idea of treating the players well and putting sponsorship/TV money back into the prize pool is definitely the right way to go about things. They seem to be doing everything right so far (except the name) but they have obviously put a lot of money into this and successfully selling poker television these days isn't easy. Regardless, I'm excited to be involved and it'd be a great tournament to go deep in.

After that I'm just back in Toronto for a while before doing Oktoberfest--->EPT London----> WSOPE Cannes ----> EPT San Remo for a month at the end of September. That's a pretty incredible stretch of tournaments (and drinking)! I haven't been able to schedule a Eurotrip in a few years now and I'm excited to get back over there. For now though, win my last tourney of the summer one more time?

Mike

I lied, WSOP is clearly worse

2011-06-09T13:58:00.002-02:30

I'm off to my usual 0-for-whatever start at the WSOP again this year. According to this pile of receipts it's eight events which isn't really anything but since 2007 I've cashed only two events a year and the earliest event I cashed was #20. I don't have the actual number but I should be over 100 WSOP events now without a final table. Basically, spending those 6 weeks golfing and doing lines of coke off strippers every day would be a better investment of my money, and probably slightly more enjoyable.

I haven't really had any time to do much other than grind so far. I got one round of golf in and had one night out but other than that it's just been poker poker poker and then lazing around recovering. Today is the $10k 2-7 NL event which is probably the smallest field I'll play so my best chance at a final table. Despite being a relatively simple game a lot of people just don't play it well. Hopefully I make a run it'd be a fun one to go deep in. I guess that's about it for now, hopefully more stories about winning all the money and partying my face off next time.

Mike

SCOOP is the worst

2011-05-23T15:16:00.002-02:30

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

Early SCOOP and such

2011-05-13T14:51:00.002-02:30

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

The Best Laid Plans....

2011-04-18T03:45:00.003-02:30

So as most of whatever readers I still have likely know by now, the FBI effectively put an end to online poker in the US for the time being this Friday. Obviously this is really bad for everyone, not just American players, but admittedly being Canadian is even awesomer than usual right now. I don't want to downplay the significance of this event or ignore the potential long term negative effects it could have on the poker industry as a whole, but I am an optimistic albeit realistic person so that's probably the angle I'll take in most of whatever I end up writing here. At least after I vent some frustrations about deciding to grind FTOPS and SCOOP instead of going to play awesome tourneys in Europe. Oops.

I am not going to speculate about US finally regulating online gaming because I have no special knowledge about that. What I do know is that Stars and Full Tilt are still the two biggest online poker sites in the world (though the Party/Bwin merger may push them into 2nd whenever that is finalized). They are going to continue on strong and find new ways to grow in the market that is still available to them. We should be especially thankful for all the work the online sites, but especially PokerStars, have done promoting the game around the world. If not for that this situation would be an awful lot worse for everyone, not just people like me who still have good games to grind online. Poker has gotten big enough that this hit should merely slow it down a little, and not be anything close to a crushing blow to the industry as a whole. Even my American friends who want to continue playing for a living have some options.

In the short term I'll have a better idea of how this effects me in a few weeks, but I don't expect it to be too drastic. I can still make a good amount of money playing online tournaments. The huge prize pools are gone, but some tournaments may actually get softer without all the American pros. FTOPS and SCOOP are a lot less exciting and I'll probably be skipping a lot more days than I was planning to, but they should still be quality series. I don't know what this really does to the high buy-in SCOOP events, especially in the less popular games, but the M-level buy-in events should all still have good enough fields and be a lot of fun. The less popular game events in FTOPS may be a bit of a joke unfortunately but the NL events will be solid enough.

The other potential benefit of this is it will force me to grind a lot more. There won't even be big mixed games for me to lose money at, or many big buy-in tournaments where my edge is questionable. If I want to play a weekday I'll have to grind in the afternoon and play a lot of smaller field events where my variance is reduced but I should still have a decent ROI. Sundays appear to still be really strong in the afternoon, though later events did not draw much of a field today. Anyways the point I was trying to make is this may actually force my game selection to be better by default.

Overall, I still really like my situation playing poker for a living. The net effect of this week's events is of course very negative, but I'm lucky not to have been hit as hard as many. Even for my friends south of the border there are reasons to be optimistic. It's going to be a rough ride, but in the end I'm hopeful everyone will come out OK.

Mike

PS. Oops forgot to include rant about UB/AP. I had a decent amount of money on there as it's the only place I win, and I am not at all confident I'll get it off. I can't really see how the Cereus Network survives without the American market. They are crippled at best and they must know this. I do not trust them to not just run off with my money given that we already know they are run by crooks. I snap cashed out Friday afternoon, will post in the comments here if/when the transaction goes through. I am concerned.

MDMDHAMD

2011-03-15T11:36:00.003-02:30

Yo, so not much to update poker-wise. I've been putting in a lot of mixed game hands and that's been going alright. I still seem to kinda blow at a bunch of the games but I'm learning and my results have been fine. I went on a quick $150k heater than lost most of it back, but I had a good session the other night to get a bit of that back. Hopefully if I get in enough hands I can eventually have some semi-meaningful information about my play in all the different games and use that to try to plug leaks. I've played a few small tourney sessions as well but those are stupid so I usually lose.

So SCOOP isn't until May 7th for some reason which overlaps nicely with the EPT Grand Final. Good work PokerStars. I heard some other bad stuff about the venue so whatever, Eurotrip is off the schedule yet again. I'm planning to grind SCOOP like crazy though. In the mean time there's not a lot in the way of super legit tourneys. Some GSOP and miniFTOPS stuff this weekend is pretty cool so I'll likely play Sunday in front of the TV while grinding March Madness obviously. Other than that I guess I'll try not to go broke grinding mixed games. Just kidding, backing Tony will be what breaks me.

Mike

Online Grind

2011-02-22T22:10:00.002-03:30

After LA we headed back to Vegas to grind FTOPS and such at Casa de Chewy. With one exception it's been all work here as the team has been putting in some serious hours on the tournament and cash grind. I hit a couple good scores in FTOPS, winning the $200 Stud Hi/Lo event for $27k and getting 5th in the 9-game multi-entry for $24.5k. Cash has gone up and down with some pretty big swings but overall it's been a successful couple weeks. I feel like my game has improved a lot in both tournament NL Holdem and mixed games over the last year despite not having a whole lot in the way of results to show for it. It definitely helps the learning process when your roommates are the best Rush player in the world (Dan likes to claim he's top 5 in the world at almost everything but in this case he's not exaggerating), and a couple guys who battle almost anyone at high stakes heads-up NL. Even Tony doesn't bring the team down that much.

Tomorrow is Dan's birthday so we're going to celebrate in Vegas before heading to LA on Thursday for the LAPC WPT event. After that I'm finally heading home! Between March Madness and SCOOP coming up I should be able to keep myself busy (depending if sitting on a couch watching basketball for 12 hours counts as a legitimate activity to you). Then I'm likely going to do the Irish Open, San Remo, Madrid tour of Euro-tourneys at the end of April.

Still no update on the results of our meetings in LA for those I've talked to about that, but we remain cautiously optimistic.

Mike

Australia 2011!

2011-02-04T01:26:00.003-03:30

Another Aussie Millions has come and gone. As always I've had a great time in Melbourne, though poker was significantly less successful than last year. I did cash 4 of the 11 events I played, but they were all min cashes. The only biggish one was 5th in the $10k 8-game for $20k. I also lost a bunch online playing cash, so good times on the poker front.

Outside of that I had a lot of fun here catching up with friends, meeting new people, partying, golfing etc.... Unfortunately(?) plans have changed and I'm leaving Australia two weeks early and going to LA tomorrow with Tony and Dan. Not really sure what the plan is between that and the good events in LAPC, but these things have a way of working themselves out somehow. Hopefully missing out on two weeks in Australia ends up being worth it! I'll update further details when I have a better idea what's going on.

Mike

Fallsview Recap

2011-01-11T17:07:00.002-03:30

I played the $2.5k and $5k events at Fallsview this weekend and it proved to be a wise decision not to go to PCA. Both events were as soft as I expected, but the $2500 being scheduled for a Saturday and Sunday really drew a huge field and was even juicier than I could have guessed. 444 players showed up and the prize pool exceeded wan mirrion dorrars.

I got off to a good start flush over flushing a guy to double early but then hung around 25k for quite a while before reversing back to the 10k starting stack. Things were looking grim as the blinds were big and my first shove with Q6s was snapped of by 77. I flopped 2 pair though and then I won JJ>AQ vs the same guy a few hands later. Shortly after that I busted another guy somehow, I think another flip, and I had chipped up to 80k before I knew it. The rest of the day didn't go as well and I had to rebound at the end to finish with 56k. there were around 68 left with 40 getting paid.

On day 2 I just crushed from the very beginning. First I busted a short stack calling his shove with ATo and holding vs 76s. I then raised over an UTG limp with 88 and the guy next to me, who had just taken like 3 minutes to call a 20bb reshove with AK, moved in for an amount that gave me almost 2:1 on a call. I sighed and threw in the chips hoping to see AK, but instead he had 55(!). Then I stole some blinds on the bubble to have 210k when we reached the money.

They did a redraw for seats at 40 and Timex got moved to my table with 280k. Now guaranteed money people were willing to gamble again, so it was a rather opportune time for me to pick up QQ, AA, and AA within the first couple orbits. I busted a player each time, the last being timex himself when he jammed pocket 2s over my pocket 1s (he had already lost some of his stack by then). Then I opened AQ UTG, got flatted by some guy who likes to call, and the BB shipped 15bb. I called and held vs the 93o. Actually. Then I won another big pot when I opened 66 UTG+1 to 23k and got repopped to 50k by a guy who had flat called me with AK in the same spot the orbit before. I was therefore very confident he had a big pair so I did some math and decided to call getting a bit over 9:1 implied odds, which is probably a small mistake. Even though I'm only 7.5:1 against flopping a set I don't automatically win when that happens, but fuck him for minraising me and maybe I score some image points as being the bully chipleader who doesn't fold to such nonsense. Obviously I flopped a set and held vs AA. After that I won another smaller pot and had over a million when 2nd place was barely 500k. I made the final table with just under a million and was still chip leader.

The first hand I played at the FT was huge. 2nd in chips who had almost caught up to me opened in EP to 41k at 6k/12k/1k and the guy on my right called. I called with 77 and the three of us saw a flop of T73 rainbow (easy game). They checked to me and I bet 72k. It seemed likely neither was very strong but I have to bet anyways and I was thrilled to see the original raiser bomb it to 246k! He had around 450-500k behind and from playing with him I knew he was capable of spewing, but I really doubted he would be bluffing in this situation. In the end I still decided to just call afraid he might somehow hero fold if I shove as it's live poker but he'd probably autoshove the turn with an overpair anyways. Plus if he does happen to have AK somehow he might accidentally make a pair. The turn was a king and he shoved as expected, I snapped and beat JJ. After this pot I had 1.85M of the 4.4M in play with 9 left. 2nd in chips would have had maybe 600k.

Unfortunately from there I did not run so hot. I lost two flips against short stacks and later AJ vs AK to drop below a million. Another player from Waterloo, David Quang, had stolen my God-mode and run up the big stack. We eventually ended up heads-up with me behind 3:1 in chips. The heads up was incredibly one-sided. He probably made the best hand at least 75% of the pots that saw a flop and there just wasn't anything I could do about it. I was down to 500k when I got all-in A6 vs A9, but flopped three sixes to get back where I'd started. I then coolered him AQ vs AJs in a pot that would have put me roughly even in chips, but he rivered a J-hi straight to take it down. Second paid $141k obviously a great score, but payouts were pretty top heavy and first was twice that. Nonetheless I was still thrilled to get the year started in such a positive way.

I played the $5k on Monday and was able to double my stack without playing any particularly interesting pots, but then I went card dead and eventually lost JJ vs AQ. I'm off to Australia tomorrow for Aussie Millions where I'm planning to play basically everything except the 100k. If I can be even half as successful as I was there last year 2011 will be off a to a great start indeed.

Mike

On to the Next

2011-01-04T04:25:00.002-03:30

2010 was a good and bad year for me. The good was that I succeeded in having a lot fun and enjoying life, which was my main goal. The bad was that with respect to poker I was in the red on the year. This was mainly because I stopped running hot at nosebleed PLO and I didn't do anything spectacular live, despite starting off the year cashing the PCA and having a great run at Aussie Millions. My lack of success at poker isn't really surprising. When you play as little volume as I did in 2010 at the stakes I played your results are going to vary wildly. Focusing more on other things and less on poker is unlikely to help. That being said, poker was not my main goal, and losing never really affected my mood. I still had a great year overall.

Losing in 2010 didn't really change my situation financially, though you probably won't see me playing much nosebleed for a while. That being said it's not something I intend to repeat in 2011. Since I got back from Asia I've been rededicated to grinding somewhat. I've spent a lot of time playing 25/50 full stack PLO and mixed games in the 40/80-250/500 range. Some of my limit games still need some work but I'm really enjoying the new 10 game mix as Badugi and NL 2-7 SD are both fun games and games I feel I'm relatively strong at compared to the field at this point. I think if I keep putting in hands as much as possible while being smart about game selection I'll have success. Making some more steady income from cash is important as my tournament results are always going to be erratic, that's just the nature of it.

As for 2011 I am doing a lot of the same traveling I always seem to do with a few changes. First, I'm skipping PCA this year. Instead I will be playing the 2.5k and 5k
events at Fallsview. These events will have a lot of value and are much easier to travel to. PCA is overrated once you've done it a few times anyways, and while the main event is one of the best tourneys of the year most of the $2k+ buy-in side events are nothing special. Immediately after Fallsview I'm off to Australia again for Aussie Millions. The schedule looks great this year and Melbourne is infinitely better than Atlantis in terms of a vacation spot in January-February. After the tournaments are over I'll be kicking it with my mates down under for the first 3 weeks of February. Finally, I'm heading to LAPC again on Feb 20 for the final week of events there. That's as far as I've got things planned at this point, hopefully I get off to a great start to a great year on and off the felt! Happy New Year and best of luck to everyone in 2011.

Mike

Part 4: Seoul

2010-12-24T04:22:00.003-03:30

We arrived on a Tuesday night Dan-less and then proceeded to immediately get hustled by a cab driver taking us to our hotel. Oh well. Tony and I checked in and then asked the concierge directions to a good Korean BBQ spot. For those who haven't met Tony he is obsessed with Korean BBQ. It would not be an exaggeration to say that is a big part of why he wanted to visit Seoul. Largely through his influence I've come to really enjoy it as well, and I must say the meal did not disappoint. The quality of the beef was fantastic. We passed out and were lucky to be well-rested for what became a very interesting Wednesday.

I woke up and ordered breakfast then did my normal routine of dicking around on the internet. To my surprise I saw several links on my friends' Facebook/Twitter about North Korea attacking South Korea and started reading all about that. Basically, just as we were arriving in Seoul the Koreas had the biggest military incident between the two countries since the end of the Korean War. While I could see the seriousness of the events I was also pretty confident nothing would actually escalate from it, but it still wasn't exactly great timing to be visiting Seoul. While Tony and I did receive several very concerned messages from friends it seems basically everyone in Seoul felt the same as I did and went about the lives normally. I couldn't sense anyone really worried about the situation and what I read said the same thing. It appears most Koreans were just like, "Yeah, those North Koreans be crazy, what else is new?".

So Tony and I went on about our business. We knew one person combined in Seoul upon arriving, but as always with Tony he knows so many people that he's always able to get put in touch with people in whatever city he ends up. That night we went for Korean fried chicken with a mutual friend's ex-girlfriend who was in the city and a group of her friends. We immediately hit it off with the group and several rounds of beers, a bottle of soju, and some other Korean alcohol we were well-initiated to the Korean custom of going for drinks with your friends/co-workers after work. The fried chicken was nothing special, but the food was the hardly the focus.

After dinner we met up with group #2 of people Tony had been put in touch with. This was a group North American guys who had moved to Korea mostly to try to play Starcraft professionally at some point and then gotten into poker because Koreans are way too good at Starcraft. I think they all had some general version of that story. They had all been in Seoul long enough that they spoke both English and Korean fluently, which was nice because not a lot of people in Seoul speak much English, though there seems to be more of the younger generation making an effort to learn it. These guys took us to a karaoke spot spot where we proceeded to party until 7 or 8 in the morning. At this place they bring in girls to hang out in your room and party with you. They are paid to be there and hangout with you but that's all. I think only one girl spoke English, but we had a fun time drinking and singing and getting to know all the guys.

I awoke around 4pm on Thursday and Tony and I went for some much-needed Korean BBQ to cure our hangovers. After that we walked down to COEX mall, the largest underground mall in Asia. It really is pretty huge and has a lot of the huge international chains you would expect. It seemed like most people working at the mall spoke enough english to get by as it's such a huge tourist attraction. All the signs were in both English and Korean which was different from most other places we visited. Then we wanted to go see the new Harry Potter movie but for some reason they didn't have it in Korea yet, so we saw Unstoppable instead which was actually pretty decent. When we got out of the movie a few people from the first group the previous night were keen for us to meet them at their friend's club in Itaewon. All the partying was starting to wear me down by this point, but we didn't come to Asia to not party, so off we went and had another great night.

Friday was our final night in Seoul and of the entire trip. It was all already planned to go out with a blast. First, I was meeting up with a friend from university now living in Seoul for dinner, and then we were meeting up with Starcraft boys and hitting a booking club. Over the course of the night talking with my friend and then experiencing a night at the booking club I learned that dating in Korea is just way different than in North America. My impression is that while many Koreans appear to be conservative and in some ways shy, they are also very social and open to giving a date a try with a lot of people they meet and seeing how it goes. I have yet to explain what a booking club is, but I should preface that explanation by saying it's not something most people do in Seoul. Yet, the very fact these places exist shows how different the culture is.

It's not unlike a high-end club in most places in the world in that the guys pay for a table with bottle service, beers, etc.... but you also have your own private room like at a karaoke place. They give you a nice spread of food as well. The girls get in for free. They are completely normal girls just looking to meet guys (this isn't Macau), the same as the guys are looking to meet girls. The difference is that there are waiters going around the dance floor and area outside the private rooms. They have a camera in every room so they can see when a guy doesn't have a girl sitting beside him and they immediately move to rectify this situation. Girls are pulled into your room, sometimes literally, and they have no choice but to go when the waiter grabs them. They can always leave when they get there or you can ask them to leave, but if you're a girl hanging around by yourself outside you have no control over when/where you end up next. Throughout the night you might easily talk to 10-15 girls. It really was something to see firsthand.

In the morning I awoke feeling like crap, Tony feeling worse not having slept, and we made our way to the airport for about half what we paid on the way in. The long flight home really sucked, though probably not as bad as I'm making it sound except for transferring at LAX. That was a disaster, thank god I left 4 hours between flights.

I spent the next 3 weeks in Toronto and currently I'm home in Newfoundland for the holidays. I'll write another post soon detailing my plans for the first quarter of 2011, and reviewing my 2010.

Mike

Part 3: Manila

2010-12-13T15:00:00.002-03:30

Manila is definitely not a typical tourist spot from what I've read, but Tony had a blast there last year and definitely wanted to go back. It is the most densely populated city in the world and there is always traffic. Just unbelievably bad, and people drive crazy. Traffic lanes appear to be merely a suggestion. By comparison driving in Shenzhen was like being out on a back country road, and I thought driving there was a death trap. Manila does however have great clubs and fun friendly people that party all night, and everything is super cheap. Also, basically everyone speaks english well.

We arrived in Manila on a Tuesday night and I felt awful the entire way there. I'd gotten a bit of a cold the last day or two in Macau, and while I was never really very sick it was enough to make me feel pretty bad. I had a bit of a fever and a very sore throat, such that it hurt every time I swallowed. I was also just generally tired. I crashed pretty early Tuesday night and slept a bunch, but was still feeling under the weather Wednesday night when the team was getting ready to go out. I decided to stay in as I knew it was going to be a big week of partying and I wanted to recover for the next three nights. This was definitely the right decision, but unfortunately I missed out on a pretty epic night. Actually, I woke up at 9:30am to grind online (Wednesday nightly tournaments with the time difference) so I guess I could still have caught the tail end of the party.

After I finished up my session, I went up to the other hotel room to see what the hell had happened to Tony and Dan. I walk in to see three girls, Tony, and Dan all passed out, Dan and Tony each cuddling with a (very attractive) girl. They regale me with some of the stories of last night and Tony and I hit the gym for a bit as I'm feeling a fair bit better. I end up going out that night but it really sucked. I guess everyone rests up for the weekend Thursday night in Manila as it was dead. Even the girls from the night before, who were legit party girls, had no interest in going out. We were at a spot that was supposed to be one of the best in the city that night, and while there were a lot of people there it totally blew.

Friday and Saturday we went to what we were told was the best club in the city and it did not disappoint. Friday night in particular we had a table on the dance floor (for fairly cheap) and there were gorgeous girls just everywhere around us. It was to the point I think we were almost confused what to do there were just too many possibilities. It was probably the best atmosphere I've ever been at in a standard club. Saturday night wasn't as good as we got bumped to a less ideally positioned table and there just seemed to be a lot more guys than Friday. While I know certain team members have reason to disagree, it was still an awesome night! I have to give a shoutout to Carlos and Max (slider on 2p2) who hung out with us those nights and were great guys to party with.

Sunday was a day of recovery, but despite relaxing all day my body was still not happy with me. It wouldn't really be again for the rest of the trip. Monday was our last night. I ended up having a date with a girl I'd met on the weekend that was easily one of the best first dates I've ever had. So then we all got on a plane the next morning and left. Such is the traveling lifestyle I guess. At this point Truck Dan leaves the team to go back to Jersey for Thanksgiving with the family, while Tony and I soldier on into Seoul for the final leg of the trip, and try not to get blown off the face of the earth by communist dictators.

Mike

Part 2: China

2010-12-06T13:47:00.002-03:30

We flew from Hawaii to Seoul and connected to Hong Kong. From there we took the ferry across to Macau. In a lot of ways, Macau really is like the Vegas of the east. In several important ways, however, it's a whole lot worse. The massive incredible casinos are the same. Many are even bigger. There are great restaurants, though not quite on the same level as Vegas. There's a Cirque du Soleil show. There are amazing spas (probably even better than Vegas). There are prostitutes.

There are some differences as well. There's no blackjack, just baccarat and some Chinese version of roulette or something called Sic-Bo I never figured out the rules to. There are not drunk people in the street at all hours of the day. Even at night. In fact there's not much of a party scene at all. There are however lots of prostitutes, it's legal, and even casino-sponsored (spa good, sauna bad)! Basically, Macau is Chinese Vegas with the party scene removed and the seedier parts emphasized.

Our plan was therefore basically to spend as little time in Macau as possible when not playing poker, and more time in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. We played the Macau Poker Cup (~$2600 USD) but no one did anything so then Tony organized a big get together at a bar at MGM. A lot of drinks, catching up with my Aussie mates, and meeting some new people later it was 2 or 3am and it was decided that those of us still partying were going to D2. As far as I can tell D2 is the only good club in Macau. It was ladies' night and there were hot girls everywhere. At least half of them were pros, but even a lot of those girls were not working that night and just out to party. Still, I was pretty nervous about trying to meet any girls. Not many of them were likely to speak great english, and how would I know if they were just trying to get paid?

David Steicke had joined our group. This was the first time I'd met him though I'd heard plenty about him. Basically, he's some super rich businessman who plays poker for fun and crushes high roller tournaments in Australia and Asia. He got us a table overlooking the dance floor and started making bottles appear. I only got to talk to him for a bit but he seemed like a super nice guy and a huge boss. At some point Dan mentioned it was his first time in Asia and was told "you have to go down there", referencing the dance floor. I was mostly planning to hang out around the table and socialize with our group, but looking down over the railing it appeared Dan was having the time of his life. I had no idea if these girls were really into him or not, but I knew either way I had to get in on the action. Suffice to say, this was a very good decision.

Unfortunately, this is where I cut off the details just as I'm getting to the good part. Sorry about that. Our next stop was Hong Kong. Tony's friend Semo came up from Shenzhen to meet us and we tore it up in Lan Kwai Fong. There weren't any especially epic stories from this night surprisingly, but good times were had as you can imagine when you're buying beers at a 7-11 and drinking them in the street. We hung around in HK the next two days as Tony and Dan waited on their visas so we could cross over to mainland China and meet Semo in Shenzhen. Hong Kong was real cool, but maybe my expectations were too high or something as I was a little underwhelmed. It was extremely cool to walk the 15-20 minutes from our hotel down a main road to the IFC where we ended up eating lunch most days. You'd start in an area that was very stereotypically China. Cramped dirty roads, stores spilling out into the sidewalks, restaurants with only Chinese signs, almost no english. Then just a mile or so down the road you are surrounded by huge modern buildings, with high end stores and restaurants, and everything is in both English and Mandarin. It really was an amazing city, but like I said I guess that's what I was expecting and it didn't blow me away. Also, the air quality was by far the worst I've ever breathed.

Finally the boys got their visas and we rocked down over to Shenzhen. Unlike Hong Kong I had no idea what to expect in Shenzhen other than that Semo would show us a great time. I've gotta say though, I was very impressed. It seemed a lot less cramped than HK. There was a very clear effort to have a lot of green and that really made the city a lot more visually appealing. Just like in HK there were huge modern skyscrapers everywhere. From what I was told SZ is a very modern city, largely getting built up in the last 30 years or so when Hong Kong became such a huge international business hub due in large part to its proximity. That modernity definitely shows in its design.

We arrived Tuesday night and Semo took us to our hotel and then for dinner. Unlike in Macau or HK there seemed to be very little english spoken. Without Semo and his friend it likely would have been difficult to even order at a restaurant. Even at the hotel the staff's english was just passable. Anyways, Semo took us to the club that night. We got a table, a bottle of vodka, and four yahtzee-like cups with five dice each. At every table in the bar, people are playing liar's dice drinking game because that's how China rolls. Semo quickly teaches us the rules and hand signals and we get in on the fun. I'm too lazy to explain how it works, but basically it's a game of luck, strategy, and bluffing, so we were all pretty sure we'd be world champion by the end of the night. This made it suck that much more when tiny 19 year old Chinese girls kicked our asses repeatedly throughout the night.

So basically, we are the only young white guys in the entire bar. It does not take long to realize that we are going to be very popular. Unfortunately, the language barrier is a bit of an issue. A lot of girls speak enough broken english to get by when combined with gestures and body language, which we're used to by this point, but others don't really speak any at all. Still, we have three things going for us:

1. Semo can translate.
2. The dice game has hand signals making verbal communication unnecessary to play.
3. Dancing is also non-verbal.

1 was not as useful as we'd hoped. Upon learning that your 6'4" friend who trains and is built like an MMA fighter speaks her language, it's amazing how fast a girl's interest can wander. 2 and 3 were money though. It really was an interesting experience. I'd imagine it was similar to being a celebrity at a bar in North America. In general I'm sure you've heard stories about how white guys are really popular in Asia, and I'd say everywhere we went that was true to at least some extent. Nowhere was it as pronounced as in Shenzhen though, and we had one hell of a fun night.

Unfortunately we had to leave the next day to get back to Macau for the next tournament. The APT main event (~$4300 USD) we all bricked as well, but we decided to hang around for the players party instead of rushing to Cebu for the APPT event there. In retrospect that was likely a botch, though we did have a good time at the player's party. While sites like PokerStars especially and FTP do everything they can to keep a clean image in the public eye as they already looked down upon as gambling sites by many, the guys who organize the APT have no such concerns. Also, I think they won in big cash game the night before as they decided to pre-pay 30 working girls for the party. While this is clearly many people's idea of a good party it was not ours. We were mostly excited because the 10 or so models they had working the tournament were all supposed to be there. Sadly only maybe half of them were there and they were serving drinks and often busy with that. So Dan and I took advantage of the open bar while Tony still managed to juggle girls and sleep with one of the models, and then hit D2 again with some of the Aussie boys for the improved hooker:not hooker ratio. While it wasn't nearly as good as the last time I would still file it under good decision.

Next stop: Manila.

