2008 Event #7 ($2,000 NL Hold'em) Recap

As as walked out of my hotel room today I made sure several times that I had everything I needed. Wallet - check. Tournament entry card - check. Extra money - check. Room key - check. It wasn't until I made it to the tournament area that I realized I'd forgotten something - I forgot to eat! Playing high stakes poker is not something you want to do on an empty stomach! I quickly dashed off to the Starbucks that I knew was close by and scarfed down a muffin and a some other sort of pastry. Not the breakfast of champions, but enough to keep me going.

I looked at my seat card as I walked into the tournament room and saw that I was at table 20, seat 6. So I walked up to table 20, sat down in seat 6 and when I showed the dealer my seat card she looked at me like it was a coupon for a free happy meal. Apparently I was at "Amazon Red" table 20 when in fact I was supposed to be at "Amazon blue" table 20. In past years the tables in the Amazon room were labeled simply 1 to 220. I'm sure they have a good reason for this change, but I have yet to figure it out.

I finally made it to my seat where I found a bottle of "All In" drinking water and a can of "All In" energy drink waiting for me. Right at noon the cards were in the air and my 2008 WSOP was underway.

The tables around me were noticeably lacking stars from the poker world, but there was one minor poker celebrity at my table - Dario Minieri. I actually have played with Dario at least 50 times since until recently he's made a good chunk of his living playing multi table tournaments on pokerstars.com which is my website of choice.

Dario's first claim to fame is he was the first player on pokerstars to exchange his frequent player points (FPPs) for a new Porche which is the most expensive thing you can get with your FPPs. His second claim to fame is he finished about 30th in the main event last year and was featured heavily in ESPN's coverage. If you watched any of that coverage you'll remember him as the young Italian guy with the goofy scarf. In person he is shockingly short and looks like he's about 15.

Now on to the poker action! Here is a phrase I hope to never say again about a WSOP event - the key hand in this tournament for me happened 30 minutes into the first level.

Before the key hand, I'd seen two flops (I folded on the flop both times), stolen the blinds once and folded every other hand. The blinds were 25/50 and I had about 3,500 of my starting stack of 4,000 when I picked up AK in the small blind. Dario raised to 150 one off the button, the player on the button called and I reraised to 600. As soon as my chips were in the pot the big blind moved all in and both of the other players folded.

I stopped to think for about 60 seconds. There was 4,400 in the pot and it would cost me my last 2,900 hundred to call so I was getting about 3 to 2 odds. The only hands I was really worried about were AA and KK since I'd be a big underdog to both. Against any other hand I'd be at worst 45% to win. Interestingly enough in an earlier hand the player in the big blind had raised with AA and then after a call and a reraise he just called. That told me that if he had AA he'd likely just call in a spot like this as well. Furthermore, given that I already had one of the aces and one of the kings the chances of him having AA or KK was greatly reduced. I figured there was about a 10% chance that he had AA or KK, an 80% chance that he had either QQ, JJ or AK and about a 10% chance that he had something else. I'd almost certainly split with another AK and I'd be just under even money to win against QQ or JJ. Since the pot was offering me 3 to 2, I decided to call.

When the cards got turned over my opponent also had AK. He had the A of hearts and the K of spades, while I had the A of clubs and the K of diamonds. The only way we wouldn't split was if the board came with four of a suit. The first four cards off the deck were all spades and I was out. My opponent was not gracious about his victory.

Given the stakes and the likelihood of the given outcome, this might have been the worst bad beat of my entire poker career. There was a 95.65% chance of a split and we each had a 2.17% chance to win.

It really sucks to have all this anticipation and build up and come all this way to lose to someone who had a 2.17% chance of winning the pot. But, the good news is that I actually feel OK about it. Of course I'm disappointed, but I think it speaks to how far I've come as a poker player that I'm not crushed. If I'd lost in a $2,000 tournament in this was a few years ago I wouldn't have been right for a few days. In this case I moped for about an hour. I played some pai gow and had a shot of Grand Mariner and now I feel fine. It helps that I've gone over the hand in my head 100 times now and every time I come to the conclusion that I did the right thing.

Poker is all about making the best decisions with the incomplete information that you have and letting the chips fall where they may. In this case I made a good decision and it just didn't work out. That's poker.

