World Series of Poker

Well, that sucked.

2007-07-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

I am so bad at poker, I can't even begin to describe it -- I went from 20k to 14k, when I had AK back to back and lost both times, back to 21k after I flopped a set of 6s against an obvious AK, on a K high flop, but I misplayed it so bad I didn't stack the guy and allowed him to get away from his hand. Shortly thereafter, I raised on the button to 900 with blinds of 100/200 after 3 people limped, included a player two to my right, also in late position. The flop was AAJ, now he checks, I now bet 1200, he makes it 2500 and I make it 7000 total, knowing that if he had any ace or JJ he would have raised coming in. Now he tanks for 2 minutes and announces all in, I fold leaving myself with 12k (still more than enough), I guess this is what happens when you assume that players will behave how you expect with certain hands, I can't believe he limped with AT in that spot, anyway. I could never really rebuild from there, I wasn't patient enough and kept going after people with hands like 7c8c and always missing, last hand was when I had about 2.1k total with blinds at 200/400 and two people limp into my bb, I look down at 88 and push, the first limper folds (horrible fold for a tiny raise) and my nemesis, the guy with AT calls with JsQs, the board is K34T9, this guy could not miss, he also took some more chips of me on a K high flop, I had K7, he had K9 and made kings up on the turn. I played pretty horribly too, so the combination of running bad didn't help. I plan to take a nice long break from poker. :( Thanks for reading..

Night before Day 1

2007-07-07T01:19:00.000-07:00

So I'm playing in Day 1b tomorrow and feeling a little bit apprehensive, with the WSOP this year being pretty disappointing I'm not feeling confident at all. Fellow Australian poker player Johnny Vincent took a crushing bad beat with AA vs 88 all in pre, which crippled him, he then picked up KK the very next hand and ran into AA. sick. I feel like I want to get to at lest 60k in chips by the end of the day (triple up), but will just have to see what I can do at the table I draw. Off to bed now, sleeping might be tough..

2nd Trip

2007-06-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

Played another massive field saturday NLHE event, things started off amazing -- I had turned
my $3000 in start chips into about $12k before the first break with some good play and also
from some massive mistakes by other players. Three hands of note, first break with AK utg, I decided to just limp and see what happens, I'm happy to dump the hand unless things go well, now the button raises everyone folds to me, I call. Flop comes JTx, I checked dark before the flop, now the button checks. Turn is gin, Q. I lead out, button calls. River blank, I bet 1500 into a 2600 pot, now the button tanks and starts whining about a setup or something, so instead of folding or calling, he raises all in! I call with the nuts, he shows JJ and storms off, oblivious to the infinite odds he gave me on the flop. Soon after, I make a small raise in early position with 5s6s, the button, a new guy who just moved to the table in place of the JJ guy, raises. I make a loose call preflop to see what happens, hoping he just has AK or something. Flop is gin, 34T with two spades -- I check, he bets around 1200, with 3700 or so behind, I raise him all in and he tanks for a few minutes before calling with AQo, which i was a little shocked at, but credit to him for going with his read that I was drawing, albeit still a favourite. The turn blanked and I hit a spade on the river, ding! Things started to go south after the break as I became increasingly tired, I made a very poor decision to stay up late the night before and only got about 1 hour sleep before
having to fly to vegas then slept for another hour on the plane, I was getting delirious at the table from lack of sleep. I just continued to lose a series of small pots, (AT vs 22 short stack) one significant one where I had AhKh in the BB after utg raised and utg+1 reraised, I just called and flop brought two hearts. I felt strongly that utg+2 had aces so I was hoping to bust him, flop was checked and turn brought straight outs for me (I thought) with another low card, aces then bets a tiny amount on the turn which me and utg both call. river blanks and I leak 3k or so on the hand, utg had 66 and straight card would have busted me. I eventually push with QJo vs the blinds and K9 calls me and scoops, I will never play an important tournament that tired again. Fingers crossed for the main event, hopefully the deeper stacks will suit me better.

