FTOPS X Event #12 Recap

ACK! Major collapse! Here's what happened in Hand of the Day #4!

I was crusing along nicely in this one when a rather inocuious hand led to my demise. With blinds of 120/240 I was in the small blind with 77 and an almost twice average stack of about 20,000. The button who had about 35,000 chips open raised to 560 and after thinking about reraising I decided to just call. I was hoping to keep the pot small and either get to the showdown cheap or take a stab at the pot and pick it up with a bet.

The flop came down KQ3 with two spades. I checked and my opponent bet about 800. I decided to just call again with the thinking that if he didn't have a K or a Q it would be hard for him to bet the turn and if he did bet the turn I could then fold with some degree of confidence that I was beat.

The turn was a 7! "AH HA!" I thought. Now I was hoping he had something good enough to pay me off. I checked, my opponent bet 2,100 and after a short stall I made it 6,000 to go. When he called me I thought "He's got a king! I've got him now! Double up here I come!"

The river was a third spade and an instant after I'd moved all in I thought "Oh shit, I hope he wasn't calling me with the flush draw that just got there!" I was so focused on the big cards and thinking that he'd connected with the K or the Q that for some reason I totally ignored the flush draw. When he called me with no hesitation I was pretty sure I was dead. To add insult to injury he had T7 of spades meaning that I only had one card in the deck that could make me a set and cost me all of my chips.

This is not one of those hands where I can go away thinking there was nothing I could have done differently. I certainly could have reraised before the flop which probably would have won me the pot right there. And even if it didn't the hand would have played out differently which might have allowed me to either bet enough on the turn to get rid of my opponent or end up saving some of my chips. Also while I might have had to call an all in bet on the river had I checked, I suspect my opponent would have bet less than my whole stack. I'd probably be left with only 3,000 or 4,000 chips, but that's better than zero!

While it might seem like kind of a weak play there is some merit to just folding those stupid sevens before the flop! After all part of good poker is avoiding tough decisions and tough situations, and there aren't too many spots where 77 is going to play easily out of position against a big stack.

Hopefully the HORSE tournament tonight will go better!

Thanks for the Comments!

Thanks to all of you who've posted comments recently. I spend a fair amount of time writing these posts and it's always nice to know that people are reading them and rooting for me!

Recently I checked the stats that the website keeps regarding readers and this month I've had about 125 unique users come to check out my blog. That means about 100 people I don't know are reading about my ups and downs. I'd like to have that number up to 1,000, but I'd probably have to post everyday and get a little more meat in terms of strategy tips to do that.

Anyway thanks again for the comments!

Event #12 Underway!

Event #12 ($216 1/2 PLO 1/2 PLH) started with 936 players. After an hour of play I'm in 12th of 728.

I got off to a super hot start. About five minutes in I got KK was up against AQ and I think another hand with a Q in it. The flop came down Qxx and I got all of one players chips and about 40% of the other's! That took me from 5,000 chips to about 12,000 and put me in first place where I stayed for about 40 more minutes.

In the first Omaha round I, busted someone and went from 12,000 to 17,000. I got dealt KKxx and I was up against ATxx with the AT of hearts. The flop came down KQx with two hearts and we got it all in on the flop. The turn was a heart, but the river paired the board and I took down a nice pot.

In fact now that I think about it, I've gotten about a few hours worth of monster hands in the first hour. I had 22 twice, limped both times, and flopped a set both times, once making quads on the turn. I had other hand where I got dealt JT vs KQ. I made the nut straight and my opponent made two pair.

The only hand that really went against me was one where I flopped the nut flush in the Omaha, I was up against a smaller flush and he made a runner, runner full house.

Hopefully the good luck continues!

FTOPS Events #10 &11 Recap

Not a very exciting day in the FTOPS. In event #10 ($322 Mixed Hold'em) I ran my starting stack of 3,000 up to about 4,500 before losing half of what I had when I missed a nut flush draw. The rest went gradually, mostly during the limit rounds where I raised with a few hands, missed and was forced to fold once I ran into resistance. My last 1,000 chips went in with KJ suited in the NL round, I got called by AJ and that was it. I finished about 400 of 667.

In event #11 ($1060 NL Hold'em) I only lasted half an hour. I've played something like 60 tournament with buy ins of over $1,000 and this is the quickest I've ever been eliminated. I lost half my chips with KK vs 44 when the flop came down with a 4 on it and the rest eventually went in with AJ vs 77.

On the other side of the coin I did win a little over $2,000 in the cash games today so I'm exactly feeling bad.

Tomorrow I have $216 half pot limit hold'em, half pot limit Omaha at 11 and $535 HORSE at 6. These are two tournaments that both look very interesting to me. Hopefully I can do something good in one or both of them.

FTOPS Events #10 & #11 Preview

Event #10 is $322 Mixed Hold'em and is underway with 667 entrants. This is great news since they came up well short of the $250,000 guaranteed prize pool. In fact there is a $35,226 overlay which is about $53 a person. This might not seem like a ton of money given the stakes, but it's not nothing.

Event #11 is the biggest on my schedule (assuming I don't win my way into the $5,000 event) and is $1,000 NL Hold'em. I have no idea what size field we might be looking at at 6 pm on a Monday but they've guaranteed 1.5 million dollars so they must be expecting 1,500 players. Right now there are only 243 signed up so I'm drooling over the possibility of only 1,000 showing up. Now that would be an serious overlay.

Sunday Tournament Recap

Forgot to mention that I made the money in the $215 Sunday Warm up finishing about 300th which paid a little over $600.

Yesterday I felt like I played really well all day, but just didn't get any cards. What I got I made the most of, but you can only do so much with well timed bluffs.

When I got a few hours into the $530 NL tournament on pokerstars I finally started making some hands. We started with 995 players and 10,000 chips each. I doubled up early and by the time we were down to 400 players or so I was in 8th place with over 50,000 chips. I hovered right around that level for a while and with 300 or so players I had an interesting hand come up (Let's call it hand of the day #3)

The blinds were 400/800 with a 25 chip ante and I was in the big blind with 94 offsuit. The player one off the button raised it to 1,800 and it was folded over to me. At first glance this looks like an easy fold right? After all I have 94 and it's not even suited.

That was my first instinct as well, but after some thought I decided to call. There was already 3,425 in the pot and it would only cost me another 1,000 to see the flop giving me close to 3.5 to 1 immediate pot odds. But that's not all that was working in my favor. I would expect my opponent to bet the flop if I checked close to 100% of the time. I knew that if I hit I would win much more than the 3,425 in the pot. Also 1,000 was only 2% of my stack so I could easily afford take the chance here. If I had the same matematical situation, but it was going to cost me 10% of my stack I would almost certainly fold. Furthermore my opponent started the hand with 12,000 so no matter what happened I could only be wounded, not killed in the hand.

So I called and the flop came down 9 9 9! HA! I was hoping my opponent had a pocket pair which would mean I was all but certain to get all his chips. I checked an my opponent bet small, about 2,000. This was an obvious time for a slowplay. If my opponent missed he might bluff again on the turn or he might make something. The turn was a ten and I checked again. I was sad to see my opponent check behind me. The river was a small card and I bet 2,000 hoping to get paid off by a hand like AK. Instead of calling my opponent moved all in! It took about a nanosecond for me to call and when the cards got turned over I saw he had AA! HA!

Unfortunately I was on the other side of a bad beat a little later. The tournament paid 144 spots and while I'd started out with a great stack, I started to slip a little and everyone else started to catch up as we got closer to the money.

With 156 players left the blinds were 1000/2000 with a small ante. I got dealt KK in early position and raised it to 6,000. I was shocked, horrified and delighted all at the same time to see the player on my immediate left go all in for 55,000! I started the hand with a little over 40,000 and of course I called.

I thought my opponent could have had anything from 23 to AA and had no idea what I was going to see when the cards got turned over. It turns out I was up against J9 suited which meant I was 80% to win before the flop. After the flop which was 952 I was 82% to win. The turn was a 5 which made me 95.45% to win since a 9 and a 9 only would make my opponent the best hand. But that's what the river was and I was out. CRAP!

