Event #2 Recap (Yuck!)

Event #2? What happened to event #1? Well event #1 was actually a $500 casino employees event so this was actually event #2. The short version is, I didn't make the money, but there isn't anything I could have done differently.

Here's the long version. We started with 208 tables that each had 11 players (it's almost always 9 or 10, but sometimes in tournaments they squeeze another player in until a few players have been eliminated and then go to 10), which is 2288 players. But there was also a list of alternates. As players get eliminated they are replaced by alternates who start with the same number of chips that everyone else started with. By the first break we already had 500 alternates in the field (meaning 500 other players had already been eliminated). I'll let you know how many they ended up with tomorrow, but they said other than the main event of last years WSOP (which had over 5600 entrants) it was largest in person field in poker history. Every Sunday I play two $215 buy-in online tournaments that usually have around 5,000 entrants so I'm used to playing against big fields, but let me tell you it's much different to see all those people in one place. It's hard enough trying to beat the players at your own table, but it seem like a monumental task to beat the thousands sitting at tables that stretch on for what seems like forever. With that said, I like my chances against the competition I've seen so far.

We started with 1500 chips and the blinds a 25/25 with the limits increasing every 60 minutes. Someone went broke on what must have been the first hand, because they were calling for alternates right out of the gate. I spent most of the first hour sitting there not doing much other than observing my opponents. I did win one pot when the most aggressive player at our table, who'd been involved in over half the pots to that point, opened for a raise to 75. I looked down at two jacks and make it 225. Everyone folded to the original raiser and he called my raise. The flop came down A 7 5 and he checked. I bet 300 and he quickly folded. Winning that pot, my first at this years WSOP, was the highlight of my tournament. Not too exciting. I stole the blinds (meaning I raised before the flop and everyone folded) 3 or 4 times and picked up another small pot after seeing a free flop from the big blind, but my stack hovered right around 1500 the whole time. About half way into round 3 with the blinds at 50/100 I picked up AA in the small blind. Everyone folded around to me and I raised to 250. A standard raise from the small blind would be 300-400 but I kept it small because I had the best possible starting hand and the fellow in the big blind was an extremely tight player (meaning he plays very few hands). I certainly didn't want to scare him away with a big raise. He called and the flop came down K Q 7. I figured this was a great flop. I wanted some action with my great cards, it was likely that he called me with big cards (like QJ, KJ, K 10, etc) and unless he had KQ or 77 I had him beat (I ruled out KK or QQ because he certainly would have reraised me preflop with those holdings). I bet out 250 and he went all in for about 1200. I quickly called and he showed me KQ. Yuck! I still had outs (cards left in the deck that would give me the best hand) as any A would give me three of a kind and any 7 would give me a higher two pair. A four on the turn gave me 3 more outs (two A's, three 7's and three 4's), but a 6 on the river gave my opponent the pot and eliminated me from the tournament. AA is an 87% favorite to win against KQ, so clearly this was a bad break. It wasn't the result I was looking for, but there wasn't anything I could have done differently so I have to be happy with the way I played.

As far as celebrity opponents go I played against a fellow who apparently finished 4th at the WPT championship event at the Bellagio in 2004 and against Eric Froehlich who was the youngest player to ever win a bracelet when he won an event last year at 21 years 4 months. This year he seems fatter, smuger and less attractive and believe me it takes A LOT to stand out in those categories when it comes to poker players. To sum up, no good today, but I'll get 'em tomorrow.

I made it to Vegas and I'm ready to go

I arrived in Vegas after a bumpy flight around 6:30 p.m. and after getting my bags, discovered the shortest taxi line I've ever seen at the LV airport. For those of you who haven't seen, it the Vegas airport taxi line must be one of the seven wonders of the transportation world. It consists of 5 rows of dividers each about 100 yards long that lead people up and down a stretch of sidewalk like they were waiting for an amusement park ride. Sometimes, like today, you walk straight to the front and get in a cab. Other times, like a Friday night, (when everyone who's just in town for the weekend has arrived) you can find yourself waiting behind over a thousand people. The cabs swoop in, in groups of 20 and scoop up passengers only to be followed by 20 more so even though you're standing in line it's more like a constant slow walk. The first time I saw that line on a Friday I thought we'd be in line for the entirety of our three day trip, but it only took about 15 minutes. It's really quite amazing.

