Back from the Dead in the 8-game

I was down to 1,500 chips and at one point had all but my last few hundred chips in the pot.

The turnung point that led to these difficulties happened in the limit hold'em. I came in for a raise with QJ and got 3 bet. I called and the flop came down jack high. I check called with the plan of check raising the turn. Which is exactly what I did after a brick came. My opponent 3 bet me which I thought meant I was in big trouble. I almost folded. The river was an ace which was clearly a terrible card for me. But the pot was so big that I check called. My opponent turned up AT! ACK! He three bet me with nothing but ace high on the turn, was a 14 to 1 underdog and hit! If I'd won that pot I would have had an average stack of a little over 6,000. Instead I had 3,000.

But after going to the basement I am now back in the penthouse. When I started this post I had 12,000 chips at least half of which came from scooping 3 pots in the stud-8. Then I picked up 3,000+ when someone moved all in on my AK suited with QJ. And I just picked up another 3,000 after getting a free look in the big blind and snapping off a bluff with 3rd pair.

That means I have 18,000 and I'm in 29th of 582. A long way to go, but things are going well.

8-game update

I got hot right after my last post. I made a queen high straight flush in the stud, picked up a few other nice pots, and find myself with 7,000 chips.

Late registration is over and we got 999 players. 1st place is $50,250 and the edge of the money is 144th which pays $480.

WCOOP Event #18 ($320 8-game mixed) Underway!

I've really been looking forward to this tournament! I feel like I have a huge edge in these HORSE and 8-game tournaments. It looked like we're going to have about 1,000 players. I've gotten off to a poor start losing 800 of my 5,000 starting chips, but it's still early.

Also on the schedule today is the second chance 8-game mixed tournament which starts at 4:30 and features a $215 buy in.

Hyper-Turbo Report

It was pretty interesting playing these 8-game hyper-turbo satellite tournaments. They lasted about 15 minutes our just long enough to play each of the 8 games in the mix for one 2 minute level.

The fact that the first two games were triple draw lowball and limit hold'em worked to my advantage because I'm great at 6 handed limit hold'em, and most of the other players were bad at triple draw.

My friend Matt Lessinger plays A TON of hyperturbo satellite torunaments (they run this style of tournament often) and he is very good at stalling at the right times and playing fast at others to insure that he doesn't get screwed by the blinds. For example in these tournaments the third game in the mix is Omaha-8 and the fourth game is razz. So during the switch between those games you go from a game with blinds to a game with antes. It is very disadvantageous to take the big blind right before you switch to a game where everyone antes the same amount every hand.

I wish I could say I did a great job of "managing the clock," but I didn't.

I played 15 $40.80 tournaments, 20 $51, tournaments, 6 $81.60 tournament, and 1 $116 tournament.

6 times I won the $320 seat (since you can't play the tournament more than once, after the first one you get $W which are dollars you can use for any other WCOOP related tournament), and three times I won a cash prize ($260, $280, and $80).

I should have won two more $320 prizes. On the first I played a hand and lost where I think I probably just could have waited it out. In the second I lost in the NL hold'em with KK vs 34 in a situation where we were playing 3 handed, two spots paid and I had the other guy all in.

In the end I showed a net profit of $176. Not earth shattering, but not nothing.

WCOOP Update

The badugi tournament was fun and if you read my twitter updates you know I was doing well for a while and then collapsed.

I ran my starting stack of 5,000 up to 13,000. I know it seems like I do that every tournament, but that is generating equity. Those 13,000 chips were worth $780.

It's hard for me to say what went wrong, but mostly I think it was running into a few huge hands. I know I lost two big pots with 4 card 8 lows and one where I had 7542 and lost to A235 which is the second best possible hand. I think this is the equivalent of making a bunch of straights and flushes and losing.

This morning I was supposed to play the $530 triple shootout, but it sold out before I was able to register (it has a 1,000 player max). So instead my plan is to play a bunch of hyper turbo satellites to the $320 8-game mixed event that goes off at 1:30.

Hyper turbos are kind of ridiculous. You get 500 chips and there are 2 minute levels, but there is almost no juice (80 cents for a $40 tournament). I'm going to play about 20 of them and see how it goes.

WCOOP Event #15 $320 Badugi!

"Badugi? What the hell is Badugi?" Those were the words I was thinking after I asked a floorman at the Bicycle Club in LA what games they played in the $60/$120 mixed games. Actually I was thinking "This guy is the worst floorman ever!"

I said "what games are they playing the the $60/$120 mixed games?" He looked at me like I'd asked him if he'd be willing to drop his pants so I could smack him on his bare ass. It was a simple question. Then I pointed to the table and said "what games are they playing in the mixed games?" After another moment of staring at me blankly he said "uuuuhhhhhhhhhh. Hold'em. Triple draw. Badugi. And sometimes Omaha."

It was the sometimes Omaha that really wowed me. Sometimes Omaha? What they hell does that mean? Tell me what games those ass holes in the corner are playing right now!

Also I'd been a professional poker player for some time and I had never even heard of badugi. Not a whisper from any other players, no websites spread it, and Cardplayer had never mentioned it in the years that I'd been reading it. It sounded like he just made up a word. Saying that Candy Land was one of the games would have made more sense to me.