Luckily one of my biggest strengths is putting the past behind me and moving forward! Tonight I'm going to play a $340 buy in tournament here at the Rio. While there is zero prestige involved, there still money to be won and I expect a weak field. I have no idea if I'll be facing 40 players of 400, but I'll put up a short recap along with a preview of my next event either later tonight or tomorrow morning.

Fucking 2.17%! Crazy.

In Vegas and Ready for Action!

So far my trip to Vegas has been great. My flight from Oakland to Vegas pulled back from the gate at exactly the scheduled departure time, the flight was less than half full (I didn't have anyone in my row, in front of me or behind me), and arrived ten minutes early. My bag was the second one off at the baggage claim and showed up the very second that I walked up to carrosel number 6 to grab it. There was even a cab waiting to take me to the Rio (for those of you who have never been to Vegas the cab line in often insane and it's not unusual to wait 30-45 minutes for a taxi) and I was in my room 20 minutes after my plane was scheduled to land.

I brought $15,000 with me on this trip and while it's been a long time since I've felt uncomfortable carrying a few grand with me, having enough in your pockets to buy a new car is a different story. While I wasn't exactly nervous, I did check to make sure I still had it an embarrassing number of times. Of course having that kind of cash with you will make you feel like no matter what you forgot at home it won't matter because you'll be able to just buy a new one!

While my plan was always to get to sleep early (I was out cold by 11:30 and slept until 10) and not do much, I did manage to squeeze a little gambling into my first night. I sat down at a $25 minimum Pai Gow table with plans of playing for about an hour and hopes of unwinding and perhaps winning enough for a nice dinner.

Unlike poker, Pai Gow is a game you can't win in the long run. It's a game you play against the house where you and the dealer each get 7 cards. You then split those 7 cards into a 2 card hand and a 5 card hand with the only rule that the 5 card hand has to be better than the 2 card hand. The dealer does the same with the house hand and if you're 5 card hand is better than the dealer's 5 card hand AND your 2 card hand is better than the dealer's 2 card hand, then you win. If you lose both hands you lose, and if you win one and lose one it's a tie. While you can't win in the long run, it's a game with a very low house edge and it's a slow game (speed is your enemy in the casino!) because it takes a while to set all the hands and there are a lot of ties.

I won the first hand and was never behind for the hour or so that I played. After I was at the table for 15 minutes a guy about my age who was on dinner break for $1,000 with rebuys WSOP event sat down at the table next to me. He bought in for $500 and started off betting $25 a hand. After a few hands he kicked it up to $50 and won. The next hand he bet $100 and won. Then he said he was feeling lucky and pulled a $500 chip out of his pocket and slid it into the betting circle. At first I thought he was asking for change! Plenty of people (including me on occasion) will bet $100 a hand, but it's pretty rare to see someone put a purple chip on the line on one hand of Pai Gow.

He left it out there and won the next 4 hands in a row! I don't think I've ever seen someone buy in for $500 and bet $25 a hand a few times and then crank it up to $500 a hand a few minutes later. Also for those of you who are wondering the chances of winning 6 hands in a row with no ties at Pai Gow are around 4,000 to 1.

I ended up winning $275 which was enough to cover my extra night of expenses, pay for a nice dinner (I had a wonderful filet mignon with a baked potato and some mac-n-cheese for dinner) and have a few bucks left over.

I didn't have any trouble signing up for my tournament and when I went to the tournament area I saw that they'd made a few changes. Most notably instead of trying to cram everything into the Amazon room, they've taken over a few other rooms in the convention area as well. Now there is a whole other room devoted to satellite tournaments and a separate room for the cashier and tournament registration. Also they've split the entrances to the Amazon room into player's entrances and spectator's entrances (every year there are more and more people coming to watch and the doorways can get a little clogged).

The Rio and it's parent company Harrah's have been extremely smart about making improvements. They have a player's advisory council made up of about 10 of the biggest names in poker and they really seem to listen to them. This is my 4th year at the WSOP and every year if I've hear something complained about the next year it's fixed.

I'll put up a post late today regarding my results from today's $2,000 no limit tournament. If I'm still alive on the dinner break might come up to my room and make a quick post about my status. Regardless there will be a post up by tomorrow morning. Wish me luck!

