Sundays and.... Cats?

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

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

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

The Aftermath

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 1 in the books, 104K

Day 1 went really well for me in the main event. I won several big pots mostly by flopping sets and finished the day with 104,425 chips. Early on I was trying to get involved a lot and I was fooling around with limping in a lot of pots. It's not something I've ever really done before but I knew my table was never going to break and because of the structure I'd probably be playing a lot of the same people all day. I wanted to establish a bit more of a passive image so that my raises would get more respect in the later ante levels as well as encouraging the rest of the table to limp a lot as well. I guess the idea is to just outplay people postflop since most players in the main event obviously play pretty bad, especially with deep stacks. I also ended up picking up a lot of smal-mid pairs which I will just limp with as a standard play a lot of the time anyways to make sure I get to see the flop and try to hit a set (when I'm not in late position). So somehow I had established some goofy limpy image and people were rarely raising my limps, except one fish who liked to raise 7xBB. After having just limped/called a 7xBB raise with 77 and check/folding when I missed this hand happened:

Hand 1: 50/100 I find KK in EP and limp. Robert Varkonyi on my left limps and fish raises to 700 again. I make it 2200 and fish calls. Flop Ks 5s 4s. I bet 3200 fish calls. Turn 6c. I bet 10K fish calls. River Tc. I go all-in for my last 2000 into the 30K pot. Fish folds. lol. 32K after this hand.

Hand 2: 100/200 I limp 88 UTG. Folds to a tight player in the CO who raises to 1200. I call. Flop J87 two hearts. I lead 2K, he raises 5K, I make it 12K, he calls. Turn J. Damn, that might kill my action. I move all-in for his last 8500 or so. He thinks it over and calls with QQ and I hold. I have around 53K here or something.

Hand 3: I open limp KTo in MP. I don't really know what to say about this play, I just kinda decided to stick with the limping thing but it seems pretty ridiculous. Button makes it 800 and he's tight so I definitely have to fold, but the BB who is big fish calls so I decide I'm getting a good price to call, especially since the button has over 40K in front of him and the fish is a fish. Flop QJ9 (obv). Checks to button who bets 1600. Fish folds and I make it 6100, he calls. Wow, he really might have a set here which would be a huge pot. Turn 8 killing my action since I'm pretty sure he basically never has a T himself. I bet 10500 because I can't let a set peel a free card and he folds.

Hand 4: 150/300 Same tight guy from hand 3 opens UTG to 1200 and I call with 22 in the SB. Flop 632 (you might be noticing a trend). Check, he bets 1600 I make it 5100 but he folds. 71.5K at dinner break.

Hand 5: 150/300 a25 Folds to a seemingly decent player in MP who opens to 1K. I make it 3K in the CO with KK and he calls. Flop KTx two spades. He checks and I bet 4K. He shoves ~12K more and I call about as fast as anyone has ever called. He has JJ for some reason and I'm over 90K.

Hand 6: I guess I should include one hand where I don't have the nuts. Really bad player from Paraguay limps in EP as he often does. He is basically a huge call station and has never folded A-hi to a flop bet ever. He has limped AK/AQ and peeled a 743 2-suit flop several times. it's hilarious. I raise to 1200 in MP with 99 and he calls. Flop K52 with 2 hearts. He checks and
I bet 1800. He calls. Turn Q chk/chk. River 4 he bets 2500 I call and A6 is no good.

Hand 7: 200/400 a50 A young guy who is playing pretty tight except he's constantly opening UTG, but he's opening to 1400 so I kind of think he's not just stealing he just happens to only get hands UTG raises to 1400. He has 12K or so I think. I find JJ on the button and flat call. Flop J22. lol. He bets 2800 I call. Turn J (lol) he checks I bet 4200 and he folds. I found out later the player in this hand was MSNL poster ParlaySlow.

Not much else of interest happened and I finished the day with 104,425. I play Day 2a on Tuesday. In other news, huge congrats to Tony "Bond18" Dunst my housemate for finally winning a live tournament and getting out of hole. He won the $3K Bellagio Cup event for $193K, and timex doesn't even get all of that! It's unfortunate that we lose all the jokes about how he's lost $100,000 of some 18 year old kid's money, but really it was about time he broke through considering the amount of live tournaments he's played. Today I'm going to UFC 86. I will probably play the $3K at Bellagio tomorrow, though I might just stay home and grind online or do nothing and complain about how hungover I am all day depending happens after the fights. Oh yeah, because I was one of the chip leaders thoughout much of the day I got a decent amount of media coverage. Pockefiveslive were following me as always, but also PokerNews and PokerStarsBlog were following me a bit. In particular here's a nice little update they wrote about me on the latter.

http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/2008/07/2008-world-series-sirwatts-is-lord-of.html

Mike

Main Event Time!

So I busted in the 2nd round of the limit shootout. The key hand was when I lost a big pot to mattg1983 with AJ vs QT on a QJ9JQ board after I 3-bet him preflop. I probably should have lost one less bet on the river but my play wasn't that bad in retrospect. Matt went on to win the event and his first bracelet though! I was lucky enough to have made a swap with him before round 2 so I got a little % of the win. Today I am playing the main event at Blue 11, seat 9. Excited as always! I'll be phoning or texting in updates to TwoRags so check in over there to see how I'm doing.

