Halfway to Glory

During my double FPP extravaganza I've crossed over the 500,000 point mark for the year meaning I'm a little more than half way home! In fact at the end of Sunday in order to be on pace I need to be at 513,661. I expect for the first time since January 1st I'm going to be on pace to make my goal.

In the five days I've played so far I've managed at least 10,200 points a day and I'm ahead about $2,000 in actual game play. With only one more day left I plan to have my biggest production day ever and then take a few days off! Looking back Sunday will be the 22nd day in a row that I've worked! But since I've made about $12,000 in that time I guess it's been worth it.

2X FPP's Day 2 & 3

So far this double points stuff has been great! On day 2 I managed 10.600 points and a moderate but not insignificant profit of $225.

Today I blew it out with a profit of $1,800 to go along with 10,200 points. Amazingly I felt like I was getting my ass kicked all day, but I had a few 10 minute bursts where I got crazy hot and at the end of the day it all added up to a nice win.

So far in 3 days I've put 32,000 points toward my year end goal. That's the eqivalent of about 2 weeks of moderate effort. It's also generated FPPs worth $1,682 to go along with my $3,000 in winnings. While the effort required has been draining, so far it's completely worth it. This is shaping up to be a very profitable week!

WCOOP 2008!!!

They announced the schedule for the World Championship of Oniline Poker (WCOOP) today. Last year there were 23 events up from 18 the year before. This year there are going to be 33 events!

In addition to ramping up the number of events they've added a few HUGE buy in events. There's a $10,000 NL hold em, a $10,000 HORSE event and an insane $25,000 heads up matches tournament! They've guatanteed a 1.6 million dollar prize pool for the $25K which means they'll need at least 64 players. A tall order for the biggest buy in event in online poker history!

Of course there are a slew of $215, $320, and $530 events that I plan on playing. At first glance I think I'm going to be playing at least 15 events this year. More to come on the WCOOP as we get a little nearer to the start date of Sept 5th.

If you want to see the full schedule here it is http://www.pokerstars.com/wcoop/

Quick Update (2X FPPs Day 1)

I managed to play more hands today than I've ever played in one day before. I played 5,046 hands today and earned about 11,200 points (I played a mix of four $5/$10 games and two $10/$20 games). If I could earn this many points whenever I wanted it would only take me 89 working days to make my yearly goal of 1,000,000.

Those points translate into 39,200 FPPs which are worth $589. Not bad for one days effort. I also made just over $1,000 in actual winnings so it was nothing short of a great start to my week. I'm certainly tired, but feeling a little better than I expected. It's looking like this double FPP madness is going to take me all the way to back on pace for the year!

My goal tomorrow is to play at least 5,047 hands!

Some Unusual Good News

June while still somewhat profitable turned out to be my worst month since January. A big reason for that was the minor loss at the WSOP and perhaps more importantly the 9 days I wasn't playing online. But there is good news!

First of all my good friend Matt Lessinger won his was into the WSOP main event in a $55 with rebuys direct qualifier! Congrats Matt! Of course I am insanely jealous. But, happily I had 10% of his action, so for a relatively small investment I now have 10% of his action in the main event (a $1,000 value). Hopefully he'll do something big!

Second, pokerstars is running a promotion offering double FPPs from now until July 6th! This means for doing the same stuff I would be doing I'm going to earn double points towards my year end goal as well as double FPPs to be cashed in for dollars. This is HUGE. Right now I'm at 443,000 points for the year and since we're at the exact half way point I should be at 500,000.

I am going to go TOTALLY BANANAS this week. Don't expect to see or hear from me until July 8th (on July 7th I anticipate being a drooling zombie blob if my brain has not actually exploded). My goal is to knock out 30,000 points which will then be doubled to 60,000 points. Those points alone will be worth $3,152 without even factoring in progress towards the year end goal! Clearly with dollars coming in at that rate FOR BREAKING EVEN I need to do as much as I can. I'm hoping I can find the mental strength to do even more that my above goal, but I'll be happy if for once I can hit a goal I've posted on this blog.

