What's next?

Now that the WSOP is over for 2006, I'm sure some of you are wondering what's next for your favorite (or at least most familiar) professional poker player. In terms of day to day poker playing I've made it a goal to play 1,000 single table tournaments in the month of August. The most I've ever played in a month before is about 600, but if I'm able to do it, I should net some where in the neighborhood of $12,000-$15,000 (plus whatever I make in other poker endeavors). This kind of thing isn't very sexy and there is certainly no glory in doing it, but the dollars are worth the same no matter how you win them.

In other news I keep hearing from friends about how they've told 3 people who I've never met about my blog and they all enjoy it. I'm sure those people, as well as some of the one's I do know, are more interested in the next time I'll be competing for fortune AND glory. The answer is the middle of September in the dubbaya coop. No it's not where the president keeps his chickens, it's the World Championship Of Online Poker (WCOOP)! The WCOOP is a series of 18 tournaments hosted by pokerstars.com with buy-ins ranging from $215 to $5,200 taking place between September 16th and October 1st. I'll be playing 12 of the events with a mix of $215, $320, and $530 events plus two $1,050 events (with a chance of the $2,600 main event if I do well in the earlier events or win my way in via satellite tournament). In "brick and mortar" casinos (meaning not online) $500 and $1000 tournaments aren't a huge deal, but online they are few and far between. The WCOOP is the biggest and best series of online tournaments and between all 18 events pokerstars is guaranteeing $10,000,000 in prize money.

In addition to No Limit Hold 'em I'll also be playing Limit Hold 'em, Pot Limit Hold 'em, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo Split, Razz and H.O.R.S.E. Crazy huh? What the hell are these other games? If you don't know about hold 'em or how to play you can check out the link "some poker basics" which will explain it all with pictures and descriptions. Here is a very brief and I'm sure lacking description of the other games. In 7-card stud players are dealt two cards face down, 4 cards face up and then 1 card face down. After the first three cards are dealt to start the hand there is a round of betting. Then the rest of the cards are dealt out one at at time with a betting round in between each card for a total of 5 betting rounds. Unlike in hold 'em there are no blinds. Instead each player antes at the beginning of each hand. Other than the first round, where the lowest card starts the betting with a small "forced bet" called the "bring in," the highest hand showing starts the betting on each round. At the end players use their 7 cards to make their best 5 card poker hand. In 7-card stud hi-lo split the best hand and the worst hand split the pot evenly with the rule that the worst hand must have 5 distinct cards 8 and below (straights and flushes DO NOT count against you). Sometimes this game is called stud-8 or stud 8 or better. Razz is the same as 7-card stud (and stud-8) except the WORST hand wins (there is no requirement that the winning hand have five cards below 8). In H.O.R.S.E. players play 5 different varieties of poker, each for equal amounts of time. The five games are (H)old 'em (limit), (O)maha (just like hold 'em except each player gets dealt 4 cards, but must use EXACTLY 2 to make your best 5 card poker hand), (R)azz, (S)tud, and stud (E)ight or better. Needless to say, you need to be a complete poker player to excel in 5 different flavors of poker and the cream really rises to the top in horse.

Although hold 'em is my specialty (and where 90% of the buy in money will be focused in the WCOOP), I'm experienced (and pretty good) in the other forms of poker and am looking forward to the variety. All of the other games are available online (and sometimes in person), but since they aren't as popular it's rare that you can play them for any serious money (which is why I don't play them much anymore). Since I'll be having a few backers, just like in the WSOP, I'll be making daily blog updates with details of what happened. It might have been more exciting to hear things like "I put Chris Ferguson on one pair and then..." than "I figured moneyluver2344 must be bluffing because...," but the money is still real and there is still some prestige involved.

In other news I had the realization that one of the poker websites is paying me as much in kickbacks as I used to make dealing cards for a living. Let me tell you how it works. For every dollar in tournament juice (ie if you play a $11 tournament $10 goes to the prize pool and $1 in "juice" goes to the website) you pay, pokerstars will give you 5 frequent player points (fpps). Once you've earned 100,000 fpp's in a year you gain what's called supernova status (there are actually 5 levels of status and supernova is the highest). Once you've made it that far they give you 3.5 fpps for every fpp a normal person would get. So every time I play a $109 tournament I get 157.5 fpps. I can play about 8, $109 single table tournaments an hour which amounts to 1260 fpp's per hour. Pokerstars sells tournament entries to online events with buy-ins $215 and higher for fpps and $1 equates to 62.8 fpps. So they're giving me back $20.06 an hour in tournament entry fees (which I would have been paying anyway). Pretty sweet!

If that didn't make sense what you can take away from it is I'm getting paid about $20 an hour on top of what I win to play on this one website. Another thing you'll notice if you do some more math is I've paid them over $20,000 in fees so far this year. That's my primary site, but I've also paid about $10,000 to a combination of a few other sites. In fact, if I make it to 1,000 single table tournaments this month (which I'm almost certain I will), I'll be paying the website $9,000 for one month which is more than out of state tuition at Berkeley for an entire semester. When I think about this kind of thing it sure seems amazing that I've made any money at all, but I certainly have.