Mike

lol min-bet

Today was the final preliminary event of the 2008 WSOP, the $1500 limit shootout. It got 823 runners. I was actually pretty excited for this event because while limit holdem is certainly not my best game I do play it pretty competently, and most people in these limit tournaments tend to be really awful. I also have a history of running pretty good in limit tournaments and that always makes you feel more optimistic. My first table was pretty much what I expected. 3 guys were just terribad. 4 people were just super ABC tight passive, if they ever raise you you are probably screwed. That left me and one other guy who seemed to play really solid with some aggression and little moves mixed in. I ran really good throughout the first 2 levels of my first heat and had already worked my stack up to 8K from the 3K start bank by the first break. I cooled off for the next 2 levels but I think I played well and lost the minimum, and I still had 5400 at the 2nd break. After that I started to cardrack pretty hard. I was making hands left and right and value betting aggressively to get maximum value. Finally, I ended up heads up against the only player who seemed tough. I ran insanely hot from the start and took a 21K-6K chip lead, but then I stopped making hands and dropped down to under 10K. Just as it felt like it might be slipping away I caught another rush of cards even more absurd than the last and made some solid value bets on the end to close out the match.

My 2nd table seems considerably tougher than my first. While my first table was very passive and predictable, this table is extremely aggressive. A few of the guys seem kind of spewy, but they are certainly not easy to play against. We played 4 levels at the 2nd table before calling it a night. I managed to chip all the way up from 30K to 30.5K in that time. We restart today at 2pm PST. If I win this table then next stop is the final table. Hopefully I can keep running good and min-bet my way to glory.

Mike

Sunday: Different game, same result

Instead of playing the usual online tournaments yesterday I was playing the $10K PLO tournament at the WSOP. I was pretty excited for this one being a big buy-in in a game I feel confident I am picking up very quickly. There's an awful lot of gamble in PLO though and I ended up on the wrong side of one I probably would have done better to avoid. I had built my stack up to around 29K mostly by winning a big pot with double suited aces against a wrap hand when this hand came up:

A weak player opened to 1500 UTG at 250/500. He had just won a huge pot off of Toto Leonidas when he made a really terrible flop call, and Toto was now pretty short. Next to act, Toto re-potted to 5250 with very little behind, maybe somewhere in the 4-7K range I'm not really sure. The way he/everyone was playing this is almost certainly AAxx, though having just lost a big pot he could be steaming a little and possibly doing this with worse, though I certinaly feel it's some kind of big hand. A T6 Poker pro who seemed good cold called quickly in the cutoff with a big stack and I found 8765ddss in the SB. Generally when a pot is going to be multiway like this one will be if I call this is exactly the type of hand you want. However, in this case there are two important factors which I think lean the hand towards a fold:

1. This is a tournament not a cash game. I'm getting into an extremely high variance situation where my edge isn't that big and I'm going to have to commit my entire stack on a lot of flops not knowing how much equity I really have. There are lots of weak players and I can surely wait and find better spots to get my money in. Usually this is the excuse of the weak-tight player as he makes a bad fold, but I feel like this is exactly the type of situation where it applies.

2. The CO, being a competent player, will often also have a hand similar to mine, and if his wrap is slightly higher than mine he will have me in really bad shape. Flops that it looks like I hit really hard he will have hit even harder. I think this is the more important reason. Without this consideration folding preflop would be passing up way too much EV, but when you factor this in you realize I'm not in nearly as profitable a situation as it may appear at first glance.

Still, calling is hardly ever going to be much of a mistake with such a strong hand, and that's what I did without much thought. The raiser decided to come along for the flop as well of course. The flop came As8s7c. Seemingly a monster flop for my hand, but there are lots of obvious possible problems:

1. My spades may no be live.
2. Toto probably has top set so my two pair doesn't do me much good.
3. I could be up against a better straight draw. Only a 4 gives me the nuts.

However, with so much money in the pot my hand clearly has way too much going for it to fold. Toto doesn't have too many chips left so if I end up all-in my two pair may hold up in a side pot against another draw that also calls. I quickly lead out for pot hoping to clean up my spade outs and get value from other draws. The original raiser ends up folding the nut flush draw luckily, but Toto and the CO both quickly call. Toto shows AAQJ for top set, and the CO shows 9865 for a wrap. This is a great spot for me however. My spades are live to scoop the whole pot. I have 6 additional straight outs to chop the entire pot, and even if I miss my 2 pair is a big favourite to scoop the large sidepot against the CO's 9865. Unfortunately a 6 hit on the river giving the CO a 9-hi straight and busting me from the tournament.

There are only 3 WSOP events left. Today is the final 1500 NL event which I will be playing. Tomorrow is a 1500 limit holdem shootout which should be good value too, and then the main event. I will be playing Day 1B on Friday. However the Bellagio Cup is also getting started soon so there's still lots more poker to be played. One final table finish could still easily salvage the entire Series for me.

Mike

First Cash!

Well I finally cashed a WSOP tournament today. Things got off to a very good start when I won a whole bunch of smallish pots to get up to over 90K. Then I played this hand really bad which killed my chances.

I raise to 5500 in MP with TT and the BB Ben Fineman calls with around a 53K stack. I'm already super scared because I think he is trapping a big pair a whole lot but there's other stuff in his range as well. The BB who is a big donk also calls. Flop 443 two clubs, BB checks and I decide to check and see what happens since I'm not crazy about my hand. He bets 8K, BB folds and I'm not sure what to do. I was sort of planning to just call and play the hand passive but then I decided we were short enough that making a goofy sized checkraise and stacking off might induce him to get it in with worse hands so I did that and he obviously just had AA as I suspected all along. As much as I hate bet/folding overpairs this is the perfect time for it. If he raises my bet he always has a bigger pair than me except for the occasional time he has a flush draw which folding too is fine since he'll always have overs with it anyways. I seriously need to stop stacking off to this transparent bullshit it's so obvious and I know it but I still let it work.

