Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Where are the November Nine?

I'm not sure what Harrahs/ESPN's plans were to hype up the WSOP final table, but it doesn't seem to be working.

As we approach the end of September I honestly can't name any of the players at the final table. Perhaps that would have been different if the gorgeous and highly marketable Tiffany Michelle had made the table, or either Helmuth or Matasow had managed to run a bit deeper.

I think if they are going to generate the hype they need to pull this off they need to start now. As for making it a global event, I haven't even seen anywhere it's being shown here in the UK. I guess we'll have to wait for re-runs on some random entertainment channel in 2010 or something.

I hope I'll be proved wrong and when the WSOP programmes start to air they pick up a significant amount of interest. This should be a great chance for poker to get an influx of new players to the game, and help improve the profile of poker as a game where peoples dreams can be realised.

On that note, the WCOOP Main Event final table featured a microstakes tournie player who won a $5200 seat in a depositors freeroll. He wasn't able to unregister so played, made the final table and ended up dealing for over $800k with a shot at making over $1 million if he won. If you're going to run good for once of your life, I'm pretty sure that's the time to do it...

Edit: Sods law, after I posted this I fire up Stars and see they are doing a big promo called The Million Dollar Men which involves the 6 PokerStars players at the final table of the WSOP.

Trust Stars to succeed where others have failed.

Friday, September 12, 2008

WCOOP

I have been seriously impressed by the turnout at the WCOOP this year. Stars have just had to increase the number of seats in the $25k HU event as it reached it's 64 person capacity a full three days before the event was due to start. They have also smashed the guarantees on all of the events so far, so maybe getting 2,000 players to stump up $5k for the Main Event, which has a $10 million guarantee, won't be a difficult as I thought.

Unfortunately I'm 0 for 4 during this series, and it looks unlikely I'll be able to play any more events.

As I suspected the play in the non Hold'em events was horrible, but I think all the super duper mega crapshoot sats probably had something to do with that. I satted into the $320 Omaha event in a $107 tournie with 750 starting chips and 3 minute levels, the only saving grace being that none of these super turbo satellites have a rake. I'm pretty sure people who simply had no idea what they were doing were playing these, and due to the structure of the sats there would have been plenty of them in the main WCOOP tournies.

Even though I won't be participating I still have a decent number of stakes in people for the remaining events, some of which are most definitely due a ~$400k win so hopefully I'll have a big score to write about next week.

Friday, September 05, 2008

Harrington, WCOOP and Cash Games

It's been a busy few weeks for me since my last entry and although I have played a fair bit of poker, it's been a bit hit and miss, and mostly cash games.

I ran at 4BB/100 over 35k hands in August at $400 NL 6 Max on Party, but I also did a few 12 tabling sessions on Stars at $200 NL when I had the motivation. Hardly exciting stuff, but certainly very profitable.

I have also been reading the Harrington cash game books over the last few weeks. I have seen people on various forums arguing both ways over the books, but I really like them. I don't think they'll ever be the well known 'must read' books that the Harrington on Hold'em books are, but they definatly have a place on the bookshelf of anyone who plays cash games. I really like Harringtons writing and explanitory styles, and I think these make the books easy to understand. As with the tournament books there isn't anything in them that makes you go 'Wow, that's some crazy shit, that might just work' but they help you look at your own game and how you approach certain aspects of deep stack play. It's also nice to look at someone elses thought processes and the way they view other peoples situations in hand examples from multiple angles.

Unfortunately I haven't really had time to play any tournies. Mostly I have just been donking around in 45 man Turbos when I haven't felt like playing cash. I think there is probably some decent money to be made in these, especially at the $55 level where they run often enough to get significant volume in but the players are still aweful. You get some regular multitablers and some decent players in them, but most of these are easy to identify if you use PAHUD or something similar.

So after grinding cash games for over a month now I fell like switching back to tournies again for a while. Hoepfully I should have more time now that work is a little quieter.

The WCOOP starts today and I have been playing a few sats to different events. I managed to win two seats to $530 events and an EPT Double Shootout which was also good for $800 in W$. I'm going to be playing the first NL event tonight, then the $530 NL on Sunday followed by maybe one or two random $215's during the week.

Unfortunely in the second week I'm moving, so I don't know how quickly I'll get a new broadband connection or whaetver set up. Hopefully it will be in place by Sunday for the $1k NL event, but I really have no idea how long it will take.

It's times like this I wish I was a bit better at other games. My HORSE isn't too bad, with the possible exception of Razz, but I don't think I have enough of an edge to be playing the $320 PLO events or anything like that. I might be wrong of course, I'm sure with all the sats the fields in the non Holdem WCOOP tournies will be bad, so maybe I should take a shot at one or two if I get the chance.