Heartbreak and Redemption

Until Thursday I'd managed to avoid being seduced by the potential huge money of multitables for the first 10 days of October. While I've certainly had some strong finishes lately, in order to get my $3,000 year end bonus I need to focus on generating frequent player points and multitables are the absolute worst way to earn points.

On Thursday morning as I started my day, in words similar to those spoken by addicts everywhere I told myself, "I'll just play one!" I jumped into "The Daily Fifty Grand" a tournament that guarantees a fifty thousand dollar prize pool, has a $55 buy in and starts with double the starting chips. The tournament went off at noon with 1,184 players and 3,000 chips.

I was playing 5 SNG's at the same time as this tournament so I wasn't really concerned that nothing happened during the first hour. Shortly after the first break I won a few pots and had my stack up to about 8,000 (most of the details of this tournament are pretty much gone in my head since it was a few days ago now so excuse my vague recap). I cruised along for a while at about that level and then I lost most of my chips with AQ against AK. I was down to a little over 2,000 with blinds at 200/400 with a 25 chip ante and feeling like I was dead.

In order to go really deep in a tournament everything has to go almost perfectly. In big tournaments that I've won or made final tables it seems like I've won every major confrontation the whole way through. That was not the case in this tournament. I was up and then down and then up again. I ran my stack up to 50,000 when average was 20,000 and then I was back down to 15,000. Then I was up to 80,000 when average was 40,000 and then back down to 25,000. I was sure I was on my way out four or five times, but then I'd slowly work my way back up. Sometimes you get such good cards that there's almost no way you could mess it up. This was not one of those tournaments. I felt like I was fighting for every chip.

As the players dropped and we got down to a few tables I had a great chance to make the final table. With 1st place over $12,000 and 8th or higher paying at least $1,000 I had my eye on a big pay day. With 36 players left the average stack was just under 100,000 chips and I had over 170,000.

I stayed right at that level, just stealing enough blinds to stay where I was until we were down to two tables. Then I started to fade a little. The blinds were up to 6000/12000 with a 1200 chip ante and I was at an aggressive table. A few people dropped, but so did the number of chips I had and when we were down to 14 players the blinds went up to 8000/16000. I knew it would be time to make a move soon.

The average stack had ballooned to over 250,000 and I was down to about 120,000 feeling like I would need a big break to make the final table. In fact it felt a little hopeless. There didn't seem to be too many week points at my table and no one was particularly short stacked.

Then I picked up KK in the big blind! AH HA! The buttoned raised to 40,000 and I hit him with a small reraise to 72,000. He could have just about anything raising from the button and I thought there was a chance he might fold if I just moved all in. I had the second best possible starting hand and I wanted action.

My opponent just called and the flop came down J 9 8. I moved all in for my remaining 50,000 or so chips and after almost no thought my opponent called. He turned over QJ which meant I was ahead, but I needed to dodge a Q a J or a T (I was 67.7% to win at this point) in order to win. The turn was an 8 which was a great card because it meant that I no longer needed to worry about a Q beating me (I was 86.4% to win at this point). Then the river came down a J! SHIT! I was out in 14th place and left muttering F-Bombs under my breath for 10 minutes.

I won $320 for my efforts which is pretty good. But when you finish 14th out of 1184 you'd like to have more to show for it. For the average player they could expect to do that well or better only 1 time in 85 and to only profit 6 times the initial buy in kind of sucks. I don't think there's anything wrong with the payout schedule, but despite what it seems like in the past two months, these opportunities don't come along every day. It's heartbreaking to be so close to thousands of dollars and only come away with a few hundred. Especially when you were 86% to win a big pot with one card to come. BASTARDS!

The good news is that was the heartbreak and there is a story of redemption from today. The bad news is I'm going to leave it as a bit of a cliff hanger! HA HA! Take that loyal readers! I can see you all now feverish checking for updates, clicking on refresh every 5 minutes, desperate to hear my story of redemption. You people need help! Anyway I'll give you the good news from today in my next post which should be up sometime tomorrow (no waiting for you Monday morning at work readers!).

SNG Recovery

I was feeling a little disappointed after my somewhat slow start to my 4,000 SNG (in three months) challenge. After the first week I was about even. A week is barely a blip in the long run of a professional poker player's career, but I felt like I'd been playing great.

The past two days I've turned things around. I won close to $600 yesterday and a just shy of $1,100 today over the course of about 95 tournaments total. Of course I caught a few breaks, but in the past month or two I've felt like my play has been great. I've gone back to the fearless style that served me so well in the past and the results speak for themselves.

The turning point was a book that I read that was geared specifically towards online SNG play. The great thing about this book is it would be way over the heads of most people shopping for poker books! Happily it was perfect for me. It confirmed that 90% of what I've been doing was right, allowed me to bring a few things into focus and add one or two plays to my game.

I'm 8.1% of the way to my goal having played 325 tournaments in 9 days. I'm a little behind where I wanted to be at this point in terms of tournaments played, but I'm ahead of where I wanted to be in terms of winnings. I'd be happy with anything around $3 a tournament, but so far I'm winning $5.19 per. That might not sounds like much, but it would be over $20,760 in three months not including FPPs or the bonus that I'm working towards. Hopefully I can keep up the winning ways.

