My FTOPS XI Schedule

I had a request to post a list of the tournaments that I planned to play so people will know when to watch if they are so inclined. Here is my tentative schedule (all times are pacific):

Feb 6th 6 pm $216 Limit Hold'em 6-max
Feb 7th 1 pm $109 NL hold'em with rebuys
Feb 9th 11 am $216 Half PL Hold'em, Half PL Omaha
Feb 10th 11 am $216 NLH 1 rebuy + 1 add on
Feb 10th 6 pm $535 HORSE
Feb 11th 11 am $216 Limit Omaha Hi-Lo
Feb 13th 11 am $216 NL 6-max
Feb 13th 6 pm $322 Razz
Feb 14th 1 pm $109 PLO with rebuys
Feb 15th 11 am $129 NLH Knockout
Feb 15th 3 pm $535 NLH (Main Event - $2.5M guaranteed)

I might also play the $322 NLH on Sunday at 3 pm if I can get home in time (I have Sunday brunch plans) and the $1,060 6 pm tournament on Monday. 6 pm is a little late to be starting a $1,000 tournament, so I'm going to have to see how I feel. I might also take a shot or two at qualifying for the $5,200 event which goes off at 11 am on Saturday.

FTOPS XI Event #3 ($216 7-Card Stud) Recap

I almost didn't play this event, but once it got started I was glad I did. So many of the players clearly just didn't know how to play stud. It's not like they were total novices, but it felt like I was up against a bunch of hold'em players if you know what I mean.

We started with 4,000 chips and despite some ups and downs I ran my stack up to about 15,000. Obviously anytime you can almost quadruple your starting stack, you've put yourself in a profitable position even if you don't convert that equity into dollars. Since one or two hands can derail you (even in a limit tournament) the key is to just keep giving youself chances and eventually one of them will work out in a big way.

With that said, two hands derailed me! In the first I started with AA3, didn't improve and lost to queens up at the showdown. A few hands later I started with three suited cards, caught a fourth one on fourth street and ended up missing my flush, but making a straight. The problem was I was up against a bigger straight.

I finished about 220th out of 593. After three events my starting $10,000 bankroll is at $10,692.

FTOPS XI Event #2 ($256 PLO/8 Knockout) Recap

This one lasted about 15 minutes. I got dealt A259 and raised a limper. The flop came down 9 9 3, I got check raised and just called. The turn was a 3 and my opponent bet the pot (which was 2,500 - we started the tournament with 5,000 chips). This looked like either a worse 9 or, more likely a total bluff. I moved in for my last chips, and got called by AK93. Oh well.

FTOPS XI Event #1 ($216 NLH) Recap

We started event #1 with 6,275 players, each with 5,000 chips. First place was $216,512 and the edge of the money was 738th which paid $326.

Not much happened for me during the first two hours of play. The blinds started at 10/20 and crept up slowly from there so there wasn't much of a reason to mix it up.

Close to the end of the second hour of play, I decided I wanted to move from my desktop to my laptop. I figured it wouldn't be a big deal to miss a few hands while I booted up my laptop, so I logged off, zipped downstairs and started what would be a 20 minute process of fighting my technology. To start, it took forever for my laptop to boot up. Then the fulltilt software wouldn't launch because it needed to update to a newer version and the automatic update wasn't working. I won't bore you with the rest, but as I said it took 20 minutes.

When I finally got back on I found myself already in a hand in the big blind. I had 95 suited and the under the gun player had made just over the minimum raise to some wacky amount. I decided to call to see if I could hit something big or maybe take my opponent off the hand with a bluff.

The flop came down 5 3 2 giving me top pair and leaving me with some tough decisions. Betting, check calling, check raising and check folding all had some merit in this spot, but I figured my best course of action was to check, see how much my opponent bet and think about what that bet size meant.