Rest of Trip 1.

2007-06-19T15:35:00.000-07:00

Not much to report, ran bad, played bad -- no results in any tournaments, am glad to be back at work to be honest. I feel my biggest mistakes were not adjusting to the short starting stack and the tendencies of the other players in these huge fields, a loss of one decent pot essentially cripples you and you have to play all in or fold poker, which I proceeded to do in a few tournaments. I ran
TT into JJ (hit a T to survive for a while but ultimately went bust), then JJ into KK, actually I rivered a J but it made him a straight. Heading back this weekend for another crack at the Saturday NLHE event. I'm really only looking forward to the main event, then taking a long break from poker thereafter.

Day 1 - PLO Event

2007-06-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

Whoops! I was out in 40 minutes, the key hand was when I was UTG with 7c8c8h9h, a very nice omaha hand and decided to just limp and keep the pot small. The flop was an amazing
Ts2d8s, I flopped a set and an open-ended straight draw. Since there were 6 players or so,
I decided to check feeling that it was likely someone would take a stab, with the intention of
check-raising, probably committing myself. I didn't want to lead out get smooth called and have a tough decision on the turn, by keeping the pot small even if nobody bets and a spade comes on the turn say I can probably call another bet to try to fill up on the river. Anyway, the turn is a very nice 3h, a blank, I now fire out for a little less than the size of the pot. One guy calls and all else fold, the river is an A, what I figure is a blank, I bet around half the pot now and then the guy essentially min-raises me. I really should have dumped the hand here, but I paid off the T545 and felt sick, the guy was drawing to a lone ace and got there, the 6 would have given me a high straight. ARGH. This crippled me and left me with $800 of the original $3k start bank, I then later tried to make a move on a guy who was clearly not sophisticated enough to realise what was happening, on a board of Ah3h5cKh with three hearts, I check raised all in with AKQx, with the queen of hearts, hoping he'd put me on the nuts, of course he insta-called with his 8hTh and I missed my outs to fill up. I feel I played pretty poorly and didn't adjust to the players who seemed to have no clue about omaha.

The good news is I played a single table sit-n-go afterwards and wound up winning, chopping
it up with another guy, I won my buyin for the omaha event back and little on top, which was nice. Let's hope things go better tomorrow..

WSOP 2007 Itinerary

2007-05-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

The nice thing about living in SF is that Vegas is only an hour's flight away, I'm hoping this will mean I'll be in better shape to play this year compared to the long flight from Australia. Ideally I won't get a headcold for this year's main event. At present the schedule is looking like;

First trip

Arrive June 13th Wednesday Night
June 14th - Event #23, Pot Limit Omaha $1500 (2 day event)
June 15th - Event #24, No Limit Hold'em $2000 (might play if I bust in previous event)
Depart June 18th Monday Night

Second trip

Arrive June 23rd Morning
June 23rd - Event #38, No Limit Hold'em $1500 (3 day event)
Depart June 25th, Monday Night

Looking forward to this trip, will be going with my buddy from work who is also playing this event.

Third trip - The Main Event

Arrive July 6th, Friday Night
Play either day 1b (saturday) or 1c (sunday) - Event #55, World Championship No Limit Texas Hold'em, $10000
It's not clear when I will be leaving, it depends largely on when I am eliminated which hopefully won't be until July 17th (Final table) if at all!

WSOP 2007 Main Event Seat!

2007-04-22T00:26:00.000-07:00

Well, it's near that time of year again and I was lucky enough to win a $10k entry into the main event online for the second year in a row on Pokerstars. It will be running earlier this year, in July which is only a couple of months away -- am looking forward to playing it again, this year the start bank is 20k, however the blinds have been doubled as well so I'm not sure what difference that makes. Hopefully I can improve on last year's performance, although it will be tough..

Home Sweet Home..

