2008 WCOOP Event #14 ($320 Stud) Recap

I finished 425th out of 627 in today's stud tournament. My chip stack bounced around between 2,000 and 5,000 for the three hours that I lasted. I feel like I played well, I just ran into a bunch of full houses. I also had a slew of hands where going into the river I'd have one pair and so would my opponent, but I was always catching a brick while they were finding just enough to call my river bet.

In other news I started out really strong in the $162 second chance with rebuys and had more than twice average at the end of the rebuy period. Then I got involved in a few hands where I faced some tough decisions. In one my opponent either played a hand very weakly to induce a bluff or because he was really scared of going broke. Whatever it was it worked for him and I blew off about a third of my stack.

A while later I was down to about 7,000 chips from my peak of 17,000 when I called a small raise out of the big blind with 67 vs three opponents. The flop came down 865 giving me middle pair and a straight draw. This seemed like the perfect situation to use the good old check raise semibluff. I checked and the last player to act made a standard bet and I moved all in. He quickly called with TT and I missed. At the time the money went in I was 44% to win and if I'd hit I'd have been back to the good side of average.

Event #14 Underway!

We stared today's $320 Stud tournament with 627 players. After an hour of play only one unlucky bastard has gone broke. I briefly had my starting stack of 4,000 up to about 6,000, but have since come back down to 4,300. 96 spots pay with the edge of the money returning $451. 8th place pays $3,292 and 1st place is $33,388.

I'm still doing fine in the $215 with rebuys. I was in bad shape for a moment. After not winning a pot other than a few blind steals for about an hour and a half (close to 100 hands) and losing a few moderate pots I was down to around 5,500.

Then I picked up 99 and raised to 600. I felt a little nervous when I saw this hand because I knew it was enough to go with if I got challenged given my stack size, but It wasn't enough to feel good about it. I had a feeling I might end up all in vs AK or AQ hoping to survive. Instead I got called by one player and flopped a full house!!

With 977 on the board I decided to check. While it's very suspicious to raise and then check, the player I was up against seemed pretty inexperienced and I thought he might fall right into my trap. Even if he checked behind me he might pick up something on the turn that would generate some action for me.

After my check he bet 600 into the 1,500 pot which looked like a tester to me. I just called and the turn came a king. This was a great card since I thought he might have called me with something like KQ. I checked again and he bet 600 again. I just called again and the river came a 5. I was torn about betting or checking here, and against a good player I'd certainly bet. But against this guy I decided to check. He bet out 600 for a third time and this time I dropped the all in bomb! He thought for about ten seconds and called with KT.

After one or two other small pots I'm up to 13,400 which is just shy of average with 1,125 players left.

The $162 second chance rebuy tournament is also underway with 330 entrants although the prizes won't be displayed until after the rebuy period.

Event #13 Underway!

We started today's $215 with rebuys event with 2,234 entrants. Those entrants were responsible for 2,234 buy ins (obviously), 2,635 rebuys and 1,524 add ons for a total prize pool of $1,278,600.

Unfortunately I had to do one more rebuy than I wanted. About 30 minutes into the tournament I picked up QQ, raised and got two callers. The flop came 7 3 2 with two diamonds. I bet about the pot and got called. The turn was a bad card - the king of diamonds. I checked and my opponent made a fair sized bet. At this point there was about 1,000 in the pot and my opponent had about 1,500 left. I thought if I put him all in there were three good things that could happen: 1) he could fold and I'd win the pot right there, 2) he could call with a worse hand like 88, 99 or a bare ace of diamonds, 3) he could call with a better hand and I could hit a diamond or a Q and win the pot that way. Of course he could call with a better hand and win or a worse hand and hit to beat me, but I thought it was an easy decision to go for it especially since I could replace those lost chips for $200. Unfortunately he turned over 97 of diamonds, I missed and had to do one extra rebuy.

So the total cost on getting into this tournament was $815. But after about an hour and a half I'm in good shape with 10,700 chips which puts me about 2,000 above average and in 464th place out of 1,832 remaining players.

324th place is the edge of the money and pays $1,023, to net $1,000 I need to make it to 90th, to net about $2,000 I need to make it to 27th, 18th pays $5,114, 12th pays $10,228, 6th is $48,586 and 1st is $207,772! Big bucks baby!

If I do well in this one London Dave will be back from work by the time it's over! I've got 10,000+ chips and the blinds are only at 25/50! It's going to take 5 hours of play for them to get to 300/600 and will probably be 7 or 8 hours into the tournament before we make the money. This is definitely one to sit back and wait for good cards.

In other micro good news I won my initial $215 entry into this one in a $55 satellite. With everything on my schedule today it doesn't seem like much, but another $160 on the WCOOP pile isn't insignificant.

Stud starts in a half hour and I'll let you know how it's all going around 3 pm pacific.

2008 WCOOP Events #13 & #14 Preview

Those of you who have noticed the conspicuous lack of a post about the mixed hold'em second chance will most likely have guessed that I came up short. I had my starting stack of 4,000 up to 14,000 at one point, but two big missed draws and an AK losing to KJ after flopping a K did me in. I guess I'll have to live with being 3 for 5 in the second chance tournaments!

My starting bankroll of $10,000 currently stands at $10,671 after some satellite success and some main event duds.

