Stable Success

I've had two more days very much like the last day I wrote about. Yesterday I won about $350 on a day where I was winning all day but never ahead more than $600. In fact I was ahead $600 about 10 minutes into my day after an insane flood of monster hands which made the whole day pretty pleasant.

Today I started off a little rough, but after a few hours I found myself even again and when I decided to call it a day I was up close to $500. These last three days have been exactly the kind of days that I need to make this year long quest a major stress free success.

In other good news I cleared my first $1,500 FPP bonus of the year today (as a supernova I can sell 100,000 FPP's for $1,500). So after a topsy turvy start I'm right where I wanted to be 11 days into the year. I've decided to cash out $1,500 every Saturday as if I was getting a regular pay check. I'm hoping that at some point I'll have enough in my account where I can give myself a raise, but we'll all be happy and in good shape if I can make it through the year with 52 $1,500 cashouts.

Small Bounce Back

I made a minor recovery today winning about $350. Much more valuable than the dollars won was the win itself. If I'd had another significant loss today I'm sure my morale would have suffered dramatically. If fact, despite all the volatility I've been experiencing in general today was a shockingly stable day. At my lowest point I was losing less than $200 and at my best I was winning about $500. That's sort of how I expected things to go at these limits, not plus $1,400 one day minus $1,600 the next.

Also I made a royal flush today. I think it's about the 10th one of my life and unlike most of the others I got good action since I didn't get there until the river. I'm up to 22,100 points and expect to be up to 30,000 by Saturday.

So Far So Blah!

Well, I'm 8 days into my quest to become supernova elite and so far I've had mixed results. After taking the first off I started off my work year with two moderate winning days and then gave back all of my winnings on the third day. I wasn't too upset because I'm still getting the feel for these 6 handed games and after all, if I can just break even I'll have a pretty good year.

Then on Saturday I kicked some major ass winning a little over $1,400! BANG! I'm going to be rich bitches! I think actual dollar signs appeared in my eyes when I thought about the kind of money I'd make this year if I could break even for the most part and then drop a 4 digit win on the pile every now and then.

I took Sunday off and reveled in the glory of my well earned grand and a half. Unfortunately Monday was a slap in the face. I got rocked all day and ended up dropping $1,600. Today wasn't much better and at one point I was down about $1,400, but I staged a late inning comeback and only ended up losing about half that much. With the amount of money involved, these games shouldn't be so volatile!

Working harder than I'm used to hasn't been so bad. As you might expect, when I'm winning it's fine if not fun, but when I'm losing and it's dark outside and I can hear Peyton giggling in the other room it's really tough to keep playing.

So far I've earned 18,430 of the 1,000,000 points I need by the end of the year. If you extrapolate that our for the year, I'm behind pace. But my plan it to take it month to month and I'm not worried about hitting the 83,000 points I'll need this month to be on pace.

Hopefully next week will be a little more productive on the point side and much more productive on the dollar side.

A Big Plan for 2008

I've been a big time blog slacker lately. Sorry! Not much of interest has been going on pokerwise lately, but I do have a major plan for 2008. This plan started when one day I was looking at the pokerstars website and I decided to drool over the benefits a player could get by reaching the highest level of pokerstars VIP status: Supernova Elite.

To reach that level you need to earn a million base frequent player points (FPPs) in a calender year. For every dollar in tournament juice that you pay you get 5 points meaning you'd have to pay $200,000 in juice in one year (an insane amount) to make it. Or for every cash game hand you play where they take at least a dollar you get 1 point and if they take two dollars you get 2 points (there's not bonus if they happen to take more). To give you some perspective in 2007 I earned about 300,010 base FPP's.

So what do they give you for making it to this nut-so level? Well they give you FREE entry into TWO $10,000 buy in poker tournaments (you get to choose between the WSOP main event, the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure and the EPT Monte Carlo) plus $2,000 for expenses for each tournament and a $2,600 entry into the WCOOP main event. They also give you cash bonuses along the way . When you reach 200,000 base FPP's they give you $2,000. At 300,000, you get ANOTHER $3,000. At 500,000 you get ANOTHER $5,000 and at 750,000 points you get ANOTHER $7,500.

So as I was drolling over all of this sweet stuff and dreaming of playing in the WSOP main event again as well as the PCA which is in the Bahamas I thought to myself "I need to find a way to make this happen!"

I did the math and discovered that I would need to play about 90 $109 SNG's a day, 20 days a month all year to make it happen. That amounts to 10 hour days, every day with little or no vacation. Keep in mind that these aren't 10 hour days like normal people have 10 hour days. They have commute time and time talking to other people and time eating. This is 10 hours of making a decision every 8 seconds. I'm sure there are people out there who could do that, but I am not one of them.

I knew how many points I could earn playing NL cash games and knew it wouldn't be enough (I'd have to play about 1.75 million hands in a year), but I wasn't sure about limit cash games. So I decided to do a little experimenting. I quickly discovered that playing $5/$10 six-handed limit hold'em games I can make about 1.05 base FPPs per hand. Meaning that if I play 80,000 hands a month I'll be able to earn enough points to become Supernova Elite. I can play 500 hands an hour so that should be exactly twenty 8-hour days a month.

