It's that time of year again. The WSOP is just around the corner and need to decide on my plans. Three years ago I won a seat into the Main Event by winning a double shootout on Stars. On my first attempt I came in second out of the 81 entrants and on my second try I won. The past two years I didn't even bother with the online sats. I just played a few preliminary WSOP events and some live sats. This year I decided to give the online route a try.

PS is running step tournaments. These are one table tournaments. In most cases if you finish in the top 2 you advance to the next step, 3-4 you can play the same step again, and you step down and anything else you lose (each of the 6 steps are slightly different, but they are all the same principal). Step one is just a few dollars, step 2 around $25, step 3 around $80ish, etc., etc. I deposited $500 into my account and started with step 3's.

At first I was very, very successful. I almost always finished in the top 2 and advanced to step 4. I made it to step 5 3 times and of these I made it to step 6 once and had some horrible 2-3 outer beats in the other 2 when I was just on the bubble.

The step 6 ticket is worth $2k, so I decided to hold off a bit before playing. I wanted to scout at thIt's that time of year again. The WSOP is just around the corner and need to decide on my plans. Three years ago I won a seat into the Main Event by winning a double shootout on Stars. On my first attempt I came in second out of the 81 entrants and on my second try I won. The past two years I didn't even bother with the online satellites. I just played a few preliminary WSOP events and some live sats. This year I decided to give the online route a try.

PS is running step tournaments. These are one table tournaments. In most cases if you finish in the top 2 you advance to the next step, 3-4 you can play the same step again, and you step down and anything else you lose (each of the 6 steps are slightly different, but they are all the same principal). Step one is just a $7.50, step 2 around $27, step 3 around $82, etc., etc. Here's a link to the information:

Link to PS STEP INFO


I deposited $500 into my account and started with step 3's.

At first I was very, very successful. I almost always finished in the top 2 and advanced to step 4. I made it to step 5 3 times and of these I made it to step 6 once and had some horrible 2-3 outer beats in the other 2 when I was just on the bubble.

The step 6 ticket is worth $2.1k, so I decided to hold off a bit before playing. I wanted to scout at the step 6 action to see who the regulars were. To my surprise there were 4-5 people who played these things over and over again. My initial strategy was to avoid the better players if I could, but since they play all the time, it didn't seem possible. Plus, I tracked their results one day and it didn't appear that they were doing anything special or finishing strong consistenly.

I kept playing other steps to try and save a few step 6 tickets, but my luck started to change. When in the past I had been winning my fair share of flips and remaining in the lead the vast majority of the time when I put my money in as the favorite, I hit a brick wall one day. I was losing every flip and couldn't seem to ever win an all-in, even the overpair/underpair variety. Oh, well, I still had the step 6 ticket. I waited a few days to get the bad luck out of my system and one morning clicked the join button when I found a table and I didn't recognize any of the names of the 5 players who were already seated.

Finally play the Step 6
I did a little work while I waited for the table to fill. When it finally filled I was a bit surprised when I noticed that Barry Greenstein had joined the table after me. I really wasn't too worried. I have played many 1 table live sats at big events with all of the best live players and I have never found them too tough to deal with. In fact, it's the young, super aggressive internet players who always are the toughest competition in these 1 table tournaments.

I won't bore you with all the details given that there weren't many. My strategy in these things is to be careful with my big hands early on and try to play a lot of 'suck out' hands to early raises when the blinds are low -- hands like small pairs and suited connectors. I hit trips in the first orbit and didn't get paid off. Then I hit top two pair on a limped pot, but the board read 9TJ. I ended up losing about 35% of my stack when my opponent turned up 78 at the end. It could have been worse I suppose.

From there I hunkered down a bit but made my one bad mistake. I had A8 from the SB and raised when folded to me. The BB called. I missed the flop but bet about 2/3rds of of the pot and the BB called. The turn blanked and I only had 1200 or so left so I decided to give up and check folded. Not terrible, but given my awkward stack size I might have been better off trying to play a small pot. I still had 12 BB's.

Barry wasn't doing any better. He was on my right and had been playing a tad too aggressive and got shorter than me. On one hand I was in the BB with AJ and he was in the CO. He only had 900 so I really expecting him to push if folded to him with most hands. However a guy in MP made a 4xBB raise and he had a big stack. It was folded to me and I needed to make a decision. Given that he hadn't played many hands and would be pot committed to call if I pushed, I just felt it was too likely that I was dominated. I had a full orbit to get a hand and double up and I much rather be the one pushing than calling when my best case scenario was a coin flip and it was too likely he had AQ/AK/JJ+. I reluctantly folded. If he was in later position I would have definitely RR all-in.