Anyways then I basically folded into the money and eventually shoved KTo into AK. I got 69th for ~$8700. I then played the $1500 Stud Hi/Lo tournament which did not go well. Every time I play this game I realize I'm worse at it than I previously thought even though I do a lot of things right. So tomorrow is a $2K NL event. Hopefully now that I've got the first one under my belt I can start making deep runs more frequently in these things.

Mike

$1K Rebuy Day 2

I'm through to Day 2 of the $1K rebuy with 61K in chips which is about average. I'm now 4/4 in making Day of these tournaments at the WSOP, and I'll be looking to make it 2/4 arriving on time for Day 2 and 3/3 in cashing when I actually do eventually show up on Day 2. Today was a typical day when nothing went my way but I outplayed my opponents so badly that I was able to get by. Some quick examples:

Hand 1: Down to 3500 at 200/400 a50 I move in with J6o in MP. Button calls with TT and I make jacks up on the turn to double.

Hand 2: Raise KTcc and a shortstack shoves a small amount such that I have an automatic call. He has KJo and the board runs out 5 diamonds for the chop.

Hand 3: Raise AQo in EP to 1650 at 300/600 a75. Button instahoves for 7K more. Through a combination of pot odds and the fact that I showed down the ol J6o not too long ago and my image probably isn't stellar I take myself into calling. He obv has AKs but I show why it's superior to have 2 flush draws by running out a 4-flush.

Hand 4: I have 12K at 400/800 a100. Folds to this huuuuuuuge fish in MP. He looks at his cards. Starts pushing them forward like he's going to muck them. Pulls back. Looks at them again. Starts playing with his chips with a clear look of pondering on his face. Eventually he reluctantly decides to throw in 800 for a call. It was actually one of the most hilarious displays I've ever seen at a poker table. There is basically zero chance he's angleshooting, he's just that huge a tellbox. CO limps. I find A2s in the SB, and have to decide between shoving and raising big then shoving any flop. I decide to make it 5K. Fish folds, CO quickly shoves and I have to call off. He has ATs. Board runs off 6444J for the chop.

After that I basically just coolered some people to get to 61K. A true example of how the superior player doesn't need to rely on the luck of the cards to win at tournament poker. Anyways I intend to continue implementing the play bad run good system to it's full potential tomorrow, hopefully the poker gods are cool with that and supply the run good for me.

Mike

Back on the Grind

Now up to 0/15, -51.5K. I had relatively quick and painless exits in the $1500 NL and $2000 PL events last week. I skipped the $1500 NL event on Saturday and $1500 mixed holdem on Sunday to play online those days, and there was no event on Monday so I had a nice little 3 day vacation from losing real money. On Friday night we went to Treasure Island and did the drunken mixed games thing. Hilarity ensued when one usually more reserved 2+2er went a bit overboard on the Jagerbombs (see the thread on 2+2), but good times were had in general before and after we had to worry about taking care of him. On Saturday I slept in a bit and only played a few tournaments and more cash. I finished 2nd in the $50 rebuy on Stars after losing a 10:1 chip lead because I run good like that. It was only $6500 though, I forgot how small the prize pool was in that tournament since I don't usually play it. In cash games I had a lot success (read: luckboxing) in the PLO games but I've been getting killed in holdem. I've been playing the 25/50 cap PLO game on Full Tilt and find it's often pretty good, as well as some 5/10 and 10/20 on Everest and Mansion. My holdem play was mostly 10/20 on Everest and Mansion and a couple times I sat 25/50 on Stars when I saw a softish looking game but that's basically just gone terribly, though my play has been fine.

Speaking of Everest, I finished 7th in their big Sunday tournament for $3K. It is basically the softest tournament ever, like playing on Paradise 3 years ago sort of. The structure is really bad so it becomes a huge crapshoot except everyone plays way too tight waiting for big hands and you just run them over and pick up the blinds constantly. They doomswitched me at the final table though, my KK was obv no good vs AA. I also went deep in the $200 rebuy on Stars but busted on maybe a questionable shove, though given the information I had at the time I think it was definitely fine. So it ended up being a breakevenish Sunday with those 2 cashes and a min-cash in a $100 rebuy on Stars as well.

Monday night I skipped tournaments and went for a late dinner at Wing Lei, a very nice Chinsese restaurant in the Wynn, with a big group of mostly online players. After that we ended up doing some -EV gambling and playing beer pong at O'Shea's, which was pretty hilarious. I couldn't stay out too late though because I was playing the $1500 PLO8 event today. This event was my best finish in the WSOP last year when I finished 10th after getting countefeited on the river, and though I still don't consider myself especially good at the game, my expectations were still high as basically everyone in this tournament is waaaaaaaay worse. Unfortunately I couldn't repeat my performance. I chipped up a bit in some small pots and had a few semi-intersting spots that I think I played well, but in the end I played a really standard hand against Joe Hachem where I got over a third of my stack in preflop with AAQ8 double suited and lost to his AJ43 with the suited ace of spades when he flopped a low draw + flush draw and turned the flush. There is another stretch of consecutive good tournaments coming up though. Tomorrow is the $1K rebuy and the next day is the $5K 6-max. These are definitely two of my favourite events and I'm looking forward to them very much. It's actually kind of a shame I may have to miss the 6-max if I make day 2 of the rebuy. After those two there is a $2k NL on Friday and then on Sunday it's the $10K PLO which I've decided to play. It should go without saying that I would not be opposed to running good in a few of these.

Mike

Still an idiot

0 for 12 -46.5K now. Gave all my chips to JC Tran in the 1500 PLO rebuy today like a true holdem donk after luckboxing a stack early. Played meh in the 2500 6-max on Monday and didn't last long. Gotta go lose another 1500 now. How can I be this bad?