Mike

Best... Trip... Ever! Part 1

2010-11-28T13:46:00.003-03:30

This series of blog entries is really not going to do it justice unfortunately. I'm actually a very open person when it comes to telling stories and opinions on personal matters. My good friends will undoubtedly hear all the details about our various (mis)adventures, and I'm sure I will be entertaining even more casual acquaintances with some of the stories of this trip for years. That being said, there has to be a line somewhere and unfortunately writing the details of my personal life on the internet for the whole world to see is on the other side of it. Luckily for you, Tony has less issues about these sorts of things, though there are a few stories from the trip that even he's not willing to write about. That's how real shit got.

The story begins with Tony, "Truck" Dan, and myself flying Vegas-->Honolulu. This was supposed to be nice relaxing start to the trip. We'd chill on the beach, drink a few girly drinks with little parasols in them, and of course still party a little, but our expectation was that the parties wouldn't be too crazy. Dan even questioned the wisdom of missing out on Halloween in Vegas. These concerns were short-lived.

Halloween in Honolulu is big fucking deal. This year, Halloween was on a Sunday, so as expected there was a huge party Saturday night. There was also a huge party on Sunday though in the area directly around our hotel. Unfortunately, unaware of this fact, Tony had booked our flight for 1:30am Sunday night. So Saturday we decided to go big, and in this regard I think it is safe to say we succeeded. It is also safe to say I succeeded a little too much, but let's backtrack a little. The first step is to decide out costumes.

Obviously, we decided to dress up as Jersey Shore style guidos. I can't imagine I need to explain why this is obvious so let's keep this moving. We bought Ed Hardy T-shirts, ridiculous sun glasses, and even some spray-on tan stuff. Unfortunately, we were stuck with our own muscles, as even Tony does not have a true situation going on. This isn't all bad though as at least it's fairly obvious we are being ironic. The key to pulling this costume off, in my opinion, is to really get into character. You must be loud and obnoxious and not give a fuck, though in such a way as to be hilarious but not really rude (so not quite fully in character). To me, the obvious way to accomplish this is to get wasted. This seems an appropriate time for pictures.

At 11:55am I made a bold decision and grabbed a Blue Moon from our fridge. After lunch we spent a bunch of hours at the hotel pool getting some sun and drinking aforementioned girly drinks with parasols. By dinner I was already very "in character". The big party that night was in Chinatown. The streets were all blocked off and you could drink and party in the streets as well as a bunch of bars in that area. I don't remember much after the first couple vodka redbulls so I'm going to put some things that happened in point form:

1. Whenever talking about a girls' costume add slutty before: Oh what a cute slutty cat! It is standard knowledge that girls halloween costumes are intentionally revealing so if you say this with the right tone it should not get a bad reaction.

2. Asking girls if they are DTF. This one you have to be more careful with but if you are doing a good job being in character it should go over fine.

3. Tony pulling his shirt up and asking girls if they know about the situation. Even with Tony's build apparently this just does not actually work.

4. Somehow I got a girls' number and was so wasted I accidentally texted it to her trying to make sure I had it in my phone properly.

5. Dan took me home before midnight. It really was a great party, so sorry about that brah.

In part two I will write about China. Hawaii really was "just a practice"!

Mike

Vegas and Onwards

2010-10-26T03:53:00.002-02:30

I've been in Vegas for the last ~2 weeks staying at Chewy's house again. I played the Festa al Lago WPT at Bellagio but busted quickly. Other than that I've been golfing a fair bit, partying, and dropping some NBA Jam knowledge on the team. The big highlight of the trip was Randal (RandALLin), who was staying at chewy's with us, shipping the WPT for $831k! An epic day of sweating the final table and then celebrating occurred. There are various videos on the internet of Randal being interviewed where they show clips of us acting like jackasses in the stands cheering him on, and I'm sure at least some of our shenanigans are a lock to make the WPT broadcast when it airs (especially as we now have a man on the inside), in addition to Randal doing his Mike Sexton impression in the middle of a hand.

Tomorrow Tony, Dan, and I are leaving for the big trip I talked about in my last post. Obviously we are super pumped! In addition to the GTL sessions and partying that will obviously take place there are also 3-4 poker tournaments for us to play that should be really soft. On top of all that a bunch of the Aussie guys are now doing a big chunk of the trip with us as well which is even more awesome. I don't have a whole lot else to talk at you all about right now, but I'll be tweeting/blogging about the trip a bit. Holler if you're going to be in any of these places at the same time as us!

Mike

WCOOP Wrap-Up

2010-09-27T14:26:00.003-02:30

I've been on the mega-grind for WCOOP the last few weeks and I was able to make a little money at it. Pretty much all my results came a week ago Monday when I made three final tables: 6th in the Stars 50r for $3600, 1st in the WCOOP-43 2nd chance event a $200r PLO for $28k, and 3rd in WCOOP-45, the $265 Turbo Knockout NL event, for $50k. That was obviously a great day but I never quite got over the top the rest of the time. I had an 8th, several 9ths (one in the iPoker Sunday major), a 10th, and a few other final two table finishes that I couldn't turn into more. I bricked two 10Ks and the 5K main event, and while I'm too lazy to actually add up all the numbers right now I should have netted a profit in the low 5-figures area which is cool. I don't expect to play much online the next couple weeks with the exception of the next two Sundays for awesome GSOP stuff.

I have a huge trip coming up though! First, it will be down to Vegas for the Festa al Lago WPT event. I'll kick around there for a week after and then it's off to Asia with Tony and Truck Dan to plunder their loot and womens. First stop however is Hawaii. Then on to Hong Kong and Macau for the Pokerstars Macau Cup, and APT Macau. There is overlap between the APT Macau main event and our next stop: APPT Cebu in the Phillipines, so I may have to miss the latter. Then it's on to Manila for a few days and finally Seoul will be the last leg of our trip. I am super excited for this as I've been wanting to go to Asia for a while now but the timing has never worked out. I've heard amazing stories though, it's going to be one hell of a trip. Also, the poker tournaments should be incredibly soft.

GL to Timex,CutiePi314, and current top dog for WCOOP player of the series Andy McLeod in the WCOOP main today!

Mike

Best... Summer... Ever.

2010-08-26T02:06:00.003-02:30

Strangely enough it was my worst financially. I basically got killed at tournaments. Then Tony was going to win the main event and make me $3 million or something but that fell through and he didn't even end up winning enough to get me even on the summer. On the plus side I did play a lot of golf, basketball, partying, and good restaurants. Living at chewy's house was awesome, there was basically always a couple other people looking to do the same type of stuff I wanted to do. The summer ended with two of my buddies from undergrad coming down to visit and throwing down one of the craziest weekends of all our lives.

So I came home and got back on the PLO grind and quickly won back the money I lost over the summer. I then proceeded to lose that and a whole bunch more. I really haven't been playing very much poker since then as it left a sour taste in my mouth. I should probably get back on the grind at smaller stakes but I'm very unmotivated right now. I'll likely play some light Sundays until WCOOP starts and hopefully WCOOP will motivate me to get on the MEGA-GRIND. If that doesn't work there's always the get rich quick scheme that is live poker tournaments, but unfortunately I have some real life stuff going on that's going to prevent me from traveling to Europe at all in the coming month for the craziness going on there. I'll just be chilling here in TO and playing WCOOP instead. There are very few big live events I'm interested in in the fall. I'm thinking one trip to the west coast but mostly waiting for PCA/Aussie awesomeness again in the new year for my next major trip.

In the mean time I'll just do whatever it is that I do with my life. Here is a picture detailing some of my goals:

Mike

World Series of Fail

2010-06-11T19:37:00.002-02:30

9 events played, 0 cashes, -87k. It's not like this is some exceptionally bad losing streak but every summer the WSOP starts like this for me and it's starting to piss me off a little bit. Of the nine there's only been two tournaments where I even had any kind of stack, and I think only 3 where I ever reached twice starting stack. Anyways obviously I'll just keep at it and hope to bink something soon. I'm skipping the limit holdem event today and likely playing the 10k O8 tomorrow. I wasn't planning to play this event but there are just so many bad O8 players in the world I figure I must have an edge in a full ring tournament.

Other than that I've been golfing, running, going out a bit and losing crazy propbets to Ashton because hes an insane beast. He ran 14 miles home in 90 degrees after eating a pound of frozen yogurt, a huge meal of sushi, and playing 9 holes of golf before that on a super hot day. It took him only 2:33 as he'd hardly want to let something silly like puking 5 times prevent him from keeping a good pace. Living in chewy's house has been real fun and as you would expect there have been a lot of ridiculous stories already that aren't really fit to write about here. Tony has no shame though so a bunch of them are on his blog if you're interested in that sort of thing, though you probably already know that because his blog is a lot better than mine. GOLF TIME! Peace,

Mike

WSOP 2010

2010-05-24T23:53:00.002-02:30

My return to Vegas for the WSOP is just 2 days away! This will be my 4th consecutive summer living in Vegas for the series (and of course Bellagio Cup) and 5th consecutive year playing the main event. It's kind of hard to believe I've been doing this for so long, but I'm still really enjoying it.

The plan this summer isn't really set in stone. I'm living at luckychewy's (Andrew) house with him, Tony (Bond), (King)Dan, Aaron (aejones), Ashton (TheAshman), and hopefully Dani (ansky) as well. Anyone who has met these guys or seen 2 month 2 million, the TV show from last summer, knows this a pretty elite crew of awesome dudes. All of them are of course well known for taking poker seriously and printing dollar bills, but around half of them are probably about as well known now for their exploits partying and chasing girls. In short, this summer is gonna be fun. That being said poker is still always first priority, but I'll be playing it by ear as to how many events I end up playing. I could see myself playing every event I possibly can, actually that's probably fairly likely, but I could also see myself skipping a few more events to play golf, watch the World Cup, and run around the desert in Las Vegas, looking for strippers and cocaine. Don't worry mom it's a line from a movie.

That being said I've really had no luck at the World Series over the years and I'd very much like to improve my record there and make some final tables, money, and maybe some bracelets. I intend to focus more on non-holdem events again because I enjoy them more, though I will obviously be playing most of the bigger buyin NLHE events as well. As I mentioned last time I'll be starting with the $50K players championship. Nothing like starting the summer 50 grand in the hole =/. Whatever happens this summer it's definitely going to be stupid fun one way or another, I can't wait to get down there and get it started.

Mike

SCOOP-a-loop!

2010-05-16T05:03:00.003-02:30

Hello, people of the internet. I've been on the mega tournament grind for the last 9 days and it's been quite a ride. With the SCOOP going on Stars I've been playing incredibly long hours and $10-20k worth of buy-ins at least every day. I've cashed for somewhere in the general vicinity of $120k in that time, which sounds great until you consider my buy-ins add up to roughly that much as well. Today was my biggest score, $50k for 2nd place in the $500 mid SCOOP PLO 6-handed event. It was disappointing to lose heads up especially as I started with a decent chip lead but oh well. Last weekend I finished 3rd twice in the Friday night fight and Sudnay $50+rebuys for a combined $50k as well. I've had a few other close calls in SCOOP events but come up short finishing in the 13th-16th range.

Tomorrow is a huge Sunday with the $10K SCOOP main event as well as several other big SCOOP events on top of the usual Sunday stuff. Hopefully I'll win lots of gold. After SCOOP is over I'll probably be avoiding poker for the most part until the series other than trying to sharpen my mixed games a little. I'm planning to play the $50K 8-game mix championship. Hard to say if I'll have an edge or not but it sure sounds like a ton of fun! Besides, I just play for the glory.

Mike

Back on the High Stakes Grind

2010-03-29T18:03:00.003-02:30

I haven't been playing a ton of poker lately, but when I have played it's mostly been high stakes PLO and some bigger mixed games. The big action has mostly been at 200/400 cap plo with the occasional deeper stacked game mixed in. I also have played some of the 7 and 8-game mixes when the lineup doesn't seem too bad for practice and because hopefully I might have a small edge. It's been a fairly strange run for me lately where I've been up and down a lot with the usual biggish swings but overall I've been doing well.

The strange part is according to the adjusted all-in EV column on Holdem Manager I've run between $200-300k above expectation in all-in pots over most of this run, and if I hadn't been I'd be losing a decent amount. This means that in pots in which I've been all-in, once my hand has been turned over and there's no more betting I've been a huge luckbox. This is just one way in which luck manifests itself in these games and I still feel like overall I've played pretty well. I've just been very unlucky in being on the wrong side of a lot of coolers (another kind of luck), but very lucky in drawing out of them. That's what it seems like to me anyways so I still feel good about my chances in these games in the long run, but it's something I'll have to keep an eye on.

The other day I was playing a big session and decided to take a chance and play some deeper stacks I had run up. I ended up playing what I believe are the two biggest cash pots of my life against cts:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5314245 - I think it goes without saying this is a dream hand.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5314252 - This one took a pretty serious chunk out of how much I was running above expectation in all-in pots.

I'm still not planning to play many tournaments before WPT Championship, a few FTOPS events, and SCOOP. Probably this Easter Sunday I'll play a proper tourney grind session, but otherwise most of my play will likely be biggish cash.

Mike

Quick Update!

2010-02-27T06:44:00.003-03:30

Let's see what I've been up to since I last posted here. After the $1K rebuy I got 3rd in the $10K PLO and 5th in the $10K Horse at Aussie Millions. They were both only ~25 player fields so the payout wasn't a whole lot but it did make for a very successful series overall. More importantly, it moved me into 9th place on the all-time Canadian tournament player money list:

9th Michael Watson $ 2,654,042
10th Mike McDonald $ 2,627,136

Eat it timex.

After the series ended Tony, Dan, Chewy and I partied for a bunch of days in Sydney then headed to Adelaide for the ANZPT event there. I went deep in that event but busted just short of the money. After that I went back to Melbourne and stayed at Tony and Jarred's place for another week. I mostly just grinded FTOPS and other online tourneys for the week, but I had no results to speak of. Finally, I left Australia last Tuesday and headed to LA for the LA Poker Classic.

Since arriving in LA I've busted the $5k prelim and $10k WPT main event. On Sunday I play the $25k high roller event. People who watch my PokerSavyy videos will have noticed that I haven't made any in a very long time. I've decided to stop making videos there altogether. I basically didn't really enjoy making them anymore and the money was never a big incentive compared to the stakes I play. I want to continue trying to balance poker with other things better, but I still have a lot of poker goals so the time I spend at poker I think is better spent just playing and working on my game.

The only other thing I have to write about is that I've been back on the high stakes PLO grind. As always it's been really swingy and I haven't played that many hands, but I'm currently on a decent upswing so that's happy.

Mike

$1K+Rebuys TR

2010-01-27T17:55:00.002-03:30

The next day after golfing was the $1K+rebuys NL event. In the rebuy period I splashed around a ton and managed to nail some some flops and get paid off to build a decent stack. I took the triple add-on even though I'm not entirely sure it's mathematically correct (I guess it probably depends on how big I think my edge is) so I was in for $5k. I kept winning a lot of pots and building my stack but there were two German players at my table who I could not beat all-in no matter what I had who took turns doubling through me. Eventually I got moved to another table and some stuff happened and I build my stack up a little out of the danger zone, likely through cardracking because that's mostly what I did this tournament. Then I got moved to another table and in quick succession started running good against the Germans there (a lot of the German guys came to Australia this year).

First I 3-bet an UTG raise from an aggressive German player with AKo. He 4-bets me and folds to my shove. Right after that I open KK and get 2 calls. He squeezes from the BB, I ship, and he calls JJ. I finally hold all-in against a German. Shortly after that I open QQ in the HJ, another German in the BB crams his 20BB with JTs and doesn't get there. Now I have a lot of chips. I kind of chip up more to close to 100K in chips but bleed off 20K or so to make the final table of 10 with 78k. That put me 3/10 but my friend James Obst has like 190k and Florian Langmann, a German Team Pokerstars pro who was at my first table doubling through me has ~120k. Last year's Aussie Million champion and all-around good bloke Stewart Scott was 4th in chips.

At the final table they were all lined up on my left. It was a nightmare seat draw. Florian, then James, then Stew. But I just cardracked so it didn't matter.

Hand 1: French player with Bwin patch on opens HJ. I flat button with AJo and one of the blinds calls. Flop AJx rainbow he c-bets, I call, blind folds. Turn J, he check/shoves KJ drawing dead.

Hand 2: I open 66 in the HJ, Florian calls, James calls button. Flop K64r, I bet 15.6k (1/2 pot) James calls. Turn A I bet 30k he calls. River 4 I bet 55k he tank/folds.

Hand 3: James minraises button to 8k with ~110K I call. Flop Qs9s6c c/c. Turn Tc I bet 12.6k he calls. River 2c I value bet 27.5k and get called by worse. I think this value bet was likely too thin and I was lucky to have the best hand and actually get called.

Hand 4: Florian open CO, James shoves button, I shove KK in BB and hold vs 22.

Hand 5: Florian opens button with like 100k at 3k/6k, I cram A4dd in the BB and beat AJo.

Hand 6: I'm heads up with Gary Benson, some people would recognize him as the guy who does all the Aussie cash for online money transfers. I have a huge chip lead HU and double him once with 89o against QJ. He's playing very passively so the plan is just to grind him down, but then I get it in pre with 88 against AJ instead for 20bb and win the flip to ship the tournament. First paid ~130k AUD.

Since then I've busted the main and the $5K HU event. I'm trying to decide between playing online tourneys today (UBOC is a $1k and 2x guarantee week on FTP) and the 10k PLO event. Leaning towards playing live again at the moment.

Mike

Part 2: United Strikes Back

2010-01-25T20:28:00.003-03:30

OK picking up where we left off. I arrive in LAX on time and have to find my way across from terminal 2 to 6. Changing terminals in LA is pretty annoying as you have to go outside and cross streets and stuff but I eventually figured out where I was going. Unfortunately, I was flying United because they were quite significantly cheaper than the other airlines at the time I got around to booking. I learned my lesson about this two years ago and vowed never to fly United to Australia again, but like I said I figured the difference wasn't worth paying more than twice as much money. The main problem with United is that economy seats do not have their own entertainment system, there is just one TV at the front of each section of the cabin and you have to watch whatever they put on like it's the mid-90s or something. On a 14 hour flight or whatever this is extremely annoying. Luckily I knew to bring a book to read.

So we board the flight and as usual we are delayed taking off. Nothing out of the ordinary. Eventually the captain announces there is a problem fueling the plane and they are trying to fix it. The longer this goes on the more clear it begins to seem that they are not going to find a way to fix it. After about 3 hours or maybe more we have to disembark the plane and wait in line with a million other people for a hotel voucher. Our flight is rescheduled for 11am. I got to the hotel around 3 or 3:30 and slept for maybe 4 hours since I wanted to get a shuttle to the airport before everyone else on my flight got up. Upon arrival at the airport I learn the flight has now been delayed another 11 hours so I am officially a full day behind schedule after all. They offer hotel vouchers again but I decide to just stay at the airport and play online and watch sports, one of the advantages of being on pacific time is that evening games on the east coast start at 4. I proceeded to lose $50K playing 1k/2k 8-game and 200/400 cap PLO. I've billed United for this and threatened to sue, but either they didn't get my e-mail or they are calling my bluff.

Eventually it's time to board and everything goes smoothly this time. The flight sucks with them playing crappy movies that I try to force myself to watch. I fail, but luckily they put me to sleep for a little bit. No idea how much I actually slept but it wasn't heaps by any stretch. We eventually land in Sydney and I get to wait two hours there for my connection. At this point I obviously regret not paying the extra money for a direct flight on Qantas or some other reasonable airline. Anyways, the flight is uneventful and I arrive 11:30am, with plans to play the bounty event at 12:30 if I can.

Customs in Australia was hilarious. I forgot to declare sporting equipment (I brought my golf clubs) but they were super friendly about it and much more interested in talking about my playing poker for a living and telling me how awesome that is! Oh and you have to fill out this form for the money it'll only take a few minutes. In retrospect, I was lucky that I got female customs agents as they were clearly taken by my Canadian accent and natural charm (and the tick in the >10K currency box). Wearing the same clothes for two days and being jet-lagged as shit I no doubt had an irresistible glow (read: smell) about me. At first I thought it was just that Aussies are more chill and laid back in general, but in hindsight it was clearly my good looks and charisma that got me through customs with so little hassle.

I ended up making Tony 40 minutes late for the tournament so he could let me in to drop off my bags and get cleaned up, but that's about 37 minutes longer than he lasted in the last one he played so I figure I was doing him a favour. I eventually crossed the street to the casino and got the last seat in the bounty event. I could already tell I was destined to win it to make up for all the bad luck I had on the trip there. I was envisioning the smug, cocky look on my face as I would tell the story, "But then I shipped the bounty event for $150k, so I guess it was all worth it after all." I busted two hours later.

Basically all my friends busted around the same time though, so we started drinking, ate dinner, and then I passed out at 8 from the jet lag and alcohol combination. The next day I went golfing with Stevo and Chris on a glorious summer day in Melbourne, and couldn't help but think; "Well, I guess the trip was all worth it in the end".

Mike

Toronto to Melbourne: Part 1

2010-01-21T21:12:00.002-03:30

The itineary was long but pretty straightforward. Leave Toronto 5:45pm EST Jan 17, arrive LAX 8:15pm PST. Depart LAX 10:20pm, arrive Sydney 7:30am Aussie time Jan 19. Leave Sydney 9:40am arrive Melbourne 11:20am. No close connections, and I got to Toronto airport early at 4pm. What could go wrong?

The only possible issue was that due to a set of strange circumstances from last year I had more than 10K in AUD cash on me. Normally I avoid traveling with cash whenver possible (and carrying cash on my person at all for that matter) and just wire money ahead, but getting raped on exchanging the money into CAD or USD and then back into AUD is stupid when I can just carry the cash at no cost. For those of you who have never carried large amounts of cash across the border the whole thing is pretty easy. You tick the box to declare it on your customs card. They take you to secondary inspection and ask you some questions which you answer truthfully and you fill out some extra paperwork for the money. Maybe if you're unlucky they search your bags. The whole thing should never really take more than an extra 30 minutes worst case scenario.

So I stroll into US customs 90 minutes before my flight knowing even with all the silly new US flight regulations I have heaps of time. The first sign of something weird is when the customs agent sees I've ticked yes to the currency question, she asks if I've already declared it with Canadian customs. I'm confused by the question and answer that I have not since I'm starting my trip here. I proceed to the secondary inspection room and there are way more people than I've ever seen in there. I hand them my card then have to sit for 5 minutes before they call my name. I roll my bags up to the desk with a male agent this time and again the first thing they ask is if I have declared my money with Canadian customs already? Again confused, I reply that I have not. He informs me that I was supposed to file the paperwork with them before I got to US customs. I ask how recently this change in procedure was implemented. He informs me that it's always been that way.
It has not always been that way. It's *possible* that it was always technically supposed to have been enforced that way, but it certainly never has been in the past. After a couple more questions he passes me the standard US currency form and says he's going to call Canadian customs and explain the situation, try to get someone to come up from there. He informs me further that I will have to fill out the paperwork again in LA saying I'm taking the money out of the country this time. The absurdity of this rule is somewhat mind-blowing. He says I will have to find US customs in LA and fill out the paper work. First of all, I have no idea how to find US customs in LA. Would they even let me back there since I'm already legally in their fucking country? I'm certain that if I ask someone this in LA they will look at me like I'm retarded. Obviously the same thing applies to finding Canadian customs in Toronto like I was "supposed to". And what happens when driving across the border? Is this a flying-only regulation? It really doesn't make sense, maybe US and Canadian customs could just try communicating the information with each other instead?

I fill out the paperwork and he is able to get a Canadian agent to come with their paperwork. He informs me that technically Canadian customs is allowed to seize the money since I came to US customs first but that there shouldn't be a problem. He was actually very friendly the whole time and he and the agent next to him made a bunch of remarks about how ridiculous so many of the policies they have to follow are, but as they are merely "peons" they just follow the rules. The funniest part was when converting the AUD into USD he got a number greater than the number in AUD. Obviously he immediately recognized this could not be right, but after double checking regulations he just left it that way saying it's obviously wrong but that's how he was told to do it and what does he care really. It's fairly likely this was still his mistake actually but either way I got a good laugh out of it.

Two Canadian customs agents arrive, I fill out their paperwork and they want to see/count the money for some reason. They leave, the US guy does the quickest, least thorough "search of my bags" in history and waves me along finally. This whole procedure took quite a while however and I am in big time trouble and there is a decent chance I may miss my flight. Luckily there is basically no line at security. There is one guy in front of me and one guy who already went through and is having his carry-on checked. This proceeds to last several minutes though as I am sitting there enraged about the possibility of missing my flight. I know it will likely move back my itinerary an entire day if I do unless I can catch another flight to LA in the next hour or so, which may not even exist. I finally get through security with no hiccups and start running for my gate. I stop running about 5 seconds later when I see the secondary search point, now standard for any flight to the US since the events over the holidays, and the lengthy queue waiting there. I am so fucked. My flight is scheduled to takeoff in less than 15 minutes so boarding may be almost over already, and it will take at least that long to get through this line. I'm just praying my flight is delayed at this point, though this seems a very reasonable hope knowing Air Canada.

Salvation: A lady with a walkie-talkie calls my name. "Is there a Mr.Watson traveling to LA in this line?". I raise my hand and go to her and now I am in the front of the queue. Now they know I am here and won't leave without me. That was too close. In their thorough search at the security checkpoint they obviously find my cash (and would have even if I'd tried to hide it so don't bother). I tell them I've declared it. They ask for proof and I tell them that's not how it works, I don't have any. Your job is security for the flight not customs I already went through those and that's why I'm late you idiot (obviously I only actually said the that's why I'm late part). Though I can't blame them for wanting to be sure. Now I stand there another 5 minutes at least as someone runs to customs to double check on me. Fan-fucking-tastic. Also, they had the cash out in plain view for some of this. Clearly no one else in the line was on my flight at this point but show some fucking discretion buddy. I mean the airport is a pretty safe place obviously but seriously use some common sense.

Finally the runner comes back and confirms it's all good, the nice lady with the walkie-talkie points me to my gate and I run there even though they are clearly waiting for me and it's only like the 3rd gate down. I get on the plane, and everyone is already in their seats looking annoyed with me. OK maybe I imagined that part. But I made my flight, and due to favbourable winds we arrived on time in LA anyways. I was still going to be off to Australia that night. Or so I thought.

Check back soon for Part 2: United Strikes Back.

Mike

PCA, Niagara and Stuff

2010-01-14T14:42:00.003-03:30

Hey guys! If you've been following my tweets you'll know I was able to min-cash the main event at PCA for $15K. I also played the Half NLHE half PLO event and $1600 side event there but had no luck. Then I flew back to Toronto and drove down to play the $5k event at Niagara Falls instead of staying to play the either the $5k event or high roller event in the Bahamas. I felt really good about that decision when the field consisted of 155 players of which there were probably less than 10 I would consider good. For such a big buy-in it was great value but unfortunately I played a little sloppy and didn't catch many hands in the fast structure to bust early. I leave for the Aussie Millions on Sunday and I'm pumped to get down there to enjoy the weather and try to win some tournaments.

One interesting hand from PCA main on Day 2: I rarely pick up solid reads live but this was one case I should have trusted one.

I open 5h5 in the HJ and the BB, who is a middle aged guy who has shown he's capable of being spewy aggro, calls. The flop comes KT6hh and I check behind. I'd raised his blind several times and he'd always folded to my continuation bets, but he'd shown he's capable of checkraising with air and I felt like I might get played back at a lot this time. The turn is the 3h and he bets like half pot, I call. River 2s, He insta-shoves for like 1.5 times the pot. Whenever I'd seen him act so quickly before he'd always been bluffing, plus the overbet from this type of player can often be a bluff. I didn't end up feeling sure enough of my read at that point and folded, and he showed A9dd =/ I saw the tell once or twice more after that before he busted and it was rock solid, oh well.