Event #13 is $215 NL Hold'em with Rebuys. For those of you who aren't familiar with rebuy tournaments the way they work is whenever you have below a certain number of chips you can buy more during the rebuy period. The idea is if you go broke you can just buy more chips and try again! For example, in tomorrow's tournament the $215 entry fee will get you 2,000 chips. Any time you have 2,000 chips or less you can buy more for $200 (There is no house fee on the rebuys!).

Those of you who are very astute will have asked yourselves "If you can buy more chips anytime you have 2,000 or less, can't you buy more right away?" The answer is yes! And that is exactly what I'll be doing as soon as I sit down. So while it's technically a $215 buy in tournament, I'll be in for $415 right away.

But there's more! After the first hour of play you can do a special rebuy called an add on. Everyone can buy more chips at this point regardless of the number of chips in their stack. And to encourage this addition you get more bang for you buck. Specifically, in tomorrow's tournament you can buy 4,000 extra chips for $200 on the first break (after an hour).

So this means for someone like me who wants every chance to go deep it's going to cost AT LEAST $615 to play this tournament. Of course there's a fair chance it might cost $815, $1,015 or even more if I run bad during the first hour.

The benefit is the house is taking their cut as if it were a $215 tournament (only $15) while in practice it's going to have the prize pool of a $600-$1,000 tournament. While this might not seem like a big deal, if you play a great deal of rebuy tournaments this small difference really adds up.

More importantly for this one specific occasion, because of the rebuys we'll all be starting with a HUGE chip stack relative to the blinds. More chips means more play, and more play means more time for the skill/luck balance to swing more in the direction of skill (a big advantage for me of course).

Event #14 is $320 7-Card Stud. You know who play stud these days? NOBODY! That's why this is the only 7-Card Stud event in the entire WCOOP! Hell there are two 2-7 lowball events and only one 7-Card Stud event! What's that all about? No one would have seen this coming 20 years ago when stud was the most popular poker game in the world!

Anyway I got a pretty good amount of experience playing stud when I was prop player at the Oaks club. I've played one stud event at the WSOP and a few WCOOP events in stud with no cashes. But that's not going to stop me here!

I think it's great that everyday I write these previews and it's something different. It's not just $215 NL hold'em, and $320 NL hold em, and $530 NL hold'em. It's really great for someone like me who knows how to do it all, but rarely gets the chance to. As a pro you have to follow the money and if that means playing nothing but NL hold'em tournaments that's what I'll do, but it's nice once a year to get a chance to play all of these other games for some real money. Even better is the fact that since it's something special I get to play against weak players!

I might fire up a satellite or two in the morning and expect to play both second chance tournaments so it's going to be a busy day. Also given the stakes of the rebuy tournament and the fact that the second chance rebuy is $162 with rebuys (a minimum $450 commitment) it's going to be my biggest day so far dollar wise. If I can do anything in the $215 with rebuys it's going to be thousands not hundreds in profit!

I'll keep you posted.

Massive Satisfaction!

I had a very satisfying set of hands come up at the beginning of the $215 Mixed Hold'em Second Chance. After playing 10 minutes of limit poker, we switched to no limit and I got dealt AQ suited in the big blind. Everyone folded to the small blind who made the minimum raise to 40. I made it 120 to go and he quickly made it 420. This seemed a little goofy to me and I decided to just call. The flop came down KQ5. This put me in a tough spot with second pair, and I decided to just call when my opponent bet out 500. The turn was a 7 and now my opponent moved all in for 3,500. We started the hand about even and this would have put me all in as well. Something seemed off, but since I really didn't have a good read on my opponent I decided to fold and look for a better spot to get my money in.

Three hands later the same guy open raised to 60 and I just called him with AT. The flop came down JT6 and my opponent bet 80. My hand figured to be the best so I raised to 240. After a little though my opponent moved all in. CRAP! This time I felt more confident that I had the best hand. There were two spades on board and it just felt like my he had something like KQ or a flush draw. I also thought there was a chance that he was just trying to exploit what he perceived as my weak play. After some thought I again figured I could find a better spot to get my money in and folded. I was getting a little irritated, but I told myself that if I just hung in there and stayed patient I'd eventually nail this guy.

On the very next hand I got dealt JJ, was the first one to act and made it 60 to go. The villain was in the big blind and I was praying he'd call and make a second best hand or try a big bluff. He called and the flop came J 7 2. WOW! Now all I needed was a repeat of the previous hands. He checked and I bet out 80, to my EXTREME delight he moved all in! I had the total nuts and stopped for a count of 2 to just enjoy the moment. I called and he showed 72! He'd called my raise with the worst possible hand and flopped two pair! Adding to the goodness the turn was the 4th jack!

On the VERY NEXT hand another player made it 80, the villain made it 240 and I made a bold move (translation: a bad play that worked out) by going all in with 77. I figured the villain was on tilt, could have just about anything and I'd pick up a few hundred chips without a fight. I thought he might even call me with a smaller pair. Instead he called me with AQ, missed, and was done! HA! Take that sucker! It was so satisfying.

Anyway we started with 226 players and with 179 left I'm in 11th place with 9,600 chips. 36th is the edge of the money and pays $316.

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!