The edge of the money was $850, but that's not how much I lost in this pot. How much was that pot worth? Well it's pretty easy to figure out in this situation. There was $500,000 in the prize pool (Exactly $500,000 since that was the guarantee and we came up 5 players short of the 1,000 needed to make it) and I would have had almost exactly 1% of the chips in play. Since no money had been paid out yet that pot was worth about $5,000! ACK!

The total damage on the day was -$1,892. Double ACK!

The good news is my $10,000 starting bankroll for the FTOPS (I'm going to call it the FTOPS for simplicity even though I'm mixing in other stuff) is at $40,389! Hard to be upset about $1,900 when you're ahead $30,000 for the past few days!

Major Heartbreak

I got blanked in the rest of my tournaments including a MAJOR screwjob in the $530. Details coming later.

FTOPS X Event #8 Recap

Event #8 was $256 6 handed NL hold'em knockout. In my last knockout tournament I busted 16 people. This time I did just a little worse knocking out zero. I could have easily gone broke three times before I actually did so in that sense I feel like I played really well. In the end I finished 2,029th of 3,499.

In other news I've had two duds in my pokerstars schedule. The first was a $109 NLH tournament in which I finished 812th of 1,260 after getting it all in preflop with KK vs AA. The second was a $109 NLH with rebuys (I rebought right away so I was in for $209). About a half an hour in I got dealt TT vs AQ, went broke and decided not to rebuy. I didn't like my table very much and just wasn't feeling good about the tournament for some reason.

I've got one foot out the door in the $215 Razz. While it's never over until it's over I'm probably going to finish about 45th out of 72.

The good news is I'm just about in the money in the $215 Sunday Warm Up. We're down to 655, it pays 585 and I'm in 159th after taking my starting stack of 10,000 and running it up to 73,000.

Big Day Underway!

I just wanted to make a quick note to my backers that I've added a few $109 NL hold'em tournaments to my schedule and will probably not play the Omaha and Stud tournaments at the end of my schedule. Whatever I decide to do I just wanted to make it 100% clear that you all have a piece of any multitable tournaments I play on pokerstars or fulltilt today with the exception of two freerolls.

FTOPS X Event #6 Recap

I feel like I played just about every hand of this torunament well, but I made one play that was pretty thin that did me in in the end. But before I get to that let me share a few other interesting hands.

With about 120 players left I had a big hand come up against another player who had a big stack. In fact he was one of the top ten chip stacks in the tournament and I was somewhere around 20th with a little over 60,000 chips. The blinds were 600/1200 and he opened for 3,600 from the button. I was in the big blind with KK84 and decided to call. The flop came down Q84 giving me bottom two pair. I checked and my opponent bet half the pot.

His bet didn't really tell me anything about his hand since I figured he could bet half the pot with top set or total garbage. I decided to call and see what developed. The turn was a 5 which looked like a brick. I checked, again my opponent bet half the pot and again I decided to just call. I thought my two pair might be good an I figured an 8, 4 or K on the river would make me the best hand.

I got one of the cards I wanted on the river - a king. I checked hoping to get a worse hand to bet or perhaps induce a bluff. My opponent bet 14,000 which was again about half the pot. I was getting ready to move in for 45,000 when I stopped to think.

There weren't 3 of any suit out there so the only think I couldn't beat with top set was 57 which would make a straight. There was no reason to think that my opponent would have 57 in his hand, but I decided there wasn't much he could have that could call a big check raise on the river.

If he was bluffing or betting a marginal hand the whole way I wasn't going to make any more by raising and there was some non zero value in getting to see his hand. So I just called with the thought that I'd really be kicking myself for just calling if he showed me QQ. Amazingly he had 57 in his hand! If I'd raised I would have gone broke and while I was sad to lose that pot I was happy to still be alive with an average stack of around 30,000.

I built my chips back up to about 50,000 when I had a hand that made me extremely nervous. We were down to about 90 players, 6 players from the edge of the money when the playing under the gun made the minimum raise to 3,000 (the big blind was up to 1,500). I was next to act and decided to call with A8xx with the A8 of spades. Three other players called and the flop came down jack high with all spades! BINGO!

I had the total nuts, but all four other players in the pot had me covered and I could still lose to a full house. It got checked to me and I bet 13,000 which was the size of the pot. No way was I messing around versus four opponents this close to the bubble!

Everyone folded to the original raiser who reraised the pot! Like I said, I had the nuts and the logical part of me was thinking "Great! I'm getting action! The rest of me was thinking "AHHHHHHHHHH I'm going to go broke 6 spots short of the money! AHHHHHHHHHHH! I'm going to kill this guy if he beats me! AHHHHHHHHHH!"

I was hoping that he was just trying to push me off the pot. Given that we were so close to the money it would be hard for me to call with anything but the nuts or close to it. Once all the chips went in I was hoping to see total garbage or a smaller flush and dreading the possibility of a set...which is just what he had with JJ! "AHHHHHHHHHH I'm going to go broke 6 spots short of the money! AHHHHHHHHHHH! I'm going to kill this guy if he beats me! AHHHHHHHHHH!"

Amazingly the turn and the river (It felt like it took about 5 minutes for them to come out) were both bricks an I was up close to 100,000 chips!

But it was all down hill from there. I gave back about 15,000 to the same guy on the very next hand. Then I lost about 70,000 more soon after.

I got dealt 8853 in the big blind and called a small raise from the button. The flop came down 762 with two diamonds, I checked, my opponent bet the pot, I raised the pot hoping to blow him off the hand. We were exactly 1 spot short of the money and I figured he'd have a hard time calling without a set. To my shock and surprise he reraised me the pot! At this point I was faced with a big decision. His bet was something like 40,000 at this point so if I was calling I was going all the way. I'd started the hand with about 85,000 chips and my opponent had about 75,000 so even if I got it all in and missed I'd still be all but certain to make the money.

I had an open ended straight draw and an overpair so it was likely that a 4, 8 or 9 would make me the best hand. I'm not sure I was getting the right odds to draw, but in the end I decided to just go for it, because that's how I roll! It turned out he had KT66 with the KT of diamonds and I missed.

This was a bit of a questionable play, but I think it was OK. I could have folded and continued with something like 50,000 chips, but it wasn't crazy to call. Even moving up another 50 places would have only been worth about $500 more. All the money is at the final table and you're never going to get there if you don't take some big risks!

Once we made the money I went broke right away. 78th place (I think that's where I finished) paid $910 gross. I'm happy to have another PLO cash under my belt and I had fun playing this tournament. I also picked up about $700 playing cash games on pokerstars today so all in all I'm feeling pretty good.

Hopefully I can take one of the zillion tournaments I'm going to play tomorrow to the house!

If You Blinked You Missed It!

I just went from 5,000 chips to 25,000 chips in two hands! Actually in the course of 6hands I was all in for put someone all in 4 times. On the first I went from 10,000 down to 5,000 with AK98 vs JT56. I flopped the nut flush draw and my opponent flopped a pair of sixes. I bet the pot and he reraised the pot on what I'm sure he thought was a bluff. I missed and he made two pair.

The next hand was nothing, but on the third hand I got all my chips in preflop with KQQ2 double suited vs the same guy who had AKJT double suited in the other suits. We both totall missed and the QQ in my hand was good enough to win. That one felt like a miracle, but the next one was even sweeter.

I had 7655 and just called the big blind which was 240. My buddy from the previous hands made it 1,080 to go and got called by one player behind him. I called as well and the flop came down 842. This was a great flop for me since any 3, 5, 6 or 7 made me a straight and it likly missed my opponents. I bet the pot which was about 3,600 and my buddy instanly went all in for about 4,000. This was a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE move on his part. When the cards got turned over he had AKJ4 which was just a pair of fours with no draws whatsoever! I know I'd been pretty aggressive in the past few minutes but come on dude!