A few hands later I pushed with AK, got called by 99 and lost. I was 1st out. The bummer was that the Step 6 pays the top 6. 6 gets $500, 4-5 gets 1000 and 2 gets 1.5k. The winner gets the $10k seat plus a few thousand dollars.
e step 6 action to see who the regulars were. To my surprise there were 4-5 people who played these things over and over again. My initial strategy was to avoid the better players if I could, but since they play all the time, it didn't seem possible. Plus, I tracked their results one day and it didn't appear that they were doing anything special or finishing strong consistenly.

I kept playing other steps to try and save a few step 6 tickets, but my luck started to change. When in the past I had been winning my fair share of flips and remaining in the lead the vast majority of the time when I put my money in as the favorite, I hit a brick wall one day. I was losing every flip and couldn't seem to ever win an all-in, even the overpair/underpair variety. Oh, well, I still had the step 6 ticket. I waited a few days to get the bad luck out of my system and one morning clicked the join button when I found a table and I didn't recognize any of the names of the 5 players who were already seated.

I did a little work while I waited

I played in the weirdest Sit-n-Go ever. It was a Stars step qualifier to the WSOP Main Event. I was just fooling around at Step 1. The entire SnG took 10 minutes and 23 hands. We just played 1 hand at the 25/50 blind level. Has anyone ever seen a 9 handed tournament go from 9 down to 2 players in less time? Here's how it went down:

This one guy, ussro, kept on going all-in from the very first hand. It didn't matter if he was the first in the pot at the 10/20 limit of if he was pushing after a standard raise. He just kept on going all-in. On a few hands he did fold, but not normally.

On the 5th hand ussro RR all-in and is called by two players. He has jh8h and the other players have QQ and AK. He turns quad 8's.

On the 9th hand he goes all-in with QT and gets called by AT. He flops a Q!

On the 14th hand a guy goes all-in, he calls and another guys calls. ussro had kc4c and the other hands were AhQh and AdJd. Of course the flop comes all clubs so we're down to 7. That brings us down to 3 players in 14 hands!

At this point I decided to just stay out of his way and let him take down the 3rd player unless of course I'm in a very favorable spot and either then it probably won't make much sense unless I get very short.

Finally on the 23rd hand ussro goes all-in wiht KhJh, the 3rd player calls with 77 and ussro turns the K to make us both winners.

Thanks ussro. Even if it was just a fun little Step one tournament. It was memorable!

Click here to read the tournament hand history and discuss it on our forums.

I haven't played a live tournament since the end of June during the World Series of Poker. It's hard to believe it's now been over two months since I've played. How did that happen? I had planned on playing a few Legends events at the Bike, but it never worked out. Between vacations, kids events, party commitments, etc., I just never had 2-3 days. Why 2-3 days? Most of these tournament require 2-3 days. While I often could make the first day of a tournament, it would become a big issue if I made it to the following day since things would get very sticky if I had to cancel plans. Last year I played a Legends tournament and my wife was leaving at 6:30am in the morning with some friends for a weekend with the girls. I was doing great and made it down from 400 runners to about 50 when a critical hand came up around 4am. I had no good reason to call an all-in raise by my opponent, but I justified the gamble with the rationale 'how was I going to watch my children, if I was to stay alive in the tournament?'

I'll be playing at the Commerce in a $545 CA State Championship event at 7pm. The complete schedule is listed here. While I haven't been playing, I have been reading about, thinking about and discussing lots of poker lately. I'm looking forward to trying out some new strategies I've been thinking about trying. Stay tuned for an update on my experience.

- S

I don't recognize anyone at my table and most people look pretty nervous so I just peg everyone as inexperienced unless they show my that they are not. I already discussed the hand during the first orbit where a guy mucks KK after spending 2/3rds of his stack. What I didn't mention was that that the guy who won the hand and is sitting to my left has been playing 3 out of every 4 pots and comments to the table that he might as well get his money's worth. Well it doesn't last long and he is the first victim after only 20 minutes or so. He tries to bluff the active woman at the table who I also wrote about in my last blog. She happened to have the nut flush and he is out. His strategy wasn't bad because she has been raising light many times before and this wasn't an exception. Only this time her A3s happened to make a flush.