I managed to run my stack back up after that hand and after we got in the money I got AA all-in against Jon Aguiar's A9 and lost. I don't think I've taken any other bad beats like that deepish in big live tourneys so I guess I was due for one, oh well. I actually never got out to the beach and water park once the entire trip. The weather was mostly bad though, there were only 1 or 2 days that were nice enough but I felt more in the mood to play poker anyways. Timex ended up winning the $1600 side event for ~$150K.

I played online the last couple nights but had no luck despite making several deep runs. If I keep going deep though I like my chances to hit a big score soon.

Mike

2010

2009-12-26T18:07:00.002-03:30

I guess I should start with a quick 2009 recap. I didn't make a boatload of money this year compared to 2008 (I'd be moderately surprised if I ever make more money from poker in a year than I did in 2008), but I think I succeeded a lot this year overall. I lived a healthier lifestyle, both in terms of eating (a little) better and working out more and socializing more. I bought myself my own place in downtown Toronto that I love, finally got around to getting laser eye surgery (which went fantastic, though I don't think I've written about it here at all), and made a lot of new friends and reconnected with some old ones. Strictly speaking I've had a solid year poker-wise, but that's mostly because at the beginning of the year when I was playing nosebleed games online I went on a big downswing in December and rebounded in January. I've done well in online tournaments as well and didn't lose too much playing live.

So the plan for 2010 is pretty vague I guess, just keep living a fun balanced life. Hopefully that will involve a bit more poker than 2009, I'd like to put up some big scores on the live circuit again this year or hit a few really big online scores. I'm not sure if I really have much in the way of goals for cash games. The big games haven't been running at all lately, and when they do they're mostly mixed games. I definitely would like to improve at the limit games so I can feel comfortable playing those more, but I'm not sure how realistic it is that I'll actually do that. I'm at the point where I feel pretty competent at all the games, and the work required to go from solid to expert is a lot, for relatively minimal improvement. I do intend to keep playing mixed game tournaments though, including the $50K player's championship at WSOP this summer.

To get the year started I am doing my usual fuck winter in Canada trip:

Jan 5-11: PCA in Bahamas

Jan 12-14: Niagara Falls $5k event.

Jan 17-Feb 23: Australia for Aussie Millions in Melbourne, ANZPT Adelaide and general awesomeness.

Feb 24-Mar 3: LA Poker Classic main event and high roller.

After that my live schedule will likely be pretty light until the WSOP. The only tournament I'll be playing for sure is the $25k WPT Championship at Bellagio in mid-April. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone reading this! Let's hope I have a lot to write about in 2010.

Mike

Random Ramblings

2009-12-07T18:06:00.004-03:30

I was just reading Daniel Negreanu's blog and he wrote something interesting related to what I've been writing about recently. I don't always agree with Daniel's thoughts on a lot of things but he has a unique perspective that's always worth reading. Anyways, in his latest blog entry he wrote the following:

Money comes, and money goes when you play poker for a living. Whether you have money or not, though, happiness really is completely unrelated to the size of your bankroll. That might not be true for "regular people" who have real jobs, but poker players are a different breed. In fact, before the boom I saw a vicious cycle that I even feel victim to at one point. You work so hard to make money, playing day in and day out, then all of a sudden you've made that money. Now what? All you've known is the grind for so long, so what do you do now? You don't NEED to play poker anymore, you don't NEED to work at all. How do you replace that time?

Well, you either find a passion for playing the game again while balancing a healthy social life, or, you get self-destructive and blow the whole bankroll so you'll once again have a purpose! Back to the grind to build it all over again.

I think Daniel really hit the nail on the head this time. Preceding this was a classic discussion about how great these young online players are, but "we'll see how many are still around in 5-10 years". This is where I think most people are greatly underestimating the younger generation of poker players. I would argue that of all the poker players under 25 who have made say 7-figures plus playing poker, a lot more will hold onto that money, or indeed even build on it, than people think. The reason for this, in my opinion, is that so many young players have such a different background and approach to poker than the older generation would have.

Think about it. 10-20 years ago, before online poker, before poker on TV, how did people get into poker? Two cases seem most likely to me:

1. You played with your buddies growing up and realized you liked the game and were good at it, then decided to take it more seriously.

2. You already spent time in casinos, then saw the poker room one day, decided to give it a shot and got sucked in.

In the second case clearly these are people who were gamblers first, and poker players second. The ones who ended up being successful were clearly very talented people, but still much more likely to have degenerate and/or self-destructive tendencies. Some of these people learned enough self-control as a part of their growth as poker players to get by. That discipline enabled them to stay away from so many of the readily available pitfalls. A lot probably never did. I've read many stories from the older generation of poker players admitting that they would always have gambled regardless. They were just lucky to find a game they could beat to outlet that part of themselves, and muster enough discipline to stick to just poker as their gambling fix.

The first case is not as clear cut, but I think it's at least fair to say that, on average, the type of people who grew up playing poker with their buddies all the time are going to have more gamble in them than the average person. Keep in mind this was before poker was on TV, when it was still viewed as a backroom shady activity in society in general. Deciding to try to play cards for a living is something a lot of people would probably never have done, even if they loved the game and felt they could succeed.

Today though, there are a lot of young players attracted to the game from seeing it on TV. It's a generation where we actively play video games and strategy games of all types. Then poker comes along and these kids who love playing games, and are already very good at games, realize there is actually a game they could make a living, hell maybe even a fortune, playing. Obviously a lot of us were immediately attracted to it. Of course the money and the gambling is what separates poker from other games at its core. But overall, this generation's attraction to poker is more about the enjoyment of the competition of playing the game than the thrill of winning and losing money. There are a lot more young players who are poker players first and gamblers second. Not to say there aren't plenty of young players who have or are going to lose their way and turn into those sad stories Daniel is warning us about. On the whole however, a lot more of these "kids" are going to pass the test of time than ever before. Just don't expect to see all of them still playing in 5-10 years. A lot will likely have moved on to newer more exciting things.

Mike

Caught the Tourney Bug Again

2009-11-30T05:45:00.002-03:30

I haven't been able to play every day but lately I've really been back in the mood to grind online tournaments, and with ECOOP (European Championships of Online Poker on iPoker network) going I've had a good excuse to do exactly that. On Wednesday I played all day, Friday I put in a solid afternoon session, and today I just finished a 13 hour Sunday grind session. I've definitely been running pretty hot at tournaments lately and I'm sure that's a big part of why I've been enjoying it so much.

On Wednesday I had a successful day making two final tables and adding two more close calls where I busted with two tables left. I didn't run well at the final tables though and finished 6th and 7th respectively in the Stars $100 rebuy and UB/AP $1K for ~11.5K combined. On Friday I didn't have as much luck, though I did make a deep run in the ECOOP event that day. It was a $100 rebuy PLO8 tourney and I finished 19th. Today I played my usual Sunday schedule starting at 2pm est. It was what has kind of become a common Sunday routine for me. Early on in the day I didn't do well at all and I thought I might even post another blank slate. Then I had a close call in the new AP/UB $500 6-max tourney but busted 9th, and I added another min-cash somewhere. Basically the last tournament on my schedule, the Stars $200r, was again the one I had the most luck in. I feel like I've cashed this tournament around 50% of the time I've played it in the last year or something ridiculous like that. So many Sundays I can recall getting killed all day and thinking "well at least the day is almost over" before making a deep run in this tournament and playing another 3-4 hours. It makes for a very long day, but when you turn a big red number into a pretty green number on the day you don't complain about that. Today I was able to actually close the tournament for the win and just over $37k.

As for Vancouver I had no luck in the tournaments there but I did have a ton of fun hanging out with friends. I really looked at that trip as more of a social visit with a few poker tournaments thrown in anyways so I definitely still consider it a success. OK I feel like my brain is tired from grinding all day and putting together coherent sentences is proving more difficult than it should. No talk about balancing poker and life or what poker teaches us about life or whatever it is I normally ramble on about in this space I'm just going to leave this as essentially a shameless brag post. ECOOP $2500 high roller event this afternoon, I'll be on my grind.

Mike

Online Update and BCPC!

2009-11-17T14:19:00.004-03:30

Hey guys, I'm here in Vancouver staying at the River Rock this week for the BC Poker Classic. I played the $1100 event yesterday and busted in the 5th or 6th level. The good news is the tournament easily sold out with 605 runners so I expect the main event to be big as well. It's *only* a $2700 buy-in but I believe it got 7-800 runners last year. I'm not sure if it's capped at 600 again for the main event but hopefully it draws at least that. The main reason I am so excited about this trip is to visit friends in the city that I haven't seen in a while.

This isn't technically my first trip to Vancouver as I was here for maybe a week once when I was 13 or 14 for a chess tournament, but effectively it feels like it is. Everyone always says great things about the city and I feel like if I knew more people out this way there's a good chance I might have ended up living here instead of in Toronto. So far the fact that it's scheduled to rain every single day of my trip isn't endearing the city to me though =P. Once you get past this weather everything I've heard about the city makes me think I'm going to really enjoy it here, and visiting friends I know it's going to be a good time regardless.

So, back to poker. With FTOPS running again I got back on my online tourney grind this past week and it's been going really well. In the 8 day stretch from two Fridays ago to last Friday (playing only a handful of Sunday tourneys) I hit four 5-figure scores, book-ended by winning the Stars $100 1R1A turbo tournament on both Fridays for $30K combined. I don't know what it is about turbo tournaments but I seem to run exceptionally well in them. They are also my favourite to play, I mean what's better than the degeneracy of short stacked play jamming it all-in and gambling it up, every hand can make or break or you poker? In normal tournaments it feels like I put up with the first 3-5 hours just so I can get to that point, but turbos cut right to the chase. No investing half your day for nothing, just 2 hours of pushbotting, sucking out on people with terrible hands, and rarely any tough decisions to agonize over. So if anyone from the online sites is reading this, more turbos with big guarantees please! Now with that sidebar out of the way when I actually go look at tournament results of the last couple months online I've actually done exceptionally well considering I've played very little volume, which is always a good feeling and confidence booster.

As for PokerSavvy, I see that some people want me to do a PLO video, but I really haven't been playing any PLO lately. The 25/50 games seem pretty tough for the most part and I haven't bothered playing. Maybe I'll get around to doing a 5/10 video again at some point but I have a lot of good tournament stuff recorded from the last 2 weeks that I'll probably be looking to do first. Next week when I get back from Vancouver is ECOOP on the iPoker network so I'll probably continue grinding a fair bit. That's all I've got to talk at you about for now, wish me luck in the main event Thursday!

Mike

Success, Motivation, and a Balanced Life

2009-10-26T14:53:00.005-02:30

I haven't written on here in quite a while, for the simple reason that I haven't really felt like it. A part of that is I haven't been playing much poker so I haven't had a whole lot to write about. This is compounded by the fact that writing about Sunday online tournaments or whatever no longer really qualifies as worth writing about in my mind unless I happen to win something big. I do tweet about them occasionally. There is a noticeable trend in the careers of many very successful young poker players. In the beginning we are obsessed with poker. We devote all our free time to learning and playing the game. We neglect other aspects of our lives to some extent at least to try to excel at poker. I'm not saying that's the ideal way to go about learning the game or this obsession is entirely a virtue in the grand scheme of the things, but it's a statement of fact of how most good players I know were when we learned this game. It definitely describes me.

I'm not saying this obsession is a bad thing either, just that things aren't black and white. It's a personality trait that helps us excel at things we really like. I certainly wouldn't trade it, poker has clearly had a massively net positive affect on my life, but there is some trade-off with other aspects of life that are important to your overall happiness. There are now a growing number of young players who have been lucky enough to achieve most of their goals in poker. At some point they stop and ask themselves, "what now?". The answer is usually realizing the things you have neglected, cutting back on poker to some extent, and moving towards a more balanced life. Given the sedentary and solitary nature of playing online poker this typically involves some combination of living a more healthy lifestyle and getting out more and meeting people/seeing the world. David Benefield (raptor) is the example that first comes to mind as he wrote extensively about this on his blog (for those who don't know his story he was a very successful young online high stakes cash game player). He definitely took it to more an extreme than most, with strict diets and workout regimens. He even took it so far as to retire from poker for the time being and return to school with the hopes of achieving bigger and better things, or at least something he'll find more personally satisfying.

So what is the point of all this? No, I'm not quitting poker. I don't think I'll do this forever but I really can't think of a better/more enjoyable job for me right now. The point is that my motivation to play poker 24/7 just isn't there right now. The great thing about the poker lifestyle is I have the freedom to do what I want. For a while I was doing my normal poker routine just out of habit and realizing once I got started playing that I didn't really want to be playing. So now before I play I always ask myself "Do you really feel like playing poker right now?". If the answer is no, then I don't. Seems pretty obvious right? But it took me a while to figure that out. Though for the longest time when I learning the game the answer to that question would always have been yes anyways.

So, I've been focused more on other things. I bought myself a great condo in downtown Toronto. I moved in and began the process of decorating said condo. I started working out more and eating a little healthier. Don't worry I'm nowhere near raptor levels on these but I'm making some improvements that work for me. I've been catching up with a lot of friends and making some new ones. And of course, I've been relaxing and being generally lazy as always. That one would be really hard to change. I still read and think about poker a lot. I'm staying pretty sharp, but with a lot less actual hands played. The main practical issue for me from a poker point of view is this is greatly hindering my ability to learn and master new games, but I'm ok with that for now.

So my little break from poker has been productive (by my lazy standards) and positive overall. But, I'm starting to get the itch to travel again. To play big tournaments and go after another big score! Unfortunately there aren't many good live tournaments that I'm interested in left in this calendar year. I'm planning to do the BCPC in Vancouver mid-November, though I'm treating that as more of a social trip than a serious poker trip, and probably the 5 diamond WPT at Bellagio in December. In January I will definitely be doing PCA and my annual trip to Australia for Aussie Millions and to visit all my friends down there.

I intend to get back into writing here more during these trips as there will definitely be tons of fun stories to tell, poker-related and otherwise. The idea of trying to write here at least once weekly is probably a thing of the past though.

Mike

Living, Moving, Grinding

2009-08-31T11:55:00.002-02:30

Since I returned home from Vegas poker has really not been first priority for me. I stayed briefly in Toronto then headed home to St. John's for 10 days for a friend's wedding and to visit friends and my parents there. Since I've returned to Toronto my focus has been on helping friends move and finding a new place to live myself. I had always been planning to buy myself a nice spot to live in downtown Toronto, and finally I've gotten around to doing it. I bought a really nice loft-style condo last week and I'm super excited about moving in in a few weeks time. My next project will be furnishing the place, which will probably end up being more of a long term thing once I take care of the more obvious essentials. I don't intend on going too over the top or anything, but definitely I want to make it a pretty ballin' bachelor pad.

So over this time I haven't played a whole ton of poker. I've still fit in some sessions here and there, mostly Sundays when I've played tournaments and short random cash sessions when I have free time. When I've played cash the big PLO games have never been running so I've mostly stuck to various limits of the 7 and 8-game mixes on FTP and Stars. I still have a lot to learn but I enjoy playing them. I haven't tracked my results super carefully but I'm probably losing a little overall. I play such a variety of stakes and so few hands that I doubt the results would be very meaningful anyways at this point.

This week the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) begins on PokerStars. As always I'm very excited for this series and looking to play as many events as possible, which hopefully will be most of them. Getting to play big tournaments against weak players taking shots on some more obscure games is a lot of fun, and the value in the big NLHE events is huge as well. I came close to taking one down last fall losing to Tom Schneider heads-up for the 2-7 Single Draw NL championship. Hopefully I'll improve on that this year.

Mike

A Good Week for Watts

2009-07-12T19:05:00.004-02:30

Thursday: Golf at Paiote Golf Club 30 mins down the I-95. Very nice course and I shot my best round of the summer.

Friday: Main Event Day 1A. Went pretty meh but whatever.

Saturday: Jay-Z concert at the Palms. It was just awesome. Afterwards we went to XS at Encore which is just a ridiculous nightclub and had a great time. Only bad thing about the day was I got way too drunk.

Sunday: Write-off due to Saturday night. Saved $5-10K I would have lost playing online tourneys.

Monday: Golfed Wolf Creek in Mesquite. 90 minute drive north on I-15. Golfing in the desert is really an amazing thing. Once you leave Vegas there is just nothing but desert with mountains in the background. It actually is a pretty amazing view even though it's all completely desolate. Occasionally there is an exit with a name like "Sun Valley" or "Heat Canyon" which is basically just a gas station and convenience, as running out of gas in the middle of the desert in 110 degree heat is simply not a good idea. In the case of Paiote on Thursday as you approach the course there is a sign signaling the beginning of the Indian reservation it's on and then you can see some green in the distance. It's kind of like an oasis except instead of being overjoyed at the site of water you're cursing the man-made pond you're going to dump a couple balls in on the 12th. As you approach you see that green obviously has to be a fairway, and in fact there is not one, not two, but three gorgeous golf courses laid out there in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

Wolf Creek was a bit different as it's actually located in a "proper" town, Mesquite, NV. Here is a conversation we had with the bartender after our round that should give you an idea of what a legitimate town in the middle of the desert is like:

Us: Is there anywhere decent to get a bite to eat around here?
Her: Well, are you staying in town? Where are you staying?
Us: No, we're staying back in Vegas.
Her: Go back. Really. Just go back.

Once you arrive in Mesquite you drive up this huge hill to get to the golf course which is a sign of what's in store for you. Wolf Creek is widely considered one of the top 50 public courses in the US. It is also one of the top 3 hardest or something like that. Teeing off at 12:30 in 110 degree heat doesn't make your life easier, nor does the wind. Fortunately, growing up in Newfoundland I have some experience playing in 2-3 club wind, but even that and the fact that the wind was at our back for more holes than not didn't save me from shooting a rather ugly number. That being said, the course really was amazing. Elevated tee boxes on most holes make for some spectacular views (and occasionally spectacular drives!). As much as I was exhausted by the heat and getting my ass kicked by the course I still really enjoyed the round. Anyways this is not Watts' Golf Blog so moving along....

Tuesday: Busto main event. Oh well. Went to a sweet Italian restaurant. It was all mafia-style with like the little slot in the door that opens up when you knock on it and they ask how many, then you hear a buzz and another door opens into the dining room. It's called Capo's on Tropicana/Jones. Great food and cool atmosphere, there are little flash lights on your menu so you can read them since it's so dark in the dining room.

Wednesday: Bellagio Cup $3K event. 180 runners so first is $185K. I run sick hot all day just making hands and always getting paid off. The field is actually way softer than even the $1500 events at the Rio. There are maybe 20 good players in the entire field and the fish at Bellagio are just on another level of bad. I nearly finish the day as chip leader except for losing QQ vs ATs near the end of the day. That was basically the only relevant pot I lost all day though so I'm still above average with 15 or so left.

Thursday: First fun hand I play: Russian guy shoves in the SB I call 44 in the BB. He has A8ss. Flop A54ss. Turn 3h. River 2c. Chop it up.

Hand 2: 3k/6k a1k I think we're at final table at this point. Same Russian guy as before opens in EP to 16k. I have 180K next to act and flat call AQs. Short stack next to me crams 40K, Russian insta-reships when it gets back to him. I just don't think he's good enough to realize how insanely strong my range is there and decide my hand should be doing ok against their ranges and call. Russian has 99, shorty has AJdd. I flop a queen but AJdd rivers a flush. I still win the big side pot though.

Hand 3: 4k/8k a1k I have 170k after losing 55 vs 77. Serbian donk limps UTG. I raise to 28K with AA he calls. Flop J86, he checks I bet 42K he crams I call and beat his KJs.

Hand 4: 4k/8k a1k I have 340K. Open AQo in the HJ to 21K. Other Russian guy on my left, Dmitry, reraises to 65k and he covers me. They announce last hand before break. Now I have all sorts of good reasons to cram here. I have AQ only 45 bets deep in late position. He's russian. He might think I'm stealing light last hand before break, though I didn't even notice the clock and I'm not sure he did either. He's been playing so solid as have I, I just don't think he's messing around with me here. Also worth considering that he is the only other competent player at the table so I decide it's not likely enough that he's light here for it to be worth gambling and fold. He shows me AKo. Ding ding ding!

Hand 4: 6k/12k a2k I have a bit over 300K. I open AKo to 32k, Dmitry calls, donk in SB calls, Serb shoves for like 220K in BB. He's such a nit that I definitely am not fist pumping as much as I normally would be here but I obv reshove. The donk in the SB calls off his last 100k or so with 22 (actually) and Serb has JJ. I flop a king and win the pot to get to 740K and take the chip lead.

After this we decide to chop. We do a chip count deal and given stack sizes that is really good for me. I lock up 115K which is more than 2nd place and we play it out for the 25K WPT Championship seat and a really nice Swiss watch.

Hand 5: I raise in the SB to 36K with 55, Dmitry calls in the BB. Flop 933, I bet 48K he calls. Turn T I check and call 75k. River 9 I check and he bets 100K. I really felt like I had the best hand on the flop and unless he floated the flop and paired his ten I don't see that much else he plays this way that beats me. That being said the way he'd been playing I couldn't see him taking this line as a bluff either since he probably doesn't necessarily expect me to fold A-hi to such a small bet. The fact that I have slightly better than A-hi isn't all that relevant and I think I should have folded but I paid off and he had KTo.

Hand 6: Now Dmitry has a big chip lead but they put the watch on the table and it's really cool so I decide I need to bear down and win this. I bust one guy with AKs vs AQ and then 3-handed I bust the other guy:

8k/16k a2k Italian donk ships 145k on the button. I flat call A3o in the SB and Dmitry tanks in the BB. Oh crap he has a better hand than me but I think hes afraid that I'm trapping since I only called. He eventually folds AJ face up and Italian has 89o. Flop JT8. Oh well. Turn 3, River 3. When stuff like that starts happening no matter how rational you are you start thinking "This is just meant to be". At this point I look up and see that rapper "Nelly" has stopped by the Fontana lounge and is having a look at my final table.

We are now heads up roughly even in chips. At first we are playing conservative. Both of us are raising most buttons and neither of us is defending out of position much. When we do it's always by calling never 3-betting. I win the first pot of interest by turning top pair and getting two streets of value. Finally I break the 3-bet-less streak by repopping A5o which gets a fold.

Again not much happens for a bit until I open AKo to 40K on the button. He 3-bets for the first time to 121K, and I make it 301K. He folds and my image is getting is more aggressive even though I had it. Right after that he opens button, I 3-bet ATs and he folds.

Then shortly after that he opens button again to 38K, I make it 118K with 55. This has been standard bet sizing. He has roughly 800K so I'm definitely calling if he moves in as I expect him to do so pretty wide since I've 3-bet/4-bet him so many times recently. Of course I'm not thrilled if he shoves since it will usually be a coin flip but it's worth 3-betting here to keep pushing him around as it will induce him into overreacting and making a mistake at some point. He shoves though and I call, he has A7o. Flop A33 is not so good, but maybe it really was "meant to be" as 5 turns. River 7 and I ship a Bellagio Cup event for the 2nd consecutive summer.

Afterwards we ate at Cut, a steakhouse at Palazzo that was really good and then head to the PokerStars party at the club Rain at the palms. Stars really throws the best parties and it did not disappoint. Nelly played at the end of the night which was pretty cool.

Friday: Play Bellagio Cup $5K event. Make the money but short stacked heading into Day 2.

Saturday: Bust 12th shoving 15xBB with ATo over Eric Froelich's HJ open. He had KK and the back-to-back run was not "meant to be". I register for that day's $5K but bust early losing a big flip for most of my chips and then stationing off the rest with TT running into JJ in a pretty marginal way. I was going to go play some cash games in Bobby's Room but by the time it looked like I might get a seat in the 100/200 PLO game the game wasn't very good so I decided to just go bet a bunch if money on the UFC fights instead. I've made small bets on a bunch of fights before online and tend to do well, mostly just following the advice of people who are really good handicappers (as long as I agree with their picks, but if we like opposite sides I usually just stay away), but never made any big bets before. The lines at Bellagio were really good though and I won all 3 of my bets to make back the buy-in I lost in that day's tournament. Hooray! Also, the fights were really good so it was a fun night.

Sunday: Doing nothing, writing a blog at last.

Monday: Day 1A of Bellagio Cup 15K WPT main event. Going to begin the quest to defend my title from last summer.

Mike

A Blog Post!

2009-06-26T17:24:00.003-02:30

Hey, I haven't written an update in a while though I figure my tweets should be doing a good enough job keeping you up to date. Obviously the series isn't quite going as well as I had hoped for the third straight year. I've played 17 events and cashed only 2, the $3K HORSE and $5K PLO. The PLO was my best shot by far but alas it wasn't meant to be. I'm planning to play basically everything from here on out except the $50K HORSE. BoostedJ has put up some results so I still have an outside chance of stealing the prop bet against Daniel if I can ship something or if Boosted crushes them in the HORSE. For those who don't know the bet is 20K to win 32K, myself and BoostedJ vs Daniel Negreanu and Eric Lindgren based on total WSOP player of the year points. So far, Daniel has 170, Eric 30, Boosted (Justin Smith) 92, and I have a whopping 15 to put the score at 200-107. A bracelet win is worth 100 though so there's a small glimmer of hope left for me.

OK so the rest of this blog will just be some interesting/important/hilarious hands I've played at the series lately. Enjoy!

$5K PLO Downfall: I had 300K with 27 left average 200K then these 3 hands happened:

3k/6k Open AKT9ss to 16K in HJ CO calls. He is a young Brazilian kid I've seen play aces super passive before and miss an easy river value bet with them. Flop T63hh I do not have hearts. I bet 28K he calls. Turn 2s check/check. River 6c I check he bets 32K I sigh and call since a million draws missed and I've seen hes not really capable of value betting thin. He has JJ and basically told me he thought he was bluffing or something. Great.

4k/8k I have 225K. Young guy open to 25K UTG with exactly 35K behind. Swede who plays a lot of hands quickly calls and I minraise to 42K with KK95ddd in the CO so that UTG's shove will reopen the betting. Except UTG flats with 18K behind as does swede. Flop A63hhh I do not have the Kh. They check to me and I bet 42K. UTG folds and Swede quickly calls. Turn blank check/check and I'm praying the board will pair since it's my only chance to maybe steal this pot. River 3! Swede leads out for most of my stack, I laugh at him for betting any hand there and fold.

Next hand I open KQJ9ds and get repopped by the brazilian with AAKT. Flop a Q stick the rest in and lose.

10K PLO: Fairly deep on day 2 I play this sick pot against Josh Arieh. 2k/4k a bad players limps in EP. Most of the times he has done this in the past he's been trapping with AA. I have 78K and limp button with 9764ss, SB folds Arieh checks in the BB. Flop 778r, Josh leads 9k, UTG makes it 21K. Already this is a pretty brutal spot. I feel like UTG is making a raise to see where he is at with AA a lot since he knows Josh can have a huge range here. And Josh can have all sorts of stuff so I cold call 21K. I feel like my cold call looks so strong it will freeze them up and I should be able to figure out where I stand, but there's an interesting argument for shoving hoping to fold out a better 7 as well. My hand has so much equity against something like AA7x anyways that getting called by that would not be so bad, but if I run into a boat I'm pretty dead. Josh quickly calls 12K more. Turn Q check/check and I check behind. River 4 and I am on a boat. Josh quickly bets 55K, UTG instantly folds and I tank as long as I have the entire series before folding. Unfortunately I busted not too long after this hand anyways getting it in pretty marginally on 854 with AK87 vs QQ96.

10K PLHE: Josh is at my starting table and I ask him what he had in that big pot. He told me he had KQQ7 so I made a good fold, though I could quite probably have won the pot by jamming the flop. Weird hand. Anyways here's my one bad beat story though it's kind of funny.

100/200 I have 33K. Nico Levi I believe it was, one of those french players anyways, opens to 500, I flat 99 in the CO, button calls, Sam Simon creator of The Simpsons calls in the BB. Flop K96hh, Nico bets 1050, I decide to slowplay which I don't normally do here obviously and call, Sam raises to 3500, Nico folds, I make it 11K, Sam sticks it in and I call. He has AK so I'm looking pretty ok. Turn 6 gives him 2 outs. Obviously you know what the river card is but the funny part was how it happened. I'm in the 8 seat and the dealer is right handed so when he deals the river I can't see it right away because his hand is in the way. There is a noticeable pause as he places it on the felt and he's staring at the card not moving his hand. It was like he had frozen up thinking "Oh my god, I have done something terrible". Sure enough, when he finally moved his hand the Ks was revealed and I lost most of my chips and busted on another cooler shortly after that.

