SCOOP Event #5 Underway!

Event #5 M is a $162 NLH Triple shootout. That means we start with 1,000 players at 100 tables of 10 players. Those tables play until only one player is left at each table. Once all the tables have only one player left, those 100 players are put at 10 tables of 10 and the process repeats. When there are only ten players left they are put at the final table and play it out for the title. If you win your first table you're in the money which pays $577. Winning the second round is worth at least $2,100 and first place is $27,400. Given the "small" field this might be my best chance to win a tournament outright. In fact at the WCOOP last year I won my first table and got it down to heads up in round two before I blew a major chip lead! It was heart breaking.

Event #5 L is similar except since the buy in is only $16.50 there is another round and we stared with 9,000 players instead of 1,000! 1st place in that one is a similar $24,800, but you have to beat 9 times as many players to get it!

Event #6 is Pot Limit Omaha and the medium stakes tournament is my first sizable tournament of the series. It's $215 with one rebuy and one add on so basically $615.

The Total So Far

After two days of Scooping (There was also a little satellite action before these two days), I'm stuck $70.50 in the low tournaments, winning $269 in the medium stakes and losing $294 in the satellites (I made the money in two of nine). So my $15,000 MHS bankroll stands at $14,975. Like I said before, these first few days are pretty much warm up.

In other news I've decided for sure that I'm going to play the $5,200 6 handed limit SCOOP event (it's towards the end of the series) even if I can't win my way in via satellite. I just can't pass up a major tournament in my specialty. The difference between 6 handed limit play and 9 handed limit play is pretty vast as is the difference between tournament play and cash game play. I don't think there are too many people anywhere who have the combination of expertise and experience in all the aspects that will come into play in this one event. So while shelling out five grand for one tournament is still more than I really feel comfortable with, I just can't pass up this opportunity.

SCOOP Event #4 (M) Recap

This tournament was the antithisys of the draw tournament. Since things escalated quickly it was great fun. Shortly after my last post I ran my stack up to 25,000 chips or so and then went a little card dead. In a tournament with 5 minute limits even a short run of bad cards and be a death sentence. As we got close to the money I had to put on the stall taking as long as possible to act whenever it was my turn so enough people would be eliminated before I was blinded off.

But I made the money! YAY! A few hands after we made the money the blinds were 3,500/7,000 and I was down to 11,000 chips in the big blind. Since way more than half my chips were already in the pot I had to go with whatever cards I got. It just so happened I got 63! YUCK! And two people moved all in in front of me! ACK!

Amazingly I made the best hand. The both had Ax hands, the flop was 5 3 2 giving me the best hand, the turn was a 4 making me way the best hand and the river was a blank. All of a sudden I was up to something like 40,000.

A few hands later I got dealt AQs, got it all in vs JJ and was up to 90K. I peaked at around 110,000 and then I made a thin call. Average was around 150K, the blinds were something like 7K/14K and the cutoff moved all in for about 100K. I had 55 on the button and after some thought I decided to go for it. To my shock and horror the big blind called with 99 and my first opponent turned over AA. I was left with 5K or so and was out on the next hand.

The good news is I finished 153rd of 2,887 which paid $754.

The bad news is I played a few more satellites some of which were not small. I'll add up the total sometime today or tomorrow and let you know the exact numbers. I think I'm losing a little bit overall, but not more than a few hundred.

SCOOP Update

I went broke in the Event #4 (L), but I'm doing OK in the medium stakes. This was a "Turbo" tournament meaning the blinds go up every 5 minutes instead of every 20 or 30. As a result, 90 minutes in and on the first break, we're down to 1,080 from 2,900 entrants. I have 10,800 chips which is a little more than half of average.

The edge of the money is 414th which pays $367 and first place is $103,000.

SCOOP Event #4 underway!

Event #4 (L) $16.50 "2X Chance" started with 14,496 players and after an early miscue I had to use my one rebuy.

In event #4 (M) which started with 2,887 players I'm about where I started with just over 5,000 chips.

They haven't put up the prizes yet. I'll post an update if I go broke or triple up.

5-Card Dud

Man does 5 card draw suck! Every now and then I think to myself "Maybe I'll play a little draw!" Then I do and I am reminded why draw is dead. It is so boring! And on top of that it requires to much thought and focus for me to play well.

I gave it all I had in the $109, but I ran into THREE full houses! The first time I had a straight, the second time I had trips, and the third time I was short stacked and had two pair.

In the $11 I had to bail. It was making me crazy. It had been two hours and there were a few hours to the money which was only $12 at the edge. So I got super aggressive in an effort to either build a huge stack or go broke quickly. Not surprisingly it was the latter.

SCOOP Event #3 Underway!

SCOOP event #3 is PL five card draw with the low stakes being $11 (which started with 4,300 players) and the medium stakes being $109. There's good news and bad news and more good news. The good news is they guaranteed $100,000 in the prize pool of the $109 tournament and there are only 756 entrants. This means pokerstars had to add $17,600 to the prize pool. The bad news is I don't know much about playing 5 card draw! The good news is almost no one else does either!

The biggest weekly 5 card draw tournaments are in the $20 range (They normally have something like 50 players), there are never more than a handful of cash games going, and those are all for small stakes. That means no one really has much experience with this game.

Hopefully I can get some good cards and use my tournament experience and skills from other games to wade my way through.

Brick City!

I came up short is all 4 of my SCOOP tournaments today. The only one in which I sniffed the money was the $5 with rebuys and I went down the tubes with KK vs 99 so there wasn't much I could do.

The Omaha tournaments were a total bust. I was out in less than 90 minutes in both. I know how to play pot limit Omaha and limit Omaha Hi-Lo, but I have to admit that I don't feel really comfortable with pot limit Omaha Hi-Lo. It's just a wierd game. Frankly I don't know why anyone plays it.

The good news is I won a $32 satellite to a $320 SCOOP event. So when you factor in the -$109 for the earier satellite, the -$105 for the $55 with rebuys and the -109 for the Omaha (M), my MHS bankroll (Medium/High/Satellite - basically my backer bankroll) only took a $35 hit. My low bankroll took a $26.50 hit.

Today was pretty insignificant as far as the sereis goes. It was really almost like a prologue. In fact the first 5 events are pretty much warm up.

Tomorrow I have $11 and $109 Pot Limit 5-card draw in the morning (that's going to be an adventure!) and $16.50 and $162 NL hold'em 2x chance in the afternoon.

The 2X chance format is interesting. Basically the way it works is if you go broke during the first hour you can buy another starting stack for the same amount as the initial buy in, but otherwise there are no rebuys and it plays just like a regular tournament.

Looking at the schedule Sunday is really going to be key. That day I have $1,050 HORSE, $320 NLH and $3,150 NLH. One way or another that day is probably going to be really good or really bad.

SCOOP Underway!

So far today I've only played one satellite and I came up short losing $109.

SCOOP Event #1 (L) $5 with rebuys started with an insane 27,134 players. I'm in for the minimum of $15 and up to 30,000 chips. Not bad since the initial buy in and one rebuy only gets you 5,000. The edge of the money is 5,400th place and pays $17, while first place in a whopping $41,000.

Event #1 (M) $55 with rebuys started with a more reasonable 4,057 players. I didn't instantly rebuy because I spaced out, and then I won the first hand so I had too many chips to rebuy. So the good news is I'm only in for $105. The bad news is I didn't make much progress and I only have about the number of chips you get for one buy in one rebuy and the add on (8,900). The edge of the money is 600th place and pays $243, while first place pays $98,000.

SCOOP STARTS TODAY!

The SCOOP will kick off today (April 2nd) with NL hold 'em with rebuys and Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo. The low stakes NLH will be $5.50 with rebuys. There are already an astounding 16,000 people registered for this tournament and there will surely be thousands more signing up. Given the structure this means it could a looong time to play. There are 15 minute limits and pokerstars has 72 levels listed in the tournament lobby with the last being blinds of 25 million and 50 million! That means the big blind will be 20,000 times the size of the initial chip stack! I guess they are counting on a TON of rebuys!

The medium stakes will be $55 with rebuys and has a more modest 1,400 people signed up so far. I plan to skip the high stakes which is $530 with rebuys. All of these events start at 11:30 pacific.

At 1:30 the PLO8 low stakes will be $11 and the medium stakes will be $109.

I feel like the low stakes events might be insanely boring, but I feel like there is some prestige even given the tiny buy ins. I'd also like to take a shot at cashing in more SCOOP events than anyone period.

I discovered today that like the WCOOP the SCOOP will feature "second chance" tournaments that are played two hours after the start of the main SCOOP events and involve the same game and the same (or sometimes lower) buy in. I've included them in my backer package. I don't know what the fields or exact buys in will be for these tournaments, but I assume I'll be playing quite a few of the medium and high stakes second chance events.

I'll keep you posted on all my results.

Final Table Recap!

When I last left off I was giving the details of a $109 mulittable tournament I played with 756 entrants. I told you that I made the final table, but didn't let on how deep I went. Of course most of you who read this blog already know how I did since it was a week ago, but I'll leave the rest of you in suspense as I go.

Final table play started on hand #405 (for me - since other players were at different tables they played differnet numbers of hands). I had 224K chips, the chip leader had 475K and the short stack hand 160K. With the blinds only at 3.5K7K with a 700 chip ante and the chip stacks so even we were looking at a long final table.

On the very first hand the short stack raised to 21K from the small blind, and then called all in with J9 suited when the player I mentioned in my last post (Johne147) moved all in from the big blind with AK. The AK held up and the short stack took home a little more than $1,000 for 9th place.

I took over the position of the short stack two hands later. I was in the small blind with A9s, the button made it 18,875 to go, I reraised to 56,000 and he moved all in for 161,400. I might have had the best hand here, but with the blind still small compared to my stack, I decided to be paitient and fold.

On hand #425 we lost another one. Johne147 took out another player with a massive bad beat. He raised to 20K with 99 and got called by a player in the field. The blinds folded, the flop came down T 5 4 and both players checked. I'm guessing Johne figured the other player was trying to trap with AA or KK (which is just what I thought too) since he checked the turn (which was a 2) also. His opponent bet out 24K and johne just called. The river was a 9 Johne check raised all in, his opponent called with AA and was out in 8th place! It was a pretty dramatic hand. 8th place paid a little over $1,700 so don't feel too bad for the fellow with the aces!