Minor Change of Plans

I was thinking about my departure for Vegas on Wednesday - specifically the getting up at 6 a.m. part - and I decided that it might not be the best idea to get up early, fly to Vegas and then play a $2,000 poker tournament that could go as late as 3 a.m. After a quick call to the Rio to see what kind of rate I could get for another night ($40 which will probably turn out to be zero once I do a little gambling) and a call to Southwest to change my flight I am now leaving Tuesday night.

While it means another night away from my family it also means I should be well rested, I'll be able to sign up the tournament the night before instead of waiting in line for 30 minutes to an hour the day of, and I'll be in the best mental state I can be in.

Welcome New Readers!

I just sent out a mass e-mail to a bunch of friends and family and in anticipation of a few new readers I thought I'd extend a little welcome. For those of you who know don't know a ton about poker I'd encourage you to read the posts "How Poker and Poker Tournaments Work" and "A little WSOP History" which I wrote before my trip to the 2006 WSOP. You can find them by clicking here and scrolling almost all the way to the bottom. You can also see a picture of me dressed as the ace of spades if you go all the way to the bottom.

I'd also encourage you to point out anything that's confusing or that you'd like to know more about in the comments section. I know I had some readers who gave up because I started writing as if my audience was very poker savvy and I didn't know anyone who wasn't was still reading. Especially during my trip to the WSOP I expect to have plenty of poker rookies reading and I'd like to make sure everyone understands what I'm saying.

I've reposted my 2008 WSOP preview below which is followed by a preview of the first tournament that I'll be playing this year. I hope you enjoy reading and if you get the slightest urge POST A COMMENT!!!

WSOP 2008 Preview!

There are a record 55 events over the course of 7 weeks at this years WSOP starting on May 31st. My first glance at the schedule made me feel like I wanted to play about 40 of those events. The vast majority have buys ins between $1,000 and $3,000 which is right in the range that I wanted to target this year and of course most of those are some form of hold 'em which is the main area of my poker expertise.

After many hours over the course of several day of staring at the schedule, looking through my casino offers for room deals, calling to check actual rates at a half dozen casinos, and looking at the prices of flights, I finally came up with a plan! The flights and the rooms are booked now and I'll be in Vegas from June 4th to June 11th. I'm staying at the Rio the first two nights, the Bellagio (Yeah Baby!) the next two, and the Paris for the last three.

I'm planning to play in 5 WSOP events this year (#'s 16-20 of my career). Here's my schedule:

June 4th $2,000 NL Hold 'em
June 5th $1,500 NL Hold 'em 6-handed
June 6th Nothing
June 7th $2,500 NL Hold 'em
June 8th Nothing
June 9th $1,500 NL Hold 'em Shootout
June 10th $2,000 Limit Hold 'em

If I get bounced early or if I feel like playing on the 6th or the 8th I'm going to try to catch a few of the other local tournaments that go off every hour around the clock in Vegas. In fact I have my eye on a $1,060 event at the Venetian on the 8th, but I might be ready for a day off by then. I plan on posting daily giving recaps of my tournaments for my fan (Hey Tom) as well as my backers so look for daily updates.

2008 WSOP Event #7 Preview

I'm off to Vegas early Wednesday morning to catch my first WSOP tournament of the year! I have to admit that I'm feeling really excited. Every time I leave Vegas I'm always ready to come home and for the next week or two the idea of going back doesn't seem like much fun. Then as time goes by it starts to seem more and more appealing. It's been about 7 months since I've been and that was just a day trip (I've been going a few times a year ever since I turned 21 so 7 months is actually a longish time for me). When you add in the 5 WSOP tournaments, the fact that my good friend E.B. (who is going to be there along with Jean, Jen, Jake, Chrissy and Matt - they'll all be there for different amounts of time) is turning 40 on June 5th, and I've got a few nights at the Bellagio it makes me want to stop typing, head to the airport and go!

My first tournament this year is going to be Event #7 $2,000 No Limit Hold 'em. Last year this event was event #10, had 1,531 entrants, and a prize pool of $2,782,570 divided amongst the top 153 finishers. Below are a list of the top 10 finishers and what they got paid. It you want to know what every other place paid you can look at the full results here.