Wish me luck! I won't keep you posted until after the fact since every second I spend in front of the computer will be spent playing!

A Tale of Two Sets

I started today by getting my ass kicked just about every way you can imagine. In fact there was one pot that I won, but it felt like I'd lost about $120 on the hand. I'm sure you're all thinking "How can that be?!?! Dave must have hit the Grand Mariner before writing this post!"

Let me explain. I was playing four $10/$20 games this morning and one of them was a spectacular game (especially for a Thursday morning). There were these two goofs in the game who were playing all kinds of garbage hands and going nuts with them. And they were both killing me. Whenever I was in it seemed like they were nailing their hands. Then the following hand came up. Goof 1 raised from the button, goof 2 three bet from the small blinds, I called from the big blind with 88 and goof 1 capped it.

I wasn't really sure where I stood, but when the flop came down 8 4 3 I started to drool. "Ah ha!" I thought triumphantly. "Now these goofs are going to pay! I'll cut them to pieces with my mighty set of eights!" Then to my total shock and horror goof 2 (who was first to act after the flop) timed out and folded (In the games I play in you have 14 seconds to act on your hand or you're out - it's kind of a brutal format, but it keeps the games moving quickly)! I couldn't believe it. I was thinking I would get AT LEAST $70 from him no matter what he had and instead I got zero.

After goof 2 folded I bet, the flop, turn and river and goof 1 folded to my river bet meaning I only made $30 after the flop. While I was trying to convince myself that maybe I wouldn't have gotten that much out of goof 2 he typed in the chat box "Thank God! I had KK and was so pissed that I folded!" BASTARDS! I'm guessing I would have gotten $30 or $40 from both players on the flop, $60 or $80 on the turn from goof 2 and $20 on the river. Even though I won the pot that hand sucked.

Now on to a much better hand. I was losing $2,200 by lunch today (I was just thinking to myself this morning how it had been a long time since I'd had a really big loss - now why would I tempt the universe by thinking that?) which also sucked. After lunch I thought I might play a little $15/$30 along with my normal $10/$20 games in an attempt to get some of my money back, but the games were loaded with regulars and pros.

Just for fun I decided to see who was playing $30/$60 even though I wasn't going to play. A few of the games looked OK, but one looked great. There was no one I recognized except for one guy who is a big loser at the $10/$20 games. I decided to take a chance and bought in for $3,000 (I was also in for $1,000 in each of three $10/$20 games). After about 18 seconds I was down to $2,500 in the $30/$60, not doing great in the other games and stuck about $3,000 for the day. SHIT!

But then I picked up AK three times in about 20 hands and won with all three. I was back to about $3,400 and I'd determined that the game was even better than I'd hoped. There were three guys who were constantly just calling before the flop which is a sign of real suckers in a short handed game.

Then I picked up TT on the button. Sure enough the first player to act just called $30 another player called behind him and I raised as I was thinking how great the game was. The big blind called and the original caller made it $90 to go. This made the alarm bells go off big time (ALERT! ALERT! We might have pocket aces!). The vast majority of the time people just call before the flop and then reraise it's AA in their hand. I called as did the other players and we took the flop 4 way.

While I was thinking about how sure I was that that one player had AA the flop came down T 3 3 and all of a sudden I was desperately hoping I was right! I almost couldn't believe it. I had to slow play a little here so I checked. To my insane delight the big blind and the original caller went to war with a bet, a raise, a reraise and a cap while I just called along! I thought to myself "Holy shit! I've flopped tens full against pocket aces and trip threes in an F-ing $30/$60 game! Yeah Baby!"

The turn was a Q which wasn't a great card, but I was pretty sure anything but an ace or a three was safe. I checked, the big blind bet $60, the other player just called and I raised to $120. Now the big blind went all in for a total of $175 which was great because it got the money in, but if he'd had more there's a chance the other player would have folded. Since it wasn't a full bet I couldn't raise again, but I did bet the river and got called. Sure enough I was up against AA and 7 3! I'd like to give the guy with 73 a little shout out and thank him for not folding before the flop (and for the $385 that he donated to me)! That pot was about $1,300 when it got pushed into my stack and I left the $30/$60 with a $1,400 profit in that game.