On hand #446 a player moved all in for 173K with 66, ran into AA, and took home $2,400 for 7th place.

By hand #450 I'd wiggled my way up over 275K without ever going past the flop or winning any kind of big pot. I simply raised and reraised when I thought my opponents would fold or if I had a good hand. Sure enough they were all in the mode of trying to move up one more spot and I was able to exploit them.

Hand #454 was one of my favorite hands. The blinds were up to 5K/10K I got dealt AJ on the button and the short stack who only had 109K was in the big blind. I made it 30K to go and I said to my wife "I hope the big blind moves all in with something like AT." He moved all in, I called and he turned over AT! HA! To my shock and horror the flop was Q T 2! I immediatly said "Put a King on the turn." Guess what? There was a king on the turn! HA! Amazing! The river was a blank, I was up to 400K and my opponent got $3,200 for 6th.

Johne147 did some more work for the table on hand #466. He made it 24K to go, a player moved all in for 207K he called with AT and won vs A7. The fifth place player got $3,900 for his efforts.

When I started the final table of course I wanted to win, but I knew I'd be completely satisfied if I could make it to at least 5th.

I worked my way up to 580,000 through blind steals and then lost 175K on hand #485 when Johne147 had KK vs my QJ and I hit a J.

But I got my vengence a few hands later! I had 99 in the small blind and Johne made it 29K to go from the button. I reraised to 84K, he went all in and I called. I figured with a bigger pair he would have just called my reraise or made a smaller raise. Sure enoug he had AQ, but the board was all small cards and I was up to 840K!

Now it was on! I knew I was the best player and now I hand the most chips too. This is what you play for! I knew if I stayed patient and didn't take a major bad beat I had a chance to win this thing.

My nemisis Johne147 took a chunk of his chips back on hand #500. We both flopped a pair, I turned two pair and he rivered trips. Luckily we both checked the flop and the board had straight and flush possibilities so I only lost 250K.

But I got those chips right back on hand #508 when I turned a pair of aces vs the pair of kings he'd made on the flop.

Nothing happened for the next 10 hands, then I layed the smack down! The blinds were 8K/16K and the button made a massive overbet by going all in for 350K. A little earlier I saw him limp in on the button with KK so I knew he was inclined to play slow with big hands. This looked like a small pair or a weak ace to me. I had 770K chips at this point and I got dealt AJ. I might not have called for my entire stack, but for half I decided to go for it. He turned over 44, the flop was 3, K T, the turn was a 2 and I started calling for a queen. Instead I got an ace and took down a sweet pot. Now I was up to 1.14 million chips and third my opponent was out the door in 4th place with $5,600.

By hand #536 I was up to 1.4M and got AJ again. This time I raised to 60K, got reraised all in to 430K by KJ, and when all the cards were out I took down a major pot. My opponent took home $7,500 and we were down to two.

It was just me and Johne147! Of course it wasn't exaclty a fair fight. I had 1.9M and he only had 386K. He started moving all in on all of his small blinds and it was just a matter of waiting for a real hand to call him.

On hand #543 he moved all in with 56s, I had KJ, made the call, flopped a K, and that was it! BOOM! Take that Johne!

Second place paid my nemisis a little over $10,000, and for first place I took down $14,175! YAY!

This was one of the best tournaments I've ever played. I hardly made any mistakes and when I did it still worked out. This was a great boost going into the SCOOP. Hopefully I can play as well and have similar results.

A Recap of a $109 Multitable (Part I)

I've been on vacation with a big group of friends in Lake Tahoe for the past 4 days, in a cabin with 7 bedrooms, an indoor pool, a theater room with a 106" screen, and a slew of other luxuries. It was a great break and a way to recharge before the SCOOP. But the day before I left I had a very nice result in a $109 tournament that started with 756 players.

I've been trying to focus on cash games lately and I entered the tournament on a total whim. I requested a hand history for this tournament because I felt like I played really well and wanted to look write a detailed post. So while I might not go into great detail about everything I'll try to mention all of the key hands.

The first big hand came on hand #43 of the tournament. We started with 3,000 chips and after not much action for the better part of an hour I had 3,135 chips. I got dealt AK and found myself facing a raise to 150. I made it 450 and my opponent who started the hand with about 3,000 chips as well called my reraise. The flop was 3 7 9, with two spades I bet 700 and my opponent went all in.

My first impulse was of course to fold. After all I didn't even have a pair. But after some thought I decided that it wasn't likely that my opponent had connected with that flop and there was at least a 50/50 chance that I was up against a semibluff or a total bluff. So I called, my opponent turned over QJ, and after a brick on the turn and a brick on the river I was up to 6,000 chips. This was a bold call and I felt great about having the stones to make it.

On hand #56 I improved my situation when I got half my chips in preflop with JJ vs AQ and my hand held up. I stayed right in the range of 10,000 chips or so for about the next hour then I picked up another nice pot.

The blinds were up to 150/300 with a 25 chip ante and I got dealt T8 suited in the big blind in hand #136. My lone opponent in this hand got dealt KK in the cutoff and came in raising. I made a little bit of a thin call preflop, but once the flop came down J 8 7 I decided to go for it. My opponent had 6,000 chips, which was a good sized stack, but only half of what I had. I check raised him all in on the flop, he called and I rivered a 9 to make a straight! Up to 18,000 chips I felt like I had a great chance to make the money.

Around hand #150 a player who I'd be seeing a lot of in this tournament was moved to my table - johne147. As we got close to the money I was impressed with his play. It's rare for an opponent to stand out to me in a standard NL tournament, but for some reason this guy caught my attention. It seemed like he was in a lot of pots picking up chips even though he didn't have much more than an average stack when he started. His activity kept me from stealing as many blinds as I normally would have as we approached the money, but I decided there was no reason to go after him with marginal cards.

There were several occasions in the tournament where we were split up and then moved back together again. The last time we were brought back together was at the final table.

Fast forward to hand #199 and I was up to 25K chips. We were in the money (which started out at around $200 gross) and the blinds were up to 1K/2K. I got dealt AQ of hearts in middle position, made it 3K to go and got smooth called by the button. I was a little nervous that I might be up against a hand like KK trying to trap me, but I was far from sure what my opponent might have.

The blinds folded, the flop came down 9 4 2 all clubs, and I bet 5,000 into the roughly 8,000 chip pot. My opponent paused for a moment and then went all in for 40K! ACK! I had about 15,000 chips left and for some reason I decided my opponent was putting a move on with a bare ace of clubs. Also I was thinking "I'm in the money and I've got a loooong way to go before this gets interesting so I'm just going to go for it!"

I called and my opponent showed me TT with the ten of clubs! OOPS! Now I needed a non club A or Q to survive. Amazingly the turn was the queen of spades (one of only 4 cards left in the deck that would help me) and the river was a small heart. Now I was up to 52K and in great shape.

A little while later on hand #217 I raised with KQ under the gun and the big blind had a moment of stupidity. For some reason after three and a half hours and 200+ hands he decided he'd just move all in with J7. I was pretty sure I was beat when he moved all in for 17K, but I was hoping he had a pair below queens which would mean I was getting the right price to call. I was really surprised to see what he had and happy to take his chips!

At this point I think I was in the top 5 of about 60 or 70 players.

On hand #253 I took out a smallish all in who had A6 vs my 44 and picked up some more chips with a flop bluff on hand #259.

On hand #274 I called a button raise out of the big blind with Q9. The flop came down JT6 and we both checked. I thought my opponent either had a monster or nothing so after the turn came a 2 I bet 8,000 into the 12,000 chip pot. He called which didn't tell me too much. I missed my straight draw and thought about giving up on the hand. Instead I bet 20K and pushed my opponent off the hand. It felt great!

After that string of small, but not insubstantial pots I was in first place with 125K. I stole some blinds and had some people play back at me a few times and really didn't have much happen for the next 30+ hands. Then on hand #308 with blinds of 1.5K/3K I got dealt A7 suited and raised to 9K from the button. The small blind folded and the big blind went all in for 45K. I wasn't thrilled about it, but I decided that my opponent's likely range of hands was pretty broad here so I opted to call. He turned over KQ, I hit an ace on the turn and I took down a 93,000 chip pot!

I stayed right in the range of 175K for the next hour or more and that's right where I was when we got down to two tables. At that point average was 126K so while I wasn't blowing everyone else out of the water, I was still in great shape to make the final table.

Things were pretty steady and boring as we approached the final table. I put on a little heat here and there and when we were down to 9 players I was up to 225K. Ninth place paid a little over $1,000, but of course there was much more money at the top of the prize pool.

I have a busy day tomorrow, but on Wednesday I'll recap the final table and give a little bit of a SCOOP preview.

A Little Hand Discussion

In a recent post I implied that Matt made a mistake calling a substantial all in with 44 at the shooting star.

To set the scene there were 29 players left in the Shooting star, the blinds were 2,500/5,000 with a 500 chip ante, Matt was on the button (I've gotten conflicting info about his position, but despite what he said in his comment I think he was on the button based on the sequence he described when we first talked just after the hand) with 85,000 chips or so, Joe Sebok (a bounty) moved all in for 75,000 chips just to Matt's right and Matt called with 44.

Here is what Matt said in his comment: In terms of the call with 4-4, if anyone uses a term other than a "bold call" for that play, then they should refer to it as a "100% correct call." I mention this just in case there were any implications that it could have been the wrong play.

I played with Joe Sebok for a day and a half. For him to move in from the button for 15x the big blind, I can say with absolute certainty that he was raising with any two. With a real hand he would have raised much less. So I'm there with a chip stack that is one-fourth of average, I'm definitely not against a higher pair, and there's even a chance I could have him dominated if he has a card 4 or lower. For those reasons alone, a call was correct because I needed to gamble in order to accumulate chips and get back to having a realistic shot. Now add to the equation the fact that I get $5,000 cash if I win the hand, and not only is it a correct call, it would be a really terrible fold.