It's also very unusual for me to arrive in Vegas, head straight to my room, and stay there all night. Usually I push the hotel room door open, chuck the bags in, and am back in the elevator headed for the tables before my bags hit the ground. But, this is going to be a different kind of trip. No drinking, no table games, all business. I'm going to take any edge I can over my opponents and if that means getting to sleep at 11:30 p.m. in a town where some of the bars don't open until 2 a.m. then that's what I'm going to do.

Tomorrow the 2006 WSOP kicks off with a $1,500 No Limit Hold 'em event. Last year this event drew 2,305 entrants, 1st place was $725,405, 9th was $54,075 and 200th paid $2,225. Also of interest, a fellow named Charlie Huff (no relation) finished 6th and won $136,780. This year there should be at least the same turn out. I wouldn't be shocked to see 3,000 people show up wanting to play, but I'm not sure they are set up to accommodate that many players at one time (they split the first day of the main event into several days to handle the huge fields). I'm already signed up so I won't be one of the one's getting shut out. I'll post again tomorrow and let you all know how it went for me (hopefully it won't be over and I'll be preparing for day 2 of my first event). It would be great to start out with a money finish, but this tournament is only 5% of my $30,000 bankroll so if I don't succeed it will be a minor setback at most.

Doesn't look like $30,000 does it?

For those of you who've always wondered if those sneaky Hollywood executives have been tricking you, now you can see for yourselves what thirty grand looks like. Sometimes I've seen in movies where they use a briefcase or even a duffel bag to carry $50,000, but clearly it's for show. Hopefully I'll show you all what a much much bigger pile of money looks like in a few weeks.

A fun story from last years WSOP

I've had a request to tell a story from last year's WSOP that was a little amusing. One of the coolest things about going to the WSOP was getting an in person look at the worlds best and most famous poker players. They were walking around everywhere. I found myself doing double takes left and right. I'd be sitting at the table playing and I'd think "wow that guy looks an awful lot like Johnny Chan....holy shit that's Johnny Chan!" This happened no less than ten times.

Even cooler than strolling by the world's best was getting a chance to play against a few of them. Among the best were Julian Gardner (the main event runner up in 2002), Layne Flack (who won back to back preliminary events in 2002), and Howard Lederer (who has won multiple World Poker Tour (WPT) events and is a fan favorite). In most competitive arenas where money is at stake you want to play against weaker competition, but having one extremely strong player at your table in a poker game is not particularly detrimental. About 80% of the time I look at my first two cards and fold them and for the most part other good players do the same, so it's rare that you butt heads with one specific player over and over. I looked at it as a positive to play against the star competition so I could observe their tactics (I also thought it was just plain cool). I didn't get to observe Layne Flack for very long, however, because I busted him 30 minutes into the tournament.

And then there was Phil Helmuth. In 1989 Helmuth became the youngest main event champ in history by winning it at age 24. He has 9 WSOP bracelets (3rd most all time) and last year became the first player to ever have 50 career money finishes at the WSOP. Around 3 p.m. in my second event, I was moved to a new table and found myself sitting directly across from Phil. Two hours later we'd been playing for five hours total and were still over an hour short of the dinner break. Phil was starting to get hungry and mentioned that fact to the table. A few minutes later he asked if anyone had any food. No one did. Of course there was food relatively near by at a snack bar area, but it would take at least five minutes to meander through the hundreds of poker tables, make a purchase and return to the game. Phil was running short on chips and so every hand was critical. Between hands he stood up and went over to Chris Ferguson (the 2000 main event champ who always wears a cowboy hat and is often called "Jesus" because he has long hair and a beard) and asked if he "had any snacks." Chris did not and Phil found himself back a square 1. Suddenly he looked down on the floor. EUREKA! He reached down and pulled up an open box of graham crackers. There were a few left inside and he said to the guy next to him "are these yours?" The fellow replied "I just got here." I could see the gears turning in his head. He asked if they belonged to anyone else but it seemed they were up for grabs. So with everyone's attention on him he took one out, looked at it and was about to take a bite when I said "Come to Las Vegas, where you can see a millionaire eat food he found on the floor." Everyone including Phil and the dealer had a good laugh. When the laughs died down he put them back on the floor (perhaps for some other hungry player to find) and a few minutes later ran off to the snack bar.

