Matt on to Day 3 at the shooting star!

I am currently squirming with envy. Matt is on to Day 3 of a MAJOR tournament. He is down to 64,000 chips, which is well below average and put him in 33rd place with 36 players remaining. But he's in the money (guaranteed a $15,000 profit at this point when you factor in the bounties) and still has a shot.

Since this is a WPT event and the final 6 players will be on national TV, the tournament has shifted gears from full tables to 6 handed tables. At Matt's table there are two players who's names I know: Joe Sebock and Vivek Rajkumar.

Other players of note still in the tournament are: Hoyt Corkins, Paul Wasicka, Kathy Liebert, and Farzad Bonyadi (there are probably a few more world class players who I'm just not familiar with).

Here is the full list of payouts:

1 $1,025,500
2 $550,000
3 $291,500
4 $230,000
5 $180,000
6 $135,000
7 - 8 $90,000
9 - 10 $60,000
11 - 12 $40,000
13 - 18 $30,000
19 - 24 $25,000
25 - 30 $20,000
31 - 36 $15,000
37 - 45 $12,500

Play resumes today at noon. I'll let you know what happens.

Matt at the Shooting Star

Every March Bay 101, the largest of the Bay Area cardrooms, hosts a World Poker Tour stop called "The Shooting Star." This tournament has a $10,000 buy in and 50 of world's best players (the "stars") have a $5,000 bounty on their heads. If you bust one of these players you istantly get $5,000 and a T-Shrit that says "I busted So and So."

Coming off his glory at in Reno, my good friend Matt Lessinger collected a pile of money from his usual backers and entered this event. On Day 1 he busted Layne Flack (Who I busted once in the WSOP! We own your ass Flack!) and picked up one $5,000 bounty. They started the day with 20,000 chips and by the end of the day he was among the chip leaders with 108,000.

Today is day 2 (there was actually a Day 1A and 1B) and they are down to 54 players from a starting field of something like 400. Matt just picked up another bounty meaning he's already got his buy in back. He's a little short of average with about 90,000 chips and the blinds will be 1,200/2,400 when he comes back.

The tournament pays 45 spots with the edge of the money being $12,500 and first place being just over $1,000,000. I have 3% and I'm thinking about all the things I could do with $30,000. I also have Jake on the hook for a trip to the Royal Hideaway (A resort in Mexico where my wife and I had our honeymoon) if Matt actually wins. He has 10% and said we should all go to celebrate and I somehow got him to agree to spring. So that's an added bonus.

You can follow the action on pokerpages.com or cardplayer.com if you are so inclined and I'll let you know what happened when it's over.

Shifting gears I'm going to quickly respond to my sister's comment on my last post. She wrote: "Considering your last post, does that mean that your goal when gambling in Reno or Vegas is to get as crazy as possible for the maximum fun factor?"

Gambling is always more fun (in my opinion) when you are with a lot of people and you are drinking and acting stupid. We all know that we're going to lose in the long run playing craps and Pai Gow and black jack. The goal is to lose as little as possible and have as much fun as possible. You would think that would mean betting the minimum and drinking the maximum, but everyone has an amount they can wager where the get a little excitement when they win, but it's not devestating when they lose. That amount is not the minimum for me. Since I make best just about every day the amount I need to bet to get any excitment at all is relatively high - about $25 a hand (or a spin or whatever) on most casino games. For some people that would seem insane. For E.B. who plays at least $100 a hand, that amount would be boring. Before I go on any gambling trip I have a certain amount of money with me and that's the absolute max that I would ever lose but I usually have a plan to "go big" and try to generate a ton of comps or "go small" and make sure I don't lose very much. Reno was a go small kind of trip.

Setting Goals

I'm a believer in setting goals, even though I'm not so great at meeting those goals. I never finished college even though I have about 80% of a Berkeley mechanical engineering degree. I'm always at least 20 pounds overweight (I'm 6'5" tall and I carry it pretty well though - at least I think so). And I always seem to make it about 3/4 of the way to achieving the goals I mention on this blog (with all of that in mind, it's a minor miracle that I made it to Supernova Elite last year).

But that doesn't mean that I'm a failure. I'm really quite the opposite. And it doesn't mean that setting goals has been a waste of time for me. If I set a goal for myself I always try to achieve it and that trying in and of itself helps me be more successful that I would have been otherwise. I might not lose that 20 pounds, but I might lose 5 or 10 before I stop giving it my all. I might not play 100,000 hands in a month, but I'll end up playing 10,000 more than I would have otherwise.

Setting SPECIFIC poker goals helps keep things in perspective. It's not helpful to say "I'm going to play as much as I can and try to win as much as I can." On the other hand saying "I'm going to earn 15,000 points in the next five days and win $1,000 during that stretch" (which are my two goals for this week) is very constructive. If I win $1,000 four days in a row and then get killed and lose $3,000 on the next day it would be easy for me to think "ACK, I just had $3,000 more dollars yesterday," but now that I have this goal, I'll still be able to think positively about a week like that even if I get smoked on the last day.

Looking at it from another angle setting a five day goal will help me think long term. Most poker players tend to think about how much they are up or down for the day. It doesn't matter if they've won $1,000 ten days straight, they'll stay in a game they otherwise would have left to try to get even if they're down $100 for the day. No one would think "I've won each of the past few hours, but I have to get even for this hour." Splitting wins and losses into days is just as arbitrary, but for some reason it comes naturally. This tendency is something I'm constantly fighting and setting goals that are for longer than a day, but not as long as a month really seems to help keep me in the right mindset.

So I'm going to win at least $1,000 this week and play enough to earn 15,000 points. If I can do both of those things in four days I'll take the 5th day off, and if I've earned the points, but am not up $1,000 I'm going to keep playing until 7 pm on Friday or until I hit that goal too.

I'll let you know what happens.

A Result So Good It Made Me Sick!

As I'm sure you all know I occasionally sell part of my action in poker tournaments. But I also take other people's action from time to time.

This weekend my good friend Matt Lessinger took the short flight to Reno to play in the $3,000 buy in event at the Grand Sierra World Poker Challange and I invested $300 for 10% of the resulting win or loss.

The tournament kicked off with 118 entrants and a VERY strong field that contained at least a dozen of the top 100 tournament players in the world as well as many other accomplished players. At the end of day 1 they were down to 16 players and Matt was in 13th chip position with the edge of the money being 9th place which paid $7,500.

Happily Matt rallied, got back into the thick of things and ended up finishing in 5th place. While 1st place paid a whopping $130,000, 5th resulted in a net profit of just over $21,000, which meant $2,100 was headed my way!

When they were down to 7 players or so I got on the horn with my good friends E.B. and Jake (who were also lucky enough to have 10% of the action!) and we agreed to throw some clothes in our overnight bags and head to Reno ASAP. Since it was going to be a three and a half hour drive we knew we probably wouldn't catch the end of the tournament, but we also knew it would be fun to go gamble it up and celebrate with Matt whatever the final result ended up being.

We made it to Reno at around midnight and met up with Matt and another friend of ours (Cole) who made the trip with Matt. We then procedded to play a hodge podge of casino games which was anchored by a spirited craps session that involved as much yelling and dumb ass behavior as they will allow. Of course we were all sending down the booze as fast as the waitress would bring it to us and by 6 or so Jake and I had had enough and called it a night. I'm not quite sure when Matt broke down and went to sleep, but I know Cole was out until 9 and in classic E.B. style he played straight through the night and met us for brunch at noon.

After a splash of additional gambling it was time to pack up and head home. Jake in true man style took a flight directly to Vegas from Reno to meet his wife and some of her MBA classmates who were headed there at the same time to blow of some post finals steam. The rest of us were headed to the car to drive back to the bay area.

Desipite being up $2,100 from Matt and being good and drunk the night before I'd kept my negative expectation gambling in check and was actually ahead $20 as we were headed out the door. Of course someone had to go and drop a $20 bill on black at a roulette table and in a matter of about 6 milliseconds we all had $20-$50 on the table.

One roll turned into a few and after assorted wins and losses I found myself with the same $20. We all declared that the next spin would be the last and I slid a $5 chip out on to the number 16 (My birthday, my anniversery, and the day I proposed to my wife are all on the 16th of various months), and a $15 bet on red. And then...BANG - 16!!! 35 to 1 on $5 and even money on another $15!