Amazingly, neglecting all of the year end bonuses and the milestone bonuses, just the FPP's alone from playing 80,000 hands in these games are worth $4,500! If you add it all up it means that if I can BREAK EVEN I'll end up making $96,652 in bonuses next year!!!

While I suspect I should be able to beat these games, I'm not certain that I can. I've got about $20,000 in my pokerstars account right now and I figure I'm willing to lose about 2/3 of that before I pull the plug and go back to playing NL tournaments as my main poker activity. Also I don't know if I can handle the work load for an entire year. This also means that I won't be able to play much in the the way of tournaments in person or online since all of my energy and effort is going to go into this one major goal. I don't know if I have it in me, but I'm going to try. If I can make a measly ten cents a hand that would be another $100,000 on top of the bonuses. This could be really big!

I'll try to keep you posted on my progress. My plan for the blog in the new year since I'm going to be working more is to try to post at least weekly, but just with short posts since all I'm going to be doing is going after this one goal. Wish me luck!

A Few Brief Tournament Results

Things have not been going well in tournament land. I had two close calls in the fulltilt series the first of which took place in the $216 pot limit hold'em event. The tournament paid 216 spots and with about 375 players left (of the 1468 that started) I got dealt KQ. With blinds of 250/500 I opened for 1,500 and the player in the small blind called. We took the flop heads up and I was happy to see K T 5 on the board. My opponent checked and I bet 3,000. To my surprised my opponent moved all in and left me with a tough decision. I'd started the hand with about 12,000 chips which was just about average, but if I folded now I'd be left with around 7,500. I felt like I was probably behind, but I decided to call anyway since there was so much in the pot already. When the cards got turned over I saw that my opponent had KJ! AH HA! All I need is to dodge a jack and I'll have more than twice average getting close to the money! And then...Jack on the turn. Shit! I was out.

The next tournament I played was the $109 with rebuys. I managed to get in for only $209 and again found myself in good shape as we approached the money. We'd started with 1,600 players and again they were paying 216 spots. With about 350 players left I was faced with another tough decision. The blinds were 300/600, I had 15,000 chips which was about average, and I got dealt AQ in the small blind. A player in front of me moved all in for a little over 12,000 and I stopped to think.

This was clearly an excessive raise and under normal circumstances my first thought would be that the raiser had AK. But this guy was TOTALLY nuts. I'd been involved in half a dozen hands with him and he was making very strange plays. The wackiest thing he did was with blinds of 250/500 a player raised to 1,100, the next player to act moved all in for 3,800, and then the nut job moved all in for 10,000 with J 2! You can't bluff the guy who's all in and since he's already reraising the chances of J 2 being the best hand are absolutely zero. This may be the worst play I've ever seen this late in a $200+ tournament. It turned out the player who made it 3,800 had AK and the nut job rivered a 2 to win the pot.

So faced with an all in raise from this guy I figured he could have just about anything. In retrospect I should not have risked 80% of my chips on this one hand when I could have avoided it. Just making the money was worth $460 and I had enough chips that I didn't need to be taking massive risks. Anyway I called, he had AK and I lost almost all of my chips. Two hands later I got my remaining chips in with 33 vs AJ and lost that one as well. What a disappointment.

While I was very close in both of those tournaments, my seat barely got warm before I was out in the $1,060 tournament at Lucky Chances. We started with 4,000 chips each and about a half an hour in I lost about 1,000 when I made a semi bluff with a flush draw against a short stacked player and missed. A few hands later with blinds of 50/75 I raised to 250 with KQ and got one caller. The flop came all small cards and after he checked I bet out 500. He thought for a moment and then called. The turn was another blank but this time my opponent bet out 1,000 and I was forced to fold. I was down to less than half my starting stack.

About 10 minutes later with blinds still at 50/75 a player in the field opened for 250 and got two callers. I was in the big blind and thinking to myself that if I found anything at all I'd move all in for my remaining 1,800 or so. It might be counterintuitive to think that with three people already in it would be a good time to make a move. One of them HAS to have a good and right? Wrong! In fact the only player I was really worried about was the initial raiser. If the other two players had something they really liked they'd have reraised, but by just calling they were telling me that they had good, but not great hands. Certainly it was very likely the neither had a hand worth calling an extra 1,550. Furthermore the initial raiser knows that not only does he have to worry about my hand, but one of the other players might decide to call as well if he continues.

So when I looked down at 44, I confidently moved all in. If someone had a big pair I was pretty much screwed, but I thought I might get called by unpaired overcards which would make me about 50/50 to win or win the pot without a fight. I got rid of the first two players to act after me but the third called with AQ. The flop came down K K T which was not a good flop since I'd now need to dodge an A, Q, J, or T on the turn. The turn was a 6 which meaning I had to dodge a 6 as well. Sadly the river as an A and I was out.

