Performance enhancers in poker

After my post about what makes a good poker player my friend Erik posed the question "you ever hear of people taking beta-blockers, which block adrenaline in the body, or use other anti-anxiety drugs to get an edge in the game?" This was in response to the section where I mentioned that during a big hand when players get nervous (myself included) their heart rates go through the roof and you can notice a visible change in their breathing which can help you figure out what cards they might have. I've certainly never heard anyone admit to doing this kind of thing, and certainly haven't seen anyone recommend doing it in print. However I do have a little experience with this type of medication. As some of you know I developed an intense fear of flying in my early 20's (which I've overcome for the most part) and for about 3 years whenever I'd fly I'd take anti anxiety medication (either valium or addavan). While I was relaxed I also felt kind of out of it and I think in poker the negatives would greatly outweigh the positives.

On the other hand medication designed to treat ADD or increase focus could certainly help improve your performance. Some people might even put Red Bull into the category of performance enhancers. Right on the can it says that it's designed to improve focus in high stress situations. Behind bottled water Red Bull is the second most popular beverage at the tables (and it's free so why not have a few!).

There is really no governing body for poker and to my knowledge, while I would consider it unethical, it is not against the rules to use mental performance enhancers. Although you could certainly get barred from all Harrah's (the company that owns the Rio and the WSOP) properties for a variety of infractions, there is no one to bar you from all major poker tournaments. The closest thing to a governing body is the Tournament Directors Association (TDA) which has only been formed in the past few years. The main purpose of the TDA is not to regulate poker, but rather to standardize rules. These days if you play a tournament in Atlantic City you can expect the same rules as you would find in Mississippi (I bet you didn't know that Biloxi Mississippi is the third largest gambling area in the country behind only Vegas and Atlantic City -bigger than Reno!). The TDA tends to focus on things like what do you do if the dealer puts out the flop before the action is complete before the flop (you reshuffle the deck and deal out a new flop after the action is complete) or how many cards can you find face up in the deck before you declare the hand a misdeal (five!). Situations that don't come up often, but happen from time to time.

As far as conduct goes I can only think of two specific rules. First of all if you say "fuck" in any form, for any reason, you get a 10 minute penalty (meaning you must leave the table and any blinds or antes that you owe are taken from your stack). In fact if someone called you a mother fucker and then you told the floorman "he called me a mother fucker," you'd both get a penalty. Sorry if I offended anyone with the coarse language there. The second rule is while folding your cards if either or both fall off the table for any reason you get a 20 minute penalty. Of course it's up to the floor people to use their discretion to hand out penalties for other misconduct that is not explicitly spelled out. I once saw a guy who's hand was declared dead for using his cell phone at the table (which I guess is another conduct rule) have a pretty strong reaction. Sometimes there's a little room to maneuver with this rule, but this guy was on the phone for most of the hand and was asked to get off several times, by the dealer and the other players. By the time the floorman got there, the hand was over and the guy in question was showing a winning hand. The floorman told him he had a dead hand and gave the pot to the other player who had missed a draw and had nothing. At this point the guy with the dead hand threw his cell phone at about 90 miles per hour directly into the wall. He was expelled from the tournament (with no refund), escorted out by security and his chips were removed from play (also his cell phone broke into several pieces so he lost that too).

Another time, I was in a tournament in L.A. and I saw the card off the table rule come into play in a crucial situation. In a $500 tournament that paid 27 places, with about 35 players left a guy threw his cards at the dealer and one fell onto the floor. The dealer called the floorman who told the player he was going to get a 20 minute penalty. The guy spent at least 5 minutes arguing and it wasn't until after he was done that the 20 minute clock started. They'd announced the rule several times and it was one of only two rules that had been written out on the paper that had the blind structure and other information about the tournament. While walking away from the table the player, who was a phenomenal jerk, asked the rest of us to "play slow" so he wouldn't lose too much in the way of blinds and antes while he was gone. In one united voice we told the guy that he was crazy if he thought we'd play slow. If he was eliminated we'd all be that much closer to the money and whatever chips he lost would be going into our stacks! If he wasn't a huge jerk we might not have gone out of our way to screw him, but he was, so we did. About every 5 minutes he'd come back and say "come on guys slow it down for me would ya." At which point 3 or 4 of us would thank him for reminding us to play as quickly as possible. With 1 minute left on his penalty it was his turn to put in the big blind which amounted to about half of his stack. He made it back for his small blind, but didn't get lucky and was eliminated in 29th place. If he hadn't thrown his cards at the dealer he probably would have made the money. Furthermore, if he hadn't argued for so long about the rule or asked us to play slow so many times he would have at least given himself a chance. You never know when being a jerk is going to come back to bite you in the ass.