The Series has still been a ton of fun overall though, definitely the most fun of my three summers here. I'm thinking I may have to just win the Bellagio Cup at the end again if I can't turn the Series around in these last 5 events or so.

Mike

$5K NL Report

2009-06-07T04:10:00.002-02:30

Hey gang, I guess I'm due to write something here again and I played a couple hands that were kind of interesting today so I might as well write about them. I was up to a bit over 16K when this goofy hand happened:

50/100 Passive guy who has already doubled up with top set limps in EP, Roland de Wolfe who had just sat down makes it 700 in position and I flat call KK in the BB. I played with Roland for most of day 1 in the $10K mixed games so I'm pretty sure he thought I was very tight/solid. What I didn't realize is he was still in another tournament and just looking to gamble here. The limper calls and the flop is 532 with two diamonds. I lead 1400, limpers calls, Roland makes it 4900. I decide to call to see what the limper does first before committing to the pot. Limper instashoves, Roland quickly calls and I fold. Limper 55, Roland AKo, turn A so I don't feel like a complete donk for not 3-betting pre.

Next I get it in pre KK vs AA and win to get over 20K then I decide to do this. First some history: The players on my right is a donk. Important history:

Theo Tran opens to 250 he defends his BB. Flop 995r, he checks raises Theo, bet the blank turn, and chk/chk A river. He shows T5s Theo mucks. So instead of keeping the pot small with marginal hands he likes to checkraise and hope they go away and put himself in terrible spots in big pots if they don't.

75/150 UTG is a donk and limps with 2K behind. UTG+1 is the other guy I just talked about and he limps. I make it 750 with KQhh and both call. Flop T66r one heart. chk/chk I bet 1500, UTG folds. UTG+1 thinks for a bit. I'm not basically just staring at the felt like I always am and not paying attention to his body language that much, and I rarely assign much weight to my live reads anyways, but I'm fairly certain he basically looked like he was going to just fold, and then changed his mind and decided "nah fuck this kid he aint got it" and raised to 5k with 7k behind. I was pretty sure from a combination of the fact he wasn't loose enough pre that I would expect him to have a 6 here very often, his body language, and his line/bet-sizing that he did not have a big hand. On the one hand donks don't like folding pairs, but on the other hand donks also don't like risking their tournament lives so early without the goods. I moved him in and he called after about a minute with 77 and I bricked out. This is a play I basically never make but I really thought this was the perfect spot for it and I'm actually pretty happy with my decision to pull the trigger despite the results.

I still had 6k but gobbo owned me in back to back hands. First he bluffed me off an overpair when I thought he was trapping a big hand but he said he just had AQ. Then the very next hand I had AK and he trapped with AA. Allen Cunningham squeezed and I got tarped. Monday is 2500 NL 6-max. I think I will skip Sundays tomorrow. I may play the Party million though. It starts super early but is such a good tourney it's hard to pass up. I'm definitely not grinding all day though. 0 for 7 so far, and down a bunch at online cash too. But the summer is just getting started.

Mike

Quick Vegas Update

2009-06-01T04:22:00.002-02:30

I don't have much super exciting to write about but I've got nothing else to do while I'm sweating Isaac Haxton to victory in the $40K tourney and I feel like I ought to post some kind of update. OK, so first my run in the $40K tourney. Here are a few interestingish hands:

Hand 1: 200/400 a50. Gavin Smith limps, someone else limps, Raszi completes the SB and I check 23dd in the BB. Flop Q54dd, Raszi leads 1600, I call, Gavin calls, other guy folds. Turn Kh, check, I check, Gavin bets 4K, Raszi makes it 14K, I cold call, and Gavin folds. River 4d Raszi checks and I check and win.

I've rarely felt like as big of a pussy after playing a hand of poker as I did here but I'm not sure I made any really clear mistakes. Probably I should have raised the flop in retrospect actually to try to drive out any bigger flush draws and possibly just win the pot right there, but calling is hardly a big mistake and I was actually kind of hoping for a raise behind so I could then bomb in a big reraise myself. Nothing like gambling for 300xBB in level one of a $40K buy-in with a draw. The turn check seems fine once I play the flop more conservatively and I think I have to coldcall the bet and raise since Gavin is super unlikely to ever reraise in that spot and I'm getting direct odds to call, plus excellent implied odds if I make my straight. The only really bad thing that can happen is if Raszi is semi-bluffing himself or Gavin calls behind with a better draw but I think the price is still good enough even taking those cases into consideration. I actually think the river is a pretty clear check as it would be extremely difficult to get called by worse and he can definitely check worse to me (either looking to checkraise with a full house hoping I'll bet my flush or checking a better flush that he's afraid could be beat some of the time).

So that and a few other pots got me off to a great start but I went pretty card dead later in the day and bled off chips. I should have picked a few more spots to try pick up some chips with resteals and such but really it just wasn't my day. On day 2 I played 3 hands in quick succession and busted:

Hand 2: 2500/500 a500 After having paid the blinds I'm down to around 80K and find 55 in the CO. I move in and pick up the blinds and antes.

Hand 3: Very next hand I open KTdd in the HJ to 12500. Bobby Suer calls on my left. He final tabled the WPT event in Tunica and I had happened to have watched that episode so I had a decent idea how he played. I felt pretty confident that he had a better hand than me and he probably should have reraised me, but he wasn't trapping with a monster or anything. Moorman then moves in from the BB for 42.5K more. If I move in and get Bobby to fold I'll be getting 2:1 against the BB's hand which is a good price, and I'm pretty sure Bobby will fold so I do that and all goes as planned except Moorman has ATo and I don't get there.

Hand 4: I have like 40K or something left and shove AQs very next hand. Shawn Buchanan reships and James Mackey (mig.com) thinks for a while and shoves over the top too. Shawn has QQ and mig has 66. I flop the nut flush draw but miss everything.

After that I went and got the keys to our summer house which is pretty sweet. I like it better than the place we had last year. I'm living with Aussies this year, so far only StevoL, Jay (Seabeast), and Joel Dodds are here, but Tony (Bond) is arriving tomorrow and the others are scheduled to show up in a week or two I think. I'll try to post pictures at some point. Probably I should take some before we make too big a mess.

Friday night I went out and got some degeneracy out of my system. I met up with Tom and Kyle (who I lived with last summer) to grab dinner and drinks and watch the Lakers game, then we went and put a beating on the nearest Texas Holdem Bonus table, and after that I ended up at the Rhino and got that out of my system too. Today I played online tourneys and some cash and got owned. Benyamine 6-outed me on the river for a 60K pot about 2 minutes after I woke up and I had no luck the rest of the day making any of that back. I had a couple deep runs in tournaments but I blew them. Here's one key hand I think I got wrong:

FTP 750K Gtd. 110/4000 players remain I have a slightly above average stack of ~120K or so iirc. Folds to the CO who opens to 8500ish and I flat call with AA in the BB. Obviously 3-betting here is fine but it's a good spot to flat call and trap and I think in this situation the call was the better play. Flop KJxdd, chk/chk. Turn 9, I bet ~13K and he makes it ~37K. I eventually shove but in retrospect I think I definitely should have folded. I really don't play my A-game on Sundays though and I shoved and lost to QT.

Anyways I'm already registered for the 1500 PLO on Monday and we're going golfing at 640am before that. I'm going to be exhausted all day but I think it will be worth it to get out there and play. I haven't played yet all summer so I"m going to really suck, but there's only one way to get back into it, and one of my bigger regrets the past couple summers is that I've hardly got out to play golf at all. If I last long in the PLO I'm going to be a mess but I guess that's what caffeine is for, even though I'm trying to minimize how much of that I drink this year.

That's all I've got for now, I should really try to get to sleep but I am lucky enough to have a small piece of Isaac's action so I'm going stay up and sweat him to the bracelet. Let's get the summer started off right for a change.

Mike

Tournament Poker for Dummies

2009-05-27T21:18:00.002-02:30

OK so the most common complaint I get about this blog from friends who aren’t poker players is that they don’t know what the eff I’m talking about with all the slang and terminology. It would be far too difficult to explain everything, but I want to write down the absolute basics so you can at least easily follow my Twitter feed when I’m reporting my chip count from the tournaments I’m playing and have some idea what's going on.

Every tournament has a buy-in. This is the amount of money each player pays to enter the tournament. For their buy-in they each receive an equal amount of tournament chips. The amount of chips is arbitrary and need not be related to the buy-in in any way, but at the world series of poker (WSOP) this summer the number of starting chips will always be three times the buy-in. You then go play the tournament with those chips until eventually you lose all of them (or if you’re lucky until you win the tournament by winning all the chips in play). You are then paid by how many people are left when you bust out (lose all your chips). The tricky part is that only around the top 10% of finishers get paid at all (this % varies from tournament to tournament but 10% will be typical for the WSOP). For example, if a tournament had 1000 players then typically the first ~900 people to bust out would get nothing and just lose their buy-in. The top 10% will all get paid enough to at least cover their buy-in, but generally speaking unless you make the final table (the last 9 players) you will not make more than 2-10 times the buy-in. The really big prizes (relatively speaking) are typically reserved for the top 3 finishers.

Blinds/Antes: The blinds and antes are forced bets that players must make (with tournament chips of course) that force the action so there is some money in the pot at the beginning of the hand to play for. As the tournament progresses the blinds and antes increase so that the tournament can’t go on forever. Each time the blinds increase is called a level. Typically, each level in the WSOP will be an hour long, though in some special tournaments the levels will be 90 minutes or 2 hours long (the latter is the case in the main event). Depending on various factors such as how many chips we start with, how many players are in the event, and how long the levels are, most tournaments will last anywhere from 2-4 days (most events are 3 days long) though the main event with its 30K (30,000) starting chips, 6000+ players, and two hour long levels will take about 7 days of play just to reach the final table. At the WSOP it is typical to play until 2am or 3am before you get to bag up your chips and go home for some rest.

So, when I report “I have X amount of chips” what does that mean? One of the easiest ways to get a general idea how I’m doing is to compare my chip stack to the “average stack”. If I have more chips than the average I must be doing pretty well, though often times even if I am well below average the fact that I still have chips at all may mean I’m really not doing that badly if it’s late in the tournament. The average stack is given by:

Av. Stack = starting stack * players started / players left, or equivalently

Av. Stack = starting stack / % of the field left

So, for example, when half the field is left average stack is twice the starting stack. One other useful example to consider is when 10% of the field is left since that is when we “reach the money”. In this case average stack would be ten times starting stack. Therefore, whenever I have close to 10 times starting stack before we reach the money I should be a solid favourite to at least make the money. Similarly, later in the tournament another useful number to consider is the average final table stack, which you can calculate easily by putting “players left = 9” in the first formula (or occasionally players left = 8 or 6 for certain special tournaments).

Hopefully that will make following my progress this summer (via www.twitter.com/SirWatts and sirwatts.blogspot.com) easy and enjoyable. Wish me luck!

Mike

The Annual Pilgrimage

2009-05-22T18:31:00.004-02:30

It's almost that time of year where professionals, amateurs, enthusiasts, and degenerates all converge on Las Vegas for the holy event that is the World Series of Poker. A month and a half of battling every day against 45 degree heat, hangovers, burn out, tables games, and of course your opponents, to try to win a bunch of loot and "a place in poker history", in the form a gaudy gold bracelet you'll never wear more than twice (unless you're John Phan). This year the "poker battle" begins early for me with the $40K 40th anniversary NL Holdem event this coming Thursday. After that I'll mostly be playing mixed games and golf as well as the bigger NLHE events in an attempt to keep my sanity throughout the entire the summer. As has been well-documented in the archives over at sirwatts.blogspot.com, the last two World Series must be considered failures for me as I have yet to final table a single event. Last year I did manage to keep my head on straight throughout the summer though and bink the Bellagio Cup at the end.

With my plan to play more of the different games this year a final table is a lot more likely as the average field size I will be playing against will be much smaller. I'm still far from a mixed games expert but I'm confident I'll have a big edge in almost every tournament I play. And most importantly it will be a lot more fun than playing Holdem day after day. I haven't done quite as much study and work on my game as I probably should have leading up to the series, but I put in a long session yesterday 4-tabling the 100/200 8-game mixed on Stars that went well. I definitely ran really good throughout but if I can even just hold my own in those games I should do very well against the weak fields at the Series. I also took a shot at a 400/800 8-game mix and luckboxed a solid win so my confidence is high.

In fact, I've basically run really hot in all my cash game play this week. I've played a bit in the 50/100 and 25/50 with antes PLO games on Full Tilt and put up good results. There has also been a shot or two at the 300/600 with ante game when a certain someone was tilting badly that went very well. As always whenever you go on a rush like that in PLO it has a lot more to do with the cards than anything about how you're playing, but I'm happy where my PLO game is at.

As for tournaments, I've put in a few mostly lighter sessions since I last wrote without any particular success. I had a couple small cashes in FTOPS events but nothing that covered my buy-ins. Hopefully my tournament run good is being saved up for the series this year, but more importantly I hope this is the most fun summer I have at the WSOP, win or lose. You'll be able to follow my progress throughout the summer on my Twitter feed located at http://twitter.com/SirWatts, and of course I will be blogging semi-regularly throughout.

Mike

Monte Carlo Wrapup

2009-05-05T09:55:00.003-02:30

Alright so Monte Carlo has come and gone. I lost just over 40K euros playing live on the trip plus probably like another 8k playing Sundays which is pretty solid I think. Just a quick rundown of the results for people that haven't been following my twitter feed (which I now have on my blogger version of this blog at sirwatts.blogspot.com).

First was the EPT Monte Carlo main event. Day 1 went poorly for me as I ended up down from 30K starting stack with 24K, but Day 2 went well as I finished up with 133K after being as high as 180K. Day 3 unfortunately went poorly as well though despite winning some pots early with AK to get back to 180K, I then a couple pots in a row and went fairly card dead. I eventually got down to like 70K at 3k/6k a500 and shoved QJs in the HJ and got snap reshoved by AK and lost to bust 97th when 88 paid.

I busted just in time to play the high roller though but unfortunately that went even worse. I was hovering around the starting 50K stack when I played this funny hand:

300/600 a75 Ivan Demidov opens to 1525 in MP with like a 27K stack, I flat JJ on the button though I think just 3-betting and going with the hand is perfectly fine here too and Gus obviously does not fold his BB getting such a price. The flop comes 822r, they check to me and I bet 3250. Gus folds and Ivan thinks for like a minute before calling which is super weird but I'm pretty sure he doesn't have much. The turn is an offsuit A though and goes chk/chk. River pairs the 8 and he bets 5125, maybe I could fold because the A hits most of his rando float range on the flop and it doesn't look like he expects me to fold but I'm getting a good price in a spot where his line doesn't really make much sense so I pay off and lose to that A6.

After that I stop winning pots and bust shoving 25K with A7o at 600/1200 a100 when zigmund opened the CO to 3400 with AKs. I think against zigmund this has to be a profitable shove but I probably would have justified it somehow anyways since I was so tired and card dead.

Then in the 5k 6-max on Saturday I busted super early on another funny hand:

25/50 Shaun Deeb opens the HJ to 150, old Moroccan fish flats the button as he plays almost every hand, I call A3cc in the SB, BB calls. Flop 245ss, I lead out 500, BB calls, Deeb folds, and button calls. Turn Jh, I bet 1500, BB calls, button quickly splashes out a bunch of big chips that add up to 7K, I shove, BB folds, and he asks me "Is the maximum enough?" as I guess they don't have a similar term to "the nuts" in French or something so it's a bit of a lost in translation moment but I'm pretty sure I know what he means. He doesn't slowroll me for than a few seconds and at least I only wasted like 45 minutes on not cashing this one (and no, he was not suited).

So now I'm back in Toronto for a while. Next live tournament will be the opening 40K event of the WSOP in Vegas May 28th. Usually it takes me like 10 events at the series to lose that much so it should be fun! FTOPS starts tomorrow as well so I'll play some events when I have time and feel like it. The next 2 installments of my PLO series on PS+ should hopefully be finished shortly as well.

Mike

Yo

2009-04-29T21:49:00.002-02:30

Just a quick post. I finished Day 1A of EPT Monte Carlo with 24K down from 30K starting stack. I've got Twitter set up to post the most recent updates from my feed on the sidebar on the right here and I'll be texting in updates at each break so you can follow my progress from here. There has been a bit of a debacle with the rgulations here and PLO tournaments and STT's have been outlawed but the 5K euro PLO tourney has been replaced by a 5K euro 6-max NLHE tourney so that's not bad at all.

Mike

A Quick Pre-MC Post

2009-04-26T15:43:00.002-02:30

Hey, sorry I have written in a while I just haven't really felt like it. WPT Champs didn't go great, I busted early on Day 2. I don't really feel like or remember all the hands I played but here's the first major pot I played:

50/100 we start with 100K in chips. David Phan opens the button to 300 I call in the SB with 88. Flop KT8r, I check, he bets 450 I make it 1525 he calls. Turn T I bet 3200 he makes it 8200 I call, River blanks I check/call 10K and KT is good. The first day actually went ok overall though and I chipped up to 105K but Day 2 nothing really went right. Congrats to Yev on the win though! I'm going to take partial credit since I loaned him some of my lucky Bellagio money for his buy-in. Also huge congrats to my fellow PS+ instructor charder for finishing 4th, and luckychewy for 13th.

I really haven't played much poker since then. Yesterday I shortstacked some good 500/1000 HA games fort he first time in a while and made 80K as I ran good. I've also played a couple short sessions of 50/100 CAP and 25/50 full stacked that went well so I've made back some of the money I've been losing to luckexpress.

Tonight I leave for Monte Carlo and should arrive early Monday afternoon. I'm planning to play the 10K euro main event, 25K euro the high roller, and the 5K euro PLO championship, though hopefully I'll do well enough in at least one of the first two that I have to skip one of the latter ones. That's all I've got for now, check out my two latest videos on PS+, I do a decent 3/6 PLO video and a HU PLO match with Tom that turned out really interesting where you can watch our commentary from both sides and see both people's cards. 5/10 PLO and 10/20 PLO will be my next two vids, I've already recorded the 10/20 but I need to do the 5/10 since it has to get put up first. Wish me luck in the coming week!

Mike

SCOOP Wrapup

2009-04-14T18:39:00.002-02:30

Ok this will be my final SCOOP-related post. I cashed the $10K main event but lost a flip to bust 33rd for $30K. That cash probably put me around even on the series, not a great result by any stretch but 9 cashes is very solid I just didn't run good deep in any of them unfortunately. I also had a 2nd place finish in a Stars $100 rebuy for $22K which was a solid result, but Shaun F Deeb runs too good at final tables for me to close. Next up is the WPT Championship at Bellagio. It will be my first time playing this event but it should be really sick; $25K buy-in, 75K starting chips and hopefully a big field. The turnouts for their preliminary events have been terrible but Bellagio usually gets a crowd for the main event regardless, especially this tournament with it's huge buy-in has always been much bigger than you would expect. so I'm pretty optimistic it'll be a good turnout. I'll be giving the live updates on Twitter thing a try so follow me on there (SirWatts) if you want to read how I'm doing at each break beginning Sunday.

In other news there's really not much other news. I don't really feel like playing a whole lot right now before Bellagio so I probably won't. I'm going to watch baseball (Jays off to an unexpected good start), the hockey playoffs (go habs go!), and hang out with my friends here before I hit the road again. Take it easy homies,

Mike

SCOOP Update

2009-04-10T15:32:00.004-02:30

Hey kids, what's up? I've been SCOOPin hard the last week playing most of the M and H events. My in the money % has been really high as I've cashed 8 events, 2 H (high buy-in) events and 6 M (mid buy-in) events. As a sidebar the 6 cashes in the M events is tied for most in the series. Unfortunately they are basically all small cashes except last night when I final tabled the (M) $425 8-game mixed event but busted 6th for a bit under $6K. I also have bubbled two additional (H) events, so I've been getting chips early and hanging in there but I haven't had quite as much luck in the later stages. Last night was particularly frustrating seeing as I went on a huge heater with 12 left to take a big chip lead, then ran KK into AA against the guy in 2nd place in the NLH round. Luckily I still had an average stack after that hand and hung in until the final table, but I spewed a few bets in the limit games and ran out of luck to bust 6th.

I haven't played all that much high stakes cash lately. The few sessions I have played went well enough despite another frustrating losing session against luckexpress. The games haven't been running a lot lately though and I've been content to go back to grinding tourneys mostly while SCOOP is on. I'm really enjoying playing the different games and feel like this is good experience to have before WSOP this summer where I want to play a lot of non-holdem events. I'm starting to become more confident in my play in the limit games which is very good news. Anyways I'm grinding some SCOOPs as I write this so I'm goign to go focus on them. Hopefully next time I write I'll actually have that win to write about!

Mike

PS. I'm giving this Twitter thing a try as SirWatts. I dont know how much I'll use it but I've been talked into giving it a shot since it's the big craze and all.

Last Week and Scoopaloop Day 1

2009-04-03T05:12:00.003-02:30

Yoooo. So I've been in Montreal visiting my sister and haven't played a whole ton of poker lately. But with the SCOOP starting on PokerStars that is quickly about to change. OK first, I don't remember exactly when these hands happened but I played some good PLO/HA games and lost like 100K since whenever I last updated. It was a pretty crap session but whatever it happens. I had a great time in Montreal though and got to relax and not think about poker too much which isn't a bad change of pace.

So today was the inuagural day of the inaugural SCOOP and I played 4 events and cashed three of them. Unfortunately they were all min-cashes but fortunately I cashed both of the high buy-in events. In the 500r I was given a ton of chips early through run good and various opponents being huge spazzes and the same in the 50r. I ran good early in the $1K PLO8 as well. Unfortunately towards the middle stages of these tournaments things stopped going so well. I made a bit of a run in the 55r event but busted around 150th/4000 or something, and in the high buy-in events I managed to survive long enough to barely limp into the money in both.

As for PS+ stuff I was happy to see all the very positive response to my last MTT video. Next up is going to finally be the HU PLO video between myself and Tom. We just recorded it and I got my ass kicked. Hopefully when I do the commentary I can at least tell you all why. After that I'm supposed to do a video on moving up from midstakes to highstakes PLO, but with all the SCOOP going on it's going to be hard to fit that in around playing 10 hour days every day. If I get deep in any SCOOP events I'll definitely be looking to record or do a hand history review possibly as well from those. Anyways I really don't have anything super interesting to write about this time, I'll write again when I win my first SCOOP event.

Mike

PS. As of when I'm writing this Bond is still in with 19 left in the 500r. gogogo Tony!

Swingy Weekend!

2009-03-24T03:47:00.002-02:30

I've basically spent the last 4 days on the couch watching the NCAA tournament with my laptop on my lap. It's been really fun! There were a lot of good high stakes HA games going on the weekend so I was pretty busy grinding those while trying to keep an eye on any close games. I crushed the 500/1K games but got owned pretty hard at 300/600 heads-up by luckexpress. Maybe heads-up just isn't my game but other than a few questionable plays it's mostly just been me being on the wrong side of a bunch of coolers. Maybe I could have lost a little less on a few of them or something but it happens. Luckily 500/1K > 300/600 so I still made money. My sessions for the weekend went something like this:

+120K, -60K (after being up >120K at one point), +150K, -90K. Guess which ones were heads-up.

Fun times and I still finished with a sizable profit (though it's not all that much considering the stakes), but at my peak I was up almost 3 times as much as I finished ahead so slightly disappointing from that perspective. I don't really have much else I want to write about right now. I've got another video coming out shortly for PokerSavvy, it's an MTT vid this time, and I'm going to have to get another one done at some point too before the end of the month. That could prove tricky as I'm going to Montreal to visit my sister and friends there on Wednesday. In any event, happy March Madness kids, enjoy the games!

Mike

March

2009-03-15T16:08:00.002-02:30

It's a pretty good month to be home from traveling. We've got the NCAA tournament starting next week. We had the World Baseball Classic here in Toronto last week, though Canada's embarrassing loss to Italy almost makes that a negative. I went and saw the Canada-US game live though which was awesome. If any of Canada's top pitchers were available they actually would have had a pretty decent team. A lot of other fun stuff is happening this month too! I'm going to go visit my sister and friends in Montreal soon. My friend Tim is moving to Toronto in a week. And today is my roommate Alicia's birthday! As such I am taking the day off to celebrate. And of course there's St. Patrick's day....

Poker-wise I've been playing a lot online lately instead of taking care of various errands I should be running while I'm home. I had an up and down week at high stakes, first losing a bunch at what was probably an ill-advised shot playing Gus heads-up 500/1k PLO. I then won all that back yesterday playing luckexpress heads-up 300/600 HA and some 500/1000 full-ring HA. Full Tilt has raised the minimum buy-ins to 35xBB in those games which is just stupid. While I feel perfectly comfortable playing that deep instead of just shortstacking 20xBB deep like I used to it's a lot of money to risk. Lately I've been selling half my action when I take shots at these games and only playing when the lineup looks very favourable. It's pretty stupid, the only high-stakes games that run are 25/50 with a 5K or maybe 10K max buy-in if you want to play deep, and then 500/1000 with a minimum 35K buy-in. Oh well, I guess I'll stop complaining and just hope I keep running good.

I played a few tournaments this week as well, had a few cashes but nothing big. My best result was finishing 4th yesterday in an iCOP event on the Boss network. It was just an 88 euro PLO8 tourney with a huge overlay on the 25K euro guaranteed prize pool. I finished 4th for 2K euro which was disappointing considering I had the chip lead at one point at the final table, but it was a fun tournament and I ran good right from the start, and that combined with no one having any clue how to play the game let me build a solid stack quickly.

Alright I don't have much else to write about. Just gotta give a shout out to timex for coming close to going back-to-back at EPT Dortmund. He final tabled and finished 5th for 200K euro. It would have been so sick if he could have repeated, and if he hadn't lost his two huge coinflips at the final table he very well may have. Alright I'm out kids, enjoy your day. Don't lose too much playing donkaments.

Mike

How I Do

2009-03-01T09:24:00.002-03:30

It has been widely reported that the first person eliminated from the WPT Celebrity Invitational was Antonio Esfandiari. This however is simply false. I know this because I had been standing in the hall outside having a conversation for two minutes before they made that announcement. Now you're probably all wondering how that nit Watts managed to bust twice (I of course took my $200 to charity rebuy) in half an hour before a single one of numerous celebs who don't really have much of an idea how to play. Fortunately you've come to the right place because I'm going to tell you the story.

Gobbo and I got there around 6pm for the cocktail party to mingle and so I could have some free cocktails. We bumped into some friends and checked out whatever celebs we could find. Other than usuals such as Jennifer Tilly, Don Cheadle, Mekkhi Phifer I also saw William Hung, Tony Aleida and Agent Pearce from "24", and probably some others I'm forgetting. What can I say I've never been a huge fan of celebrities but it was still pretty cool. After some quick speeches Bruce Buffer gave us his special rendition of "shuffle up and deal" which was freaking awesome and it was time to gamble. First of all, I am playing 2 out of every 3 pots at least, often without looking at my cards. I am "straddling" every UTG and have got others doing the same. If I catch any piece of the flop I do not fold. If they check to me I will almost always bet.

So I've lost some chips doing stuff like limp/calling the Q3o when I finally pick up a real hand and make my standard raise to 200 at 50/100 with the 45o. 4 players call and the flop comes Q64 with two clubs. I make a strong continuation bet of 200 and the guy on my left calls, then Mimi across the table from me makes it 700. I obviously call as does my friend on my left. The turn is an offsuit 5. DING DING DING DING DING!!!! Two checks and Mimi bets 1100. I quickly make it 4 dimes and my friend cold calls the whole thing with what is almost certainly a flush draw. Mimi calls as well. The river is the 2c which means I lose. But I bet the 3 or 4K I have left anyways for some reason and then rebuy.