When you add up all the results I still have $2,284 of my $4,000 starting bankroll. I have three more tournaments that I'm going to play to conclude the series and all of them go down next Sunday. The first is a $163 no limit hold'em "Knockout." I've never played a tournament like this before and I'm really looking forward to it. The tournament plays just like an normal tournament except that for every player you eliminate you win cash on the spot. I think it will be something like $20 for every player you knock out meaning of the $163 I buy in for $13 goes to the house, $130 goes to the general prize pool and $20 goes to the player who knocks me out. It should be fun.

The next tournament is the $535 FTOPS main event which has a 2 million dollar guaranteed prize pool. Finally I've decided to throw in the $215 Pokerstars Sunday Million. I may also play the $215 Pokerstars Sunday Warm up and/or the $215 Pokerstars Sunday Second Chance. If I do so I'll be including those tournaments as part the series, meaning my backers for all of the fulltilt and Lucky Chances tournaments will have a piece of that action as well. If you're a backer and you have any objections (I can't imagine why you would) just let me know before Sunday and I'll count you out. There's also a 10% chance that I might play one of the other remaining tournaments on fulltilt, but right now it doesn't seem likely. By the way I'm wes1279 on fulltilt not ACESEDAI so if you want to watch from your computer you can find my by searching for that username. The action starts at 11 am pacific and I'll recap all of it on Monday.

Tournament Recaps

Sorry again for the major laziness on my part in updating the blog. I know those of you that have financial interest in my results are probably very interested in knowing what's been happening.

I'll start with what's been going on at Lucky chances. On Wednesday I played the $550 NL tournament. I arrived at the casino feeling good about my chances since I'd done so well the previous day. My first interesting had came about 45 minutes into the tournament with the blinds were 50/75. I was in the big blind with K6 when three players called in the field as did the small blind.

The flop came down K 9 2 and I thought there was a good chance I had the best had, but against so many opponents it was hard to be sure. I considered betting but decided to check. An aggressive player bet about half the pot and I was the only player to call. The turn was another 9, I checked again and my opponent bet about half the pot again. I knew she was a little loose so she could have a wide range of hands and I also knew she was a thinking player that could lay down a fairly strong hand if she thought she was behind. I decided to move all in since that would be exactly what I would do if I had a 9. I also knew that if she had a king it wasn't AK, KQ, or KJ since she would have raised those hands preflop meaning if a A, K, Q, J or 9 came on the river I get half the pot if she also had a K. I figured it was more likely she had a pair between 33 and 88. She thought for about 5 seconds and then called me with 96. At first I thought to myself "why the hell did you do that," but upon further reflection I think it was an OK play if not a good one.

On Friday I went back to Lucky Chances to play the $550 shootout. In the first hour and a half I won one pot and it was because I stole the blinds preflop. In fact I didn't even play a hand to the flop during that entire time because my cards were so bad. Then I picked up AK suited and was first to act. I raised, the big blind moved all in and I called. I was happy to get some action with by far the best hand I'd seen all day, but I was unhappy to see my opponent turn over AA! I was only about 7% to win and I didn't catch a miracle.

While it sucked to go out early twice in a row, that's actually not the worst possible result. Going out just short of the money is much more time consuming and painful than going broke in the initial stages. Because of my misfortune I managed to dodge the rush hour traffic and enjoy the rest of my day, so it wasn't all bad.

On Wednesday after I went broke I came home and played in the $216, 6 handed NL event on Fulltilt. I was lucky to start at a table with a bunch of weak players. It seemed like every time I reraised them they folded. Not surprisingly I started to do a lot more reraising even with marginal hands. I've forgotten any interesting hands along the way, but I know when I made they money (yay!) I had about an average sized chip stack.

A short while later I had slightly less than average with about 20,000 chips. The blinds were 800/1,600 and I open raised to 4,800 with AJ suited. The player in the blind blind moved all in for something like 30,000 and I decided to take a chance. I could have folded, but in order to go really deep I needed much more than I had. Hoping to see a pair below jack I called. My opponent showed a pair of tens which meant I was just shy of 50% to win. Sadly the tens held up and I was out. I finished in about 250th out of more than 3,600 which paid $375.

I'm out of blogging time, but I'll have more recaps soon. Tomorrow (Sunday) I have the $1,000 event at Lucky Chances. Wish me luck.

Massive Blog slacking!

Sorry about my lack of tournament updates! I'll have a recap of the three tournaments that I've played since my last post as well as the one I'll be playing tonight, sometime tonight or tomorrow.

A New Series of Tournaments

Today I started a new series of medium sized multitable poker tournaments. Actually it's more like two series. The first set is a group of 4 tournaments at Lucky Chances Casino in Colma CA the first of which ($330 NL Hold 'em) I played today (Tuesday). There is also a $550 NL hold 'em (Wednesday), a $550 NL hold 'em shoot out (Friday) and a $1,060 NL hold 'em (Sunday).

The second set is similar to the WCOOP but is on another website, namely fulltiltpoker.com. I plan on playing 6-8 of the 16 tournaments in that series in the $215-$1060 range. Some of these events are on the same day as the in person events, but happen much later in the day. So if I go broke early in person I can come home and play, but hopefully I won't be able to. :) I've given myself a $4,000 bankroll for both sets combined and I've sold off a little bit of my action to a few select backers.