Later I found out what it was and now I'm going to tell you! Every player gets 4 cards and you get three draws where you can throw away cards from your hand and replace them with new ones. Your goal is to make the lowest hand possible. Aces are low and straights don't count against you. But here is the thing that makes it interesting. If you have two cards of the same suit you can only use one of them!

So the best hand is A 2 3 4 with four different suits. But if 3 and 4 are both the same suit you have a 3 card hand and ANY hand with 4 different suits (and no pairs) will beat you. If you have three cards of the same suit, anyone who has three suits represented will beat you.

It's a really goofy game and it hasn't really caught on. To my knowledge this $320 tournament will have the biggest prize pool of any badugi tournament ever played (unless some rich goofs got together any played one privately for absurd stakes).

I wasn't going to play it, but I won my $320 seat via a $41 satellite. I don't know how much I like my chances, but they can't be that bad. Just based on some of the plays I saw in the satellite and in the first 10 minutes of the main tournament it's clear that a few players have no clue. Regardless it should be fun!

Mixed hold'em not going great so far. Down to 3,000 from 5,000.

Thanks!

Thanks to those of you who have left comments! I hear verbally from people all the time that they've been following my blog. I know my backers are reading it and my website will often get 100 hits from unique users in a day, but it's still nice to get comments even if they are simple.

I'm probably get more comments if I could do something in of these tournaments! The exciting thing is you never know when the day that everything comes together is going to be. Today could be that day.

WCOOP Stud Recap and Today's Plan

Event #13 $320 7-card stud was pretty disappointing. I got off to a slow start, but in the middle stretches of the tournament I made some major progress running my 5,000 chip starting stack up to 25,000. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I was in 16th of 300 or so players (96 spots paid) at that point.

I maintained that stack for a while and then as the stakes increased I got a ton of marginal, but playable hands on 3rd street that never improved. Stud isn't about what you start with it's about what you have at the end. Unless your first three cards are three of a kind (which happens once in every 457 hands), you're never going to be way ahead of your opponents no matter what they have the way you are in hold'em if you have a big pair and they have a smaller one.

For example I would have a hand like T 8 T and someone with a 9 would come in raising. I would catch 4 total bricks and they'd call all the way and hit a second pair on the river. Sometimes I was the one with the smaller pair calling along, but at least 5 or 6 times all I needed to do was make two pair to win and I missed every time. It made me crazy!

The last hand I played was typical of the hands that led to my demise. The bring in was directly to my left and everyone folded to the player on my right who raised. He had an ace showing and I was confident that he would raise here with an ace up no matter what he hand in the hole. I had a A J 9 which I thought was a slightly better than average set of cards to go with my ace. I was in bad shape anyway and I needed to do something before the antes ground me down.

So I raised. I hand enough for that raise, a bet on 4th street, and almost a full bet on 5th street. To go along with my A J 9 I caught a 6, T, 6, 2 making me a lowly pair of 6's. My opponent started with A Q 3 and caught 7, 5, 4 (at this point I was way ahead) and lastly a 6, making him a straight.

I finished 144th which was a very annoying result.

On the bright side, labor day (or the weekday of any 3 day weekend) is a great day to play poker. People who play once a month or less find themselves sitting around with nothing to do and decide to play a little poker. Those are the perfect opponents to face.

To make a long story short I won $2,300 playing a mix if $10/$20 and $15/$30. That makes losing a $320 tournament a lot easier to handle!

Today I have $320 6 handed mixed hold'em. In this format every 10 minutes you switch between limit and no limit hold'em. I should have a slight advantage over my opponents in the no limit portion and a huge advantage in the limit.

On my schedule is the $1,050 NLH tournament that starts at 5 pm. But after some more thought I don't think it's the best decision to play a tournament that's going to take 6 or 7 hours to make the money and 15 hours to go all the way through after already playing for 5 hours. If it was a HORSE tournament or a limit hold'em tournament I would play, but there's really nothing special about this one, so I'm just going to skip it.

WCOOP Event #13 Underway

Event #13, $320 7-card stud, went off with 668 entrants. Four and a half hours into the action we've lost almost exactly half the field and I find myself in 30th of 330 player remaining. Actually while typing I just lost a big pot so now I'm in 51st. Ok now I just won another one and I'm in 16th! HA! That was an action packed 2 minutes!

Anyway at this instant I have 22,000 chips and average is just over 10,000. The edge of the money is 96th which pays $481. I need to make it to 24th to net $1,000+ and first place is $37,575. There is a long way to go, but right now I like my chances to make the money.

In other good news I crushed the labor day crowd and won $2,300 playing cash games no higher than $15/$30.

Today's WCOOP Action

Today I have $215 4 hande NL hold'em and $320 7 card stud.

4 handed NL hold'em is pretty nuts. You have to play a lot more hands than in a full game or even a 6 handed game. Generally the fewer players there are at the table the more the better players dominate, but it's much easier to go broke.

After 1 hand I've lost 20% of my chips! ACK! The good news is I have a bronze star and a sliver star player at my table. Looks like about 3,500 players in this one.