Two Solid Finishes

I came back from vacation on August 12th ready to get back into my normal poker routine. I played a little on vacation, but it wasn't the type of play that generates many points. In fact I spent most of my time playing multitables, and oddly enough limit Omaha cash games and Razz (7-card stud where the worst hand wins) cash games. After a while I was feeling so good about my Razz play that I played about 250 hands of $30/$60 and won about $1,000!

Many people would say that Razz is one of the most boring games in the poker world, but I enjoy it. The thing I like about it most is there are so many situations that come up where you can be 100% sure that you have the best hand. For example after 3 cards if you have 3 cards 7 and below and someone is showing an up card 8 or higher you're ahead. On the next card even if they catch a 2 if you hit another good card you know for sure you're still ahead.

One thing people hate is when they start off with 3 or 4 great low cards and then catch a bunch of face cards. While this can be frustrating when it happens to me, I love it when it happens to my opponents. Sometimes weak players get so frustrated that they continue in a hand where they are totally dead just because they had a good hand on third street.

So with all that in mind, on Friday night I decided to play a $320 Razz tournament on Full tilt. They are in the midst of running a series of big tournaments much like the WCOOP (only much less significant and prestigious) which is the only reason they were able to run a $320 Razz tournament and get more than 3 people to sign up (normally $20is about the biggest Razz tournaments get and even then there's usually a very small field).

I'd already played a full day and the start time for the tournament was 6 pm. But since this type of tournament only comes along once every few months I decided to sit on the couch with my laptop, have a glass of wine, watch some Olympics and give it a go. I also jumped into "The Nightly Hundred Grand" on pokerstars which is a $162 tournament with a $100,000 guaranteed prize pool. Even though it had been a long day, I couldn't bring myself to play just one game at a time.

So after all that Razz talk I have to tell you that the Razz tournament was a total bust! I went broke about half way through that one, but I made the final table in the $162 tournament!

We started that tournament with about 750 players and I struggled for the first few hours. I was never in major trouble, but I never had a comfortable stack either. The tournament paid 90 spots and when we made the money I had about half of average. From that point on I played great in the small pots and poorly in the big ones. But sometimes you get lucky.

I got all my chips in when I was totally dominated at least 4 times that I can remember. The first one was just after we made the money. A player from middle position made a standard raise and I moved all in from the button with AT suited. I got called by AK and figured I was done. But I flopped a ten and doubled up.

When we were down to about 45 players I managed to get about 2/3 of my chips in with AJ vs KK. I flopped a J and turned another one giving my stack a nice boost.

A little later I once again had ATs against AK. The flop came AT2 and I doubled up again.

After all this great luck I was in good shape as we made the final table. 9th place paid about $1,500 so I was already looking at a nice score, but of course I had my eye on the $20,000 first place prize.

Unusually, everyone at the final table was very even in chips. In fact the chip leader only had twice as many chips as the player in 9th place! Normally when you make the final table there are a few short stacks and everyone plays pretty conservatively until they go broke since every spot you move up is big bucks. In this case 8th place paid $2,400 and I was happy to see the first person go broke after a very long half hour of final table play.

The player who finished in 8th place went broke and soon after I had my 4th miracle of the day. I was running a little short on chips and I moved all in with 44. I got called by QQ and figured I was done in 7th. The flop came 6 6 5 the turn was a 7 and the river was an 8 making me a straight! I was back baby!

That poor fellow soon went broke in 7th and took home $3,500 for his efforts. By this time is was well after midnight, and despite the fact that I'd started playing that day about 9 in the morning I was feeling surprisingly fresh.

We lost the 6th place finisher who got paid $4,600 and then we spent a long time playing 5 handed. We were all still pretty even and based on what I'd seen I liked my chances against my opposition. At that point two players got all their chips in: one with TT and the other with 33. The tens held up and I was happy to see the player with 33 get knocked down to about 45,000 chips. The blinds were 5,000/10,000 the rest of us all had more than 300,000 and I figured he'd be done in a hurry. Sadly I was wrong.

