Saturday, January 31, 2009

2009 WSOP Schedule

At last we have a somewhat delayed WSOP schedule for 2009.

Some thoughts:

Lots of events at $2500 and below should make for some decent field
sizes this year and help solve some of the issues regarding higher
buy-ins and 'the downturn' or whatever they are calling it now. I'm
not sure how much effect currency rates will have, but I have seen a
couple of European players downscaling their schedule due to quite
rapid changes between the Pound/Euro and the Dollar. Last year it cost
me just over £5,000 to play the $10,00 Main Event, this year it would
set me back over £7,000.

I really hope they televise the $40k even they are holding to
celebrate the 40th anniversary of the WSOP. It should attract a field
of decent players, and they'll be starting so deep (800 BB's by my
calculations) that you could sit out the first day and still be pretty
comfortable. It should throw up some interesting deep stack
situations, although I realise this isn't necessarily what the average
ESPN viewer wants to see.

The removal of the rebuy events is probably a good thing and a less
complicated 'I can only lose $x' approach might bring in the fish a
bit more. I don't think the arguments about being able to 'buy' a
WSOP bracelet are well founded, but there was one event last year ($5k
rebuy 2-7 lowball?) that was a bit silly really.

The first weekend sees the introduction of a $1k NLHE event, which is
going to be mental. 2k starting stacks and litterlayy thousands of
players is going to throw the Rio into absolute mayhem for two days.
It should be a lot of fun. Also, I wonder if they have been looking
at the mega field turbo tournies online and thinking 'we could do
that'

As for my own plans, I hope to get out there at some point, but as
ever my job will have the final say. It's a busy time of year
hopefully I'll get lucky enough to make it out to Vegas for a week.
Not really thought about trying to qualify for the ME this year, in
fact I might not even bother.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Good Start To 2009

2009 has been kind to me so far. I won a seat to the GUKPT on Thursday, final tabled the $27.5k at FTP on Friday and finished 15/1450 in the $21k last night.

In the $27.5k I had a top 10 stack from 3 tables down, but never really got much going at the FT. In the $21k I lost a huge pot for the chip lead when tere was 15 left with AA < QJs after getting it all in pre.

So some good performances but an obvious lack of closing. Hopefully I can build on these and continue to work on my tournament game this year. Getting close to some $10k scores definitely increases my motivation.

I have managed to log just over 10k hands at $400 NL 6 max (at an epic 2BB/100) and around another 5k hands trying a bit of $100 NL HU.

2007 was my first full year playing poker and I made some goals at the start of the year which I surpassed and took beyond anything I could have imagined before the end of March. In 2008 I didn't really set any goals (or if I did, I don't remember what they were and certainly wasn't sticking to them) So I have decided that my only goal for 2009 is get get less terrible at poker. I'm going to study as much as I can, because to say I have neglected studying over the past year or so would be putting it mildly.

This means more Cardrunners, Stox and DC in addition to getting hold of a couple of decent books. I also need to get more time in discussing hands with other players, so I'll hopefully be making a conscious effort to do that too.