2006-08-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

Finally back in Sydney, after sleeping 20 hours on Monday I'm slowly returning to reality, I really missed my friends here and the food as well, Vegas food is the absolute worst, except for N9NE @ the Palms which was awesome. If you just want something quick and easy though, you're in trouble it's just grease city.

WSOP Main Event - Day 4, Busto!

2006-08-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

It was a very tough day, I went from 170k to 500k back down to 120k
and had around 350k when the following hand came up. This young guy who
moved to our table an hour ago with 1.2 million in chips had played maybe 2 hands (clearly he was going fridge until more people went broke) raised to 30k on my big blind in late position, then the small blind made it 80k. I looked down at pocket kings and thought for a few seconds about mucking as the situation wasn't quite right, here was a relatively tight norweigan guy raising the massive chip leader who had barely played a hand in an hour, he has to be very strong. After some thought, I figured he could easily have TT, JJ, QQ, KK or AK in addition to AA -- since the pay
structure was moving slowly at this point and my stack of 350k was below the average
of 500k, the opportunity of getting a 700k stack was more important than surviving a while longer and passing KK is kind of ridiculous anyway. I shove all in, the original raiser folded, but the small blind calls quickly and confirms he has aces, I don't suck out on him and it's all over. It was the tournament of coolers for me, JJ vs QQ, QQ vs AA I could get away from, but KK is simply too big of a hand and you can't be afraid of the nuts all the time. Anyway, I finished 155th and was paid $47k US which isn't too shabby considering the size of the field, obviously disappointed I didn't go further. Even though I got my money in very bad, I felt at ease with how I went out, I doubt that many people would or could have done differently in that spot. Thanks for following along with my progress.

WSOP Main Event - Day 3

2006-08-05T03:40:00.000-07:00

Wow -- what a day, I got up to over 200k at one point and was doing quite well
at my table. I ran into some very unfortunate situations, I got dealt QQ to another
player's AA, then JJ to another player's QQ, both times I got away from the hand preflop and was correct both times. I bluffed all in with 44 on a J89Q turn, correctly putting my opponent on AK and stole a big pot with 6s7s on a AJA7 board, both times these pots were in excess of 30k and while my plays were risky, I just felt my opponent couldn't call. We finally made the money, at this point I can do no worse than win $US 26k. I have 173k ending day 3 which is around average, I have to make a move tomorrow.

WSOP Main Event - Day 2

2006-08-02T01:54:00.000-07:00

This will be quick -- I got exactly three pairs all day, QQ, JJ and TT. I didn't get AK
once, I had to manoeuvre to get all my chips, stealing, bluffing etc, I went down to 27k from 61k but ended the day with 105k, average is about 73k. Day 3 is on Friday and I have two days off. I had Phil Ivey at my first table, with nightmares of the Aussie Millions returning, but thankfully after an hour or so the table broke. I'm off to bed!

WSOP Main Event - Day 1

2006-07-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

Wow, that had to be the most stressful 15 hours of my life. The short story is that
I survived Day 1, in fact ended it with 61k in chips after being down a low watermark of 4k. 61k is probably around the top ten in chip counts -- far better than I ever expected! I now have two days off to recover until I have to play Day 2, very excited!

Here are some photos and more details

According to cardplayer, I'm currently 26th out of 856 for my day, which is the top 3%. There are 4 days so extrapolating means on Day 2 I should be around about 52nd out of 1712 which is obviously a great spot.

Great Timing...

2006-07-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally got sick over here. Constantly switching from air conditioned
comfort to the overwhelming outside temperature of Las Vegas has given me a sore throat and stuffy sinuses, a great condition to be in when my Day 1 of the main event starts tomorrow. I will see if I can defer my starting day, but I'm not hopeful -- will just have to try and get better by then.

Not much to report...