Amazingly the other player in the hand went all in for about 10,000! And all he had was a pair of eights! He had T986 with 2 spades and 2 diamonds (there was one of each on the flop). It was like all of a sudden these fools decided we were playing for nickels at the kitchen table instead of a five hundred dollar tournament!

Anyway, the turn and river were both deuces which made me a full house with my 55. Those of you who are only familier with hold'em might be thinking "Why didn't fool #2 win? Isn't his best hand 22288 while your's is 22255?" The key here is you have to use EXACTLY TWO cards from your hand making his best five card hand 2288T. That hand put me up to 25,000 chips.

The next hand was nothing, but on the following hand I took out fool #2. I had A552 and he hand KKj4. On the flop I hit trip deuces, check raised him all in and he called. He missed the K and was done. That one put me at 32,000.

While I've been writing this post I have been blowing suckers away left and right! I'm up to 50,000 chips and am in 5th place of 218.

FTOPS Event #6 Underway!

We started today's $535 Pot Limit Omaha 6 handed tournament with 642 players. This is good news because fulltilt guaranteed a prize pool of $350,000. 642 times $535 is $343,470. While this isn't exactly a huge overlay it means we're all playing juice free (instead of paying $35 a player)and they've added about $10 a person on top of that.

I have about 50% more chips than I started with and we're down to 490 players. I like my table. There's one player who seems pretty good and is very aggressive, but he's just to my right so I have position on him. Everyone else seeems pretty weak. Amazingly everyone at my table is from a different country (if you hold the cursor over a player it tells you what country they are from)! The countries represented are Spain, Sweden, Russia, Austria, Italy and of course the USA. Technology is amazing. To think that were in 6 different countries competing in a game that requires instant action blows my mind a little.

84th is the edge of the money and pays a little over $900 while 1st place is $75,250. I'll keep you posted.

Sunday Tournament Extravaganza Preview!

Sunday's are the busiest day in the online poker world. As a result the websites tend to put their flagship tournaments on Sunday. It looked like I was going to be busy this Sunday and unable to play, but my plans have changed and I've decided to do some heavy tournament playing.

In addition to the two FTOPS tournaments which are $256 NL Hold'em 6-max and $322 NL hold'em (there's a 1.5 million dollar guaranteed prize pool for that one!) I'm going to play "The Sunday Majors" and a few other tournaments on pokerstars. Here is my pokerstars Sunday schedule(all times are pacific)

9:45 $215 NL Hold'em ($750,000 guaranteed prize pool)
10:45 $215 Razz
1:30 $215 NL Hold'em ($1.5M guaranteed prize pool)
2:15 $215 Mixed Hold'em (1/2 limit and 1/2 NL)
2:30 $530 NL Hold'em ($500,000 guaranteed prize pool)
3:30 $215 NL Hold'em ($250,000 guaranteed prize pool)
4:45 $215 HORSE! (they should just pay me now)
5:30 $215 Limit Omaha Hi-Lo
5:45 $215 7-card Stud

Sort of like a mini WCOOP huh? Those last two are maybes. I'll have to see how I'm feeling when 5:30 rolls around, but I figured I'd put them on the schedule.

I certainly don't plan to do a post about all of these tournaments, but I'll at least let you know where I finished and of course if I go deep I'll post a more detailed recap. That is after I spend a few minutes pouring champagne over my head and screaming like a little girl when I win one of the tournaments with a 1.5M guarantee.

FTOPS X Event #4 ($322 NLH 1R + 1A) Recap

Today's tournament was a total dud! I lasted a little more than two hours and never had more chips than I started with. I won a few small pots here and there, but it was mostly a fold fest. In the end I was running a little short and made a thin all in reraise and got caught by a real hand. I finished 400th out of 815.

My social life is going to stop me from playing the 6 pm tournament today, but I have $535 6 handed Pot Limit Omaha tomorrow. Since apparently I'm the PLO king I'm looking forward to it.

FTOPS Event #3 Underway

Sorry for the lack of a preview! Event #3 is no $322 no limit hold'em with 1 rebuy and 1 add on. Basically it's a $922 NL hold'em with deep stacks. Looks like about 800 players. Wish me luck!

FTOPS X Event #2 ($256 Omaha Knockout) Recap

I have to admit that while I made copious notes about specific hands in this tournament, the details of pot limit Omaha hands don't stick in my brain quite as well as hold'em hands do.

What I can tell you is that I had all of my chips at risk several times early in the tournament. In one instance I got it all in with 9743 vs QJxx (The xx denotes two cards which are irrelevant) with the QJ both being diamonds on a flop of 974 all diamonds. Happily the turn was a 7 and I won a major pot with a full house vs a flush.

In another instance I was all in with AA67 vs KK55 and vs a short stack with J966. The flop came with a K, but I turned an A and rived a flush to boot! That pot put me in first place with about 30,000 chips and roughly a third of the starting field left. I wouldn't drop out of the top 3 chip positions until we were down to two tables!

The edge of the money was 135 players and paid a little over $300. But by the time we were down to that many players I'd already busted 8 opponents netting me $320 in knockout dollars. Since I was in such good shape I kept the pressure on by raising often and following through with big bets on the flop regardless of what type of hand I made.

Experience was key in this tournament. Not in Omaha, (I've played maybe 15 PLO multitables in my life), but in tournaments where it's a big deal to just about everyone who is playing, but me. At one point with around 60 players left I had close to 250,000 chips and 6 of the other players at my table had 30,000-50,000. They all knew that if they confronted me and won they'd double up but I'd still be in great shape so they couldn't hurt me. But if they tangled with me and lost, then they'd be done. Even if they go in with the best hand they could still go broke. Whereas if they just fold they can't go broke. Meanwhile, I'm building my stack vs scared opponents who don't want to go broke.

18th-16th place paid a little over $1,000, 15th-13th paid $1,444 and 12th-10th paid $1,980. I felt like if I could make it into the top 12 I'd be somewhat satisfied with my result. Adding in all the knockouts it would be a fair payoff.

When we got down to 15 players or so I stared to slip. I found myself with only an average stack for the first time since the early minutes of the tournament.

But I still had fearlessness on my side! I put my head on the chopping block more than a few times, but my opponents either folded or I had the best hand and ended up dragging big pots.

There wasn't much suspense as we went from 15 to 12 to 9 players quicker than I expected. I had about an average stack as we reached the final table. On the first hand after losing player number 10 I got dealt KK52 double suited and raised about 2.5 times the big blind from early position. I got called in two places. ACK!

While this was an OK hand it was not great and as the flop came down I couldn't help but think of my 9th place finish at my last significant final table in the $215 with rebuys event in this year's WCOOP.

The flop came garbage and I bet half the pot. After agonizing thought my opponents both folded. 9th place was worth $3,495 and when the first player went broke at the final table I was guaranteed at least $4,893.

Oddly there was one significant chip leader who had 1.6 million chips while every other player was between 500k and 750K (I had about 600K)

Again my aggressiveness worked to my advantage as I ran my stack up to 900K through blind steals, preflop reraises and small pokes at small pots.

With 7 players left I took a major sting. I was dealt Q965 in the big blind and after the button limped in for 50K and the small blind called we took the flop 3 way. I bet the pot and called a big raise with top pair and and open ended straight draw when the flop came down Q74. But I was up against JT77 and after a Q on the turn and a 3 on the river I was down to 300K. DOUBLE ACK!

I picked up a few small pots and then I caught a big break. I got it all in preflop with AK76 vs AK97. Notice that the only card that is different in our hands is the 6 and the 9. Well the flop came with not one, but TWO sixes and I was back up to 900K! AH HA!

The 7th place player went broke and took home $6,757 and all of a sudden a calm came over me. 6th place paid $10,485 and once I had that locked up I knew I'd feel fine about whatever happened.

Playing a final table with tens of thousands on the line is exhilarating, exciting, terrifying, tiring, miserable and wonderful all at the same time. I'd been tense ever since we got down to about 20 players. If I'd been in last with 20 left I would have felt totally normal knowing that I did my best and the breaks just didn't fall my way. Being in the top 3 with 20 left I knew that it would be a major disappointment to not win some big cash. So when we got down to 6 and it was an assured $10,000+ payday I felt like I was freerolling from that point on.