Just in case there were "other people" with "other words" to describe the play. :-)


Matt makes a good case for calling, but I still don't totally agree with him. Let's look at this hand in depth.

One of the keys here is what is the range of hands that Sebok could have. Clearly he has a weak hand and doesn't want to be called, but that doesn't mean that the total garbage hands are as likely to as the other weak ones. Despite Matt's assertion that he could have anything, I'd be surprised if anyone no matter how aggressive would just drop the all in bomb with the bottom 25% of hands when they still have 15 big blinds left.

With 44 the only way you're going to be a big favorite is if he has a 2, 3 or 4 in his hand. That's 10 if the 50 unknown cards which if your opponent moved in dark means there is a 36% chance that one of this cards is a 2, 3 or 4. But realistically I think the only hands Sebok would move in with in this spot that have a 2, 3 or 4 in them are 22, 33, 44, A2, A3, A4, K2, K3, K4, and Q2, Q3, Q4 (the last three are a little bit of a stretch in my opinion). There are 24 other hands that contain a 2, 3 or 4 that I think he would have mucked. In my estimation there would only be a 15% chance that his hand would contain a 2, 3, or 4.

We'll assume for this analysis that there is 0% chance that he has a pair bigger than 44. So if there's a 15% chance that he has a 2, 3 or 4 in his hand and 0% chance that he has an overpair there is an 85% chance that he has two overcards. In the best case scenario (vs unsuited, unconnected overcards like J6) 44 will be 55% to win and in the worst case (vs suited and connected overcards) 44 will have a 48% chance to win. So by far the most likely scenario is that you'll end up as a microscopic favorite of 1%-2%.

Let's think about something else - the $5,000 bounty. How much should that come into play in making the decision to call or fold? There was $3,282,480 left in the prize pool and Matt had 1.087% of the chips in play which means his stack was worth $35,680 (if he had 85,000) so even though $5,000 is a lot of money, it's not a major consideration. But it is a minor one and it might be enough to turn this from a fold into a call.

When I decided to write this post I was still thinking this was a fold situation and I was looking to make that point, but after looking at some of the math and taking more time to think about it it's closer to a call than I thought.

With that said - I'd still fold! This hand reminds me of a phenomenon from sit-n-go tournaments. Let's say you're playing a standard 9 handed online SNG with a player that you know as well as you could know an opponent. It's the first hand, you have pocket fives and make a standard raise to 60 chips. Your opponent who is next to act goes all in for 1,500 and everyone folds around to you. Now you know that this could only be AK since you've seen him make this play 1,000 times always with AK and have never seen him make it with another hand. Should you call?

If it were a cash game you'd call in a heart beat. You're 55% to win vs AK off suit and 52% vs AK suited. But in a SNG it's time to muck those fives and the reason is - you can find a better spot to get your money in! In tournaments there are many situations that come up that are positive expectation in term of tournament chips and negative expectation in terms of real world dollars. This is one such situation.

Think about it this way; if the house is taking 10% off the top you need to finish in the top three spots out of nine players 36% of the time (with an equal distribution of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishes) to break even. To show a solid profit you need to make it to the money 40% of the time (I was in the low 40's when I played SNGs for a living).

In the hand outlined above 54% of the time you'll double up and 46% of the time you're broke. That means that the times you double up you need to make the money 67% of the time to break even (that will put your overall in the money percentage at 36%)and 74% to show a solid profit. Guess what? THAT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!

Matt's hand has a similar feel to me. While he was in bad shape in terms of what the average stack was he was not on total fumes with 15 big blinds. It just seems like he could have waited for a spot where he was the aggressor or had a better chance of being a substantial favorite.

As a pro it's important to spend time away from the table thinking about these things. I'm sure I'll never be up against Joe Sebok in a $10,000 tournament with 15 big blinds facing an all in and looking down at a small pocket pair. But I will face plenty of situations where I'm thinking of calling an all in with a pocket pair. This discussion and the time I've spent thinking about this hand will make it easier to put it all together and figure out what to do when I only have a matter of seconds to pull the trigger.

I welcome any other comments on this hand.

Weight Loss Bets

Before I get to the meat of this post, I want to make a correction to my last post. I felt like something was a little off when I was writing about Matt's had with KK vs QQ and AA and after talking to him I realized I made a major mistake in recounting the action. He started the hand with more chips and while I had the preflop action right, I messed up the rest. On the flop Matt bet, got called by the QQ, the AA raised and both Matt and the other player called. It was on the turn after he and the QQ checked that Matt really had to think when the AA bet enough to put him all in. Sorry about the inaccurate reporting!

Now on to weight loss bets! I've never been really fat, but ever since I turned 20 I've always felt like I had a few pounds to lose. When I was still in college my wife (she was just my girlfriend then) and I were apart for a summer and we made a bet to get in great shape while we were on opposite coasts. The bet was whoever worked out more times that summer won the bet, got to choose a day of activities, and the loser had to pay for it all. We both worked out almost every day and both looked great when we reunited (I lost, by 3 workouts if I remember correctly). At the end of that summer I was running 6 miles a day in under an hour which blows my mind since now it takes me about 12 minutes to run one mile and at the end I've got nothing left.

While there were a one or two other short term similar wagers in there, the next major weight loss bet I made was with my good friend E.B in early 2006. I made this bet at my fattest. I was in the neighborhood of 270 pounds and E.B. was around 240. The bet was we both had 5 months to lose 40 pounds and the penalty was $100 a pound for every pound you came up short. E.B. made it under 200 and I made it down to 239. I lost $900, but I also lost 31 pounds so it was worth it.

As time has gone by we both went gradually back to our old ways and put most of those old pounds back on. So now I actually have three concurrent weight loss bets!

The first is with E.B. and this one is much more long term. The goal is to lose 36 pounds which would put me at 230 and E.B. just under 200. This bet doesn't just have one end goal and one time frame. Instead there are many checkpoints. The first checkpoint was March 1st (we started in the middle of January) and we had to have lost 3 pounds by then. If at anytime we weighed 3 pounds less than our starting weight we were safe for that check point. If I didn't make it I'd owe E.B. $250 and vice versa. Of course we both made it easily, but it's going to get harder.

We actually set up 18 check points each on the first of the month for 18 months. For the first 6 months we have to lose 3 pounds a month, for the next six 2 pounds a month and for the last six 1 pound a month. Coming up short on any of these checkpoints results in a $250 penalty.

So far I've lost 9.6 pounds meaning that no matter what happens (even if I gain 100 pounds) I'm safe for the April 1st and May 1st check points. I'll need to lose another 2.4 pounds to be safe for June 1st, 5.4 more to be safe for July 1st and so on.

At the same time I have a similar bet running with my sister in law Kristen. She wanted to lose 20 pounds so we have a five month plan with the same monthly checkpoints but of course we each need to lose 4 pounds a month on average to hit those monthly goals. Since it should be easier for me to lose the weight I've put up twice as much money. My penalty is $100 for missing a checkpoint and hers is only $50.

Today I added a third weight loss bet to my stable of pending wagers! This one is not head to head. In this one I've simply bet Jake that he can't get from 209 to under 190by August 1st. He has to be under 190 in the morning before working out four days in a row anytime between now and then. I'm pretty sure he can do it, but I've only put up $100 and if he doesn't make it he owes me $1,000 so I had to go for it. Now I just have to make sure there are plenty of temptations. I need to start having pies delivered to his office and bacon slipped into all of his meals. You're going down Jake! Downtown! To the plus sized men's shop! But you won't be able to buy anything because I'll have your $1,000! Yeah!

Even though I haven't been able to stay near my ideal weight, I've put in hundreds of extra hours exercising and kept myself from getting really, really fat by making these and other similar bets. Even if you just want to lose 5 or 10 pounds making a bet with someone is a great way to get motivated.

Matt out in 29th

Matt finished in 29th place which left him with a net profit of $20,000! Way to go Matt!

He gave me the details of a hand that he played really well just before his demise. With blinds of 2,500/5,000 a tight player with a huge stack (over 500,000) open raised to 13,000 from under the gun. Another player with a big stack who was fairly aggressive just called and Matt who was in the big blind with 130,000 chips found KK when he looked at his hand.

Let me start by saying I would reraise here 100% of the time. If it were up to me I would have reraised to 40,000, but for some reason Matt decided to just call. He said he thought he might be able to double up if he just called since there was no way anyone would put him on a big pocket pair.

The flop came down Q33 and first to act Matt led out for 25,000 (This is also different that what I would do - I would check raise here 100% of the time). The original raiser called and the other player made it 55,000 to go. Now Matt went to the tank. He stopped and thought for almost 5 minutes. Let me say that I would have moved all in here, but Matt said he just couldn't think of a way that he could have both other players beat. Sometimes it's hard to trust your reads, but Matt did, made a monster laydown and mucked his pocket kings.

At this point in the story I thought I wasn't going to get to find out what the other's had, but I was wrong! The original raiser moved all in, the other guy said "really?!? I have Aces. I have to call you." He called, turned up AA and lost to QQ!

Normally with those hands you'd expect all the money to go in preflop, but Matt got saved by the way it went down.

On the very next hand he went down the tubes after making what a positive person would say was a bold call (other people might use other words to describe it). A player with 70,000+ moved all in from middle position and thinking "that could be anything" Matt called him with 44. It turns out that "anything" was K5, a 5 came on the flop and that took Matt down to fumes. The next hand he was out.

Once again, way to go Matt! Thanks for the easy $600!

Matt on to Day 3 at the shooting star!

I am currently squirming with envy. Matt is on to Day 3 of a MAJOR tournament. He is down to 64,000 chips, which is well below average and put him in 33rd place with 36 players remaining. But he's in the money (guaranteed a $15,000 profit at this point when you factor in the bounties) and still has a shot.

Since this is a WPT event and the final 6 players will be on national TV, the tournament has shifted gears from full tables to 6 handed tables. At Matt's table there are two players who's names I know: Joe Sebock and Vivek Rajkumar.

Other players of note still in the tournament are: Hoyt Corkins, Paul Wasicka, Kathy Liebert, and Farzad Bonyadi (there are probably a few more world class players who I'm just not familiar with).