Mike

I am an idiot

Scott Freeman Eliminates Michael Watson

Michael Watson raised to 4,440 and Scott Freeman called from the cutoff. Both players checked the flop, and when the turned Watson bet 7,200 and Freeman called. When the fell on the river Watson checked, Freeman bet 10,500, and Watson moved all in for his last 22,800. Freeman turned over to Watson's , and Watson was eliminated. Freeman now has 142,000.

There is actually a small amount of logic to the river bluff. I'm almost certain he never has a king in his hand when he flat calls preflop, or at least extremely unlikely (KdQd or KdKc are about the only possibilities). And it would clearly be suicide for me to ever be bluffing here. Checkraising all-in for a minraise is completely retarded as a bluff. I'm pretty sure he almost always has the Qd or Jd but I *might* be able to get him to fold because I *can't* be bluffing, but my line makes no sense. Why would I ever checkraise the river with the nuts with < pot left, and he's getting 675:1 on the call. Anyways I'm gone for the weekend, back for the $2500 NL 6-max on Monday. I'm going to start updating a little less regularly because most of the tourney reports have got to be as boring for you to read as they are for me to write. Just assume I lost a few grand every day if I don't write anything to say otherwise.

Mike

On to Day 2

Today was an up and down day. I ran really good off the start but then messed up some hands at the end to lose a lot of my chips. Early on I flopped the nut flush against a set after chipping up in a bunch of small pots to get to 22K. Then I got some guy on my right to spaz out and put 21K in the pot at 100/200 a25 with TT vs my KK. I had not reraised preflop once in 3 and a half levels but he obv still never believes me. I used to try to use that image to 3-bet light. Now I just nit it up because people from the internet never believe other people from the internet in live poker. So I had 44K or something, got as high as 50K when 88>AQ vs a short stack. Then I misplayed a couple hands where I restole with K-hi and forgot to bluff him off A-hi postflop when he called. I also defended 55 against an LP raise and put in way too much postflop before finally folding and obv getting shown AA from the guy who kept instapotting very street. I grinded the short stack for a bit and ended the day with 26K. I'm supposed to catch the red-eye to Toronto tomorrow night so hopefully I min-cash and quickly bust with lots of time to make that or final table this shit fo sho. I think there are around 120 players left and 72 cash. Average would be around 60K to start the day at 800/1600 a200.

Mike

Fast Structures Quick Bustos

Well Monday was a $1500 Shootout event. The $1500 events only give you 3K starting chips (all events have twice the buy-in starting chip bank) so if you don't run good early your day is over pretty quickly. I lost most of my chips on the first hand I played.

25/50 I open KQcc UTG 9-handed. MP calls, button calls, BB calls. Flop Ac7h2c. I bet 300, button calls. Turn 6d. I think I can represent AK pretty easily by firing a decent sized bet. The button is young kid who looks like a live player though so I think I can probably get him off stuff that can't beat AK. I fire 750 and he minraises. Fuck. I'm getting odds to call and try to hit my flush, though it's a weird spot if the 7c or 6c hits. I think I can check/fold the 7c but I might have to shove the 6c. Anyways I brick and am left with 1050 chips.

I later double with an A on the river AKs vs QQ but shove AQ over a raise and get called behind by QQ to bust. In the PLO not much good happened and I busted on the first hand after the break getting half my stack in preflop with double suited aces and the rest went in on the flop drawing pretty dead against the mighty KJT3 on the QJ3 flop. Tomorrow is a $5K NL event, the first pretty big buy-in NL event. I have a flight scheduled Thursday night to come back to Toronto for my grandpa's 80th birthday party with a lot of family for the weekend so this is the last event I'll be playing this week.

Mike

A Big Sunday Final Table!

I finally made my first final table in one of the biggest Sunday tournaments! I final tabled the $750K Guaranteed on Full Tilt. It was a bit of a strange tournament where every time I started getting chips I would lose the next pots I played and become short, but once I was short I would always win the next big pot and get back in contention. Unfortunately I couldn't get anything going at the final table and busted 6th for $23K. Between that and my 5th in the Stars 320 on Wednesday night for $10K I almost made up for the $40K I lost playing 200/400 PLO trying to get back my equity for missing Day 2 of the $1K rebuy. It was good to finally make one of these big final tables beating almost 3500 players, but obviously still a little disappointed not to win. But with JCarver at the final table in a Full Tilt tournament I clearly never had a real chance. I gotta give another shoutout, this time to my friend Leo Wolpert who finished 3rd in the $5K NL Shootout event. He made a deal for $300K which is obviously pretty sick. Tomorrow is the $1500 NL Shootout event, hopefully I have a little extra run good left. As much as I enjoy seeing all my friends make tons of money at big live final tables I'd prefer it was me.

Mike

Another Quick Day

Today was a $2500 NL event and I busted before the first break again. One interesting hand:

25/50 5K starting chips. I have a little under that CO covers. Folds to CO who is a youngish guy who seems to have some idea what hes doing who raises to 175. I call in the BB with ATo. Flop T82r. I lead 250. I've started leading a bit in situations like this and I think it's a really good way to play the hand against aggressive players. They don't expect a thinking player to lead this type of hand into them here and you will often get called down light or induce bluffs. Checkraising makes the pot too big and I'm just not getting called down by worse with my image, so leading allows me to try to get one bet in on all streets which I think is basically the ideal situation with my hand. It does lead to some really messy situations but I think it's worth the higher risk to go for extra value. He calls and the turn is an 8. I bet 525 and he raises to 1500. I think there's a pretty good chance hes just decided to make a move out of confusion, and I don't think he raises an overpair very often here so he basically has trips+ or a bluff most of the time. I call. River blank, I check/call some stupid tiny 1K bet when I probably would have called off my stack and lose to A8. Then I later fold for a bit and lose A9o vs T9s for my last 1300.