Getting back to performance enhancers, I've often wondered how many people use them in poker and my guess would be not very many. I've also wondered what other players might think about the ethical implications of using them, but I've never seen the topic discussed in person or in print. If you use steroids or other physical enhancers it's easy to measure your improved strength or stamina, but with mental enhancers in poker it's not so clear. I know that if I play after I've had a few drinks (which I never do for significant amounts of money) I feel like I'm making the same decisions and playing the same way, but my results tell me other wise. Similarly I'm not sure you would feel like you were making better decisions if you were on something so unless there was a dramatic change in your results you might not give credit to the enhancers. Also I think many players underrate the focus aspect of playing good poker so they'd never try to improve that aspect of their game chemically.

MAIN EVENT PREVIEW EXTRAVAGANZA!

Welcome to my main event preview! I’m sure some of you are asking yourselves: what’s the big deal about this one? Isn’t it just another tournament for a little more money? NO! This event will have the largest prize pool and largest first prize of any poker tournament of any kind in the history of the world! Every year the winner of this tournament is crowned the world champion!

To put it into perspective let’s say you were the best golfer in the world and the best tennis player in the world and you won all four of golf’s major tournaments (The U.S Open, The Masters, The PGA championship and The British Open) and somehow found time to also win the four major tournaments on the tennis circuit (The U.S. Open, Wimbledon, The Australian Open and The French Open). You’d win just shy of 9 million dollars, but you’d still be a million dollars short of the $10,000,000 the WSOP main event champ will get this year for winning this one event.

Last year there were 5,619 entrants and this year they expect around 8,000. In order to handle this huge number of entrants (there isn’t a room big enough to hold that many poker tables and they certainly don’t want to hire 700 or 800 new dealers for one day’s work) the 8,000 players will be split into 4 groups of 2,000 (groups A, B, C, and D). On July 28th, the first day of the tournament, group A will play from 2000 players down to about 700. Group B will do the same on July 29th followed by group C on the 30th and finally group D on the 31st. On August 1st the 1400 players left from groups A and B will return and play down to about 600. The next day groups C and D will return and do the same. When August 3rd rolls around on the 7th day of the event everyone’s who is left (around 1200 players) will play together for the first time. After a rest day on the 4th play will continue 12-15 hours a day every day until only one player remains on August 10th.

The longer a tournament takes the more skill comes into play and clearly this is a long tournament. If you play 10 hands it’s mostly luck who wins and loses. If you play 100 there’s more skill involved but still a large luck factor. When you start to get into the range of 1000 hands skill is going to shine through most of the time. But no matter what you do bad luck can still sink you at any time. As long as someone at your table has more chips than you, you can be eliminated in 1 hand. You could play perfectly and get eliminated on the first hand of the tournament. But for the most part, avoiding situations where your entire tournament is at risk on 1 hand is part of the skill involved.

So how do they make this tournament take longer so skill can play a larger part? Three factors determine how quickly a tournament will progress: the number of chips you start with, level length (how frequently they increase the blinds and/or antes) and what amount the blinds start at. In the first tournament I played at this years WSOP we started with 1500 chips, 60 minute levels and blinds starting at 25/25. In the main event we start with 10,000 chips, 90 minute levels and the same blind structure. It’s easy to lose 1500 chips in one hand. In the first event if you lose 1500 chips you’re gone, while in the main event if you lose 1500 chips you still have 8500 left and plenty of time to make a comeback. In fact, you can have a couple bad hands and still have the chips you need to maneuver your way back into the action. Also, 90 minute levels means after 12 hours of play we’ll be finishing level 8 instead of level 12. If you play a $100 tournament at your local casino the whole tournament will be over in 4 hours. In the main event you could walk into the tournament 4 hours after the first hand is dealt (or fold every single hand you’re dealt for 4 hours) and still have 90% of your chips. But…lose your focus on one hand and you could find yourself busted and wondering what the hell happened.