With the little roulette splash and Matt's excellent result I picked up a very easy $2,300+ and had a nice 24 hour Reno trip. Actually it was a nice 21 hours and three hours of tourture when a hangover, a huge lunch, and some sever motion sickness collided! There's nothing like having to use the emergency puke box, and then puking more as you open the car door and more into a bush and then A LOT more 2 hours later on the side of the freeway. I think it's going to be about a week before I get into a car for any reason!

A Few SCOOP Satellites

Even though the SCOOP doesn't start until April 2nd, satellite tournaments with buy ins ranging from $1.50 to $500+ are going off around the clock.

Satellites are a big part of why I've done so well in the FTOPS and WCOOP as well as the big weekly Sunday tournaments. They create a field packed with weaker players who are out of their comfort zone.

If you run a $55 Satellite to a $530 tournament and get 100 entrants you can give away nine $530 tournament entries and one $230 cash prize. The players who enter that type of tournament probably feel comfortable playing tournaments with buy ins ranging from $20 to $200. But 9 of them are headed to a $530 tournament that they would never play in if they had to put up the money right out of their pocket.

Every single SCOOP tournament has dozens if not hundreds of satellites (maybe over 1,000 to one of the main events) so when that $530 SCOOP event goes off with 4,000 players, maybe 1,000 of them bought in directly. Those are the $530 players. Those are the people who can really play (for the most part). The other 3,000 are the ones that make the tournament so profitable.

I've put together a $15,000 bankroll for the SCOOP and as per usual I've collected some of that money from investors.

Mostly out of boredom, yesterday I decided to play a few smallish satellites to the medium stakes SCOOP events. I played an $11 with rebuys satellite to a $320 event, an $82 satellite to a $215 event, and a $64 satellite to a $320 event.

I came up one spot short in the $82 tournament, but I picked up a $30 cash prize so I got a little refund. Happily I made it to the end of the $11 with rebuys. The prize breakdown in this one was a little different. It was a small field and you had to finish in the top 2 to win the $320 seat. Places 3 and 4 paid $31 and place 5 paid $20. When we got down to 6 players I was in first place and had everyone covered by a significant margin. I could tell that they players I was up against were not good and were trying pretty hard to pick up those small cash prizes (a big mistake - you have to go for it when the top two spots are 10 times the edge of the money).

So I started moving all in on every single hand no matter what I had. Everyone folded something like 8 or 9 hands in a row and when someone finally did call I had a real hand and won. By the time we were down to three players I had twice as many chips as my opponents combined and easily finished in one of the top two spots.

These were pretty much bullshit tournaments and tomorrow I expect I'll play something with a little more spice. Maybe something where I have to put up $215 or $320 to win a $2,000+ seat.

Anyway, my $15,000 starting bankroll has gotten a mirco boost up to $15,163!

A Professional Play

I made a strong read in a hand that I played great today and I thought I'd share it with you since I know there are some budding players who read this blog.

I've moved back to playing a mix of $10/$20 and $15/$30 limit 6 handed games in the past 10 days or so and I've had some strong results. The advantages of playing $10/$20vs $5/$10 are pretty staggering. First of all at the higher stakes I generate points 40% faster! That is huge. Also the rake is pretty much the same, but the stakes are twice (or three times in the case of $15/$30) as big which neutralizes the house take to some degree. Of course the players are better, but lately it seems that many of the tough pros have either been playing bigger or smaller stakes. I haven't exactly been banging out $2,000 wins every other day like I did for a while last year, but I've had a few solid wins and no big losses.

Anyway I was in a $10/$20 game today, I got dealt AA in the cutoff and the player just in front of me raised it to $20. I three bet making it $30 to go and everyone folded to my lone opponent who just called. The flop came down 3 3 4 and my opponent checked and called my bet.

The turn was a great card - a Q. My opponent came out betting and I thought "Ah ha, he has a queen! That's probably KQ or QJ." I raised and my opponent just called. The river was a king and my opponent bet out again. I raised again and he reraised me.

This is the part where I played the hand well - I capped it. I figured if he had QQ or KK he would have reraised me before the flop instead of just calling my three bet, and if he had a three or 44 he would have check raised the turn instead of betting out and just calling. That covered all of the hands that could beat me and none of them were likely. On top of that it just felt like KQ which it was. Most players would have just called the three bet on the river. They'd think they were up against a three or a deceptively played full house, but I made the max.

It might not seem like a big deal to pick up another $20 in a pot that is already around $300, but it's huge. If I can make one more big bet every 500 hands and I'll make another $150 or so a day which is another $37,000 a year.

It's hard to trust your reads sometimes and I was really proud of myself for trusting mine in this hand.

The Poker Hat Trick!

In hockey, scoring three goals in the same game is a hat trick. My good friend Matt Lessinger coined the phrase "The Poker Hat Trick" in an article in Cardplayer a few years back and defined it as check raising the same player three times in the same hand. This is something I'd never done before until today. While I've been known to bet the flop and turn and then check raise the river (I probably do that a few times a day), I'd never had the stones to check the river after check raising both the flop and the turn. But today the situation was perfect.

I was in a $10/$20 limit 6-max game in the four seat with a very aggressive player who was on total meltdown tilt in the two seat. On the hand before the one in question I played a flush draw super aggressively capping it on the flop and then three betting on the turn after I'd hit a pair. The player in the two seat also had a flush draw, which we both missed, but he still called my river bet even though all he had was ten high! I guess he was hoping I was on a smaller flush draw!

On the very next hand I was in the big blind and my nutty friend was on the button. He raised, the small blind called and I decided to see a flop with J 5 off suit. Normally this hand easily goes in the muck vs a raise and a call, but since I knew the original raiser could have any two cards and I was almost sure to get paid off if I made the best hand it was an clear decision to see the flop.

The flop came down 5 5 3 and I thought "Holy Shit! Please let him have a real hand!" While I thought I might get paid off all the way by any ace, I knew I'd make a bundle if my crazy opponent had an over pair.

The small blind checked, I did too, and of course seat two bet out. The small blind called and I raised it. Most average or good players would just call here with the plan of check raising on the turn, but pros would almost always raise. The first reason to do this is you might get three bet which means you can either cap the flop and lead out or check raise the turn. Also it's a minor disaster if you call the flop, check the turn and it gets checked behind you. Furthermore the small blind is in there. Many players will take one off with overcards on the flop and then dump on the turn. By just calling the flop you'd miss out on a potential extra small bet or two from the third player in the pot.

So I check raised. And I got three bet which led to the drool coming out of my mouth and the dollar signs popping into my eyes. I opted to just call instead of capping and betting out since I was all but sure my opponent would bet the turn.

The turn was a ten, I checked, he bet and I raised, just like I'd planned. The river was a queen which was a great card. I figured if I checked he'd assume that I had a ten or a three. If he could beat a ten I knew he'd bet and there was also a chance that he might fire with absolutely nothing. So I checked for a third time.

After a short stall he bet again, I raised, and he called me with pocket nines. It was a sweet hand!

A Sunday Million Gift

The Pokerstars Sunday Million is the largest weekly poker tournament in the world. This week 8,800 players put up $215 each in an effort to hit it big.

What I like about this tournament is it's something special. If you play a $215 tournament in the middle of the day on a Wednesday you'll find youself against 50 good players, 25 very good players and 25 great players. Almost everyone will be a winning poker player.

On the other hand, since it's something special, in the Sunday million you'll find those same hundred solid players and another hundred just like them, but you'll also have 8,600 players who are some where between pretty good and terrible. To top it off, they will all think the tournament is a big deal and will be sweating the result making it easy to pressure them into mistakes.

This week I put up my $215 just like everyone else, caught a huge break early on and turned it into a nice win.

A little more than a half hour into the tournament my starting stack of 10,000 chips was down to about 7,000, the blinds were 100/200 and I found myself in middle position with Q9. The player just to my right limped in and I decided to try to see a flop cheap. I called as did a player just to my left and along with both blinds we saw the flop 5 way.