What do I really expect to happen

The most likely result of my trip is a loss. If I was to go play this same set of tournaments 1,000 times I have no doubt that my net result would be positive, (and that's why I'm going). But, it would probably be the result of 750 losing trips and 250 winning ones. The key is the wins would tend to be much, much larger than the losses.

Last year (in my first year at the WSOP) I played in three events and even though I had a net loss I would classify the trip as a success (probably a B or a B- on my scale). The first event I played in was a $2,500 No Limit Hold 'em event and I finished 72 out of 1050 which paid $3,750 gross ($1,250 net). Unfortunately in my second event ($2,500 Pot Limit Hold 'em) I finished about 100 out of 450 and in my third event ($2,000 No Limit Hold 'em) I finished about 250 out of 1100. So even though I was better than the 25 percentile in all three tournaments I lost $3,750 (actually I personally only lost about half that since I had investors who had put up half the money). Maybe the best thing about that trip is I've already done it once so now I'm not going to be nearly as nervous as I was last year.

What are my goals

I'm bringing $30,000 to Vegas for the WSOP events (as well as some side action or smaller "second chance" tournaments and satellites) and I've given a lot of thought to what my goals are. I've got plenty of them, but rather than make it a simple success or failure I've come up with a letter grade system much like you'd have on a test. This is how I'd rate my level of success.

A+ Making any final table or winning more than $50,000
A Making the Money in 50% of the events I enter or winning more than $25,000
A- Making the money in 40% of events I enter or winning more than $10,000
B+ Winning at least $1 or making the money in the main event
B 3 strong money finishes or Coming home with more than $25,000
B- 3 weak money finishes or coming home with more than $20,000
C+ Coming home with more than $15,000 and two money finishes
C two weak money finishes
C- Coming home with more than $10,000
D+ Coming home with more than $5,000 and 1 money finish
D Coming home with less than $5,000 and 1 money finish
D- Coming home broke with 1 money finish
F Coming home completely broke with no money finishes

A money finish is exacly what it sounds like. The top 10% of finishers in every event win money and everyone else loses. A weak money finish would be just sneaking into the top 10%. For this kind of finish you get your buy-in back plus a little extra. A strong money finish might be one where you win several times the initial buy-in (ie winning $8,000 in a $2,000 buy-in event).

Of course my letter grades aren't a perfect system, but it will give me a record of pre WSOP ideas about success that I can look back at when I'm done. Not included on the list are a few off the chart results such as winning a bracelet (the winner of each event gets an engraved gold bracelet as a sort of trophy), multiple final table appearances, winning over a million dollars etc. I figure I have about 1 in 150 chance of winning an event, about a 1 in 600 chance of winning $1,000,000 or more and a 1 in 6,000 chance of winning the main event and $10,000,000. Not great odds but light years better than the lottery.

My Schedule

All of this poker and WSOP stuff is great, but what the hell will you actually be doing!? I'll be staying at the Rio (where all of the events are taking place) from June 26th until July 9th for the preliminary events. I'll be heading back to Vegas again on July 27th for the main event, which could last 5 minutes or 12 days depending on how I do. Here is my exact itinerary with the dates, the variety of poker and the buy-in for each tournament.

Tue June 27 No-Limit Hold'em $1.5k
Wed June 28 Pot-Limit Hold'em $1.5k
Thu June 29 Limit Hold'em $1.5k
Fri June 30 No-limit Hold'em Short Handed, 6/table $2.5k
Sat Jul 1 No-Limit Hold'em $2k
Sun Jul 2 Limit Hold'em $3k
Tue Jul 4 No-Limit Hold'em $5k
Wed Jul 5 Seven Card Stud $1.5k
Thu Jul 6 Limit Hold'em $1.5k
Fri Jul 7 No-Limit Hold'em $2.5k
Sat Jul 8 No-Limit Hold'em w/re-buys $1k (3K-5K total commitment)

