WSOP Days 3 & 4 + Other Stuff

The WSOP is really in full swing with events 4,5,6,7 and 8 all in progress currently.

Day 3 is underway in Event #4: $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em with 42 players back to fight it out for the bracelet. The 2009 winner of the equivalent event Brian Lemke has 1m chips, almost 300k more than second in chips. Still a long way to go in that event though.

Jake Cody wins Event #2: $25,000 Heads-Up Championship for $851,192 and becomes only the third person to achieve a triple crown. Cody has now won an EPT (Deuville), WPT (London) and a WSOP bracelet. He took his time though, 15 months to win all three, and, oh yeah, he's 22 years old...

The first $1k mega donkaments of this years Wold Series, Event #8 starts today and so fare there are over 2,700 players in the field (including those registered for day 1b, which starts tomorrow). I guess poker isn't dead just yet - that's going to be an epic field. I have seen some crazy things playing poker but never anything quite like this.

Bluff Magazine will be taking care of the WSOP player of the year system for this WSOP.

I don't mind a bit of light entertainment and I think the WSOP rematches were just that. Chan and Moneymaker were victorious over Helmuth and Farha with the Chan v Seidel matchup postponed as Seidel was probably winning a few million dollars elsewhere and was unable to play.

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WSOP Day 2 Round-Up

It would be hard to follow the drama of the first day of the WSOP this year but here's a round up of the various goings on at the WSOP and the wider poker world:

The WSOP has announced a $1 Million buy-in tournament in aid of One Drop, an charity started by Guy Laliberte of Cirque du Soleil fame.

It looks like a few well known businessmen/poker players are on board:

Bobby Baldwin
Phil Ruffin
Andy Beal

In addition to the professionals everyone would expect:

Doyle Brunson
Patrik Antonius
Gus Hansen
Tony G

I think we can add Ivey to that list depending on how things go over the next year (the event will be in 2012). There is some serious value in there from the businessmen so I'd be surprised if we don't see a few lesser known pros selling action and getting involved - even if there is a big rake for the charity.

3 million chip starting stack, not entirely sure that is needed, although it is in line with the chip value of other WSOP tournies. There is a 48 player cap and if reached it would create a $40m prizepool and somewhere in the region of $17m for 1st..

Cue arguements about buying a bracelet (assuming there is one) and the all time money list which currently only requires $16m to take the top spot, although one would guess Seidel will just win it anyway.

2+2 poster ncpokeresq offers a half decent legal analysis of Ivey v. Tiltware which can be read here. It's posted in NVG so take it for what it's worth...

Titlware's response was clearly written by an angry hormonal teenager:

“Contrary to his sanctimonious public statements, Phil Ivey’s meritless lawsuit is about helping just one player – himself. In an effort to further enrich himself at the expense of others, Mr. Ivey appears to have timed his lawsuit to thwart pending deals with several parties that would put money back in players’ pockets. In fact, Mr. Ivey has been invited -- and has declined -- to take actions that could assist the company in these efforts, including paying back a large sum of money he owes the site. Tiltware doubts Mr. Ivey’s frivolous and self-serving lawsuit will ever get to court. But if it does, the company looks forward to presenting facts demonstrating that Mr. Ivey is putting his own narrow financial interests ahead of the players he professes to help.”

Rapidly losing respect for the team over at Full Tilt, the knives have come our from some of the better known pro's - looks like that story has a long way to go.

Event #2: $25,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Holdem Championship is about to kick off with day 3. The final 8:

Matt Marafioti vs Gus Hansen
Jake Cody vs Anthony Guetti
David Paredes vs Yevgeniy Timoshenko
Nikolay Evdakov v Eric Froehlich

Some interesting match ups there. Hansen sent Dwan packing in the last round and Timoshenko is just a monster. The structre is interesting too, players get an inital stack, then two 'rebuy' options which they can use at any time.

We'll probably start to see some players multi tabling as Event #4: $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em kicks off today with what looks like a huge field for a $5k - Negreanu, Binger, Shulman and Liv Boeree are among the early chip leaders. Live updates can be found on Pokernews.

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WSOP Day 1 - Phil Ivey not playing WSOP, Bord and Juanda have a scrap

Well, the first 24 hours or so of the WSOP haven’t been without event, that much is for sure.

One thing I forgot to mention in my opening post yesterday was the stick that Full Tilt and other pros who represent sites who are yet to return player money would get from other players.

It was a pretty big oversight, because clearly those who have significant amounts of money tied up in these sites are going to be emotionally charged and in an environment where they are able to confront well known associates of the sites face to face.

It looks like first to create a scene was James Bord, who politely waited around for Jon Juanda to finish his match in the $25k HU event before launching into what appears to be a tirade of abuse at the Full Tilt pro.

Rio security were seen in the lobby giving Bord a hard time about his actions afterwards. Let’s hope there isn’t a hard penalty for his actions despite the fact that they were clearly not the best way to approach any situation that may have occurred.

After the words ‘thieving’ and ‘disgrace’ were heard it sounds like he made a physical threat which I’m sure the Rio security team will have to take seriously. It’s worth noting that Bord is British, so while it’s unlikely any of his own money is held up it’s possible he does have a significant interest in any horses he may have or money owed he’s not getting. There is some speculation that it may not have anything to do with Full Tilt paying out US players.

If Bord and Juanda’s tiff at the Rio was a warm up, then clearly Phil Ivey’s announcement on Facebook was the main event…

To cut a fairly long story short: Phil Ivey isn’t playing in the WSOP this year, and he’s files a law suit against Tiltware, the company that operates Full Tilt Poker.



Phil's statement from Facebook (page can be found here):

For many years, I have been proud to call myself a poker player. This great sport has taken me to places I only imagined going and I have been blessed with much success. It is therefore with deep regret that I believe I am compelled to release the following statement.

I am deeply disappointed and embarrassed that Full Tilt players have not been paid money they are owed. I am equally embarrassed that as a result many players cannot compete in tournaments and have suffered economic harm.
I am not playing in the World Series of Poker as I do not believe it is fair that I compete when others cannot. I am doing everything I can to seek a solution to the problem as quickly as possible.

My name and reputation have been dragged through the mud, through the inactivity and indecision of others and on behalf of all poker players I refuse to remain silent any longer. I have electronically filed a lawsuit against Tiltware related to the unsettled player accounts. As I am sure the public can imagine, this was not an easy decision for me.

I sincerely hope this statement will ignite those capable of resolving the problems into immediate action and would like to clarify that until a solution is reached that cements the security of all players, both US and International, I will, as I have for the last six weeks, dedicate the entirety of my time and efforts to finding a solution for those who have been wronged by the painfully slow process of repayment.

The news came by way of Facebook with conformation seemingly from Wicked Chops Poker first after speaking to Phil's agent.

Without the slick PR machine of Full Tilt behind Phil I guess we can forgive the strange medium and approach of the announcement, including the 'PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIAYE RELEASE' on his website.



While some people are complaining about Phil's own self interest or some other agenda he might have I personally have a lot of respect for Phil and this really only cements his reputation as a stand up guy in my opinion.

Tom Dwan has publicly stated (by way of his Twitter account) that he will return all of the money he's made from Full Tilt in the event that players don't get their money back and that he'll be playing the WSOP.

In other news, Joe Sebok arrives tomorrow, that should be interesting...

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...and so it begins

With the Casino Employees event already underway and the $25k HU NLHE starting in a few hours the 2011 WSOP is underway.

Who will win their first bracelet? Who will win more than one bracelet this year? What prop bets will be won and lost over the coming weeks? Will Black Friday have a significant impact on prelim event field sizes? How about the main event? Will a well known pro make the final table in the main event?

All this and more to be answered in the next six weeks...

I'll be updating at various points on interesting events, prop bets, results and anything else I find interesting. It's unlikely I'll be in Vegas this year due to work commitments so I'll be updating the blog to help me cope.

BOOM - Poker Documentry Trailer

More great work from Ryan Firpo, Jay Rosenkrantz and Taylor Caby.

From what I understand there are a number of high stakes cash game players involved in the project, both in content and in financing.

You can see the trailer here:

They started producing/filming this before Black Friday, so my hat goes off to them for adjusting the content and coninuing with the project.

AP/UB File For Bankruptcy

Well, I can't say I'm surprised.