Here is the full list of payouts:

1 $1,025,500
2 $550,000
3 $291,500
4 $230,000
5 $180,000
6 $135,000
7 - 8 $90,000
9 - 10 $60,000
11 - 12 $40,000
13 - 18 $30,000
19 - 24 $25,000
25 - 30 $20,000
31 - 36 $15,000
37 - 45 $12,500

Play resumes today at noon. I'll let you know what happens.

Matt at the Shooting Star

Every March Bay 101, the largest of the Bay Area cardrooms, hosts a World Poker Tour stop called "The Shooting Star." This tournament has a $10,000 buy in and 50 of world's best players (the "stars") have a $5,000 bounty on their heads. If you bust one of these players you istantly get $5,000 and a T-Shrit that says "I busted So and So."

Coming off his glory at in Reno, my good friend Matt Lessinger collected a pile of money from his usual backers and entered this event. On Day 1 he busted Layne Flack (Who I busted once in the WSOP! We own your ass Flack!) and picked up one $5,000 bounty. They started the day with 20,000 chips and by the end of the day he was among the chip leaders with 108,000.

Today is day 2 (there was actually a Day 1A and 1B) and they are down to 54 players from a starting field of something like 400. Matt just picked up another bounty meaning he's already got his buy in back. He's a little short of average with about 90,000 chips and the blinds will be 1,200/2,400 when he comes back.

The tournament pays 45 spots with the edge of the money being $12,500 and first place being just over $1,000,000. I have 3% and I'm thinking about all the things I could do with $30,000. I also have Jake on the hook for a trip to the Royal Hideaway (A resort in Mexico where my wife and I had our honeymoon) if Matt actually wins. He has 10% and said we should all go to celebrate and I somehow got him to agree to spring. So that's an added bonus.

You can follow the action on pokerpages.com or cardplayer.com if you are so inclined and I'll let you know what happened when it's over.

Shifting gears I'm going to quickly respond to my sister's comment on my last post. She wrote: "Considering your last post, does that mean that your goal when gambling in Reno or Vegas is to get as crazy as possible for the maximum fun factor?"

Gambling is always more fun (in my opinion) when you are with a lot of people and you are drinking and acting stupid. We all know that we're going to lose in the long run playing craps and Pai Gow and black jack. The goal is to lose as little as possible and have as much fun as possible. You would think that would mean betting the minimum and drinking the maximum, but everyone has an amount they can wager where the get a little excitement when they win, but it's not devestating when they lose. That amount is not the minimum for me. Since I make best just about every day the amount I need to bet to get any excitment at all is relatively high - about $25 a hand (or a spin or whatever) on most casino games. For some people that would seem insane. For E.B. who plays at least $100 a hand, that amount would be boring. Before I go on any gambling trip I have a certain amount of money with me and that's the absolute max that I would ever lose but I usually have a plan to "go big" and try to generate a ton of comps or "go small" and make sure I don't lose very much. Reno was a go small kind of trip.

Setting Goals

I'm a believer in setting goals, even though I'm not so great at meeting those goals. I never finished college even though I have about 80% of a Berkeley mechanical engineering degree. I'm always at least 20 pounds overweight (I'm 6'5" tall and I carry it pretty well though - at least I think so). And I always seem to make it about 3/4 of the way to achieving the goals I mention on this blog (with all of that in mind, it's a minor miracle that I made it to Supernova Elite last year).

But that doesn't mean that I'm a failure. I'm really quite the opposite. And it doesn't mean that setting goals has been a waste of time for me. If I set a goal for myself I always try to achieve it and that trying in and of itself helps me be more successful that I would have been otherwise. I might not lose that 20 pounds, but I might lose 5 or 10 before I stop giving it my all. I might not play 100,000 hands in a month, but I'll end up playing 10,000 more than I would have otherwise.

Setting SPECIFIC poker goals helps keep things in perspective. It's not helpful to say "I'm going to play as much as I can and try to win as much as I can." On the other hand saying "I'm going to earn 15,000 points in the next five days and win $1,000 during that stretch" (which are my two goals for this week) is very constructive. If I win $1,000 four days in a row and then get killed and lose $3,000 on the next day it would be easy for me to think "ACK, I just had $3,000 more dollars yesterday," but now that I have this goal, I'll still be able to think positively about a week like that even if I get smoked on the last day.

Looking at it from another angle setting a five day goal will help me think long term. Most poker players tend to think about how much they are up or down for the day. It doesn't matter if they've won $1,000 ten days straight, they'll stay in a game they otherwise would have left to try to get even if they're down $100 for the day. No one would think "I've won each of the past few hours, but I have to get even for this hour." Splitting wins and losses into days is just as arbitrary, but for some reason it comes naturally. This tendency is something I'm constantly fighting and setting goals that are for longer than a day, but not as long as a month really seems to help keep me in the right mindset.

So I'm going to win at least $1,000 this week and play enough to earn 15,000 points. If I can do both of those things in four days I'll take the 5th day off, and if I've earned the points, but am not up $1,000 I'm going to keep playing until 7 pm on Friday or until I hit that goal too.

I'll let you know what happens.

A Result So Good It Made Me Sick!

As I'm sure you all know I occasionally sell part of my action in poker tournaments. But I also take other people's action from time to time.

This weekend my good friend Matt Lessinger took the short flight to Reno to play in the $3,000 buy in event at the Grand Sierra World Poker Challange and I invested $300 for 10% of the resulting win or loss.

The tournament kicked off with 118 entrants and a VERY strong field that contained at least a dozen of the top 100 tournament players in the world as well as many other accomplished players. At the end of day 1 they were down to 16 players and Matt was in 13th chip position with the edge of the money being 9th place which paid $7,500.

Happily Matt rallied, got back into the thick of things and ended up finishing in 5th place. While 1st place paid a whopping $130,000, 5th resulted in a net profit of just over $21,000, which meant $2,100 was headed my way!

When they were down to 7 players or so I got on the horn with my good friends E.B. and Jake (who were also lucky enough to have 10% of the action!) and we agreed to throw some clothes in our overnight bags and head to Reno ASAP. Since it was going to be a three and a half hour drive we knew we probably wouldn't catch the end of the tournament, but we also knew it would be fun to go gamble it up and celebrate with Matt whatever the final result ended up being.

We made it to Reno at around midnight and met up with Matt and another friend of ours (Cole) who made the trip with Matt. We then procedded to play a hodge podge of casino games which was anchored by a spirited craps session that involved as much yelling and dumb ass behavior as they will allow. Of course we were all sending down the booze as fast as the waitress would bring it to us and by 6 or so Jake and I had had enough and called it a night. I'm not quite sure when Matt broke down and went to sleep, but I know Cole was out until 9 and in classic E.B. style he played straight through the night and met us for brunch at noon.

After a splash of additional gambling it was time to pack up and head home. Jake in true man style took a flight directly to Vegas from Reno to meet his wife and some of her MBA classmates who were headed there at the same time to blow of some post finals steam. The rest of us were headed to the car to drive back to the bay area.

Desipite being up $2,100 from Matt and being good and drunk the night before I'd kept my negative expectation gambling in check and was actually ahead $20 as we were headed out the door. Of course someone had to go and drop a $20 bill on black at a roulette table and in a matter of about 6 milliseconds we all had $20-$50 on the table.

One roll turned into a few and after assorted wins and losses I found myself with the same $20. We all declared that the next spin would be the last and I slid a $5 chip out on to the number 16 (My birthday, my anniversery, and the day I proposed to my wife are all on the 16th of various months), and a $15 bet on red. And then...BANG - 16!!! 35 to 1 on $5 and even money on another $15!

With the little roulette splash and Matt's excellent result I picked up a very easy $2,300+ and had a nice 24 hour Reno trip. Actually it was a nice 21 hours and three hours of tourture when a hangover, a huge lunch, and some sever motion sickness collided! There's nothing like having to use the emergency puke box, and then puking more as you open the car door and more into a bush and then A LOT more 2 hours later on the side of the freeway. I think it's going to be about a week before I get into a car for any reason!

A Few SCOOP Satellites

Even though the SCOOP doesn't start until April 2nd, satellite tournaments with buy ins ranging from $1.50 to $500+ are going off around the clock.

Satellites are a big part of why I've done so well in the FTOPS and WCOOP as well as the big weekly Sunday tournaments. They create a field packed with weaker players who are out of their comfort zone.

If you run a $55 Satellite to a $530 tournament and get 100 entrants you can give away nine $530 tournament entries and one $230 cash prize. The players who enter that type of tournament probably feel comfortable playing tournaments with buy ins ranging from $20 to $200. But 9 of them are headed to a $530 tournament that they would never play in if they had to put up the money right out of their pocket.

Every single SCOOP tournament has dozens if not hundreds of satellites (maybe over 1,000 to one of the main events) so when that $530 SCOOP event goes off with 4,000 players, maybe 1,000 of them bought in directly. Those are the $530 players. Those are the people who can really play (for the most part). The other 3,000 are the ones that make the tournament so profitable.

I've put together a $15,000 bankroll for the SCOOP and as per usual I've collected some of that money from investors.

Mostly out of boredom, yesterday I decided to play a few smallish satellites to the medium stakes SCOOP events. I played an $11 with rebuys satellite to a $320 event, an $82 satellite to a $215 event, and a $64 satellite to a $320 event.

I came up one spot short in the $82 tournament, but I picked up a $30 cash prize so I got a little refund. Happily I made it to the end of the $11 with rebuys. The prize breakdown in this one was a little different. It was a small field and you had to finish in the top 2 to win the $320 seat. Places 3 and 4 paid $31 and place 5 paid $20. When we got down to 6 players I was in first place and had everyone covered by a significant margin. I could tell that they players I was up against were not good and were trying pretty hard to pick up those small cash prizes (a big mistake - you have to go for it when the top two spots are 10 times the edge of the money).

So I started moving all in on every single hand no matter what I had. Everyone folded something like 8 or 9 hands in a row and when someone finally did call I had a real hand and won. By the time we were down to three players I had twice as many chips as my opponents combined and easily finished in one of the top two spots.