The 6th place player went broke and was quickly followed by the 5th place finisher who made $14,282 for his efforts.

Then the tournament became a bit of a struggle. I was all over the place. I started 4 handed play with about a million chips. We all sparred a little for a dozen hands and then I made a move. I got almost all of my chips in vs an opponent I barely had covered with AQJ8 vs AK83. The flop came with an A and an 8 on it and I was focused on the fact that we were both probably going to have the same hand. As the turn came a T and the river a 9, it took me until just before the chips came my way to see that I'd made a straight! BOOM! 2 million chips baby!

Then I totally tanked! I dropped 200K here and 300K there and before I knew it I was down to 500K facing 3 opponents who each had more than a million chips!

At this point my notes and my memory have failed me a little. But I can tell you that I came back! I can also tell you that the player who went broke in 4th took home $18,931 and that he was quickly joined in the land of the busted by the player who took down $23,591 for 3rd place!

And then there were just two of us. My opponent had about 4 million chips to my 2 million and I can say for sure that while I felt great about how I'd played up until that point, I don't know a damn thing about playing heads up PLO. I decided to just get crazy aggressive and let the chips fall where they may. Almost immediately I flipped the stacks and had him 4 million to 2 million. In fact I actually had him all in and was ahead on the turn, but he had a ton of outs and connected on the river. I went broke a few hands later.

But (and it's a BIG but) 2nd place paid $32,620!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As a little cherry on top I busted 16 players which at $40 a player is another $640. Subtract the buy in and it was a net profit of $33,004!

The good news and the bad news is that I've sold an even 50% of my action for the FTOPS. It's bad news in the sense that it's only (HA HA, only!) $16,500 for me. It's good news in the sense that the 50% is split amongst about 10 family members and friends and I'm thrilled to bring home the bacon for my backers. I feel even better since if I had all of my own action I almost certainly wouldn't have played this event. First place was a little over $50,000 and while it would have been nothing short of wonderful to had the title and the extra money, in conclusion I have to say, THIRTY THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS BABY!!!!!

FTOPS Event #2 Underway!

We started event #2 $256 Pot Limit Omaha Knockout with 1,165 players and a first place prize of a little over $50,000. After one hour of play I'm off to a great start. I have my starting stack of 5,000 chips up to 11,600.

In the key hand so far I was dealt KKQQ on the button and raised the pot (the blinds were 25/50). I got called by the small blind and the big blind and the flop came down Q83 with two clubs. My opponents checked and I bet about 3/4 of the pot. After some thought the big blind check raised me the max which was about 2,700. He only had 1,000 more and since I had the total nuts (for the moment) I put him all in. When the cards got turned over I saw he had AA33 with the A3 of clubs.

I was really surprised to see this hand since I would have expected a pot sized reraise with AA and any two other cards preflop (AA and any two other cards is a favorite over any hand that doesn't have the other two aces with one or two exceptions like 89TJ double suited) let alone AA33 with a suited ace.

I managed to dodge the clubs and the remaining two aces in the deck and took down a nice pot. In addition since this is a knockout tournament I won an instant $40 for busting another player (I think that spin on things is very cool!).

I'll keep you posted.

NEW BANNER ADD!

Click on my new banner add for fulltiltpoker.com and create an account! If you do I'll get 20% of the rake that you pay the website for the life of your account. Pretty amazing huh?

FTOPS X Event #1 ($216 NL 6-Max) Recap

We started this tournament with 5,000 chips and a few hundred more players than the 5,000 required to meet the guarantee. (I didn't really proofread this post so sorry about any typos!)

At times in this tournament I played great and at others, not so much. Maybe my biggest mistake came early and worked out in my favor. On the turn I got all my chips in with AQ vs KK on a QJT2 board. I knew my opponent was strong and given the board there really wasn't much I could beat. It was really a moment of pure stupidity. But I spiked a king on the turn which lead to a very early double up.

I got it up to 12,500 and then slipped back down to 7,000 or so when the following hand (you could call it hand of the day #2) came up. I've forgotten the exact blinds since full tilt has all sort of ridiculous limits (like 60/120 or 160/320 blinds) but one player limped for something like 150 and a player on the button who had been very active preflop made it 600. In fact this guy had it up to 40,000+, but was down about 20,000 and seemed to be on tilt.

I picked up AT in the big blind and decided to make a strong play. Specifically I decided to reraise before the flop and then go all in on the flop no matter what came. So I made it 1,800, got called, put my hand over the cards so I couldn't see the flop, and moved all in for a little over 5,000.

I saw that I'd been called before I saw what cards had come on the flop, but when I finally looked I saw that the flop was A 8 5 and I'd been called by Q8! That certianly looked like a couple of tilt calls to me!

At my peak I had it up close to 20,000, but then I went down the tubes. I had a guy call a big bluff on the turn and a huge bluff on the river with A5 no pair. I couldn't believe it. Then I lose some more chips with KQ vs a short stack who had AT.

On the final hand I got it all in with A6 vs 66. I made a thin call preflop, but 66 was at the very top of the range of hands I thought my opponent could have given the action and I didn't manage to get what I needed to win the hand.

Tomorrow I have $256 PLO knockout at 11 am and $530 NL triple shootout at 6 pm.

FTOPS Event #1 Preview!

Event #1 in the FTOPS X is $216 NL Hold'em 6 handed. It starts at 6 pm pacific so I'm guessing most of you won't be awake to see it if I make the money. Fulltilt has guaranteed a $1,000,000 prize pool so we should be looking at at least 5,000 players although it would be great if there were fewer.

For those of you who want to watch the action live you can download the software at www.fulltiltpoker.com.

They have a search feature much like pokerstars so it should be easy to hunt me down. Since I created this account a loooooong time ago I have a different username. Instead of being acesedai, I'm wes1279 on fulltilt. Let me know if you have any trouble finding me and I can put up more detailed instructions.

If you don't have a fulltilt account, but are thinking of creating one. Hold off for a day or so and I'll have a banner add that you can click on which will lead to potential minor profits for me!

SORRY!

Sorry about the lack of posts! I had a bad day or two and just didn't feel like posting and then I had to get ready for vacation and now I am on vacation. My son Peyton, my wife Jen, and I are spending two days in Orange county with her parents, one day in San Diego with my Dad and step mom, and one day in Vegas (Peyton is staying with his Jen's parents for that part of the trip).

I was certainly ready for a vacation after the forty days of pain. I earned about 90% of the points I set out to earn and got myself all but on pace for the year. Unfortunately after a blazing start that had me ahead close to $7,000 at one point I actually lost a few bucks in game play and it took the $4,000 FPP bonus that I cleared to make the stretch profitable at all.

Even though I didn't feel like I was playing all that poorly, I was certainly tired towards the end and I don't think I was playing my best. Also I think I was pushing the limits of the number of games I can play at once and expect to make a solid profit.

Luckily my $8,000 bonus for making it to 800,000 points on the year will be in my account soon (even though technically it's a bonus for making it to 800,000 points, you have to earn another 40,000 in the following 120 days to actually get the money) and I'm close to enough FPPs for another $4,000 FPP bonus. So really all is well.

The FTOPS starts on the 5th of this month so lookout for many posts in the near future. I'll try to put up a preview of event #1 before I play it, but I can't make any promises!

Hand of the Day #1

While I know my friends and family (the ones who read the blog anyway) are always interested in my results, I've been thinking I need to put a little more meat on the table for my poker savy readers. My plan is to start putting up a hand of the day. It's not going to be every single day or even every single day that I play, but hopefully it will be most days. While ideally I'd like there to be some sort of lesson or tidbit of knowledge conveyed with each hand, sometimes it will just be a forum for me to vent about how unlucky I got on a major hand or perhaps describe something unusual.