The flop was a total bingo - J T 8 with two diamonds (I had the Q of diamonds) making me a straight! Both of the blinds checked and the player who'd limped in bet 800 into the 1,000 chip pot. I opted to just call and let the other three players get involved since I had the total nuts.

The player to my left called, the others folded and the turn came down the ace of diamonds. This was either a great card or a disaster. If someone had a hand like AT it was great. If someone had KQ or two diamonds it was a disaster.

The player to my right cooled off and checked. I bet out 1,800 into the 3,400 chip pot. There were a ton of second best hands that would have a tough time folding and given my short stack and the strength of my hand I was committed to going all the way no matter what. If someone made a flush I was dead anyway and this seemed like a good sized bet to make the maximum from another player with a second best hand.

I was not happy to see the player to my left make it 3,600 to go and the player to my right move all in for about 9,000! I thought one if not both of them could have me beat, but I decided to go for it anyway. My hand was just too strong to fold and even if I was behind I still had a draw to the second nut flush.

The player to my left who'd made it 3,600 and only hand another 5,000 or so behind thought for a long time. Eventually he typed something to the effect of "I guess 87 of diamonds is no good" and he folded. The player to my right turned over KK with the K of diamonds, the river was a blank and I went from out, to great shape. The player who had apparently folded a made flush went a little nuts in the chat box!

I used the chips in won in that pot to make the money and even go fairly deep. I ended up finishing 133rd of over 8,800 which paid a little more than $2,100! The way things have been going it was a very sweet victory - my biggest of 2009! Even more sweet since I had all of my chips in with the worst hand many hours ealier!

SCOOP!

It's the Spring Online Championship of Poker! It's a new series of tournaments on pokerstars similar to the WCOOP, but with a few differences. The SCOOP runs from April 2nd until the 12th and is made up of a whopping 66 tournaments! You can see the full schedule at www.pokerstars.com/scoop/

The way it works is every day there are two sets of tournaments each with three sets of stakes: low, medium, and high. For example on Day 1 in the morning there is NLH 6-max with rebuys. There is a $5.50 tournament, a $55 tournament and a $530 tournament all starting at the same time. Then in the afternoon there is PLO-8 with an $11 tournament, a $109 and a $1,050 all staring at the same time.

All of the "low" tournaments are $109 or less (except one that is $270), the mediums range from $109 to $1,050 (again with one exception), and the highs range from $1,050 to $10,300 (with one at a whopping $25,500).

My plan is to play all of the lows and probably 18 of the 22 mediums. As far as the highs go since most of the ones that look good to me in terms of what games are being played are $3,000+ I plan to play some satellites and see if I can get in cheap.

Some of what I do is going to depend on what kind of backing I get from my typical group of investors. I'm not going to put any cap on how much people can invest, but I will probably need some if not all of the investment up front. I'll probably put up $5,000-$8,000 of my own money, see what I can get from other people and then plan my schedule accordingly.

There will be much more on the SCOOP in coming weeks, but for now it's back to the cash game grind.

FTOPS XI Brief Recap

Well I came up short in the last few events of the FTOPS XI and ended the series with a whopping profit of $50! Better than losing but given the chances I had it was a little disappointing.

In fact I got very close to the money in the $530 main event. We started with over 5,000 players and 7,500 chips each. After dipping down to 5,000 for a moment I turboed up to over 25,000 and that's where I stayed until we got close to the money. 738 spots paid and with 1,100 players or so left I got dealt AQ suited. I got it all in vs KJ and 99 and would have had a stack that was double average as we approached the money if I took it down. But after a board with five cards under 9 came down I was out and the FTOPS XI was in the books.

Even though I broke even this set of tournaments was still a success. I finished right around the top 1% twice and gave myself two realistic shots at making a major final table with high five and six figure payouts.

Four FTOPS duds, Two Tournaments Left

Sorry about the lack of updates. I haven't been much in the blogging mood lately and not much good has been happening.

Since my last post I came up short in the $535 HORSE, the $216 Omaha hi-lo, the $216 NLH 6-max and the $109 pot limit omaha with rebuys (I was in for $309).

Right now I'm ahead $823 for the FTOPS XI and there are only two events left: $129 NLH knockout and the $535 NLH main event.

This means I've locked up a $159 profit for the FTOPS even if I get blanked in the last two. Actually after looking things over I'm going to play a $109 satellite to the main event in the morning so I might end up with a $50 profit (If you have 1% of my action don't hold your breath waiting for a check!).

Tomorrow is a big day for me tournament wise. Not only do I have the two FTOPS tournaments, but I'm going to play the $215 Sunday Warm up, the $215 Sunday Million and the $215 Sunday Second Chance (all on pokerstars) as well as a $162 tournament on Doyle's Room (I discovered I had a few bucks lingering in that account) and a qualifier open to only Supernova Elites for a $6,500 in person tournament that goes off in Uruguay in March. Amazingly I'm not making that last one up.

I'll let you know what happens...if you're lucky!

FTOPS XI Event #13 Recap

I got off to another great start in event #13 $215 NL hold'em with one rebuy and one add on. We started with 2,000 chips and I immediately did the rebuy which put me at 4,000. I'd run that stack up to 10,000 by the time we made it to the break and after the add-on I had 12,500 or so.

Sometime during the second hour with blinds of 60/120 I was dealt KQ in the big blind. A player in middle position made it 400 to go and got called by two players before it got to me. KQ can certainly be a trap hand in a spot like this, but I had everyone covered by a fair margin and the pot odds were just too good to pass up. So I called.

The flop came down J T 5 giving me an open ended straight draw and two overcards. While checking was an option I considered since I had about twice as many chips as all of my opponents I decided to get aggressive. A bet might win me the pot right there and in the worst case scenario I'd only lose half of my chips. So I bet 1,200 chips.

The original raiser thought for 5 seconds or so and moved all in for about 4,000. It was an easy call since I had 8 outs to the nuts and maybe a K or a Q would be good too. I was not happy to see my opponents hand - 55! The turn was a brick, but the river was an ace and I took down a nice pot.

The next MAJOR hand I remember came much later when I was dealt JJ with a stack of around 20K. An early position raiser made a standard size raise, I reraised and he moved all in! There are times when I've folded JJ preflop, but this was not one of those times.

With all the chips in and my opponent having me slightly covered I was at risk. When the cards got turned over he had AQ and the flop came with an A and a Q! But the turn was a jack and I was in great shape!

In fact I took that stack of 40K or so all the way up to over 60K and with 300 players left from the starting 1,200+ I was in 3rd place. Then I started a gradual slide. The players I was up against were much better than in the other FTOPS events so far. I dribbled my stack all the way down to about 25K.

But I did make the money!

The tournament paid 135 spots and I finished 117th. On my last hand with blinds of 1K/2K and 250 chip ante I moved all in from the button with QT. Surprisingly the small blind called me with K8 suited. I made a straight, but he made a flush and that was it.

117th paid $805 which is only a profit of $189, but of course it's $805 better than not making the money!

FTOPS XI So Far Plus a Micro Preview!

I blanked in the 1/2 hold 'em, 1/2 pot limit Omaha today without much fanfare and I decided I was just too tired to play the $1,060 6 p.m. event. That means that so far I'm ahead $1,910 for the FTOPS XI. Not too bad.

Since I opted to skip the one four digit buy in event on my schedule, tomorrow is my biggest day of this FTOPS. In the morning I have Event #13 which is $216 with one rebuy and one add on no limit hold'em. Since I'll no doubt be doing both the rebuy and add on I'll essentialy be playing a $616 deep stack NLH tournament.

Then at 6 p.m. I have Event #14 $535 HORSE! Giddy up! I have to say with the HORSE success I've had in the past 6 months I'm pretty excited about this tournament.

FTOPS XI Events #7 & #10 Recap

I haven't been great about keeping you people updated. Usually that means all bad news, but that's not the case here!

Despite my slow start in Event #7 ($109 NLH with rebuys) I actually made the money! With about 500 players left (we started with more than 2,200) I caught a major break. I got all of my chips in preflop with AQ vs AK, a king came on the flop and I still won! That's not something that happens every day! I made a runner, runner flush, took down a nice pot and didn't look back.