I never really played at either site, mostly because when I first tried back in 2007 I didn't really like the software and beyond that everything that was widely reported on various news sites and forums put me off for good. Other sites had great software, great games and great support, so there was no reason to play at either.

I really don't think people should have been playing there. I understand that many of the players may not have known, and not everyone reads ITH/2+2 or other sites they would have seen the news and details on but many people played there simply because it was soft and the games were better than they were elsewhere.

I don't believe that these people deserve to lose thier money in any way, because nobody does, but if you were educated on the matter (and you have to assume that most people with big balances were) then you really should have known better.

Sadly, for those with large balances trying to sell at ~15c on the dollar: I don't even think your funds there are worth that.

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'Federated Sports' Poker League Season 1

The roster for the first season of the Annie Duke/Jeffrey Pollack has been announced and it's actually better than I expected.

While I still don't agree that someone can just decide to set this up and call it what they have, it's clear they have put a significant amount of effort into the writing the criteria to get the players they want.

Criteria as follows:

The 5 Year Card was awarded to 27 players who met the following criteria:
- At least $4.0 million in adjusted lifetime earnings, with the single largest win capped at $2.0 million
- At least 3 major lifetime titles
- At least 9 cashes since January 1, 2008, for a total of at least $600,000 won

The 3 Year Card was awarded to 55 players who met the following criteria:
- At least $2.5 million in adjusted lifetime earnings, with the single largest win capped at $1.5 million
- At least 1 major lifetime title
- At least 9 cashes since January 1, 2008, for a total of at least $500,000 won

The 2 Year Category A Card was awarded to 36 players who met the following criteria:
- At least $2 million in adjusted lifetime earnings, with the single largest win capped at $1 million
- At least 1 major lifetime title
- At least 6 cashes since January 1, 2008, for a total of at least $300,000 won

The 2 Year Category B Card was awarded to XX players who met the following criteria:
- At least $1.25 million in adjusted lifetime earnings, with the single largest win capped at $750,000
- At least 9 cashes since January 1, 2008, for a total of $600,000 won

It is of course a shame to see no consideration of cash game play or online tournament results but adding either of those means a lot more work (if it's even possible in the case of cash game play) so I can see why they have restricted it to live tournament results.

From the Bluff article:

'For a tournament to qualify it must have been an open tournament with a buy-in of at least $1,500 and the field had to be a minimum of 21 players. The event must also have been publicly announced for at least 30 days prior to starting.'

So none of those 18 man SNG's with $100k buy-ins that get announced a day before are going to count, which is definitely a good thing.

It will be interesting to see how many players will actually turn out to play in these tournaments. I think we can assume that a field of some of the best players in the world with none of the casual and non-professional players that make live tournaments actually worth playing might put some players off.

We may end up with fairly small field tournaments with someone like Mike Matusow or Men Nguyen able to claim to be the 'best in the world' after beating a field of 50 players, which would be a shame.

Personally I think the best talent sits in the '2 Year Category B Card' list which contains people like Christian Harder, Jimmy Fricke, Andrew Robl and Peter Jetten. I'll take them over the Phil Hellmuth/Howard Lederer type players any day.

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Seiborg (feat. Erik Seidel)

Just in case anyone hasn't seen this yet, excelent work from SrslySirius, DRybes and the team behind The Micros:

Seiborg

Looks like Erik Seidel has been a great sport in helping create this. I'm not sure if this is the only/main video but I'm surprised it's only been viewed 25,000 times since April 29th.

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US Players Starting To Get Money Back

Great news that PokerStars has started to pay out to US players who are no longer able to play on the site.

Reports are that withdrawals are processing with little or no problems.

This should ease some of the concern around smaller numbers at the WSOP this year and give lots of players hope that funds from other sites will be recovered.

I wonder what all the players with huge balances will do with the money? I'm sure we'll hear some great tales of degeneracy in the coming months.

Fingers crossed for those with money in Full Tilt and AP/UB.

This is a great boost to me personally as the majority of the players I back play on Stars (In addition to non-US facing sites) so while I still face some interesting transfer issues now that 'ship it to me online' is no longer an option I'm glad the money is back in safe hands.

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Online Poker Advertising

It's really weird seeing adverts from poker rooms like Sky Poker, Betfair and some other smaller sites on forums and other poker related sites. They were so much a part of the furniture that they really jump out at me, I'm so used to seeing the same banners and logos everywhere.

I guess if you remove the two biggest sites everyone else can afford to enter the market where advertising is concerned.

I wonder if we'll see a bunch more sites putting patches on players at the WSOP this year? Could be a nice opportunity for a site with a decent marketing budget to get some great exposure.

US Facing Poker Sites

I have received a number of emails in the last couple of days offering great deposit bonuses and other deals to encourage people to play at the poker sites still able to accept US players.

I'm not American so it makes no difference to me, but for anyone who is I'd strongly advise that you don't deposit on these sites. While some of the bigger sites have been able to cut deals to potentially release funds, I can't see the smaller sites negotiating the return of players money.

The sites emailing these offers really don't have your best interests at heart, as they'll get a percentage of your rake or a one off sign up bonus when you sign up and deposit through them.

They have nothing to lose, you do.

DOJ Gives Domain Names Back

Good news from the DOJ press release, looks like FTP and Stars are getting domain names back to facilitate the return of funds to US players.

The document suggests there was an agreement, looking forward to hearing what that was.

UB and AP not named, as much as I dislike the sites I'd prefer for people who have money there, however silly that might have been, to get it back.

Info from Kevmath on Twitter.

The Fallout and the Future

Over the last could of days I’ve read various blogs and forum posts about the ‘Poker Apocalypse’ and I agree with most of what’s being said. I think that in some cases people may be over reacting a bit (on Friday people were suggesting a worldwide shutdown was coming within 48 hours) but overall players and the poker media have been fairly objective and relatively calm given the situation.

However, the one thing I have to disagree with that I’ve seen written in a number of places is that the removal of PokerStars and Full Tilt from the market (temporary or otherwise) could be a good thing. I understand the angle people are coming from, if you remove the two biggest sites you remove the fact that they have somewhat of a monopoly on the market.

The problem is that these sites are where they are because they are good at what they do. I’m sure everyone has had their problems with support at these sites over the years, but they are generally very quick to respond and helpful when they do. These two sites have set the bar in almost every respect, from tournaments and cash games to new concepts like rush poker, multi entry tournaments and double or nothings. Their size, profitability and volume of players allows them to try new things, develop new concepts and invest in the software, support teams and players.

Also, it’s not like there is the pool of players knocking around online and they just so happen to pick FTP or Stars. In most cases it’s one of these two sites that actually got people online to play poker on the internet in the first place. They run TV shows as headline sponsors, they run adverts in traditional media, magazines, websites and they have done a great job of adopting social media.

They also do a great job of retaining players with their frequent player programmes and rakeback. While I’m still bitter at the fact that I don’t get rakeback at FTP, Stars has kept me playing there with frequent deposit bonuses, VIP instant rewards and FPP bonuses.

Let’s not forget that they have had competition in the US (and continue to do so in Europe and the rest of the world) and Doyles Room, Cake Poker and the like have failed to capture enough of the market to make them anywhere near as competitive.
It’s also important to note that they have always had major competition, each other. When FTP decided to try to break the world record for the number of entrants in a tournament, Stars decided to beat them the week after. When you’re lucky enough to make a feature or final table in a big live tournament you do have at least two options most of the time on who to represent.

I have no affiliation with these sites, don’t have an advertising interests and the reason I’m not talking about UB/AP is because I don’t play there, and haven’t since all the original superuser details came out.
I’m all for competition and healthy competition clearly has its advantages for players and the poker media, but let’s not get carried away with what we want to see in the future.

After all, nobody was complaining when they were still around.

PokerStars Big Game Canceled

I'm sure there will be more shows and other media axed as I said in my post a few days ago, but I've just read that the PokerStars Big Game might not be back and that makes me sad.

It's a real shame because it was a fantastic concept and I liked the range of players they had on. I really enjoy High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark but they do feature a lot of the same players. It was great to see some decent online high stakes pros mix it up with the old guard and the loose cannon.

I'm a huge Huff & Stapes fan and I have to admit I actually quite like Gobboboy too, so I'm gutted to see such talent come off TV so soon after it got going. Hopefully they'll land on their feet and find something else soon.