Another interesting thing about the main event is despite the big buy-in the field will be loaded with weak players. About 75% of the field will win their way into the tournament by winning a satellite. A satellite is a tournament with a relatively small buy-in where instead of a normal prize structure the only prizes are entries to a larger event. For example, if you have 500 people all put up $200 you’ll have $100,000. Instead of paying 50 places with various prizes, everyone who finishes in the top 10 will win a $10,000 entry to the main event while everyone else will get nothing. Sometimes you’ll have situations where 10 players who put up $1,000 play for one entry and other times you’ll have 1,000 people put up $10 to play for an entry. I played in the largest satellite in history a week and a half ago where over 7,500 people all put up $370 and the top 234 players won an entry into the main event. The guys (and gals) who are willing to risk $1,000 to get in probably don’t suck, but thousands of amateurs will win their way in via small buy-in satellites. Many internet qualifiers will be playing their first in person tournament. Even if their poker skills are up to par it takes hundreds (if not thousands) of hours at the poker table to learn to control your movements, recognize what the movements of other players mean, and just feel comfortable sitting around the felt. Also let’s not forget that this is the World Series. If a pro like me can be nervous about it, players who’ve never played a tournament with a buy-in more than a few hundred dollars or who’ve never sat face to face with their opponents are going to be a total mess.

What does all this mean? It means that I’m going to have plenty of time to out play what will hopefully be a somewhat weak field. Don’t get me wrong, ALL of the best players in the world will be there, but they’ll be hiding mixed in with some total chumps, lot’s of semi-skilled amateurs, and plenty of mid level pros like myself. After all, with 8,000 players there’s only a 1 in 8 chance of having one of the top 100 players at your table.

Tell me more about the money! Like I said before last year there were 5,619 entrants and here are a few of the payouts:
1st $7,500,000
2nd $4,250,000
3rd $2,500,000
9th $1,000,000
10th $600,000
20th $304,680
30th $274,090
40th $235,390
50th $173,880
75th $107,950
100th $77,710
150th $46,245
200th $39,075
300th $24,365
400th $18,335
500th $14,135
560th $12,500

Obviously, I’m going to do my best and I’m confident I can compete, but I’m sort of looking at this year as my rookie year. You don’t expect rookies to win championships and I’m certainly not expecting to win, but I know I’ve got what it takes to make the money and there’s always the chance that something crazy could happen. I give myself a 1 in 5000 chance of winning, a 1 in 500 chance of winning $1,000,000, and a 15%-20% chance of making the money (which would still be one of the top three or four accomplishments in my poker career).

Jen and I leave for Vegas on Thursday and will be staying at the MGM for 3 days and the Paris for 4 days (hopefully I’ll have to extend my stay). I’ll do my best to update the blog from Vegas, but I’m not sure what kind of internet access I’ll have so it might be a little more sporadic and less detailed than past updates. Wish me luck.

What makes a good poker player?

When I'm at parties or other social functions and people hear that I'm a professional poker player, they always ask "god damn, how did you get to be so good looking?" Once we have that out of the way they also ask "what separates the pros from the amateurs?" Or "isn't it all just luck?" Or "Isn't poker just gambling? I thought you couldn't win at gambling? Doesn't the house always win?" After that about 40% of people say "is it all bluffing or what?" The first thing I tell them is in order to be a good poker player you need to WAY overuse parentheses in your blog (seriously, have you see how often I use them; it's ridiculous). The second thing I tell them is there are a ton of things that go into being a good poker player.

First and foremost you need solid fundamentals as far as strategy goes. You can get a good deal of this kind of information from books and articles, but it takes putting theory into action to really internalize good strategy. If someone raises in front of you before the flop and you have AQ, I can make a good argument for folding, raising or calling in most situations. It takes experience to identify the correct times to do each. Furthermore, just like there are many different kind of attacks in chess, there are many different general strategies in poker. Some players like to see a ton of flops in the hopes that they'll win a few big pots when it will be difficult for their opponents to put them on a specific hand. Others see very few flops and only proceed when they have strong cards. Neither is correct or incorrect and part of being a good player is finding the style that suits you best. Other parts of good fundamentals are knowing the odds of certain things happening and having some math skills. This aspect of poker is often over hyped and really anyone can learn this part of the game without too much effort.

Secondly you need a lot of patience. Poker can move really slowly and can get boring if you're not getting good cards. It's much more fun to play than to not play and fighting the urge to get involved with marginal cards is something every poker player faces from time to time. You've got to wait for good cards or wait until the situation is right to make a move with weaker cards.