I quickly begin rebuilding my stack though. For whatever reason I have 93o and flop a 3 so I call a bet. I turn a 3 and bet out but somehow everyone folds. Go figure. Then I call Chau Giang's raise with KThh and flop ATx. I call his 500 bet and when a T turns I bet 1k which he calls and then 3k on the river which he somehow folds to again!! Gah! So despite being 3 for 3 on 5-outers I am still down like 7K chips.

Then there are two sweet hands in a row where a young asian guy whose name I should know but I don't opens to 250 in EP and I reraise to 500 in MP with the 5h and the 2h. He calls and snap folds to my 500 bet on A44. I just know I woulda hit the living hell out of my gutshot too why couldn't he have an ace. Then the next hand he limps correctly fearing another reraise so I know hes weak and quickly raise to 200 with 23o to try to isolate. Unfortunately I get reraised to 700 and decide to fold my hand face up.

Now on my BB at 75/150 the same young asian guy makes it 500 in the CO and I call with AQo. The flop comes QT7 with 2 spades and I bomb out for 1k, and he raises to 3k or 4k or something like that. I quickly jam all 12K or so of my chips into the pot while fistpumping and doing double backflips of pure joy in my head but he calls with Q7 and I lose all my gold. SIIIIIIIGH.

After that I hung out for a bit with Kristen and Gavin (busto not too much later) and Jennifer and Heather (and a hilarious visit from Noah Schwartz) but when gobbo busted we decided to just head back to the hotel. Now at this point you may be thinking "Watts, what the hell is wrong with you? First place in that tournament was $100K", and that is a reasonable thing to ask. But as usual I am thinking about 5.3 steps ahead of you. Don't feel bad it's just one of the skills I've developed from poker. So we get back to the room and there are a few pretty ok looking 500/1000 HA tables going on Full Tilt. I sit and start winning lots of pots. PLO is just such a ridiculous game. Last week I felt like I could not win money at the game to save my life. This week I feel like I just can not lose a hand. By the time the games break a couple hours later I'm up $120K. As you may recall first in the freeroll was $100K. I believe the moral of the story is that the gambling gods love you when you just degen it up for them from time to time.

Alright that's about as much as I can possibly write in this tone. I'm back to Toronto late Monday night. Looking forward to seeing everyone I've missed while I've been off hiding from winter, but especially the kitties! Take it easy,

Mike

Another Week in LA

2009-02-28T08:24:00.003-03:30

Yoooo. So I decided to stay in LA for the Celeb Invitational freeroll today. It should be a really fun tournament, I'm definitely not going to take it too seriously although first is 100K so if I get deep I'll have to focus up. I've had a week here in LA with no tournaments to distract me. I'd like to say I used that time to go out and see the city and then party with movie stars all night. But in typical Watts style I've mostly just slept away the day and stayed up late playing PLO, mostly online but some live as well. The good news is that I've been on a pretty solid heater in the 500/1k HA games as as well as 10/20 and 25/50 PLO, up over $200K. The HA games have been very good this week so I was back playing them again. They're pretty fun win you win most of the flips.

Oh yeah as for the LAPC main event itself I made Day 2 but busted early on. I was up and down a lot. I'm not really happy with how I played a few hands but I don't think I made any super clear cut mistakes. So overall happy enough with my play and I definitely had my head in it unlike at Aussie Millions where at times I was very unfocused. I think that's about all I've got for now though I'm probably forgetting some stuff. Just wanted to post a quick update. Keep it real,

Mike

LA and PS+

2009-02-20T21:49:00.003-03:30

Hey y'all, I've been in LA for the LA Poker Classic for almost a week now. The WPT main event starts tomorrow and I'm hoping to improve on a deep run I made last year when I ended up finishing 10th. So far I've had no luck in the few prelims I've played, just a $1K and a $5k event. Unfortunately I couldn't play any more as I'm pretty low in cash here. They wouldn't change my Australian $$ at the casino here because we are in the ghetto, or at least that was the reason I took from the whole thing. I probably would have played the $10K HU event, though the field was so tough that missing out on that is not a huge loss really. I also might have played the $10K PLO but it only got 54 players and was on Sunday so again no big deal. After the main event I was planning to stay around for the Celebrity Invitational freeroll event, but depending how deep I get in the main and how much cash I'm able to get to play live games here I may change my flight and bounce early.

In other news I'm on a pretty big PLO downswing because 500/1000 is just way too big. I'm pretty upset that Full Tilt made all these tables instead of just leaving 200/400 as the biggest game. Essentially no one actually has the money to play that high so obviously most people have to buyin short if they want to play as it's the only games over 25/50 that runs at all regularly. I do still think I have an edge short stacking the half holdem half omaha games against a lot of lineups though so I've been gambling a bit and playing with not so great reults. Anyways I'm probably going to take a break from playing these games except when the lineup happens to look really good.

I think my new goal in poker is going to be to get a lot better at limit mixed games. I play a few of the HORSE games fairly decently and a few others pretty mediocrely and I also want to learn 2-7 triple draw so that I can play most of the new Pokerstars SCOOP events, as well as play a lot more non-holdem events at the WSOP this summer. There is just no way I will survive the summer playing a 2000 person $2K NL event every day again. I need a new challenge and the smaller fields in the mixed games are nice too so maybe I could actually finally final table a bracelet event. Speaking of which, look at all the money I get to lose beginning in April:

PokerStars SCOOP: April 2-12 Probably around $40-50K in buy-ins.

WPT Championship at Bellagio: April 18-24 $25K main event.

EPT Monte Carlo: April 28-May 3 10K Euro main event. 25K Euro high roller. 5K Euro PLO championship among other side events. ~$60K USD.

World Series of Poker 2009 (and Bellagio Cup!): Begins May 28th with the special $40K buy-in tournament. Likely to spend close to $150K in buy-ins this summer.

Countdown to busto has begun.

The final major announcement which I haven't written about on here in a while is that I have officially joined Poker Savvy Plus as a core pro and will be contributing three strategy videos a month beginning in March. I'm very happy to be on board and hope some of you sign up and enjoy my videos, and most importantly learn from them to make some $$$! This blog is now being cross-posted over there, so a special hello to everyone reading this on PokerSavvy! I really think PS+ now has a very strong team of core pros and you're going to see a lot of really good videos coming from there this year. That's all I've got for now, going to the gym for a bit, wish me luck beginning tomorrow!

Mike

Adelaide

2009-02-08T22:20:00.003-03:30

First, before I begin, I need to point out that my WPT epsiode has FINALLY been pirated by the fine people of the internet and is available over at thepokerbay.org and possibly some other torrent sites as well. I'm looking forward to watching it later on today. Edit: It's now also up on www.pokertube.com for people who dont want to do the torrent thing.

Alright so the last four days I spent in Adelaide for the ANZPT event there. I guess I'll start with a brief recap of my tournament since some semi-interesting stuff happened and I last more than 3 hours.

We started with 20K chips and hour long levels, a pretty fast structure but quite reasonable, I think it was the same as the standard EPT structure. In the early levels I chipped up a lot by getting dealt big pairs and winning decent sized pots with them and just winning most small pots I played uncontested whether I made pairs or not. I got as high as 42K before this hand:

Hand 1: 200/400 a50 I opened to 1100 UTG with AKo no spade and a bad player flatted as did some guy in the CO as well as the BB who actually seemed ok. The flop came A83 all spades, I bet 3K, first guy flatted with like 4K more behind or something ridiculous, CO folds, BB shoves for 9K more, I sigh and stick it in and other guy calls as well. BB has 88 and other guy has KK with the Ks so I don't win. Gross spot but in this tournament I can't imagine ever playing it differently.

Hand 2: At a new table now 400/800 a100 a loose player who's very short opens UTG to 2K, I make it 6K UTG+1 with AKs and around 18K more behind. It folds to a pretty tight youngish girl Monica in the SB who makes it 16.8K without hesitation. Folds to me and after some thought I realize I should probably not give away the rest of my chips yet.

Hand 3: Same guy opens UTG to 2K, I 3-bet to 6K UTG+1 with AA. Nice life. He makes some comment along the lines of "this fucking kid, every time" and says let's see a flop. Flop AQJ with two spades, he checks, I shove his last 10K or so in and he mumbles about how of course the ace had to come and he has 8 outs before folding T9cc face up. lol.

Hand 4: 500/1000 a100 I"m up to 30K or so. Asian lady minraises in EP, guy on my right calls with like 4500 behind, I call button with 22 and a blind calls. Flop KQ2 two spades, lady bets 6k, guy on my right calls all-in, I expert raise to 12K, lady calls. Turn blank, she shoves I snap and hold vs AA to get to ~70K.

Hand 5: I open to 2700 in MP. Some Canadian guy with a ton of chips who talks a lot calls in the BB. Flop QTx rainbow, he tells the dealer tha I'm going to bet if checks and then he'll call so I oblige and bet 4K he calls, Turn 8 he says now if I check hes gonna check behind so I've gotta bet and leads 10K. I'm thoroughly unamused by this nonsense and call. River blank he shoves for my last 45K or so and I cry and fold. He def seemed like a bit of an idiot but most people when they pull this type of bs and talk this much always have it so and he didn't seem like the type to run such an insane bluff.

Hand 6: Monica limps UTG, I raise to 4K in MP with AQo she calls. Flop KJ8 two clubs she donks 5500 with like 13.5 behind and I decide to shove since these leads are usually weak, she might fold KQ even, or I might accidentally be ahead of a draw, but she really did just lead into me with top 2 pair and so I'm down to 20K. Oops.

Hand 7: HJ who is new to the table opens to 3K, I shove 22 in the CO for 20K, he calls with AK, I flop a set and lose to the backdoor flush.

Anyways, the big news from Adelaide was Tony final tabling and finishing 2nd for 111K AUD. Even at the current exchange rate he cleared his makeup! There were also several nights out where I learned the true meaning of "Go hard or go home" as they like to say here. I have decided to go home. But not right away. Saturday I leave for LA to go play a few events of LAPC. My flights are tentatively booked to stay until early March and play the Celebrity freeroll thing but I might bounce right after I bust the WPT main event instead depending how much I'm feeling LA. We shall see. Anyways I'm off to enjoy my last week in Melbourne. Check out my episode I've watched it since I started writing this blog and it's pretty sweet. I cooler everyone so fucking hard. There's really not a single hand where I do anything resembling outplaying anyone, I just always get there.

Mike

Heat

2009-02-01T02:03:00.002-03:30

OK I have no idea what I want to write about in this entry but I feel like I'm due for one so here goes nothing. The last week since Aussie Millions ended has been pretty fun and relaxing. It has also been one of the hottest in Melbourne's history as those of you have been watching the tennis at all may have heard. Timex and I didn't make it out to the tennis at all because all the night sessions were more or less sold out and we learned our lesson last year about watching tennis in the mid-afternoon heat, and it was probably at least a good 5 degrees cooler the day we went last year compared to the heat wave that's been going on lately. It's basically felt like Vegas here for the last week with temperatures in the 40s every day. We got down to the beach a couple times when the weather was more reasonable, but this week we hardly ever left the apartment during the day other than to go the gym two minutes down the street. I can hardly complain though, I'll take this weather over winter in Canada any day. No one has ever had to shovel out their driveway from sun and heat.

I have about two more weeks left on my Australia trip before I head to LA for the LAPC. Today is going to be a chill day and we'll watch the tennis on TV tonight, hopefully it will be an epic final. Tomorrow is SuperBowl Monday here in Melbourne so we're going to get up a little early and go watch that over at Berky's place. I think it comes on at like 11am here or something. I don't know what plans will be after that, I think we'll have to hit the beach at least one more time before we rock out to Adelaide for the inaugural ANZPT event on Wednesday.

I guess PokerStars decided they just didn't have enough live poker tours yet so they started another one here in Aussieland even though they already have several APPT events here. There's a 3K AUD (~75 USD at latest exchange rate) event in Adelaide starting Wednesday so we're rocking down there with some of the Melbourne donks (Bond, stevol, berky, etc...) to win that shit. I'm told Adelaide isn't much of a city but it'll be fun to see somewhere else in Australia regardless.

Anyways I think that's about all I've got for now. Gonna go try to win back some of te money I lost playing PLO while writing this.

Mike

A Quick Hello from Melbourne

2009-01-24T02:33:00.002-03:30

I've had a bunch of complaints about the lack of updates so sorry about that. I think my ethernet card is broken or something because the internet in my place here isn't working. Luckily I have found a wireless signal to steal but it's very unreliable, and I haven't really been spending much time back in the room here lately anyways as I've been out playing poker and enjoying the city and the weather.

Anyways, the quick version of the story is I'm having a blast here but playing pretty bad. My head really hasn't been into the tournaments at all. At PCA that was kind of the case as well, but when I sat down at the table I played my best. On this trip that hasn't been the case. I've been very impatient and played quite poorly in a number of spots. Part of it is trying some new things, part of it is running bad, but a big part of it too is just not playing well. But like I said, I'm still having a blast here and I'm only losing plastic-coated Australian play money anyways.

Timex and I will be here for almost another 3 weeks just for vacation, though we will probably go play a tournament in Adelaide on the new Stars Australia/New Zealand tour whenever that is. We're staying in an hotel-style apartment in Tony's (Bond18) building which is quite nice. It's nothing big, but there's plenty of space for us and the location is actually quite convenient. So many of the things we need (gym, grocery store, restaurants, etc.) are super close near by, and we're a short drive from the casino. Anyways I'm quite tired and was supposed to get a nap by now, and this hello has not been as quick as planned. I'll try to write more soon.

Mike

First Real Post of 2009!

2009-01-12T14:46:00.002-03:30

Alright, I've been super lazy about blogging so far this year but I think it's about time I wrote up something real. First of all, Bahamas trip report:

PCA was way more fun than I ever thought it would be. I'm not sure why I wasn't as excited about it as I should have been from the start. 2 years ago when I went I was just starting to meet people in the poker world. I had a great time and met a lot of friends for the first time. Last year I didn't go at all since I just did Aussie so i didn't know how much better they had made the resort. But more importantly I just didn't have all the friends in the poker world that I do now. First let me get the poker stuff out of the way though. I ended up playing the $25K and $5k tournaments and busting both pretty early with not much going right. I wasn't super motivated to play either, in fact I wasn't planning to play either of them when I woke up the respective mornings but that's what ended up happening. I certainly don't regret the decision though in retrospect I'm sure I would have had more fun rocking the lazy river and hanging out with whoever I happened to bump into out there. Once I sit at the table though I am into the game and I play as close to 100% as possible.

Alright, so what really made PCA so great was just bumping into everyone, and I really do mean almost everyone, that I'm friends with in the poker world. Over the years I've made a lot of friends through poker, but seeing most of them in one place and randomly bumping into different people every day and having a great time no matter who it was I bumped into that day really solidified in my head how amazing these people are. I only get to see them a handful of times a year, and other than that I only get to talk to them periodically online, but yet so many of them have become true friends. We all have so much in common that we seem to just get along so easily when we see each other, it's really quite amazing. So, for all of you that are reading this, even though you probably won't hear me say it very often in person, you are all so awesome and I'm so happy to have friends like you.

Moving along, every January I usually do a recap of my previous poker year and set goals for the new year. The 2008 recap is remarkably easy: I accomplished basically every single one of my poker goals that I had set for myself last year. In fact I blew them away. I don't feel like going through all of them right now, but if you're interested it's easy to find the post archived at sirwatts.blogspot.com. I ran insanely good from the Bellagio Cup onwards through November, and even booking a decent loss in December didn't put too much of a dent in the year overall. On the one hand I need to remember how lucky I was in 2008 and keep my expectations reasonable or I will likely be setting myself up for huge disappointment in 2009. On the other hand, you gotta dream big.

So, moving along to 2009. I have one of those good problems when it comes to setting goals for 2009 in that I need to completely come up with a new set of them. I still enjoy playing tournaments but I'd be lying if I said I had the same fire and drive to play them as in 2008. That's not to say I don't care or find them interesting anymore as I certainly do, but I think it's pretty normal and understandable that it's just not going to be the same now that I've had "the big score". Of course that being said, the group of people who have won two major tournaments is significantly smaller than the group of people who have binked one, so that does motivate me quite a bit. However, as anyone who reads this blog regularly is aware, I've definitely caught the PLO bug, in particular the high stakes PLO bug. Obviously I have to be a bit smarter about the games I play, but I would very much like to be an extremely successful high to nosebleed high stakes when the games are good PLO cash player in 2009. I feel like there is just so much money potentially to be made in these games and I want to get a piece. No doubt this will probably be the hardest goal I've ever set myself but I guess a challenge is always a good thing.

However, most importantly for 2009, I want to do better at all things outside of poker. Continue to try to get back in better shape, get back to playing a lot of golf and possibly other sports, buy my own place, continue to meet new people and make more friends, and spend more time hanging out with the ones I already have. I'm sure this list could go on a lot longer but you get the point. When it comes down to it there are a lot more important things than poker in life, and I know the better I balance all these things the happier a 2009 it will be for me. It's certainly not an easy thing to do, and I don't expect to completely change the way I live or anything, but I will try to keep making small improvements as I go. All the best to each of you in 2009, I've got a flight to Melbourne to pack for.

Mike

sick preview

2009-01-11T06:55:00.005-03:30

Bellagio Cup IV Part 2 Preview

OMG PAIR THE BOARD!!!!!

I CANT TAKE IT EITHER VINCE!

can't wait to see if I get there..

Mike

PS. Still can't find downloads for the first half unfortunately.... 2nd half will air tonight in the US on FSN. No idea about Canada but I'm guessing it will probably not get shown until a later date but might be worth checking.

Busto PCA

2009-01-07T14:03:00.001-03:30

Hey all I just busted out of the PCA main event. Yesterday I went up to 50K at one point before losing some pots and ending the day at 25K. Today I quickly lost two pots and busted. Yay. Off to the water park!

Mike

WPT Episode on!?

2009-01-05T09:39:00.002-03:30

Well, apparently the first half of my WPT episode aired last night. Would have been nice if they told me or something but there ya go, I wasn't expecting it to air for a couple months still. I think it's a 2-part episode and will conclude next Sunday but I haven't seen it myself yet so I dunno. Also I am in Bahamas and playing Day 1B of the PCA tomorrow. My Christmas and holidays were awesome, hope yours were too! I think that's about all I've got for now. I'm going to go try to find some illegal downloads of my episode.

Mike

Important 2009 Update

2009-01-01T23:18:00.000-03:30

44 Michael Watson Toronto 2,952 2 $2,158,130
45 Michael McDonald Waterloo, CAN 2,920 3 $1,487,214

Mike

Aaaaaand busto

2008-12-15T20:55:00.003-03:30

It was a short day, I was super card dead and when I finally got a hand I folded the winner on the flop. Got the last of my chips in against Mark Teltscher with 88 vs 66 and lost that too. Here's the one interesting hand:

400/800 a100 I open in early-middlish position to 2200 with JhJ and 20K more behind. Joe Cassidy calls 2 to my left (though I forgot it was him at the time) and and a middle aged asian guy calls right after him. The flop comes 853hh and I bet 5K. Cassidy makes it 11K, and the asian guy INSTA-shoves for 40-50K or something that covers both of us. I only have 15K left and really don't want to fold again but it's hard for me to beat both of them here. I feel like the speed of the all-in move weights the asian guy's range towards a draw a lot. He has a set or a draw and most people Hollywood with their sets a little at least. But I still have to worry about Joe and I have no idea what he has. I ended up folding and Joe called with A8cc and held vs A3hh. So that really sucked. I think maybe the live reads were strong enough that I should have called but I'm not sure how results oriented I'm being.

Anyways now that that's over it's back to Newfoundland this Friday for Christmas which I'm definitely much more excited about than any poker tournament. In other news I've done 2 videos now for PokerSavvy and it looks like I will be doing a lot more. They've got a lot of other very good players making videos there as well so if you're thinking about joining a training site you should go over there and check it out. I think they still have a 24-hour free trial offer on. Also, for people that haven't seen it yet I got "felt'd" by Kristy Arnett from CardPlayer. It's basically the poker version of Punk'd. Here's a link:

Felt'd =/

I don't really know what to say about it but hopefully you get a good laugh out of it on my behalf. Either that or you'll feel super awkward the entire time watching it like I did. Alright I'm out, possibly no blogs for a while over Christmas depending what I'm up to.

Mike

Bellagio Five Diamond Update!

2008-12-15T04:14:00.004-03:30

Hey hey it's time for a little update about what I've been up to here in Vegas. I got in Tuesday night and played the $5k tournament on Thursday. I got off to a good start in that one but lost a biggish pot to Mark Teltscher that I played weird and then got KK vs Shannon Shorr's AA so that was that. I played Day 1A of the $15K main event on Saturday but unfortunately it was a really frustrating day where not a whole lot went right. I finished the day with 32K of my 45K starting stack though and with blinds starting at 400/800 tomorrow I still have some room to play. Here are some key hands:

Hand 1: 100/200 A player limps in MP, I make it 1k in the SB with A8dd and he calls. Flop 666 I bet 1250, he calls. Turn 4 I bet 2500 he calls. River 2 I bet 5500 he calls with TT and wins. Yay obvious 3-barrels.

Hand 2: Amnon Fillipi limps the HJ, Matt Hyman limps the CO, I make 1050 on the button with AJo and both call. Flop AK2cc, Amnon checks and Matt bets 1750 which I call as does Amnon. Turn Js putting a 2nd flush draw on board. They check to me and I fire 6K, Amnon thinks briefly and shoves for 19K more. Matt thinks a bit and folds and I tank for a long time before finally folding. From what I've seen of Amnon he is very spewy in a call stationy way preflop and on the flop but when he puts his chips in he usually has it. He's quite capable of making the elaborate slowplay with a set of 2s here as well as peeling the flop with QTo, and while there are a decent number of hands he could semi-bluff with on the turn I don't think he is particularly likely to make a big move like that.

Hands 3-7ish: I raise and #1pen 3-bets me and I have to fold. wtf he's supposed to be a nit like me.

Hand 8: 200/400 a50 Solidish player opens the HJ to 1200, Amnon quickly calls, I make it 4800 in the SB with 98o and Peter (#1pen) cold 4-bets to 10.5K in the BB. Can't imagine he didn't have a monster here but when someone picks you off time and again like he was it's pretty tilting even if it seems like he's probably just running good picking up hands on you most of the time because you just don't know for sure.

Hand 9: 300/600 a75 Young short stacked guy open to 1600 in MP with like 10K behind and I shove in the BB with AK and hold vs his AQs.

Hopefully day 2 goes better and I can put chips in the pot a few times without getting raised out of my seat. Or ya know just get raised when I actually have it.

Today I played Sunday tourneys online and got owned. Just a couple small cashes to show for it. Anyways I better get some rest for tomorrow. Cheers,

Mike

Biggest Online Tournament Score; Losing Week

2008-12-08T15:02:00.005-03:30

So I stuck to the plan and took a week off of poker while I was down in NYC partying with some friends. New York was awesome, really an amazing city, but more importantly hanging out with some good friends I don't see often enough and partying like we were still in university was just a great time. I also got to visit my aunt and uncle in Brooklyn and check out their neighbourhood, and even though I'm lazy and don't do it often enough it's always good to see family. I really love that poker gives me the freedom and means to pick up and take trips like this one and I should really make a point to try to do it more often (trips purely for fun with no poker).

So I got back in town a little bit worse for wear but well-rested mentally and was ready to get back to work and crush the tables. I quickly proceeded to lose around $125K in ~800 hands of 200/400 PLO. Omaha sure is a fun game. There were a few hands I played pretty questionably and ended up getting it in really terrible for a decent amount of money. Two in particular were basically courtesy of Gus bluffing, and me getting stuck in the middle of him and a 3rd player who ended up having the nuts holding something fairly strong but kind of marginal myself. If not for Gus making a move I probably get away from at least one of those hands without too much damage, but so it goes. Oh yeah I guess I should post them:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3556785 - Trips is a pretty tricky hand to play sometimes, especially here when I have a weak kicker and a pair in my hand leaving me with very few outs when I'm behind. Maybe I still could have found a fold but I think Gus is bluffing so often and Cole certainly doesn't have to have a monster either, and once I call the first time I'm pretty priced in.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3556807 - Getting 25K in drawing dead is just not as much fun as it looks, trust me. This may well be spewy but other options didn't seem like too much fun either.

I didn't play much 200/400 for the rest of the week, or even all that much poker really, but I did put in a few sessions at smaller stakes to work on my game a bit. I played some hands at 5/10 and ran extremely well so that made me feel more confident in my game again. The Sunday tournament lineup was pretty strong this week with a bunch of big stuff on Ongame and iPoker. I woke up early as I have been all week and played a super long session starting at 11:30am and not ending until around 2am. I ended up finishing 13th in two tournaments that I had a ton of chips in at one point, which would normally be super frustrating, except I finally won a (online) tournament! Ongame had a tournament series which I had missed all the events of but at the end there was a special $5K buy-in tournament with no rake that they bought all the winners of the tournament series and leader board into. It only got 78 runners but it had a sick structure and the field was not especially tough. I ended up getting lucky in several key pots after a series of hands on the bubble where I really hated my play and blew a lot of chips. I got heads-up behind in chips against a really weak player and then ran insanely hot to take it down for 117K. To celebrate I lost 16K at 200/400.

Tomorrow I'm off to Vegas again for the last couple events of the Five Diamond series at Bellagio. Everyone was screaming that the sky was falling after the turnouts in the first few events but it seems like the fields in the last few $5K events have actually been relatively large and I expect the last $5K preliminary and the $15K main event that I'm going to play to be more of the same.

Mike

Mo' Gold

2008-11-24T04:08:00.004-03:30

I've easily been on the biggest online heater of my life this month and this week was just more of the same. I didn't really play all that much this week, mostly just 200/400 PLO when I saw a decent looking game running and 5 tournaments. I final tabled 4 of them placing 2nd, 4th, 4th, 5th for a total of ~54K. On Wednesday night I played the four 9pm majors, and for the first time in my career I made 3 final tables at the same time. I got yet another 2nd in a tourney on Absolute, 5th on UB, and 4th in the FTP 100r. I recorded the end of these so there's a pretty good chance I'll turn them into a training video at some point. I also played the AP $500 tourney on Saturday and got 4th this time after just losing every pot at the final table after having the chip lead at one point. The play at this final table was some of the most ridiculously hilariously terrible play I've ever seen and I recorded that as well so maybe I will turn it into a video where I mock everyone relentlessly for entertainment.

Speaking of videos I finally finished my 1st video for PokerSavvy which I expect to actually be up this week. It didn't turn out as well as I might have hoped but that was probably inevitable the first time around while still getting used to the software etc... I think it still turned out pretty good though, I guess I'll get to see what people think soon enough. I believe PokerSavvy still has a short free trial promotion going so you might be able to go check that out once it's up. So that brings us to PLO.

I basically have just continued running stupidly good all week at 200/400 running up short stack buy-ins. I'm just going to tell you the story of Thursday night/Friday morning since that was my biggest shot yet and also my biggest win. I jumped into a game just after midnight and did my usual luckbox thing:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494156

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494160

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494162 - Not sure if my flop semi-bluff is good in this one as my wrap can easily be in bad shape on this board with the flush draw. Still, I feel like if either of them had a hand they really wanted to go with they probably would have just bet it themselves so I think I have a decent amount of fold equity. Gus ended up calling the flop real light though he's a coin flip against my actual hand but I am too lucky.