This Loose Woman who I talk about in my last blog looks a bit like a 45 year-old Betty Davis. I could have showed a 45-year old Betty Davis below, but to my she was more like bitchy 70 year-old Betty Davis so enjoy:

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Marcel Luske sits down at our table and is very nice and livens things up a bit. Mlagoo from 2plus2 also joins us but doesn't last long. The loose woman (read my previous blog for more on her) raises preflop and Mlagoo reraises her all-in -- he's a bit short but has enough to get her off of most of her range. However, he didn't count on her calling from the low end of her range with 55. His KQ doesn't improve and he's out. He did win the pokerstars million the next day and took home $315k, so he was probably better off getting knocked out then and having a day to get his act together!

I won a few small hands and gradually chipped up a bit and then picked up AA in late position. There are two EP limpers when it comes to me and I raise my standard 3x BB. The flop comes K high, it's checked to me, I raise about 2/3rds the pot, get one caller. Nothing changes on the turn and I raise again and the EP reraises all-in. I don't like it but it's not that much more to me. He shows KQ and I'm off to the races.

My stack is now at about 5k -- we started at 3k, I continue to chip up just a bit. I don't believe I ever lose a hand or have to show my cards. I move slowsly up to 7k over the next hour or two. The loose woman had slowed her play considerably when Marcel sat down at the table. I believe she was star struck and my belief was confirmed when I saw her getting his autograph during a break and telling him what an inspiration he is to her.

I am sitting two to her left and decide to play pots with her. I'm at 7k and she has a monster stack now with about 15K+. Nobody at our table has more than 5k. I call her PF raises twice with any two cards and win the pots when she checks the flop and I raise. Then this hand comes up. One limper at 100/200, she raises to 700, I call with JJ from LP. The flop comes 974r, she makes it 2.5k which is a weird overbet. I didn't really have a good stack to just raise so I push hoping she didn't have something funky. She goes into the tank and folds. I could see that she was visibly frustrated with me. I'm pretty sure that she felt that I was making a move and appeared close to calling me light with a hand like A7. Too bad she didn't.

I'm now up to about 11k and she still has me covered but not by much. I'm now double of anyone else at the table. On the very next hand after the JJ hand a MP player makes it 300 and the loose woman makes it 1k. I look down at QQ. Normally after a raise and reraise I might just call with QQ, but the first raiser only has 4k-ish, so I'm fine with playing for his stack. Against this loose woman, I'm not too concerned with her just yet. She has been making reraises with almost any two cards. I decide to make it 2500. The MP raiser folds and the loose woman takes a bit of time before pushing.

Oh, boy. I don't like it but how can I fold QQ against this player? At one point after she comments that I probably don't have much I said something to the effect that I'm only worried about 2 hands'. She got all mad saying that I effectively told her what I had. I replied that it didn't matter given that she has no more decisions in the hand. Perhaps I should have realized right there that she had one of those two hands, but I just couldn't bring myself to fold. I call, turn over my hand and she acts like she is all upset for about 3-4 seconds and then smiles, completes the slowroll and turns over AA.

If this were the movies, a Q would have showed up and she would have been taught a lesson. However,this is the WSOP and I'm destined to continue to take one hard shot to the face after another. Oh, well. I go to shake her hand and she comments in an extremely sacrastic manner that I'm a great player. Clearly my comment early on (see last blog) to Marcel has set her off. In truth, I did feel she sucked, but my comment was simply meant to get her to loosen up again.

I apologize for running a bit behind on my tournament blogging, but I did write up a long post two nights ago only to have it vanish in the internet time-space continuum. My internet connection for Vegas was horrible and I needed to use my Treo 700wx as a modem. However, I haven’t figured out a way to get it to block calls, so whenever a call comes in, the connection is dropped. Oh… well. It only took me about an hour to write the post!

I’ll try again to get up to date, but rather than blogging about specific tournaments and results I thought I would give you a flavor of some of the players and type of plays I have seen at the WSOP.

I HAVE TWO PAIR, CAN YOU BEAT IT?

This happened on the 3rd hand of the 1500 NL event on Saturday. A MP player raises to 175 at the 25/50 level. The BB calls. The flop comes Q78. The MP player bets 500 and is called. The turn is an A and the MP player bets 1200. I sense that he is spooked by the A and is reluctant to bet, but does anyway. The BB calls. The river pairs the Q and both players check. The MP player asks the BB ‘what do you have?’ The BB responds ‘two pair, can you beat it?’ and the MP player mucks his cards only to see the BB turn over a pair of eights. ‘What,’ he says. You said you have two pair.’ ‘I did,’ responded the BB. It took a minute but the MP player finally understood. He claims he mucked KK and I believed him. This was for 2/3rds of his stack!