So what happened in the $330 event from today? Well we started with 204 players, 3,000 chips, blinds at 25/50 and 20 minute levels. I have to say that this was not a great structure. In person 20 minute levels means 10-12 hands per level which meant this was in effect a turbo tournament.

I folded just about every hand for the first hour or so and then managed to pick up a few small pots without ever having to show a hand. I quickly grouped my opponents into two categories: players who I knew weren't any good and players who didn't seem very good but had yet to make it perfectly clear that they sucked. From the start I liked my chances.

After two hours of play the blinds went up to 200/400 with a 50 chip ante and I found myself with about 7,500 chips in the small blind. The player on the button raised to 1,600 and I thought to myself "If I look down at anything here I'm moving all in." It just felt like a bullshit raise to me so when I looked at my first card and it was a king I moved all in without looking at my other card. The big blind folded and after about 5 seconds of thought so did the raiser. It turned out my other card was a 7, but I didn't look until I was already stacking the chips.

On the very next hand the same player raised, but this time he moved all in for about 8,000. I looked down at AQ and quickly called. When the cards got turned over my opponent showed A9. I flopped a Q so I didn't even have to sweat it and took down a nice pot. With about 70 players remaining, I was in great shape with about 20,000 chips while the average stack was around 9,000.

I fluctuated a little, but found myself with that same 20,000 chip stack a few hours later when the blinds had ballooned to 1,000/2,000 with a 300 chip ante. In the big blind with KJ I faced a tough decision when the player one off the button moved all in for about 9,000. I wasn't thrilled with my hand or the prospect of risking a big chunk of my stack, but after counting down the pot and seeing that I was getting better than 2 to 1 on my money I decided to call. When I showed my cards, my opponent proudly turned over AJ. Yuck! I called out "Put queen, ten, nine out there." I didn't get my wish, but the flop I got was just as good- A Q T! I'd flopped a straight! After winning that pot my stack was over 30,000 chips and we were down to about 30 players.

As we got close to the money I made a play that took balls of steel. With about 25 players left (18 spots paid) and blinds still at 1,000/2,000 I was in the big blind again. The player on the button (who was talking up a storm at all times) raised to 5,000, went silent, and stared at the table. This was as good as a neon sign that said "I Do Not Have a Good Hand!" I told myself that if I looked at anything good at all I was moving all in even though my opponent was one of only two players at my table who had more chips than me. When I checked my cards I saw that I'd been dealt 9 3! ACK! That's about as bad as it gets, but after about 10 seconds I moved all in anyway. My opponent quickly folded, I took down a fair sized pot, and felt a wave of satisfaction come over me. In the past in situations like this I would think to myself "If I was a better player I'd probably move all in here," while I folded. But lately I've been playing with a fearless attitude and my results have been great.

When the player in 19th place went down I was in the money and guaranteed a payout of $600 gross. I'd run my stack up to about 50,000 chips while the average stack was around 35,000 at that point. We quickly lost 3 more players and my payday was guaranteed to be at least $800. With the blinds were 2,000/4000 with a 500 chip ante I ran into a major speed bump. I raised to 12,000 with KJ, the player in the big blind moved all in for a total of 24,000, and I was forced to call even though I was pretty sure I was behind. Unfortunately, my opponent had AA and I didn't manage to catch a miracle.

My stack slipped even further as I slowly got blinded off. The blinds went up to 3,000/6,000 with a 1,000 chip ante and I found myself with 19,000 chips and two more hands before I would be forced to take the big blind. I was looking for just about anything to move all in with, but instead of finding anything, I got dealt 8 5 and then 2 4. Yuck! In the big blind with a third of my chips already in the pot I called a raise with A 7. Sadly my opponent had A9 and I was eliminated. :(

I played a great tournament and did surprisingly well considering the crappy cards I got dealt. I got AK twice and AQ once, but I never got a pair above 88. I finished in 11th place which paid $1,040. I would have like to make the final table, but this was still a pretty good way to start my November tournaments. Tomorrow I have the $550 NL at Luck Chances which starts at 10:15 am. At 6 pm there is a $216 (that's not a typo, they charge and extra dollar in juice at fulltilt) 6-handed NL hold'em online which I should be able to make barring a money finish in person. I'll let you know what happened.

Beating the Bad Players and the Good Ones

On Thursday I woke up and played some 6 handed $5/$10 limit hold'em. There is a very lengthy, but interesting reason why I was doing that which I will save for another post. It started off going fine, but after about 2 hours I was stuck about $500. Crap!

Instead of pressing on I decided to switch to playing a few multitables. After 45 minutes or so I was in 6 tournaments, 3 of which ended much more quickly than I would have liked. The remaining 3 were: a $55 tournament that started with 1,200 entrants, an $11 tournament (one of the quicker ones with 10 minute limits) with 883 entrants and a $55 plus rebuys tournament with 206 entrants.

In the $55 I made the money and with 60 or so players left I was eliminated because of a misclick! Oops! I was playing the other two tournaments which were going well and somehow I accidentally clicked on a button which put me all in with a hand I never would have played. I had about 20,000 chips which was about a third of average and the first player to act raised to 12,000. The window of that game popped into the foreground just as I was moving my mouse across the action buttons and BOOM, I was all in with K2! ACK!