It's a sign of things to come unfortunately.

Severity of DOJ Online Poker Charges

There seems to be growing speculation that the charges brought against the individuals involved in Stars. Full Tilt and UB/AP could have wider reaching consequences for the sites than initially thought, namely that they may actually end in the shutdown of all three major online poker sites.

It seems like a genuine threat, which is very concerning. The speculation is being lead by the money laundering charges. These are the most serious because regardless of your stance on online poker or gambling in general money laundering is a very serious crime. It’s unlikely that the DOJ would even have pursued the case if it were not for the money laundering part from what I’ve read.

So while we’re (and I’m referring to non-US players) all breathing a sigh of relief that we can still play poker and the games haven’t been effected in a devastating way, we could be in for a shock some time soon if this is pursued.

As I said in my previous post, sites like Party are in great shape at the moment, and even more so if the DOJ is planning to bring the hammer down. Only time will tell if their patience, and money, will pay off.

Post US Player Ban Fields Exceed Guarantees

I’m surprised at the field sizes online after ‘Black Friday’ as some of them were much bigger than expected in light of not taking US players.

It looks like a few players from the US did actually manage to play online yesterday. I think they have simply not logged out since before the ban, so I suppose they’ll be good until the reset servers.

While I can’t really blame them for getting in one last Sunday grind, I don’t think I’d continue to play in light of everything that’s happened. They might have been better off using the fact that they can still play to transfer money to other players who can get it offline for them, although there are obviously risks associated with that too.

Some of the bigger tournies had prizepools as follows:

Stars:

Kickoff ($75k Guarantee) $86k
Warm Up ($500k) $747k
Daily 40k - $106k
DNG ($200k) $251k
Storm ($200k) $301k

FTP:

Double Deuce – Multi Entry ($200k) $200k
FTOPS Event 1 – Multi Entry ($1m) $1.39m

With the reduced guarantees there wasn’t much chance of the overlay many people (myself included) were expecting. This is even more impressive when you add in the fact that French and Italian players no longer play on the main sites. It’s a mark of how far poker has come, as when the UIGEA came into effect Party dropped the Party Million to a $200k guaranteed tournament.

Stars and FTP have both done a great job at attracting players from around the world with sponsorship deals, TV shows and international marketing.

It doesn’t look like online poker is going anywhere yet. Hopefully it will be alive and kicking when US player get their freedom back.

New Online Poker World

The news that US players are no longer able to play online poker and that accounts are currently frozen is clearly bad for everyone involved in the industry, but what can we expect to see now?:

Online Marketing – It doesn’t look good for forums, poker podcasts, affiliate sites and anything that pretty much relies on two or three main sites as sources of income. I guess these types of income could be replaced by non-poker advertising for products likely to appeal to the poker player market, but with a potential reduction in traffic this might be a hard sell.

Player Sponsorship – Apparently Viffer was a couple of days away from signing a big deal with PokerStars. I wonder what will happen to all the ‘paid’ pros at FTP and Stars? The Red Pros at FTP have fairly basic rakeback type deals they they’ll simply lose out on those, but some of the deals must be fully contracted, monthly payment deals. I think we’ll see a few more players getting dropped.

Poker on TV – The PokerStars Big Game, Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker. The TV shows that bring poker to the mainstream on TV are on the whole sponsored by Stars and FTP. These shows were a key way for these sites to market to an audience that they don’t have access to via traditional marketing and advertising activity. I’m interested to see what happens to these now.

Live Poker - It seems likley that there will be an increase in live play in the US, but the WSOP should be interesting this year, as online sites were a common route to the Main Event. We could see a field of 5,500 or less this year. There may also be a knock on effect on the prelims if money in online accounts remains frozen. Many players would have been cashing that out to play this year.

Non US players - I think we'll continue to see a strong market, especially on Stars. Even tonight, the Daily Ninety Grand is running on Stars, with full guarantee, 2,244 players and a $112k prizepool. The Sunday Million has had $500k dropped from it’s guarantee (to $1m) but things seem about as normal as they could be, given the circumstances.

In all this is difficult to speculate on how long (if ever) it will take to get US players back online, but will people keep sponsorship deals, TV shows, training sites and other activity in operation in the hope that if they keep going they’ll be around and ready for a second poker boom if poker gets legalised?

Party Poker looks to be in good shape now. That $300m or whatever they paid to the US government doesn't look so bad now...

NBC Heads Up

The player lists are up for the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship. The tournament features a $25,000 buy in up $5k from last year. The tournament will be broadcast on NBC in April and May in six episodes.

It looks like Tony G and Sammy Farha are notable absences this year, although I understand Sammy plays mainly PLO cash and there are probably some more deserving players, but you can't argue with the entertainment value of Tony G. I'd also like to see a Luke Schwartz or someone like that too.

I'm not sure what Layne Flack does to get invited, but surely they could find some better options? I'm not really sure what he adds. There are plenty of great/entertaining players who would be much better to watch.

As always there is some potentially interesting matches, like Mizzi v Racener due to the 'bottom dealing' Chinese Poker saga that's ongoing at the moment or Negranu v Duke for the various spats they have had over the years.

As always there are a few celebrities in the field such as Emmitt Smith, Don Cheadle and Jason Alexander. I guess we can include Kara in that category but quite frankly, who cares how she gets in.

Looks like we're in for an interesting tournament. Looking forward to watching.

Full list available here:

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110223005594/en/Emmitt-Smith-Don-Cheadle-Jason-Alexander-Join

Unusually busy period for poker...

Glad to be back from my studies and blogging again, looking forward to 2011, and it's already shaping up to be an interesting year.

It's been a busy few weeks for the poker community:

Pokerstars pro Daniel Negreanu gets off to a cracking start in 2011 by overtaking Ivey in the all time money list after his second place finish in the $100k super high roller event at the PCA. I have a feeling these two might be swapping places on a regular basis as long as Ivey stays motivated to play tournaments. 38 runners for such a high buy-in and the appearace of Guy Laliberté are both good things for the poker world. Looking forward to seeing the TV shows as this was all filmed for

As much as I hate to give them any more blog space than they already have, Phil and Annie leaving UB is a big story, and I expect the bigger story will be where they end up. I'm not sure how marketable Annie is (and I assume her brother might be able to help her at FTP, where she fits the current team quite well) but Phil clealry has appeal as he's on every TV poker show going, including the big game. Will be interesting to see how this plays out, and if Phil will hold out on legeslation details before signing a new deal.

Pokerstars Home games looks like an interesting concept, I have to admit I haven't looked into this in much detail yet, but the option popped up on the client today and I like the overall concept, great idea for Stars, hope it brings more players to the wider game too. Might even have to get my old home game online!

It's shaping up to be an interesting year already, no new years resoltions from me, but I will be trying to play as much as possible this year, especially before the summer.

Pokerstars WBCOOP

I have registered to play in the WBCOOP PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! You too can Play Poker Online at PokerStars.com and take part in the WBCOOP which is open to all Bloggers by registering on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 453802

As ever Stars has put on some good prizes, offering loads of SCOOP tickets as prizes in both the qualifiers and in the main event.

KK Holds

I was on an annual festive pub crawl that we do each year between Christmas and New Year yesterday and one of the games we played was a blind hand of poker where the winner took all the stakes and had to nominate someone to drink a forfeit drink with the proceeds.

We dealt out 9 hands and I got KK. I was explaining that it was pretty unlikely I hold given that 9 hands would see a showdown. Two other players also had a King and there was only one ace out and some nice looking suited connectors. To my complete surprise I actually hold and take down the hand.

Frustratingly I have been grinding tournies today to try to ensure a top 2,000 TLB score for the Stars Passport promo this month and have been dealt KK 11 times. Guess how many won a pot at showdown?

Big Swings

I have been running pretty badly through most of 2009, but somehow I feel a bit better after reading about some of the swings at the nosebleeds.

It looks like Brian Townsend lost around $1.6m to Isildur1 (running really bad) in less than 9k hands of HU. That set the scene for what is the biggest winning day in online history, with Brian Hastings winning more than $4m from Isildur1 (who also ran terrible).

Obviously these guys are beyond good and probably more dedicated to learning the game than just about anyone out there. However, the sheer amount of money involved in these swings is crazy. I really hope the action continues at these stakes as Isildur1 has been very interesting to watch.

