A Comment Response

Mike left this comment a few days ago regarding my deep finish and monumental collapse in the $215 Limit Event:

Tough one Dave. Do you have notes on the final rounds of the tourney? How many hands did you play in between 3rd place and elimination? Were there hands you should have played differently or did you just run into a buzzsaw? I'd be interested in sharing in the madness (you were in 3rd when I went to sleep, so I want to know what I missed, even though it's ugly).I think that simply playing for 11 hours in a row is an often overlooked element in terms of the difficulty of winning a tournament. I think it gets a lot harder to focus and especially when you are among the chip leaders in a limit tournament it becomes surprisingly easy to lose a bunch of your stack. Anyway, hope you can shake it off and proceed to triumphant glory in the coming tourneys. Good luck!

At the time I put up my last post regarding this tournament it was late and I'd been playing for almost 15 hours straight that day so I didn't really go into too much detail. I've requested a hand history which will give me the exact details of all of the over 800 hands I played in that tournament. When the WCOOP is over or perhaps on a day when I don't have any tournaments I'll do a write up where I talk about all of the hands that went bad in the last 50 or so hands and try to objectively analyze if I did it right. To be honest I'm sure there are plenty of things I could have done differently and it will be interesting for me to look back.

2008 WCOOP Event #12 ($320 Mixed Hold'em) Recap

Another super early exit for me today. I finished in 1,299th out of 1,496 entrants in today's mixed hold'em event. There was one big hand and one medium hand that did me in.

In the big hand we were playing no limit (a little over an hour into the tournament) and I raised with TT. I got called by a guy who I knew was nuts. I knew he was nuts because not only was he playing a ton of hands, but I had a slew of notes on him from past occasions that we'd played confirming my impressions (on pokerstars you can make notes on other players and then when you encounter them again there is a little icon on their picture letting you know you have a saved note).

So I raised with TT, he called and the flop game down A Q 5. YUCK! I bet out 2/3 of the pot anyway and he just called. The turn was a blank and I decided to give up. I checked and he made a VERY small bet. This game me hope that maybe I did have the best hand, and it gave me a cheap look at the last card. When the river came it was a ten! BINGO! I checked hoping my opponent would bet again and to my extreme delight he moved all in. Of course I instantly called, but was shocked and disappointed to see my him turn over KJ for a straight! ACK!

This left me with about 1,000 of my original 4,000 chip starting stack. A few hands into the limit I picket up JJ and ran into KK. The board came with all cards below ten the whole way and when the hand was over I was broke.

On the bright side because of my satellite play earlier I essentially got into both of today's $320 tournaments for a total of $117. I have the $215 mixed hold'em second chance in about an hour and a half so there's a little action left on the docket today.

2008 WCOOP Event #11 ($320 PL PLO8) Recap

I've got bad news, bad news and good news. I'll start with bad #1. I decided to play in the $320 pot limit Omaha Hi-Lo tournament today and I finished in 1,535th out of 1,733. Not much of a story to go with this one. Just a check raise bluff on the river that didn't work out.

The other bad news is I spent the whole morning playing like a total fool. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I did some of the stupidest shit I can ever remember doing. The one thing that stands out like a Beacon of Stupidity is I finished in 6th place in a satellite that paid 5 spots after coming to the top 6 in second place! Total moronitude (not a real word, but apt none the less) of a grand scale is the only explanation for this result. The final hand of that one was perhaps the worst play I've made in the past several years and is too embarrassing to even mention.

Now the good news! Despite my horrific play I did managed to win two satellites! I woke up and saw that today's mixed hold'em event was in fact played 6 handed! Jackpot baby! I don't know why it's not called "Mixed Hold'em 6-Max," but I'm fired up about it. Once I discovered this fact I decided I should play in all of the remaining satellites (except the hyperturbo ones that have SUPER short limits) which turned out to be 4. My total outlay ended up being $117 and I returned $640 in tournament entries (which are transferable between all the WCOOP tournaments).

So even though I got busted early in the Omaha and I played like a total mook, I'm still ahead a few bucks for the morning. I've got 45 minutes to take a nice break and get my head straight before the hold'em starts.

Razz Second Chance Recap

I finished 54th of 128 in the Razz second chance. I was doing just fine with about 8,000 chips (a little above average) with 60 or so players left. Then I had two big hands go against me.

On one I was up against a player who ended up all in on 5th street and one other player. Basically they both had very marginal hands and I had 4 cards 6 and lower. All I needed to win was a card 9 or below that didn't pair me. Instead I got three straight jacks!

On the next hand I knew the player I was up against had a weak hand. I put on the big heat on with a pretty crappy hand on 5th, 6th and 7th streets and he called me with Q9732! This is a total shit hand to showdown. I know it was a big pot, but this was still a surprising call. My best 5 cards were QT974 and after I missed out on that one I was down to 2,000 chips. I was out pretty soon after that.