These were pretty much bullshit tournaments and tomorrow I expect I'll play something with a little more spice. Maybe something where I have to put up $215 or $320 to win a $2,000+ seat.

Anyway, my $15,000 starting bankroll has gotten a mirco boost up to $15,163!

A Professional Play

I made a strong read in a hand that I played great today and I thought I'd share it with you since I know there are some budding players who read this blog.

I've moved back to playing a mix of $10/$20 and $15/$30 limit 6 handed games in the past 10 days or so and I've had some strong results. The advantages of playing $10/$20vs $5/$10 are pretty staggering. First of all at the higher stakes I generate points 40% faster! That is huge. Also the rake is pretty much the same, but the stakes are twice (or three times in the case of $15/$30) as big which neutralizes the house take to some degree. Of course the players are better, but lately it seems that many of the tough pros have either been playing bigger or smaller stakes. I haven't exactly been banging out $2,000 wins every other day like I did for a while last year, but I've had a few solid wins and no big losses.

Anyway I was in a $10/$20 game today, I got dealt AA in the cutoff and the player just in front of me raised it to $20. I three bet making it $30 to go and everyone folded to my lone opponent who just called. The flop came down 3 3 4 and my opponent checked and called my bet.

The turn was a great card - a Q. My opponent came out betting and I thought "Ah ha, he has a queen! That's probably KQ or QJ." I raised and my opponent just called. The river was a king and my opponent bet out again. I raised again and he reraised me.

This is the part where I played the hand well - I capped it. I figured if he had QQ or KK he would have reraised me before the flop instead of just calling my three bet, and if he had a three or 44 he would have check raised the turn instead of betting out and just calling. That covered all of the hands that could beat me and none of them were likely. On top of that it just felt like KQ which it was. Most players would have just called the three bet on the river. They'd think they were up against a three or a deceptively played full house, but I made the max.

It might not seem like a big deal to pick up another $20 in a pot that is already around $300, but it's huge. If I can make one more big bet every 500 hands and I'll make another $150 or so a day which is another $37,000 a year.

It's hard to trust your reads sometimes and I was really proud of myself for trusting mine in this hand.

The Poker Hat Trick!

In hockey, scoring three goals in the same game is a hat trick. My good friend Matt Lessinger coined the phrase "The Poker Hat Trick" in an article in Cardplayer a few years back and defined it as check raising the same player three times in the same hand. This is something I'd never done before until today. While I've been known to bet the flop and turn and then check raise the river (I probably do that a few times a day), I'd never had the stones to check the river after check raising both the flop and the turn. But today the situation was perfect.

I was in a $10/$20 limit 6-max game in the four seat with a very aggressive player who was on total meltdown tilt in the two seat. On the hand before the one in question I played a flush draw super aggressively capping it on the flop and then three betting on the turn after I'd hit a pair. The player in the two seat also had a flush draw, which we both missed, but he still called my river bet even though all he had was ten high! I guess he was hoping I was on a smaller flush draw!

On the very next hand I was in the big blind and my nutty friend was on the button. He raised, the small blind called and I decided to see a flop with J 5 off suit. Normally this hand easily goes in the muck vs a raise and a call, but since I knew the original raiser could have any two cards and I was almost sure to get paid off if I made the best hand it was an clear decision to see the flop.

The flop came down 5 5 3 and I thought "Holy Shit! Please let him have a real hand!" While I thought I might get paid off all the way by any ace, I knew I'd make a bundle if my crazy opponent had an over pair.

The small blind checked, I did too, and of course seat two bet out. The small blind called and I raised it. Most average or good players would just call here with the plan of check raising on the turn, but pros would almost always raise. The first reason to do this is you might get three bet which means you can either cap the flop and lead out or check raise the turn. Also it's a minor disaster if you call the flop, check the turn and it gets checked behind you. Furthermore the small blind is in there. Many players will take one off with overcards on the flop and then dump on the turn. By just calling the flop you'd miss out on a potential extra small bet or two from the third player in the pot.

So I check raised. And I got three bet which led to the drool coming out of my mouth and the dollar signs popping into my eyes. I opted to just call instead of capping and betting out since I was all but sure my opponent would bet the turn.

The turn was a ten, I checked, he bet and I raised, just like I'd planned. The river was a queen which was a great card. I figured if I checked he'd assume that I had a ten or a three. If he could beat a ten I knew he'd bet and there was also a chance that he might fire with absolutely nothing. So I checked for a third time.

After a short stall he bet again, I raised, and he called me with pocket nines. It was a sweet hand!

A Sunday Million Gift

The Pokerstars Sunday Million is the largest weekly poker tournament in the world. This week 8,800 players put up $215 each in an effort to hit it big.

What I like about this tournament is it's something special. If you play a $215 tournament in the middle of the day on a Wednesday you'll find youself against 50 good players, 25 very good players and 25 great players. Almost everyone will be a winning poker player.

On the other hand, since it's something special, in the Sunday million you'll find those same hundred solid players and another hundred just like them, but you'll also have 8,600 players who are some where between pretty good and terrible. To top it off, they will all think the tournament is a big deal and will be sweating the result making it easy to pressure them into mistakes.

This week I put up my $215 just like everyone else, caught a huge break early on and turned it into a nice win.

A little more than a half hour into the tournament my starting stack of 10,000 chips was down to about 7,000, the blinds were 100/200 and I found myself in middle position with Q9. The player just to my right limped in and I decided to try to see a flop cheap. I called as did a player just to my left and along with both blinds we saw the flop 5 way.

The flop was a total bingo - J T 8 with two diamonds (I had the Q of diamonds) making me a straight! Both of the blinds checked and the player who'd limped in bet 800 into the 1,000 chip pot. I opted to just call and let the other three players get involved since I had the total nuts.

The player to my left called, the others folded and the turn came down the ace of diamonds. This was either a great card or a disaster. If someone had a hand like AT it was great. If someone had KQ or two diamonds it was a disaster.

The player to my right cooled off and checked. I bet out 1,800 into the 3,400 chip pot. There were a ton of second best hands that would have a tough time folding and given my short stack and the strength of my hand I was committed to going all the way no matter what. If someone made a flush I was dead anyway and this seemed like a good sized bet to make the maximum from another player with a second best hand.

I was not happy to see the player to my left make it 3,600 to go and the player to my right move all in for about 9,000! I thought one if not both of them could have me beat, but I decided to go for it anyway. My hand was just too strong to fold and even if I was behind I still had a draw to the second nut flush.

The player to my left who'd made it 3,600 and only hand another 5,000 or so behind thought for a long time. Eventually he typed something to the effect of "I guess 87 of diamonds is no good" and he folded. The player to my right turned over KK with the K of diamonds, the river was a blank and I went from out, to great shape. The player who had apparently folded a made flush went a little nuts in the chat box!

I used the chips in won in that pot to make the money and even go fairly deep. I ended up finishing 133rd of over 8,800 which paid a little more than $2,100! The way things have been going it was a very sweet victory - my biggest of 2009! Even more sweet since I had all of my chips in with the worst hand many hours ealier!

SCOOP!

It's the Spring Online Championship of Poker! It's a new series of tournaments on pokerstars similar to the WCOOP, but with a few differences. The SCOOP runs from April 2nd until the 12th and is made up of a whopping 66 tournaments! You can see the full schedule at www.pokerstars.com/scoop/

The way it works is every day there are two sets of tournaments each with three sets of stakes: low, medium, and high. For example on Day 1 in the morning there is NLH 6-max with rebuys. There is a $5.50 tournament, a $55 tournament and a $530 tournament all starting at the same time. Then in the afternoon there is PLO-8 with an $11 tournament, a $109 and a $1,050 all staring at the same time.

All of the "low" tournaments are $109 or less (except one that is $270), the mediums range from $109 to $1,050 (again with one exception), and the highs range from $1,050 to $10,300 (with one at a whopping $25,500).

My plan is to play all of the lows and probably 18 of the 22 mediums. As far as the highs go since most of the ones that look good to me in terms of what games are being played are $3,000+ I plan to play some satellites and see if I can get in cheap.

Some of what I do is going to depend on what kind of backing I get from my typical group of investors. I'm not going to put any cap on how much people can invest, but I will probably need some if not all of the investment up front. I'll probably put up $5,000-$8,000 of my own money, see what I can get from other people and then plan my schedule accordingly.

There will be much more on the SCOOP in coming weeks, but for now it's back to the cash game grind.

FTOPS XI Brief Recap

Well I came up short in the last few events of the FTOPS XI and ended the series with a whopping profit of $50! Better than losing but given the chances I had it was a little disappointing.

In fact I got very close to the money in the $530 main event. We started with over 5,000 players and 7,500 chips each. After dipping down to 5,000 for a moment I turboed up to over 25,000 and that's where I stayed until we got close to the money. 738 spots paid and with 1,100 players or so left I got dealt AQ suited. I got it all in vs KJ and 99 and would have had a stack that was double average as we approached the money if I took it down. But after a board with five cards under 9 came down I was out and the FTOPS XI was in the books.

Even though I broke even this set of tournaments was still a success. I finished right around the top 1% twice and gave myself two realistic shots at making a major final table with high five and six figure payouts.

Four FTOPS duds, Two Tournaments Left

Sorry about the lack of updates. I haven't been much in the blogging mood lately and not much good has been happening.

Since my last post I came up short in the $535 HORSE, the $216 Omaha hi-lo, the $216 NLH 6-max and the $109 pot limit omaha with rebuys (I was in for $309).

Right now I'm ahead $823 for the FTOPS XI and there are only two events left: $129 NLH knockout and the $535 NLH main event.

This means I've locked up a $159 profit for the FTOPS even if I get blanked in the last two. Actually after looking things over I'm going to play a $109 satellite to the main event in the morning so I might end up with a $50 profit (If you have 1% of my action don't hold your breath waiting for a check!).

Tomorrow is a big day for me tournament wise. Not only do I have the two FTOPS tournaments, but I'm going to play the $215 Sunday Warm up, the $215 Sunday Million and the $215 Sunday Second Chance (all on pokerstars) as well as a $162 tournament on Doyle's Room (I discovered I had a few bucks lingering in that account) and a qualifier open to only Supernova Elites for a $6,500 in person tournament that goes off in Uruguay in March. Amazingly I'm not making that last one up.