My opponent fired out a little less than 1/3 of the pot. This looked really weak to me and my first instinct was to blow him off the hand with a raise. But the pot was relatively small compared to our stack sizes and I though I might be able to check call all the way and still have 2,500 chips or so left at the end of the hand if my read was wrong.

I just called the flop bet and the turn came down a jack - not a great card, but not a terrible one either. I checked and again my opponent bet about 1/3 of the pot and again I just called. The river was a total bingo card - a nine! Now I was hoping I was up against a big pair that was just trying to milk me for more money the whole way.

I checked again, my opponent bet about 1/2 the pot, I moved all in, and he instantly called me with QJ. After two hours of nothing and some technical difficulties I was all of a sudden in good shape after one great hand.

Two or three hands later I made a set against top pair and found myself up to 15,000 chips. And then stuff really started getting good!

Over the course of the next few hours I had no fewer than three people go kamikaze on me when I had a big hand. Twice I had AA and the other time I had top pair. In each case the player I was up against made a massive overbet all in on the flop with a pocket pair 66 or lower. It was great!

With that happening I easily made the money (yay!) and managed to keep my stack above average for a long, long time.

Now I have to cut to the end because I have to get to work! With about 100 people left I went from 225,000 up to about 470,000 after beating AK with JJ. Average was a little over 300,000 at this point and after that hand I was starting to think about the final table.

Then with blinds of 6K/12K I got dealt AQ in the big blind. A player in early position who had me barely covered made it 40K to go and it got folded around to me. I thought about reraising to 120K, but decided to just call. I was in such good shape that I didn't want to risk too much against someone who had me covered with a dicey hand like AQ. The flop looked like a miracle - A Q 5 giving me top two. It was an easy decision to check and when my opponent bet 65K I made it 140K to go.

I got called and the turn was a jack. The pot was already so big that I moved all in for my remaining 290K. My opponent snap called with KT (a straight), the river was a blank and that was it.

There were a ton of ways this hand could have gone differently. First of all, KT isn't exactly a playable hand in early position at this point. Secondly I could have reraised preflop and either won right then or with a flop bet. Thirdly my opponent could have (should have) folded when I check raised him on the flop. Lastly the turn could have not been an F-ing jack! I'd be curious to hear any comments from those of you who are poker savvy about how I played this hand or how you might have played it.

I finished in 90th of 6,275 which is still great. I made a net profit of $1,164 on the tournament which puts me off to a solid start in the FTOPS.

QFV Done, FTOPS Starting

Well the Quest For Victory ended much like a quest for finding diamonds in your back yard as a kid. It was a massive failure! On Monday I bailed on my plan of playing mostly $5/$10 games and instead played a mix of $10/$20 and $15/$30 games. I got totally bamboozled and finished the QFV down a few thousand. ACK!

So I've gone back to plan A and am going to stick with the $5/$10 games and try to bang out a few small wins while still making points progress.

In other news the FTOPS XI kicks off today! Event #1 is $216 NL Hold'em, has a $1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool and starts at 6 pm pacific. For those of you interested in watching live, my username on fulltiltpoker.com is wes1279.

I'll put up a recap late (hopefully very late) tonight as well as a short preview of event #2.

QFV on Hold

I played a little yesterday and then decided it was time for mini vacation. So I took most of the day off, cooked a pair of Cornish game hens with some home made crab cakes for my wife and I, drank some nice wine and relaxed.

Today I went to the zoo with my wife and my son for a few hours in the morning, came home and took a 2 hour nap in the middle of the day.

Tomorrow I'm off to wine country for a day of tasting.

Sunday we're having a Superbowl party for about 15 people followed by a Thanksgiving style dinner with a turkey, mashed potatoes, pie and a pile of other goodies.

On Monday it's back to the grind, but for now I'm enjoying the good life.

QFV Day #6

A small loss today, about $140. But it could have been much, much worse and I play a ton of hands which is good.