1 Will Durkee (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) $566,916
2 Todd Terry (Hoboken, NJ, USA) $353,875
3 Hunter Frey $231,273
4 Justin Bonomo (Sherman Oaks, CA, USA) $156,040
5 Michael Banducci (Traverse City, MI, USA) $105,884
6 Stanley Weiss (Nashville, TN, USA) $78,020
7 Walter Browne (Berkeley, CA, USA) $58,515
8 Gil George (Dallas, TX, USA) $43,190
9 Ronnie Hoffman $32,880

Like almost all tournaments at the WSOP this tournament takes place over three days the first of which starts at noon and goes until about 2 in the morning. There's a 15 minute break every 2 hours and a 75 minute dinner break after 6 hours of play. If you make it past day 1 you're in the top 10% and in the money. Day 2 starts at 2 pm and goes until only 9 players are left. The last nine players will come back on day three to sit at the table with all the cameras and get filmed by ESPN. I've made it to day 2 twice in my 15 career WSOP tournaments and it's one of my major career poker goals to make it to day 3 and be on TV.

In this particular tournament all the players will start with 4,000 chips and blinds of 25/50 with gradual blind increases every 60 minutes. While I could go broke on the first hand, baring an early bad beat I should have plenty of time to get familiar with my opponents and to do some maneuvering.

As a little aside In looking up these results for last years tournament, I was surprised to see Walter Browne in 7th. While I can't call him a friend I can certainly call him an acquittance. He's a prop player at the Oaks Club where I used to work and I've played against him somewhere between 50 and 100 times. He's also a SIX TIME United States chess champion. Obviously he's an extremely smart guy, but his chess game is much better than his poker game. Not to say he's not a good poker player, but despite this final table appearance he's not a world class player. Anyway I was happy to see his name there and I also discovered that he finished 2nd is the $2,500 HORSE tournament at the 2007 WSOP. Maybe he's better than I thought!

A Sweet $64

Before I get into my post I want to wish a quick congratulations to one of my best and oldest friends Chris Wilhelmi on his recent engagement. Chris proposed to his girlfriend Sarah over the weekend during a trip to Yosemite and of course she said yes. I want to wish them all the best.

Now on to poker related stuff. For the majority of my day today I got totally stomped. Sometimes you play a session where you are connecting with plenty of flops, but your opponents just keep on getting whatever turn and river cards they need. Today was one of those days. Not only is is much more expensive than just getting shitty cards or having good starting cards miss the flop, but it's also a great deal more frustrating.

Feeling like you've got a hand won and then discovering that the clown you are up against hit a 10 to 1 shot is never fun. When it happens over and over and over again it can make you want to pull your hair our and in the worst cases take you off your game.

I'd been playing a mix of two $15/$30 and two $10/$20 games all day and by the time I was ready to take my lunch break I was down about $2,000. I was feeling like giving up for the day, but I took a long break and after about 90 minutes I was ready to give it another shot. 20 minutes later I was down another $500 and decided to call it a day. I went and shot some hoops, took a shower and played with my son for a few minutes.

Even though I've had plenty of sessions where I've won $2,500 in my career when you're down that much it can feel like you're never going to get it back. Even a big pot at $15/$30 is about $500, usually at least a third of that money was money you put in the pot so it's not all profit, and pots of that size are few and far between. When you're winning much more pedestrian $200 pots (which don't exactly grow on trees) where half of the money in the pot was your's to begin with you can see how it feel like it's going to take forever to pick up $2,500.

Happily, even though I'd decided to call it quits for the day I was once again feeling OK. I opted to play a little more with the thinking that if I dropped another $500 (which would put me at -$3,000 for the day) I'd be done for sure and if I managed to pull back even a few hundred it would leave me feeling a little better about the day.

Well instead of my opponents getting whatever turn and river cards that they wanted, I was the one getting the magic cards. I quickly got back $1,500 and thought about stopping. After all -$1,000 is not a major loss and something I could easily get back tomorrow. But I liked the games I was in and decided to keep on playing. I picked up another $500 and though a little harder about quitting. But I kept on playing.

