Event# 13 ($320 6-Handed PL Hold'em) Recap

WCOOP event #13 kicked off with 1741 players seated 6 to a table. Despite small blinds relative to the chip stacks, with fewer players at each table, people were taking more risks and going broke quickly. Like I said in the preview I felt very comfortable with the format was hoping to do well in this event.

One part of playing well short handed is playing well in the blinds. After all you're in one of the blinds a third of the time in this format. Unfortunately the player who was in the small blind when I was in the big blind, gave me a lot of trouble. I didn't get to see his cards often and is possible that he was just hitting plenty of flops, but it seemed like he was putting me to the test every time and unfortunately I never managed to connect with a flop out of the big blind.

Another part of playing well short handed is about chopping out a bunch of small pots and I succeeded in doing this during the first two hours. At one point I had my chip stack up to about 5,000 (after starting with 2,500) without winning more than about 500 chips in any one pot. Around this time I picked up AJ on the button. With blinds of 50/100 the player in first position raised to 300. I thought about reraising but decided to just call. The blinds folded and the flop came down J 7 6. My opponent bet and I decided I'd just call and pop him on the turn. The turn came another J and while I was almost sure to have the best hand I thought this card would kill my action. As I expected my opponent checked, but after I bet he raised me! Great! I moved all in and hoped for a call from a hand like QQ or KK. I got the call I wanted, but not the hand. He also had AJ and after an A came on the river to make us both full houses, we split the pot.

After two hours we'd played exactly 200 hands (roughly 80 more than you'd get in 2 hours of 9 handed play) and were down to 683 players. Unfortunately I'd given back some chips and found myself with around 3,000.

During the 6th level is when I met my demise. With blinds of 100/200 I had about 2,700 chips and found myself with QJ (with the Q of spades)in the small blind. I raised to 600 and got called by the big blind who had close to 15,000 chips. The flop was A 10 5 with two spades. Normally I might bet here, but I decided that with so many chips the big blind might call me with a wide range of hands. So, I checked. I expected the big blind to bet, but he checked behind me. The turn was a 7 of spades. I figured if my opponent had anything he would have bet the flop so I bet out 1,000 and found myself facing a raise that would put me all in. I only had 1100 left, there was 4300 in the pot and the average stack was over 8,000. I had a flush draw a gut shot straight draw and some chance that a Q or a J might be good if it hit. It was a call that I had to make, but I wasn't happy about it. My opponent showed A3 and after a nothing came on the river I was eliminated in 494th place.

Tomorrow is another Omaha event and I've decided to cut out the $530 Stud-8 event that was on my original schedule so I'm "off" (meaning I'll be playing single tables and chopping wood) for two days. All that's left for me in the 2006 WCOOP is a $1,000 limit event on Saturday. I also plan to play a special $280 satellite to the $2,500 main event. Pokerstars has guaranteed 100 seats will be given away in this tournament and if I win one (or if I was to go deep in Saturday's event) I'll be playing, but other wise I'll be skipping it.

Now to finish with a splash of good news. I'm sure those of you reading who don't know me well sometimes think "how does he do this for a living? All he does is lose!" Unfortunately the stuff I write about is big buy in tournaments that have very high fluctuation. On a day to day basis the money is much more steady. In fact, if you neglect the WCOOP I'm on an 8-day winning streak and have netted somewhere in the $2,500 range during that time (this is actually a pretty low number for an 8-day winning streak - normally I'd expect closer to the $4,000 range for a streak like this one). Event #17 preview coming soon.