Fri Jul 28 No-Limit Texas Hold'em World Championship Event $10k

Sure looks like a lot of poker when I look at it this way. But the chances of me playing all of these events is remote. The first 11 events are theoretically 3 day events. The first day consists of about 15 hours of play (there's a 15 minute break every 2 hours and a 1 hour dinner break about 6 hours into each event). The next day whoever is left (about 5%-10% of the starting field) comes back and they play down to the top 9 players who come back the next day for the televised final table. So if I make it to day 2 of an event I won't be playing day one of the next event. I expect the first event to have over 2000 entrants (like it did last year) and even the smallest events (some of the limit hold 'em events or the stud event) will still have at least 300 or 400 so making day 3 is going to be extremely difficult. If I make it that far in ANY event the trip will be a huge success monetarily and otherwise. Conversely if I don't see day 2 of any event the trip will be a spectacular failure. Keep in mind, however, that these are not chess tournaments or golf tournaments where the best players always tend to do better than the worst. The short term luck factor (notice I said short term, because in the long run everyone gets the same distribution of cards and skill alone separates the winning players from the losing ones) in poker can destroy the best laid plans. In poker the best player in a tournament can be the first one out and the worst player could win outright. Of course it's much more likely to be the other way around. One of the great things about the WSOP is they give you time. The longer the tournament lasts the more skill comes into play. Hopefully I'll be able to avoid the rough spots early and give my skill a chance to come into play.

A little WSOP History

The first World Series of Poker (WSOP) was organized by Las Vegas pioneer Benny Binion and inspired by a 5 month heads up match between Nick "The Greek" Dandolos and Johnny Moss which had taken place in 1949. During that historic match Moss reportedly won between two and three million dollars, but more important to Binion were the crowds that gathered to watch the spectacle. The first World Series of Poker which took place at Binion's Horseshoe in 1970 was nothing more than a high stakes game that went on for several days designed to draw people into the casino. The game was populated by seven of the foremost players of the day and the champion was determined by a simple popular vote among the players. The following year the event adopted a tournament format and 13 entrants each put up $10,000. All of the money went to the winner, Johnny Moss, who was not coincidently also the previous years champion. As the tournament grew, more events were added with smaller buy-ins. While players competed in various forms of poker during these preliminary events (in 1988 there were 12 events total), the main event remained No limit Texas hold 'em.

A few revolutionary happenings came together around 2003 that led to an explosion in poker popularity and shaped the WSOP as we know it today. In 2002 the travel channel made a deal with the organizers of 13 of the largest existing annual poker tournaments to film the play of the final six players. This wasn't the first time poker had been on TV, but the key difference between these and previous broadcasts was tiny cameras in the table (called lipstick cameras) that allowed the viewers to see every players hole cards. In the past watching poker had been like watching paint dry, but now all the bets, bluffs and blunders were there for everyone to see. The following year ESPN jumped on the poker bandwagon when they filmed the 2003 WSOP in a similar manner. The main motivation for this endeavor was the NHL hockey strike which left huge holes in ESPN's prime time line up. They filled these holes with poker.

The internet also played a huge role in poker's growth. While you could play poker for money online as early as 1998 it took a few years to work out the bugs and even longer for people to trust that the games were fair, safe, and secure. But, once that started to happen it meant that people who didn't live within 500 miles of a card room or casino could get in the action. In fact the eventual winner of the 2003 WSOP main event was an unknown accountant named Chris Moneymaker (his real name!) who got into the tournament by playing a $40 internet qualifier. He parlayed that $40 into a 2.5 million dollar payday after beating 849 of the worlds best (and a few of the worst) players. The following year the size of the field in the main event tripled to over 2,500 entrants. In 2005 the tournament grew by leaps and bounds again to over 5,600 entrants (that's a prize pool of over 56 million dollars!) with a first place of 7.5 million dollars (plus everyone in the top 9 won at least a million dollars). This was the biggest cash prize in television history and in fact even if you won all 4 of golf's major tournaments (The Masters, The U.S. Open, The British Open, and the PGA Championship) you'd still come up short of the prize money for first at the WSOP! This year there are 45 events scheduled and the main event is expected to draw around 8,000 entrants. I'll be among those 8,000 and while 7,200 of us will be coming home with nothing but a story I'm planning to be one of the 800 winners.

How Poker and Poker Tournaments Work

How does this whole Texas Hold 'em thing work anyway? If you're familiar with hold 'em and the way tournaments work you can skip this section. For those of you who don't know how Texas Hold 'em works you can check out the following link which has a brief description of the procedures as well as a few pictures to help you figure it all out.

http://www.fulltiltpoker.net/holdem.php

You'll probably need to refer back to this link to understand a good deal of what I'm saying in my daily updates. Once you've got that down it's important to understand the way poker tournaments work. In many poker games people play for cash. In those games players can come and go whenever they chose and if they run out of chips they can simply buy more. In a tournament, however, once you've paid your entry fee you're locked in and if you run out of chips you can't buy more and are eliminated from the tournament.