So that was pretty sick I quit up my 55K and the games broke so whatever. I was still up in the morning though and there was more 200/400 PLO action going than almost ever with like 6 tables running. I started running up stacks on them but this time I didn't quit when I got deep stacked if I had good table position. I ended up 4-tabling for around 4 hours and having a really swingy session. The variance of these games is really sick and from my +55K starting point I went as high as +110K then dropped as low as just +16K. I bounced back and ended +95K. It was a really crazy session but it was also really fun and a great learning experience. I've never had anywhere close to that much money in play before in my life or played that many high stakes tables at once before. I definitely made some mistakes but I didn't feel like they were related to the amount of money on the line, I've just still got a decent amount to learn about PLO and even the best make mistakes sometimes. Here are some more key pots:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494206

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494207 - Ups. A slightly lighter 3-bet from me here.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494212

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494216

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494217 - This looks ugly but it's actually pretty standard. I have to call the flop with possibly 6 outs and preflop is correct too. Oh yeah I do lose some pots too:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494227

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494232

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494234 - I guess I could jam the flop but I have 3 hearts and I have to be concerned about whether my 7 is actually live. Certainly I don't figure to have much/any fold equity at all so I decided to just peel.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3494251 - Having 3 diamonds sucks but I don't really see what else I can do here there should be enough semi-bluff hands in his range that I have good equity against.

Heading to NYC this week so probably not much poker will be played for a bit. Take it easy and watch my video let me know how bad it sucks.

Mike

Winning All the Gold

2008-11-17T04:22:00.002-03:30

That's what I've been doing this weekend. Well, just Saturday to be more accurate, I gave some back today. Saturday was one of the best days of my internet pokers career though so I'll tell you all about that now. The day started at 2pm with a bunch of tournaments and some 200/400 PLO shots. I made 24K at PLO so that was pretty sweet. Here are the biggest pots I won:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3461326 - 3-betting preflop is probably more standard but stack sizes make it awkward when he calls and I hadn't been 3-betting much. Obviously get it in on the flop and hold the 56-44 how lucky.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3461335 - Flop pretty good turn better river ok also.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3461339 - I guess I have to get it in on the flop, though if I run into the nut flush draw I'm fairly dead. Getting called in two spots was unexpected, as the hand played out I'm not really sure what they had. With the blockers against the nuts bombing the turn definitely merited serious consideration but I went the more conservative route this time. When Ozzy checks the river I'm almost certain my hand is good and decide to go for a checkraise since Patrik should either have made a flush himself and be looking to value bet it or turn something into a bluff a lot. Pretty easy checkraise for value once Ozzy folds since Patrik would almost surely have raised the flop with the nut flush draw.

After that I just concentrated on my tournaments. The awesome $5K 6-handed FTOPS was on but I busted super early losing a big flip with AK vs JJ. It was just a spot where even though we were 200xBB deep I had to put the money in. I did much better in the other early FTOPS event though, the $500 heads-up tournament. I was actually really happy with how I played these HU matches for once and I was making a lot of pairs and winning races and stuff as well which obviously helps a lot. I think I was doing a very good job getting maximal value in a lot of spots where in the past I may have made the mistake of playing for pot control too much. I rattled off five quick wins with more than a bit of luck on my side (my 88 beat QQ all-in preflop for most of the chips in the 5th) and as I was waiting for my 6th match I ended up playing HU in two other tournaments!

The first was a Step 6 satellite for a PCA seat. I got heads up around even in chips with jorj, one of the regulars who plays every single step 5/6 that runs basically, and I got lucky to win a coinflip for almost all the chips to take down the $14K package. I'm definitely glad I was able to get that seat out of the way early and without spending too much on satellites. Next up was the AP $500 tourney. I had a huge chip lead throughout most of the final table which I was able to increase easily as all the short stacks had around the same number of chips and several were clearly just playing to try to move up a few spots. I just moved in preflop uncontested time and time again to pick up the large blinds and antes. When we got 3-handed though I lost a big pot to apestyles with 99 vs AA and then doubled up the short stack when he finally called one of shoves to all of a sudden find myself as the short stack. Ape did something crazy and sucked out on the other guy to get us heads up but with me way behind in chips. I doubled once but then lost QJ vs J8 aipf to bust 2nd for $24K.

As the heads up of the AP tournament was being played my 6th round in the FTOPS tournament started. My new opponent was actually pretty weak but after I grinded him way down he doubled up twice to take the chip lead from me momentarily. I got back to a 2:1 chip advantage and then ran my 88 into his 77 to end it. The next round I ran into a much tougher opponent though and got behind early. I won a flip to get back to even and then another big pot where I turned the nut straight to take the chip lead. I had a 2:1 chip lead when I checkraised him on the turn of a QT96 board with Q6 and called his shove only to run into 87. I won A7 vs A5 to get back in it but on the final hand I got all-in on the flop with J8 vs his KJ on the J-hi flop to end my run. I finished 9-16th for $7500.

So as you can tell all those scores added up to a pretty big day. Not final tabling a $10K+ buy-in tournament big but still probably a top 5 online day for me. Then I got to watch a pretty sweet UFC 91 card so it was just an all-around super day. The hot run didn't carry over to Sunday though unfortunately. I only cashed the early $100 buy-in FTOPS event and the $200 rebuy on Stars for less than $2K total. Now that FTOPS is over this week figures to have less poker. I'll keep working on my PLO game and maybe play a couple of the bigger tourneys but that's likely about it. I also need to get my first PokerSavvy video out asap. That's all I've got for now, keep it real homies.

Mike

Bad Habits, a Donkament Score, and High Stakes PLO

2008-11-12T08:52:00.002-03:30

Since arriving back in Toronto I've quickly gotten back into my normal lazy at home routine. I stay up too late, then sleep away the hours of the day in which I could actually go out and do productive things, then play some tournaments and cash games, watch TV, download the TV I miss, and various other lazy activities which keep me up all night. It's not like I'm super upset about it, not having any real obligations and being able to live on such a ridiculous schedule if I want to is a pretty sweet luxury to have. I'm enjoying my time relaxing, but at times the unproductive and lazy feeling of a day mostly spent at a computer or TV screen can be pretty gross, even if I've spent a lot of that time "working". As an example, this blog is being written at 7:30am and I assure you I did not just wake up. I'll get to what I was doing tonight shortly but first let me recap what else I've been up to since the last time we talked.

FTOPS started and I've played a handful of events. I didn't have much luck at all with tournaments through this weekend unfortunately. I final tabled the $100 single rebuy $100K Gtd tournament on Ongame on Sunday but busted 9th for ~$1600 and didn't have any other particularly notable cashes until tonight. I've also been playing some more big PLO. 25/50 and 50/100 Cap games as well 200/400 shortstacking shots have been up and down quite a bit but overall going pretty well, and of course some 10/20 and 25/50 games on Cake when they are good. OK so on to tonight.

I skipped most of the nightly tournaments but decided to play the 9pm ones on Stars/Full Tilt. There were two FTOPS events tonight, the $500 HORSE and $200 turbo NLHE. Both of those are really fun formats even though I seem to suck at HORSE. Anyways the turbo was where I picked up a big score. Running good in a turbo donkament is really really fun. There were almost 2600 players and the whole thing lasted just over 3 hours (it ended before the 3rd break). The beauty of the turbo donkament is you more or less skip all the boring deep stacked play and get right to the best part: Jamming your stack in with crap and hoping they all fold or you suck out.

I mean really, what's better than pushbotting? Every hand there is a very real possibility you could double up or go broke and that's pretty exciting. Well I'll tell you what's better, pushbotting deep in a tournament when substantial money is on the line and everyone is too scared or too bad at poker to do it properly. Obviously running sick hot and winning every time you have to call someone or they call you makes this significantly more fun, and that was what happened tonight. I held the chip lead for a decent while in the latter stages of the tournament before slipping a bit as we got down to two tables. But then I owned some chump's 99 with my K6s and made the final table 3rd in chips. The final table got off to a bad start as I lost AT vs AK and was super short. I luckboxed a couple double ups and some blind steals though and made it to 3-handed play 2nd in chips. Unfortunately djk had a big chip lead though, and he's even better at going all in every hand and winning every time they call with an obviously superior hand than I am so when he shoved my BB and I called with A6hh I was eliminated by his Q8ss. I still got $50K for 3rd though which is a solid three hours work in my opinion.

So then I ended up playing a bunch of high stakes PLO all night as the games were really good and only lost around $9k which wasn't too bad. Overall it was a pretty solid night. I even recorded a session 2-tabling 50/100 Cap PLO which I think I will turn into my first PokerSavvy video, hopefully by the end of the week. I'll let you all know when that actually happens. Anyways I should probably go rest up now I've gotta do this all again in 12 hours or so.

Mike

November and Future Plans

2008-11-05T03:37:00.003-03:30

Now that I've been home a few days I've had some time to sit down and plan out the next few months. The rest of this year is going to be pretty laid back in terms of live poker, but it looks like the beginning of next year is going to be really really crazy. So for November I'm probably not playing any live tournaments. There's a chance I could go to Vancouver for the BC Poker Classic but it's looking pretty unlikely at this point as the buy-ins just aren't that big. There's another FTOPS starting today though so I'll play some of those events. I certainly don't plan to try to grind the events every day like I have in the past but I'll play when I feel like it and don't have other plans. The $5K buy-in 6-handed 2-day event should be awesome and is the only one I feel like I can't miss, but I'll try to play at least all of the bigger prize pool events. Then at the end of the month is the ECOOP on the iPoker network. I might have to miss a couple of the bigger events in that one unfortunately as I have plans to go visit my friend in NYC for American Thanksgiving (and all the football and partying that comes with it).

After that I'll be headed back to Vegas for the Bellagio Five Diamond series at some point. I may skip some of the prelims as turnouts for preliminary events have been way down lately and as much as I love Vegas I was just there for a while and I'm not getting comped this time :-). Once I'm done there it's back to Newfoundland to see my friends and family there for Xmas. As always I'm reeeally looking forward to that. Then January is when things look like they're going to get crazy. I really wanted to avoid doing this but I think I'm going to play both PCA and Aussie Millions. The travel is horrendously awful, but Aussie Millions is not going to be as good this year without Full Tilt sponsoring it and PCA is going to be insanely huge and the High Roller event should be sick as well. So the tentative plan appears to be to rent an apartment in Melbourne with timex and stay for at least an extra week after Aussie Millions because Melbourne kicks ass.

Now, depending on the LA Poker Classic schedule it's possible I could end up going straight from Melbourne to LA for that. This would be an incredibly long trip as I would stay in LA until early March, but on the other hand it has to beat the hell out of winter in Canada. I'm still far from settled on any of this but it does kind of make sense and would be fairly awesome, though barely being in Toronto for a 3-month span is really crazy. Sooooo I dunno.

In other news I am going to give the video training site thing a try and do some videos for PokerSavvy Plus this month. I'll add more details about that as I figure them out, but I'm going to try to make my first video for next week. Oh yeah I haven't played much poker this week but I'm up over 100K. I bought a piece of a friend in a big game which he ended up absolutely killing and making me ~90K, and then I had one of my random 200/400 PLO shots where I ran 8K up to 38K in 23 hands or something. I played 3 big pots and won them all, and they all happened to be against Gus. Once I got him in drawing almost dead, the 2nd I got it in horrendously bad (but in a standard spot) and sucked out really badly, and the third I got it in really bad against his aces preflop (but again I think it's gotta be fairly standard against Gus) and sucked out again. Sooo I'm a lucksack, but you probably already knew that.

Mike

GOING TO FUCKING KILL SOMEONE

2008-10-30T05:05:00.002-02:30

Today was the maddest I have ever been at a poker table. I don't give a fuck about bad beats or about bubbling the stupid tournament. I'm partly very mad at myself for being an idiot and allowing this bullshit to happen, but moreso that some jackass actually pulled this on me. The story is coming shortly let me begin at the beginning. So I run/play bad for a bit and get down to 200K, then double with TT vs 22 blind vs blind and I think win some other pot I can't remember. Then this hand happens:

6k/12k a1k I open to 32K UTG with JJ and the BB who is bad defends. The flop comes J87 with two hearts, he checks and I bet 56K which he calls. The turn is an 8 he checks and I bet 86K and he calls. The turn is a Q, he leads out for 125K, I say all-in for his roughly 200K more. I hear him almost immediately say call and turn over my hand. At this point he says "What are you doing I didn't say anything yet." I ask the dealer "didn't he say call?" The dealer obviously doing his job well says "I didn't hear anything." At this point I fuck up really bad since I don't know what is going on. Instead of calling over the floor I just kind of end up going with it and letting him fold his hand and keep the last of his chips. I don't know why I did did that, it was one of those situations that kind of happened so fast and I was obviously pretty excited about having the effective nuts that I can't even remember exactly how things happened. Also, who the fuck has the audacity to say "Call" in front of a table of people and then be like "No wait I actually didn't say that"? It certainly made sense I could be the one who fucked up. So the hand ended and we go on break (which also could have added to the confusion).

The guy sitting directly between me and my opponent at the table now comes up to me and says "Why didn't you call the floor? He definitely said call." The the dealer who was waiting to rotate into our table also says "Yeah I heard him say call. I think you even asked him "Did you say call?" and he said yes before you turned your hand over." Obviously at this point I am pretty fucking livid but it's too late to do anything. The rule apparently is that if the dealer doesn't hear anything two people have to have heard him say it, so if I'm not an idiot he wouldn't have gotten away with it which makes me feel even worse.

Anyways I have my break and am able to accept what has happened. As a poker player I am trained to ignore things outside my control and just focus on making good decisions in the future, it's all I can do really. I'm still pretty pissed though because the whole thing was so fucked up and I can't believe this scumbag actually did that that I was sitting there steaming for most of the next level just planning how bad I was going to slowroll him when I finally bust him and take MY chips back. I'm very card dead for a while though and end up folding all the way back down to around 440K when this hand happens:

15k/30k a3k I'm UTG with KK and make it 77K. Folds to angle shooting scumbag in the BB who has folded his way all the way down to 225K playing like a fucking genius after having chipped back up earlier. He thinks for a minute or 2 then makes the brilliant play of flat calling. The flop comes A73r, he checks and I check behind since nothing worse calls and I can let stuff that's drawing basically dead catch up a bit. If he has me beat he's going to get my money regardless. The turn is a J, he checks and I check behind again. I can probably just move in here and hope he calls with a J but if he's behind he can't have more than a few outs and giving him a chance to do something stupid on the river is fun and I'm still getting called by a J on the river usually anyways. The river is a T, he checks and I finally bet 100K of his 150K. He moves in, I cry but obviously have to call and he has JT....

I don't think I had ever thrown cards or chips in anger at a poker table before but that streak is now over. I would never get really mad over just a bad beat but given the circumstances I think it's pretty understandable why I was furious. Our table breaks after this hand and I have a meager 210K at my new table. I move in with A7 on the first two hands and get back to around 350K. Then I pick up 99 UTG and move in again, Kathy Liebert calls with AK and I lose. I tell her nice hand, wish Adam good luck, and make my exit.

So in the end I don't know what else to say. I could have done a lot of things differently after the fact but it's just not me. In the future I'll just have more confidence in myself and less faith in the poker community, not that I didn't know it has more than it's fair share of liars and cheats to begin with. That being said the great majority of the people I've met in the poker world are incredibly honest and good people (especially the newer younger generation), but you do have to watch your own back. Still, I'm not going to stop believing that most people are good honest people and giving everyone the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. You can't be so naive as to let yourself get taken advantage of, but I sure as hell am not going to go about living my life being paranoid and not trusting anyone, I'd rather risk getting angled once in a while than live my life that miserably. So there you have a rare Watts emo rant. Peace y'all,

Mike

Caesar's Poker Classic Main Event Day 1

2008-10-29T07:21:00.002-02:30

The tournament that I've been sticking around for the last week or so since I busted Bellagio began today. It's a $10K buy-in with a million guaranteed first prize. The do the payouts by their normal payout structure for all places but then if first is less than a million they top it up to that, so there's an overlay (of only ~55K this year though as they got ~310 players). However, a lot of the players in the tournament are actually freeroll and special contest winners and there are a ton of satellite winners on top of that so this easily the softest 10K+ buy-in tournament in Vegas outside of the World Series. We played really late and are starting up again at noon so I can't write a big report, but I ran pretty good all day including set over setting someone on one of the last hands of the day to run my stack up to 457.6K from the 100K starting bank.

The structure is really bad and while there was a lot of play today it is going to become a complete crap shoot tomorrow, though to be honest that suits me just fine, especially if I can maintain a big stack into the bubble since there is going to be so much dead money scared satellite and freeroll winners. I think Cardplayer (www.cardplayer.com) is the only place doing live coverage so you can check there for updates throughout the day. Gotta try to get some sleep tonight for another (hopefully) long day tomorrow. Night,

Mike

Festa al Lago Day 2

2008-10-22T22:55:00.003-02:30

Well I'm busto. I grinded my short stack for quite a while but every time I got something good going I immediately lost a pot to give it back. In the end I obviously got owned Doug Lee because why wouldn't I?

Hand 1: 500/1000 a100 Somehow I'm down to 13K at this point and Jen Harman opens on my right. I move in with KK and Kristy Gazes instaships in the BB and Jennifer folds. She has QQ and I double back to around 30K.

Hand 2: Somewhere in here Doug Lee gets moved to the table. It folds to me in HJ and I raise to 2700 with QsQh. It folds to Doug in the BB and he calls because when it's his BB that's what he does. The flop comes A64dd, he checks and I check behind intending to fold approximately never no matter what happens ever. Then the turn is the Kd, and he bets 5K and I cry and fold. There's a good chance calling down here is still correct.

Hand 3: 600/1200 a200 So I get back to like 22K and raise to 3200 in the HJ again with KQo this time. Doug Lee calls in the BB because as we've established why wouldn't he? The flop comes 743r, I'm not thrilled but I think I have to bet. I bet 5K and he calls. The turn is a 2 chk/chk river J chk/chk. "I have one pair." I nod my head like obviously that's good but for some reason it takes him a while to roll over the winner, his 83s.

Hand 4: 800/1600 a200 Down to 13K now it folds to Jon (FatalError) in the CO and he opens to 4K, I ship A9o in the SB and hold against his KJo.

Hand 5: I'm back to around 30K and we get moved away from the balcony in the Fontana room because it was insanely cold. As we're unracking our chips a the new table the dealer asks me if I remember this card, and shows me the Ad. As it turns out it's the dealer who peeled off that beautiful Ad on the river against David back in July when I was all-in with AK vs QQ. So the first hand at the new table I'm UTG+1 and look down to see AKo! I raise and everyone folds and I show the ace and say I knew I had nothing to worry about. The next hand I get AKo again UTG! This guy is good! I open to 4400 again and Doug Lee makes it 16K in MP. Folds back to me and I insta-double fistpump-triple backflip-Hi 5s all around-turbo ship the rest of my chips in and he calls with AQ. The board runs out KJxx.......T. Oops. I guess I'm still slightly ahead lifetime on his river cards though so no major complaints.

I'm gonna stick around for another week still and play the 10K at Caesar's at the end of the month and probably some cash games. It's undoubtedly too much to ask, but I certainly wouldn't mind doing that thing where I hit a big score in my last tournament of the trip again! In the mean time I will try to get in an appropriate amount of trouble.

Mike

Festa al Lago WPT Day 1b

2008-10-22T03:07:00.002-02:30

Not a very successful day 1 today unfortunately. I finished the day with 25K of my 45K starting stack. My starting table was very soft, the only other players I recognized were shaniac and gobbo. Unfortunately I then got moved to some crazy table with Shawn Sheikhan, Brad Booth, Minh Ly and some other people I recognized. Here are two interesting hands I played today, the latter being the key hand of my day.

Hand 1: 200/400 a50. The player on my right opens to 1400 in MP and I flat KK next to act hoping for a squeeze from Sheikhan or Brad Booth or to just trap the raiser. One player calls behind me in position and Booth calls from the BB. The flop comes AT6hh and checks around. Turn T checks around. River 5 checks to me and I figure I almost always have the best hand and I may be able to get value from a hand like JJ or QQ so I bet 2800 and Brad calls with JJ.

Hand 2: Brad has been very active making a lot of really big preflop raises and reraises. In thish and Minh Ly open to 900 in early-middle position and Booth makes it 3800 next to act. I find KK on the button and make it 14K which is probably a bit too big. Booth calls pretty quickly which is really strange. The flop comes Q65hh and he checks. I think for a bit and was going to just jam it in and hope to get hero called but eventually I decided his preflop call seemed so strong that I was actually pretty worried about him having AA or QQ and I could induce bluffs or something by checking anyways. The turn is an 8 and he bets 8K which I call. The river is an A and he bets 22K. I think for a bit and mutter about how I must be the only nit in the world who plays this hand so weak and I'm either an idiot or a genius before accepting that I just can't imagine how he could be bluffing and fold. He said he flopped three queens and kept muttering about how if he played the hand differently he could have busted me so it seemed pretty legitimate that he actually had the hand.

I was down to 30K after that hand and finished the day with 25K after a boring level where I didn't do too much other than steal the blinds a few times. Hopefully I can turn things around and get something going tomorrow.

Mike

Awesome Day!

2008-10-21T05:40:00.003-02:30

Today started like almost any other day. I woke up and lazed around for a bit. Eventually I forced myself to go get a workout and then I came back to the room and ordered some food. I watched the new episode of Entourage which was the best in a long time, and also Dexter which was really good as always. After that I decided I'd go check out the poker room and see if any good games were running and buy into Day 1B of the WPT event for tomorrow. I ran into Vivek in the poker room and we both ended up sitting in a 10/20 game for a bit. Then we heard a new 25/50 NL game was opening and that a certain swimmer you may have heard of was playing it, so we instantly locked up seats and moved to that game. Sure enough, seated three to my left was none other than Michael Phelps.

Normally, to play in the legendary Bobby's Room, home of the biggest cash games in the world, you have to be playing at least something like 100/200 NL with a minimum 20K buy-in, but seeing as Michael Phelps is kind of a big deal and all they made an exception and moved our table in there. We were playing 25/50 NL and the BB also posted a $100 ante so it played a fair bit bigger than a normal 25/50 game, but you probably don't care about that. So there Vivek and I are, both coming off of huge WPT victories, sitting in Bobby's room play high stakes poker with the greatest olympian ever and one of the most famous people in the world this year. At the other table next to us Doyle, Helmuth, Eli, Ralph Perry, Freddy Deeb and various others are playing some huge stakes mixed game. It was kind of a ridiculous surreal moment where all Vivek and I could do is look at each other and say "Wow, are we living the life right now or what?".

So anyways back to things you probably care more about. Michael was actually really down to earth despite all his success and a cool guy. He immediately recognized Vivek (everyone seems to) which Vivek obviously thought was pretty sick. He didn't really seem to recognize me though, but I guess that's not surprising because I'm just some quiet kid who won a WPT event when the entire poker world was focused on them reaching the final table of the WSOP main event. Anyways, he was having a beer and enjoying himself and it was a really fun game. He actually seems to play fairly well though he never got in many tricky spots postflop at all and we never really saw any of his hands. The whole experience was pretty amazing though, and afterwards Vivek, Adam, and I went for some food at Fix and grabbed a late dinner to celebrate our sweet day. Oh yeah on top of that I also won $4K in the game by flopping the nuts a bunch but never winning any really huge pots.

So, tomorrow I begin my quest to defend my WPT at Bellagio bracelet. I'm pretty excited to get going, though I somehow doubt tomorrow will be able to compete with the events of today.

Mike

Festa al Lago Update

2008-10-19T03:24:00.002-02:30

Hey I've been lazy and haven't written anything in a little while so here's what I've been up to this week. After I busted Niagara I drove home immediately and started looking for a flight to Vegas. There was a very cheap Westjet flight at 9pm that night and I had a credit for Westjet that I had to use soon anyways so I booked that right away, threw a bunch of extra clothes in my bag, and was off to the airport. I got in around 11pm PST and checked into the Bellagio. They were nice enough to comp my room for this trip as the returning champion so that was pretty badass. I had actually never stayed at the Bellagio before though I had seen the rooms and knew what to expect. Still, my room is way nicer than I remembered them being. There's so much space, the bathroom is huge, and all the decor is really classy without being excessive or snobbish. I of course still have to pay for all my own incidentals (internet, gym/spa, room service, mini bar, etc...) and they're very good at making those add up quickly, so even without paying the actual room rate they're still making an alright sum off me.

I've played a fair bit since I got here and had no success. On Thursday I played the $5K buy-in tournament and busted early without much going right. The next day I played a $1500 satellite to the main event but played very poorly and wasn't really focused and busted early again. I then played some 25/50 NL live and lost a bit over $5K getting in some tough spots and making a few likely questionable/poor plays. Today I played the $5K tournament and hung in until just before the dinner break very card dead for the most part. I busted on a tricky hand which I think I'm fine with:

600/1200 a100. A player who has been playing a lot of hands and limping a fair bit limps in MP. He seemed to be a cash player so competent but making a lot of preflop mistakes on the shorter effective stacks. I find KJcc in the CO make it 4200 with ~27K behind, and it folds back to him and he calls. The flop comes Ah Jh 7s and I check behind. The turn is the 2s and he leads very big for 10K. I feel like his bet sizing is either a made hand protecting against the 2 flush draws or a semi-bluff. I thought he would raise a lot of aces preflop so it's a bit less likely he has an A, and there are tons of ways he can have a flush draw that I'm ahead of. With only 17K behind after the 10K bet I think it's a spot where I have to move in for value if I think he has a draw since the pot will be so big if I call that trying to play the river would really not be fun. In the end that's what I decided to do but he had ATo and I lost. I think there are more aces in his range than I originally gave him credit for since he can probably limp/call a bunch of suited aces as well as some offsuit ones with middling kickers but I still think he should have a draw often enough that stacking off was ok.

The $15K WPT main event starts Monday and Tuesday, and after that there is a $10K buy-in tournament at Caesar's that I didn't know about with a million dollar guaranteed first prize so I'll probably stay until the end of the month to play that as well. I'll probably also try to play more big cash games during the main event since they should be fairly good, but I'm still not a big fan of live cash at this point. Maybe I just need more experience but it can be pretty boring. Oh yeah I've also picked up one Adam Junglen as a roommate again on this trip as he just turned 21 today! So happy birthday to him! I thought I got rid of him after London but it seems I was mistaken. Oh yeah also Friday night was David 'Bakes' Baker's birthday so a bunch of us went out for beer pong at O'Shea's which was a fun time as always. There's not as many people here that I know as usual but more and more are arriving as we get closer to the main event so it should be a fun couple weeks!

Mike

WPT Niagara Day 2-3

2008-10-14T16:52:00.002-02:30

The internet stopped working on my computer in the hotel room for some reason so I wasn't able to blog last night. I had a pretty crappy day despite getting up to as high as 94K pretty early. I then went pretty card dead and lost most of the pots I did play. I was in pushbot mode by the end of the day and stole the blinds a few times to get to 40K. Today I played all of one hand when I moved in with A9s in MP for 32K for whatever and didn't beat JJ even though I flopped a flush draw. Timex and stevepa are stll in though so gogogogo them. I'm gonna book a flight to Vegas asap and play as many Festa al Lago events at Bellagio as I can now.

Mike

WPT Niagara Day 1

2008-10-13T01:25:00.002-02:30

Hey I finished day 1 with 49.5K which is about average (30K starting stack). We only played 5 levels so not too many people were eliminated. I don't really feel like there were enough really interesting hands that I want to write a detailed report. Also, I'm pretty tired and just don't really feel like it. We start up again at noon tomorrow.

Mike

EPT High Roller Day 2

2008-10-07T22:19:00.005-02:30

Well as most people probably know by now I finished 3rd for 241K pounds. It was a tough tournament and I never had a ton of chips so I was pretty happy with the finish, and obviously it's by far my 2nd biggest cash ever. I guess a lot of the hands have been reported pretty accurately elsewhere so I'll try not to focus too much on those but I do want to write a little recap.

Early on I was able to pick up a few pots where I reraised David Benyamine but I was otherwise fairly card dead. Between the blinds getting big leaving me on an awkward stack size and the fact that 9th paid around 2.5 buy-ins making it a really big bubble I didn't have much choice but to play very tight. I hung in until the final table but entered with a pretty short stack. Then I started coolering the other shortstacks, first Isabelle with AK vs her AJ and then Masaki with 99 vs Q9. I lost the latter though but then immediately picked up AA vs David's KJ (probably didn't move me up his list of favourite people at all =/) to bust him and AKs vs Masaki's AQs to bust my 3rd player and move into 2nd chip position. I then lost a couple small pots including this hand which was my only really tough spot at the final table. Here's a cut/paste of the strategy post I made on 2+2:

Weird river spot, all of call, fold and shove seemed pretty reasonable.