Learning To Win Flips

Clearly I won a few to get to these positions, but that doesn't make me feel any better.

From the last 2 weeks:

$55 Stars - 16/2100
$11r Stars - 22/2500
$75 FTP - 7/780
$33 Stars 500 Max - 6/450
$16 Stars Turbo - 20/1600

Most of these were for decent stacks too. I haven't won a tournie with > 500 players this year and I'd really like to take one down before Christmas.

I think part of the problem is all the huge fields online these days. My average field size this year is 1900, so the variance I encounter is bound to be huge. I should probably mix in some slightly higher buy-in tournies with smaller fields, but I just can't resist a field of 2k terrible players and the prospect of a five figure payday for 1st.

Volume is an issue too. I haven't had the chance to play anywhere as much as I would have liked this year, and there really isn't that much action at the times I want to play outside of my regular tournies.

Funny Vegas Story

You know that strange little exchange when someone asks you for the time:

Them: Excuse me, do you have the time?

You: Sure *checks watch* it's half past

Them: Half past?

At this point it becomes apparent that they don't know what hour it is and you'll let them know.

Today a friend told me what can only be described at the Vegas version of this story.

He's standing in the Bellagio lobby and a well dressed, tired looking man in his 40's walks over and asks for the time. My friend looks down at his watch and informs the gentleman that it's 6 o'clock.

The man responds 'Erm, 6 o'clock in the morning?'

It was 6pm. I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that he didn't know if it was evening or morning, or that he guessed and got it wrong.

I can't wait to go back to Vegas. Unfortunately I have five long months to wait until I'll next be in town.

WSOP Stories

With the WSOP Main Event well under way I thought I'd share some of my favourite stories so far:

Phil Hellmuth's Entrance was pretty ridiculus. He's going to have to die soon because there is no way he can keep topping this year after year. I'd like to put him in touch with Naseem Hamed about using a magic carpet to get him to his seat next year.

Everyone winning multiple bracelets (Ivey, Parker, Lisandro (3!) and Mueller) is also something I'm a big fan of. I know the some of the fields for this win weren't that big, but I think it goes some way to showing that poker is a game of skill, and not a complete lottery.

Ivey winning his bracelet prop bet. You guys were mental to bet against him when he's motivated. I wonder if he'll get action next year?

Tales of terrible play. People checking the nuts behind (a few of these) and a couple where people were confused (sometimes in epic pots) when the chips get pulled their way when they hold 88 on a 855 board vs 85 or similar. Poker is alive and well in 2009, even in $10,000 buy-in events...

WSOP Standings on the official site. You mean the USA are winning the most events with the most cashes in a 'world series' held in America with fields populated by 90% Americans? Wow.

WSOP 2009

It's finally that time of year again and in the Rio, Las Vegas, several thousand miles away from where I'm sitting, a bunch of casino employees are rifling chips and playing the first event of 2009 World Series of Poker.

Unfortunately work has been far too busy of late for me to get much poker in, but the first event of the WSOP always gets me excited.

It seems like some poker players arrivals were delayed somewhat today by the presence of one of the most famous airplanes in the world. It would appear that Barack Obama landed at McCarren airport today just in time for the first event of the WSOP.

Although I'd love to think he's here for tomorrows $40k NLHE event, it looks like he's in town on a bit of a fundraising mission for upcoming Democratic campaigns.

He may also drop by to see Oscar Goodman, the Mayor of Las Vegas after some comments he made about Vegas (and bankers):

"You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime. There's got to be some accountability and some responsibility.”

Somewhat ironic then that he should jet into Vegas on Air Force One, fully funded by the taxpayer of course, after making this comment. I'm sure I'm not the first (and certainly won't be the last) to point that out. To be perfectly fair to Obama, of whom I am a huge fan, how the hell else are you going to get to a city in the middle of the desert?

There is also news he's meeting with WSOP commissioner Jeffrey Pollack and a number of pros, which can only mean good things for the world of poker.

April Update

It’s been a funny few weeks since my last post. I really enjoyed playing in the SCOOP at PokerStars and managed to play 15 or 16 events in total. Although I think the mix of events they offered was good, I think they could have tried to space the game types out more evenly. There were a few periods of 2-3 days during the series where there were no events I wanted to play.

The event I was really looking forward to was the $22 rebuy towards the end of the series. Coincidentally this was my best result, finishing 24th from over 9,500 runners. Overall I made a profit of $1,690 for the entire series after cashing in 3 events. That’s not too bad, but playing in these events did take me away from my normal cash games, where I would, on average, make more over the period.

I still seem to have a real issue with closing tournaments though. The SCOOP finish was pretty frustrating, but here is a selection of deep runs from my last 6 weeks:

24/9,500 (Stars $22 rebuy)
16/3,250 (Stars $55)
19/4,290 (Stars $55)
8/850 (FTP $75)
14/2,250 (FTP $26)
12/910 (FTP $26)

The $75 FTP tournie was the only one I managed to final table, going in 2/9 in chips. I lost half my stack with QQ < AK then, rather amusingly, busted when I shoved AK into QQ.

When I start to get deep my absolute priority is the win, so these finishes aren’t the result of careful tight play folding my way up the payscales. I don’t think I’m going too far in the opposite direction either. I do increase the aggression as stacks get smaller relative to the blinds and I certainly seek to exploit players who seem to tighten up, especially when we are nearing a big pay jump.

Maybe it’s just the variance I need to overcome. In the above finishes there is one flush < flush, two flips, one AK < KJ, one AQ < AK and one hand where I flopped top two vs a flush draw and he hit for my bustout hands.

No really spewy hands, and I was only short when I busted in one of these too, so I would have had a decent stack in any of the rest had I won my bustout hand, and of course would have been sailing far closer to the win.

I just need to keep grinding and getting deep and I'll take something down eventually...

Improved WSOP Structure

“It’s a tough economy, so we wanted to make sure our poker players were getting the most value,”

If that's what it takes to get more starting chips and extra levels at the WSOP this year then I'm all for it.

It looks like the $1500 events will be starting with $4500 chips now, as supposed to $3000. I think the added levels will have the biggest impact though. If they add a 75/150 level the early stages of the smaller events will allow for a lot more play, especially when players are starting with an extra 1500 chips. As the events get deeper there should be more chips in play, which can only be good news. I'm sure they will still be a bit of a crapshoot, but it's a step in the right direction. It remains to be seen how much longer it will take to finish he events however, those going deep in weekend $1500 event are probably in for some long hours at the tables.

The Main Event will start with 30,000 chips this year instead of the 20k stacks players have started with for the lest few years. I'm sure this is partly because they need to have a consistent dollar value (3x) for tournament chips (otherwise you could potentially take chips from an event where you get more for your buy-in) but should also have some interesting implications for what is already a deep starting stack.

It should make it even funnier when people stack off with top pair on the flop this year. With 300 BB's that's going to take some doing.

I suck at closing

Some tournie finishes from the last 3 days:

29th/1800 in the $55 $80k at Stars
18th/600 in the $55 $20k at FTP
22nd/2200 in the $11 rebuy $70k at Stars

Then the last 3 days in the same tournie - the $26 $27.5k at FTP:

27th
16th
33rd

All in fields of aound 1500. Fun times.

