WCOOP Stud Recap and Today's Plan

Event #13 $320 7-card stud was pretty disappointing. I got off to a slow start, but in the middle stretches of the tournament I made some major progress running my 5,000 chip starting stack up to 25,000. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I was in 16th of 300 or so players (96 spots paid) at that point.

I maintained that stack for a while and then as the stakes increased I got a ton of marginal, but playable hands on 3rd street that never improved. Stud isn't about what you start with it's about what you have at the end. Unless your first three cards are three of a kind (which happens once in every 457 hands), you're never going to be way ahead of your opponents no matter what they have the way you are in hold'em if you have a big pair and they have a smaller one.

For example I would have a hand like T 8 T and someone with a 9 would come in raising. I would catch 4 total bricks and they'd call all the way and hit a second pair on the river. Sometimes I was the one with the smaller pair calling along, but at least 5 or 6 times all I needed to do was make two pair to win and I missed every time. It made me crazy!

The last hand I played was typical of the hands that led to my demise. The bring in was directly to my left and everyone folded to the player on my right who raised. He had an ace showing and I was confident that he would raise here with an ace up no matter what he hand in the hole. I had a A J 9 which I thought was a slightly better than average set of cards to go with my ace. I was in bad shape anyway and I needed to do something before the antes ground me down.

So I raised. I hand enough for that raise, a bet on 4th street, and almost a full bet on 5th street. To go along with my A J 9 I caught a 6, T, 6, 2 making me a lowly pair of 6's. My opponent started with A Q 3 and caught 7, 5, 4 (at this point I was way ahead) and lastly a 6, making him a straight.

I finished 144th which was a very annoying result.

On the bright side, labor day (or the weekday of any 3 day weekend) is a great day to play poker. People who play once a month or less find themselves sitting around with nothing to do and decide to play a little poker. Those are the perfect opponents to face.

To make a long story short I won $2,300 playing a mix if $10/$20 and $15/$30. That makes losing a $320 tournament a lot easier to handle!

Today I have $320 6 handed mixed hold'em. In this format every 10 minutes you switch between limit and no limit hold'em. I should have a slight advantage over my opponents in the no limit portion and a huge advantage in the limit.

On my schedule is the $1,050 NLH tournament that starts at 5 pm. But after some more thought I don't think it's the best decision to play a tournament that's going to take 6 or 7 hours to make the money and 15 hours to go all the way through after already playing for 5 hours. If it was a HORSE tournament or a limit hold'em tournament I would play, but there's really nothing special about this one, so I'm just going to skip it.