WBCOOP

No that's not a typo. The WCOOP is over but the WBCOOP (World Blogger Championship Of Online Poker) is going off on this Saturday. This is a freeroll for anyone who has a blog that's at least 2 months old and posted to regularly. Pokerstars is putting up $40,000 in cash and prizes and in return the bloggers have to earn their entry by doing a little advertising. In order to get my entry ticket I have to copy a piece of code onto my blog which produces the following message and graphic:

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 9580085

Since you must have a blog to get into this tournament almost all of the best players will be shut out. I expect the field to be populated with a slew of novices, weak players and buffoons. If you have a blog I'd highly recommend checking out the sign up instructions and take a shot at the tournament. After all it's not going to cost you anything and if you're reading this post, you probably have some interest in poker and blogs. Good luck and if anyone needs me to point them in the direction of some basic multi table strategy I should be able to help. Also if you're going to play keep in mind that 3 pm is 3pm eastern time.

The First Few Days of My 4,000 SNG Challange

In the first 4 days of my quest to play 4,000 SNG's by the end of the year I've managed to play 210 tournaments, with sub par results. I started out as badly as I possibly could have, turned around spectacularly and then went down the toilet again.

One major positive aspect of starting a new day, a new month and a new long term project is it's easier to think long term. Knowing that no matter how bad your start is there's still plenty of time to turn it around can allow you to brush off some early losses. But there is a limit to how far you can go with that attitude.

I started off day on Monday with 12 straight out of the money finishes, then one first, and then another 11 straight out of the money. This is arguably the worst run I've ever had (I had a run of 23 tournaments out of the money in 2004, but those were 10 player tournaments so it was marginally less likely for me to make they money and they were $55 buy in instead of $60) I won a pot here and there, but whenever all my chips went in I lost. I dropped about $1,200 in the first 3 hours of my day and was not looking forward to playing anymore.

But I trudged on and my results improved drastically. After a few thirds and a few more duds, I had a run where I had 5 first and 2 seconds in a span of 8 tournaments. In fact (including those) I won 8 tournaments outright in a stretch of 18 tries. That is one of my best runs ever and I actually ended up winning about $200 for the day!

The next two days were both solid. I won about $900 on Tuesday and after losing all day a little rush at the end left me a $400 winner on Wednesday.

Then I flushed it all today. I had a run that was EVEN WORSE than the run I had on Monday! Over 27 tournaments I only had two money finishes and they were both 3rds. That streak cost me a little over $1,400. What a load of shit! This time there wasn't a monster run of first place finishes to get me back in the black.

The optimist in me is thrilled that I had what I think are the two worst runs of SNG luck that I've ever had (In 4 years of online poker!) in a four day span and still managed to win about $100. I also picked up a few hundred dollars in FPPs and of course I'm a little more than 5% of the way to earning what I need to pick up that $3,000 year end bonus.

The pessimist in me is pissed that I was on my way to a great week and am now pretty much even. My confidence which was building nicely took a major blow and even though I played 210 tournaments I had been planning on playing at least 30 or 40 more during these past four days. With Thanksgiving and Christmas looming large at the end of the year I'm going to have to dig deep and find some mental strength somewhere in order to collect the points I need.

Luckily, after kicking ass in September (my best month since February 2006 and my third best month ever) the reserves have been replenished so barring a massive collapse I shouldn't be feeling any money pressure for at least a few months.

The End of the 2007 WCOOP

I played quite a few Satellites to the $2,600 main event today and unfortunately didn't have any luck. I played three $80 double shootouts, an 8,000 FPP buy in event where pokerstars added 9 seats (worth $23,400) to the prize pool, the $320 mega super satellite where they guaranteed 100 seats, and a few other small buy in satellites. None of them produced even a whisper of a possibility of getting into the main event.

The only good news of the day was I did manage to get into the $320 satellite via an $11 with rebuys satellite. They run satellites to satellites? Of course they do! In fact in you're trying to get into the $10,000 main event of the WSOP the satellites start at $2! I think from the $2 tournament you can win a seat in a $33 tournament which leads to a $600 tournament which gives away seats to the $10,000 event. Sounds easy right?

You could also take the $2 bet it on a specific number on a roulette wheel, say 16. If you hit you'd win $72. If you then let it ride on 16 and hit again you'd be up to $2,592. Then you could bet $288 on 9 different numbers and if you hit again you'd have enough to pay the $10,000 entry fee and $368 for expenses. All from $2! Who wants to go to Vegas? Now that we have a system we're sure to win!

The bottom line is even with the 11 with rebuys win I dropped $344 today in WCOOP related activities. There are still satellites running to the main event, but I think I'm going to call it a wrap. All in all I have to call the 2007 WCOOP a solid success. I played 6 main events and had two strong money finishes. I also felt like I did pretty well in the satellites although since I've just kept a running total of all my action I'm not sure what the exact break down was.

My net result for the WCOOP was a profit of $738. I had 57.5% of my own action so I ended up making $424 which I can say was probably not worth it given the effort I put in. But the experience was certainly worth something and I gave myself some good chances to put some serious dollars in the Huff coffers.