First he moved in with A5 and I called him out of the big blind with QT. He flopped an ace and was up to around 100,000 while I was down from about 350,000 to 300,000. A few hands later he moved all in with 99 and I called him with AQ. After no help for me we both had around 200,000. A few rounds later he moved all in from the button and I found myself with 66 in the big blind.

While his other all ins had been pretty standard moves, now that he had more chips moving all in was really excessive. I knew if he had a big hand he'd never put in all of his chips that way. If either of his cards was a 2,3,4,5, or 6 (18 of the 50 cards left in the deck) I be about 70% to win.

After some thought I decided to call and he turned over K5s which was just the kind of hand I hoped he'd have. Sadly the flop came with a K and I was done. The good news is I got paid $5,700 for 5th place!!! YAY!

One of the best things about winning is it usually leads to more winning. On Saturday I sat down feeling like even if I had a terrible day and lost a few thousand it would be ok. As a result I was feeling very relaxed and confident.

When I logged on to pokerstars about 9:30 in the morning I saw that a special tournament was going off at 10. They were running a $109 HORSE multitable as a test run for the structure they're going to use in the $10,000 HORSE event at this years WCOOP. This meant a looooooong tournament since we started with 25,000 chips and 30 minute levels. But since I was just starting play I figured I'd have the energy to play it all day if I had to.

For those of you who don't know HORSE is a combination of 5 forms of poker: (H)old 'em, (O)maha, (R)azz, 7 card (S)tud and Stud (E)ight or better (stud Hi-Lo split). We played each game in that order for 30 minutes and every time we switched to a new game the stakes increased slightly.

The thing I like about HORSE is I feel like I'm really good at all 5 games. Also having 5 different forms of poker adds significantly to the complexity of a tournament and any time you can make it more complicated it favors the stronger player. Stud Hi-Lo is probably my weakest of the 5 games, but I feel like there are very few experts in that game and even though it's my worst game I'm still way better than most of my opponents.

We started with 72 players and after about 7 hours I found myself in 3rd place as we started play at the 8 handed final table. Since this was a much smaller tournament that the one I described above the payouts weren't as exciting, but they were still significant. 8th place paid $360 and this time we did have a few short stacks who quickly went broke.

We started the final table playing Omaha and I struggled a little, but once we got the the Razz I started kicking major ass. By the time the half hour of Razz was over we were down to 5 and I was in first. During the half hour of 7 card stud I built my lead. At the end of that half hour while we were still playing 5 handed, but I had as many chips as all of my opponents combined!

In the Stud Hi-Lo I dropped the hammer and busted three of my 4 opponents leaving one player left. I had about 1.5 million chips and he had 200,000. 2nd place paid $1,440 and 1st was $2,160 so we were playing heads up for a little over $700.

I figured since we were going back to hold'em soon I'd make quick work of my last opponent and call it a day. But I was in for much more of a battle. We were playing FAST. I'm talking 5 or 6 hands a minute fast. And we played about 10 minutes of Stud Hi-Lo, the whole way through the half hour of hold 'em and into the Omaha before we were done. This was a TON of hands.

As soon as we started the hold-em my opponent started picking up a ton of great hands. He got AA at least 3 times and kept making 2 pair with garbage hands. Soon we were even and at one point he took the lead with about 1,000,000 chips to my 700,000 chips. That was only for a moment and I took the lead right back. It seemed like I'd get him down to 400,000 and then he'd always climb back up.

We stated the Omaha about even, but he clearly had no clue how to play heads up Omaha and I blew him out of the water in no time. I knew I was having a good run, but wasn't really looking at our stacks. Then all of a sudden I won a HUGE pot and saw he was down to 40,000. The next hand it was over.

I know I won much more money in the hold'em tournament, but there's something very special about finishing in 1st. Also I love doing well in HORSE tournaments. It makes me feel like a very well rounded player. It's certainly been a sweet two days!

Also my sister in law and avid blog reader Kristen was here and took 5% of my action in the HORSE. It was nice to be able to shoot her a $100 bill and share some profits for once!

More Battle of the Planets!

As of my last post I'd played 63 tournaments of a 100 tournament block in the $50-$99 division of the battle of the planets. On Friday, the day I left town for vacation, I woke up and played the remaining 37 tournaments I needed to complete my block. And I kicked some MAJOR ass.