Again I started off great and found myself ahead about $600 in less than an hour. I totally obliterated this one guy. I mean I turned his brain to mush and put him on nuclear meltdown tilt. I can't remember all of the hands, but I won 7 pots that all went at least to the river in ten hands and this guy was my lone opponent by the end every time.

I wasn't getting all great hands, but I got a bunch like A8, or QJ with a few pocket pairs mixed in and I was either hitting or managing to bluff perfectly (which is super tough against a maniac). At the start of this stretch my opponent was playing not great, but not terrible either. Towards the end he capped 67 off and bet it all the way through with nothing even though I'd just (correctly) called him down with ace high. After pumping $500+ into my stack he had enough and left. It felt great.

Sadly I took a major downturn after that. I lost a little over $2,000 during the badness, but after some late day goodness I turned a potential major loss into an inconsequential one.

Now on to a comment question! London Dave posted "Do you have ground rules for your daily play, For example do you play for a set amount hours irrespective of your earnings be it a profit or a loss or do you have a trigger point of daily profit where you just switch the PC off, and chill out for the day."

I get asked this question all the time and the answer has changed a few times throughout my career. When I first started playing poker and was certainly an ammature I'd try to win $100 and then quit. If I lost $200 then I'd quit too. Then I learned that you play much better when you're winning and it was better to play longer when I was winning and maybe cut and run if things were going poorly. I didn't always stick to that, but at least I was considering it.

In the early days of my pro career if I hit a certain dollar amount, say $1,000 or so (Which was a much bigger win for me in those days - probably the same as winning $2,500-$3,000 for me now) I'd quit and if I was stuck $1,000 or so I'd quit too (usually). Of course these were the outer limits of reasonable for the stakes I was playing and it was only once or twice a month that I'd go four figures in one direction or the other. For the most part I'd just play until I felt like I'd had a productive day which often meant 2 or 3 hours and a few hundred bucks to the good. This was not an optimal approach either.

These days I tend to think about things by the week or the month. I know how many points I need to earn in the year and I break that into smaller and smaller point production goals. When I wake up every day I have a pretty good idea of how many hands I want to play and rarely do I play longer or stop significantly short of that goal. If things take a really sour turn I might stop a few hours early, but since I know I'm going to have to make those hours up sometime later in the week or the month I try not to. Typically I wake up around 10 and play from 10:30 to 1:00, from 1:30 to 3:30 and then from 4:30 to 7:00. If I'm ahead $2,000 or so at 3:30 I might not log back on (of course it's hard to remember the last time that happened - Dammit!), but I'd never call it quits early in the day no matter how good things are going.

Anybody who knows anything will tell you that you should focus on how many hours or hands you want to play, make the best decisions you can, and not worry about your results. If you're playing good poker, you'll win in the long run, and if you're not you won't. Of course I guarantee you that EVERY SINGLE ONE of those players have left a good game early because the were ahead a certain amount or stayed in a bad game because they were losing a dozen times if not a hundred. But that's still the best way to think about it.

QFV Day #5

Things started out great today and at one point I was winning about $700. Then I had a slow slide back to ahead $200 or so. After a short break I came back and lost $700 in a matter of 15 or 20 minutes. I had to stop earlier than I wanted to because I got so pissed. IT SUCKS!

I'm still ahead $200 for the QFV, but since it was more like $1,400 a few hours ago, I'm pissed!

QFV Day #4 and Elite Benefit

I won $302 in 3,000 or so hands today and had one hand that was fairly interesting. I'm going to call it Hand of the Day #7 (I have no idea if that's right, but who cares!).

In a $5/$10 game I got dealt K9s under the gun and open raised. The small blind three bet and I called. The flop came down K J 7 which was either a very good flop or a trap flop depending on what my opponent had. Barring some very coordinated runners, I was taking this one to the river and it was just a matter of how agressive I wanted to be.

I was surprised to see my opponent check and figured maybe he had a hand like TT or 88. Of course I bet, and started to get worried when my opponenet check raised. I decided to just call.