Given the situation I wasn't in terrible shape. My opponent had A5 giving me about a 35% chance to win the pot, but I didn't manage to pull it out. I still made a net profit of something like $200 on that tournament and I was a long ways away from the final table so it wasn't a disaster.

In the $11 tournament I was doing well early and then ran into some trouble which left me very short stacked with about 90 players left as we were getting close to the money. With blinds of 400/800 and a 50 chip ante I was down to 3,600 chips and first to act. Rather than go through the blinds and lose a third of my already tiny stack I decided to move all in with Q3 suited. I expected to get called and probably lose, but it was only an $11 tournament so who cares?

In fact I did get called, and by TWO players. But I flopped a Q which was enough to drag the pot and give me a fair sized stack of about 12,000 chips. From there it was a massive turbo to the top. I doubled up to 25,000 chips when I beat KQ with 99. Then I busted a player with about 10,000 chips who played KJ against my AQ. A few hands later I went from 35,000 to 70,000 with QQ vs AT.

I'd increased my stack by a factor of 20 in less than 20 hands! I sat on a stack around 70,000 chips for about the next 50 hands occasionally scooping in the blinds and eventually caught another break when someone went all in with 77 against my 88. When we got down to two tables I had my stack up to over 130,000 and was in first place. I went to work stealing blinds and was certain I was going to the final table. While the prizes at the top didn't have my mouth watering (after all the entire prize pool was only $8,830) anything higher than 5th would wipe out the $500 cash game loss from earlier in the day.

With 20 players left I busted someone else. I got a little too aggressive with KQ and was lucky to find myself against TT and not AK or AQ. I was even luckier to hit a Q and win the pot. Now I was up over 200,000 and in one of my favorite situations - I had twice as many chips as the player in 2nd place!

With about 15 players left the other players caught up a bit, but not for long. On consecutive hands I eliminated a player with TT vs A8 and another with JJ vs KQ. As we cruised into the final table I felt like I was in complete control with almost a third of the chips in play in my stack.

The final table went by in a blur. Myself and one other player were chopping down our opponents left and right. We went from 9 players to 4 in ELEVEN HANDS! That is unheard of. My main opponent and I each had over 500,000 chips while the other two players had less than 100,000 so it was only a matter of time until we squashed them. About 15 hands later one player finished in 4th earning a little over $600 and he was soon followed by the third place finisher who got paid $800.

Now there were just two of us. 1st place was $2,200 and 2nd was $1225 so we were playing for about $1,000. I knew I was much better than my opponent and never tempted to offer a deal. Heads up play lasted about 20 hands and I feel like I didn't win a single pot (I'm sure I won a little one in there somewhere). Whatever my opponent needed he got. He was playing literally every hand and kept hitting monsters. If he was any good at all he could have busted me 4 times before he actually did. On the final hand I had AQ against his A5 and he flopped two fives!

From the time there were 25 player left I felt like I was going to win this one, but I can't be upset about how I played and certainly not about making over 100 times my buy in!

But that's not the end of the story! I was still in the $55 with rebuys. Everyday pokerstars has a $109 with rebuys and a $55 with rebuys that start at 11:15 and 12:15 respectively. The thing about rebuy tournaments is they are much bigger than the initial buy in would suggest. Anytime you get below a certain chip count you can "rebuy" more chips so if you want to be competitive you're looking at at least a $309 commitment (some players spend well over $1,000 in an effort to accumulate chips) to play the first tournament and at least $155 for the second.

What happens is there are 50+ online tournament pros or very serious players who play both of these tournaments every day. While there are tons of big buy in SNGs and cash games, it's hard to find big buy in multitables during the week with enough players to make the prize pool really interesting. These two fit the bill and draw some excellent players. If you're on the west coast and a multitable pro you set your alarm for 11 am (one of the perks of the job is sleeping in late every day) and play both every day. The point is while I was no doubt one of the top 2 or 3 players of the 883 in the $11 tournament, I was probably only in the top 25 of 206 in this one, and there weren't too many players who sucked.

I struggled through the whole tournament. When we got to the top 27 I was thrilled to just make the money (which was about $260 gross - I was in for $155). I was playing the final table of the $11 tournament not really paying attention and I saw we were down to 18 which added another $100+ to my prize. Great!

I was in 11th place with 13 players left when I caught a huge break. The blinds were 2500/5000 with a 250 ante and I got dealt A7. I moved all in for about 60,000 and instantly regretted it. This was just a little too aggressive. I got called by JJ and found myself only about 30% to win. Amazingly I hit an A on the turn and found myself with an average sized stack.

I was still around average with 140,000 chips when we made it to the final table. On the very first hand of the final table with blinds still at 2500/5000 I was in the big blind with 55. The first player to act raised to 13,000 (a weird amount) and I decided to call. The flop came down 8 6 2 and while I'd considered checking and folding I decided instead to bet out 20,000. I figured if my opponent (who started the hand with about 95,000 chips) had big cards he'd fold and if he had an over pair he'd raise.