What about looking for "tells?" In the movies you'll see the hero spot the villain's nose twitching every time he bluffs and his lip curl up every time he makes a full house. In reality this kind of thing never happens. And while everyone always talks about having a good poker face having a good poker body is really much more important. Looking at an opponent’s posture, what they do with their arms and hands and even their breathing is much more important (if your heart rate goes way up because you’re nervous about something it's really tough to control your breathing and look relaxed). How a player puts their chips into the pot is also very important. Do the throw them in violently or do they slowly push in a neat stack? Did they sit there for 10 seconds or bet right away? Did they say anything as they bet or were they silent? Most importantly you have to remember what they did before so you can interpret all off this information. The same action will mean different things for different players and you have to know who you're dealing with.

At the highest level people don't give off much information with their movements (and on the internet you can't see people at all) so you have to use betting patterns to make your best guess about what they have. Sometimes your hand is so good (or so bad) that it doesn't matter what the other players have and your only goal is to get as much money in the pot as possible, but for the most part you need to try to figure out what they have. There are 169 possible combinations of two cards (neglecting suits) and your job is to eliminate as many of those as possible. When the hand starts you have no information and each player could have anything. As soon as a player calls or raises your information gathering starts (if they fold we don't care about what they had) and at this point you can usually limit what they have to about 20 of the possible 169 holdings. After the flop you can usually narrow it down to something like 10 possibilities. Hopefully by the river you can narrow it down to just a few (or sometimes just one), think about the likely each possibility is and then you look at how much is in the pot and how much you need to risk to win the pot. In order to do a good job at narrowing the possibilities you need to pay attention to how the other players play in various situations so you can interpret (and predict for that matter) their actions on future hands. If you've read my blog I'm sure you've heard me say "I knew this guy didn't have X because of this and thought he might have Y because of this other thing." Being good at making these guesses based on you opponents past betting patterns is a huge part of poker.

On the other side of the coin is making it difficult for your opponents to guess what you have. The way that the other players at you table perceive you and the way you play is called your "table image." You have to understand how the other players perceive you and use it against them. If they think you're a wild and crazy player who's always bluffing then you'll do better to wait for a good hand and if they think your captain conservative you should try bluffing more. Sometimes it's important to make non optimal or non profitable plays from time to time in order to throw your opponents off and make it tougher for them to figure out what you have in the future. If they see you do something ridiculous they'll remember and will always have to consider that maybe you're doing something else ridiculous when they come up against you in a future hand. The easiest players to beat are the ones that are totally straight forward and predictable.

Having the right mindset is also important. Risking thousands of dollars on a card game can be some scary shit and having the fearlessness to do the right thing is very important. The best play is oftentimes the most risky (and scariest) and it takes guts to go ahead with it anyway. Confidence is also very important. You have to believe that the guesses you’re making are correct if you’re going to act on them. Good poker is aggressive poker and a lack of confidence usually manifests itself in timid play which is a recipe for failure. You can never be 100% sure of what someone has until the cards get turned over and sometimes you have to be willing to put all of your chips at risk when you’re 75% sure or 60% sure.

Having good focus is also important. It's easy to watch the game on TV while you're playing or talk with the casino employees or just space out, but if you do that it will be much more difficult to guess what your opponents have when you're involved in a hand. Believe me it can be EXTREMELY difficult to pay attention to the game when all you've been doing is folding for an hour and a half, but it's still important to do so.

Intuition also plays a part. Sometimes you'll hear players say "I don't know what he had, but I knew I was beat" or "It just felt like he was bluffing." Somehow your subconscious has picked up on something the other players are doing and it just gives you a gut feeling. Learning to trust those gut feelings is tough, but important.

Last, but not least on my list is emotional control. Have you ever seen a baseball player kick the shit out of a water cooler or throw bats onto the field? Or seen a golfer slam their club into the ground? Poker players have the same kind of reactions. Think about how you'd react of you had $1,000 riding on the turn of one card and you were a 10 to 1 favorite and lost? What if the same thing happened to you again a few hands later? You'd probably go bananas. When a poker player let's his emotions affect his play negatively it's called going on tilt and believe me it happens to everyone. Usually if things aren't going well the first thing to go is patience. Players on tilt tend to play more hands than they should. The next thing that comes is bluffing too much. A player on severe tilt will have a sense of desperation to get their money back as quickly as possible, but what happens is they make poor decisions and lose even more. But, among strong players tilt comes in more mild forms. It might be calling a raise with a hand that isn't quite good enough or raising when the situation doesn't warrant it instead of just calling. The thing I like about tournament poker is if something really bad happens to you, you're usually out of the tournament and can't make any more mistakes or do any more damage to your bankroll.