After busting I found Aaron and Steve and hung out at their place with Timex who came down when Aaron final tabled Event 2, and we got tickets to see Mystere in the evening, the cirque du soleil show at Treasure Island. It was really good, the best of the cirque shows I've seen (though I haven't seen "O" yet which I've heard is the best one). Playing online today, then back on the live grind Monday. Tom finished 2nd in the $2500 O8/S8 event for ~$150K. What a badass.

Mike

Such bustoness

No luck in the $5K shootout. My table wasn't that bad though it was certainly tougher than most. I was the first eliminated. I got off to a good start but then lost every pot I played after that. I then played some 5/10 PLO with a $25 straddle on the button most hands but just never made much in the way of hands there either. It was around 2 hours before I won a single pot. I ended up losing another $2K there so that sucked. Today is a $2500 NL event which figures to be pretty huge being on a Saturday and all. Maybe I'll run good or something. Also, today is my housemate here Tom's birthday. To celebrate he has made the final table of the $2500 Stud 8/Omaha 8 mixed tournament. He's 4/8 coming in and play starts up again at 4pm so good luck to him! Good to see someone in our house not sucking at least, winning a bracelet on your birthday wouldn't be a bad feat.

Mike

Double Busto

I played both events today with absolutely no success. The noon event was a $1500 6-max NL event which is usually pretty awesome because playing shorthanded against live donks is the best. I lasted 3 hands:

25/50 3K stacks. UTG who looks like mostly not very good opens to 150. I reraise AKs to 500 UTG+1, he calls quickly. Flop KJx, he check/calls my 625 bet. Turn T, he checks to me I think a bit and decide the T should basically never help him. If he has AQ or TT then great, but if he's that bad he's probably also bad enough to stack off KQ or JQ or QQ or something here so I shove my last 1875 and he snaps AQ. NH sir.

Then I waited around and played the $2500 half Omaha H/L half Stud H/L event. Most of my table was pretty bad but I never really made any hands and died a slow painful death. Tomorrow is the $5K NL Shootout which should be fun because you get to play shorthanded more. I expect a relatively tough field but obviously am pretty confident about my chances.

Mike

Didn't make day 2

12:45pm: Call cab since everyone else drove in for 12pm event. 10mins to an hour wait time. OK could potentially be cutting it close but no worries.

1:15pm: Call back cab company. No one in the area wait another 10-15.

1:30pm: Call again. No one making any attempt to get here still.

1:45pm: Call again. Lady says she's going to try to get me a cab gets on phone. 10 mins pass she has no luck. Tells me to keep waiting.

2:05pm: Bond comes through the door busto before the first break as usual. I run out into the street chasing his cab waving my arms. Sprint for a block but I'm not closing distance.

210pm: Call back cab company offer $100 tip for a ride.

2:30pm: Have basically given up since I can't think of anyone that can come get me and I will probably be blinded off.

2:35pm: Kicking empty router box around the house on life tilt.

2:40pm: Call from Deeb wondering where the fuck I am. Explain situation he says he can find me a ride.

2:45pm: PokerNews posts update saying I have 4K in chips.

3:05pm: Geoff (mini-Thayer) and Shaun still not here. I am certain I will have been blinded off by the time I get there so I tell them thanks for trying. Sorry guys for making u come this way but I appreciate it.

Anyways a similar thing happened to me in a $1K rebuy event last year but I was able to get a ride in and only miss a couple orbits and we were in the money by the time I got there. Las Vegas cabbies who won't leave the strip because it costs them money can all go fuck themselves. Ace cab company when I do finally win a bracelet I am going to celebrate by going to your head offices and burning you to the ground. If you see an Ace cab kick the door in for me.

Mike

Made a day 2

Today was the $1K+rebuys. I ended up in for the "minimum" of $4K and never really had a ton of chips. I had one mini-rush where I picked up AK on back-to-back hands and reraised to win a nice pot on the first, and then basebaldy decided to shove 66 over my reraise on the next hand for some reason and I actually won the flip to get to around 35K. I quickly lost those chips raising good hands, continuation betting, and then getting checkraised out of my seat. I grinded the shortstack for the rest of the day and finished with 16.5k with blinds starting at 800/1600 a200 tomorrow. So I'm very short but hanging on. It looks like there are around 106 players left and 72 will get paid so I'll have some work to do right away tomorrow. Also, huge congratulations to Aaron "Pacmann" Coulthard for finishing 6th in Event #2, the $1500 NL event with almost 4000 runners. He won just over $200K for the finish. Aaron was stevepa's roommate in Waterloo, another sick player who sort of stays under the radar since he doesn't play a lot of volume at all but he still crushes.

Mike

Another Miss

So I skipped event 2 and played online this weekend with little success. The only thing I seem to be winning at online lately is PLO strangely enough. Today I decided to play the $1500 pot-limit holdem event at noon. Here's a report of how I lost that buy-in:

Hand 1: 25/50 3K starting chips. I've basically played exactly one pot in the first 45 mins or so. Folds to guy in MP who raises to 150, CO calls, I decide to squeeze it up to 600 with T7s in the BB. Raiser flat calls, damn. Flop 532r I check but he checks back. Turn 6d giving me a flush draw and gutshot. It turns out the raiser only has 1250 left. I should probably have shoved but I decided to check. He checks back again so I'm pretty sure he has AK. River T. I bet 600 and he calls and mucks.

Hand 2: This one was reported online but they butchered the details pretty bad.
75/150 4 limps I complete KJdd in SB. Flop Td9d5d, I check for some reason and it checks around (I normally just bet out here and I think that's better). Turn 6c I bet 625 BB calls one limper calls. River 7h I shove ~2300, BB calls with a lower flush and I'm up to ~7500.


