Hand History from my big win

The easiest way to look at it is to register at http://www.pokerxfactor.com/ (completely free and only takes a few seconds) then login and click on the following link to view it in their flash hand history replayer: http://www.pokerxfactor.com/servlet/pxf?a=mv&t=myhand2&handid=16120&fn=2971_20060716_031935. Thanks to Irah for posting this. However I've also analyzed most of the key hands so you can read my comments as you go here: http://pokerforum.ca/forum/index.php?topic=10175.0.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Wow, so I made $23K tonight. First I won the Pearl, a $150 buy-in NL tourney on Paradise, for $3K (only 73 players), and then I won the $162 buy-in nightly tournament on Stars for $20K. I'm really excited right now, I'm going to have to consider going for the Pocket Fives triple Crown (since I now have 2 legs and I'd actually have all 3 if I'd won that coinflip Saturday night) or maybe even making a run at the Stars weekly Tournament Leader Board. Also, Im going to have to drink some beers. Anwyays, I plan on reviewing my play from the Stars win and making a fairly detailed post analyzing all the key hands. Hopefully that will happen by the end of the week if I'm not too busy going for the triple crown and stuff. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Mike

Coinflipping for the $$

It was another decent week for me, I managed to grind out another 4 figures of profit but nothing spectacular considering how much I played. I feel comfortable playing 3/6 NL now and plan to mix it in a lot more when I'm not playing too many tournaments. My big scores for the week both came on Saturday night when I finished 3rd in a $100 rebuy on Stars for 4K and 2nd in a $77 freezeout on Party for $2700. Party crashed for an hour with 12 people left in the latter when I was chipleader, but fortunately they were able to get the tournament restarted. After taking some beats and hitting some suckouts of my own I was heads up even in chips, and I ended up getting all-in with 78 vs J6 on a 963 flop. I bricked my 14 outs twice and lost the $2000 coinflip. Not a huge deal, I've taken costlier beats, but flipping coins for 2 grand is a little ridiculous when you step back and look at it that way.

Anwyays, I had a fairly poor Sunday, but Steve's roommate Aaron made it heads up in the Full Tilt 200K Guaranteed. 2nd paid 31K and first 50K. The blinds were huge so they were left crapshooting for 19K. Aaron got it all-in with KJs vs TT when they were even in chips and a T on the flop ended things quickly. Gotta love flipping coins for 20K. Hopefully when I'm deep in the main event I'll win my 5-7 figure coinflips, but the key is to take care of the things that you can control. If you keep making good decisions eventually you'll catch some lucky breaks too and hit that big score.

Mike

WSOP has begun!

I'm starting to really get excited about heading to Vegas. The preliminary events have started and I've been reading almost everything that has to do with the WSOP. Live coverage, player's blogs, threads on 2+2 and CPF, etc.... Especially exciting so far was that two of the most respected posters in the MTT forum on 2+2 have already made final tables. Rizen, whose blog is very good and linked on the right, and MLG both made 6-figure scores for finishing 3rd and 4th respectively in early events. I have no doubt there will be a lot of other well known online players breaking through for their first big scores in live events as well. I can't wait to get down there and try to join them.

As for my own play this week, my results were a little more steady for a change and I made a small profit, mostly from 2/4 NL, as my tournaments were close to breakeven. I finally stacked someone for their full $400 at 2/4 when AA>KK. Getting shipped an $800 pot feels kinda nice. One of the more interesting things that happened this week was Friday night (June 30) I got home pretty early for a change, and decided to play almost every tournament on Stars before midnight in an effort to crack the top 100 on the monthly TLB. I was hoping to qualify for the WSOP freeroll and it seemed like a fun goal. I needed to gain another 250-300 points. I made the final table of a $22 180-man tourney and accross the table from me was MrSmokey. Smokey is one of the best players online and he was in this micro-buyin tourney, compared to what he normally plays, because he was trying to win a $5000 TLB sidebet against a few other top players for June. Anyways we ended up heads up about even in chips. Premier (another top player in the bet) was sweating the final table cheering for me to bust him, as I guess the bet was pretty close going down to the wire. Really, I think my crappy TLB quest was more important, so I owned him and got the 306 TLB points for first. Only top 20 scores count so this increased my score by about 250 points, it was going to be close, I just needed one more decent (like 100 point) score to lock it up, but the only thing I was still in was the 10r 55k Guaranteed. Fortunately, I was already in the money and I picked up AA on the button and got all-in against the SB's AK. Two runners to his broadway straight later I finished the month in 104th place, a measely 12 points out of the top 100.