There are certainly other things that make a good poker player, but for my money these are the big ones. Now if someone asks you, "isn't poker all just luck?" you can tell them that it's not and have something to back it up. About 25% of the time I tell people that I'm a professional poker player they imply (sometimes not subtly) that I'm a big fat liar. Everyone's been taught from the time that they are small children that they can't win at any endeavor that involves betting. "The house always wins" is the mantra that goes along with this lesson. Of course it's true that casino's make money, but just because the house wins doesn't mean that you can't win too.

Back to My Specialty

I was once again reminded of the power of internet poker yesterday. The key to winning on the internet is volume. At the WSOP every decision is critical. Watching your opponents and learning their betting patterns and mannerisms over a period of hours helps you eventually take them out. In a live game you get about 35 hands an hour (which may sound like a lot, but it's really not). In the same game online you'll get 60-70 hands an hour. Why so much faster? Well it takes all of about 1.5 seconds to shuffle and deal the cards online, you don't ever have to count out chips and every action is just a click of the mouse. Also you aren't limited to playing just one game at a time. After playing online almost full time for the past few years I've gotten really good at managing multiple games and making quick decisions (plus I have a 30 inch monitor so I can see everything that's going on). The most games I've ever played at once is 9, but I usually limit it to 6 at a time. I was thinking that yesterday I played more hands before I had lunch (about 2,000) than I did during the 9 WSOP events I played (about 1,500). The bottom line is I played 62 single table tournaments (starting with 9 players with the top 3 spots playing - in a $100 tournament 1st pays $472.5, 2nd pays $283.5, and third pays $189) yesterday and won $3,702. Nice timing for a good win.

Well what was the damage?

I lost $17,239 playing WSOP events (I didn't actually play any other poker while I was there). Of that my share of the loss is 51.5% or $8,878. But let's not forget that I won $3,500 playing stupid casino games. There was also something like 1800 worth of expenses (I have exact records but have yet to add it up) so far and of course the opportunity cost of not working for 2 weeks. A decent showing in the main event could easily wipe all of this away, but you'll have to wait for the preview to get the full details.

I'll probably keep blogging a little between now and when I head back to Vegas and may continue after that. At the very least look out for the "Main Event Preview" which will be coming some time soon. For now let me just say that after 13 days in Vegas it's great to be home. Jen cooked me a FANTASTIC home cooked meal yesterday (she's turning into a super duper cook) and we caught up on some TIVO'd reality shows. I'll probably have a half assed work day today and then get back on my horse tomorrow. Thanks again for all of the good luck wishes and support I've gotten from everyone reading this blog. If anyone out there want's to get into online poker, wants recomendations about poker books (strategy books or interesting reads about poker), or has any poker questions send me an e-mail (or post a comment) and I'll help you get started, recomend, or answer.

A little math

Clearly I'm a little disapointed with my performance so far at the WSOP, but how bad was it? Let's look a few exmaples to put it into perspective. Imagine the player who is in the exact middle of the field, let's call him Middleton. Half the players are better than him and half the players are worse in every event he plays. Middleton shoud have exactly a 10% chance of making the money whenever he enters. So if Middleton played 9 events (just like certain other players we know and love) what are the chances of him finishing in the money in ZERO events (the math for 1 money finish is a little more complicated so we'll stick with this). Who said 10%? Nope. 26.57%? Now you're just guessing. The real answer is actually 38%. 38% of the time Middleton would have no money finishes after playing 9 events even though he's better than half of the other players.

Now lets look at a great player. We'll call him captain 20! Captain 20 is better than almost all of the players he plays against and makes the money 20% of the time he enters an event. What are the chances of him going o for 9? Who said 19%? Nope. It's actually 13.5%. Even a great player can still expect to get totally blanked almost 14% of the time he enters 9 events.

Now let's look at a player that makes the money 30% of the time. We'll call him the figment, because guess what he doesn't exsist. There's just too much short term luck and too many other good players for anyone to make the money this frequently. Even if you put Phil Ivey (who many think is the best player in the world) into a mythical $50 tournament (let's assume you agree to give him 100 times what he actually wins so he's interested) where they gave you plenty of time to play (a normal $50 tournamnet would have about 100 players and will usually be over in 4 hours or less) with a bunch of total amatures he still wouldn't make the money more than about a third of the time.