When I was within $100 of even I said enough is enough and decided to get up after playing to my blinds. Luckily in one of those last few hands I picked up pocket aces, won a nice pot and ended the day with a $64 profit. It was a very sweet $64 win.

Also of note, I played against 2003 World Champion Chris Moneymaker in one of my $15/$30 games for about an hour (during the stretch that I was winning). You might wonder what a former WSOP main event winner is doing playing $15/$30 and I don't have a good answer for you other than he is probably the worst poker player of any world champion ever and he's more of a tournament specialist. I've seen him playing the 6 handed games a few times, but he's usually in the $50/$100 (where I played him once before) or the $100/$200. Anyway I always think it's cool to play against poker celebrities and in this case I certainly got the best of him. Not only did I take him off a few pots with bluffs, but I also snapped off a few of his bluff attempts with weak hands and at the very least held my own in pots where we both had real hands. It felt pretty good.

Being Stupid

I did something stupid yesterday. I did something that novice and amateur players are constantly doing, but what I and most other pros almost never do. I moved up limits to try to get even.

On Monday I had the $2,300 win I mentioned in my last post. On Tuesday I was ahead $3,000 at one point and ended up booking a $1,500 win which I followed up the next day with an uneventful $600 loss.

When I sat down yesterday I was feeling pretty good and jumped into four $10/$20 games. In no time I was ahead $1,500 and expecting to have a major kick ass day. But then my profits slowly drained away. When I took my lunch break about 2/3 of the way through my working day I was ahead a must less exciting $300.

When I came back from lunch I quickly fell below even and in a matter of a few hundred hands I was down over $1,000. At this point I was not thinking about the fact that $1,000 is not that big a loss for me these days. I was not thinking that if I quit right then I'd still be ahead $3,200 for the past four days. I was thinking about the fact that I'd been ahead $1,500 earlier that day and not only was I not going to book the big win that I wanted, but I was actually going to have a significant loss.

I knew I wasn't in the best state of mind to play and the best thing for me would be to quit. But instead I did the exact opposite. I decided to play some $30/$60. I left all but one of the $10/$20 games I was in and substituted one $15/$30 and one $30/$60.

A short while into the play at the $30/$60 I picked up KK in the big blind. AH HA! Now is my chance to get back some dough! A player who I knew could be raising a wide range of hands (I had a note on him that identified him as a very loose $5/$10 player) raised from the button and I made it $90 to go. He capped the betting at $120 and the flop came down Q T 5. I check raised and he three bet me.

At this point even though I knew my opponent was loose he was still showing massive strength and I thought there was about a 80% chance he had either had AA, QQ or AQ. My hand was way to strong to fold, but I decided my best course of action would be to just call him down. The turn was a blank and the river was another Q. Ack! The only worse river in my mind would have been an A and now I couldn't beat any of the hands I thought my opponent likely to have. But given the fact that there was almost $600 in the pot and it only cost me another $60 to call I had to call his bet on the river. He turned over AQ and took the pot.

So far so bad. I told myself that if I got down $2,000 for the day I'd call it quits. Luckily I managed to make a few hands. In fact I destroyed a guy who I happen to know is a regular $200/$400 player! While I was losing to other players I was beating the pants of that guy in hand after hand.

After an hour or so I was back to about even for the day and jumped ship. The problem is it was still stupid for me to play so big when I knew I wasn't in the best state of mind. Poker is all about focusing on making good decisions not about what the results turn out to be. In the long run good decisions will lead to profits and bad decisions will lead to losses. In this case I made a bad decision and I just got lucky that it didn't cost me.

A Solid Day

I booked a nice win today playing nothing but $10/$20 games. After a string of minescule or moderate wins and losses it felt great to make some real money.

My plan was to play enough to earn 5,000 points today and each of the next 3 days. Of course since I've had precicely zero days so far this year where I've earned that many points I don't know why I thought it would be no problem. I woke up early (about 8 - super early for me) and managed to knock out 2,000 points winning $600 before having a late breakfast around noon. So far so good.

When I came back all hell broke loose. In my first 100 hands I was up $900 more and by the time I hit 250 hands (about a half an hour of play), I'd made $2,300 post breakfast and was up $3,000 for the day! During that stretch I'd won 26 of 31 hands that had gone to the showdown and won 31 pots without showdown. Par for the course is winning about 50%-55% of pots at showdown and one in every ten or so without showdown so I was clearly running really hot.