Over the course of the 100 tournaments I finished in 1st 25 times! Every time I found myself in the money it seemed like I won. I ended up with 1566 points which was good for second place in the High Orbit leader board and a prize of $700! I also finished in 13th on the low orbit leader board (which is for blocks of 20) which was good for $80.

Of course I did make about $2,500 in the actual play of the 100 tournaments so that bonus money wasn't super significant, but it felt really sweet to have a high place finish.

Wasting time...sort of.

I've sort of been screwing around lately poker wise. While I've put in a few thousand hands of my normal 6 handed cash games in the past week, I've been spending most of my time playing tournaments.

This week I've been playing a mix of multitables and SNGs. I haven't managed any final tables, but I have finished in the top 20 in 3 tournaments with 500 entrants or more. Of course I can bring some pride and a few bucks away from those results, but it's mostly frustrating to be just short of winning a few grand for a final table appearance or a five digit first place payday.

After last weeks attempt to do well on the Battle of the Planets SNG leader board I realized I missed playing single table tournaments a little. So while I was mixing it up in the multitables I was also seeing if I could do anything in this weeks battle of the planets. After a strong start and then a small reversal in the $100+ division I wasn't able to book a big number of points in the "low orbit" leader board (which counts blocks of 20 tournaments) and after about 80 tournaments I gave up on scoring in the top 10 in the "high orbit" leaderboard (which measures blocks of 100 tournaments).

In the $50-$99 division I had some better success. I had one block of 20 tournaments where after 18 SNGs I had EIGHT first and two second place finishes (it's some serious shit for tournaments that start with 9 players to have that many top finishes). With two tournaments left to go I was in a spot where all I needed was one 3rd place finish to move into 3rd place on the low orbit leaderboard (it would have taken two firsts to move into first overall). Instead I got robbed. In BOTH of my remaining tournaments I was in first chip position with five players left. In one I lost 90% of my chips with TT to AK and in the other I lost KK to 44 in a very similar situation. I couldn't work any magic with my super short stacks and found myself stuck in 9th on the low orbit leader board. With a few days left in the week I don't think there's any way I can hang on to a top ten spot.

But I still have a shot a the high orbit leaderboard in the $50-$99 division. After 63tournaments I have 900 points (you get 45 for a 1st, 27 for a second and 18 for a third). I need over 1,400 to be in the top 5, over 1,500 to be in the top 3 and 1,693 to be in first if you look at the current standings. Right now I'm on pace to finish with 1,428 which I think would be good for somewhere in the 6th or 7th range once the week is over. But if I can close strong I have a shot at a top 2 or 3 spot. 1st pays $1,000, 2nd $700, 3rd $500 and every place in the top 15 pays something ($80 is the bottom prize).

To be honest this competition isn't really about the money. Of course that's nice and if there wasn't any money I wouldn't go for it. But mostly I want the thrill of victory! I can say for sure that in the long run I'd be better off dollar wise just playing my 6 handed cash games. But, I am a pretty damn good SNG player and I want to take down that $1,000 for first on one of these leaderboards!

I'm off on vacation to the east coast for the next week or so and while I expect to play a little, I don't expect to post about it unless something major happens.

Don't forget the WCOOP starts September 5th! This will be right about the time I clear my $6,000 milestone bonus so I'm going to go big!

Two Tournament Victories!

I've been playing about half a dozen multitables a day for the past week or so and I've had some solid success. It's been a mix of medium buy in tournaments with lots of players and big prizes and some small buy in tournaments with fewer players.

I actually managed to win two of the latter! One of my victories came yesterday in a $55 NL tournament with 6 handed tables and about 150 entrants. I dominated the final table and took home about $2,000 for my first place finish.

The other came today in a $22 with one rebuy tournament today. We started with 198 players and I ended up on top. 1st only paid about $1,300 but it came with the thrill of victory!

Also while I was playing in the $55 tournament I mentioned above I finished 4th in an $22 with unlimited rebuys tournament that started with about 250 players. That cash paid just under $1,500!

It's been a great two days! I've had a few other cashes as well and have been playing some of the best poker I can remember ever playing. This all bodes well for the WCOOP which will be starting in about 5 weeks.