My starting $10,000 bankroll is now at $11,003. When it comes down to it these $162, $215, and $320 tournaments are probably not going to determine my overall fate in the WCOOP. When I start getting to the $1,050 tournaments and the $500 with rebuys later in the series that's when we'll know what's what. Of course it doesn't suck to be up thousand bucks at this stage.

2008 WCOOP Events #11 & #12 Preview

Event #11 is one that wasn't on my original schedule and I'm still not sure I'm going to play. It's $320 Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Split.

I was in the midst of trying to explain Omaha Hi-Lo for those of you who don't know much about it and I decided it best to just direct you to this link if you want to learn more. Also you'll notice all the other games listed on the left if you'd like to read more about them.

I have a fair amount of experience playing this game limit and not much playing it pot limit. I expect to make a game time decision and right now I think there's about a 75% chance that I'll play.

Event #12 is $320 Mixed Hold'em. Basically it's half limit and half no limit hold'em switching back and forth every half hour. I'm hoping that at least some of my competition will be much worse at limit than they are at no limit (or perhaps vice versa in fewer cases). This is the first year they've had this event and I love that they're always coming up with new ways to spice things up!

2008 WCOOP Event #10 ($215 Razz)

I finished 650th out of 1288 in today's Razz event. I'm a little dissapointed since I had high hopes for this tournament. But it just didn't come together. At one point I had my starting stack of 3,000 up to 6,700, but it was a quick downhill run to zero soon after.

In still in the $162 Razz second chance which started with 128 players and a first place prize of $4,416. We're still in the early stages, but I'll let you know what happens when I'm done.

Event #10 underway

We kicked off the $215 Razz (7 card stud where the worst hand wins) with 1,288 entrants. After an hour only 10 people have busted out. The stakes have been so small during the first two levels that it's really felt like warm up. I have my starting stack of 3,000 up to 3,330, which is of course better than being down 330, but not too exciting.



I've decided to skip the 4 handed second chance. I think it's just a bit too much of a crapshoot and it requires a great deal of attention and concentration. I will however be giving it my best in the $162 Razz second chance which starts in 2 hours.



Also I wanted to make sure no one missed these comments:

From Kristen:

Is it weird that I consider the WCOOP one of my favorite times of the year? As though it's some awesome holiday!? haha! Well, my point is..it is so fun watching and cheering you on. Even more fun when I've got a piece of the action! Regardless of my own personal gain, I am always excited for you to win because it seems like you just keep getting better and better which makes it more and more exciting! Not to mention that I most definitely have a cooler brother in law than anyone else I know! hahaha!!

From London Dave

Right you've tickled the belly the belly of Bracelet and got a whiff of the Mega pay day, I can feel it in my water ! the big one is coming, keep it up Dave, It WILL happen, I just hope I'm around to see it, Most of the games start around 7-8pm UK time hence my 3am stay ups, Sigh... up for work at 5:30am ! roll on the WCOOP!

Census T0m I think you've fallen to #3 on my list of super fans! I'd also like all of you (except Damian) to acknowledge that all of your bothers in law are no match for me in the coolness department!

WCOOP Event #9 (NL 4-max) Underway...and over.

I finished 2,761 of 3,290. This one lasted all of 36 minutes. Amazingly I started by running my starting stack of 3,000 up to 7,000 by making some hands and putting major pressure on my opponents. Then I crashed head first into a slew of made hands and that was it. Such is the nature of 4 handed play.

Hopefully I'll have better luck with the Razz.

2008 WCOOP Event #9 & 10 Preview

Event #9 is $215 4 handed NL hold'em. This is a tournament that might last 8 minutes or 8 hours for me. 4 handed play is full of confrontations and you just have to go for it. In the words of many great poker players "In order to live, you have to be willing to die." Playing so short you just have man up and get your chips in there!

Event #10 is $215 Razz. I've been playing a fair amout of Razz lately and since there are already almost 700 people signed up for this tournament I expect a large turnout. Guess what? There are about 100 people that play Razz with any kind of regularity on pokerstars. I don't know who these people are who think they're going to do anything in this tournament when they never play Razz, but I'd pay $430 to get into this one even if everyone else was paying $215.

I expect to play a few satellites to these tournaments as well. I'll let you know how it goes.

8-game Second Chance Recap

I finished 8th out of 108 in the 8-game second chance. I'm going to be brief since I've been playing for 12 straight hours and I've got a similar day on tap tomorrow. I got paid $745 for 8th which means I had a net profit in WCOOP today of $1,588 and my starting $10,000 bankroll is up to $11,595.

Even though I haven't hit a home run in this years WCOOP (Yet!), I have to be happy with my play. If I keep going deep, everything is going to come together sooner or later.

Thanks to everyone who has posted comments. Clearly I've spent some effort writing this blog and it's great to know that people are reading it. Keep up the comments!