But he just called. The turn brought a miracle - one of the two remaining 5's in the deck giving me almost certainly the best hand. I checked feeling 95% sure my opponent would move all in and that's just what he did. I confidently called expecting to see something like TT, 99 or even AK. Instead I saw 96 of clubs? What? Then I saw that the 5 on the turn was a club and the 8 on the flop was a club! Yikes! I was expecting to be a total lock to win and instead I had to dodge a 7 or a club to win the pot. Guess what the river was...the 7 of clubs making my opponent a straight flush! Crap!

I was down to 45,000 and in last place. 9th paid $650, but moving up just one more spot was worth another $500 and the spot above that was worth another $500. I was determined to survive long enough for at least one person to go broke. I stole the blinds a few times and then the player in the small blind moved all in with K9 when I had A9 in the big blind. I managed to win that one and was out of immediate danger.

It took almost 50 hands for the first player to go broke at the final table! What an amazing contrast to the $11 tournament where 5 players went broke in 11 hands and the whole final table only took a little more than 50 hands!

This table plodded along for what felt like forever. I never really managed to pick up much in the way of chips, but I didn't go south either. The other players were playing plenty of hands, but many of the confrontations were going the wrong way.

We have to go to dinner soon, so I'm going to sum up. By the time we made it down to 5 players I only had 80,000 chips while everyone else had 200,000 plus. I went broke in 5th, but didn't feel the least bit bad about it. 5th place paid a sweet $2,750!!!!

Another amazing day to go on top of a crazy fantastic month. I am playing some great poker lately and I'm hoping I can keep up anything even close to what I've been doing for the past 7 weeks. It's like every time I get 5 times as many chips as I started with I take it to the final table. I should not be this easy to keep chewing thorough these big fields and I know I'm just running super hot right now. Either that or I'm one of the best players in the world and I just somehow put it all together last month. Let's hope that's it. :)

Anyway, I kick ass. I'm taking 3 days off in row before getting back to work on Monday.

More Final Table Action!!!

There is more EXCELLENT news in this post. Even though it's long, it's a must read for anyone interested in my poker exploits.

On Saturday I decided to play a few multitables. I'm just about on pace to reach my points goals for the end of the year and earn my $3,000 bonus. I've found a way to earn points at a much faster rate, but I'll explain all that in a future post. So while I had planned on Saturday being a full work day, it turned into watching college football and playing multitable tournaments on my laptop.

One of the tournaments was a heads up matches tournament. The way these tournaments work is everyone is split up into tables of two players. Those two players play one on one (or heads up as we say in the poker world) until one of them goes bust. Once every table is left with just one player, the remaining players are matched up and they do it all over again. This continues until you're left with one player. Essentially it works just like a tennis tournament where the winner of each match moves on and the loser is eliminated.

The tournament I played started with 230 players (meaning 26 random players got a free pass through the first round) and had a $22 buy in. I've played about a half dozen of these tournaments in the past week and while they're not for big bucks they've given me a chance to brush up on my heads up play.

In order to make the money you need to win 3 matches and make it to the round of 32 which pays something like $45 ($23 net). I won each of my first 3 matches in about 50 hands which takes about 15 minutes. My 4th match took about 25 minutes, which felt like forever, but I won and I was up to $61 in prize money with 16 players left. In my next match, about 10 hands in I got dealt QQ, my opponent got dealt 55 and all the money went in before the flop. He didn't catch a miracle, we were down to 8 players and my guaranteed prize money was up to $161.

I wasn't expecting to make much playing this tournament, but all of a sudden it was getting interesting. Making it to the top 4 was worth $370 and there was more prize money beyond that. Up to this point my opponents were fairly passive and with the exception of the player who went broke against my pocket queens I was able to gradually grind them down before eliminating them. In the round of 8 my opponent was super aggressive. He was making big raises and reraises on almost every hand and I knew I'd need to catch a big hand to beat him.

We started every match with 1,500 chips each and 10 minute limits. In the second limit with blinds of 15/30 I was down to 1250 chips when he raised to 120 from the small blind. I made it 300 to go with AT and he just called. The flop came down T 5 2. I bet something like 250 and he moved all in. I quickly called, he showed 56, I won the pot and he was down to 500 chips. Since I now had a 5 to 1 chip advantage it was easy to finish him off and I was in the top 4.

I have no idea what happened in the round of 4 match, but I know that I won. HA! We were down to the final table which this time was a final table of 2. Second place paid $690 and first place paid $1242 so I was about to play a heads up match (against someone who had also just won 7 straight matches to get to that point) for $552 dollars. Before we even started I suggested that we split the remaining prize money. My opponent (BIGsexy85777 was his name) suggested that we each take $866 and play for the remaining $200. This sounded perfect to me.