While I was done in the $30/$60 (the busted player and one other softy left and were replaced with some real players) I kept playing my other games and managed to cut my days losses all the way back down to about -$450. While I started the day with a win that felt like a loss with the set of 8's I finished they day with a net loss that feels almost like a win.

A Fe w Comment Responses

First of all thanks to those of you who post comments. I love feed back on my posts as well as questions.

A while back now my sister asked:

I have 2 questions: First, when you went to the 1st WSOP, I remember you talking about being pretty nervous. There was a guy in the elevator with you who looked like he might crap his pants, if I remember correctly. Are you nervous this time around? Or is this getting easier and easier?

Second, since you play online mostly, you don't have to worry about tells. Are you worried about that at all now, or is a poker face easier to hold when you're only playing one hand at a time versus eight? Or does that have nothing to do with it?

Great questions! The most nervous I've ever been in my entire life was when I read a poem that I wrote for a girl to her as a way of asking her out when I was 16. About a third of the way into it I could tell by the look on her face that she was NOT receptive to my advances and was trying to figure out what the hell to say to me when I was done.

A close second was the first time I played a big buy in tournament. It was a $1,500 tournament at the L.A. Poker Classic in 2004 and before that my biggest tournament ever was a $215 buy in. I got pocket kings on the second hand and if you had a heart rate monitor on me I'd bet my pulse was around 175! While I was pretty nervous at my first WSOP after an hour or so I felt pretty comfortable and since I made the money in my first event ever I'd say the nerves didn't get the best of me.

This year I wasn't nervous at all. I think part of that is this was my fourth year at the WSOP and I've played close to 50 tournaments with buy ins over $1,000. I feel like I belong in those games, I know I'm good enough, and I expect that eventually I'll nail one of these babies for big money! It doesn't hurt that I've been having a strong year in the cash games so I wasn't really sweating the money.

As far as tells go, I'm always surprised how I get back into the groove after a long time away from in person games. It's hard for me to detect how much information I'm giving away, but as far as picking it up goes, I feel like I had great reads on my opponents for my entire stay at the WSOP. I'm always amazed when I play in person how much information people are giving away. If only I could play 500 hand an hour I'd play in person all the time!

Now on to another comment topic: the one Sunday I spent in Vegas. While I glossed over it originally I would like to say that it was great fun hanging out with my sister in law Kristen and her boyfriend Matt. While there were so many good times during that day that I could hardly mention them in one blog post I will point out the one major highlight which E.B. alluded to in his comment.

After I don't know how many hours of Pai Gow, Kristen, Matt, E.B. and I moved over to the craps table at the Paris. After a few bad shoots it was time for Kristen to roll the dice. For those of you who don't know anything about craps essentially one person keeps rolling the dice until they roll a 7. The longer a shoot goes on the better it is and the more numbers 4-10 that you repeat the better it is.

Before they pushed the dice to Kristen she warned us that it was going to be an amazing shoot and only a fool would do anything but bet more than they normally would. E.B. took this advice and instantly decided to double all of his normal bets which are already pretty sizable. I also decided to go from reserved mode to full out mode and since I'd been getting my ass kicked at Pai Gow and craps I was ready for a big turn around. That's exactly what I got.

Kristen then proceeded to roll 4,5,6,8,9 and 10 AT LEAST 3 times each (some of them hit 7 or 8 times) without ever rolling a 7. Given that there's a 16% chance of rolling a 7 on any given roll and it is the most likely roll this was a pretty amazing feat. Good work Kristen!

As as result of this shoot and the fact the E.B. won 9 out of 10, $100 bets that he placed on Kristen's hand at the Pai Gow table he's promised her a free room in Vegas any time that he's in town. Given the comps that E.B. gets at just about all the hotels in Vegas this amounts to the owner of a deli offering a free ham sandwich, but I know it's still appreciated by Kristen.

Thanks for the comments!