More Comment Comments!

If you're into heavy poker discussion read the comment left on my last post before you read this one! Otherwise, you can skip this post!

Gavin wouldn't have any idea how I play. I know who he is (and actually met him in person at the Commerce once years ago), but I'd just been moved to the table. Another thing to consider in this problem is the fact that we were playing six handed. In a full game it takes a much stronger hand to make plays than it does with fewer players. It might not seem like going from 9 to 6 players is a monumental difference, but it is. As a result he might not fear my reraise as much as you would in a full game.

You make a good point when you say "I can't see him making a play on you here. I wouldn't call your re-raise with AJ but maybe he does and then there's a chance he would push all in, but what would he put you on? You re-raised preflop and called a big overbet on the flop with a player to act behind you. You almost certainly have AJ beat."

It's pretty unlikely that he'd push with a hand that couldn't beat KK. In fact I had some small hope that he might even fold AA if he had it! The one exception might be if he had something like a straight flush draw or a pair and a flush draw and just decided to get it in there and take his chances.

While I presented the case that it was possible that he could have other hands, and even though it was six handed which tends to produce more action, my read was that he had AA. And that's the brass tacks of the hand. It just felt like AA to me. In fact, I would have put the likelihood at around 70%.

To be successful at poker you have to trust your reads. Even if you can't fully justify it (and you never had time in the moment to do full analysis) you just have to go with your feelings sometimes. It happens much more in person when you find yourself thinking "I don't know what he has, but I feel like I'm beat."

If I let the hand go and I was wrong it's a minor mistake at most. If I call 7,500 and then have to fold to an all in, it's a good sized mistake and doing what I did by moving all in was a major mistake. The blinds were 25/50 and I had 25,000 chips! You don't need to take chances for 80% of your stack when you're not sure if you have 500 big blinds left!

Another thing that this hand brings to light is the idea of making big laydowns. That's often mentioned as one of the things that separates the pros from the good amateurs. When you play thousands of hands a day like I do, especially in limit cash games, you don't need to make huge folds because one hand isn't really that much more important than the next. But playing $1,000+ tournaments requires you to sometimes say "This is a great hand and normally I would never do this, but since I have a ton of chips and thus plenty of time, I'm going to wait until I'm a little more sure to put myself at risk."

These are all things I know. I try to remind myself of them frequently. In fact I think I'm stronger than most pros when it comes to theory and justifying action with solid logic. But poker (online poker especially) moves quickly and it's easy to make mistakes. That's why experience is so important.

I'd like to say "the next time I come across a situation like this I'll be ready!" But there is no way in hell I'm ever going to be in a 6 handed game with kings, reraise, get smooth called by someone I know is a world class player, and have someone move all in on the flop for 3 times the pot in front of both of us!

2008 WCOOP Final Thoughts

I didn't reread this post after writing it so sorry for the typos!

This years WCOOP was filled with some major highs and lows. I was going to be super pissed if got blanked on the last day and ended up winning only a few thousand dollars. But happily I played well, got a few key breaks and ended up winning a solid amount. Before the WCOOP I said I wanted to have 4 cashes and make one final table. I had 5 cashes and one final table, so in that sense it was a major success. I also had 5 cashes in the second chance tournaments, and one major satellite win which is also very satisfying.

So what was the final number! Well I ended up winning $16,484!!!! BOOM!!!

More than anything playing the WCOOP has made me really look forward to going back to the WSOP. Hopefully I've generated some good will with my backers and I can roll up a huge pile of money to play 10-15 events.

Now on to a comment response (WARNING: HEAVY POKER CONTENT!) It's regarding a hand in the $530 with rebuys and in order to refresh your memory here's what I wrote about it:

With blinds of 25/50 the first player to act raised to 150 and got called by the next player to act. Then it was up to me and I had KK (I had about 25,000 chips)! I made it 600 to go and Griffen (who had about 20,000 chips) just called out of the small blind. My first thought was "Shit, that looks like AA." The other two players called as well and the flop came down J 9 7 with two spades. Griffen checked and then the original raiser went all in for 7,500 into the 2,500 chip pot. Right away I knew that was a draw. My only decision was how sure was I that Griffen had AA. Could I really lay down KK here?After a short moment I decided my hand was too good to fold and I went all in for 25,000. Griffen called and turned over AA! AHHHHHH! The other player had T9 and after no help I was down to 5,000 chips.