I'll let you know what happens...if you're lucky!

FTOPS XI Event #13 Recap

I got off to another great start in event #13 $215 NL hold'em with one rebuy and one add on. We started with 2,000 chips and I immediately did the rebuy which put me at 4,000. I'd run that stack up to 10,000 by the time we made it to the break and after the add-on I had 12,500 or so.

Sometime during the second hour with blinds of 60/120 I was dealt KQ in the big blind. A player in middle position made it 400 to go and got called by two players before it got to me. KQ can certainly be a trap hand in a spot like this, but I had everyone covered by a fair margin and the pot odds were just too good to pass up. So I called.

The flop came down J T 5 giving me an open ended straight draw and two overcards. While checking was an option I considered since I had about twice as many chips as all of my opponents I decided to get aggressive. A bet might win me the pot right there and in the worst case scenario I'd only lose half of my chips. So I bet 1,200 chips.

The original raiser thought for 5 seconds or so and moved all in for about 4,000. It was an easy call since I had 8 outs to the nuts and maybe a K or a Q would be good too. I was not happy to see my opponents hand - 55! The turn was a brick, but the river was an ace and I took down a nice pot.

The next MAJOR hand I remember came much later when I was dealt JJ with a stack of around 20K. An early position raiser made a standard size raise, I reraised and he moved all in! There are times when I've folded JJ preflop, but this was not one of those times.

With all the chips in and my opponent having me slightly covered I was at risk. When the cards got turned over he had AQ and the flop came with an A and a Q! But the turn was a jack and I was in great shape!

In fact I took that stack of 40K or so all the way up to over 60K and with 300 players left from the starting 1,200+ I was in 3rd place. Then I started a gradual slide. The players I was up against were much better than in the other FTOPS events so far. I dribbled my stack all the way down to about 25K.

But I did make the money!

The tournament paid 135 spots and I finished 117th. On my last hand with blinds of 1K/2K and 250 chip ante I moved all in from the button with QT. Surprisingly the small blind called me with K8 suited. I made a straight, but he made a flush and that was it.

117th paid $805 which is only a profit of $189, but of course it's $805 better than not making the money!

FTOPS XI So Far Plus a Micro Preview!

I blanked in the 1/2 hold 'em, 1/2 pot limit Omaha today without much fanfare and I decided I was just too tired to play the $1,060 6 p.m. event. That means that so far I'm ahead $1,910 for the FTOPS XI. Not too bad.

Since I opted to skip the one four digit buy in event on my schedule, tomorrow is my biggest day of this FTOPS. In the morning I have Event #13 which is $216 with one rebuy and one add on no limit hold'em. Since I'll no doubt be doing both the rebuy and add on I'll essentialy be playing a $616 deep stack NLH tournament.

Then at 6 p.m. I have Event #14 $535 HORSE! Giddy up! I have to say with the HORSE success I've had in the past 6 months I'm pretty excited about this tournament.

FTOPS XI Events #7 & #10 Recap

I haven't been great about keeping you people updated. Usually that means all bad news, but that's not the case here!

Despite my slow start in Event #7 ($109 NLH with rebuys) I actually made the money! With about 500 players left (we started with more than 2,200) I caught a major break. I got all of my chips in preflop with AQ vs AK, a king came on the flop and I still won! That's not something that happens every day! I made a runner, runner flush, took down a nice pot and didn't look back.

Unlike the first tournament of the FTOPS where I got great cards, and great action making it easy to do well, I got very little in the way of big hands in this one. But, I feel like I played great and made a lot out of not much. This was another case of the tournaments being a big deal to my opponenets and not a big deal to me. Their fear allowed me to take pots away from them even in situations where I felt like I was making obvious bluffs. In these same spots better or more seasoned players would surely have played back at me.

The tournament paid 234 spots and after the one miracle hand I mentioned, I made the money easily. As more and more players faded away I once again started thinking about the final table. With 50 players left I still had more than an average stack. Then I ran into some trouble. I gradually got drained from a high point of around 250,000 chips down to 125,000 when the following hand came up.

The blinds were 6,000/12,000 and a player in early position made the minimum raise to 24,000. I decided to gamble a little and called out of the big blind with Q3 suited. The flop came down 7 5 3 with two of my suit. This was a great flop for me. Unless my opponent had a pocket pair I'd be almost certainly be able to take it away from him on the flop, and even if he did I still had a flush draw that I'd make about 1/3 of the time.

I considered betting out, but decided to go for the check raise. I checked, my opponent bet 24,000, I moved all in for about 100,000, he called me with A7, I missed and that was it.

I finished 37th which paid $1,583. Another strong result, but not quite major glory.

In event #10 I got off to a great start. After starting with 5,000 chips I was up to about 17,000 just after the first break. Even though it was just yesterday for once I can't remember quite how I got elminated. Hmmmmmmm. Well I should probably get to work anyway. I know I finished about 1,000th of over 5,000 and it paid 738 spots so it was close to another cash, but I just can't quite recall the last hand!

Today I have $216 half PLO, half hold'em and maybe the $1,060 no limit later. I'll have to see how I feel when 6 p.m. rolls around.

FTOPS Triple Update!

The $216 6 handed limit tournament (which is supposedly my specialty) ended with a fizzle, and is not even worth a recap!

But I do have a splash of good news! I won a $162 satellite to Monday's $1,060 tournament! I must admit I caught a few big breaks to take this one home. We started with 82 players and the top 12 spots paying $1,060. With about 30 players left I beat AJ with KJ and a little later also beat KK with KJ, both times with all of my chips in the pot. After the second major bad beat I delivered I was in first place and despite a few more ups and downs I made it to the money with relative ease.

The third part of this update is that FTOPS XI Event #7 ($109 with rebuys) is underway. I ended up doing two more rebuys than the minimum which means I'm in for $509. When I started writing the post I was in great shape, but some douche bag called one of my raises with 74 suited and made a flush to beat my top pair. At the start of that hand I had about 14,000 chips and now I have about 6,000. Average is 10,500 and we are down to 1,050 players from the starting field of 2,235 with the top 234 spots paying.

My FTOPS XI Schedule

I had a request to post a list of the tournaments that I planned to play so people will know when to watch if they are so inclined. Here is my tentative schedule (all times are pacific):

Feb 6th 6 pm $216 Limit Hold'em 6-max
Feb 7th 1 pm $109 NL hold'em with rebuys
Feb 9th 11 am $216 Half PL Hold'em, Half PL Omaha
Feb 10th 11 am $216 NLH 1 rebuy + 1 add on
Feb 10th 6 pm $535 HORSE
Feb 11th 11 am $216 Limit Omaha Hi-Lo
Feb 13th 11 am $216 NL 6-max
Feb 13th 6 pm $322 Razz
Feb 14th 1 pm $109 PLO with rebuys
Feb 15th 11 am $129 NLH Knockout
Feb 15th 3 pm $535 NLH (Main Event - $2.5M guaranteed)

I might also play the $322 NLH on Sunday at 3 pm if I can get home in time (I have Sunday brunch plans) and the $1,060 6 pm tournament on Monday. 6 pm is a little late to be starting a $1,000 tournament, so I'm going to have to see how I feel. I might also take a shot or two at qualifying for the $5,200 event which goes off at 11 am on Saturday.

FTOPS XI Event #3 ($216 7-Card Stud) Recap

I almost didn't play this event, but once it got started I was glad I did. So many of the players clearly just didn't know how to play stud. It's not like they were total novices, but it felt like I was up against a bunch of hold'em players if you know what I mean.

We started with 4,000 chips and despite some ups and downs I ran my stack up to about 15,000. Obviously anytime you can almost quadruple your starting stack, you've put yourself in a profitable position even if you don't convert that equity into dollars. Since one or two hands can derail you (even in a limit tournament) the key is to just keep giving youself chances and eventually one of them will work out in a big way.

With that said, two hands derailed me! In the first I started with AA3, didn't improve and lost to queens up at the showdown. A few hands later I started with three suited cards, caught a fourth one on fourth street and ended up missing my flush, but making a straight. The problem was I was up against a bigger straight.

I finished about 220th out of 593. After three events my starting $10,000 bankroll is at $10,692.

FTOPS XI Event #2 ($256 PLO/8 Knockout) Recap

This one lasted about 15 minutes. I got dealt A259 and raised a limper. The flop came down 9 9 3, I got check raised and just called. The turn was a 3 and my opponent bet the pot (which was 2,500 - we started the tournament with 5,000 chips). This looked like either a worse 9 or, more likely a total bluff. I moved in for my last chips, and got called by AK93. Oh well.

FTOPS XI Event #1 ($216 NLH) Recap

We started event #1 with 6,275 players, each with 5,000 chips. First place was $216,512 and the edge of the money was 738th which paid $326.

Not much happened for me during the first two hours of play. The blinds started at 10/20 and crept up slowly from there so there wasn't much of a reason to mix it up.

Close to the end of the second hour of play, I decided I wanted to move from my desktop to my laptop. I figured it wouldn't be a big deal to miss a few hands while I booted up my laptop, so I logged off, zipped downstairs and started what would be a 20 minute process of fighting my technology. To start, it took forever for my laptop to boot up. Then the fulltilt software wouldn't launch because it needed to update to a newer version and the automatic update wasn't working. I won't bore you with the rest, but as I said it took 20 minutes.

When I finally got back on I found myself already in a hand in the big blind. I had 95 suited and the under the gun player had made just over the minimum raise to some wacky amount. I decided to call to see if I could hit something big or maybe take my opponent off the hand with a bluff.

The flop came down 5 3 2 giving me top pair and leaving me with some tough decisions. Betting, check calling, check raising and check folding all had some merit in this spot, but I figured my best course of action was to check, see how much my opponent bet and think about what that bet size meant.

My opponent fired out a little less than 1/3 of the pot. This looked really weak to me and my first instinct was to blow him off the hand with a raise. But the pot was relatively small compared to our stack sizes and I though I might be able to check call all the way and still have 2,500 chips or so left at the end of the hand if my read was wrong.