Running Good

I think it's fair to say I run somewhat badly after this hand from tonights $80k on Stars:

PokerStars Game #24868753242: Tournament #139354490, $50+$5 Hold'em No Limit - Level VIII (150/300) - 2009/02/12 17:01:39 ET
Table '139354490 132' 9-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: ZAR84 (2085 in chips)
Seat 2: uvw03191155 (6028 in chips)
Seat 3: Hikkespett (3317 in chips)
Seat 4: Shotgun747 (14651 in chips)
Seat 5: .xXmagnetXx. (24909 in chips)
Seat 6: SirSmokey33 (23430 in chips)
Seat 7: Für Elise (16955 in chips)
Seat 8: arestone (6846 in chips)
Seat 9: Icemen85 (14294 in chips)
ZAR84: posts the ante 25
uvw03191155: posts the ante 25
Hikkespett: posts the ante 25
Shotgun747: posts the ante 25
.xXmagnetXx.: posts the ante 25
SirSmokey33: posts the ante 25
Für Elise: posts the ante 25
arestone: posts the ante 25
Icemen85: posts the ante 25
Hikkespett: posts small blind 150
Shotgun747: posts big blind 300
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to arestone [Jd Jc]
.xXmagnetXx.: folds
SirSmokey33: folds
Für Elise: folds
arestone: raises 600 to 900
Icemen85: folds
ZAR84: folds
uvw03191155: calls 900
Hikkespett: folds
Shotgun747: folds
*** FLOP *** [Ts Jh 7s]
arestone: bets 2500
uvw03191155: raises 2603 to 5103 and is all-in
arestone: calls 2603
*** TURN *** [Ts Jh 7s] [Js]
*** RIVER *** [Ts Jh 7s Js] [As]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
arestone: shows [Jd Jc] (four of a kind, Jacks)
uvw03191155: shows [Ks Qs] (a Royal Flush)
uvw03191155 collected 12681 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 12681 | Rake 0
Board [Ts Jh 7s Js As]
Seat 1: ZAR84 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: uvw03191155 (button) showed [Ks Qs] and won (12681) with a Royal Flush
Seat 3: Hikkespett (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: Shotgun747 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: .xXmagnetXx. folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: SirSmokey33 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: Für Elise folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: arestone showed [Jd Jc] and lost with four of a kind, Jacks
Seat 9: Icemen85 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

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.

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.

Fun!

You know whats lots of fun?

Being 2nd in chips with 20 left in a tournie with a big field, and getting your money in pre with AA vs KK against the guy who's first in chips.

And losing.

You know whats even more fun than that?

Less than an hour later, after grinding your way through 450 people to get to the FT of a different tournie, getting it in pre with AA vs KK against the CL when 2nd in chips.

And busting in 9th.

Bad Party (Gaming)

The biggest shareholder in PartyGaming and therefore party Poker, has
agreed to pay US authorities $300m (£195m) and plead guilty to a
charge related to illegal online betting.

This person is also in the unfortunate position of being called Anurag
Dikshit, which I know I probably shouldn't find funny. He's an
extremely wealthy Indian businessman who owns a 27% stake in the
company. This will probably be a landmark case where online gambling
in the US is concerned, as it appears two other major Party
shareholders have not followed the same course of action. I also
suspect many of the Poker and other online gambling sites still
operating in the US will be very interest to hear the outcome of this
case.

It's all a much more serious than I had originally thought, with
Dikshit potentially facing up to 2 years in prison. It seems likely
that the negotiations, coupled with Anurag's willingness to cooperate
will result in a settlement with the US DoJ, but it's certainly one to
watch over the coming weeks.

On a more personal note, as a result of playing cash at FTP over
the past couple of weeks, I have also fired up a few tournies there
having never really played anything other than the Sunday $750k. Last
night I busted my first Full Tilt Pro, by sucking out on a short
stacked Lee Watkinson with KQ > AJ, who I didn't even realise was at
my table until I got the pop-up afterwards.

There seems to be so many of these guys in the mid stakes tournies
that I don't think it'll be long until I'm able to cover a whole room
with the commemorative T-Shirts.

Stars Blogger Tournie

I played in this the last 2 years, and will be doing so again this year. One of the guys at ITH made the FT last year, so I have a decent target...

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

The WBCOOP is an online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers.

Registration code: 416977

Running good, but not good enough...

It's been a busy few weeks for me away from the felt, so I haven't had much chance to play poker of late. When I have been able to get away from my clients pre Christmas demands it's been a great chance for me to bubble final tables and generally run good right up until it really counts. I have posted a 10th, 12th and 15th all in tournies with over 500 players in the past two weeks.

Outside of that I've been keeping up a half-respectable volume at the cash tables, dropping down to $200 NL 6-Max so that I can play a few more tables. I have been playing well in these games and running at what I would imagine is about expectation. Nothing to shout about really, just good old fashioned grinding to make up for a lack of playing opportunities.

I have a decent amount of time over the next 3 or 4 weeks so I intend to get really stuck in and get some decent volume posted. There are a few decent tournies over the holiday period, so I might focus on getting back to my tournie A game and taking things a bit more seriously going into the new year.

There has been some interesting field sizes at a few of the larger live tournies, notably the Bellagio events, but I'll write up my thoughts on that when I have a bit more time.

WSOP Taxes

Sometimes I hate living in the UK. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things I love about this amazing and unique country, but from time to time I get annoyed with the weather, the way the country is run or a number of other random annoyances.

It's easy to just see the negatives, but it's important that you don't take the positives for granted. One of these is that I don't have to pay tax on my poker winnings. This suits me for two reasons, the first is that obviously I make more money, but the second is that I'm lazy when it comes to things like record keeping and form filling. So with the news about the taxes due by the players at the Final Table of the WSOP, I'm very grateful for the tax laws on gambling in my home nation.

It's been widely reported so I won't go into too much detail, but overall the players who made at FT this year potentially face an average tax bill of over 42%. There are some changes as the winner Peter Easgate moved to the UK during the break (one definate advantage of the FT delay for him, that's for sure) but the overall result is that all of the players are paying at least some taxes on their winnings.

Had Eastage not moved he would have been in line to pay 72.77% of his winnings, some $6.6 million, straight to Denmark's tax agency. That's a pretty sick rake.

The Poker Economy

The Poker Economy

I have never really thought about how the poker economy until the last couple of months. I always just saw a system of people depositing $100 on a Friday night, donking it off in whatever SNG's or cash games they saw fit with the money filtering through to the winning players (and some others who eventually lose it) and the rake takes it cut. The winning players move up, maybe some cash a bit out, maybe some of the players at the higher levels take some of the money off them and move up, and so on.

Tournament wise I think you have to assume that your average winner of the Sunday million or an FTOPS event doesn't plough the $200k back into the poker economy. It seems likely such is the same for the mid/high stakes grinders too. I think this system is reasonably sustainable, as long as there is a steady supply of people doing the initial depositing and some maniac open shoving every third hand on a Friday night at $2/$4.

So it's interesting to see how things are changing at the moment. Someone told me last week that cash game traffic was actually up at Stars and FTP over the last few weeks. I thought that was a little strange give than they are currently struggling to make some of their more aggressive guarantees at the moment. However, it would appear that at least some of this traffic is coming from other sites where the games are drying up, as I found out this weekend. There has almost always been decent traffic at Cake and Party for the limits I play ($200NL/ $400NL) at the weekend, but that seems to have slowed a bit recently, and with less decent table selection options available, I found my self playing cash at Stars for the first time in ages.

On the positive side, there still seems to be plenty of action online. It feels a bit like early post UIGEA with nobody really knowing what effect it will have on the player pool. The games may be marginally tougher but for now at least, I think the industry is going to be fine. It will be interesting to see what happens other the coming months as people discover that this financial storm may be a little harder to weather than people suspected.

Now of course we have the confirmation/finalisation of UIGEA to fret about. I think the banks currently have a bit more to worry about that spending money on systems to implement the changes made my a pretty open-for-interpretation law, but that’s just the way I see it. The reality is it could be worse, and the harder it is to deposit the less liquidity there will be in the games, so they are bound to get tougher.

Certainly an interesting time for online poker. And only time, as we are all fully aware, will tell.

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.

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.

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.

WCOOP, WSOPE and being bad at poker

After grinding out the cash games last week during the Stars promo I'm back to tournies this week. I have sucked sooo badly all week, repeatedly running up huge stacks and donking them off in a variety of super fun ways. I went deep in a couple but lost key flips/got sucked out on, and had a couple of light shoves called and way behind when short. Didn't really get much going in the Sunday Million or any of the other Sunday tournies last night, so a dissapointing week overall.

Unfortunately all of the guys I backed are out of the WSOP. One guy made the money but busted in the first level. It was fun railing the guys and it was cool being at work in the morning here in the UK and getting the odd update e-mail.

There isn't much on the poker horizon for me a the moment, but two things I'm looking forward to are the WSOPE and the WCOOP, both of which aren't until September.

Since they have added a £1500 (roughly $3k) event to the WSOPE, I initially looked at trying to sat into that, but it appears nobody is running sats to that event, so I may try to buy-in direct. I don't really have the patience or the bankroll to try to win a $25k ME package, so I doubt I'll be bothering with that.