Now here is the comment:

Did you consider just calling the 7500 bet? If Gavin had a worse hand than you (AK, QQ,) he would almost certainly fold and if he pushed you could fold assuming he had either AA or JJ and still have 17,500 chips. I don't think he ever folds a better hand than you so I don't see the point of making the big reraise.You didn't mention this possibility in your recap so I'm guessing you don't consider it to be the correct play. Can you explain it in some depth? Thanks.

This is a great comment! Thanks to whoever wrote it! I did briefly consider just calling the 7,500 chip bet, with the plan of folding in Griffen moved all in, but I don't think it's the right play.

I've actually been thinking about his hand quite a bit over the past few days and while at the time I thought "Oh shit that looks like aces" I think that was just a bit of pessimism coming though. Even though I was right it wouldn't be fair to say it was a spot where he just about had to have AA. Making that call Griffen was only risking 3% of his stack in a pot that was clearly building up for major action. In retrospect I think he is capable of making this call with a fairly wide range of speculative hands like medium suited connectors or most pocket pairs. I feel like I could rule out QQ or JJ since he wouldn't want to take a flop vs 3 opponents out of position with one of those hands. No doubt he would have reraised to clear the field with either of those hands. But he easily could have had 99 or 77 hoping to hit a set and snap off a big pair. Obviously if I had to pick something to put him on, I would have chosen AA, but he could have had other hands.

With all that said I think folding was the best option here. By calling I'm risking 7,500 to win about 9,500. Not only do I have to worry about griffen moving all in after me, I have to worry about beating the guy who's already in the pot! I was all but positive that KK was the best hand at that point, but I was sure he was drawing very live. I was guessing I was about a 2 to 1 favorite (I figured he probably had a flush draw - it turns out he had a pair and a straight draw which also put me at about 2 to 1 to beat him).

Let's assume I'm going to win the 9,500 in the pot 2/3 of the time if I don't get reraised. That means every time I call here I have an expectation of +3,833 chips (two times out of three I'm going to win 9,500 and one time in three I'm going to lose 7,500 - so I average a net of 3,833).

But every time I get reraised I lose 7,500 chips! I'm getting a little screwed up on the exact math here, but to round off if I get reraised a third of the time I lose 7,500 one time in three and gain 3,833 two times in three which is pretty close to break even.

So in order to make just calling 7,500 a profitable call I need to assume that I'm going to get reraised significantly less than a third of the time.

And this is all assuming that I'm 66% to beat the guy who bet 7,500 which is a big assumption.

What I did was even worse than calling! I risked almost 20,000 to win 9,500! How stupid!

Of course the one big plus to moving all in is I'll never get blown off my hand by a reraise from something like AJ or a flush draw and more importantly about one time in ten that I do move all in and get called by AA, I'll spike my king and win a huge pot!

Anyway I should have folded. I hope this put a little light on the subject and I welcome further discussion.

40 Days of Pain!

My wife Jen, my son Peyton and I are off to southern California for a few days starting November 1st. That means between the end of the WCOOP and our little vacation I have 40 days to make some major headway on my year end point goals.

I thought the WCOOP would be good motivation to stay logged in and play for hours and hours thus generating tons of points. While I did spend an insane amount of time playing during the WCOOP, it was all multitable tournaments! I figured I'd be able to seamlessly mix in cash games, but in practice I had trouble playing lots of NL tournaments and limit cash games at the same time.

Now I'm way behind! My solution in to literally work for 40 days straight. I've had stretches where I've worked for 10 or 15 days in a row and not really noticed (my record is somewhere in the 20's) so it's not going to be like a normal person trying to pull off 40 work days in a row.

At the start of my 40 days I was at about 645,000 points for the year needing to make it to 1,000,000 by December 31st. My plan is to alternate days of 7,000 points which will take all the effort I can muster, and days of 3,000 points which I can either do at a leisurely pace or get up early and bang out before lunch.

