Saturday, February 28, 2009

Another Week in LA

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

Friday, February 20, 2009

LA and PS+

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

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Adelaide

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

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Heat

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