Kid Silence, Legend of the Mute

I played at a table for 4 hours with a young guy, about 20 or so. The guy kept both of his feet resting on his chair so he basically was leaning against his knees. This wasn’t the odd part. What was strange was that this guy never said a word. It’s not that he was quiet, rather he would not talk. Now I really don’t think there was anything wrong with him, because if there was I’m sure he would have explained to us using writing or some other means that he couldn’t speak. No… this was part of his shtick. I’m not sure what he was trying to gain by this, other than to piss everyone at the table off. Not only wouldn’t he talk, but he took 30 seconds to a minute to make most decisions and for the tough decisions he would manically shuffle his chips in silence. Someone finally called the clock on him (I was ready to do it myself) and he did speed up a bit, but still no words came out of his mouth. Pretty strange.

Drinking and Poker do not Mix

I was playing at a table with two loud gregarious sorts. They were both doing well and having a grand old time. After one big pot won by one of the guys, he asked his new buddy if he would join him for a shot of scotch and the other guy said yes. They asked the floorman to get them the drink and the guy was pretty offended and let him know that he was not a waiter. The guy then took out his wallet and asked if he would get them a drink for $100. The floorman smiled and said ‘absolutely.’ After several shots, one was down to the felt. They were raising blind, making crazy calls and plays, etc. The other guy actually did pretty well though, but I have to conclude that in most circumstance drinking and poker do not mix!


Do not call and turn over your cards until everyone has acted

I will save this story for my full tournament report, but will related here how I went all-in after a MP player had raised during a WSOP tournament only to have the initial raiser (Mr. shot of scotch #2) declare ‘I call’ and turn up his hand. However the BB had not yet acted and he had the MP player and me covered. There was lots of commotion (we happened to be pretty far into the tournament and about 3 minutes were left until the night was over and we would return for the next day – it was almost 3am!). The ruling was that the BB -- Mr shot of scotch #2 -- could call and the AK guy must call and could not raise. Of course the flop did not contain an A or K, the BB pushed and the MP player was forced to fold. More about this hand and my fate in the hand in a subsequent blog.


Marcel, you are a brake!

$1500 NL tournament. A woman at my table is playing extremely fast and loose. Within 30 minutes Mrs. Fast and Loose has tripled up. One of her victims happened to be Mlagoo from 2plus2 who won the pokerstars million the next day and took home $315k! He reraised her PF bet all-in with KQ and she called with 55. She was making lots of somewhat loose calls for significant chips. She was also raising PF from any position with virtually any hand.

Anyway, after about 30 mins Marcel Luske sits down at the table and comments on her chips and how she got them.



A few people told Marcel that he would soon see. Well he didn’t see for some time because she completely slowed down. She must have been scared of him or more likely in awe of him. Once it became apparent to me that she had changed her style I said to Marcel ‘Did you know that you are a brake?’ I explained to him what I meant and everyone laughed. I didn’t mean to criticize her play, although I didn’t think much of it. Actually, I wanted her to speed back up again so I could pick her off. I was seated two to her left and wanted her to play fast and loose again which she did.

Marcel, you are a brake! -- Part II, the slowroll

An hour or so went by and Mrs. Fast and Loose and I have a few tangles and I come out on top each time. On the last hand I actually had the goods and pushed over the top of her flop bet. She folded and I won quite a nice pot. I’ll go into it during a future trip report, but I will report here that Mrs. Fast and Loose took me out on the very next hand. There was one limper at the 150/300 level and she raised to 1000. I looked down at QQ and re-raised to 2500. She pushed and I tanked for a bit, but decided against this player I had to call. She had made moves like this before with a wide range of hands. Plus I knew that she felt that I was capable of making a play at her so her range was even wider than normal. Anyway, when I called and turned over my cards she feigned disgust. After pausing for a few seconds she smiled and turned over AA. I didn’t improve and was out. I ignored the slowroll, shook her hand and left.

Marcel, you are a brake! -- Part III, the come on

The next night I saw Mrs. Fast and Loose again. I walked up to her during a break in another event and asked her how far she made it the day before. She didn’t last too much longer (big surprise!), but complemented me on my play. I mentioned to her that she didn’t think much of me the day before and that she slowrolled me, but she claimed not to remember. She asked what I did and where I was from and when I told her she got all excited and put her hands around my back and arm and suggested that we get together. I quickly moved away, smiled and told her some other time.

The next night I was walking down the hall with a friend after dinner and we crossed paths again. She told me how great I looked and asked for my number. I just kept on walking.

That’s it for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll try to do some more tournament write-ups.

Good night!