I just called the flop bet and the turn came down a jack - not a great card, but not a terrible one either. I checked and again my opponent bet about 1/3 of the pot and again I just called. The river was a total bingo card - a nine! Now I was hoping I was up against a big pair that was just trying to milk me for more money the whole way.

I checked again, my opponent bet about 1/2 the pot, I moved all in, and he instantly called me with QJ. After two hours of nothing and some technical difficulties I was all of a sudden in good shape after one great hand.

Two or three hands later I made a set against top pair and found myself up to 15,000 chips. And then stuff really started getting good!

Over the course of the next few hours I had no fewer than three people go kamikaze on me when I had a big hand. Twice I had AA and the other time I had top pair. In each case the player I was up against made a massive overbet all in on the flop with a pocket pair 66 or lower. It was great!

With that happening I easily made the money (yay!) and managed to keep my stack above average for a long, long time.

Now I have to cut to the end because I have to get to work! With about 100 people left I went from 225,000 up to about 470,000 after beating AK with JJ. Average was a little over 300,000 at this point and after that hand I was starting to think about the final table.

Then with blinds of 6K/12K I got dealt AQ in the big blind. A player in early position who had me barely covered made it 40K to go and it got folded around to me. I thought about reraising to 120K, but decided to just call. I was in such good shape that I didn't want to risk too much against someone who had me covered with a dicey hand like AQ. The flop looked like a miracle - A Q 5 giving me top two. It was an easy decision to check and when my opponent bet 65K I made it 140K to go.

I got called and the turn was a jack. The pot was already so big that I moved all in for my remaining 290K. My opponent snap called with KT (a straight), the river was a blank and that was it.

There were a ton of ways this hand could have gone differently. First of all, KT isn't exactly a playable hand in early position at this point. Secondly I could have reraised preflop and either won right then or with a flop bet. Thirdly my opponent could have (should have) folded when I check raised him on the flop. Lastly the turn could have not been an F-ing jack! I'd be curious to hear any comments from those of you who are poker savvy about how I played this hand or how you might have played it.

I finished in 90th of 6,275 which is still great. I made a net profit of $1,164 on the tournament which puts me off to a solid start in the FTOPS.

QFV Done, FTOPS Starting

Well the Quest For Victory ended much like a quest for finding diamonds in your back yard as a kid. It was a massive failure! On Monday I bailed on my plan of playing mostly $5/$10 games and instead played a mix of $10/$20 and $15/$30 games. I got totally bamboozled and finished the QFV down a few thousand. ACK!

So I've gone back to plan A and am going to stick with the $5/$10 games and try to bang out a few small wins while still making points progress.

In other news the FTOPS XI kicks off today! Event #1 is $216 NL Hold'em, has a $1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool and starts at 6 pm pacific. For those of you interested in watching live, my username on fulltiltpoker.com is wes1279.

I'll put up a recap late (hopefully very late) tonight as well as a short preview of event #2.

QFV on Hold

I played a little yesterday and then decided it was time for mini vacation. So I took most of the day off, cooked a pair of Cornish game hens with some home made crab cakes for my wife and I, drank some nice wine and relaxed.

Today I went to the zoo with my wife and my son for a few hours in the morning, came home and took a 2 hour nap in the middle of the day.

Tomorrow I'm off to wine country for a day of tasting.

Sunday we're having a Superbowl party for about 15 people followed by a Thanksgiving style dinner with a turkey, mashed potatoes, pie and a pile of other goodies.

On Monday it's back to the grind, but for now I'm enjoying the good life.

QFV Day #6

A small loss today, about $140. But it could have been much, much worse and I play a ton of hands which is good.

Again I started off great and found myself ahead about $600 in less than an hour. I totally obliterated this one guy. I mean I turned his brain to mush and put him on nuclear meltdown tilt. I can't remember all of the hands, but I won 7 pots that all went at least to the river in ten hands and this guy was my lone opponent by the end every time.

I wasn't getting all great hands, but I got a bunch like A8, or QJ with a few pocket pairs mixed in and I was either hitting or managing to bluff perfectly (which is super tough against a maniac). At the start of this stretch my opponent was playing not great, but not terrible either. Towards the end he capped 67 off and bet it all the way through with nothing even though I'd just (correctly) called him down with ace high. After pumping $500+ into my stack he had enough and left. It felt great.

Sadly I took a major downturn after that. I lost a little over $2,000 during the badness, but after some late day goodness I turned a potential major loss into an inconsequential one.

Now on to a comment question! London Dave posted "Do you have ground rules for your daily play, For example do you play for a set amount hours irrespective of your earnings be it a profit or a loss or do you have a trigger point of daily profit where you just switch the PC off, and chill out for the day."

I get asked this question all the time and the answer has changed a few times throughout my career. When I first started playing poker and was certainly an ammature I'd try to win $100 and then quit. If I lost $200 then I'd quit too. Then I learned that you play much better when you're winning and it was better to play longer when I was winning and maybe cut and run if things were going poorly. I didn't always stick to that, but at least I was considering it.

In the early days of my pro career if I hit a certain dollar amount, say $1,000 or so (Which was a much bigger win for me in those days - probably the same as winning $2,500-$3,000 for me now) I'd quit and if I was stuck $1,000 or so I'd quit too (usually). Of course these were the outer limits of reasonable for the stakes I was playing and it was only once or twice a month that I'd go four figures in one direction or the other. For the most part I'd just play until I felt like I'd had a productive day which often meant 2 or 3 hours and a few hundred bucks to the good. This was not an optimal approach either.

These days I tend to think about things by the week or the month. I know how many points I need to earn in the year and I break that into smaller and smaller point production goals. When I wake up every day I have a pretty good idea of how many hands I want to play and rarely do I play longer or stop significantly short of that goal. If things take a really sour turn I might stop a few hours early, but since I know I'm going to have to make those hours up sometime later in the week or the month I try not to. Typically I wake up around 10 and play from 10:30 to 1:00, from 1:30 to 3:30 and then from 4:30 to 7:00. If I'm ahead $2,000 or so at 3:30 I might not log back on (of course it's hard to remember the last time that happened - Dammit!), but I'd never call it quits early in the day no matter how good things are going.

Anybody who knows anything will tell you that you should focus on how many hours or hands you want to play, make the best decisions you can, and not worry about your results. If you're playing good poker, you'll win in the long run, and if you're not you won't. Of course I guarantee you that EVERY SINGLE ONE of those players have left a good game early because the were ahead a certain amount or stayed in a bad game because they were losing a dozen times if not a hundred. But that's still the best way to think about it.

QFV Day #5

Things started out great today and at one point I was winning about $700. Then I had a slow slide back to ahead $200 or so. After a short break I came back and lost $700 in a matter of 15 or 20 minutes. I had to stop earlier than I wanted to because I got so pissed. IT SUCKS!

I'm still ahead $200 for the QFV, but since it was more like $1,400 a few hours ago, I'm pissed!

QFV Day #4 and Elite Benefit

I won $302 in 3,000 or so hands today and had one hand that was fairly interesting. I'm going to call it Hand of the Day #7 (I have no idea if that's right, but who cares!).

In a $5/$10 game I got dealt K9s under the gun and open raised. The small blind three bet and I called. The flop came down K J 7 which was either a very good flop or a trap flop depending on what my opponent had. Barring some very coordinated runners, I was taking this one to the river and it was just a matter of how agressive I wanted to be.

I was surprised to see my opponent check and figured maybe he had a hand like TT or 88. Of course I bet, and started to get worried when my opponenet check raised. I decided to just call.

The turn was a real beauty - a nine! Oddly my opponent checked. I'd say only one or two times in a hundred will someone check raise the flop and then check the turn when a relative blank shows up. Now I was confused, but it was an easy decision to bet. Again my opponent check raised! If I had to make one guess I would have put my opponent on AA, but I couldn't rule out KJ, a set or even QT. Feeling even more confused I thought about 3 betting, but decided to just call.

The river was a total brick - a six. My opponent checked again! Now I was thinking he either had absolutely nothing or a total monster. I knew there was a fair chance I was going to get check raised again, but I just couldn't check two pair, acting last, on the river. Of course my opponent check raised me! ACK! I called while I prepared to berate myself for being such a dunce, but was pleasently surprised to see my opponent show K2! HA!

My good friend Matt lessinger wrote an article for Card Player magazine 7 or 8 years ago called "The Poker Hat Trick" which was about check raising the same player three times in the same hand (A hat trick is when someone scores three goals in a hocky game). I read it in the dawn of my poker career and I can say for certain that I've never check raised someone three times in the same hand. If I have the stones to check raise the flop and the turn I always bet the river. There have been a few times where I bet the flop, turn and river, got raised on each round and three bet, but I've never pulled off the hat trick.

I think this instance was the only time I've gotten check raised three times and won the pot. My gut tells me I've gotten hat tricked a few times before and had the worst of it. I can tell you it makes you feel like you are as dumb as a sack of rocks and that you just got totally schooled.

In other news I had a realization today that in leiu of taking a free entry into a $10,000 tournament later in the year, I could take $10,000 cash. I didn't want to do this because the tournament entries (I have one left that I can use for one of 4 $10K buy in tournaments) also come with $2,500 in cash for expenses, but the potential for money 6 months or 9 months from now doesn't seem as helpful as $10,000 right now. While I feel I've got the ship going in the right direction, my bankroll is a little thin right now and adding $10,000 should allow me to make more money in the interum as well as feel much less stressed. So after a quick talk with my wife I pulled the trigger.

Amazingly, I sent pokerstars an e-mail asking them for $10,000 and they wrote me back in 5 minutes and told me I'd have it within the hour. In actuallity it only took about 15 minutes.

Now can someone tell me why when I have a problem with my f-ing Ipod it takes them three days to send me a form letter that has nothing to do with my question when I can get $10,000 in 20 minutes?

Quest For Victory Day #3

QFV day #3 was actually split between Saturday and Sunday and was a small loss. After 8,000 hands or so I'm ahead $420. More importantly I feel like since I realized I was playing too tight, I've felt like I've been playing solid winning poker, wheras in December and early January I know I was playing losing poker.