Here's the story of a hand that I played today in a 6 handed $10/$20 limit game. I was on the button with AT off suit and I came in for a raise to $20. The small blind three bet it and the big blind came along. With AJ or against one aggressive opponent I probably would have capped it, but I didn't know anything about the players I was against other than not recognizing their names so I decided to see the flop and go from there.

The flop came down T 7 6 rainbow which I figured was a great flop for me. The small blind, who was the original three bettor, fired out and the big blind called. I raised to $20, the small blind made it $30 and the big blind called again.

When I saw the flop I thought it was very likely I had the best hand. Now I was pretty sure the small blind had either an over pair, a set or also had AT. I didn't have a good feel for what the big blind might have, but it felt like over cards, or a hand like T9 or A7. I didn't think I was ahead, but for only $10 there was no way I could fold without seeing the turn.

The turn was a wonderful card - an ace! Now I had top two and I was almost sure I had the best of it. The small blind bet again, the big blind just called again and I raised to $40. I was worried I might lose one of them with the raise, but they both called.

The river was another beauty - another ace! Now I was just praying they had enough to call. But to my delight the small blind bet out again and the big blind called again! I didn't care what they had since I had the nuts. I raised and they both called. When the hands got turned over I was surprised by one hand and shocked by the other.

It turned out the small blind had A8 and the big blind hand TT!!! The small blind bet every round with the worst hand of the three of us (in fact the reraised with the worst of it before on on the flop) and the big blind just called on all four betting rounds when I would have raised every time I had the chance with his hand! Not capping it before the flop with TT is weak but forgivable, not raising on the flop is a pretty good spot for a slow play so that's ok, but not putting in a raise on the turn or the river with second set and then a full house is criminal. It turns out he lost less, but it was really poor play.

For me the hand obviously worked out great. Any guesses as to how dead I was on the flop? 2% to win? 1%? WRONG! Before the flop I was 13% to win and 6% to tie. Not what you want, but not a flat line. After the flop I was .11% to win! That's over 900 to 1! I'll try to remember this hand and the $417 that came my way the next time I get really screwed.

FTOPS Schedule

For those of you interested in exactly what I'm going to be playing in the FTOPS here is the schedule (sorry for the goofy format and extra garbage - it was cut and paste job). My plan is to play everything except for the events on November 9th (I have plans for that day), the stud/8 event, the heads up matches, and the $5,000 event (I'll probably play a few satellites to the $5,000 event and play if I win a seat). Like the WCOOP my goal is 4 cashes and 1 final table.

For those of you wondering what a "knockout" tournament is let me tell you! The way it works is for every player you eliminate you win a certain dollar amount. Whether they have 1 chip or 1,000,000 chips it's the same prize for eliminating them. For example for every entry into the $256 PLO Knockout, $16 goes to the house, $200 goes to the main prize pool and $40 goes to whoever knocks that player out. Eliminate 3 players and you win $120. Bust 50 and you win $2,000. It adds a little extra fun to the tournament and I'm looking forward to these type of events.


Note that the number at the end of each event description is the prize pool guarantee.


Event #1
Wednesday
Nov 5th
21:00 ET
$200 + $16
NL Hold 'em
6-Max $1M

Event #2
Thursday
Nov 6th
14:00 ET
TBA $240 + $16
PL Omaha
Knockout $200K

Event #3
Thursday
Nov 6th
21:00 ET
TBA $500 + $35
NL Hold 'em
3 x Shootout $300K

Event #4
Friday
Nov 7th
14:00 ET
TBA $300 + $22
NL Hold 'em
1 rebuy and 1 add-on $600K

Event #5
Friday
Nov 7th
21:00 ET
TBA $200 + $16
Limit Hold'em
6-Max $150K

Event #6
Saturady
Nov 8th
14:00 ET
TBA $500 + $35
PL Omaha
6-Max $350K

Event #7
Saturday
Nov 8th
16:00 ET
TBA $100 + $9
NL Hold 'em
Rebuy $600K

Event #8
Sunday
Nov 9th
14:00 ET
TBA $240 + $16
NL Hold 'em
Knockout
6-Max $600K

Event #9
Sunday
Nov 9th
18:00 ET
TBA $300 + $22
NL Hold 'em $1.5M

Event #10
Monday
Nov 10th
14:00 ET
TBA $300 + $22
Mixed
Hold 'em $250K

Event #11
Monday
Nov 10th
21:00 ET
TBA $1,000 + $60
NL Hold 'em $1.5M

Event #12
Tuesday
Nov 11th
14:00 ET
TBA $200 + $16
HA (half PL Hold 'em, half PL Omaha) $150K

Event #13
Tuesday
Nov 11th
21:00 ET
TBA $500 + $35
HORSE $300K

Event #14
Tuesday
Nov 11th
21:00 ET
TBA $200 + $16
NL Hold 'em
Turbo $500K

Event #15
Wednesday
Nov 12th
14:00 ET
TBA $200 + $16
PL Omaha/8 $150K

Event #16
Wednesday
Nov 12th
21:00 ET
TBA $300 + $22
NL Hold 'em
6-Max
Rebuy $1M

Event #17
Thursday
Nov 13th
14:00 ET
TBA $200 + $16
NL Hold 'em
4 x Shootout
6-Max $250K

Event #18
Thursday
Nov 13th
21:00 ET
TBA $300 + $22
Razz $150K

Event #19
Friday
Nov 14th
14:00 ET
TBA $200 + $16
NL Hold 'em $400K

Event #20
Friday
Nov 14th
21:00 ET
TBA $200 + $16
Stud/8 $100K

Event #21
Saturday
Nov 15th
14:00 ET
TBA $500 + $35
NL Hold 'em
Heads Up $500K

Event #22
Saturday
Nov 15th
14:00 ET
TBA $5,000 + $200
NL Hold 'em
Two Day Event
6-Max $2M

Event #23
Saturday
Nov 15th
16:00 ET
TBA $100 + $9
PL Omaha
Rebuy $400K

Event #24
Sunday
Nov 16th
14:00 ET
TBA $120 + $9
NL Hold 'em
Knockout $500K

Main Event
Sunday
Nov 16th
18:00 ET
TBA $500 + $35
NL Hold 'em $2.5M

40 Days of Pain - Day 31

Last weekend I cracked and took a full day off. It felt really good.

I don't feel like playing every day is having a profoundly adverse effect on my play, but I have really been struggling lately. In fact in October I've only made about $1,700 and I cashed in $4,000 in FPPs so that means I've actually lost $2,300 in game play.

The summer was INSANELY profitable and I've got more than enough money in reserve to have a few losing months in a row so having sort of a weak winning month is no big deal. It just sucks to have a bunch of losing days! In fact I've had 13 losing days in the past 21! ACK!

It's amazing how when I'm winning day after day it seems so easy. It feels like my opponents have no chance at all and it's just a matter of time before I get their chips. And then during runs like this it feels like all of my bluffs are getting called, all of my draws are missing, and I keep crashing face first into sets and five card hands.

The good news is that it WILL turn around. Not might. Not Maybe. I could break off five +$2,000 days in a row and make this a great month. That's the attitude you have to have when things haven't been going great.


Tomorrow is day 297 of 366 in 2008. That means there is 19.12% of the year left. Right now I'm at 790,061 points for the year, meaning I have 20.99% of my year's work load left to do.

FTOPS X

The subject line of this post looks like pure gibberish, but as I'm sure you've guessed it's an acronym! In fact it stands for "Full Tilt Online Poker Series 10" which is a series of tournaments that will be running from November 5th until November 16th. This is sort of the WCOOP analog on fulltiltpoker.com and is kind of like the WCOOP's little brother.

They run this series twice a year and while it carries less prestige than the WCOOP, it still has some. The tournaments will have smaller fields than the WCOOP, but they'll still be pretty big. And in general the buy ins are a little less. There are going to be 25 events and 22 of them have buys ins between $129 and $535. By Contrast 9 of the 33 events in the WCOOP had buys ins (or effective buy ins in the rebuys tournaments) of $1,000+.