2006-07-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, sorry there isn't much to tell, I've played two of the smaller
tournaments with little result. The first was a Limit Hold'em shootout, which I have no idea why I played, I guess boredom -- it was seriously torture, every hand I made got run down, but I suppose that's limit. Today I played a smaller No Limit event, but the starting stacks are a little bit small and force you to play tight early on. I managed to double up in the first hour or so, but then I got stuck in a couple of situations that quickly saw me get short stacked. So I'm at 3000, blinds 50/100 -- a short stack of about 450 moves all in front of me and I look down at pocket sevens, I decide to call but possibly could have mucked, everyone else folds and he flips AQ, he of course hits his queen on the flop and I'm back down to 2500. I lose about 350 the following round from the blinds and a failed preflop min-raise which was re-raised, back to 2150.

I'm UTG+1 and UTG makes it 450 to go, half his stack. I make it 900 to put him all in with TT, now UTG+3 decides to shove all his chips in, he had me covered. This guy had recently moved to the table with 3300 in chips and I hadn't seen him get involved, I can assume that he's better than average since he's chipped up -- after an early raise and a structure raise his move means I'm facing JJ,QQ,KK,AA or AK. At best I'm 53% favourite otherwise I have two outs. Anyway, there was 450+900+900+1250 (3500) in the pot and it was costing me 1250 to call, but I was calling for my tournament life and I was pretty convinced he had an overpair, this giving me an insufficient price. Anyway, since the players at my table were so bad, I decided that I could give myself a chance if I folded and tried to rebuild -- the latter part of the plan didn't really work out and I busted some time after. He took me aside afterwards and told me that he had AK of diamonds, doh.

So, that's the only tournament news. I don't really like Vegas much from what I've seen, it seems a pretty empty, soulless place. I am looking forward to Joe getting here so we can get out and do some non-poker related stuff like shopping, swimming and some sightseeing.

Hope you're all doing well.

Steaming..

2006-07-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

I'm so exhausted right now, the last 24 hours have basically been a nightmare. The first leg from Sydney to LA was massively overbooked, thankfully I got an aisle seat -- unfortunately the side of me that wasn't an aisle, but a seat, contained a fairly large man who took up not only his seat but about 15% of mine (not the first time this has happened to me) and the guy on the other side of him. I was in an awkward position for thirteen hours or so and arrived in LA utterly drained. After hanging around for two hours at LAX waiting for my flight to LV to board, we finally got everyone on and ready to go. "This is the captain speaking ... ", uh oh, you know what's coming can't be good. We stay on the plane for an hour while they investigate an issue with the brakes on one of the sets of wheels, it takes them an hour to come to the conclusion that we all have to get off the plane and wait for another 2 hours. TILT! Anyway, after a few other incredibly frustrating experiences (the hotel girl who checked me in wrote down the wrong room on the tenth floor, so I dragged my luggage up, then down, then up again before the issue was resolved) I finally entered the bliss of a hotel room. Now, I'm just chilling and trying to recover, I might just have an early night and start over tomorrow. I hope today contained all the bad beats I'll be receiving on this trip, more to come....

Leaving Las Vegas...

2006-07-20T06:10:00.000-07:00

Quite the opposite actually, tomorrow afternoon I head off to Las Vegas to make my run at the biggest poker event of the year, the World Series. I've already won my entry into the main event, which frankly is the only way I can see myself playing it -- forking over $10,000 USD would just be too painful to play in a field of players that includes the best players in the world, ALL of them. I'll be trying to keep my expectations realistic, Vegas is designed to make people have brain explosions and eventually go broke -- I'm just hoping to play good poker and make correct decisions, if that means going really deep, so be it, statistically however it just isn't likely, you need to be lucky AND good to win the main event. The slow structure is definitely a huge advantage to the more skilled players, I just haven't figured out if it's going to help me or not. :)

My `Day 1' doesn't start until the 29th July, I'm going to spend a week just settling in and playing some of the less expensive tournaments if only to warm up and adjust to the huge fields.

I'll try to update this daily with anything of interest and my experiences along the way.