Battle of the Planets!

Sounds dramatic doesn't it? Battle of the Planets is what Pokerstars calls their weekly SNG leader board. It really pisses me off that as soon as I stopped playing single table tournaments they created a leader board for them! Bastards!

This week as part of their 2X promotion Pokerstars doubled all the prizes on the Battle of the Planets. As a result I decided to take a little shot at the leader boards to see how I would do.

The leader boards are split into 8 buy in levels with the lowest being Mercury at $1-$3 and the highest being Jupiter at $300+. I decided to focus my attention the $50-$100 bracket (Uranus) and the $100-$300 bracket (Saturn).

You score points by finishing in the money in SNGs. For a standard 9 player SNG first place is 45 points, 2nd is 27 points and third is 18 points. There are two leader boards for each buy in bracket: one that looks at who scores the most points over blocks of 20 tournaments and another that looks at blocks of 100 tournaments. Only your first 5 blocks of 20 tournaments count for the first set and you can enter as many blocks of 100 as you want. Anyone who finishes in the top 15 on any leader board gets prize money and anyone who finishes in the top 10 in any leader board gets entry into a tournament with a $50,000 prize pool at the end of the month.

Since I didn't want to spend too much time on this I decided to play 100 $60 SNG's and 100 $114 SNGs. After completing my set of 100 $60 SNGs I'm currently in 9th on the 100 tournament leader board. With only 20 hours left in the week I'm hoping to stay in the top 10. Unfortunately 37th was the best I could manage on the 20 tournament board. (in case you're wondering I think it's 9th out of 70 and 37th out of over 1,000)

In the $114 tournaments I've only played 65, but it doesn't look too good for the 100 tournament leader board. I'm hoping I can bust out a nice block of 20 and get in that way.

I'm only looking at making $250 for 9th place in the $60 100 tournament race, but the prize pool in the monthly tournament has been doubled this month to $100,000 so I'm hoping to hang on to a top 10 spot for that.

I've had fun participating in the competition and I suspect I might take a few more shots at it in the future. Getting 1st on either leader board in the Uranus division is normally worth $1,000 and it's $1,200 for the Saturn division. I feel like if I gave it a good shot I could win it one of these weeks.

A Brief Visit to High Limit Territory

I was having one of those days today. One of those days where I was constantly finding new and horribly frustrating ways to lose. But I felt like I was playing really well.

Like many other days in the past and I'm sure many days in the future I made the dubious decision to play for tons of money in an effort to get even on the day. I went from a mix of $10/$20 and $5/$10 games to one $30/$60. I was losing about $1,500 on the day when I switched gears and after about 10 minutes of $30/$60 I found myself down about $2,500. CRAP!

Amazingly I was not feeling like a total moron, and wasn't feeling off my game, just unlucky. So I really decided to put my luck to the test and jumped into a $100/$200 game! Whoa baby!

It's been more than 2 years since I last played $100/$200 and it's the biggest game that I've ever played. On that occasion I was playing a full game in person at the Commerce in L.A. which is quite a bit different than a 6 handed, fast paced online game.

I sat down with $5,000 in front of me hoping to make a few hands...and I did. After playing for a little while I was dead even (in that game) and in the small blind. The button raised and I three bet with AJ. The flop came A high, I bet the flop and got called. The turn was a blank I bet and my opponent folded. Bang, an $800 pot and a $400 profit on a hand that didn't even have any action on the turn!

On the next hand the same player raised and I three bet with AT suited. The flop came down ten high, my opponent called a bet on the flop and the turn and folded on the river. This time it was a $1,200 pot and a $600 profit. Nice.

One round later I found myself in the small blind again, this time with QT of clubs. The button raised and I thought about three betting, but just called. The big blind three bet and we took the flop 3 way. The flop was AK5 with 1 club. I checked, the big blind bet, the button folded and I decided to take one look. There was $1,000 in the pot and it was only costing me $100 to continue. If I didn't hit a J or a club on the turn I was done with the hand. Guess what came on the turn...the jack of F-ing clubs! DING!