Hand 3: I got as high as 9600 but my super soft tight/passive table got broken and I got moved to a new table. 150/300 I have ~8K now. Some guy limps, I complete the SB with KQo and the BB checks. Flop Q96r, checks to limper who bets 600. I usually just call here but this time I decide to raise to try get a little more value and make it 1600. The problem is I know nothing about this player and when he then makes it 3600 I throw up in my mouth a little before eventually deciding I guess I better just fold.

Hand 4: 300/600 I just moved in on my friend Leo's raise to get back to 7400 at yet a another new table and post the SB in this hand. Folds to me in the SB with 55 and I decide to limp. I had raised this guy's blind the last 2 times it folded to me and I thought he would defend against a raise a lot by calling which would make postflop kind of gross on my stack size. I can just reraise if he raises my limp but he checks. Flop K22 I min-bet and he calls. Turn 6 check/check. River Q. I'm pretty sure he has a deuce and there's a good chance he'll pay off a bet. I should have the best hand unless he happened to hit his kicker. I bet 1200 and he quickly calls and shows Q2. Dammit.

Hand 5: 300/600 I have 5K before posting. Folds to old guy in HJ who raises to 1700. He's not especially tight or anything and I find J9cc and decide to try the ol stop and go since i think he'll give my flop shove some credit. Flop Js8c5c. Ding! I abort the stop and go to let him bluff. I check he bets 1700 I shove 1600 more he calls with AdTc and I'm slightly ahead. Turn Ah river brick hyachachachach.

Tomorrow is the $1K rebuy NL event though which is always fun. I cashed both of them last year so hopefully that trend continues.

Mike

One Down

Well I busted the 10K PLHE pretty quickly. I screwed up this hand:

I have 19.3K of 20K starting stack at 200/400. Eric Assadourian (I think?) raises UTG+1 8-handed to 1100, Will Durkee pots it next to act to 3900. I find QQ in the CO. My first thought is just to fold, but then I ask Will how much he has behind and it's only 7K more, which makes me think his range can be slightly wider. Something about the way he raised made me think he didn't have KK/AA but Im obviously a live poker fish so I shouldn't put much faith in that. Anyways I talk myself into reraising, Eric reshoves, Will folds and I call. Eric has AA and Will had to fold AK after putting in over a 3rd of his stack. I don't win and am crippled. Definitely a fold is right there, and coldcalling is probably also better than reraising. I manage to run my stack up to 2800 then find QQ UTG at a new table. I pot it and get it in on the 987 flop and lose to TT. Oops.

I went to register for the huge $1500 event this weekend but they were only letting people register for Sunday at the time since too many people are registered for the Saturday starting day. I decided not to bother and just play online this weekend. The Ongame grand tournament is running this weekend and I can still play it from here so in addition to the usual other good tournaments there's just way more value online and I'm not all that crazy about playing live again right away. Maybe I'll decide to play the starting day on Sunday if I don't make day 2 of the Ongame tourney but I doubt it. On the plus side it turns out my wire transfer had arrived but I sent it to the wrong place. I was able to get that sorted out though so I have lots of money in my account at the casino to lose in subsequent tournaments now. Hooray!

Mike

WSOP 2008 Preview

Hey gang, welcome back. I arrived in Vegas today and got to our house for the summer with no problems. I'm living with a bunch of different people this year: Serge (Adanthar), Tony (Bond), Celina (Bondgirl), Tom (LearnedFromTV), Nath, and Kyle (grafyx). We have a pretty nice house rented off the strip. Whoever designed the layout for this thing really butchered it, the main area of the house is one huge open room which is kind of weird. I usually like a nice open space but they took it too far. Also, the big TV kind of sucks it's a bit flickery. Nonetheless there is lots of space and it should have everything we really need including an outdoor pool. Yes, the pool really is a necessity.

I went down to the Rio today to check out the new set up and see if my money had arrived. I had read a few reports that they had made a lot of improvements this year and it looks like that's definitely the case. They have a separate room dedicated to satellites with its own cage, as well as a separate room for tournament registration which should hopefully help eliminate much of the congestion that was present last year. There's also a few more food options, most interesting to me is the new Sushi & Noodles place. It was open today so I tried it out and was pretty happy with it. It's All-You-Can-Eat, just noodles is ~$20ish and just sushi is ~$29. For a combination of both menus it's $38. I just had the sushi and was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the fish. It's certainly nothing amazing by any means, but it was pretty good and definitely exceeded my expectations for a small little place like it is, so I'd definitely recommend it to people looking for a relatively quick delicious meal near the poker room (it may not be quite so quick during the Series when you're not the only person in the room, but the simple all you can eat format is clearly designed to make your options simple and get people in-and-out). They have all the usual basic sushi options; salmon, tuna, shrimp, crab, eel, mackerel, yellowtail, nigiri and sashimi, as well as various rolls.

So while that was very good, it was the high point of my trip to the Rio as once again my wire transfer had not yet arrived. You'd think I'd have learned from last year, and I intended to send it much earlier this year, but I also had to send a lot more this year and it took me a little extra time ot get that money wired to my bank account after returning from Europe as I was waiting to get my MoneyBookers account set up properly. So I've repeated my mistake and will probably end up skipping the 10K PLHE event tomorrow, which isn't the end of the world since it figures to be a relatively tough event, though I would have liked to play. I'm still definitely planning to play the $1500 event on Saturday which will be no problem to borrow money for if need be. Oh yeah if by any chance someone in Vegas reads this and has 10K they can lend me for tomorrow's event that would be awesome, please get a hold of me. After that I'll basically be playing the NLHE events almost every day plus some PLO, and who knows what else. I do plan to skip some of the $1500 NLHE events later in the series though to try to avoid the burnout that hit me by the of the series last year. So wish me luck, hopefully I can do better than last year and come home with some jewelry and a bunch of money.