Once we e-mailed support and got someone to the table to arrange our deal it was time to play it out. Close to 10 minutes in, with blinds at 10/20, Bigsexy raised to 60 from the small blind. I called out of the big blind with 64 suited (you have to play a wide range of hands against just one player). The flop came down 7 5 4 giving me a pair of fours and an open ended straight draw. I bet out 120 expecting to win the pot right there, but Bigsexy called. The turn was an ace and I checked. He bet out 200 and I called hoping to make my straight. The river was another 4 which was perfect because I was almost sure to have the best hand and it didn't look as scary as a card that would make my straight. I figured I'd get some action and I did. I checked hoping my opponent would bet and that's just what he did. It wasn't a big bet, but he was running low on chips and when I moved all in he was forced to call. He had A6 for one pair, I had trip fours and it was all over.

Add another notch to the tournament win belt and another $1,066 to the coffers!

But that is not the real good news. I can hear you all thinking now "(Gasp!) You mean there's something more significant that happened to you this weekend." Yes there is, and here's the story.

I was planning to take Sunday off to watch football, but I've been doing so well and having so much fun playing lately that I decided to take a shot at a few multitables on the laptop again. I had 4 or 5 duds, but the last tournament I signed up went MUCH better. It was a $55 no limit hold'em tournament that went off with 1,206 entrants.

About an hour and a half into the tournament I had tripled my starting stack of 3,000 to over 9,000 when I had some internet troubles. Something funky was happening the the cable modem and even after restarting everything I still couldn't connect. So I used the highly advanced technique that I learned studying engineering at Berkeley - I unplugged everything to "let it rest." Sure enough 10 minutes later when I plugged everything back in, I was able to get back on.

The prize money started at 135th place and with 137 players left I was faced with a tough decision. I had 35,000 chips (average was about 26,000), the blinds were 500/1000, I was in the big blind and the player in the button raised to 3,000. I called with KT of hearts and the flop came down Q J 5 with 2 hearts. I had an open ended straight draw and a flush draw and one over card. While I didn't have anything yet, I'd hit something about 55% of the time. I considered betting but decided to check. My opponent bet out 4,000 and I just called. The turn was a blank and I check called 8,000. The river was another blank and we both checked. My opponent turned over Q9 and won the pot.

When that hand was over, I felt like a real wuss. My opponent had about 2,000 fewer chips than I did and after he bet on the flop or the turn, and all in raise would have been a great play for me to make. Two spots out of the money I can't imagine he'd have called with Q9 if I'd put him to the test and I really felt like I'd missed out on some chips. I vowed to play better, and more aggressively for the remainder of the tournament.

But a minute or two later I was in the money and still had enough of a stack to work with. I was starting to fade and as we got down to about 80 players, I had 18,000 chips while the average stack had shot up to 45,000. Then I caught a nice break. One player raised to 6,000 and another moved all in for 25,000. I called with AK and the first player folded. I flopped a K, beat my opponent who had JJ and was up to about average.

I've forgotten exactly how it happened, but I made some big hands, got some action and by the time we were down to 45 players I was in first place! I suppose that's a lot to gloss over, but it's not like this is a short post!

The next key hand came up with just under 40 players left. Average was close to 100,000 and I still had more chips than anyone in the tournament with about 275,000. The blinds were 2500/5000 and the player who was in second place with about 250,000 chips raised to 15,000. Another player made it 30,000 to go and I was on the button with QQ - the third best possible starting hand.

By my estimation, I've played about 1.5 million hands of hold'em in the past 7 years which means I've been dealt QQ about 7,000 times. I could probably count the number of times I've folded QQ before the flop on one hand (I've never once folded AA or KK before the flop). Up until this year I never would have even considered it. But in this case, I just couldn't think of anything that the player who made it 30,000 could have except for AA or KK. I decided to trust my read and I folded.

The initial raiser immediately went all in and the other player instantly called. The player who had almost as many chips as me had KK and the other player had AA! If I'd called or reraised the player with KK surely would have raised again. The flop was all cards below ten and I'm certain I would have lost almost all of my chips had I decided to play. Folding this hand made me literally thousands of dollars.

I was still in first place and that's pretty much where I stayed as players started dropping. I wasn't making any huge hands, but I was stealing blinds left and right and the other players were letting me walk all over them.

Unfortunately, when we were down to around 14 or 15 players I hit a major speed bump. I lost half of my chips with KK against AQ. ACK! I think I've mentioned recently that in order to go really deep, just about everything has to go perfectly. I figured this had was the beginning of the end for me. But it wasn't!

10th-18 paid $482. Which wasn't bad, but 9th paid $904, 8th paid $1,387 and it was up and up from there. It seemed like everyone had plenty of chips compared to the blinds and I felt like it was going to take forever to make it to the final table. Luckily the players acting just after me were very tight so I was able to do plenty of raising without anyone playing back at me. This kept me afloat.

We made it down to 9 players, and then 8 and then 7. I was guaranteed $1,989 and had a stack that was just about average at that point. There were 3,600,000 chips in play and the two players to my right each had about 1,000,000. The reaming 5 of us all had between 200,000 and 400,000 and were just trying to outlast each other.

Then something dramatic happened. One of the players with 1,000,000 chips busted the other by making a straight flush against the other player's top two pair! Now one player had 2,000,000 chips and the rest of us were way behind. But we were down to 6.