Unlike the first tournament of the FTOPS where I got great cards, and great action making it easy to do well, I got very little in the way of big hands in this one. But, I feel like I played great and made a lot out of not much. This was another case of the tournaments being a big deal to my opponenets and not a big deal to me. Their fear allowed me to take pots away from them even in situations where I felt like I was making obvious bluffs. In these same spots better or more seasoned players would surely have played back at me.

The tournament paid 234 spots and after the one miracle hand I mentioned, I made the money easily. As more and more players faded away I once again started thinking about the final table. With 50 players left I still had more than an average stack. Then I ran into some trouble. I gradually got drained from a high point of around 250,000 chips down to 125,000 when the following hand came up.

The blinds were 6,000/12,000 and a player in early position made the minimum raise to 24,000. I decided to gamble a little and called out of the big blind with Q3 suited. The flop came down 7 5 3 with two of my suit. This was a great flop for me. Unless my opponent had a pocket pair I'd be almost certainly be able to take it away from him on the flop, and even if he did I still had a flush draw that I'd make about 1/3 of the time.

I considered betting out, but decided to go for the check raise. I checked, my opponent bet 24,000, I moved all in for about 100,000, he called me with A7, I missed and that was it.

I finished 37th which paid $1,583. Another strong result, but not quite major glory.

In event #10 I got off to a great start. After starting with 5,000 chips I was up to about 17,000 just after the first break. Even though it was just yesterday for once I can't remember quite how I got elminated. Hmmmmmmm. Well I should probably get to work anyway. I know I finished about 1,000th of over 5,000 and it paid 738 spots so it was close to another cash, but I just can't quite recall the last hand!

Today I have $216 half PLO, half hold'em and maybe the $1,060 no limit later. I'll have to see how I feel when 6 p.m. rolls around.

FTOPS Triple Update!

The $216 6 handed limit tournament (which is supposedly my specialty) ended with a fizzle, and is not even worth a recap!

But I do have a splash of good news! I won a $162 satellite to Monday's $1,060 tournament! I must admit I caught a few big breaks to take this one home. We started with 82 players and the top 12 spots paying $1,060. With about 30 players left I beat AJ with KJ and a little later also beat KK with KJ, both times with all of my chips in the pot. After the second major bad beat I delivered I was in first place and despite a few more ups and downs I made it to the money with relative ease.

The third part of this update is that FTOPS XI Event #7 ($109 with rebuys) is underway. I ended up doing two more rebuys than the minimum which means I'm in for $509. When I started writing the post I was in great shape, but some douche bag called one of my raises with 74 suited and made a flush to beat my top pair. At the start of that hand I had about 14,000 chips and now I have about 6,000. Average is 10,500 and we are down to 1,050 players from the starting field of 2,235 with the top 234 spots paying.

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!

Quest For Victory Day #2!

AAAAAAHHHHHH HAAAAAAAAAA! This playing more hands stuff seems to be working. I only played about 2,000 hands again today, but I booked a real win.

I started the day off losing about $600, but the whole time I felt like I was playing great and I had this strong feeling that everything was going to turn around. By lunch I was even for the day, and after taking advantage of the Friday night crowd I ended the day ahead $501.

While I'm standing by my promise to not shave until I win $1,000 in a day (sort of) I celebrated making if half way to a thousand by shaving my neck. Now I look like someone trying to grow a beard instead of someone trying to get you to give them spare change.

Tomorrow is going to be another short day since I have a 100 Days party to go to. My good friend and frequent commentor on this blog, E.B.'s son Charlie is roughly 100 days old so I'll be making it a half day. Hopefully I can keep the winning ways going!

Quest For Victory Day #1

The Quest started off great...and then went down the toilet...and then ended up pretty good.

About an hour into the day today I found myself ahead about $300 and feeling like I was going to have to dump a bottle of champagne over my head. A little while later I was about even when all of sudden the floor dropped out from under me and when I took lunch I was stuck about $700 and feeling super pissed.

I took a long lunch and decided to go over a little of the data that I've gathered with Poker Office. I then compared that data to some of recomendations given in one of my poker books that's geared specifically to 6 handed limit play.

One of the first chapters in this book talks about tracking software and some "metrics" you can use to see if your play is optimal. The most basic one is pre flop raise percentage - meaning of all the hands you are dealt how often do you put in a raise or reraise before the flop. Over the 10,000 hands or so that I've tracked my percentage has been right around 16%. The recommended range in the book is 17%-25%.

Another metric is a thing called "aggression factor." Here's what they say in the book: "Agression Factor (AF)= (#bets+#raises)/#calls. For example if kingbob bets 18 times, raised 12 times and calls 20 times he would have an agression factor of 1.5 ((12+18)/20)."

While this is certianly not an intuitive way to look at things, it can tell you how aggressive a player is relative to others. The target range given in the book is 1.5 to 2.4. My AF is somewhere in the 2.5 range.

Another key metric is Voluntarialy put $ in pot or VPIP. This means how often do you put money in the pot before the flop in the form of calls or raises. The recomended range is 23%-35%. I was surprised to see that I was somewhere around 20%.

So what does all this crap mean? Well as far as I can tell it means I've been playing too tight. When I play a hand I certainly play it strong enough, but I'm simply not playing enough hands. There are two problems with playing too few hands. First and foremost it means you're throwing away positive EV (money making) hands. Secondly it can make you too predictible which is almost as bad.

So I came back after a loooooooong lunch and decided to get in there and mix it up. I won $850 in about an hour. Of course that was mostly because I made an insane number of monster hands and was up against some real nut jobs, but it was certianly some positive reenforcement for my theory.

I came up pretty short on my hands goal(I only played about 2,000), but I won $158 which is just fine given how things have been going and how the day started.

I made a vow about a week ago to stop shaving until I have a +$1,000 day so for the sake of all the people who have to look at me, wish me luck tomorrow.

The Quest For Victory!

Sounds exciting doesn't it? Well I just made it up. For the past few months I've really been struggling. I was hoping the new year would bring some new luck and my plan to play fewer games and fewer hours would lead to better results. I guess you could call them better since I'm losing more slowly, but they're far from good enough.

Amazingly I find myself in a situation (with all of the bonuses and FPPs and such) where I can not just get by, but make a nice living BREAKING EVEN! AND I CAN'T SEEM TO DO IT! AHHHHHHHHH! IT"S MAKING ME CRAZY!

So I've created an artificial mental reset. A chance to start with a clean slate and go forward again with confidence. I'm calling it The Quest For Victory (CRASH goes the lightning, BOOM goes the thunder)!

The QFV is going to last 10 working days (I'm talking every Sunday off this year). During that stretch I'm going to play a very reasonable 3,000 hands a day and my goal is to win ONE DOLLAR! Of course I will generate $2,400 in FPPs and make progress towards and myriad of milestones during that stretch, but MY GOAL IS TO WIN ONE DOLLAR in the actuall game play.

Even if it's just a plus minus and one sentenceI'M GOING TO POST TO THE BLOG EVERY DAY OF THE QFV. Using capital letters is part of my new attitude.

Tomorrow is QFV day #1. I'll let you know how it goes. If I win $1,000 on day #1 I swear to everyone here that I'm going to dump a bottle of champagne over my head (Don't worry I'll post pictures).

Lots of News

It's been a long time since my last post (Sorry about that!), but that means I have a lot to write about.

Right after my last post I took 11 days off in a row. It was great! When I finally sat back down at the computer to play again I was refreshed and definitely in the mood for some poker.

Since I got my clock cleaned in December (which was by far the worst month I've ever had) I decided to back way off and try to book some small wins. I started off playing four $5/$10 games planning on playing 2,500-3,000 hands a day, 6 days a week for the rest of the month. That plan lasted about an hour and soon enough I had some $10/$20 and $15/$30 games in the mix. While I did fine at $15/$30 and $5/$10 I didn't do so hot at the $10/$20 games on my first or second day back so while I'm close to even I'm stuck a little in the new year.

On my third day back I finally got around to doing something that I've been thinking about for a long time. I bought some tracking software. Let me tell you it is very cool and I'm kicking myself for not getting around to it sooner.

The software I bought is called Poker Office (you can get it at pokeroffice.com)and it costs about $85 to download a copy which is good for 1 year. It keeps track of every action of every hand you play and accumulates data on you and your opponents.