Edit: Looks like I found money and will be playing tomorrow. GL me!

Mike

Last Week before WSOP!

Well let's see where was I last time I posted. Oh yes FTOPS was running. I ended up staying home last weekend and losing lots of money playing in those events. I did however finish 4th in the Party 300 on Saturday for ~$4800 to get me even for that day, but I had no luck on Sunday either. This week I played a bit as well. My only tournament success was finishing 7th in the AP $1K for $3500 when I came into the final table with a big stack then did nothing for a while before losing a big flip since everyone had absurdly short stacks. Today I finished 5th in the FTP $100r for $5K when I took the chiplead into the final table but lost JJ vs 69s aipf to Zpaceman. It was pretty awesome. That's about all I can recall wrt tournaments, other than to say that ECOOP II (Euro Champ of Online Poker tourney series) is running this week so I'm going to play a bunch of those events on the iPoker network before I move to Vegas for a month and a half and can no longer play on most of the sites that I actually make money on during that period.

Paragraph 2 of this post will be dedicated to some more Omahizzle. I've actually been playing a pretty decent number of hands for me lately when I don't have too many tournaments running to try to get a lot of the necessary experience under my belt to improve at PLO and gain confidence in my game. I definitely want to have a 2nd game I can play with confidence during the WSOP so I can mix up my schedule a little and hopefully help keep me fresh from the grind of just playing NL Holdem tournaments everyday. I've now put in 10,000 hands at 2/4 - 5/10 PLO and the results have easily exceeded my expectation. I've almost certainly been running super hot over this period but nonetheless I'm very confident I have a substantial edge at these limits, especially on the European sites where a lot of the play is just awful. The games on FTP and Stars definitely seem tougher but I'm pretty sure I'd be a winner in those as well long run, just not for nearly as much. Anyways here is a graph of my results for my first 10K hands of mid-stakes PLO. As you can see there is a lot of variance in Omaha so I put a lot more faith in the fact that I constantly see my opponents making big mistakes to believe I'm a winning player than in the fact that I've won over this period. Averaging 10 ptBB over these hands is pretty solid though :D.


Anyways given how bad play typically is in Omaha tournaments I definitely feel I'd be +EV in pretty much any Omaha tournament at the WSOP so I will look to add some extra PLO events to my schedule. I'm going to end this post here and save room to write a big WSOP pregame show post before I leave this week. I'm only playing a few early tournaments tomorrow again, but with ECOOP running I don't imagine I'll be taking much of a break from poker or anything like that before WSOP.

Mike

There might be hope for me yet...

Hey hey! I've rebounded pretty nicely the last couple days. Let's take a look at the list of things that were going wrong in my last entry. First, I finally won a step 6 to the WSOP. I ended up playing my friend ch0ppy HU and of course the first time I play a good player I manage to luckbox the win. So I got my first WSOP seat at last. Next, I had a nice tournament score. I just finished 2nd in the Stars 100+rebuys for $24K. I got heads-up behind 3:1 in chips and started to mount a comeback before blowing up. I made two really stupid spazzy plays heads-up trying some new things at bad times. Once again on my bustout hand I ignored obvious bet sizing tells and made a stupid bluff when the guy hadn't played back at me in any way for probably 20 minutes. If I just folded like I always used to and kept grinding away at him there's a decent chance I may have made the comeback. I also made a hero call earlier in the HU that had no chance of being right because I just want to be a fucking hero alright. I dunno, I guess that's just something I'll have to work on, maybe play some HU sit n gos or some bs. Gotta learn not to listen to that stupid game theory voice that says "Dude, folding here is so exploitable and folding is no fun anyways!" and listen to the common sense voice of years of me playing poker experience that says "Watts, listen to me. I know it's really exploitable to fold, but he's not bluffing. Here are several good reasons why. He's going to show you the nuts and you're going to feel like an idiot. Again." Just read that and tell me which voice sounds like he knows what he's talking about, I mean seriously, which one would you trust?

Alright, moving on, I also kicked ass at Omaha in the last 2 days. I still haven't played anything resembling a decent sample size, but I am now winning at a solid rate over the hands that I have played. I ran so stupidly hot though that it would have been impossible to lose, so it's far too early to make any statements about whether I'll be able to beat the games in the long run, but I do feel like my opponents make a lot of mistakes that I would avoid, and often substantial ones, so I think I have an edge. I guess we'll have to wait and time will tell. It's not like I don't make my fair sure of blunders. However I will say that Omaha is a pretty easy game when every time you get in a reraised pot you flop the nuts. Practically every time my opponent had AAxx I outflopped him (and my hand held), and if I had AAxx in a reraised pot I usually flopped two pair or a straight with my other two cards and instead of having lots of outs against just a pair of aces my opponent got the rest of his money in on the flop drawing practically dead. Of course the times they did outflop me I would just get there. Let me find a few examples.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2607438 - I'm pretty sure Kongsgaard was just tilting hard from losing some big pots, but I always thought he was complete nutcase at tournaments too. I don't see how getting 2 times the pot in on this flop this way can ever be good for him though.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2607445 - can't blame him for thinking he has 11 outs, but he's obv drawing to runner runner against my luckbox.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2607440 - Sometimes it's ok to check! (and get there obv)

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2607461 - They finally outflop me but I still have a lot of outs and get there of course.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2607471 - This is probably the pinnacle of running good. I mean seriously this isn't even fair.