Relevant history or whatever first. 5-handed, errbody is playing super solid TAG except Scotty on my left who's super nitting it up.

5k/10k a1k. Last orbit I raised UTG to 27K and Peter defended his BB. Flop came 228 I c-bet 36K and he called. Turn and river were low cards and we checked it down and his TT was good.

I think effective stacks were around 300K for this hand. Next orbit I raise UTG again to 27K with A9s. As I'm putting in the chips Peter says "trying again are u?" or something to that effect, and I say "If at first you don't succeed...." Can't imagine that's terribly important but included for the sake of completeness. Folds to him in the BB and he calls.

Flop AK8r. He checks and I check behind. I think betting is obv fine too but I didn't do that. Turn 5d making a backdoor flush draw. He bets 37K I call. River 4h, he bets 65K and I???

So I ended up folding and I guess the commentator's weren't pleased I took so long but obviously it was kind of a hard decision and big fold. I felt like AT-AQ were by far his most likely holdings as he probably wouldn't call a hand like A6s preflop so all I beat was a bluff which I also thought was pretty unlikely.

So after that I folded a lot into 3rd, then won a bunch of pots in a row including a double up with QT vs A8. But then I busted when Juanda opened the button to 56K at 10k/20k and I shoved 400K and change I think with A7o and ran into his AK. I'm not thrilled about that spot but the shove has to be +EV against any reasonable range he's opening on the button there. The only way I can really fold is if I suspect the button raiser has a much tighter opening range than usual because he doesn't want to have to fold to a shove again. I think I would have folded A6o though, not sure if that makes any sense mathematically or not but there you go.

So next up is WPT Niagara just down the road from Toronto for me! I'm playing Day 1c on Sunday. I always look forward to this one since it`s my "home" event so to speak. Right after that I'm heading to Bellagio for whatever prelims I can play and then the Festa al Lago WPT event. So lots more live poker coming up in the next few weeks, we'll see if the ol' luckbox has anything left.

Mike

EPT High Roller Day 1

2008-10-05T23:58:00.002-02:30

Just a quick post to update that I made it to day 2 of the High Roller tournament. I have 118K which is roughly average with 14 players left of 86 who started. I did the following skillful things to get my chips:

Cold 4-bet shoved 99 over Barry Greenstein's 3-bet of a crazy Scandi and beat his AA.

Got KK in preflop vs Chris Moneymaker's AA and rivered the K to crack them again.

Pussied out and checked behind the turn with A9ss when I turned a backdoor flush draw against Benyamine when I clearly should have semi-bluff shoved. River the card that makes my flush and also his trips to double up. I don't think I am David's favourite person these days.

We were supposed to play down to 9 but we stopped early at 2am instead with 14 left. Only 9 pay so hopefully I don't bubble and end up changing my flight for nothing. We start up at 1pm local time tomorrow. Once we get down to the final table you should be able to watch a live video stream of the final table with commentary on www.eptlive.com. Not sure when that will start since we ended the day early but check it out, hopefully you'll see me there.

Mike

EPT HIgh Roller

2008-10-05T08:02:00.002-02:30

Last minute decision I decided to play the High Roller event and was able to get myself bought in. It's a 20K+300 pound buy-in so like $36K USD. Capped at 100 players it's only a 2-day event so it should be a bit of a crap shoot but what's better than huge money crap shoots? Normally I can only lose like 10K playing tournaments on a Sunday. Going for the high score!

Mike

EPT London Day 2

2008-10-03T13:30:00.003-02:30

Busto in 3rd level of the day. Only a couple of biggish hands.

Hand 1: 500/1000 a100 First hand of the day it folds to the SB who shoves his 11.3K stack. I find KTo in the BB and out luckbox his A3s to get to 46K.

Hand 2: 800/1600 a200 I don't do much for a bit and open AKs UTG to 4400 the first hand back from break when a couple people aren't back yet. French team Winamax lady who hasn't really done much shoves 13K more or something on the button and I'm in pretty ok shape against her KJo. Flop QJ6 two spades isn't ideal but I have lots of outs which I unfortunately brick.

Hand 3: I had shoved a couple hands in a row and then our table broke. At my new table I have 25.7K and Vicky Coren limps in EP. I find 88 next to act and while I'm a little worried she could be limping a big hand she plays so bad that I can't give her too much credit and there's enough in the pot now to easily justify shoving to try to pick it up. Folds back to her she says something about how she hasn't played with me maybe you're the type to actually have a hand at which I'm pretty sure I'm about to get nit-rolled. She eventually does call and her TT is easily good.

So in the end just another typical day in the life of Watts. I had a fun time but no luck with the ladies.

Mike

EPT London Day 1a

2008-10-02T11:55:00.002-02:30

Hey gang, I made day 2 of the EPT with 34.2K, which I think is somewhere in the vicinity of average. I only remember a couple big pots, I won a bunch of small ones I guess to chip up a bit in between. In general my tables were incredibly soft, gotta love the EPT.

Hand 1: 150/300 a25 last hand before break. Crazy french guy limps in MP as he does very frequently, I limp the CO with 66, SB completes and the BB shoves for around 5100. French guy folds and I eventually decide to reshove since the BB seemed pretty competent about shortstack play and I figured he was probably shoving super wide since the French guy is almost always folding and no one else really figures to have much of a hand. SB folds and BB has 44 which I hold against to get to roughly twice starting stack with just under 20K.

Hand 2: 300/600 a75 I'm up to 30K at this point, I won a few smallish pots when I flopped huge but somehow couldn't get any action, and I'm at a new table where I don't really know how people play yet. A middle aged british guy limps, devinr12 limps behind and I make it 3K in the SB with JJ. British guy calls and we see a Q76hh flop. I check and he bets 3K which I call. Turn is the 3c putting up a 2nd flush draw, I check and he checks. River 6d, I bet 5K trying to get paid by 88 or 99 and he quickly shoves. I think for a bit pretty confused as I didn't really think he had an A6s or 56s type hand but eventually end up folding because somehow they always have it. He told me on the break that he had quad 6s which I guess I'll believe. The rest of his play throughout the day also made me pretty confident in my fold.

Hand 3: Shortly after the last hand I'm down to around 15K when the HJ opens to 2025. I find AA in the CO and decide to flat call and guy from last hand calls in the BB. The flop comes 554r, and the BB leads out for 1300(?), HJ folds and I make it 5K. He thinks a bit and puts me in and I hold vs TT. No more big pots and I ended the day with 34.2K.

Day 2 is on Friday and I have today off while they play Day 1b. Hopefully I can make a little run and do that thing where I wait until the last tournament to turn an unsuccessful trip into a very profitable one again.

Mike

Made the break this year

2008-09-28T13:27:00.004-02:30

WSOPE main event is just not my tournament. Last year I busted in level 1 with bottom set vs top 2 pair all-in on the flop, and this year I didn't fair much better. I survived level 1 but won only one pot which was just me picking up the blinds and chipped down to 15K. Then early in level 2 this hand happens:

100/200 Winamax French guy limps UTG, Devilfish limps in MP, I pop it to 1K with AJo in the CO and both call. Flop Ac Qd 6c. Both check to me and I bet 2K, Winamax folds Devilfish calls. Turn Js, check I bet 5K, he asks how much I have left and I show him my 6475. He thinks for a bit and calls. I am certain that he has clubs that picked up a straight draw. River Kd, he quickly bets enough to put me all-in. Sigh, I think it over for a bit and decide the only hands he can have are KQcc, KJcc, JTcc, T9cc, T8cc. I beat 2 of those 5 and I'm getting almost 4:1, but it comes down to a matter of weighting those hands properly. He needs to have KQ or KJ over 20% of the time for me to call, meaning that if he only bluffs with them on the river half the time that he has them I should fold. Now that I say it like that I actually think it's kind of an easy fold against David but I stuck it in and lost to T9. Oops. It was a tricky spot though and I'm not too upset about it.

So that just leaves EPT London which begins for me on October 1. Hopefully I can run/play better there.

Mike

Winning streak snapped at one

2008-09-24T23:27:00.002-02:30

I was unable to extend my live tournament winning streak today in the 5K pound PLO tournament. I busted on the very last hand of the day getting all-in with the nuts on the turn but in unfortunately bad shape.

I had about 45K at 500/1000 when Allen Cunningham opened the button to 3K. I had JT98 with clubs in the SB and called, as did Andy Bloch in the BB. The flop came K87ssc. An ok but not great flop for my hand because of the presence of the flush draw. I check and Bloch leads out for 6K. Allen folded and I call. The turn is an offsuit J, I decide I can't risk him checking behind which I expect he will very often and just lead out for pot (21K). He quickly moves in and I call. Unfortunately my weak redraw to a full house doesn't look so great when he turns over QT9x with spades for the nuts as well with a massive redraw and rivers the As to bust me.

I play Day 1b of the WSOPE main event which I believe is Saturday. Hopefully I can get a new streak started in that event! Or at least make it to level 2 this year.

Mike

WCOOP over, off to London!

2008-09-22T06:48:00.003-02:30

I didn't have much luck with my Sunday tournaments today. I managed a couple small cashes but lost a bit overall. I bubbled the WCOOP main event after being a bit unlucky. Things were actually going pretty smoothly for quite a while until this hand happened:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3223838

I fought for a little while on the shortstack and then made an aggressive resteal with 44 over some guy that was raising constantly and just way out of line in general. A supertight player behind me woke up with JJ though and by the river I was staring at quads again to bust within 15 or 20 from the money. Tonight I am off to London for WSOPE followed by EPT London. I'll be there for two weeks before returning home for WPT Niagara. First up is the 5K pound WSOPE Omaha event followed by the 10K pound main event and 5K pound EPT main event. It should be fun to get back to playing live again, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone there as I haven't traveled since Bellagio.

Mike

WCOOP success!

2008-09-17T07:03:00.002-02:30

It wasn't the best event to final table but it was a fun one! I final tabled the $500 buy-in 2-7 NL single draw event of the WCOOP today and finished 2nd for $30K. This was the first and likely only WCOOP event that will have overlay. It had a $200K guarantee on it but only attracted 308 players, and even with the added money from PokerStars it was still the 3rd smallest prize pool of the WCOOP. So most of you are probably wondering what the hell is 2-7 NL single draw and since when do you know how to play it? Basically it's a 5-card draw game in which you try to make the worst possible poker hand and ace only counts for high, just like in triple draw. So 23457 is the nuts, 23467 is the 2nd nuts and so on. Straight and flushes count against you so any straight or flush is completely worthless. You're dealt 5 cards, there are blinds and antes, and a normal round of pre-draw betting just like preflop betting in NL Holdem. Then anyone still in the hand pitches any number of cards they want and gets fresh ones from the deck. Another round of betting just like in NL Holdem and then hands get shown down.

Because there are only two rounds of betting once you know some of the math behind drawing cards it's actually not that complicated a game. I had never played it before today, and while I obviously am still far from an expert I already feel pretty comfortable playing it in a tournament setting. I definitely think it's a game that anyone with a solid understanding of general poker theory and some basic lowball math could learn to play fairly competently very quickly. Lucky for me I guess no one knew that so the field stayed small and there was an overlay. I was chipleader for much of the final table but lost a couple big pots where I ran big hands into bigger hands and then battled on the shortstack for a while. I was well behind in chips when we got heads up but I was able to chip up a little and get within 2.5:1 at one point. It just wasn't meant to be I guess as my opponent kept hitting draw after draw and making monster hands. If I had just stuck to my gameplan of trying to grind him down I may have had a chance to come back, but eventually I went for a big bluff after the draw and ran into the third best hand in the game: 23567, a completely unreasonably enormous hand to run into in a HU game. I don't think my play on the final hand was all that good but I don't think it's terrible either. Anyways it's nice to finally achieve some WCOOP success, hopefully I can build on that over the remaining events.

Mike

Not so crazy about WCOOP

2008-09-15T00:45:00.006-02:30

I never thought it was possible for a tournament to have too good a structure, for there to be too much time to gain an advantage through skillful play. But these WCOOP events are crazy! 14 hours for a $200 razz tournament? Really? It's great for the really big events, but trying to do it every day is just draining. At some point I'm just like can't we just get it all-in and flip coins for all the money already? This past week was mostly smaller events and the upcoming week is a lot more big events though so hopefully that will keep me focused. I didn't cash a single WCOOP event this week of the dozen I played, though most days I grinded for many hours before busting still not even that close to the money! I did min cash a couple 2nd chance events though. I also had a really rough week at PLO. The first couple days I ran really hot and was crushing, but the last 4 days or so I've been getting killed. I think I'll post some of the bigger hands in my DB and do a little strategy talk for the rest of this entry since I haven't done that in a while. Unfortunately the main site I've been playing on lately doesn't import into Poker Tracker so I don't have all those gems, so these hands will all be 5/10 and 10/20. First a few winners.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3192275 - iPoker has the worst hand history format ever sorry about the mess. Anyways I repot AKQQhhdd from out of position preflop and get called. Flop top pair, a gutter and the nut flush draw so I'm going to play the hand strong. He peels the flop and peels the turn so I figure he probably has a draw, or possibly a hand like a set of jacks or top two pair that doesn't believe I have AA. On the river I figure he either just made his hand or he really hates that card. When I check my hand looks like a scared top set so I figure he will value bet all his draws that got there and possibly turn hands like AJ into a bluff instead of checking it down. I'm not sure if this is better than just potting it myself and hoping he puts me on a naked ace bluff or something but it worked this time.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3192373 - I raise it preflop with a hand that plays well after the flop. Being out of position sucks but I feel like some people play such terrible hands that this hand has so much value in a 3-way pot that not raising would be a mistake. And again, it's a hand that shouldn't be too hard to play after the flop, not something like bad aces. The flop spot is actually pretty gross. Obviously I have a much bigger hand than he likely gives me credit for but with the flush draw out there it's hard for me to ever be in very good shape: If I run into a set I'm obviously in big trouble or if I run into a big combo straight + flush draw or something similar I'm also going to be an underdog, and these are obviously some of his mostly likely hands when he makes that raise. However, it's important to notice here that I don't have a dry top two pair. I also have a gutshot which is going to add a lot equity to my hand. Not only because I can make a straight but because if he has a straight draw himself (say a hand like QT98 with clubs) I have a lot of "blockers". That is, I have one of the nines and one of the tens that he would need, and an 8 would make me a straight too so he'd only chop. When I showed Tom (aka LearnedFromTV, one of my Vegas roommates) this hand we both ended up agreeing that if I didn't have those blockers I should probably fold to the raise against most players at these limits, but having them gives me enough value to get it in. As it turns out I was in really good shape and hit my freeroll to scoop the pot.

Now some losers. Set over set is not an automatic win in this game Again, you can see the value of having extra strengths in your hand to play defense against draws and give you an escape hatch when you run into a bigger hand.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3192462

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3192472

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3192569

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3192505 - This time I have the smaller set. We`re deep enough that I really wanted to fold to his shove but with 2 flush draws out there I don't think I can.

There also a bunch of standard hands where I get it in with huge draws against made hands or the opposite and I win some and lose some, and pots where I get a bunch of money in preflop with AAxx and pray I hold or against AAxx and try to suck out. Some I win, some I lose. So basically PLO is a swingy game and can be very frustrating when you`re on the wrong end of a bunch of these in a row. Hopefully this week goes better! I`m taking Monday off and then jumping back in full speed ahead.

Mike

WCOOP!

2008-09-08T03:25:00.003-02:30

Well WCOOP started this weekend. I'm off to a fairly decent start so far, cashing 3 of the first 4 events I played (I skipped Friday to go to a stag). No real big cashes though unfortunately. On Saturday I played the $215 limit holdem and $215 2-7 triple draw. I cashed the holdem event but unfortunately not the triple draw once my beginner's luck wore off. I did a lot of reading and practiced a little for that game and I think I at least have an ok understanding of the basics now. I actually like the game a lot there's a ton of action it just sucks when you keep bricking your draws. I can imagine the game would be incredibly frustrating at times and very high variance. Anyhow today was Sunday so I played a ton of tournaments. The WCOOP had the biggest buy-in online MTT ever. A $10K buy-in 2 Million guaranteed event. It ended up attracting a field of 321 players and first pays $617K. I won a really big pot in the early-middle stages when I got all-in 3 ways with KK vs AA and JJ and promptly flopped top set. I chipped up a bit from there and made the money but then was quickly eliminated in 2 consecutive hands where I shoved on the short stacked BB from the SB with A5o and lost to his KQ, and then shoved my now shortstack on the button the very next hand with AQ and ran into his AK in the SB. I got about 17.6K for 42nd though so still an ok little profit. I also went very deep in the $500 NLHE WCOOP event with over 7000 runners but busted ~270th when I made a maybe questionable squeeze play with the A8o. I think it was probably fine though since as I was quite sure the SB never had a big hand I was just unlucky to run into the button's JJ.

I've also been playing a little 25/50 and 50/100 PLO when I see my favourite fish sitting and I had a very profitable weekend at that. I was lucky enough to finally make some big hands against him and he paid me off nicely. One of my favourite parts of PLO is when the fish that play every hand complain about how I always seem to have a bigger flush than them and don't seem to have any idea why that might not just be random chance. Tomorrow there is a $200 6-max PLO and $320 8-game mixed event on the WCOOP schedule which both sound like lots of fun. I'm going to keep playing almost all the events and hopefully I'll make my first WCOOP final table this year.

Mike

A Little Update

2008-09-01T04:55:00.003-02:30

Well, it's been a while since my last entry mostly because nothing super exciting poker-wise has been going on. I helped my sister move to Montreal last weekend so I didn't play any tournaments, but I did have a good time during the few days I spent there. It was actually the first time I'd ever really been in Montreal other than the airport, and I have a few friends from home living there so it was cool to catch up with them and see the city a bit. I've gotten back into the online routine a bit more lately though. I haven't been playing many tournaments during the week as I've been focusing more on PLO instead, but this weekend I put in a really big tourney grinding session.

PLO has been going ok I guess. My results at 5/10 and 10/20 on non-Cake sites have not been very good lately, but I've had a couple more good sessions at 25/50 on Cake when certain players are in the game. I feel like it's mostly just that I haven't been running as hot at the smaller stakes games which is not surprising because the variance in PLO is pretty huge. The games may also have gotten slightly tougher on one of the non-US sites I play on a lot, but I still feel like I'm learning and playing well, I just need to be careful not to drift onto autopilot too much because that's when I get sloppy. Also I have some pretty terrible fancy play syndrome at times but I guess that's part of trying new things and seeing what works.

As for tournaments I had a very good weekend. On Saturday I finished 2nd in the $300 tournament on Party for $9K. Again I was kind of upset with myself for blowing a chip lead heads up but whatever. I had a very good Sunday though. First, I finished 6th in the $500 tournament on Party for $4K, and I also came close to winning a WPT Niagara seat on Party as well. No worries though because I won a $12K package to that event later in the evening on Cake! I was also deep in the $200 rebuy on Stars as I kept winning the important coinflips but finally ran out of luck finishing in 4th place for $21K. So overall it was a very profitable Sunday which always feels nice!

I'm pretty excited for WCOOP which is starting this Friday. I'm looking forward to having a good excuse to try to learn and play some of the weird games almost as much as the huge NL Holdem and PLO events. I play basically all the HORSE games with some basic level of competence but I've never really played any draw games sober before and they seem pretty interesting. I'm thinking I may try to fit in some kind of crash course in 2-7 triple draw in the next week so I can at least know enough of the basics in that game to feel reasonably comfortable. The great thing about WCOOP is there are tons of players in all the events that don't really know how to play the games either so a decent crash course would likely be enough to make me +EV since I tend to pick up the basics of games pretty quickly. If that doesn't work I have my usual strategy to fall back on: Play bad, run good!

Well I guess that's about all I've got for now. I hope people are enjoying their long weekend and best of luck to everyone heading back to school for the fall!

Mike

Sundays and.... Cats?

2008-08-18T04:51:00.009-02:30

I have finally started playing a bunch of poker again the last few days with FTOPS running. It hasn't gone especially well though, but at the same time I guess it hasn't gone that poorly either. The stakes I'm playing are sort of all over the place, from big FTOPS tournaments to high stakes PLO shots to midstakes PLO grinding and some mid-high NL Holdem cash. I just play whatever looks fun or whichever games look good and try to luckbox some buyins. I know I've lost each of the last 3 days but I couldn't really say how much, nor do I especially seem to care, other than to know that there were no really ugly numbers. I feel like my play has been a bit weak at times but overall pretty reasonable, however I think some of the high stakes shots have hurt my focus when I'm grinding smaller stakes. Right now I don't really feel like talking about anything too serious poker related though, and instead I'm going to tell you about kitties. Before reading on please refer to this xkcd comic as an explanation of the inane ramblings that will follow:

So a few weeks before I went to Vegas for 7 weeks or whatever it was this summer my roommates adopted two kittens. They were tiny and adorable and they quickly grew fond of their uncle Mike (who could blame them), as I did of them. I've never been a big pet person, but as I didn't have to do most of the work in taking care of them and they were unbearably cute it was actually pretty fun to have them around. There was a grey kitten who got named Clementine, and her brother was a black kitty named Clover, because they just weren't cute enough on their own so you must use alliteration in naming them I guess. I've always said that the main problem with kittens is they grow up and become cats, and unfortunately while I was in Vegas I missed out on much of the fun times while they were still kittens. So when I finally get back here after Vegas they are of course much bigger, and therefore much bigger trouble makers. Generally when I want to get something done on the computer I have to close my bedroom door to keep them out, or else they will try to type for me, or they will climb all over my room and kick stuff everywhere, or my personal favourite is when they climb my chair and I turn quickly or rock in it or whatever which knocks them off balance, and their first instinct is to dig their claws into whatever is closest to stop their fall. Unfortunately this is usually my back. Now that being said they are still super adorable when they get tired of running around like crazy breaking stuff. However, I no longer feel their cute little alliterative names are as appropriate, so I now prefer to call them by the simple descriptive "grey cat" and "black cat". Actually I have no idea why I do that I just get bored of real names like everyone.

So moving back towards the realm of poker somewhat, I was grinding Sunday tournaments as usual today and things were not going well. I was busting out of everything quickly and pretty short stacked in the few I had open. The kitties weren't too crazy today though so I left my door open so they could come hang and maybe pick up a few tips for their home game. I was relatively short stacked in the FTOPS main event when grey cat came in and cuddled up on my lap. I immediately got dealt KK and doubled up, and then on the very next hand I got dealt KK again and doubled once more, after which I exclaimed "Grey cat are lucky cat!". I continued to build my stack while grey cat rested, but eventually she ran off again and everything went to shit and all I could manage was a couple min cashes. I was also down a bunch from short stacking some big PLO and 50/100 NL cash games, but now that I had screen space open I noticed a rare 50/100 PLO game running on Cake. I had never seen such a thing but it quickly became apparent the game was very good so I decided to buy-in short and try to run it up. I quickly succeeded in running my 2K buy-in up to 11K under the watchful eye of grey cat, but when she left I donked it back down to 1K. However grey cat later returned and decided to nap on my desk:

At this point I went on a big heater and ran my stack all the way back up to $22.5K by the end of the session to save my day (unfortunately I kept playing some other tables after grey cat awoke and left and I lost a few grand back). So that is the story of my Sunday. I leave you with a picture of black cat.

Mike

Here, there, and everywhere

2008-08-11T02:20:00.005-02:30

I imagine that title will apply to the content of this blog entry as well as it does to what I've been doing the last week or so. I still haven't played a whole lot of poker since Bellagio, though I finally put in the typical huge Sunday session today. Before I get into that though I have to give a shoutout to Joe Atanas for winning the first annual Olympafalloza or some such spelling last weekend. Basically, a bunch of my university buddies got together in Brantford and played a series of sporting events to determine an overall champion. While it became clear that the poker:sports ratio in my life has gotten a bit high which was apparent in my performance, Joe was solid throughout. And of course there were celebrations afterwards, the whole thing was a great idea and lots of fun.

So then I took care of a few odd tasks this week, while also just being lazy and relaxing in general. Surprisingly there wasn't all that much playing poker involved though. I did my "well" on 2+2 which took a decent amount of time but I think turned out pretty well and hopefully some people learned a lot from it. It definitely seemed like a great way to give back to the forums where I learned so much. So while I wasn't playing much I was definitely back to reading and thinking and poker all the time, not that I ever really take much of a break from that. Then this weekend was Steve Paul-Ambrose's wedding in Picton, near Kingston. First however, another aside.

Meeting Steve and through him Aaron and Mike (PacMann and timex) was probably a key point in my development as a player. While posting on forums was great, I had never really had friends at/above my level to bounce ideas and hands off of all the time. It quickly became a routine for us to get together on Sundays and grind our tournaments in the same room, and that was so much more fun than grinding in my room by myself, and much more educational. I think we all learned so much from each other and were such talented people to begin with that the group having great success was inevitable, though I'm sure none of us could have imagined how quickly and to what extent it would come. Anyways, the point is that Steve luckboxing a donkament and being such a friendly guy to meet complete strangers like me and timex probably changed our lives as much as it changed his. In short, stevepa is the fucking man.

So back on topic, Steve and his wife Nathalie were high school sweethearts in Kingston and went to Waterloo together. Both are super nice, intelligent, talented and caring people who completely deserve each other. I couldn't be happier for them. The wedding was really nice and a lot of fun. The venue was perfect and thankfully the rain held off. Aaron delivered a hilarious speech after we had been needling him for about an hour straight about how he couldn't possibly compete with the previous speeches. He came through huge though and knocked it out of the park, and even the one mistake he made was accidental comedic gold and had us in tears. Steve had way more moves on the dance floor than anyone could have predicted :P. Aaron and Mike were both groomsmen and since I hadn't seen them much all summer I suggested we hang out Saturday night and watch the UFC card, and then grind Sundays together like the good ol days. So I drove back to Waterloo with them Saturday morning and I've been hanging at Aaron's place here since. The UFC card was very good and Sundays weren't bad either.

OK so on to some poker. I played the full noon to 9pm Sunday schedule today and had a pretty good day. I went deep in a bunch of tournaments as I was running exceptionally well all day in the early-mid stages, just winning every race whether I got it in ahead or behind. Unfortunately I lost a few key hands deep and missed out on the really big scores. I had a 21st place finish in the OnGame big deal and 22nd in the 2pm huge $100 rebuy on Stars. I won a WCOOP main event satellite which paid the $5200 seat for my biggest win of the day. I also cashed the $200 rebuy on Stars and I think I had one other small cash as well. All-in-all my cashes must have added up to around $10K, so I made a nice little profit on the day. I'm definitely planning to play a lot more FTOPS events this week, but I have softball games a few nights so I'll likely end up missing a few. I may end up playing a bunch of PLO cash instead to keep my hours more flexible. Speaking of PLO I took one brief shot at 200/400 this week when I was bored and felt like gambling. I ran my 8K buyin up to 30K pretty quickly winning a flip against Gus to double to around 15K and then getting him in drawing dead to double again. Still not planning to play that game much though at least until I get a bunch more hands in grinding midstakes.

My next live events will be WSOP Europe and EPT London, which both take place in London from late September to early October. I've got all my flights and hotel booked now and I'm looking forward to it. As much as I would love to do EPT Barcelona again, WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker on PokerStars) is so big this year that I think it makes more sense to relax at home and just concentrate on online during that period. London should be a lot of fun though as I'm playing the 10K PLO (5K pound), and 20K NLHE main event (10K pound) of WSOP Europe, and then the 10K EPT London main event, and possibly even the 40K buy-in high roller event after that. I may play a few more live events this fall than I did last year but I still don't feel like I want to be following the circuit and traveling all the time, especially during the summer when it's so nice here anyways. Shortly after that is WPT Niagara, my home event so to speak, and then I'll probably do Festa al Lago at Bellagio after that since they seem to like me there now :-).

Well I think that's about enough for now, I should get a little sleep. The only other thing I can say is I'm looking forward to some epic trip reports from the TwoRags guys that made it down to Fresno to visit Kyle at his casino this weekend.