Now I had the total nuts (with a redraw to a flush) and I decided to go for a check raise. Happily my opponenet bet $200 after my check and I quickly raised him to $400. He called me down on the turn and put in another $200 on the river and I dragged a $2,400 pot (which may be the biggest cash game pot I've ever won). I went from down $2,500 on the day to up about $200 in the matter of about 3 minutes!

But I then I gave some of it back. I was all set to get up after playing to my blinds, but then I picked up AJ. I raised and got called by the guy who'd beaten with no showdown on the first two hands I mentioned. The flop came down 774 and he check raised me. The turn was a J which looked like a great card, but when I raised my opponenet after he bet the turn, he quickly 3 bet me. The river was a blank, he bet, I called and he showed me AA! I dropped $1,200 on that one hand and all of a sudden I was stuck $1,000 on the day. I had to just sort of stare at the screen for a minute after that one.

The money really moves in $100/$200! I wanted to keep playing, but thought better of it and called it a day. I think I'll give it another go if I find myself ahead $2,000 for the day sometime soon.

In other good news, I cleared my $5,000 bonus for reaching 500,000 points today (even though it's a bonus for hitting 500,000 points they make you earn another 25,000 before the actually give it to you - kind of stupid). Along with the money I made from Matt at the WSOP this is turning out to be a pretty profitable month!

Man, that jack of clubs was SWEEEEEEEET!

Even More Easy Money?

Those of you who are regular readers of my blog may remember a few months ago when I made $400 as the result of a banking problem on Pokerstars. In that instance a widthdrawal that I made was delayed about 3 weeks and since it was a $2,000 widthdrawal and they were offering everyone who was affected by the problem 20% of the amount they were taking out, $400 was added to my net worth out of thin air.

Recently something similar happened. A month or so ago I played a few tournaments on fulltiltpoker.com and then cashed out my total balance of $881. I deposited the check and it went through normally. Then a few days ago I got an e-mail telling me with no explaination that I'd made two deposits: one of $881 and another of $100. I looked in my account and sure enough there was $981 sitting in there even though I'd made no deposits and no money had come out of my bank account.

I e-mailed support asking what was going on and they told me that since there had been a problem with my last cashout they were crediting the amount back to my account and adding another $100 to cover any bank fees.

At the very least I've made $100 here, but I think I've in fact made a free $981. Like I said it's been about a month since I deposited that first check which seems like more than enough time for it to bounce.

While there's never a bad time to pick up a grand, part of me wishes something like this could have happened to me when I was about 15 when I REALLY would have appreciated it.

144th Place for Matt

Sorry it took me 24 hours after I got the news to put up this post. Matt went broke about 4 hours into play on Saturday. Here is what he had to say is his last e-mail.


Hi all,

As a lot of you know from following online, I got eliminated in 144th place. That was worth about $41,800. I'm a tad disappointed, but certainly happy overall. I have notes from the entire tournament, and over the course of the next week, I'll type them up and send them out, so that anyone who is interested in hearing how the tournament went can read about it.

In my final hand, with the blinds at 8K-16K, the button made it 35K. It was folded to me in the BB, and I pushed all-in for about 250K with pocket tens. He thought for a while and called with K-J and flopped a jack, and bing bang boom, that was it.

I just got word that he is either the chip leader or among the chip leaders, which is friggin scary since he was really not a good player. He had all his chips at risk with J-J against A-A, in a situation where it was obvious that his opponent had pocket jacks beat. But he ends up flopping a set of jacks and turning quad jacks, so I guess that is how you get the chip lead at the World Series. That, and calling 250K with king-high. :-) Que lastima.

Everyone in Vegas has their money already. I will see all you California people over the course of the next week to make sure you get your shares.

Thanks for all of the support. And hey, let's do this again sometime! :-)

Regards,
Matt

Good work Matt! I have to say that the money I made on the tournament was the easiest money I've ever made. 10% of $41,800 is of course $4,180, but I actually ended up making more than that!

On Saturday morning my good friend Jake e-mailed me and said he wanted more of Matt's action than the 1% he had. He wanted to know if I'd be willing to sell a little of the action that I had. So I sent him the following e-mail:

I have an offer for you and here is how I came up with it. The total prize pool at this years main event was $64,333,600. So far they've paid out $13,527,307 leaving
$50,806,293 left up for grabs.

