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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