What I really wanted it for is the feature where it tracks how much you've won or lost with each of the 169 possible starting hands. I'm sure that there are some hands that I'm playing far from perfect and to be able to look back and see exactly how much I'm losing or winning per hand is going to be a great help.

Of course it will also tell you how often you took a given hand to the flop or to showdown, what percentage of the time you raised with a given hand, what percentage of the time you won with it and a few more facts all presented in an easy to read chart.

The software will also tell you how many dollars you won and lost in each position. The button is spot 0, the small blind is 1, the big blind is 2 and so on. What jumped out at me was the insane difference between the blinds and the rest of the positions. Under the gun (Pos 3), I netted $504 in my last 4,000 hands of $5/$10. In Spot 4 I won $209, in spot 5 I won $1,048, on the button I made $521, in the sb I lost $110 and in the big blind I lost $1,955! Of course it makes sense that I'd lose the most when I was forced to put in $5 regardless of what I had, but the difference was still surprising to me.

I noticed this phenomenon right away and realized that I've been playing too loose in the big blind. For some reason I was calling way to many raises with weak and marginal hands and then check folding. I suspect this was costing me a fortune. After making some significant adjustments to my big blind play, it felt like my results improved immediately.

I don't think I have enough data yet to do analysis on specific starting hands, but my plan is to play 20,000 hands of 5/10 and see what the data tells me.

But wait, there's more! As I mentioned the software also tracks all of my opponents and I can look at what they did and how they fared with every starting hand too! While it's not practical to look at stats for every player I encounter it certainly helps to see what the regulars are doing.

Also all of this data is sorted so you can get a snapshot of everybody. There is a list of every opponent I've played against (an astounding 330 different players over the course of just 4,000 hands!) the number of hands they played, the % of hands won, the % they saw the flop, the dollars they won total, the dollars won per hand, the % of the time they won when they saw the flop, the % of hands they took to showdown, the % the won at showdown, and how often they raised preflop.

What's great is the list is dynamic. The first thing I did when I got a fair amount of data was see who was seeing the flop the highest percentage of the time. With one click I had a list of every player in order of the percentage of time they saw the flop. Of course there were a few players whose numbers were skewed because they'd only play a handful of hands. But there were a few players who were seeing 50% of the flops or more and I had 100+ hands of data on them.

Another thing I looked at was who was raising too much, and who was raising barely at all. I played 70 hands against one player and he never raised once while a few other players were raising 40% of the time or more!

Of course the best case is if you can find someone who is seeing the flop too much and not raising at all.

Another thing you can do which I haven't explored too much is having some of this information (up to 4 pieces of data) displayed right on the table next to the corresponding opponent. The big problem I have with it is the text is too small and it adds significantly to my eye fatigue, but I'm not going to rule out using it in the future. Frankly I've only had a few days to play around with it and I know there are more capabilities as far as graphs, charts and other more exotic statics go.

It might seem like this software is somehow illegal, but it's on the list of approved software on the pokerstars website (there is a lengthy list of banned software as well).

In other news I found out today that the FTOPS XI starts on February 4th. I thought the FTOPS was a semiannual occurrence, but I guess it's more frequent. After looking at the schedule it's looks almost exactly the same as the FTOPS X. Hopefully I'll have a similar result!

Another minor piece of good news is I got pokerstars to raise my deposit limits on the instant methods so I won't have another fiasco like I did at the end of last year where I was running out of money in my account.

I think that's all for now, but I'll try to keep you posted on the data tracking and any epiphanys that it leads to. And of course you can look out for daily posts once the FTOPS XI starts. Here is the full schedule for those of you who are interested.

SUPERNOVA ELITE!!!

I did it!

I ended the year with 1,000,051 points. I wish I could say it was easy and that I ended the year on a high note. Unfortunately, it was the exact opposite. December 2008 was without a doubt the worst week of my professional life. Not only did I play every day but one from the 2nd until the 30th (I actually knocked out a record 7,000 points on the 30th to wrap it up), but I got my ass kicked in the process. I don't want to go into the exact numbers, but I will say that it was my worst month ever by a substantial margin.

While I know that I ran into some pretty horrific luck this month, I'm certain that for most of the time I wasn't playing winning poker. I just don't have it in me to play 7 or 8 games at a time for 8 hours a day, every day for a month. Ideally, I should be playing 4 games at a time 6 hours a day, 5 days a week so it was a real stretch.

In this case my hands were tied. I needed to make up for the fact that I did 7 months of work in the first 9 months of the year by doing 5 months of work in the last 3. Like I said before, it was not easy and I am beat! In 2009 I expect to do a much better job of spreading my effort over the whole year evenly.

But guess what? I MADE IT TO SUPERNOVA ELITE! Myself from a year and a half ago wouldn't have believed it. In fact I think this was one of the first times in my life that people doubted me. While I don't think anyone would have called me a hard working guy until recently, almost everyone would call me a smart, capable guy. But I can't tell you how many people said to me "Are you going to make it?" in all seriousness even when I was coming down the home stretch. Not "how is it going with the points?" Or "What is it going to take for you to make it?"

Every time I heard "are you going to make it?" in the last few months of the year I wanted to say "Are you fucking kidding me? Am I going to make it? OF COURSE I'M GOING TO MAKE IT! Do you think I'm going to bail on $30,000 that I've been working towards all year? Do you think I'm just going to wake up one morning, not feel like playing and just blow it off? ARE YOU CRAZY!? Do you think I'm a totally unreliable, flaky, idiot?"

Of course I never actually said that, but it's what I was thinking every time. Normally I just responded by saying that I was going to make it no matter what it took, but if you are one of the people who asked me if I was going to make it, don't feel bad. Almost everyone I know used those exact words!

Within 5 minutes of earning that last point I was sucking on an $80 Magnum of Champagne that I had bought specifically for celebrating that exact moment. It was hard to feel too excited since I knew this was coming for a long time, but now that it's been 24 hours and it's had some time to sink in, I'm pretty proud of myself. I don't think I've ever achieved a goal in my life that took so long, and involved so much effort.

The second part of the celebrations starts tomorrow! My wife Jen and I are leaving our son with his grandparents and heading out for two nights in Vegas (at the Bellagio - BOOM!)! Actually the genesis of this trip was the fact that it's actually a bachelor/bachelorette party for our good friends Jake and Chrissy who are getting married on January 10th. Our other good friends E.B. and Jean will be there and we're going to drink, eat and gamble as if we are celebrating all kinds of good shit (which we are) and are living the kind of lives that most people only dream about (which we are).

Now that I'm done killing myself I'll have more time to blog. I enjoy it, but some days I just need to be away from the computer! I'm taking the next 11 days off (YAY!), but then it will be time to start work on Supernova Elite 2009!

Also on the horizon are some WCOOP or FTOPS style tournaments on Ultimate bet in mid January. The buy ins are smaller, they prize pools are smaller, there are many fewer tournaments and the prestige is close to nothing, but I expect weak play from my opponents and it could be a chance to make some solid cash. I haven't decided if I'm going to take backers on this one or not, but I'll keep you posted and put up a schedule of events when I get back from Vegas.

2008 was a great year for me in my personal and professional life. I hope that it was great for you too and that 2009 is even better for us all! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Things Getting Better

I wish I could say I started really kicking ass recently, but I can't. I have however stopped flushing money faster than the US automakers and have actually won the past three days.

The day after my last post I dropped another $2,000 or so in the first few hours of play. At this point I was in a state of panic. I had about $2,000 left in my account and had been losing an average of $2,000 a day for the past 8 days. This was December 9th and I had to go all the way back to November 21st (three days before I left for vacation) to see a winning day in my records. I can tell you that from the day I was dealt my first hand of Texas Hold'em in August of 2000 until now I've never gone 19 days (I only played ten of those days) without a winning day.

In addition to all of the losing I was worried about keeping enough money in my account to keep playing. Pokerstars has 4 deposit methods that I can use: Instant E-checks (they take the money right out of your bank account), credit card, Western Union and Money Order. The first two have a limit of $600 a day and $1,000 in any 7 days. By the time I was down to $2,000 I'd already maxed those out.