I now have 7 WCOOP cashes in 29 events over the past three years. 24% in the money in quite a few varieties of poker (I've played limit, NL, and pot limit hold 'em, HORSE, heads up matches, pot limit Omaha, limit Omaha hi/lo, 7 card stud, Razz, and 7 card stud hi/lo over the course of all 29 events) against the best online players in the world is something to be proud of.

So what now? Well even though I've had a nice run of multitable tournaments (which is what I enjoy doing to most pokerwise) I have to get back to the grind. So far this year I've earned 201,344 VPPs. VPPs aren't worth anything but are the way that pokerstars determines a player's VIP status (ie. gold, platinum, supernova etc). For making it over 200,000 VPPs pokerstars gave me a bonus of $2,000! If I make it to 300,000 before the end of the year I'll get another $3,000 bonus.

In order to earn the remaining 98,656 points that I need, I'll have to play 3,947, $60 SNGs (which is the equivalent points wise of 2,193 $109 SNGs, or 173,081 NL cash game hands). It seems like a lot, but it's doable. Unlike other goals that I've set for myself, this one has a major reward. I don't care what happens, I'm not blowing off three grand. Also playing 4,000 SNG's in a relatively short span should give me a precise idea how much I can make playing at that level so I can reevaluate my goals and plans for 2008. I'm hoping I can make this easy on myself by keeping a steady pace and not leave myself having to play $109 SNG's 8 at a time for 16 hours straight on December 31st (In case you were wondering that would be about 192 SNG's, that would generate 8,640 VPPs, 30,240 FPPs worth $482, make pokerstars $1,728 in juice and leave me brain dead for a week).

Since that's all I expect do be doing for the next three months, I don't expect to have any exciting news of big wins. Of course I'll still be playing my Saturday freerolls which might amount to something and I'll try to post from time to time to let you know how things are going.

Today's WCOOP Event

I'm going to skip today's WCOOP event. For whatever reason, I couldn't sleep last night. It's never smart to play when you're really tired especially when you're looking at a long tournament. I know in the past I've made some really stupid plays wanting to either be done with a tournament or have so many chips that it was worth the discomfort that continuing to play was causing.

I'm not sure if I'm going to take the money I had earmarked for today and play more satellites or just add it to the locked up profit. I'll let you know what I decide.

A Comment Response

In response to my horror story about the player at my table going broke in the first 3 minutes on Sunday's Event EB commented: "Out of curiosity, do you see yourself doing anything differently if you are either of those two players? (Except that if you'd been the player with the aces, of course the river would have been a non-pairing club).

Heres a recap of the hand if you've forgotten the details: Someone at my table went broke with AA vs KK on the third or fourth hand. We started with 15,000 chips and blinds of 25/50. One player raised to 130, the player with AA went to 230, and the player with KK made it 500. The initial raiser called, the player with AA made it 2,500 and got called by the player with KK. The flop came Q high with 3 clubs and they both had a club. All the money when in on the turn which happened to be a K.


I would have done a few things differently. First of all I would have made a slightly larger initial reraise if I was the player with the AA, going to maybe 350 instead of 230 and I would have gone a little bigger with the reraise if I was the player with KK also, but that's not really important. Since I didn't include them, let me fill in details of the remaining action. On the flop the player with AA bet 2,500 and got called and on the turn he went all in for 10,000 and got called.

The all in on the turn is a big mistake. When a player in front of you raises, you reraise, someone else raises again and then calls another BIG raise what they hell could they possibly have? Given that action and the fact that I already have AA if I'm that player, I'd put it at 70% KK, 15% QQ, 5% AA, 5% JJ, 4% AK, 1% all other hands.

So on the turn when the board has a K and a Q on it and your opponent called a bet on the flop what they hell can you beat? You have to hope that he's got JJ with the J of clubs or AK with the K of clubs, or the other two aces which are the only hands he could possibly have that you could beat. You wouldn't mind giving any of those hands a free card since you're a 22-1 favorite against the first two and freerolling against the other aces. On the other hand, in the extremely likely case that your opponent has KK or QQ you'd like to see the river for as little as possible to see if it's a non pairing club. It seemed painfully obvious that this was a case of AA vs KK or QQ to me.

In the actual hand if the player with AA had checked there's no way the player with top set and a second nut flush redraw would have gone all in. He'd probably bet something like 5,000 (or even something less like 3,000) and there's some chance (maybe 10%-15%) he might even check as a slow play. This would give the player with AA the chance to see the river and either win by hitting an ace or a club or survive with at least a third of his stack.

If the player with AA faces a bet of more than 5,000, the play would be to fold and preserve his chances. Of course it would be a tough, frustrating fold on the river (assuming he calls the turn) with an overpair (if he missed) when he'd put 2/3 of his stack in. But given the preflop and flop action, folding on the river would be the only reasonable play. Trusting your read in a spot like this can be difficult and most players let their emotions come into play too much. They get attached to those aces and forget that they're just a pair.

I just put up this hand because it sucks to go broke with AA so early, but it's actually a very interesting hand.