Today I did my normal Sunday thing. I even decided to drop the $615 and take a shot at the one rebuy one add-on version of the Sunday million. I did terribly in that tournament but I made a decent run on Party again before bustng out on a pretty poor resteal for $600 in 384th. I final tabled a $100 rebuy on Dise and had lots of chips coming in but things didn't work out and I busted 7th for $1800. I also final tabled a $100 NL on Party before running the nut flush into quads and busting 5th for $2100. Overall it was a pretty good day though it's always disappointing to not make more of those final table chances, but really the cards just didn't cooperate once I got there. A belated happy CanadaDay to eveyone, I'm calling it a night. Well, maybe I'll see what's going on at the Rio first.

Mike

Big Downswing, Huge Recovery

It turned out that last Sunday was just the beginning of a nice downswing for me. By Saturday night I was down over 5 grand from where my bankroll had peaked 2 weeks earlier. I was running pretty brutal, my hands never holding, losing the key coinflips, running big hands into bigger hands etc.... The usual stuff. I was actually considering switching to 2/4 NL as my primary game for a while because I've been killing those games over a completely insignificant number of hands where I'm running good, and I want the deepstack practice for the main event anyways. I mean, when you're on a 5K downswing and you're biggest score ever (other than the WSOP seat) is only 4K it's a bit depressing.

6/24/2006 11:49:32 PM Watts if I"m still terrible after tomorrow then maybe I'll switch
6/24/2006 11:49:53 PM Brad good plan...you know you're going to win one tonight now right :P

The Pinhead (Brad) is a smart man, though he was slightly off on this one. I final tabled the $10 rebuy 55K guaranteed on Stars and after winning all-in with the worst hand like 4 times (I'd been saving them up for the last week or 2) I was chipleader 3 handed. Then I proceeded to get screwed over 3 times by the cards and I managed to bustout 3rd losing to two fairly weak players (one was sorta ok and the other was awful). I did cash for $5400 which basically took care of my donswing, but I was so close to that 14K first prize. Anyways, I went to bed after that at 7am and got up at 2 with a more positive outlook on tournament poker, ready to do some damage in the big Sunday tournaments.

With Stars running it's quarterly $1000 tournament this week, the lineup consisted of the usual $200 buy-ins on Dise and Party, the $200 2nd chance on Stars, and I also decided to play the $650 WSOP sat again at the last minute, along with a couple other smaller tourneys. I busted out of the WSOP sat early due to set over set but I was on fire from the beginning in the $200 buy-ins. I had a monster stack on Party before my AA lost to JJ AIPF when he flopped quads. This brought me back to average but I recovered from there and made another good run before eventually going cold and busting 138/5021 for $1305. On Stars I also had a huge stack at one point but I went pretty card dead there as well and just treaded water until the blinds caught up to me and I was forced to make a move, which ran into a real hand. I finished 61/954 for $420. However, Paradise has been my best server lately and it didn't let me down today.