Stars Promo and WSOP

I've played quite a lot of cash games on Stars over the last few days as they were running a double VPP promotion which was just about worth me moving from my usual games at Party. I dropped down a level to $200 NL and ran 10-12 tables of FR. I have to admit after doing so much 3-4 tabling and improving my concentration I struggled a bit to start with but overall I finished up $1,200 which was not too bad, and managed to clear 12,000 VPP's.

I would have liked to do more, but I only really got the chance to play on the final two days of the promotion. It looks like they might be doing a similar one next week so maybe I'll get more time to play then.

It was part of a 4 week '2x' promotion by Stars during the first week of which they had the VPP promo above in addition to a bunch of double chance tournies at $2, $22 and $222. This week they are doubling the guarantees of all of their regular tournaments. I initially thought they might squeeze a small overlay on some of them, but that thought was quickly dismissed when the $50 gtd had an astonishing 2500 runners compared to it's usual 1200, and a $125k prizepool.

I posted on the forum that this was great and all, but only really means I'll be busting out of tournies with bigger prizepools. I didn't disappoint last night, busting from the 100k with KK < A9, from the 90k with AK < QQ, from the 80k with 55 < 85 (he shoved to resteal and I called, river 8 obv) and last but not least the 50k with KK < AA.

Good times.

I have been watching the WSOP ME updates all week too, and a couple of the guys I backed made it to day 2. One has just over 70k in chips, the other is short on 15k. Still plenty of room to play though and they are on separate days (2a and 2b) so at least I get to rail a little tonight and tomorrow. My favourite non poker story from the WSOP so far is of the guy who, when the cards were first in the air at the start of the day, stood up from his chair and crashed two symbols together. He was promptly informed about the excessive behaviour rule or whatever it's called, and told not to do it again. Something tells me he already knew about the rule.

Staking

I have been doing a lot of staking recently, so I thought since it's more interesting than me talking about bubbling final tables or bitching about losing huge pots in cash games as a massive favorite I may as well write about it here.

There are two types of staking deal I engage in. The first is purely for fun, sometimes they make a little profit, sometimes they don't. I still seek to back + EV players but it's usually for small amounts, a typical deal will be someone playing 50,000 hands of $50 NL and me picking up 10% of a $1k seed fund and taking 60-80% of the profits on my share. I often rail these people, try to give them advice and just enjoy being a part of something they are trying to achieve. I have done a few smaller MTT ones too, backing people 100% for a set number of tournies and taking a cut of any profits.

The second type is more about making money. I have backed people for everything from $50 NL to 30/60 FL sometimes picking up all of their action. On the whole these deals have gone very, very well for me. One person I backed made me just over $4.5k in two separate deals (including makeup from the first) over just two months, and my biggest loss to date has been about $500 which I'm more than happy to write off given how well my other deals have gone.

Last week however I encountered my first real issue. I backed a player $2,000 to play $100 NL 6-max with a 20 buy-in BR over a set number of hands. This player was hugely +EV and after running badly at the start and dropping to $50 NL for a while, he eventually clawed it back and went on a nice run towards the end to finish up at $3800 total. We had a 70/30 split in my favour, so I was due to pick up a tidy $1200 profit and he was going to pick up $600 for his efforts.

Unfortunately after the deal had ended he supposedly decided he wouldn't want to play low stakes after being at $100 NL with his newly earned, but ultimately smaller $600 BR, so he proceeded to try to work up a bit more money using the money I staked him while he still had it.

The story is that he was taking shots and first lost the $600, then lost a bunch while tilting, eventually stopping at $2k. This was over a period of about 2 weeks while I didn't hear from him at all (before this we spoke 3-4 times a week, so initially I thought he had done a runner with the whole lot). I managed to get my $2k back which I was happy about after being frozen out and thinking I might end up with nothing, so at least I didn't actually lose anything on the deal.

Obviously I have no way of knowing if his story is true. He has no way to pay the money back, hence the original staking deal, and the only way he could raise more funds was to get another backer, which I would obviously move to block. So I think I have to write that money off, which is annoying, but I think it would be too much effort and stress to try to get it back when I consider my chances to be pretty low from the outset. Ironically I knew he wanted a larger BR, and if he didn't go silent for 2 weeks I was going to alter the deal slightly in his favour to give him a chance to build a half decent BR and start playing for himself.

All this leads to a few deals I have been arranging recently for the WSOP. I had a couple of stakes for people in prelims but I pretty much broke even on those with one early exit and one small cash. However, I have backed no fewer that 7 people for the WSOP Main Event this year, all on different deals. Some of them are buying straight up percentages, which isn't that good of a deal for the backer, but it's just a bit of gamboool with a potentially huge payouts.

So I'll be watching the ME with interest next week and hopefully one or two of my guys will go deep and make me some serious money...

Bubbling Final Tables Is Fun

I often switch between cash and tournies depending on how I feel, but I generally go in patterns of a week or so playing one, then switching.

I think tonight might be the end of my tournie run for a week or so. I ran up a huge stack in the $10 rebuy on stars and made the final 2 tables 1/18. From there I lost like 459 flips and ended up busting in 13th after shoving over the top of a 3x BB raise with JJ, only for him to tank for like 30 seconds and call with KQ.

I can't win the flip and I miss out on what would have been my first FT for a while. On the bright side, I managed my big stack really well and utilised it to stay the CL from about 60 down to the final 2 tables.

So frustrating.

Well, this doesn't happen live...

It's rare I make any stupid mistakes online with regards to bet sizes or accedental calls, so maybe I should be glad that this doesn't happen more often.

I rushed home from a busy day at work to make the $50k gtd on Stars and a few other tournies. About 10 mins in I get QQ in the SB and it folds to the button who just calls for 20. I bump it up to 100 and both the BB and the button call.

Flop = K85 with two hearts and I go to lead for 275 to see where I am.

Instead, I bet 2775, and the BB instacalls.

Interestingly he has 4h 5h for the flush draw, but of course still hits on the river.

So pissed off with myself now. Not because of the bustout, but because the $50k is pretty much the only decent tournie I can play tonight and I definitely wasn't busting on that hand if I didn't make that mistake.

WSOP 2008

So it's WSOP time again. After seeing a few trip reports and live updates my enthusiasm is definitely back, I can't wait to get out there later in the series to tear it up and lose large amounts of money.

One of my favourite things about the WSOP is the stories it brings. So far this year I have heard of the open shoving cash game player who offered to take his whole table elsewhere to play in a limo (to which they obliged) and more recently today's action from the $1k rebuy event where a handful of people are in for $20k+, twice the buy-in for the main event and still on starting stack. It tilts the hell outta me when I'm in for $150 or something in the $10r, but I guess these guys are playing with the same rebuy period approach as me, just with a LOT more money.

All the stuff I have been reading has made me a little annoyed with myself for not playing any WSOP sats this year. I was really excited when they came out, made a half hearted effort to build a W$ roll and then never really followed up on it.

I look forward to posting some interesting stories over the next few weeks, and hopefully some deep runs from either myself or one of a couple of people I have backed this year.

Biggest Cash Pot

Last week I was having a discssion about poker with a friend of mine who mainly plays live. He got me thinking about live poker again, and since I hadn't played for a while and had a 4 day weekend I thought I'd make an effort to play live.

It's fairly obvious from the title, but it went really well. I played two nights running and on the first night I made the final table of a £10 rebuy with 120 runners. I busted in 5th when I shoved 2 pair on the flop vrs a flush draw for half the chips in play and he hit.

I played a great £5/£5 NL cash game after I busted, but it broke up about 30 mins after I started playing as it was already pretty late.

I decided to play the game again the following night. It's a fair bit above my normal $400 NL games online (pretty much $1k NL) but I feel comfortable in the game, and it's not like I'm playing any significant volume.

It was an interesting mix of players, two or three players who knew each other who were quite old and nitty, two younger guys who were loose and aggressive, and the rest were either really straight forward or really awful.

Unfortunately it's not a particularly interesting hand, basically I raised preflop with AK, two callers, JT3 rainbow board, I raise, a guy in MP folds and the other calls. Turn is an offsuit Q so I bet out again, villain re-raises quite big and I flat. The river is a blank and I bet out 1/2 te pot or so and he jams.

I half expected him to have the same hand, but he flipped JT for flopped two pair and I raked in a pot of about £1200, which is roughly $2400. Not much happened in the game after that, but it was petty sweet to cash out my chips rather than just logging off after a win like that.