The turn was a real beauty - a nine! Oddly my opponent checked. I'd say only one or two times in a hundred will someone check raise the flop and then check the turn when a relative blank shows up. Now I was confused, but it was an easy decision to bet. Again my opponent check raised! If I had to make one guess I would have put my opponent on AA, but I couldn't rule out KJ, a set or even QT. Feeling even more confused I thought about 3 betting, but decided to just call.

The river was a total brick - a six. My opponent checked again! Now I was thinking he either had absolutely nothing or a total monster. I knew there was a fair chance I was going to get check raised again, but I just couldn't check two pair, acting last, on the river. Of course my opponent check raised me! ACK! I called while I prepared to berate myself for being such a dunce, but was pleasently surprised to see my opponent show K2! HA!

My good friend Matt lessinger wrote an article for Card Player magazine 7 or 8 years ago called "The Poker Hat Trick" which was about check raising the same player three times in the same hand (A hat trick is when someone scores three goals in a hocky game). I read it in the dawn of my poker career and I can say for certain that I've never check raised someone three times in the same hand. If I have the stones to check raise the flop and the turn I always bet the river. There have been a few times where I bet the flop, turn and river, got raised on each round and three bet, but I've never pulled off the hat trick.

I think this instance was the only time I've gotten check raised three times and won the pot. My gut tells me I've gotten hat tricked a few times before and had the worst of it. I can tell you it makes you feel like you are as dumb as a sack of rocks and that you just got totally schooled.

In other news I had a realization today that in leiu of taking a free entry into a $10,000 tournament later in the year, I could take $10,000 cash. I didn't want to do this because the tournament entries (I have one left that I can use for one of 4 $10K buy in tournaments) also come with $2,500 in cash for expenses, but the potential for money 6 months or 9 months from now doesn't seem as helpful as $10,000 right now. While I feel I've got the ship going in the right direction, my bankroll is a little thin right now and adding $10,000 should allow me to make more money in the interum as well as feel much less stressed. So after a quick talk with my wife I pulled the trigger.

Amazingly, I sent pokerstars an e-mail asking them for $10,000 and they wrote me back in 5 minutes and told me I'd have it within the hour. In actuallity it only took about 15 minutes.

Now can someone tell me why when I have a problem with my f-ing Ipod it takes them three days to send me a form letter that has nothing to do with my question when I can get $10,000 in 20 minutes?

Quest For Victory Day #3

QFV day #3 was actually split between Saturday and Sunday and was a small loss. After 8,000 hands or so I'm ahead $420. More importantly I feel like since I realized I was playing too tight, I've felt like I've been playing solid winning poker, wheras in December and early January I know I was playing losing poker.

I discovered another capability of my tracking software. It will tell you how frequently you've bet, check/raised, check/called and check/folded on the flop with every type of hand (ie top pair or an over pair or a gut shot straight draw etc.) and how you did as a result.

For example in the 12,000 or so hands that I've tracked, I've had a flush draw (4 to a flush) 96 times on the flop. 2.08% of the time I've checked and then folded and I lost $15 on those hands. 8.33% of the time I check called and won $198. 14.58% of the time I check raised and LOST $167. When I bet, which was the vast majority of the time at 75.0% I won $1212. This tells me betting my flush draws is a good idea and I should reduce the frequency with which I check raise a flush draw.

That was one of the most useful things I've noticed using this feature. Plenty of the information is not surprising at all, but still interesting. For example the situation in which I've made the most was when I bet and overpair and that resulted in profits of $2162 in 94 occurences. On the other hand the worst spot was when I check folded one overcard. That happened 81 times and I lost $840 on those hands.

The amount of data I need to draw strong conclusions from this feature is probably on the order of 100,000 hands or maybe even more. But since I played about 800,000 hands last year I should have mountains of data to sift through in no time!