So where do I fit in. When I play tournaments on the internet that pay 10% of the field with buy-ins ranging from $50-$300 (which other than special events is as big as they get online) I've finished in the money about 22% of the time (in 2005 I played 606 tournamnets of this type). At the WSOP I'd put myself some where in betten Middleton and Captain 20, but it's hard to say and I may never really know where I fit in. In order to get any kind of idea statistically I'd have to play AT LEAST 100 events (and probably more like 500 or 1000). The problem with that (along with the insane cost) is after playing 50 events I'll be much better than I was when I started and after another 50 I'd be much better than I was after the first 50. So I really just have to guess where I stand. The real question is "If I played this tournament 10,000 would I have more money than I started with." At the WSOP if the answer is yes then I should play. In smaller tournaments the answer has to be yes and then we have to look at how much. I could go beat the shit out of some $20 players all day every day, but it wouldn't get me much.

Event 12 recap

It's a little late but here it is! Event #12, $2,500 no limit hold 'em, started with 1290 players and I had great feeling about it going in. On the very first hand of the tournament I easily could have gone broke. I was two off the button with J 9 and I considered raising because the players in the blinds had not yet arrived at the table, but their chips were still in the pot (you don't get a free trip through the blinds if you're not there yet). Despite what looked like easy money out there, I decided to fold and the player to my left, a 50ish Englishman, made it 125 to go (the blinds were 25/25). The player to his left made it 300, he called, and the flop came J J 4. I was kicking myself for folding what would have been trip jacks until the Englishman checked and called a bet of 800. It looked like one of these fellows probably had a J. The turn was another 4 and the Englishman instantly put the rest of his 1400 chips into the pot. After about a good 3 or 4 minutes the other player folded QQ face up and the Englishman showed a 4 to the table. He threw in both of his cards face down and someone asked "what did he show?" Everyone said "a four," but the Englishman reached out a flipped up one of the cards he'd just folded anyway. It was a four, BUT the card he flipped up wasn't the same 4 he'd already shown - he'd made four of a kind. I don't think anyone noticed that he'd grabbed a different card but I was sitting right next to him so I caught it. If I had seen the flop I would have been out on the first hand.

A few hands later I dodged another bullet. One player raised to 100, another made it 300 to go and I looked down at JJ - the 4th or 5th best starting hand in hold 'em. Raising, calling and folding were all options here. If I raised and got reraised I could be sure I was against a bigger pair, but I'd be risking about a third of my chips to find out. If I called and the board was all small cards I'd probably go broke if someone had me beat. I decided it was still too early and folded. The player who'd had QQ in the first hand moved all in with 99 and was called by one of the other players who showed KK and won the pot with a full house.

Despite my Matrix style bullet dodging I was still getting hit with some shrapnel and found myself down to 1100 chips after the first hour. I had yet to win a pot even though I'd been getting some pretty good cards. I caught my first break in round 2 with the blinds a 25/50 when the button open raised to 150. After finding 22 in my hand, I got aggressive and moved all in. I'd be about a 53% favorite against any non pair and I was planning on winning the pot before the flop. My opponent called in about 1/10 of a second and I said "show me ace king!" AK and pairs much bigger than 22 were the only hands that would require no thought before a call. Happily he showed me AK, the cards that came out in the middle of the table were all garbage and I doubled up to about where I started.

Perhaps the easiest chips I picked up in the entire WSOP came to me a few hands later. The Englishman (who was super aggressive) open raised to 150 (this was a little out of character because he was normally raising to 5 to 10 times the big blind - too much in my opinion) and the button called. I was in the big blind and picked up two red 10's. I thought about just calling, but I figured the Englishman could have a wide range of hands and if the other player had anything great he would have rerasied so it was likely I had the best hand. I made it 650 to go and after about 30 seconds the Englishman called and the button quickly folded. The flop came down 10 6 5. DING DING DING! I had the best possible hand and I tried to figure out how to get the most money into the pot. Hoping to get called or raised, I bet 500 into a 1475 pot. The Englishman thought and asked how many chips I had left (a sign that he was considering moving all in). After some more thought, he just called. At this point I was checking no matter what came on the turn. If he was thinking about moving all in I wanted to give him every indication that I had a weak hand. The turn was a small club (which put two on the board), I checked, the Englishman immediately moved all in and I almost beat him into the pot. He turned up KJ of clubs and after no club materialized on the river I took down the pot.