Not played much online this week, but have run quite deep in the $50k on Stars a couple of times. I made a pretty bad play in one with about 40 left and a decent stack, which I was pissed off about, but I played again the next night and made a similary decent run. I was runnning sooo bad in the $50k, so hopefully this will be the start of me running a little deeper in it from now on. It's pretty much the only decent tournie that starts at a good time for me, so I play it pretty much every time I'm online in the evenings.

Cash Going Well

Not too much going on recently. Didn't really get anywhere with the Sunday tournies this week. I'm a little annoyed about all the FTOPS events starting at 11pm UK time, but not much I can do about that.

I'm running at about 5bb/100 over the last 20k hands of $400 NL 6-max. Not the biggest sample size ever, but I think I'm finding my feet a little more now. I have invested some time in reading through my HH's and watching some videos on Cardrunners and PXF.

There does seem to be lots more decent multi tabling regulars at this limit, but I'm not struggling to find good games, and they also seem to want to steer clear of me unless someone is really spewing which is a good thing I guess. I'm only playing 3-4 tables at the moment, so I think it would be more of a problem if I wanted to start doing more. I can't see that being any time soon though, so I should be okay.

I'm aware I need to start posting more content, I just never seem to think about this blog. I'll try to make some notes when I'm playing so I remember anything interesting and make sure I post about it here.

Titles?

I'm running out of names for titles, so I might start using the date in future. I should probably be more imaginative, but since my posts aren't that frequent they often cover a number of topics, so nothing really covers them all.

I have had a bit more time over the last week or so to play poker, which has made a nice change. I kept trying to play when I didn't have much time or had other things on my mind which inevitably doesn't work.

The other day I started playing what I thought was two turbo double shootouts because I only had a couple of hours to spare. They were both normal speed which I didn't have time to play. I donked around a bit and true to form when you're not trying, I won both my first tables and ran up big stacks at both final tables just before I had to go. I was 1/3 in the $650 satellite with 2 seats and 1/7 or 1/6 in the $215 Sunday million one with 3 seats.

I gave one of my non poker playing friends a quick lesson on how to play internet poker and handed over the controls. Needless to say he won neither seat, pretty much call/folding his stack into oblivion.

gg $765.

I played the Sunday Million for the first time in ages last Sunday. Unfortunately Monday is now an early start and a busy day for me at work, so normally I don't bother. It was the $530 buy-in this week and I came 70th or so for about $3,000. I basically short stacked the whole tournie, I think I had about an hour or so with above avg stack when was floating around 230k ish and the avg was 150-190k.

It's a bank holiday here tomorrow in the UK, so I'll be playing the Sunday tournies again tonight.

They confirmed the WSOP final table delay I spoke about in my last post. I still think it's a pretty crazy idea, but I guess it's probably never going to effect me. It should at least be entertaining to watch the build up and see what they can do with it. On the plus side, if it does create more hype and get more exposure then it will bring more players to the game, which is obviously a good thing.

WSOP Final Table Delay

As some of you may have heard, Harrahs/ESPN are looking at delaying the Final Table of the WSOP by 3 months. The idea is that they would then have the time to follow the players around, build a back story and make the FT more of a global sporting event than it is now.

Some of the main reactions to this are quite funny:

- OMG What if someone dies in that 3 months
- People will collude and do deals
- People will get trained/coached by pros for a % of their winnings

Although I think all of these points are valid, I don't think any would be that big of a deal.

It's possible someone dies during the WSOP while they still have chips anyway. I realise that this is more likely given a 3 month gap in which to croak, but it's still not something that would be a major concern.

As for the training, I think you would be surprised how little you can teach some people in 3 months. I think the better professional players (if any) who make it would suffer a bit as the level of competition would increase, and naturally there will be more information available on them than the randoms who make it to the FT. However, the dynamics of the tournament can change at any time, so much of what they might learn could change in an instant. They suddenly find themselves short, or double through twice and a few players bust early and leave him 5 handed with a huge chip lead.

I don't think it's possible to practice all of those eventualities, so I still think the player who can adapt and draw on his own experiences will still have an edge.



There are some benefits for the players however. They will fill the poker media for 3 months prior to the big day. Their faces will be on the front of magazines, Stars and FTP will sponsor the non-sponsored players and they'll generally get a lot of exposure that they wouldn't otherwise, because normally we only know who makes the FT the day before. I can't even name the people who busted 6th or 7th in previous years, but I definitely would be able to if I got 3 months of them in interviews/magazines/websites.

After saying all this, I still think it's a bad idea. Harrahs are trying to hold on to a TV audience that is losing momentum. There is a lot of poker on TV these days and not enough people to watch it all. It's difficult as a producer of these shows, because fast paced action with vibrant well known pros is what the majority of poker programme viewers want. Only a minority want to see interesting well thought out hands with detailed analysis. When you're trying to appeal to a wide market you don't want to confuse them by saying that 'He floated the flop so that he could shove over the top of any turn card that was unlikely to have hit villains range'

If they want to appeal to the wider audience then this 3 month gap is the way to go.

I have a solution that probably helps both parties though. It's actually really simple.

Run the WSOP episodes DURING the WSOP. It's a long enough event, with 4 starting days you have plenty of time to edit a story together. Then it might be worth having a day or two gap before the final 18 start. That way they can catch up on the action, show the story so far and still keep the players happy. Play down to 9, break for a couple of days to air the last lot of highlights from the final two tables and build some excitement. Do some bios on the players, market the hell out of the final table then screen it live with a reasonable delay.

As long as they remain smart with which hands they show from the earlier tables I don't think this would be a bad idea at all. It keeps it close to the original format and nobody is going to get whacked to improve the equity of someone else at the table.

Back On Track

Things have been much better since I got back from my holiday last week. I think the break did me some good.

I have been on a good cash game run over the last week, running up about 7 or 8 buy-ins over ~25k hands. I'm enjoying playing less tables with the same earn rate, but the $400NL games are definitely as tough, if not tougher than I expected. While I'm enthusiastic about playing cash I'm going to make the effort to learn as much as I can and put some more time into studying the game. I think table selection is going to be much more important than it ever has been for me. I have never really played at a level where you have to do as much as you can to avoid the good regulars.

I'm also looking around at some other sites, as I tend to stick to Party, FTP and Stars. I need a site with decent ring games and a good rakeback deal so I have more choice when the games are a bit dry elsewhere.

I haven't played many tournies since I got back. I played a couple of the big Sundays but other than that I have just been donking around in a few sats.

Last week I played in an awesome home game with 8 guys, of which only one really knew what he was doing. The stakes weren't high but it was certainly interesting trying to adjust my game to play against people who think 4 cards make a straight, and that middle pair is a hand to bet your house on. I might write up a trip report for that as it was good fun and actually highlighted a couple of aspects of my game that I need to work on.

No Fucking Way

Ugh. If these sats were beyond a joke before then I really don't know what they are now. I made another FT of a Double Shootout tonight, making it 4 in the last 6 tournies. I'd trade any of those for a win on the second table of course, but it just doesn't want to happen. I got HU in this one and got my money in with 2 pair vrs a higher 2 pair.

I then made the FT of an $11 rebuy for the same $650 seat. I was only in for $33 and happy to make the FT, even if I was short. This was a regular speed tournie so we were quite deep by the time we got 4 handed. There was 2 seats up for grabs. I played pretty aggressively and was CL with and M of over 40 for quite a while. The shortish stack kept shoving quite deep over my SB raises and I was looking for a good spot to call. I finally picked up AQ, raised, he shoved and I call. He flips A8 and promptly flops an 8 and leaves me 4/4 and desperate to get back in it. I finally bust after shoving 44 into 77. If win the hand we're 3 handed with 2 seats and I'm a decent chip leader.

These are really starting to piss me off now. I have come so close so many times and like I said in my earlier post I'm giving up value in other games I could be playing instead of trying to build a roll for the WSOP sats. I'm actually up about $150 from playing all these sats from all the $80's and $60's that I have won from bubbling, which is pretty funny.

I didn't play the direct WSOP sat as I played live tonight. Got nothing going there but it was just fun tournie I play with a few friends who don't play too seriously.

Off on holiday for a week now so no poker until I return. Let's hope I can pick up some momentum when I get back. One thing is for sure though, I have already worked harder to win a WSOP seat this year than I did to win either of the two I won last year.