I built a big stack there early as well before losing a big pot with a set against a flopped straight that I probably played too aggressively. The flop was all spades and I pushed the turn trying to price him off his flush draw. Oops. But I bounced back and won several huge pots, usually getting paid off by hands that should never have paid me off. The funniest was when I saw a free flop in the BB with 83 and it came J83 rainbow. I meant to bet 3600 into the 5000 chip pot but I accidentally bet 13600 instead. The limper on the button still managed to get broke with his JT. Soon enough I had a monster stack but stopped picking up hands and was treading water for a long time. I managed to win 2 key coinflips on the final table bubble to get back into contention. I survived down to 7 players before pushing 55 all-in as the shortstack. It was folded to the BB who instacalled.

"Please have AK, please have AK."

Sadly he flipped QQ and my day was done. 7th paid $5400 for the 2nd consecutive day, putting me up over 10K in a 24 hour period. Like I keep telling you guys, tournament poker is just crazy. I'm happy to be writing this on the happy side of variance again, it's amazing how quickly things change sometimes. I might post some of these hand histories on pokerxfactor if anyone is interested in looking at them. I respond well to peer pressure so let me know. Guess I'd better go do some real world stuff for a bit. Later on,

Mike

Day 1C

Just got my confirmation e-mail from Harrah's. The main event begins for me on Sunday, July 30. When I registered with Pokerstars this was my first choice for starting day because it gives me a couple days to get comfortable in Vegas (I arrive on the 27th), but if I had to wait for the very last day the anticipation would probably get to be too much. Also, it seems so soon but the WSOP starts next week. Best of luck to everyone heading down for the preliminary events.

Mike

Sometimes you just lose

So yesterday was Sunday, and in the online poker world Sunday means big tournaments. I played a lot of them again this week hoping for that elusive big score. Unfortunately, when you run bad in said tournaments you take a nice downswing.

Tournament/Total buy-in counting rebuys and add-ons if available/place/$$ won

Stars:

Million Guaranteed $215 983/4299 $0
2nd Chance $215 373/749 $0
$100 Rebuy $309 90/255 $0 (No, I shouldn't be playing this high)
$100 PLO8 $109 36/144 $0
$10r 55K Guar. $71 886/1534 $0


Party:

Million Guaranteed $215 1376/4002 $0
$100 NL 40K Guar. $109 78/630 $0
$150 NL $162 349/360 $0
$100 NL $109 35/275 $0 (I lost my connection and blinded off %$^%$#)

Paradise:
$150K Guaranteed $200 72/610 $0 (donked out 2 from the money on a poorly timed resteal)
$30r 100K Guaranteed $210 100/1021 $120!!!! (SHIP IT)
$60 NL $60 35/146 $0

I did make like $110 playing 2/4 NL briefly so I managed to keep the damage under 2K at least. Stretches like these are pretty common playing tournaments, sometimes the cards just don't fall your way. It sucks when they happen while you're playing your biggest games for the week of course, but so it goes. This post shows how sick variance can be in the big tournaments. That's it for now,

Mike

I'm not sure what I want to do with this blog...

The main reason I finally signed up and started this blog was so I'd have a place to post updates and write about my experience at the WSOP. So come late July/August there will be some sweet content here, but in the mean time I'm not sure how often I'll post and what I'll write about. I guess I'll just randomly post whatever seems interesting for a while and hopefully it will become clear what works best. Feel free to drop me any suggestions.

Mike

Running good, TLB, & WSOP

Hey all. You're undoubtedly on the edge of your seat after I left you hanging in my last post, wondering if our hero would ever win at poker again. The title obviously gives it away as a lot of you prboably knew anyways, so let's get back to the story. I finished my last course at the end of March and decided that to celebrate I would take a run at the weekly tournament leader board on Stars. The winner gets his picture on the main page of the Stars software for a week and a heads-up match against a Team Pokerstars player for $1000. I really had no reason to think I had any chance, but I didn't do too badly: TLB Report.