My goal is to make it to 840,000 points by the end of my 40 days. That means I need to average 5,000 points a day (with one emergency day off built in) to make it. This IS NOT going to be easy. But since I'm taking a five day vacation and a seven day vacation in November and another seven day trip in December now is the time to make it happen!

I've got extra money in my pokerstars account from the WCOOP, my real world bank accounts are topped off and 840,000 points just so happens to be the point where I'll clear my $8,000 yearly milestone bonus so if I get rocked I'm OK with it. While I always plan on winning it's going to take playing more games than optimal, for longer hours and while I can't be specific about how my results might be affected, it might not be good.

When it comes down to it the difference between making it to 999,999 points vs 1,000,000 is worth about $50,000 so there's no way I'm not making it! I don't care what it takes!

Since I knocked out just under 7,000 points today and wrote this post you'll have to wait for WCOOP recap! Backer checks will be in the mail by the end of the week!

$1,050 HORSE Recap

This tournament was great fun, even though it was a tough field. Among the 32 players that entered were two time WSOP bracelet winner Bill Chen, Pokerstars Pro Chad Brown who won the $5,200 HORSE event at last years WCOOP and has 5 WSOP top 5 finishes, "Chino23" (I've forgotten his real name) who was the only poker pro to make the final table of the WSOP main event in 2007, and "Pearl Jammer" who is one of the best online tournament pros around and (according to his bio on fulltiltpoker) has 1.6 million in career tournament winnings.

We all started with 25,000 chips and while I dropped down to 15,000 at one point early on I came right back up to 25,000.

I did have one big hand early where I kind of got screwed. We were playing stud and I started with KK in the hole and a 6 up. Both of my opponents had an ace showing and after they'd capped it on 3rd street and again on 4th street it was about 99% sure they both had AA. On 5th street I hit the third king. At this point I was 99% sure I had the best hand. Since it got capped again I figured both of my opponents had two pair. On 6th street it was two bets an on the river it got capped again. Since I didn't do any of the raising on the end I was about 95% sure I was dead, but since the pot was an insane 25,000 chips I had to call. It turns out that they did both in fact have exactly what I thought, but one made a flush and the other a full house. In order to lose on the last card I had to miss my full house, and one of them had to hit one of his two outs and the other had six outs to hit. It sucked.

But things got better quick. By the time we were down to 25 players (a few hours in) I was in first place with about 100,000 chips. I kept steady at that number until we were down to the final 8 handed table.

Then I made a bunch of hands. I kept thinking "Man, I am running so good right now!" By the time we were down to 6 players I had about 40% of all the chips in play with over 300,000. And that's about where I stayed until we were heads up!

When we got to heads up we were close to even. Then my opponent kicked my ass in the hold'em which really surprised me. I feel like that must have been his best game and when we switched to Omaha he had me about 600,000 to 200,000. But I kicked his ass in the Omaha! I totally flipped it on him and was ahead 600,000 to 200,000. Sadly he took the advantage back in the Razz and wiped me out in the Stud. I feel like I played well heads up and there wasn't anything I could have done much differently so I feel great about this result!

2nd place paid $8,640! I've got to find some more HORSE tournaments to play! I might have to explore some new websites to see if they have any good HORSE action.

Now after playing all day and writing this blog, I'm tired! I'll have the final total and some final thoughts on the 2008 WCOOP tomorrow.

More Good WCOOP News!

We're in the money in the $1,050 HORSE! I was in first going into the money so it never really felt in doubt. I've slipped a little since then, but things are still going well. I'll let you know what happened when it's over. Giddy up!

WCOOP Update

Well after all my talk about how great I was going to do in the 6 handed limit events I got my doors blown off! I was out about as fast as I could have expected to be eliminated in both the main tournament and the second chance.


But there is good news! I won the second $320 satellite to the Main event! I thought I was going to have to play but instead I've unregistered and gotten $5,200 in what they call "W" dollars. $W can only be used to buy into "special events." While every tournament associated in any way with the WCOOP is considered a special event, I can't say I know too much about what else counts. My impression is that it's very few tournaments. At worst I'll be sitting on $5,200 that's locked up for a year until the next WCOOP. At best I'll find some tournaments that pay cash in which I can use them. I'm not sure yet what this means for my backers. I still need to give it some thought.