Double Shootout Sickness

The $16 Double Shootouts to he $650 WSOP sat are getting beyond a joke now. I made another FT today (3rd in a row) and was shoving light a lot with 6 left and a stack around 1200 to 1800. I pick up the blinds twice in an orbit and get dealt KK in the BB. UTG opens for 600 and I shove for 1700.

UTG calls with 99 and the board runs out T2JQK. So sick. With how bad I'm running in these can I at least win an 80/20? That pot wold have seen me in great shape and this one paid 2 seats as it was nealry full.

I'm free tomorrow night so I might just buy in direct to the WSOP sat. I don't really want to waste too much time playing these to increase my value when I'm missing out on games where my hourly is much higher. Plus they are now tilting the shit outta me.

FU DS

So I seem to be running pretty much normal in everything now except the bloody $16 turbo Double Shootouts to the $650 WSOP sat. I think I have made FT's in about 8 or 9 of them now to no avail. I have been playing/running well on the first tables but just never seem to be able to get anything going on the second.

Even though I promised myself I wouldn't waste too much time with the steps tournies I have managed to run up a couple of entries to the $215 level from the $27's. There are a few decent players going through them, but on the whole the play is pretty soft, even in the $82's.

I'm going to Egypt for a week in a few days, so hopefully I can turn things around when I get back. Having this trip coming up has calmed me down a bit this week. I have booked a five star all inclusive break for myself and my girlfriend courtesy of some of my poker winnings from last year. Knowing that I could pay for that holiday without putting too much of a dent in my bankroll helps keep me focused on playing well and getting back to the other side of the variance I'm experiencing at the moment.

Running Worse Than Judas

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So yeah, I'm running bad. I can't remember ever running as bad as this. I'm just going through one of those stages where I can't seem to win an 80/20, let alone a flip.

I have now made 4 final tables in $650 satellites since my last post, and managed to come 4th in one that paid 3 seats, 9th on one that paid 6 seats, and I came 8th in two of the double shootouts that paid just the one seat.

Last night at $400 NL I had AA < KK then the very next hand I lost with KK on a K29 rainbow board against AA.

I'm repeatedly shoving hands like AQ or TT into AA/KK and repeatedly getting sucked out on when people shove junk into my monsters.

This has never really happened when I have been running bad before, but I think it's starting to effect my play. It's early Friday night and I was about to settle in for a poker filled weekend. Instead I'm going to take a break until at least Sunday night and go party for the weekend.

Edit: Someone told me not to forget that I MINIMUM CASHED the $55 on Stars last night. Fucking great.

WSOP Sat Time!

At last Stars have started their WSOP sats. I don't have as much time as I would like over the next couple of months, but I'm going to do my best to qualify playing from the lower buy-in super sats upwards.

I got off to an awful start tonight - I played 10 of the $27 Step 2's and only advanced in one. Luckily I managed to run that up to a $215 ticket for a step 4 which I'll probably play tomorrow. In this set of 10 I lost to runner runner quads and 3 other hands where my opponent had less than 4 outs, all in spots which would have seen me either in great shape, or busting someone to win the seat.

My luck improved a little in a $16 DS to the $650 I played later. I made the FT but busted after an AQ shove OTT of a LP raiser was called by JT and the obvious T on the flop followed by blanks saw me down to 300 chips.

So a slightly frustrating start, but all the sats I played tonight were pretty soft. The $82 step was reallly tight, even late on, possibly as a result of a few players working their way up.

I think I'm going to try mainly to qualify for the weekly $650 on Stars and try not to waste too much time on the Steps tournies. The $27 rebuys were pretty good for building a W$ roll last year, so I'll be playing those again alongside the $16 DS's and maybe some of the direct qualifier $215's if I manage to win a few seats to the $650's

The sats on Party also look pretty soft. I bubbled one of the $65 sats to thier weekly direct qualifier, but the play was crazy bad on the bubble, and those certainly very exploitable even if they don't run too often.

I also might look into the bracelet race tournies on FTP if they do those again, but I'd prefer not to use too much of my BR to get over to Vegas from the UK, which makes the Stars $2.5k in expenses look like great value.

Time!

I haven't been able to play much over the last couple of weeks. Work has been really busy and unfortunately that's only going to get worse. I have also been busy at the weekend so my playing time has been severely limited.

Not being able to play tournies has been killer. I have trouble motivating myself to play cash ring and SNG's, managing to post just 3,000 hands of $200 NL 6-max and about 50 SNG's in two weeks.



I'm desperate for WSOP sats to start on Stars and FTP to give me something to focus on. I probably used up my luck by winning two seats last year, but I'm definitely going to make an effort to play lots of sats this year and try to get myself out to Vegas again.

I did manage to get a live tournie in last night. There was a disappointingly low turnout of 80 runners, but it was a rebuy, so at least the prizepool was half-decent.

I made the FT with a little above average stack and busted in 5th when, after shovebotting for a while, I got called light when I had AQ and got sucked out on. I picked up $800 for my efforts though, so i can't really complain.

Credit Card Roulette

I have managed to convert a few of my friends to the delights of Credit Card Roulette. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, every time you get a bill in a restaurant or a bar everyone puts their card on the tray and you spin it. Whoever is lucky enough for it to land in their card gets to pay the bill.

The people I have introduced to this game love it already, mainly because I have picked up pretty much every bill since we started doing it last week.

We had a meal out for 6, I lost that one, followed by the Friday lunch AND Friday night food/bar bills. Then on Saturday night 4 of us were out for dinner and I lost that one too.

It's possible to run bad in other ways than just losing of course. One I actually managed to avoid was on Sunday night, our tab in the bar for about 45 mins which came to a massive $21. Awesome.



In poker related news I had a pretty bad day of it in the Sunday tournies last night. I think I made one first break out of 7 or 8 tournies I played, and that was the $55 buy in at 10pm on Stars, my lowest buy-in of the night.

I made a pretty big mistake in the Sunday Million when I could have called an obvious value bet rather than shoving over the top for the rest of my stack with 2 pair like the LAGtard I am. Only two hands in his range were ahead, but I should have just called and kept the pot smaller. I had him covered but I busted a few hands later.

I just need to learn when to control my aggression in spots like this, but I do find it really hard to give too much credit to unknowns in donkfests like the Million.

Still, I picked up on the mistake and learned from it, which is at least one positive I can take away. I might read through a few hand histories from other tournies and take a look at what I have done in similar spots. I haven't played much the past couple of weeks, so it's nice to come back and still be enthusiastic about plugging my leaks and improving my game.

Sunday 100k Donkfest

I made the final table of the Stars 100k guaranteed last night.

It's a 20,000 player field and I ended up finishing 8th when I finally lost a flip. I played exactly zero interesting hands, since nearly all of the poker I played was preflop. It was fun though, and at least I can say I have made the FT of the biggest weekly online tournie.

I think I used up my luckbox for 2008 already though.

ROYAL FLUSH!

Dealer: arestone has a Royal Flush

I was having a bit of a brutal night until this just happened. I have been playing online for nearly 3 years, logged over a quarter of a million hands and tonight I hit my first Royal Flush.

On the river.

It was an EPT Dortmund sat and I had AdTd in the BB. A short stack shoved from LP and I made the call. I didn't even see it until I read the chat.

Now to get one of each suit...

2007

I had a great year in 2007. Considering the relatively low volume I play I had some great scores over the course of the year, ending with my win in the Stars $35k gtd in December.

I cashed for over $50k in total with an ROI approaching 120% over nearly 1000 tournies. I also managed to win 2 WSOP Main Event seats. It's not a massive sample size, but I think that's about as much volume as I'll ever be able to put in as a recreational player.

Playing the WSOP was definitely the poker highlight of the year for me. I really enjoyed my time in Vegas. When I left I felt like I would leave it a few years before coming back, but after a few months I started to feel like I was ready to go back again. I'll definitely be making an effort to play some sats this year and hopefully I'll be able to get out to Vegas again this summer.

The WSOP schedule isn't great for me this year, so what I might do if I win a seat is fly out and play $10k worth of prelims. I did say I'd do this last year though and still ended up playing the main. It really depends if people I know are going to be in town during the main or if there is a big meetup during the preliminary events.

I flip good in 2008 so far. Went out of both the Stars Million and the Full Tilt 750k on Sunday to big flips. I hope it's not a sign of things to come.

Here's to running as hot in 2008.