Luckily, the leading player was not any good at all. In fact someone who'd been eliminated earlier was talking smack in the chat box about how terrible he was. He should have been raising 75% of the hands at least since the rest of us were all sort of trying to wait each other out. 6th place paid $2,592 and moving up one more spot to 5th was worth another $600 which was about 11 times the initial buy in.

Another thing that was lucky was, he was just to my right, meaning he had to act just before me. I'd squeaked into second place with around 500,000 chips and every time he folded, I raised. Someone went broke in 6th and then another took home 5th place money ($3,196), but I wasn't involved in either elimination.

Now were were down to 4 and I was guaranteed at least $3,919. I had 500K, the player with 2 million still had the same amount and the remaining players had 300K and 800K. As soon as we were down to 4 the player with 800K started talking deal and he was pushing hard. He was saying things like "Any smart player would make a deal" and "we should really make a deal, should I call support?"

For once I wasn't really interested in a deal. I thought I was clearly the best player left, the worst player has almost all of the chips, and I'd be taking something like $2,000 more than 4th place money when I had a shot at much, much more. I told the guy pushing for the deal that I'd listen to the exact numbers, with the plan of only taking a deal if I could get much more than the equity of my chips was worth (ie I might take and extra $3,500 when my chips were only worth another $2,000).

The guy with 2,000,000 chips had no idea what was going on. The whole concept of a deal was foreign to him so even though it would have been in his best interest, he wasn't sure. The remaining player wasn't saying a word. I assumed it was because either he had his chat off or just wasn't interested. Upon later reflection I noticed that he was from a place called Kakalak so maybe he just didn't speak English. Regardless, there was no deal to be had.

So we played on. About 15 minutes and 30 hands passed without the chip stack changing much. Then the player with 300K doubled up through the player with 800K on one hand, and busted him a few hands later. We were down to 3 and I was guaranteed $5,306!

Then I caught a major break. The blinds were 20,000/40,000 and I was in the big blind with about 600,000 chips. The player who had been at 2 million chips for the past hour was still right around that level and in the small blind. He raised to about 300,000 which was really excessive given the size of the blinds. I think he was trying to make what was supposed to look like a strong move since I'd moved all in against some of his previous smaller raises. As it turns out this was perfect timing for me since I got dealt AA! I moved all in and he called me with KQ. He totally missed and I was up to about 1.2 million chips!

We were all relatively close and chip wise and I was looking good. The blinds went up to 25,000/50,000 and I found myself in the big blind with A8. The first player to act (the guy who wasn't saying anything) moved all in for about 1,000,000. This was certainly excessive, but this guy had shown that his only move was either all in or fold once we made it to the final table. A8 wasn't a great hand, but unless he had AA I'd have at least a 30% chance to win and it was likely I had the best hand.

So I called. This was a scary call, and I wasn't happy when he turned over 99. But, I was thrilled to see an ace on the flop! I managed to dodge a 9 on the turn and the river, we were down to 2 and I was up to 2.2 million chips! 2nd place was $8,140 and 1st was a whopping $13,869!

At this point I did the stupidest thing I possibly could have done. I offered the other player (who I knew what no good) a deal. I asked if he wanted to split the reaming prize money based on chip count. I just didn't want to play heads up for almost $6,000 no matter what the circumstances. I explained that we should both sit out and I would e-mail support to help us with the deal. He still wasn't sure but he agreed anyway.

While we were having this discussion, we were still playing. I'd raised to 150,000 with total garbage and he'd called me. The flop came down with a bunch of face cards and I was ready to give up on the hand. Then he clicked on sit out in the middle of the hand! The pot which was over 8% of the chips in play and worth almost $500 if we were going to split got shipped my way!

So here we are both sitting out waiting for support to show up (which usually takes 2-5 minutes) and after about 90 seconds I see that he's sitting back in again. What? Then he says "I don't understand what's going on, let's just play." I tell him that I've e-mailed support and when they get here they'll explain it to him but we can play until they show up.

So we play. On the 5th or 6th hand I pick up A9 in the big blind. The blinds are still 25,000/50,000 and he raises to 200,000. I move all in and he calls with QT of hearts making me 54% to win . Jen is sitting next to me and we're both calling for an ace. ACE! ACE! ACE! All I need is for him not to hit, but I'm thinking just put the f-ing ace out there and send me the money. The flop is all cards under 8 with one heart. So far so good. The turn is a heart and I feel deflated. I'm certain that I'm not going to survive the river. Now I need to dodge a Q, a T, or a heart. I just can't see missing all of those cards. I'll still be alive, but now if I make the deal I'll have lost thousands in equity.

Then the river comes out...and...it's a black deuce! SEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNDDD MEEEEEE THE MONEY BABY! $13,869!!!!!! DING DING DING DING DING!

This was an amazing win for me. I can't believe how well I've been doing lately. I also can't believe that I almost made a deal with that goon. I won a heads up tournament by winning 8 straight matches YESTERDAY! Why in the world would I make a deal when I've got a 5-2 chip lead, I've got my opponent totally outclassed, and my heads up game is a sharp as it's ever been? Very foolish of me, but in the end it makes for a much better story.

What a sweet win!