There are a total of 136,880,000 chips in play and matt has 308,000 which is .225%. .225% of $50,806,293 is $114,314. So 1% is worth about $1,143 but I'll sell you 1% for the bargin price of $1,086 (which of course comes with a refund of $386 already built in). Let me know what you think.

Happily for me Jake decided he wanted 2% and while I was feeling conflicted about giving up a little bit of my piece of the pie, I thought it was just too good an opportunity to pass up. Sorry Jake!

Anyway congrats again to Matt!

Matt's Post Day 4 E-mail

Here's what Matt had to day after day 4:

I've heard that some of you are following the action online. That's pretty cool. I actually called Dave to tell him about a hand I was involved in, and before I could tell him about it, he told me he had read the hand online. Pretty cool.

So yes, I am still alive. We are down to 189 players. I am guaranteed $38,600.

The bad news is that I did not make too much forward progress in my chip count. I ended the day with 308,000, and the average stack right now is about 750,000. That means that I have my work seriously cut out for me tomorrow. But as I keep telling myself, anything can happen as longas I'm still in.

I was down as far as $200,000 but then made some upward progress from there.

I also moved all-in at one point with A-K on a flop of 10-5-3. Thankfully I was not called.

The sickest hand (which is the one that was broadcast on www.pokernews.com) went as follows. With the blinds at 4,000-8,000, the first player made it 20,000 to go. Three people called, which was really unusual, since our table wasn't typically loose. When it got to me in the small blind, I found pocket queens. There was already over 90,000 in the pot, and I felt that the only player I really had to worry about was maybe the original raiser, or maybe the first guy that called him. Anyway, I raised to 140,000. When it got back to the first raiser, he immediately looked at me and said, "How much does he have left? 240,000? Ok, I'm all in." The next guy folded what he said was pocket jacks. The next guy calls with what turned out to be ace-king. The next guy folded, and I just couldn't see how I could call in that spot. I was 90% sure he had aces, or else I figured he had to have at least pocket kings to move in so quickly. At any rate, I folded, at which point he turns up king-queen offsuit. It was a sick and bizarre play, and the worst part is that it cost me a HUGE pot. If he folds instead of making that wacky play, I'm probably getting called by the jacks and the ace-king, and given that the board never had a card higher than nine, I could easily have gotten up to 900,000 from that hand. Instead, I was down to 240,000 and fighting for my life. In fact, I still am. We're coming back to a brief period of 5K-10K blinds, and then it goes up from there.

I've said it four times, so I might as well say it a fifth: I'm clearly an underdog to make it through tomorrow. I will need to get very lucky and catch some cards, or make some plays against some really good players, or else I might not be around very long. But I've made it this far, so who the hell knows, right?

Play starts at noon tomorrow. They have running updates on www.pokernews.com and I think also on www.worldseriesofpoker.com for anyone who is interested.

If I somehow make it through, then we will be looking at some REAL money. That, as Dave says, would be some shit.



Good luck Matt!

Matt Still Alive at the WSOP!

Matt continues to do his thing at the main event of the WSOP. At the end of Day 4 there are 189 players remaining and Matt has about 300,000 in chips. The average stack is a little over 700,000 so Matt has a little work to do. But when you consider that when the players come back blinds will be 5000/10,000 with a 1,000 ante for another 40 minutes (for some reason they decided to stop play early and right in the middle of a level - weird) and then go to 6,000/12,000 with a 2,000 ante for 2 hours he really has enough that he's no where near desperation mode.

Right now Matt is guarenteed a payout of at least $38,600 ($3,860 for me! Yay!). Moving up to 157th or better will put another $3,200 onto that and then the pay jumps start getting big and more frequent. 99th is $51,466 and 90th is $64,333. I won't even go beyond that since my keyboard will probably short out from all the drool.

Also of note I'm being a very lame friend and not making the trip out to Vegas tomorrow. I told everyone including Matt that I'd make the trip if he made it through day 4, but I've since had the realization that I'm still Vegased out from the 9 days I spent there a few weeks ago. If he makes in through tomorrow I'm going to have to go no matter how I feel.

Keep up the good work Matt!