The rest of April went ok, but I kept falling just short of the big prize. In the span of about 3 weeks I busted with 2 tables left 5 times, all in tournaments with between 5K-15K for first. And then came May. It started with me taking my first shot at the $650 WSOP satellite on Sunday (through an $80 satellite). I was hanging in there on a fairly short stack and then pushed AKs into AA 8 from the bubble. However, I was so close I knew I could make it with a little more luck next time, and in general the level of competition was surprisingly poor. The structure of the tournament gives you the time you need to wait for a hand and take advantage of these players as well. Many times I'd flop a set and double through a surprisingly weak hand (for like 50-100 times the blind). Being so close again just motivated me further. I was determined to breakthrough soon, and in a big way.

It started with a $55 PL Holdem victory for $1450. Then I won 2 $20 180 man tourneys and a $55 limit holdem tournament, and there was a 3rd in a $100 NL Holdem tournament. But the biggest day of all was 2 Sundays after my original shot at the WSOP satellite. I was deep in the $215 500K Guaranteed tournament on Party, but my other table had me more excited. I had built a monster stack in the $650 Sunday WSOP satellite, and was more or less in position to coast to a main event seat. I busted 41st on Party for for $1400 or so, but I was hardly upset. There was an hour or 2 left in the tournament but it was all but guaranteed. I was going to Vegas to play in the WSOP. Ifinished the tournament off in grand style as chip leader after busting the bubble player. Since then I've continued to run well and put up some nice scores, bankroll still on the rise. Hopefully things will stay that way until, I dunno, at least a couple weeks into August.

Mike

My first real post!

So I wanted to write my first post as a little introduction to who I am and how I got to where I am in poker since if anyone ever reads this I imagine they wouldn't know a whole lot about me. Then I realized I can't actually remember all the way back to the beginning of my poker career. So my story is going to begin in summer 2005. I'd just finished my undergrad degree and was home for the summer. I'd been playing for about a year at this point and built up a decent online bankroll. I didn't need a lot of money so the plan was to just play poker over the summer and make a few bucks without having to work a "real" job. However despite putting in a good number of hours things really didn't go very well. I was getting killed at 5/10 shorthanded limit holdem and i couldn't figure out why. My tournament results were positive but not amazing. I ended up making only a very modest profit for the summer and was very disappointed.

So September comes and I head back to Waterloo to start my Masters. I decided to concentrate more on tournaments and give up my limit cash games for a bit. Finally in October I got hot. Pokerstars runs a $10 NL tournament at 7:45 ET every night that at the time attracted between 1400-1700 players on a usual night. In the span of a month, I finished first once and second twice in these huge fields, cashing almost 8K combined. Unfortunately I was back to playing more limit cash games between these scores and dusted off a couple grand running bad/being a donk, but I was finally running very good again overall and my confidence in my game was high. I continued to turn in decent results for the rest of the term and I felt like it was just a matter of time before I started making a run at some big money. But every rush has to end, and when it does there's usually a big downswing waiting.

The term ended and I went home for Christmas break. Between catching up with everyone I hadn't seen in a few months I was still fitting in a lot of poker, a lot of it late at night when I was tired. A combination of running bad, fatigue, and just being off my game (and not being nearly as good as I thought I was in the first place, you NEVER are) contributed to my biggest downswing yet, as I dusted off 4K in 2 weeks. I'd been through bad runs before though, and I told myself if i just kept working on my game eventually things would have to turn around. Eventually can be a long time though in poker, especially when it comes to MTT. Over the next 3 months I broke even. I was playing a lot and playing fairly well again, but I was getting killed in NL Holdem tournaments. My results in limit holdem tournaments and stud hi/lo tournaments over this period were the only thing keeping me even as I seemed to be winning one of these almost every week. Unfortunately these are small tournaments compared to the NL tournaments I was playing, in terms of number of players and the size of my buy-ins. I was still waiting on that big score that would instantly erase all my recent struggles. This is getting really long already so I'll save the save the rest for my next post!

Mike

Yeah, I have a Poker Blog

Sigh.... All the cool kids are doing it.