So I asked my wife to read the 1,000 words of instructions on depositing via money order, get a money order for $5,000 and send it off to pokerstars ASAP. It turns out you have to send it registered mail and that takes 5 to 10 business days because it has to go all the way to the Isle of Mann which is in the UK. When I heard this news I had a medium sized freak out. I'd stared the day with $4,000 in my account, and I'd sent my wife out with instructions to pay whatever it cost to get that $5,000 to the Isle of Mann as fast as possible. At that point I was thinking my account would be back to $9,000 in 2 or 3 days and $4,000 would be more than enough to last me that long even if my bad luck kept up. By noon I had $2,000 with no prospects a big deposit for at least week and I was thinking $2,000 might not last the rest of the day.

This was a totally unforeseen set of difficulties!

The last despot option is western Union which while also limited has a more substantial $1,800 daily and $6,000 weekly maximum. This option also came with a full page of instructions including the name of a person in Costa Rica to whom I could send the money. Not a company, or an entity, but specifically "Greivin Navarro Segura." Right after "look both ways before you cross the street" and "don't take candy from strangers" I think every child should learn "don't send money via Western Union to Costa Rica!" Actually I had confidence in the validity of the transaction, but it was going to cost $100 to send $1,800 so I decided to wait until it was absolutely essential that I make a deposit.

Luckily, I told my good friend Matt about the conundrum and he offered to transfer $2,500 into my account until the Money order cleared. Happily that happened today and after a few wins and cashing in a few FPP blocks I'm back up to about $11,000 after transferring Matt back his $2,500.

So why am I going through all this trouble anyway? I think it's been a long time since I mentioned the benefits of Supernova Elite so briefly I want to remind you all (and remind myself) why I'm busting my ass playing for twenty 10+ hour days in a row.

Perhaps the least glamorous part is that instead of getting 3.5 FPPs for every base FPP I will get 5 FPPs for every base FPP. I'm sure the magnitude of that isn't clear to almost all of you so I'll try to explain. Every time you're dealt into a hand where pokerstars takes $1 out of the pot you get 1 base FPP (which for simplicity I refer to as points on this blog - I need 1,000,000 base FPPs in a year to be Supernova Elite). If they take $2 out of a pot you get 2 base FPPs which is the most you can earn on one hand. If they take no money because someone wins before you make it to the flop you get no points.

Playing $10/$20, on average, I make about 1.4 base FPPs per hand. That translates into 4.9 actual FPPs per hand this year as a supernova and will be 7 actual FPPs as a Supernova Elite. I can then trade in 250,000 actual FPPs for $4,000 cash.

To simplify, in order to make $4,000 in bonus cash it takes me 51,000 hands right now and next year it will only take me 35,700. That's a big deal.

The more glamorous part is the FREE tournament entries. I get entry into the WCOOP main event FREE which normally costs $5,200.

I get entry into the Main Event of the WSOP FREE which normally costs $10,000! Plus I get $2,500 in travel expenses, and 8 nights hotel in Vegas!

I get FREE entry into the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure tournament which normally costs $10,000! Plus I get $2,500 in travel expenses and 7 nights at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas!

That's some serious shit! And I'm going to get it all! And that's why I'm working so hard.

I've got about 48,000 points left to go. I'll let you know the next time I have some good news.

Bounce Back

I wrote my last post just after finishing my work day. An hour or so later I got a call from my good friend Matt wondering if I was OK. I just wanted to assure everyone that I'm not as upset as my last post might lead you to believe. One of the things that has allowed me to be so successful as a professional poker player is I have great bounce back.

I'm always pissed when I lose. If it's one dollar or ten thousand, I hate to lose. But my personal life is as good as anyone could ever wish for. I have a family who I love and who loves me, I have great friends, and I like where I live and what I do. While I never feel great after a loss, those feelings are always short lived.

Tomorrow is a new day and I'm going to go into it with a positive attitude and do whatever I can to make it a successful one!

More Bad News

I really don't like posting about all the bad news so I'll keep this brief. I lost about $2,500 yesterday and another $600 today. This is now without a doubt, hands down the worst run I've ever had in my entire life. I've moved to beyond frustrated, and beyond angry, into just feeling sad. It's really depressing flushing so much money in such a short period of time.

My Worst Losing Streak Ever?

I can't say for sure since I'm not willing to look back over years of records, but I think I'm in the midst of my worst losing streak ever! I know I've lost on 8 consecutive days in the past, and while I'm only on a 5 day downswing I've dropped in the neighborhood of ten grand since I got back from vacation! ACK!

After getting beat down for $3K on Wednesday, I lost almost $4K on Thursday. Then after two moderate $400 losses I lost about $2K today. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I can tell you that it sucks (you can tell how much by all of the exclaimation points I'm using!)! I feel like I'm playing OK, if not well, but for whatever reason I'm just getting smoked.

While there's never a good time to go on a major losing streak, this is really bad timing. I'm up against the wall with the end of the year looming and my FPP's not quite where the need to be (I'm at about 910,000 points for the year). I just can't take a day off to regroup which is what I'd normally do. I can't even drop down a limit since I need my point production to be a full capacity.

To make matters worse my account balance is getting a little short. Normally I like to keep about $20K in pokerstars, but after paying off a few backers for the FTOPS with transfers and the beatings I've been taking I'm down to about $5K. I've actually had to resort to depositing (GASP! I'll never live down the shame!) to keep enough dough in there for me to do my thing.

The good news is I'm not feeling as bad as you might expect. In fact if I could have any kind of winning day at all tomorrow I'd be happy. After all I killed last month and in about three days or so I'll be clearing a $4,000 FPP block. The only thing that has me worried is that perhaps the games have gotten tougher as a result of the economic crisis or perhaps I've changed something slightly in the way that I'm playing. When you play 4,000 hands a day, even the smallest change can have a big effect.

It's probably just the natural ebb and flow of the stakes, but the longer this type of thing goes on the more likely it's an internal problem and not outside factors so I'm constantly trying to reevealuate everything when I have a losing streak.

I just read a poker article today that quoted Winston Churchill. Apparently he once said "If you find yourself going through Hell, keep walking." I'm not going to dig myself out of this hole with inaction. When it comes down to it there's really nothing for me to do, but keep playing, try to play my best and know that it's going to turn around eventually.

Twenty Days of Pain!

Seems like it should be easy right? After all I did 40 (ok 38!) days of pain not too long ago and these days of pain will require the same 5,000 base FPPs a day that those did.

Well you didn't factor in the fact that I've totally forgotten how to play! TDOP day 1was, well, painful. After a long (well deserved, and very pleasant) vacation I came back and had one of my ten worst days of the year! ACK!

I lost something like $3,000, but I did manage to hit my 5,000 point goal. Of course it had been a while since I actually looked at my bank account balance after massive cashouts from my fulltilt account so I'm not exactly in a panic. After all November was one of my best months ever, and even if I get killed in December this is still going to be a banner year.

In other news while the glory of the FTOPS X is still burning bright in the recent past, my next major shot at glory is on the horizon. It's come to my attention that there is a set of tournaments at the L.A. Poker Classic which fit my skill set like a pair of old sneakers.

The L.A. Poker Classic takes place every year at the Commerce Casino, (in the Los Angeles area) which is the largest brick and mortar (as they say) poker room in the country (or the world, I can never remember). In fact the Commerce and more specifically the L.A. poker classic was the site of the first poker tournament I ever played with a buy in of more than $1,000 (it was $1,500 NL hold'em in 2004 and I finished 64th of 308).

In 2009 the classic is going off over a period of 30+ days mostly in February. There is a stretch of 6 tournaments on consecutive days that all have buy ins between $1,000and $2,000 going off from the 10th to the 15th (I think). 5 are NL hold'em and the other is HORSE!

Since my wife's family lives in nearby Orange County it's very convenient for me to make it to the area, and it's now on my official schedule. Backers, grease up you wallets because this will be another chance to make some easy money. I'll keep you posted on all the details in the near future!

I'm hoping day 2 of the TDOP is a little less painful!

A Little Vacation

I'm working tomorrow and then I'm on vacation until December. Sorry blog fans!

When I get back I have 20 days of pain planned that should get me to 1,000,000 points for the year and make me Supernova Elite!