Up to 5000 in chips I was feeling great as I moved to a new table and we went on break. My new table was tougher than my first and I found myself sitting across from Clonie Gowen, one of the best (and best looking) female players in the world. I bled off about 1000 chips in unspectacular fashion and found myself moving yet again to another table. At this new table I found Mike "The Mouth" Matasow. Mike has the most fitting nickname in all of poker - he never shuts up. I'd seen him on TV plenty (he finished 9th out of 5600 in last years main event and has two WSOP bracelets) and he's always seemed like a prick, but he was really nice to me and was actually pretty well behaved. Of course he was still talking constantly.

Shortly after arriving at my new table I got involved in the hand that was the turning point of the event. At the start of round 4 with the blinds at 100/200 I was in the big blind with 77. The player on the button raised to 525 and I had a decision to make. I could just call the 325 more and see a flop or I could reraise and try to win the pot right there. I looked at my opponents stack and he only had about 2000 more while I had about 4000 chips so even if he called me AND I lost I'd still have 1500 left (not a ton of chips but enough to work with a little). After about 10 seconds I moved all in and he instantly called. Uh oh. I was hoping to see AK again, but instead he showed me 99 and took most of my chips. I know this was the right play and my opponent easily could have had plenty of hands that he would have folded or plenty of hands that I would be a favorite against (in fact if he had anything but a pair bigger than 77 I was ahead). I spent the next 30 hands or so looking for ANYTHING to move all in with and managed to steal the blinds a few times, but of course I had to go right back through them again. Finally with about 1200 chips left I picked up A8 of spades in late position. One player just called the big blind and I moved all in. After asking for a count of my chips he called with A 10. The flop was 9 10 J giving me a straight draw and some hope, but no help arrived and I was out.

Event #12 recap preview

Get ready for a preview of the recap! I had another mid stream exit today (it seems like everyday I went broke in round 4, damit!). I'm going to go have dinner and a few drinks now, but I'll write a recap either later tonight or tomorrow along with a few thoughts about how things have gone so far, what I need to work on and just what the hell happened. Remember there's still hope -the $10,000 main event starts July 28th. Hopefully I've been saving up all my good luck for "the big one."

Today 3 years ago

On July 7th 2003 I had my first day as a professional poker player. I won he first hand I played that day with four aces. I won $98 and left the casino feeling like a million bucks. In the three years since I've had plenty of good days and bad, but I've had 34 winning months and only 2 losing months (September of 05 and March of 06). I tell everyone who'll listen that I have the best job in the world. After all if I was retired or had tens of millions of dollars I'd still spend a great deal of my time playing poker. Hopefully today will be just as revolutionary and today 3 years ago.

Event #12 preview

Sorry about the lack of Event# 11 preview and thanks to Jen for putting one together at the last minute. Event #12 is a $2,500 No Limit hold 'em event. Last year this event had 1,056 entrants (featuring a special appearance by yours truly) with 1st place of $594,960, 9th place was $48,575 and 100th was $2,670 (My research tells me 250th place pays nothing!) I think since today's event was limit, the last no limit under $5,000 was Event #6, and all of the no limit events have been much bigger this year, we can expect 1,200-1,300 players. This is my last shot until the main event so I hope it's a good one. Without a doubt I'm due for some good luck. Maybe I'll try putting on my socks inside out and see what happens.

As you may have guessed I'm not going to play Saturday's event which is $1,000 buy in with rebuys. The way this tournament works (all rebuy tournaments work similarly) is you start with 1,000 in chips and any time you have 1,000 or less you can buy another 1,000 chips for $1,000. So when you sit down most people will immediately buy another 1,000. If you go broke or get back below 1000 chips you can buy more. You can do this as many times as you want you just have to pay for it. You can imagine what the players who don't care about the money (but want desperately want the bracelet) do to accumulate chips while they have the chance. Last year in the $5,000 with rebuys Daniel Negranu did 22 rebuys which cost him $5,000 each! After the first 2 hours all of the insanity ends, but they give you one more chance to buy chips (called an add on) no matter how many you have. So if you want to compete you are looking at at least a $3,000 commitment and if you lose with a big hand early it could easily be $5,000 or even $7,000. I don't think things have been going well enough for me to put this kind of cash on the line.