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
AhAcKcQh	85.12%	639	118
Kh9hQs6s	14.88%	63	118

Here is a graph of the last 2 days because everyone loves pictures! Pretty much all 3/6 and 5/10 PLO.



I even had a nice winning holdem cash session too. I haven't seen many good 25/50 games lately but I can usually track down some juicy 10/20 games. Anyways more FTOPS tomorrow. I haven't made it out of the first hour in my last four FTOPS events (not counting the HORSE event because it's limit) due to ridiculous coolers. There are 2 good events tomorrow but they may be the last 2 I play since I'm probably going to my roommate's cabin for the weekend. It'll hurt to miss the $2500 event and $500 final event but I've been grinding so hard lately that it can't be a bad idea to get out of the house for a change. I guess.

Mike

Brutal week...

Well I haven't posted in a while, I guess i didn't really have much to write about because I've basically just been getting my ass kicked all week. I've started playing some 2/4-5/10 PLO full stacked to try to learn the game, and while I feel like I'm playing reasonably well the results just haven't been there so far. I might be running bad, but I don't really have the experience playing PLO to really be able to tell. I've even been taking a bit of a hit at Holdem cash games lately, though for the most part I'm pretty happy with my play in those and I think I've just been running bad. Here is an example in which I get "Matusowned" (when he made his little speech I thought he had AA for sure hence my chat).

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2592084

Even tournaments haven't been going that well. I've been playing a lot of the step 5 and step 6 WSOP satellites. I won 6 or 7 seats for the main event last year but this year I haven't been able to win a single one. I've been heads up for the seat in Step 6 three times against fish who probably qualified from like step 1 or something and lost every time. Unfortunately a lot of that is my own fault for playing poorly. MTTs have been going a little bit better but still far from stellar. FTOPS began on Wednesday and I've played several events. I got heads up in round one of the $500 triple shootout, but I lost again. This time I feel I played pretty well though, and I was very unlucky to lose on this hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2592104

I also final tabled the Stars Super Tuesday this week but finished 7th for just $12K. Today I had a big stack deep in Event 7, $100+rebuys NLHE, but in the span of a single orbit I went from a top 10 stack to busto 69th. First I doubled up a shortstack with 99 vs AK, then another with AQs vs K9, and I still had an average stack when I lost AK vs JJ for the rest in three completely standard boring coolers. Today there was also a sick tournament on Everest, a $3000 buy-in with a $1 million guaranteed prize pool against almost all the complete morons who play on that site who satellited into a tournament way above their bankroll. Unfortunately I lost this sick pot to end my tournament really early.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2592132

I probably should have folded the river because satellite winners usually don't have the guts to run a bluff like this, but I was almost certain he didn't flop a set from the flop action and his timing, I was pretty sure he'd raise the turn with AQ, so that just left a KJ or KT type hand and I had one of the kings.... On the other hand he instashoved the river which seemed super strong, but it's especially hard to fold the hand in practice after having been so huge on the flop. Anyways tomorrow night I have a softball game which seems infinitely more fun than poker right now, so I think I'm going to just play some of the early tournaments and go to that assuming I don't go deep in anything. If I do then cool hopefully I make some big money or something.

Mike

Epic Fail

The PLO heater came to a crashing halt the last couple nights, as expected really. At my peak I was up around 100K but I lost most of that back. The thing is that PLO is such a sick high variance game and shortstacking it in particular is even swingier that winning/losing 12 buyins or whaetver is really not statistically significant in any way. It's a whole lot of money at these stakes though obviously. Anyways seems only fair I post some of the hands that led to my demise if I'm going to brag when I win. This time I will include some strategic musings for my benefit as much as yours.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551339 - The flop is weird. I will often run into the straight, but I have a ton of equity against the straight and there is a lot of value in protecting my hand when it's best. I will also get called by worse hands sometimes (smaller sets especially) so there is definitely a lot of value in betting. My hand is so strong that if it's beat I will be getting all-in regardless since I have a short stack, so I need to play in such a way to maximize value when it's not beat. In holdem this often might mean checking and taking some line where i give worse hands a chance to bluff. In Omaha you've got to bet to protect your hand a lot more in these situations and inducing bluffs is not a big part of your overall strategy.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551404 - Sigh.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551409

Preflop:
7c 5c 3c 4d 30%
Ac Ah 9h 5s 34.9%
Qs Kd 9d Jh 35.1%

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551421 - This spot really sucks. I should probably just fold preflop too. I'm pretty much either dead to a set or flipping against a wrap straight draw but I'm getting 2:1. Oh I have backdoor flush draw too that's pretty hot.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551433 - Another weird one where I bloat the pot preflop with likely a small equity edge and everyone calls. The flop is awkward though because I'm pot committed. Betting didn't really seem to accomplish much, maybe I should anyways because two of the guys are being squeezed in the middle and may have to fold a lot. Anyways I call the shove obviously with my gutter and backdoor nut flush draw and some random overcards and incredibly the others fold and I have 40% equity.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551459 - Sigh again.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551462 - Benyamine takes more of my money. He was me and timex nemesis when we shortstacked the big NL Holdem games.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551468 - Yawn

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551473 - I dunno I think I have to call the flop because there's so many ways he can be drawing and I do have at least a few outs regardless getting big pot odds.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551483 - Dang.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551485 - Sigh this was a tilt hand. In general I think my bluff on the turn is a very strong play. Against this player it's just awful and I need to check behind and get there.

Oh well I still made a little money and overall it was actually a really good learning experience. I'll take it easy on the high stakes PLO again for a while but if I see a game that's just really good since I know all the players now it might be hard to resist. There's definitely money to be made in these games. The stats on here are just crazy:

http://www.highstakesdb.com/results.aspx

Mike