Then I had a big reversal. I dropped about $1,300 in 150 hands winning only 2 of 15 pots at showdown. I decided to take a short break, make some tea and then get back to business. I made a little progress and ended up taking lunch winning about $1,900.

Around 5:30 I was about 1,000 points short of my 5,000 point goal for the day, but I found myself ahead $2,300 so I decided to quit. I probably should have kept playing, but if I'd given back most or even just a big chunk of that money I wouldn't have been able to sit down tomorrow with the positive attitude that I expect to have.

My goal now is to earn 14,000 points in the next three days. That will put me at 380,000 for the year and since my wife Jen and I are making an overnight trip to Napa on Friday and Saturday, I need to earn some major points. Even with that once I come back I'm going to have to earn 40,000 in 10 days in order to hit my 420,000 goal before I head to Vegas. I don't know why I'm talking to you people I need to get to work!

May So Far

May has been an unusual month for me. I was in Maryland where I grew up for my good friend Brian Ridgeway's wedding from the 5th to the 12th so I've fallen a little behind in my point production. While I was there, however I discovered that a good chunk of the Ridgeway clan as well as some of my friends from high school have been reading this blog. I like readers!

Here I was thinking that Tom from the census (Hey Tom), my sister, and sister in law were the only ones reading this blog. But it turns out that there are other people out their neglecting their work duties and/or families to read virtual nonsense about FPPs, massive quantities of complaining about bad luck, and stories about people who may or may not be Ben Affleck. What's wrong with you people?

Anyway in the 5 days since my return from MD I've had some general frustration, but I've also had money flying into my pockets from strange sources. As far as the general frustration goes here's the story. In my five days of play I've been ahead at least $1,000 every day, but haven't had any four digit wins. In fact I've had three roughly break even days, one -$1,500 day and a +$700 day. I feel like someone is slipping kryptonite under my chair every day at noon everyday. I could be worse and I have been racking up the FPPs so it hasn't been a total waste of time.

Now on to the money coming to me in weird ways. Here are two e-mails I got this week from Pokerstars:

PokerStars has become aware of two players who were in violation of
our poker room rules. You were involved in one or more hands with
these players. Based on a rollback of hands in which you may have
been harmed, your account has been credited $70.00.

Due to our privacy policy we are not at liberty identify the specific
games or players in question. After careful review we have
permanently closed the accounts in question. In addition we have
implemented measures to prevent these individuals from playing on the
site using any other account.

Here's the second one:

Hello ACESEDAI,

In recognition of the inconvenience you have suffered with the delay in receiving your eCheck cashout we have credited your account with a bonus of 20% of the requested cashout amount. This amounts to a credit of $400.00 for your $2000.00 eCheck cashout requested on 04-May-08. This credit can be found in your PokerStars Cashier History as "eCheck compensation".

Score! The first e-mail had a subject line of "account credit" and I was hoping that would be more than $70, but the second one was totally out of left field. Pokerstars has the best F-ing customer service in the universe. With any other company you'd hear "we're really sorry" but they'd never do anything to make it up to you. If they'd given me $100 I would have thought it was about $80 more than I deserved so this was a very nice surprise.

Lastly and most significantly on the weird extra money front I won $1,900 from my good friend E.B. I'm sure you're wondering under what circumstances I could have possibly won so much money from him. I don't want to go into the exact details, but let's just say that I bet him that he wouldn't do something stupid and the stupider he got the more he owed me. I feel a little bad about it, but he won $900 from me in a weight loss bet that we made a few years ago and I'm pretty sure he's gotten me for a few hundred in $20 bets over the years so I don't feel too bad about it.

Since I've taken so much time off this month (I've only worked 7 days - Yikes!)and I'm going to be taking a 8 days off to go to Vegas, I have some serious catching up to do. Right now I'm at 361,500 points for the year and I'm hoping to make it to 420,000 (the point at which my $4,000 milestone bonus will actually be availible for me to cashout) before I leave for Vegas on June 4th. 60,000 points in 17 days is going to take a man sized effort, but I think I'm up to the challenge. I'll try to keep you posted.