Lets look at a simple example which will illustrate a few of the finer points. Imagine you have 100 players who each buy into a $100 tournament which gives us a $10,000 pile of money. In return for this $100 entry fee the players each get $1,000 in tournament chips (tournament chips are always referred to in units of dollars, but they're not actually worth anything; they are just betting units). In a situation like this the blinds might start at 10/20 (meaning a $10 small blind and $20 big blind). After 20 minutes of play the blinds might be increased to 20/40 and then to 30/60 after another 20 minutes and so on. After a while those 1,000 chips each player started with don't seem like so much and eventually are forced to put all their chips at risk on a single hand. If a player runs out of chips he or she is eliminated and leaves the tournament. Now it's time to split up that $10,000 pile of money we started with. First and foremost the casino or whoever is running the tournament takes their piece of the pie off the top (usually around 10%). After "the house" takes their $1,000 fee we're left with $9,000 which gets split up amongst the top 10 finishers. The tenth place player would normally get about $150 gross ($50 net). Not too exciting after beating out 90 other players, but much better than 11th place. The first place player would usually get about $3,500. Pretty sweet for a $100 risk. The other eight places would be somewhere in between with each place paying slightly more than the previous.

Sometimes when there are only a few players left (usually less than 5) the players will agree to split all of the remaining prize money based on how many chips each player has. In our example Let's say 1st place is $3,500, 2nd is $2,000, and 3rd is $1,500. Player A has 50,000 chips and player B has 40,000 chips and player C has 10,000 chips. Assuming all the players are of equal skill Player A has the best chance of winning because he has the most chips and player C has very little chance of winning (and not much chance of getting second either) with player B somewhere in the middle. But, crazy things happen all the time in poker and maybe the players want to lock up their profits and avoid the stress of playing for big money. If they agreed on a deal based on chip count player A would get $2,750, player B would get $2,500 and player C would get $1,750. Players A and B get MORE that 2nd place money and player C gets a little something extra when he's probably toast anyway. It's easy to see why deals are attractive. I play tournaments of this type every day. On the internet you can play tournaments with buys ins ranging from as little a 10 cents to as much as $5,000 and every amount in between. And in person you can play tournaments with buy ins between $10 and $50,000. Anyone can play in 99.9% of these tournaments, they just have to put up the money.

WSOP tournaments work just like my example except instead of 100 people putting up $100 each, you might have 1,000 people putting up $2,000 each. In a situation like this 1000th place to 101st place would pay nothing. 100th place would pay around $2,200, 10th place might pay about $25,000 and first place would pay about $500,000. You can get a sense of what the other places might pay and it's easy to see that you really need to go deep into these tournaments to be successful in the long run.

Welcome to My Blog!

Welcome to my blog! Hopefully this blog will be a place where my friends, family, and jerks that I know can get updates and stories direct from the World Series of Poker (WSOP). For those of you who are poker savvy I'll include as many details as I can remember about key hands and reknowned poker players that I compete against. For those of you who aren't I'll try to include as many explanations of terms and concepts as I can. So no matter who you are plan to be either confused or bored much of the time that you'll be reading my blog! I'll have my laptop with me and I plan to write something at least once a day and most likely before and after every tournament. You can sign up with blogarithm (there's a little white box on the right hand side towards the top of my blog) and they'll let you know when I've updated my blog (although they only check a once a day).

Before I go any further I'd like to thank my wife Jen for not only helping me set up this blog and making the costume I'm wearing in the picture (they say dress for success), but for fully supporting me in this endeavor which could end up costing us tens of thousands of dollars. I'll be the first to admit that coming home with my pockets completely emptied is a very real possibility. But there's also a chance that I could be bringing home hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars as well as some degree of fame and a boat load of respect from my peers. That's the dream and that's my goal.

I'd also like to thank Gerry Lopez, E.B. Sandberg, Matt Lessinger and Jake Chapman who between the four of them have put up $13,500 of the $30,000 bankroll I'll be using for tournament buy-ins. I have plenty of confidence in myself, but it's great to know that these guys have enough confidence in me to put their hard earned money at risk.

I hope you enjoy my blog! Please comment whenever you feel inclined to do so and feel free to e-mail me at wesdave1279@yahoo.com to express any thoughts you might have or hopefully to wish me congratulations on winning large amounts of money.