In other news I'm still in the $1,050 second chance HORSE. We started with 32 and are down to 12. It pays 5 spots and I'm in 3rd.

WCOOP Complaining!

I'm getting screwed in the limit tournament! I've had AK five times, AQ once, and KQ 4 times. While I snuck out a few small pots with bets I haven't made a pair with any of these hands! What the hell is that all about! I'm down from 7,500 to 3,200. I like my table. I'd smoke these jokers if I could make a pair!

I blanked in the first $320 main event satellite and two $44 satellites as well.

Before today my $10,000 starting bankroll was at $16,002. I'd really like to get it to $20,000 by days end. If I get blanked for the rest of the day I'll end the WCOOP with a $2,644 profit. It makes me a little sad to see it drop so low, but the day's not over yet!

Last Day of WCOOP!

Event #31 is underway! This is the one that caught my eye the first time I looked at the schedule. $1,050 Limit Hold'em 6 handed is what were playing today. More than anything else these days this is my specialty. We started with 580 players with 84 spots paying. The edge of the money is $1,566 and 1st place is $107,300. So far it's not going well. We've played 100 hands and I've only won 8 pots. That's less than half as many as I would expect. Luckily the stakes are still low so I have 80% of my starting stack left.

Also on tap today I have the $530 6-max limit hold'em second chance. This should be another chance to play my best game for solid stakes.

But wait there's more! I also have two $320 qualifiers to the $5,200 main event (one is actually 20,000 FPPs which are worth $320). I have a baby shower to go to tomorrow for some of our best friends so if I win a seat I'm going to in the words of Ricky Ricardo "have some splainin' to do." But these are just too good to pass up. The first one is for supernova's only and pokerstars put up 12 seats no matter how many players signed up. I basically got into a $450 tournament for $320. In the other it's the super duper big satellite to the main event that they have been running smaller satellite to for 2 months. They've guaranteed at least 100 seats given away and I expect this tournament to be loaded with some total buffoons who have won their way in via $4 with rebuys satellites to the satellite!

But wait! There's even more! The last thing I have today is the $1,050 HORSE second chance tournament. While the competition in this one is going to be light years ahead of the people who play the $109 HORSE tournament that I win 1/3 of the time, there just aren't very many chances to play HORSE for this kind of money.

Hopefully I can close out the 2008 WCOOP with a bang!

2008 WCOOP Event #28 ($530 6-max with rebuys) Recap

This one all came down to one hand. Sometime in the second hour of play I got moved to a new table and saw that I was up against not one, but two team pokerstars pros. Right behind me was Gavin Griffin who for a little while was the youngest player to ever win a WSOP event and is still the only player to win a title in a WSOP event, the WPT (World Poker Tour) and the EPT (European Poker Tour). Needless to say he's a great player.

So with blinds of 25/50 the first player to act raised to 150 and got called by the next player to act. Then it was up to me and I had KK! I made it 600 to go and Griffen just called out of the small blind. My first thought was "Shit, that looks like AA." The other two players called as well and the flop came down J 9 7 with two spades. Griffen checked and then the original raiser went all in for 7,500 into the 2,500 chip pot. Right away I knew that was a draw. My only decision was how sure was I that Griffen had AA. Could I really lay down KK here?

After a short moment I decided my hand was too good to fold and I went all in for 25,000. Griffen called and turned over AA! AHHHHHH! The other player had T9 and after no help I was down to 5,000 chips.

If that weasel with T9 hadn't just blown all in like a fool I might have been able to make it to the river only putting a few thousand chips in the pot.

A little while later I got the rest of my chips all in with 66 vs JJ and that was it.

I've decided to skip the second chance tournament and instead play a bunch of $33 with rebuys satellites to the $1,050 limit 6-max (there's one going off every hour). I played $150 in satellites in an attempt to make it into the $1,050 Omaha cheap, but no luck there either.

Event #29 Underway!

Sorry about the lack of preview. This one is some serious shit. 6 handed $530 with unlimited rebuys (you still have to have 4,000 chips or less to rebuy).

We started this one with 852 players and after an hour of play I'm only 30 chips down from what I started with. After 1 rebuy and the add on I'm in for $1,530. 132 spots pay with the edge of the money being $2,205 and first paying $211,000!