Mike

Well..... I played some poker today

2008-08-04T04:57:00.002-02:30

I didn't get back home until around 2:30 so I missed most of the eurodonkaments, but I played most of the usual later Sunday tournaments on Stars and Full Tilt. It was my first real poker session since the WPT win but I feel like my play was still pretty solid. I only managed a couple min-cashes but that's hardly an atypical Sunday result. I did get a little bit bored at times today, but again I don't think that's really all that uncommon when I'm playing a long session and things aren't going great. Basically, I don't think the prospect of winning *only* 30K for first is boring to me now or anything like that. However, one of my goals post WSOP was always going to be to play a lot more cash games. In particular, I want to to play a lot of 5/10 and 10/20 PLO now that I can play on all the European sites again and get really good at that game, since I feel like there's a lot more money there right now and it's a new and exciting challenge. However, FTOPS is starting on Wednesday so that will undoubtedly sucker me back into the world of donkaments.

It seems like life is starting to move back towards normal now. Having seen timex win and talked to Steve about his win I had some idea what to expect, and it seems like the 2 weeks or so when things are pretty hectic before it dies back down a bit is fairly standard. It's been a great two weeks though, that's for sure. Doing interviews, signing autographs, and having 7-figures in my bank account before I turn 25.... 4 years ago I figured I'd probably be a moderately successful mathematician writing papers that half a dozen people in the world might ever read, and the only people asking for my signature would be students looking to drop my class. Being a poker player you quickly learn to just roll with whatever comes your way, and you become pretty desensitized to the value of money since you're constantly winning and losing so much of it. Even as I write this paragraph about how crazy this has been, it's clear to me that I still really lack the perspective to truly appreciate it. I can only imagine how I'll look back at this whole thing in 5 or 10 years when I probably won't be playing poker anymore and laugh.

In other news I am doing a "The Well" thread on the 2+2 MTT Community Forum this week. It's basically just a thread where people can ask me whatever the hell they want and hopefully I will respond with something that is fairly intelligent and everyone will learn something. Bed time,

Mike

What I Did Today

2008-07-29T17:57:00.001-02:30

The Aftermath

2008-07-21T01:49:00.003-02:30

The last few days have been really hectic. I got maybe 2 hours sleep before my flight and felt pretty terrible until I finally got a little extra sleep on the plane. When I got home I tried to quickly catch up a bit on reading all the congratulations from friends, family, and well, basically everyone. My phone was constantly vibrating alerting me of another text message or phone call I had missed, there were threads hundreds of posts long on all the poker forums I read, and countless e-mails and Facebook wall posts. It was really kind of overwhelming to hear from so many friends and family in such a short period all saying how happy they were for me. After that I went to a little party with my sister and some friends which was a lot of fun. As exhausted as I was I'm glad it wasn't anything too crazy. Still, I didn't get home until 4am and between talking to people online and reading some more of the threads i didn't get to sleep until 6.

At 1pm on Saturday I was awoken by my friend Cam informing me he was on his way to kidnap me. Before I was abducted I decided to check my account balance and see if the wire transfer had arrived yet. Sure enough, even with the 30% withholding because I`m Canadian that I can`t file to get back until next year, as well as a few other deductions like Bond`s 5%, I still had a 7-figure balance. I just felt like including that because I've got to get a solid brag in here somewhere. Anyways, again my phone was buzzing all day, and I did a few more phone interviews and talked to even more friends and family. Otherwise we had a fun relaxing day and then we partied pretty hard all night. Again I woke up still tired and got some brunch before making my way home. Today I`ve been making my best effort to send thank you`s to everyone who has sent me congratulations. I haven`t quite gotten through all of them but I`m getting there. If for whatever reason I haven`t gotten to you yet or somehow I missed you, just know that I really appreciate it. I also booked a flight back to St. John`s for Wednesday because I've got to go see my parents and all my friends there. I'm really looking forward to it because Newfoundlanders are always especially proud when one of our own accomplishes something big like this, apparently it's been huge news there and it's going to be great to get back and see everyone. Also we do kind of know how to party a little bit.

At the risk of making this an exceptionally long post I do want to finish my write-up of the key hands of the tournament just for the sake of completeness and in case some of you just can't "wait to see it on TV". I'll start with day 4:

Hand 1: 12k/24k a3k Benyamine limps the SB and I raise 50K more in the BB with AJo. He calls and the flop comes JT3 all spades. He checks and I decide to check behind (I don't have a spade). Certainly betting here is the more standard and probably slightly better play but there's plenty of merit in playing it this way too. The turn pairs the 3, and he leads huge for 180K. This bet seems really strong to me but I have a huge hand considering the action so far so I'm obviously not folding. I call and the river is the 9c. He checks and I decide to go for a huge value bet that I`m hoping he will perceive as a bluff. I bet 450K and he quickly calls with JTo. Oops. I don`t think I like my big bet considering his bet size on the turn but I also can`t really imagine checking this hand behind.

Hand 2: Glen Chorny has the button in Seat 7 and Mike Watson raises to 66,000 from the cut off. Chorny reraises 180,000 total and Per Ummer asks how much he has left. Chorny informs him he has around 490,000 and Ummer folds. Watson thinks for a minute or two before moving all-in and Chorny quickly calls.

Chorny has AA and Watson is behind with 1010. The flop comes K53 and the aces are still ahead, but a 10 on the turn gives Watson his set and leaves Chorny drawing to two outs. The river is the 5 and Chorny is eliminated in 14th place. Watson is up to 2,350,000.

He had shoved on my button raise the hand before and I muttered something about how I should have known that was coming eventually as I folded. Most players are not reraising you light the 2nd time in a row because they don`t expect you to believe them as much when they`ve done it twice in a row and his bet-sizing also looks really strong. On the other hand I have TT in steal position against a 28xBB stack. Gross spot I think I probably should have folded but I executed the play bad run good system instead.

Hand 3: Mike Watson has the button in seat 6, Gabe Thaler raises to 70,000 from under the gun, Mike Watson reraises to 220,000, and Adam Geyer moves all in for 860,000. Thaler folds, and Watson calls. Watson shows AK and Geyer shows AQ. The board comes KJ254 and Geyer is eliminated in 13th place earning $64,640. Mike Watson runs his stack up to 3,500,000.

I`m not really sure why he moved in here. Gabe was playing very solid and it`s really unlikely I would reraise light here. I think he actually moved in for 860K more not total but anyways I just can`t fold because I know for sure he would never fold AK or QQ there and I`m getting the right price against that range, and while I didn`t know enough about him to really think he was shoving light I was at least aware that it was a possibility.

Hand 4: Hand #104 - David Benyamine has the button in seat 5, John Phan raises from the cutoff to 240,000, Mike Watson reraises from the big blind to 700,000, and Phan calls. The flop comes K42, Watson bets 1 million, and Phan tanks for nearly 10 minutes before Gabe Thaler calls the clock on him.

With about 10 seconds left, Phan reveals his cards and indicates a fold. Phan folded QQ face up. Mike Watson doesn't show his cards as he collects the pot.

I had Q3o. There was a hand shortly before this where Phan made a huge open raise to 400K (5xbb) in the SB and showed Benyamine QQ after David folded. I knew that meant for whatever reason he did not want to play a big pot before we got to the final TV table so I decided I was going to make a play on him preflop if I got the chance. He thought forever and then called which really surprised me. I thought he was just doing his usual routine and never really thought he`d actually call. I felt like he had a hand like JJ or TT a lot so when the king flops I think it`s pretty automatic to fire again and the longer he took the better I began to feel that he was going to fold.

At the final table I mostly just coolered the hell out of everyone. The only big pot I can remember where I didn`t show my hand was this one:

Hand 5: Mike Watson has the button, he raises to 400,000, and Benyamine calls. The flop comes 7d 4c 2c, and both players check. The turn card is the 10h, Benyamine bets 700,000, and Watson calls. The river card is the Jc, Benyamine bets 1.4 million, Watson thinks for a bit before he moves all in for a total of roughly 5.3 million, and Benyamine goes into the tank for more than a minute before he folds. Mike Watson takes the pot.

I had 98o here.

OK this has gotten pretty long and I should get a good sleep. I really have no idea what`s next for me. For the time being I`m just going to keep taking things as they come and enjoy the moment.

Mike

Holy crap I won

2008-07-18T10:45:00.002-02:30

Wow I run good. Wow. Wow. Wow. I'll write more about the final table later after I've slept or something. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all the kind wishes and support. I'll try to thank everyone personally later but I have flight back to Toronto in 5 hours and I haven't slept yet. Just so sick it played out like it was scripted or something. It's like how you dream it would play out but that's never supposed to be how it actually happens. So crazy.

Bellagio Cup Day 4

2008-07-17T07:59:00.002-02:30

Hey, it was another long day and I'm pretty tired so I'm just going to write something here quickly. I'm the chip leader heading into the final table of 6 tomorrow with 5.06 million. It was a pretty sick day, I tried to monkey off my stack at one point but I failed by sucking out on Choron pretty bad with TT vs AA preflop. Right after that csimmsux monkeyed off a million to me with AQ vs my AK preflop and I was chip leader again. With 9 left everything slowed to a crawl and I went up and down a little playing pretty much only small pots. I started to pick up some hands as the night wore on though and built my stack up over 4 million. Then I won a fairly big pot against John Phan where I reraised him preflop and he called, the flop came K-hi and after 10+ minutes of thinking he folded QQ face up to my 1 million chip bet. The day ended shortly after that. The final table is fairly tough, with myself, my friend Luke "IWEARGOGGLES", John Phan, Ralph Perry, David Benyamine, and Gabe Thaler. All the hands from the final table today appear to be posted on worldpokertour.com.

Tomorrow is the "televised" final table (in quotations because sadly WPT does not have a TV deal yet for this season :-(). I have to do the whole deal with makeup, interviews, etc etc.... The final table starts at 5PM PST, but I have to be at Bellagio around 1 for all that stuff beforehand. There should be more interviews of me up on worldpokertour.com and cardplayer.com if you want to see me look goofy in front of a camera some more. I need to get some sleep, one more day of run good please for 1.67 million!

Mike

Bellagio Cup Day 3

2008-07-16T07:34:00.003-02:30

Well, I had another super sick day at the Bellagio Cup. I was chip leader for most of the day and finished with 2.272 million chips to take a solid chip lead into Day 4 tomorrow. There are 32 players left and we'll play down to the final TV table of 6 players. We played 7 levels today so play went pretty late, so this is going to have to be a quick blog so I can get some sleep. I ran my stack up early in the day by making the toppest pair against Thayer a few times in some medium sized pots and abusing the bubble a little bit to get to 625K after the first 2 levels. After that I basically just played very solid for the rest of the day and was lucky to make a lot of hands. Here are the 2 key pots I played where I got most of my chips:

Hand 1: 4k/8k a1k I have around 700K and open 99 to 22k in EP. A player who seems kind of weak flat calls on the button with around 600-700K and a french player Philippe calls in the BB with around 500K as best I can recall. Flop A93 with two hearts. Philippe leads for 40K and I decide my best way to get action is to call and slowplay here a bit as he's the type to just lead out with an ace here and I don't want to scare him out. Also, this gives the button the chance to make a mistake (such foreshadowing). The button calls. Turn is another 3. Philippe checks and I bet 100K. The button raises to 350K, Philippe thinks for a long time before folding an ace, and I move in. Button calls and shows 34ss. Lucky for me as an ace hits on the river. I had around 1.4M after this hand.

Hand 2: 5k/10k a 1k Peter Costa had raised the previous hand and shown kings or some such monster when everyone folds, and in this hand it folds around to him in the CO and he quickly raises to 30K again. I have A9hh on the button and am considering reraising, but something about the way he raised seems very strong to me. I decide not to reraise but then instead of just folding I ended up calling, which is probably a mistake considering my read. Both blinds call and the flop comes K87 with two hearts. Peter bets 80K, I call, and both blinds fold. The turn is the 6h. Peter checks and I bet 160K which he calls. The river is a blank, he checks and I bet 400K which he eventually calls. Someone told me he apparently had KK here which I'm inclined to believe. After this hand I was up to around 2.2M.

After the day was over I did a couple quick interviews with WPT and CardPlayer which you can find on the respective websites. I was named the "Blue Diamond Almonds bold player of the day", which earns me free almonds for the year, one package per week. I am uncertain what is particularly bold about making the nuts a bunch of times and getting paid off, but I do like my almonds so I kept my mouth shut about that. Ahaha I just realized I "made the nuts" one more time even after the day was over! ahahaha. I just found that way too funny I clearly need to get some sleep. Night y'all,

Mike

Oh yeah updates over on worldpokertour.com, I guess CardPlayer.com now too, and I'll be phoning them in to TwoRags.com as well on breaks.

Bellagio Cup Day 2

2008-07-15T05:13:00.002-02:30

Out of nowhere I ended up having a sick day 2. I won two key huge pots in the last level to vault my stack over 400K. I finished with 427K which must be top 5 in chips with 125 left. The payout structure for this tournament is weird, as it pays 100 spots but there were only 445 runners, so over 22% of the field makes the money which seems really excessive. I have no problem with paying more spots in such a big buy-in tournament but wow. Anyways, here's a rundown of how I got my chips. My table draw was excellent as I recognized almost no one at my table. In level 1 I didn't do too much though and lost a few chips from my 36K starting count. In level 2 I was able to double up without showdown when I kept picking up hands like TT or JJ after a whole bunch of people limped and throwing in a big raise. People either folded preflop or called then folded to my flop bet every time. Level 3 I chipped down slightly again without too much happening.

Hand 3: I'm down to about 55K at 800/1600 a200. I open black AA to 4800, a shortstack calls all-in for 4500 and then the BB makes it 17K. I shove and he calls. The BB shows red QQ and shortstack has KdQ. Can't ask for much better than that. Flop: Jd9d8d. GG Vegas it's been another fun summer. Turn small black card. River small black card. Holy crap.

Hand 4: There is a Russian guy on my right who has been playing very sporadically all day. He's limped or raised and called huge reraises several times with weak hands like suited connectors and then just got it in when he flopped draws. More often than not he hit and he has a lot of chips. He's played extremely passively when he has big hands though and failed to get value with them whenever he's leading the betting.

1k/2k a300. Russian limps in the HJ and I make it 7K with A9o next to act. The SB calls and the Russian calls. Flop A84 rainbow. Both check and I decide to check behind. The turn is the 2d, putting two diamonds on board. SB checks and the Russian bombs out 30K into the 25K pot, and immediately I just thought this doesn't make any sense. He's never bet this hard with a big hand, and all of the big hands that are possible on this board there's a good chance he would have raised with preflop in late position. It seems overwhlemingly likely that he's limped in with another suited connector that he loves to play so much and is now just semi-bluffing with a big drawing hand when he picked up a flush draw on the turn. I count down my stack as I think and realize I only have 53K more after his 30K bet so if I go with my read I'm going to have to commit my stack and move in to get maximum value from his draw. That's what I finally decide to do and he calls quickly and shows 8d7d. OK now I just need to fade a third of the deck again, and when the 2 pairs on the river I do just that and have a 200K stack.

Hand 4: After that the Russian seems to just be on massive tilt for whatever reason and is moving all-in preflop around 2/3 of the hands even though he still has plenty of chips. He loses another race to drop to 50K but people keep folding to him for some reason when he shoves on their raises so he builds that back up a bit. It folds to him on the button and he open shoves probably somewhere in the 80-100K range. It would be a good time to find a hand I'm thinking as I look down at QQ and shove in. The BB, with a bit over 100K or so I guess, thinks for a bit and then makes the overcall with JJ. Wow. Yet again I fade all the bad cards and bust two players to increase my stack to around 400K.

Hand 5: The very next hand a shortstack moves all-in UTG for 25K. I find AJo on the button and make the call. I flop a jack and hold against his KTs to bust my third player in two hands. I end the day with 427K.

Hopefully my table draw for tomorrow will be as good as it was today, but the field in this tournament is fairly tough so I doubt I will be so lucky. I'll start calling in some updates to TwoRags tomorrow during the breaks to keep you all up to date. The only place doing live reporting for this event seems to be www.worldpokertour.com so you can also check in there to see how I'm doing.

Mike

Bellagio Cup Day 1

2008-07-13T04:48:00.002-02:30

Today was a really fun day at Bellagio Cup, but I finished with a sour taste in my mouth when I lost a bunch of chips in the last orbit, which is really unfortunate because it was probably the most fun I've had at a poker table in a long time before that. Devo was on my right (MaverickUSC), shaniac on my left and Raymond Davis 2 to my right and we cracking jokes the entire day, I've never laughed so hard at a poker table. We started with 45K in chips and the structure is obviously very good. I didn't do much in level 1 before I played a couple really weird hands in level 2.

Hand 1: 100/200 John Pham raises to 625 UTG, one call, and I make it 2625 in the SB with AA. Shaniac cold calls in the BB and both others call. Flop JT5 two diamonds and I decide to check because betting out and getting raised would make me cry a lot, though I'm not sure this is any better. It's definitely the type of board I have to be a bit worried about a set on though. Shaniac bets 5500 and Phan calls. I also call because I still don't really know wtf is going on. Turn Ad. I decide I probably just have to bet and protect my hand even if it might cost me action so I fire 20K and both fold.

Hand 2: I open 97hh to 700 on the button. Ray Davis defends his BB. Flop T52 two hearts. I bet 1150 and he checkraises to 2500. I call. Turn Jc, he bets 2500 and I pussy out and just call. River As, he checks and i don't think I can really represent anything credibly and he's kind of a station so I check behind and give up. He table Q8o and wins and I want to kill myself.

Hand 3: I busted a guy with AQs vs A7 who clearly was a weak player looking to get out of there and then I won a bunch of small pots to get as high as 70K. I'm down to about 62K before the last level of the day when these 2 hands happen:

Hand 3: 300/600 a75 Richard Lee opens to 2000 in MP, I make it 6K with AKs and he instaships all-in. WTF. I just muck my hand since as suspicious as this looks I can't imagine I'm ever in good shape against his range here.

Hand 4: I open AJo to 1800 in EP and Lee defends his BB. Flop AT9 I decide to check behind. Turn T, he checks I bet 2500 and he makes it 7500. Siiiiiiiiigh. i've seen him so some spazzy stuff today so I call. River K he bets 11K and I pay it off, QTs is good. So I finish the the day with 36K and I am just enraged.

After that we go to Fix where we wait for 15 minutes to get a table we had reserved. I am already on megatilt from donking up the last hand before the end of the day and that just makes it worse. The service is really bad but at least the food is pretty good. Throughout the entire meal I am just furious though. As much as I know I have to be realistic about my skills in poker, to not have an ego, and to not get upset with myself when I make a bad play, there is still some part of me deep down that holds myself to impossibly high standards. I always expect the best of myself and anything less is unacceptable. That and being up chips all day until the final hand just really really pissed me off. I'm still kind of livid. I guess those high standards/expectations are a big part of what has made me successful at a lot of things, but at the same time as mellow and relaxed as I typically try to be there is a huge part of me that can not accept making mistakes and failing when it's my own fault and I should know better. Bad beats roll off me like nothing, but fucking up a hand the same way I've fucked it up 5 times before and still never learned drives me crazy. Oh yeah then I lost credit card roulette but it was only a $400 meal so whatever.

In other credit card roulette related news a bunch of us went to Prime Friday night, the steakhouse in Bellagio, to celebrate gobbo's big win and our general awesomeness or whatever. I had some ballin Kobe beef sampler of 3 different cuts of steak and it was exceptionally delicious. The servers were extremely professional and knowledgeable, and everything about the meal was just top notch, easily one of the best overall dining experiences I've ever had. This time I managed to not lose CCR for the $3K bill, so no complaints there. Anyways tomorrow/today I'm doing the usual Sunday online tournament thing. The guarantees are all doubled on Stars so it should be a fun day. Then Day 2 of Bellagio on Monday where my 36K is still plenty of chips.

Mike

Sigh Day 3

2008-07-11T18:04:00.003-02:30

Well as I'm sure most of y'all know by now I busted early in Day 3 well short of the monies. Here's how that went down.

Level 1: Noting happened and I chipped down to 100K. No one calls my raises and the few times I called raises I missed the flop and gave up.

Level 2: I've been pretty tight so far so I decide to pick it up a notch. I open several pots with marginal holdings winning the blinds and even mix in a resteal against a semi-active asian player who opened in MP. I've already chipped back up to 115K when this hand happens.

Hand 1: 1k/2k a300 I open KQo in MP to 6k. Old guy who seemed kind of tight but I've seen do some weird stuff as well calls in the CO. Flop KT9 two hearts. I check and he bets 10K, which I call. Turn 2c, I check and he bets 20K. I kind of think he has AK or a set or something here a lot but I've seen him do some weird stuff like I said so I decide I should call one more time, especially as I have some outs when I'm beat. River 5s, I check and he thinks a bit then checks behind and tables AA. Damn.

Hand 2: Asian guy who I restole already opens to 5800 in MP again. I find AKs in the SB and make it 18,500 again. He thinks a bit and calls. Gah. Flop Q87r, there's about 40K in the pot and 53K in my stack so I decide to just check and fold when he quickly bets 60K. I think stack sizes are too awkward to bet the flop, I don't want to commit 51K here but bet/folding is pretty gross too so I don't really like betting. I could have reraised bigger preflop so I can just shove any flop but I wanted to make the same bet as when I was stealing to maximize the chances of him doing something stupid preflop.

Hand 3: 1200/2400 a300 I've since lost a couple other small pots and am down to ~40K. French guy opens in EMP to 7K, asian guy calls in MP, his range here is really wide, and I find TT in the BB and shove. French guy calls a bit too quickly for me to like my chances at all and his JJ is good.

I'm taking today off and Bond and I are playing Day 1b of the $15K WPT event at Bellagio tomorrow. Unless I bust out tomorrow this will be my last live event of the summer (there's a $5k at the Venetian starting Sunday if I'm busto). The Bellagio events have been going really well for my friends thus far though. Bond won a $3K event for $193K and gobbo won a $5K event last night for $443K, so big congrats to him! Hopefully I can be next on that list of winners at Bellagio. I have had a moderate amount of success there in the past, and now that the tournaments are moved back to the Fontana Bar it's a great venue to play at again.

Mike

A Rocky Day 2

2008-07-09T17:12:00.002-02:30

My basic game plan on Day 1 of "Flop set, bust donk" turns out to not work as well when you don't flop 6 sets in one day. I basically was miserably card dead almost the entire day and watching my chip stack slowly but consistently decrease. Fortunately, Brandon Adams doubled me up in the last level of the night and I finished with 112,900 which leaves me in fine shape for Thursday. Here are the few interesting hands I can recall:

Hand 1: 250/500 a50. Folds to me on the button and I make it 1500 with K7o. Both blinds defend. Flop K62r I check behind. Turn Q they check and I bet 3000. SB calls, BB folds. Turn K, check I bet 6500 he calls and mucks.

300/600 a75: I'm fairly certain nothing actually happened.

Hand 2: 400/800 a100 I open to 2400 in MP with 99. Young Scandi on my left who likes to call and then fold when I bet the flop calls and mman_status makes it 9200 on the button with only ~15K more behind. I eventually decide to fold as much as I hate it since Mike is usually very solid, but I can't help but feel like a pussy. Mike told me had AA at the end of the day though, whew.

Hand 3: 500/1000 a10. OK so I'm down to 95K here coming back after dinner break and in this level I really start to bleed them off faster. I open J9s in the HJ, scandi calls again and mman_status calls in the SB. Flop K65r, well I think this is way too good a flop not to bet so I fire 6500, scandi folds and mman shoves so I lose 10K this hand. The rest of this level not much happens. I see a few flops here and there and miss and check/fold. One of my raises gets repopped and I'm down to 60K by the end of the level.

Hand 4: 600/1200 a200 I open 55 on the button and scandi on my left repops me. This is the first time he has reraised preflop the whole day but I still feel like he is fos. I eventually decide not to tilt shove. Then I open KJhh in EP a few hands later, the SB flat calls and JasonGray in the BB reopops. I know he has a monster so I obviously fold, but I'm visibly getting upset with how my day is going as I mucked pretty angrily. The thing about me is though that I don't really tilt like other people. I'm aware that my image is now terrible and no one is going to give me much credit. When I tilt I actually end up playing nittier since everyone seems to expect you to start overplaying your hands and spaz off your chips to them. I'm not sure how much my "tilting" has to do with what happened in this next hand since Brandon Adams is pretty insane to begin with but it's possible it has something to do with it.

Hand 5: I open AJs in MP to 3600 with around 50K more behind. Brandon Adams calls in the SB. Flop AJ9 two diamonds, he checks and I bet 6600 which he calls. Turn Td, not exactly my favourite card. He checks and I have a decision to make. The T shouldn't really have made his hand. He's certainly capable of floating the flop with KQ but it's not a likely holding. It could, however, have easily made him a worse 2 pair. It seems very unlikely that he has a flush. Most flush draw hands would also have a pair or straight draw of some sort on the flop and he would have played those more aggressively on the flop almost always. So unless he has something like 86dd, 56dd, or 57dd he shouldn't have a flush. With that decided it's now obviously extremely likely that I still have the best hand so I need to bet for value and to protect my hand. Of course with so few chips I can't fold to a checkraise so I have to be willing to commit my stack vs a raise since he could checkraise me with a lot of worse 2 pair, semi-bluffs, and possibly other stuff. So I make what I guess is actually a really easy bet of 15,600 (I should probably actually bet a lot bigger), he moves me in relatively quickly and I shrug and call. He says "I don't have much" and I table my hand. "Ya, I'm dead". He doesn't want to show his hand but he's required to in a tournament all-in situation so he's turns over his A6hh. Lucky for me since the river is the 8d.

I won and lost a couple small pots after that and finished the day with 112,900. Hoping for the super soft Day 3 table draw as I'm pretty sure my table today was likely the toughest in the entire tournament throughout the last half of the day. I recognized 3-4 people as very solid players and the other guys were not playing poorly at all either. In the World Series of Poker main event on Day 2 that's just extremely unlucky.

Mike

Day 2 tomorrow, finally

2008-07-08T04:15:00.002-02:30

Alright, I finally get to play Day 2a tomorrow. The UFC was awesome to go to live. We saw 2 really just sick fights. We arrived a little late and the first fight we saw was the war between Cole Miller and Jorge Gurgel which ended by submission with only 18 seconds left. Just crazy. And of course the main event was insane. The atmosphere during that fight was just electric from start to finish, it was awesome. I really didn't have huge expectations for the card coming in, and while the fights in the middle were pretty boring overall it was a great night. On Sunday I decided to stay home and grind online tournaments. The day was going catastrophically as I had not managed a single cash and I was down to only the last tournament of the night, the always tough Stars $200 rebuy. Things started going right in that tournament though and I kept picking up hands when short stacks pushed and holding against them. Before I knew it I had a lot of chips at the final table. At the final table I again got lucky in a few key pots and got heads up with a 2:1 chip lead. As always though everything just went wrong heads up. I got behind in chips but clawed back to even when the big pot happened.

10/20K he lmped the button and I raised to 60K with KK. He called and the flop came J65. I bet 80K and he called. The turn was an 8, I checked and he bet 160K. I shoved for 400K more and he thought a while before calling with QJ. River Q, sigh. 2nd again, but 31K is obviously still a good score.

Today I stayed home and relaxed. Went for a swim and played online a bit more. I luckboxed a big stack in the 100r on Stars but in consecutive hands I lost KK vs JTo aipf and then KQ vs AQ on a Q-hi flop against the same guy to bust 12th. So tomorrow is Day 2. My table draw seems relatively mediocre. The only player with a lot of chips is on my direct left, a Scandanavian sounding name with 83K. Solid online players mikeymer and SBRounder are also at my table but with only a little over 20K in chips each. Recognizing 2 players at your table as solid players this early in the tournament seems rather unlucky, but if the other guys are bad the table draw should be alright. None of the others seem to have any live results so that's probably a good sign. You should be able to follow my progress all day at PocketFivesLive, PokerNews, and of course my voice blog updates over at TwoRags. Hopefully I can pick up right where I left off on Friday!

Mike