I discovered another capability of my tracking software. It will tell you how frequently you've bet, check/raised, check/called and check/folded on the flop with every type of hand (ie top pair or an over pair or a gut shot straight draw etc.) and how you did as a result.

For example in the 12,000 or so hands that I've tracked, I've had a flush draw (4 to a flush) 96 times on the flop. 2.08% of the time I've checked and then folded and I lost $15 on those hands. 8.33% of the time I check called and won $198. 14.58% of the time I check raised and LOST $167. When I bet, which was the vast majority of the time at 75.0% I won $1212. This tells me betting my flush draws is a good idea and I should reduce the frequency with which I check raise a flush draw.

That was one of the most useful things I've noticed using this feature. Plenty of the information is not surprising at all, but still interesting. For example the situation in which I've made the most was when I bet and overpair and that resulted in profits of $2162 in 94 occurences. On the other hand the worst spot was when I check folded one overcard. That happened 81 times and I lost $840 on those hands.

The amount of data I need to draw strong conclusions from this feature is probably on the order of 100,000 hands or maybe even more. But since I played about 800,000 hands last year I should have mountains of data to sift through in no time!

Quest For Victory Day #2!

AAAAAAHHHHHH HAAAAAAAAAA! This playing more hands stuff seems to be working. I only played about 2,000 hands again today, but I booked a real win.

I started the day off losing about $600, but the whole time I felt like I was playing great and I had this strong feeling that everything was going to turn around. By lunch I was even for the day, and after taking advantage of the Friday night crowd I ended the day ahead $501.

While I'm standing by my promise to not shave until I win $1,000 in a day (sort of) I celebrated making if half way to a thousand by shaving my neck. Now I look like someone trying to grow a beard instead of someone trying to get you to give them spare change.

Tomorrow is going to be another short day since I have a 100 Days party to go to. My good friend and frequent commentor on this blog, E.B.'s son Charlie is roughly 100 days old so I'll be making it a half day. Hopefully I can keep the winning ways going!

Quest For Victory Day #1

The Quest started off great...and then went down the toilet...and then ended up pretty good.

About an hour into the day today I found myself ahead about $300 and feeling like I was going to have to dump a bottle of champagne over my head. A little while later I was about even when all of sudden the floor dropped out from under me and when I took lunch I was stuck about $700 and feeling super pissed.

I took a long lunch and decided to go over a little of the data that I've gathered with Poker Office. I then compared that data to some of recomendations given in one of my poker books that's geared specifically to 6 handed limit play.

One of the first chapters in this book talks about tracking software and some "metrics" you can use to see if your play is optimal. The most basic one is pre flop raise percentage - meaning of all the hands you are dealt how often do you put in a raise or reraise before the flop. Over the 10,000 hands or so that I've tracked my percentage has been right around 16%. The recommended range in the book is 17%-25%.

Another metric is a thing called "aggression factor." Here's what they say in the book: "Agression Factor (AF)= (#bets+#raises)/#calls. For example if kingbob bets 18 times, raised 12 times and calls 20 times he would have an agression factor of 1.5 ((12+18)/20)."

While this is certianly not an intuitive way to look at things, it can tell you how aggressive a player is relative to others. The target range given in the book is 1.5 to 2.4. My AF is somewhere in the 2.5 range.

Another key metric is Voluntarialy put $ in pot or VPIP. This means how often do you put money in the pot before the flop in the form of calls or raises. The recomended range is 23%-35%. I was surprised to see that I was somewhere around 20%.

So what does all this crap mean? Well as far as I can tell it means I've been playing too tight. When I play a hand I certainly play it strong enough, but I'm simply not playing enough hands. There are two problems with playing too few hands. First and foremost it means you're throwing away positive EV (money making) hands. Secondly it can make you too predictible which is almost as bad.

So I came back after a loooooooong lunch and decided to get in there and mix it up. I won $850 in about an hour. Of course that was mostly because I made an insane number of monster hands and was up against some real nut jobs, but it was certianly some positive reenforcement for my theory.

I came up pretty short on my hands goal(I only played about 2,000), but I won $158 which is just fine given how things have been going and how the day started.

I made a vow about a week ago to stop shaving until I have a +$1,000 day so for the sake of all the people who have to look at me, wish me luck tomorrow.

The Quest For Victory!

Sounds exciting doesn't it? Well I just made it up. For the past few months I've really been struggling. I was hoping the new year would bring some new luck and my plan to play fewer games and fewer hours would lead to better results. I guess you could call them better since I'm losing more slowly, but they're far from good enough.

Amazingly I find myself in a situation (with all of the bonuses and FPPs and such) where I can not just get by, but make a nice living BREAKING EVEN! AND I CAN'T SEEM TO DO IT! AHHHHHHHHH! IT"S MAKING ME CRAZY!

So I've created an artificial mental reset. A chance to start with a clean slate and go forward again with confidence. I'm calling it The Quest For Victory (CRASH goes the lightning, BOOM goes the thunder)!

The QFV is going to last 10 working days (I'm talking every Sunday off this year). During that stretch I'm going to play a very reasonable 3,000 hands a day and my goal is to win ONE DOLLAR! Of course I will generate $2,400 in FPPs and make progress towards and myriad of milestones during that stretch, but MY GOAL IS TO WIN ONE DOLLAR in the actuall game play.

Even if it's just a plus minus and one sentenceI'M GOING TO POST TO THE BLOG EVERY DAY OF THE QFV. Using capital letters is part of my new attitude.

Tomorrow is QFV day #1. I'll let you know how it goes. If I win $1,000 on day #1 I swear to everyone here that I'm going to dump a bottle of champagne over my head (Don't worry I'll post pictures).

Lots of News

It's been a long time since my last post (Sorry about that!), but that means I have a lot to write about.

Right after my last post I took 11 days off in a row. It was great! When I finally sat back down at the computer to play again I was refreshed and definitely in the mood for some poker.

Since I got my clock cleaned in December (which was by far the worst month I've ever had) I decided to back way off and try to book some small wins. I started off playing four $5/$10 games planning on playing 2,500-3,000 hands a day, 6 days a week for the rest of the month. That plan lasted about an hour and soon enough I had some $10/$20 and $15/$30 games in the mix. While I did fine at $15/$30 and $5/$10 I didn't do so hot at the $10/$20 games on my first or second day back so while I'm close to even I'm stuck a little in the new year.

On my third day back I finally got around to doing something that I've been thinking about for a long time. I bought some tracking software. Let me tell you it is very cool and I'm kicking myself for not getting around to it sooner.

The software I bought is called Poker Office (you can get it at pokeroffice.com)and it costs about $85 to download a copy which is good for 1 year. It keeps track of every action of every hand you play and accumulates data on you and your opponents.

What I really wanted it for is the feature where it tracks how much you've won or lost with each of the 169 possible starting hands. I'm sure that there are some hands that I'm playing far from perfect and to be able to look back and see exactly how much I'm losing or winning per hand is going to be a great help.

Of course it will also tell you how often you took a given hand to the flop or to showdown, what percentage of the time you raised with a given hand, what percentage of the time you won with it and a few more facts all presented in an easy to read chart.

The software will also tell you how many dollars you won and lost in each position. The button is spot 0, the small blind is 1, the big blind is 2 and so on. What jumped out at me was the insane difference between the blinds and the rest of the positions. Under the gun (Pos 3), I netted $504 in my last 4,000 hands of $5/$10. In Spot 4 I won $209, in spot 5 I won $1,048, on the button I made $521, in the sb I lost $110 and in the big blind I lost $1,955! Of course it makes sense that I'd lose the most when I was forced to put in $5 regardless of what I had, but the difference was still surprising to me.

I noticed this phenomenon right away and realized that I've been playing too loose in the big blind. For some reason I was calling way to many raises with weak and marginal hands and then check folding. I suspect this was costing me a fortune. After making some significant adjustments to my big blind play, it felt like my results improved immediately.

I don't think I have enough data yet to do analysis on specific starting hands, but my plan is to play 20,000 hands of 5/10 and see what the data tells me.

But wait, there's more! As I mentioned the software also tracks all of my opponents and I can look at what they did and how they fared with every starting hand too! While it's not practical to look at stats for every player I encounter it certainly helps to see what the regulars are doing.

Also all of this data is sorted so you can get a snapshot of everybody. There is a list of every opponent I've played against (an astounding 330 different players over the course of just 4,000 hands!) the number of hands they played, the % of hands won, the % they saw the flop, the dollars they won total, the dollars won per hand, the % of the time they won when they saw the flop, the % of hands they took to showdown, the % the won at showdown, and how often they raised preflop.

What's great is the list is dynamic. The first thing I did when I got a fair amount of data was see who was seeing the flop the highest percentage of the time. With one click I had a list of every player in order of the percentage of time they saw the flop. Of course there were a few players whose numbers were skewed because they'd only play a handful of hands. But there were a few players who were seeing 50% of the flops or more and I had 100+ hands of data on them.

Another thing I looked at was who was raising too much, and who was raising barely at all. I played 70 hands against one player and he never raised once while a few other players were raising 40% of the time or more!

Of course the best case is if you can find someone who is seeing the flop too much and not raising at all.

Another thing you can do which I haven't explored too much is having some of this information (up to 4 pieces of data) displayed right on the table next to the corresponding opponent. The big problem I have with it is the text is too small and it adds significantly to my eye fatigue, but I'm not going to rule out using it in the future. Frankly I've only had a few days to play around with it and I know there are more capabilities as far as graphs, charts and other more exotic statics go.

It might seem like this software is somehow illegal, but it's on the list of approved software on the pokerstars website (there is a lengthy list of banned software as well).

In other news I found out today that the FTOPS XI starts on February 4th. I thought the FTOPS was a semiannual occurrence, but I guess it's more frequent. After looking at the schedule it's looks almost exactly the same as the FTOPS X. Hopefully I'll have a similar result!

Another minor piece of good news is I got pokerstars to raise my deposit limits on the instant methods so I won't have another fiasco like I did at the end of last year where I was running out of money in my account.

I think that's all for now, but I'll try to keep you posted on the data tracking and any epiphanys that it leads to. And of course you can look out for daily posts once the FTOPS XI starts. Here is the full schedule for those of you who are interested.