During that stretch I'll try to post at least 10 hands of the day...of course I've been known to make empty blog promises in the past, but I'll do my best.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

FTOPS X Final Thoughts

Sorry about the lack of update on the last two events. I got a little burned out on blogging in the past few weeks.

In the $129 Knockout I gave myself a chance to go deep. After losing 60% of my chips 5 minutes in I figured it was going to be an early exit. But two hours later I hadn't gone broke or picked up any chips. Then I went on a total tear. By the time we were down to 1,000 players from the 7,000 we started with I was in 6th place. But as we approached the money (which was the top 720) I had A TON of moves backfire on me.

One of my big strengths (which has come from the experience of playing thousands of tournaments) is going after other players with total air because I know the situation is right. Normally when I have a big stack and we're getting close to the money I'm very good at running over the table (no matter what cards I get) without making it too obvious (you can't just raise every hand and expect to get away with it no matter how many chips you have). This time it seemed like every time I made a play someone played back at me. So by the time we'd made the money I was back to average, and went broke soon after when I made a bold, but solid play and ran into a big hand. I busted 3 people along the way (which isn't very many at all given I went from 5,000 chips at the start to over 120,000 at one point), and made a net profit of $138 (including the knockouts) for the tournament.

In the $535 event I went broke in very unusual fashion. Specifically I lost with AA to 23! That's not something that happens every day, and I bet 99% of the time it happens it's because someone slow played their aces. I, on the other hand, actually raised more than I normally would have and the guy with the 23 wasn't even in the blinds!

We started the tournament with 7,500 chips and I had about 6,000 left. The blinds were 50/100 and I raised to 350 in first position. I got called by 4 players in the field and the big blind! ACK! The flop came a bunch of junk with 2 clubs. I bet the pot and everyone folded around to the button who moved all in for about 10,000. I called, he had 23 of clubs, a club showed up and that was it.

In the end I took my $10,000 starting bankroll and turned it into $36,565. Of course all of that profit came from one tournament and if I hadn't played that one the FTOPS would have resulted in a fairly substantial loss.

At the start my goal was to have 4 cashes and one final table. I ended up playing 15 events which was a few less that I had originally planned (the fact that a ton of the tournaments started at 6 p.m. stopped me from playing more), so I'm happy to have had 3 cashes and of course my second place in the $256 PLO felt wonderful.

According to the FTOPS X leader board I tied for 67th place in terms of the player of the series competition. That's pretty cool since there were probably around 15,000 unique users that competed in the FTOPS.

Unlike the WCOOP the FTOPS is a twice a year thing (I think), and I know ultimate bet which has just joined forces with absolute poker runs a similar (but certainly smaller) set of tournaments which I've been meaning to check out. So before you know it I'll be back in the action. For now it's back to the daily point grind. I'll try to put up a hand of the day or two this week.

In conclusion I want to just add...SECOND PLACE! $33,000 BITCHES!

FTOPS Main Event Satellites

I just stumbled upon what might be some great value. Fulltilt has a set of about 5 $109 Satellites to the $535 main event. In all of them they've guaranteed AT LEAST 45 seats will be given away. That means they need at least 240 people to sign up to hit that guarantee. Right now with 5 minutes to go before it starts the first only had 142 players registered. The others are starting in like an hour and then every 30 minutes after that and have just about no one signed up. I looked like I've got a great shot to get into the $535 tournament cheap. Just a reminder to my backers that you too have a piece of all the FTOPS satellites!

FTOPS Update

Sorry for the major blog slacking! I went broke in the $216 FTOPS event in unspectacular fashion on Friday (I don't think I ever mentioned that result), and I just wasn't in the mood to play yesterday afternoon so I blew off the $109 PLO with rebuys.

I did have an interesting hand come up in the $535 heads up matches. I'm going to call it hand of the day #4. About 10 hands into my first match I got dealt 84 off suit in the big blind. My opponent just called and I checked. The flop came down QJ8 all hearts, I checked and my opponent bet 30 into the 60 chip pot. I didn't have much with bottom pair no kicker, but since my opponent could have just about anything I thought it might be the best hand.

The turn brought another 8! BINGO! Now I was hoping I was up against a Q or a J. Looking to get maximum value I checked and when my opponent bet 90 I made it 270 to go. We'd both started the tournament with 3,000 chips and I'd started the hand with a few hundred more than my opponent so I knew if he overplayed the hand or made an insane all in bluff I could bust him and move on to the next round.

After a long stall my opponent called my raise. I was thinking anything but a heart, a Q or a J would be a good river card. Instead I got a great one - a 4! There was almost 700 in the pot and I decided a bet of 400 was about right. To my delight my opponent made it 1,700 to go. This looked like a total bluff to me, but no matter what it was my only move was going all in.

My opponent instantly called and turned over T9 of hearts. For a second I thought about how I'd just put a sweet bad beat on him...and then I saw that T9 made a straight flush! AHHHHHHH!

Losing a full house to a straight flush is not something that happens everyday. I lost an ace high flush to a straight flush about a week ago, but I think it's been a few months if not years since I've lost a full house to a straight flush (I've never lost with 4 of a kind or better, but I have beaten 4 of a kind twice with better quads).

I was left with about 300 chips and actually brought that back to over 2,000 before getting it all in with a flush draw and losing to two pair.

In other news I've decided to skip the $1,000 in person tournament next Sunday. I need to get my FPP production back into full swing, and that's the day before I go on vacation for over a week which will no doubt take some prep time.

So today is the end of the FTOPS X. Hopefully I can do something in one of these last two tournaments. I'll give you all the final total at the end of the day today or tomorrow and I'll be sending out backer checks early next week.

FTOPS Satellite Update

SO CLOSE! I finished 10th of 88 in a $322 satellite to the $5,200 FTOPS event where the top five finishers got seats. The good news is I only played two other satellites, a $216 to the $5,200 event and a $109 to todays $535 heads up matches event.

In the latter the top 42 finishers of 227 entrants got a seat and while I was about 3 hands from being anted off I made it to the top 42! So it lookes like I'm playing $535heads up matches at 11 am. To make the money I'll need to win 3 matches, each vs just one opponent. I really enjoy this format, but I haven't had a ton of success playing in events with this structure so that's why I left it off my original schedule.

Of course I played the satellite on a total whim. In fact the tournament had already been running for 5 minutes when a message in the chat box of one of my other satellites mentioned it and said registration would be closing soon. For $109 I figured what the hell. Maybe it's destiny!

I also have $109 PLO with rebuys at 1. I'm 2 for 2 in PLO events in the FTOPS so I'm feeling good about my chances.

FTOPS Event #18, WSOP Champs, and Peter Eastgate Trying to Kill Me

I got my starting stack of 4,000 chips up to 8,000 at one point in Event #18 ($322 Razz), but that was as far as it went.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this tournament was I got to play against 1996 WSOP main event Champ Huck Seed until he went broke. Huck has two WSOP bracelets in Razz so it was interesting to watch one of the worlds best razz players play for a few hours.

This makes 5 world champions that I've played against. Specifically, Tom McEvoy (1983), Phil Helmuth (1989), Huck Seed (1996), Chris Ferguson (2000) and Chris Moneymaker (2003).

Also of note I've played against three WSOP main event runners up: Dewey Tomko (1982, 2001), Erik Seidel (1988), and Julian Gardner (2002). And of course like everyone who has ever been to Vegas I played craps with 1985/2000 runner up T.J. Cloutier.

This leads me to briefly mention the 2008 WSOP main event champion Peter Eastgate who was recently crowned the champ. Have you seen this guy? Did you see his reaction when he won over $9,000,000 and the world championship? He looked like he was watching episodes of Full House that he'd seen five times before. He looked like he was waiting for his bags at the airport. He looked like he was playing 50 cent blackjack and they told him it was time to shuffle the deck. Did no one tell him about the $9,000,000? Was he on some massive depressants or something?