After a brief look at the schedule my plan is to play somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000 in tournaments. The one I really have my eye on is $535 HORSE. If you want to check out the full schedule you can do so here.

While I won't be selling a big piece of my action I will be selling a splash. I'll be sending an e-mail to my usual backers in the near future.

Shifting gears, you may have noticed my new banner ad. I'm never one to pass up an easy buck and I'm hoping this banner ad might just lead to a few. If anyone clicks on my ad and signs up for an account on pokerstars I get a piece of the money that pokerstars makes from them for the life of their account.

So if any of you out there in blog land have been thinking of diving into the online poker world or are thinking of joining pokerstars after playing on other websites, please do it by clicking on my add! If you do so and let me know via e-mail I'll even give you a free 90 minute poker lesson over the phone! That's somewhere between a $15 and $300 value (even though I've given a few lessons for money I have no idea what they're worth on the open market)!

I have no idea what percentage of the rake we're talking about here and the only reason I did this in the first place was my friend Matt Lessinger asked me to. He wanted to do it himself, but he doesn't have a website. Anyway one of the players who he gives lessons to is going to be switching from another site to pokerstars and since Matt had experience with this type of thing in the past (on now defunct poker websites). He suggested that I set it up and give him the money that this one fellow brings in.

What do I get out of that arrangement? NOTHING! But you do favors for a guy who won you $5,000 a few months ago.

For those of you out there that are particularly enterprising (for example, Kristen!), if you get someone to sign up via my banner ad I'll split any money I make off of your referrals 50/50. So tell your friends!

I would give it at least a 60% chance that I never see a dime from that ad other than what Matt's guy brings in, but it didn't cost me anything and wasn't hard to set up so who cares!

40 Days of Pain - Day 21

I played for a little while early today to keep my steak of consecutive days going, but I've finally gotten to the point where I needed to take most of a day off. Luckily I put in some major points last week so I'm still in good shape.

I have 19 days left to go and need to earn 92,000 more points to make my goal, having earned 103,000 points in 21 days so far.

I had a bit of a bad run losing 5 or 6 days starting last Sunday, but the largest of them was $1,300 and after a $2,400 win yesterday I'm still ahead of where I expected to be in terms of profit.

In other news I've taken on a protege of sorts. My sister in law Kristen has a friend (also named Kristen) who wants to quit her job and be a professional poker player or sorts. She is in a great situation since she's currently working part time (her husband is the main bread winner) and only needs to win about $1,000 a month to make as much as she does working 25 hours a week at her job.

She had by far the biggest win of her career recently finishing second in an $11 tournament with 21,700 players (that's not a typo!) winning about $10,800. Clearly an amazing return on an $11 investment. Not surprisingly she's pretty gung ho about playing. We've made a deal where I'm going to give her lessons and she's going to give me 5% of her profits in 2009. Obviously I'm not doing this for the money, but she said she wanted to pay me something and this way if she runs into a big win I'll get a piece. If we have e-mails that might provide good blog material I'll post them. Here is one such exchange we had recently:

Lately I have had a strange run of "luck". I have been maintaining about 300$ in my account for over a month now and when It gets closer to 400$, I'll cash some out and so far have had about 350$ sent to me in smaller checks-I think I mentioned this before. Anyhow, a couple of weeks ago, I lost a big hand at a cash table with pocket queens. It was at a 1$ 2$ table and I raised to 8$ pre-flop. I had one caller who was behind me, I was under the gun. The flop came 10-6-Q, all unsuited-beautiful! I was stoked and bet 10$ just trying to make a little bit more from him just hoping he made a pair or even tripped on the flop. He just called. a 2 feel on 4th, perfect....so i bet 22$ at this point, I felt like i was milking the guy. He just called again. a 7 fell on the river and i bet 36$ he pushed all in for 70$. I had a strange feeling that I might have just been beat by the most ridiculous player imaginable. I called and there it was: 8 9 off suit to wipe me out for over 100$! I was in awe that he would not only call a preflop raise with that hand and then call all the way down for a gut-shot! Is the anything I couldv'e done differently? I'll admit it took me a bit to shake that one, in fact, it probably cost me another 40$ or so not really having a clear head about things. A few days later I got dealt pocket kings in the bb and was left with one caller out of the blinds that had been playing fairly loosely. It seems that pocket kings have been the hand to knock me out o several tourneys lately so I decided not to deal with a possible risky situation so I raised it to 10$. He called. flop is 10-2-5 with 2 clubs. I bet the pot, he calls. a J falls on 4th, but not a club and i bet 30, hoping he hadn't called my preflop raise w-J-10 and if he had, i hoped to outdraw him on the river, he calls and at this point I'm fairly certain he either tripped, made his 2 pair or is really hoping for a 3rd club on the river. River brings an 8 or diamonds and I feel a little better, but jst in case of the 2 pair, I check, he moves all in for 56$-and I call, assuming he had in fact missed that club flush. In reality he had called he had 10 8 of spades! The river killed me. Another 100$+ loss that I felt I couldn't have done anything differently that got railroaded on the river. Is this just part of the game, or should I have played it some other way? Long story short, I had 5$ left in my account and played a 4$ 180 person tourney and came in 5th for 45$ and then played a 20$ single table s-n-g and came in 1st! for 90$ so my account is back over 100$ which I am pretty proud of after those 2 horrendous hands that cost me most of my $! I have the next 2 days off so hopefully I will get in some good playing time. Any suggestions for my cash game blunders is appreciated, as always. Thank you :0) talk to you soon-Kristen

Here is my reply:

I have answers to your questions! First of all let me say that this is just the type of e-mail I want you to write me. One of the best ways to learn is to discuss the merits of different ways to play certain hands.

The first thing that jumped out at me reading your e-mail is that your bankroll is a little (or a lot!) thin. I'm guessing you were playing on Ultimate bet or you cashed out almost all of that $10,000 you won?

$300-$400 isn't close to enough to ride out the swings at $1/$2 blinds NL. When I used to play NL cash games I would have something like 2,500 big blinds in reserve (which would be $5,000 for a $1/$2 game) and would cash out 500 big blinds when I got to over 3,000 in my account. That's not to say you absolutely have to have that much in your bankroll to play at that level, but you should think about trying to get your bankroll into AT LEAST the $1,000-$2,000 range. Otherwise you'll find yourself is just the spot you mentioned where you lose two or three big hands and then your account is empty.

As far as the hand with the QQ goes I think you played it right, but your impressions about the other player are a little off. One of the big differences between tournaments and cash games is everyone's chips stack is much larger compared to the size of the blinds. Most players have somewhere between 50-150 times the big blind in a cash game while in a tournament (other than the first few levels) an average stack might be something like 20-30 times the big blind.

When the stacks are deeper it makes more sense to call a raise or 3 or 4 times the big blind with a speculative hand like 98 suited once in a while hoping to hit the flop hard and maybe win 50-100 big blinds. Also for opponents that are paying attention it makes it much harder to put you on a hand if you play 89 the same way you might play AQ.

The big thing you missed was that 89 was a DOUBLE gutshot. A 7 or a J would have made him a straight. Given that he had 8 outs to a monster it makes it much more reasonable for him to call you down like he did.

With that said, you still played the hand very nicely. In no limit when you have a big hand and you suspect that your opponent is drawing you want to bet an amount that encourages them to make a mistake.

Let say you've played with this guy a million times and you're 99% sure he's drawing to 8 outs. How much should you bet? If you bet too little it's giving him the right price to call and draw, and if you bet too much he'll fold and you won't make anything with your set. On the flop there is $19 in the pot and he has about a 1 in 5 shot of hitting his straight on the turn. So anything more than $5 means he's not getting the right price to draw. You bet $10 meaning he was only getting about 3 to 1 when he needed 5 to 1 to see the next card. Seems like a good bet on your part.

Of course he knows he might make money on later streets if he hits so maybe it's worth the stretch for him even though he's not getting the right price.

On the turn it's similar, but this time he makes a big mistake You bet $22 into a $36 pot meaning he's getting something like 5 to 2 when he needs 5 to 1.