Of the 9 people at the final table he was the worst one for the promotion of poker. He has all the charisma of a bowl of plain, lite oatmeal. He makes Greg Raymer look like Brad Pitt's character in Fight Club. He makes Robert Varkoni look like James Bond. He makes Jaime Gold seem like an F-ing mix of Mick Jagger, Tiger Woods and Han Solo! When is someone with a little personality going to win the world championship? You're killing me Peter Eastgate! You're Killing me! If someone with the vitality of the keyboard player of any marginal 80's rock band could win, online poker would get a major boost. Instead we have Peter "plain rice cake, fat free vanilla pudding, room temperature water" Eastgate. ACK! If (cough, when, cough) I ever win that shit I'm going to need 6 agents to negotiate all of the sponsorship deals!

Whew! Sorry Peter. I laid it on a little thick there. I'm sure you're a great guy and I'm sorry I spent the last few paragraphs slamming you. I'm sure you don't deserve it.

In all seriousness, Eastgate played great and he deserved to win. I was rooting for Chino Rheem (who I played against at the final table of the $1,000 HORSE second chance tournament in the WCOOP), but Eastgate did his thing and maybe in the coming months and years he'll turn out to be an admirable champ.

But for now, YOU'RE KILLING ME PETER EASTGATE, YOU'RE KILLING ME! YOU'RE SO BORING! AHHHHHHHHHHH!

PPA Congress Ratings!

Check to see if your congress person is good or bad for online poker here! Of the three listed for my zip code one got an F- (ACK!), another got an F and another got a B.

Unlawful Internet Gaming Comment Response

Recently London Dave put up the following comment:

Dave
What is your take as an American online pro, and implications for you.


Compliance 12/1/09

The Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board today announced the release of a joint final rule to implement the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The Act prohibits gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with unlawful Internet gambling, including payments made through credit cards, electronic funds transfers, and checks.

The Board and the Treasury are required by the Act to develop a joint rule in consultation with the Department of Justice. The final rule requires U.S. financial firms that participate in designated payment systems to establish and implement policies and procedures that are reasonably designed to prevent payments to gambling businesses in connection with unlawful Internet gambling. The rule provides non-exclusive examples of such policies and procedures and sets out the regulatory enforcement framework. For purposes of the rule, unlawful Internet gambling generally would cover the making of a bet or wager that involves use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any applicable federal or state law in the jurisdiction where the bet or wager is initiated, received, or otherwise made.

Compliance with the rule is required by December 1, 2009.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsev...20081112a1.pdf

London Dave

For those of you who have forgotten or didn't know the story of the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act here is a brief summary of the story. When the UIGEI passed in September 2006 as a last second addition to the Safe Port Act of 2006 (tell me that's not total bullshit!) it called for the treasury department to figure out a way to police transactions related to online gaming within 270 days. Banks everywhere cursed under their breath at the super conservative republicans who snuck this garbage in there.

As soon as this legislation passed a movement to get it repealed started. The Poker Players Alliance was created. To make a long story short on that front there are now over 1,000,000 members with a former US senator as the leader. The PPA is constantly lobbying in Washington and pushing forward the cause and fighting for the rights of poker players in the US. Check out their webiste here for all the latest news about the legality of online poker.

Nothing happened for about 50 of those 270 days, then a bunch of bad stuff happened. Neteller and Firepay the two leading processors of payments from customers to online casinos (and vice versa) decided overnight to block US users. Then one by one all of the publicly traded poker sites (including party poker which at the time was by far the industry leader) either shut down completely or blocked US users which turned them into poker ghost towns. This was a major boon for the privately owned websites who's market share got a major boost overnight.

Around this time the games got really tough. Some casual players fearing they were breaking the law stopped playing. Others ran out of money in their account and weren't willing to jump through the hoops to get more in there. All of a sudden if you were in the US the only way to get money into your account was to send the website a money order when before that it was a few clicks and the money was instantly available for play. There were still games to be played, but the easy money started to dry up.

For a good while everything was quiet as far as the UIGEA was concerned. The 270 days came and went and nothing changed. Then came a light in the distance! A savior! A miracle! INSTANT E-CHECKS! All of a sudden it was back to instant transfers right from your bank account to the website.

Gradually the games got better and then there was a bit of good news. A few of the websites that had blocked US users, unblocked them and came back into the fold. To me this was a major sign that the UIGEA was something that was going to be on the books, but didn't really have any teeth.

The news of this week is that the government has set the date of December 1st 2009 for compliance. This seems very similar to the deadline of 270 days. Well guess what, we're coming up on 800 days and all they've done is set a new deadline!

Maybe the biggest problem the government is going to have is the banks don't want any part of this! They don't want to have to review every single transaction to see if it's related in some distant way to online gaming. And even if they did want to check everything out, I'm not sure they could stop it without tremendous effort and cost. With all the trouble in the banking system these days I can't imagine anyone pushing for anything that would make it tougher and more expensive for banks to do business.

When I cashout my checks don't say Pokerstars.com Internet gaming. They say KJR financial or CRQ corp. or BRG group. I don't know if it's ever said the same thing on top of any two checks I've received. Furthermore, the checks themselves all look different and they come from a wide variety of banks.

On the other end when you make a deposit to the website it doesn't say anything at all about gambling on your statement. It says netvibes or intertainment or whatever.

Right now there are no fewer that 6 bills in congress related in one way or another to repealing the UIGEA and/or creating a regulated form of Internet gambling in the US. With the new congress and new administration coming in who knows what might happen.

The two biggest things I have working in my favor are 1) Poker is a skill game and 2) just about no one is in favor of a ban on Internet poker. There has been much talk that even if other online gambling gets squashed somehow that a niche will be carved out for poker since it's a game of skill. The main group of people who are in favor of a ban on online poker are religious Conservatives. In congress those people are on the way out or their power has been greatly diminished. The people who are against it are the banks, the poker players, and most important of all people who think Americans should be able to spend their money however they want to!

Anyway, to sum up I'm not worried. I think things will remain as they are or get better for me. Since I pay my taxes I'm not worried about the government taxing and regulating the industry. If the government licensed a regulated Internet gambling it would be worth billions of dollars to them and everyone in the industry knows that it would bring in so much new money to the system that the extra taxes would hardly matter.

I'm not sure if I really responded to your comment or not Dave. Let me know if there was anything specifically that you'd like me to comment on additionally.

What's left in the FTOPS X?

Tonight I have Event #18 which is $322 Razz. After that I have four events left: $216 NL Hold'em, $109 PLO with rebuys, $129 Knockout NL Hol'em and the "main event" which is $535 NL hold'em with a guaranteed prize pool of $2,500,000.

The real main event is the $5,200 NL hold'em 6-max two day tournament that goes off on Saturday (and Sunday if you make it that far). Despite my big hit early in the FTOPS, I'm not ready to fire five large on one online tournament. But I am going to take about $1,000 and play a few $300 or $500 satellites to see if I can win my way into the field (unlike in the WCOOP if I win a seat I'm actually going to use it!).

I still have loose plans to go play a $1,000 tournament at Lucky Chances Casino in Colma, CA on Sunday the 23rd, but it's close an hour away depending on traffic and I have some concerns about showing up and having the tournament be sold out (they limit it to about 200 entrants since they only have so many tables). If I'm feeling super motivated I might haul myself out there a few days ahead of time and sign up early.

Even if I blank the rest of the way the FTOPS X has been an unqualified success. But let's hope that's not going to happen!

FTOPS Event #13 Recap

I'm going to make this short since I slept in until noon today and I really need to get to work. I got off to an awesome start in the $535 HORSE tournament, running my starting stack of 5,000 all the way up to 20,000. Then I got done in somewhat by the crazy play of one opponent when I had a draw I couldn't fold (tip: if it's capped three way on 4th street in 7 card stud DON'T RAISE AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY WITH ONE PAIR OF 3'S THE REST OF THE WAY!)and party by a weak tournament structure.

Fulltilt has done a really poor job setting up the blind increases in all the FTOPS tournaments. In the tournament in which I finished second earlier in the FTOPS with 8 players left the average stack was 15 big blinds! This is plainly absurd for tournaments that are supposed to be a big deal. With stakes like those it's hard to play a hand without getting pot committed.

Along those lines there's no way with more than an average stack you should be able to get most of your chips in on one hand in a limit tournament well before you make the money. If this were a $50 HORSE tournament fine, but for $500 it would be nice to have a little more room to maneuver.

Anyway I came up short in the end. No FTOPS until Thursday night for me.