I might be making this too complicated. Let me just say that if you make a set and someone makes a not obvious straight you're going to go broke. If you don't go broke it means you're probably not making enough with your good hands. You bet the right amount the whole way and on the end when he hits your stuck. It just as easily could have been two pair or a smaller set or even AA or KK on a massive slowplay.

The only thing I might have done differently would be to check the river to induce a bluff. If I was in your shoes I would have thought he had KJ. That's hand where it makes sense for him to call before the flop (I'm not saying you should call early position raises with KJ - in fact you shouldn't, but people do it frequently), call the flop and the turn. If that's what he has then he's just going to fold on the end. But if you check he might make a desperate bluff and then you can nail him. If he has something else (like maybe AT) he might decide you don't have much and bet for value.

On to the hand with KK. It seemed in this one like you over bet it a little since you were worried about getting beat. You can't be afraid that someone is going to out draw you and start betting 1.5 or 2 times the pot. All you'll do is drive off the hands that you want calling you and get yourself totally stuck against the monster hands that have you beat. 99.9% of the time you don't want to bet more than the pot and rarely do you want to bet less than 1/2 the pot. Whether you're bluffing or have a made hand or a draw, somewhere in that range is almost always the optimal bet size.

If fact when I play NL cash games I always raise to three times the big blind if I'm going to play before the flop and I'm first in, no matter what my position (If I have one caller in front of me I make it 4X the bb, with two callers it's 5X the bb and so on). If I get 1 caller I bet 3/4 of the pot EVERY time on the flop. If I missed or hit, or the flop is 3 5 8 or AKQ all suited, it doesn't matter. I'm betting 3/4 of the pot. That way my opponents don't have any information about my hand. All they know is I chose to play before the flop. It make it really tough for them to read me.

Another thing is you want to be careful about always putting your opponent on the only reasonable hand that can beat you. There was really no reason to think he had JT and when the river came with an 8 there was no reason to think that helped him. Checking hoping he's going to bet a worse hand or a miss is fine, but I like betting again (about 1/2 the pot) in this spot hoping to get called by a ten. On the river you can go under the 1/2 pot bet size much more often. If you think your opponent has just a little something you might bet 1/4 of the pot hoping to get a call from second pair or maybe a missed draw that hit a weak pair.

Let me know if that made sense or if you have questions about my comments.

Nice work running that $5 back up to close to $100! I'm sure that was satisfying.

40 Days of Pain - Day 15

I started the 40 days of pain on September 22nd with 645,000 points (or base FPPs) for the year, needing to make it to 1,000,000 by December 31st. Clearly I was behind schedule. My goal has been to work for 40 consecutive days averaging 5,000 points a day.

To give you an idea of how hard that is, if I'd earned 5,000 points a day 22 days a month I would have been at a million by the end of September. Most of this year I've considered 3,500-4,000 points a full work day.

So far I'm just a little behind pace to meet my goal. After 15 days I've earned 71,000 points which is 4,000 short of where I wanted to be at this point. I'm definitely getting tired. It's tough working every single day all day, but I feel maybe a little better than I expected.

The good news is I've been winning steadily. I'm ahead about $6,500 not counting the value of the FPPs I've earned. It's much easier to play when you're winning!

I tried something a little different today. I have been playing a combination of 4 $10/$20 6-max games and two $114 SNGs all at once. The SNGs don't require nearly as much attention as the cash games, but they don't earn as many points either.

Today I decided to ramp things up a bit. Well, quite a bit actually. I played NINE 6 handed $10/$20 games at once for about and hour. That works out to about 1,000 hands an hour or 16.6 hands a minute or one hand every 3.6 seconds. If you were to play in person it would take you about 29 hours (with no breaks) to get dealt 1,000 hands. It was not easy!

Amazingly I managed to show a profit of a few hundred dollars over that stretch, but it left me feeling a little overloaded and pretty brain dead. I spent a few more hours playing 6 cash games at at time which was also very taxing, but very productive.

I did manage 6,000 points today though so I'm feeling like playing an insane number of games at once might be my ticket to success in the 40 days of pain. The only problem is if I start running bad, money can fly out the window in a hurry! Hopefully I'll keep playing well and running good!

40 Days of Pain - Day 10

All of this effort is starting to catch up with me a little, which I expected to happen. I lost a little momentum today when my wife Jen woke up not feeling well. I took our son Peyton for a few hours so she could sleep. Happily when she woke up she was feeling better and Peyton and I had a good time playing, but I didn't get to work until 2 or 3 hours later than I normally start. As a result I had kind of an off day points wise.

So far I've earned 48,600 points in 10 days and I've won $3,300 during that time period. This is great news since I was thinking it would be OK if I just broke even or lost a little bit during the 40 days.

In other good news pokerstars in effect gave me a little raise today. I'll try to explain in as unconfusing a way as I can (I do use the acronym "FPP" 24 times in this post!). What I call "Points" on this blog are what pokerstars refers to as "Base FPPs" (with FPP standing for frequent player point).

One of the great benefits of being a supernova is for every base FPP I earn I get 3.5 regular FPPs while the players with the lowest level of VIP status only get 1 FPP per base FPP (poor bastards!). Everything in the FPP store as well as tournaments that you can buy into with FPPs are all listed in regular FPPs.

Another of the great benefits of being a supernova is I can trade my FPPs in for cash at an excellent rate. Players of other levels of status are forced to buy merchandise in the FPP store or trade their FPPs in for cash at an absurdly poor rate.

For example if you are a "silverstar" player you can get $50 in cash for 5,000 FPPs or 100 FPPs per dollar. If you're goldstar you can get $285 for 25,000 FPPs or 88 FPPs per dollar.

As a Supernova I've been able to get $1,500 in cash for 100,000 FPPs or 66.7 FPPs per dollar. Those of you who are super quick at math will have figured out that the 48,600 points I've earned in the past 10 days translate into 170,100 FPPs which at that rate are worth $2,552.22.

Pretty amazing huh? Seems like pokerstars is pretty generous doesn't it? How can they stay in business just giving out thousands of dollars like this? Well I've paid them about $9,000 in fees in the past 10 days and there just giving me some of my own money back! Can you belive it! $9,000 in 10 days! It means I've actually beaten the other players out of $12,300. Amazing.

Back to the point. Today I noticed that they had a new FPP for cash deal in the FPP store. Specifically, I can now buy $4,000 for 250,000 FPPs which is 62.5 FPPs per dollar. It might not seem like going from 66.7 per dollar to 62.5 per dollar is a huge deal. But it means that the 170,100 FPPs I've made are now worth $2,721.60. That's a free $169! That's like finding a pile of money that has 8 twenties, a five and 4 ones! It feels like I should go out and buy myself 8 DVDs and some KFC!

More importantly over the course of all of next year (I won't run you through all the math on this one) it will be an extra $4,282 in my pocket! It's pretty amazing how that small difference makes a big difference! Thanks pokerstars!

40 Days of Pain - Day 8

Well, my brain hasn't started leaking out of my ears yet. I'm 20% of the way there and so far I'm just a tad behind pace. I've made 39,400 points of progress in these past 8 days and while I still have a long way to go I like my chances of at least getting close to my goal of 195,000 points in 40 days.

I had kind of a wild ride over the weekend. On Saturday I found myself losing about $2,500 at one point before flipping it completely around and actually winning $2,000!

Then on Sunday I found myself stuck a little over $5,000 (flirting with my worst day ever), before managing to bring it all the way back to just over even for the day!

Part of that comeback was a good result in the $215 Sunday Million. We started with about 7,300 players and by the time we were down to 100 I'd run my starting stack of 10,000 chips all the way up to 1.4 million and was in the top 10. I caught a few breaks of course (most notably beating AQ with QJ in a big all in confrontation), but I won a ton of pots in this tournament with nothing.

The great thing about this tournament (and the WCOOP tournaments as well) is that it's a big deal for most of the people who are playing. If you run a $215 tournament at the same time on some other day with no satellites you'll get something like 300-400 players, maybe less. Those are the people who are $215 tournament players. Most of them have the bankroll to play tournaments of that size, feel comfortable with the stakes, and have worked their way up playing in smaller tournaments.

That means in the Sunday Million we have 7,000 players who don't really belong. When you get close to the money, these players lock up. If you have a solid chip stack (like I did in this tournament about that time) and the combination of balls and experience to pull it off, you can totally run them over. That's just what I did.

The tournament paid 1,080 places and between the time that player 1,300 went broke and we made the money I probably won 1/3 of the pots at my table and almost doubled my already strong stack without ever showing down a hand. Most of the time I just raised and everyone folded. Sometimes when someone would raise in front of me I'd put them all in before the flop. Other times I'd just call and then raise them on the flop. It's great fun to run over weak players like this!

Unfortunately I finally ran into some real hands, missed with a few of my hands when I was facing resistance and ended up finishing in 68th place. It paid $2,250 and I feel like I couldn't have done too much differently in the period where I went slowly down the tubes, but 9th was $10,000 and first was $184,000 so I did feel a little disappointed to miss out on the final table.

It's hard not playing multitables when that's what I want to do, but there's so gold in the pot at the end of the FPP rainbow that I have to just worry about points for a while. For now my plan is to play a few on Sundays and leave it at that.

40 Days of Pain Day 3

Working all day every day sucks! I've generated a little over 16,000 points in three days which is great, but I have lost about $1,200. Given the swings I've been having that's really not a big deal.

I hope I can find the mental fortitude to make it through these 40 days!

Even More Comment Comments!

Getting back to the hand that has led to so much discussion I have to emphasise that one of the key issues here and what makes this hand so unique is the SUPER deep stacks that we all had. During the first round on the main event of the WSOP you have 400 big blinds in your stack and I had 500 big blinds in my stack when this hand came up. In fact I'm not sure there is a tournament anywhere that gives you 500 big blinds start. It was simple the nature of rebuy tournaments and that fact that this was as $530 with rebuys tournament that led to such insane stacks.

In a SNG if you get KK vs AA you're dead 19 times out of 20. There just isn't enough room to manuver. In fact if just about any normal tournament the decisions would be so much easier. You'd just go all in with your pocket kings on the flop and if it didn't work out, no big deal. In fact if there was a standard raise, a call and then you reraised and got called by everyone, you be talking about a major pot that you could never get away from.

London Dave, you did a solid analysis of the hand. In a normal situation or a smaller buy in tournament if someone acted the way Gavin did it would usually be AK, AQ or a medium pair.

But I really did put him on AA. It could have been a case of "let me put this guy on the only hand I can't beat," or maybe it was the timing of his call, but that was my read and I felt pretty strongly about it.

Maybe it was a hand that happened to me recently that made me feel that way. Here is how that hand went down (this is actually how a good friend of mine who was writing for a certain poker magazine and ran out of material wrote it up after we spent some time talking about it - he wrote it as if it happened to him even though it happened to me!)

I was playing recently in a $320 nightly tournament on Pokerstars. Out of a starting field of 450 players we were down to 60, and the top 45 would be in the money. I had an average stack of about 18,000. Normally I’d feel pretty secure that I would at least make the money, but my table draw was really unfortunate, as I was 7th in chips at my table. With so many players that could bust me, I knew I had to tread carefully, but at the same time I felt I needed to continue playing with first place as my main goal.

With blinds of 300-600, the UTG player made it 1,500. It was folded to me in the cutoff with J-J. I wanted to find out right away just how strong he was, so I made it 4,800 to go. After some hesitation, the button, who had me covered, called. The blinds and the UTG player folded, so I was going to the flop heads-up and out of position.

Before going any further, I’ll tell you that my immediate instinct was that I was up against pocket aces. This was not a case of me seeing monsters under the bed; it was simply his most likely hand. If this was some $11 tournament with 3,000 players, it might have been different. But with a buy-in of $320 on a weeknight, this tournament usually attracted a very tough field of 400-500 players. There was very little dead money, and very few players who would cold-call a re-raise preflop this late in the tournament without a huge hand. I wasn’t completely sure how to proceed, but checking and folding definitely crossed my mind.

In general, I usually have a pretty good idea ahead of time of how I’m going to proceed based on the texture of the flop. For example, if the flop had a jack, I would probably make a small lead bet. If it came with an ace, I would probably check-fold. But when the flop came A-J-3 rainbow, bringing both the ace and the jack, it was one of those rare times that I felt truly unprepared. The flop was there, and I really wasn’t sure what to do.

After some thought I realized that, if he had pocket aces, my goal was simply to avoid going broke. If he had anything other than aces, I probably wasn’t making any decent money on the hand anyway, so there was no reason to get overly aggressive. I decided to check. After two seconds, my opponent checked behind me.

Oh well, that didn’t accomplish much. Upon further thought, I realized that he probably would check there regardless of his hand. Whether he had A-A, K-K, or A-K, checking that flop made sense for him. Whether or not it was possible, I found myself wishing I could have gotten some more information.

The turn paired the three. I decided to lead out for 1,800, a laughable underbet. He flat-called. Again, I realized that this gave me no real information. With A-A he’s calling so he can string me along, and with K-K or A-K he’s calling the small bet into the large pot just in case he has me beat. I still had no information, but as strange as it may sound, I was thankful that I only had one-third of my stack in the pot, as I still thought A-A was his most likely holding.

The river was a blank. I considered leading small again, but then decided against it. It wasn’t too important to get paid off by a lesser hand. Of greater significance was the possibility that I would get raised and have to consider making a sick laydown. Plus, I figured that if I checked and he had A-A, he would probably bet small just to make sure he got paid off, and I’d be able to survive.

With that in mind, I checked. He immediately went all-in. Huh?

So much for all my careful thinking. I was expecting him to either check behind me with a worse hand, or to bet small with A-A, and instead he went all-in? I’ll admit it threw me off. Why would he bet so much if he had A-A? Could he really expect me to call? From the way I played it, he had to figure my most likely hands were K-K or Q-Q, so why bet so much?

I almost found myself wanting to flip a coin to decide what to do. In the end, whether or not it was the best thing to base my decision on, I decided that it was a forgivable mistake to call with jacks full and lose. I called all-in, he showed his pocket aces, and I was eliminated just short of the money.

At first I was a little miffed at myself. I put him on pocket aces the whole way, then convinced myself that he might have something else, and that change of heart cost me the tournament. On the other hand, everyone I’ve talked to says that it was just a bad-luck flop, and I was destined to go broke in that hand.

Either way, I still thought it was worthwhile to go through the hand and think about what I could have done differently. But in the end, I think that - if I try too hard to get away from hands like the second-nut full house - I’ll be doing myself more harm than good.

Meanwhile, this hand obviously worked out perfectly for my opponent, but that doesn’t mean I like the way he played it. I thought his pre-flop call of my reraise was pretty transparent. Whether he calls or raises, I’m giving him credit for a pair higher than jacks, so all he’s doing by flat-calling is giving me a free chance to outflop him. I think his better play is to re-raise preflop, and hope that I have something I can’t get away from. Of course, once it came set-over-set he seemed like a genius, but I still think the flat-call was a fancy play at a time when the straightforward play made more sense.

I also have mixed feelings about his river bet. Again it worked out perfectly, but I think that’s because I had the only hand with which I would call his all-in. If I had Q-Q or K-K he’s simply blowing me out of the pot, instead of betting small and giving me a chance to pay him off for 2,000 or 3,000 in a 14,000-chip pot. I’m sure he wanted me to misread his bet, to assume that his all-in meant that he was weaker than he really was, but that still wouldn’t have mattered. The only other hand I would even consider calling him with was A-K, and even then I think I would have leaned towards laying it down.


This is one where it would have made more sense to dump my hand. My read here of AA was MUCH stronger. I'm not sure my friend captured all of my feelings exactly right, but it was still a nice article and another case of putting someone of AA with great certainty before the flop.

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!