Hey hey! I've rebounded pretty nicely the last couple days. Let's take a look at the list of things that were going wrong in my last entry. First, I finally won a step 6 to the WSOP. I ended up playing my friend ch0ppy HU and of course the first time I play a good player I manage to luckbox the win. So I got my first WSOP seat at last. Next, I had a nice tournament score. I just finished 2nd in the Stars 100+rebuys for $24K. I got heads-up behind 3:1 in chips and started to mount a comeback before blowing up. I made two really stupid spazzy plays heads-up trying some new things at bad times. Once again on my bustout hand I ignored obvious bet sizing tells and made a stupid bluff when the guy hadn't played back at me in any way for probably 20 minutes. If I just folded like I always used to and kept grinding away at him there's a decent chance I may have made the comeback. I also made a hero call earlier in the HU that had no chance of being right because I just want to be a fucking hero alright. I dunno, I guess that's just something I'll have to work on, maybe play some HU sit n gos or some bs. Gotta learn not to listen to that stupid game theory voice that says "Dude, folding here is so exploitable and folding is no fun anyways!" and listen to the common sense voice of years of me playing poker experience that says "Watts, listen to me. I know it's really exploitable to fold, but he's not bluffing. Here are several good reasons why. He's going to show you the nuts and you're going to feel like an idiot. Again." Just read that and tell me which voice sounds like he knows what he's talking about, I mean seriously, which one would you trust?

Alright, moving on, I also kicked ass at Omaha in the last 2 days. I still haven't played anything resembling a decent sample size, but I am now winning at a solid rate over the hands that I have played. I ran so stupidly hot though that it would have been impossible to lose, so it's far too early to make any statements about whether I'll be able to beat the games in the long run, but I do feel like my opponents make a lot of mistakes that I would avoid, and often substantial ones, so I think I have an edge. I guess we'll have to wait and time will tell. It's not like I don't make my fair sure of blunders. However I will say that Omaha is a pretty easy game when every time you get in a reraised pot you flop the nuts. Practically every time my opponent had AAxx I outflopped him (and my hand held), and if I had AAxx in a reraised pot I usually flopped two pair or a straight with my other two cards and instead of having lots of outs against just a pair of aces my opponent got the rest of his money in on the flop drawing practically dead. Of course the times they did outflop me I would just get there. Let me find a few examples.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2607438 - I'm pretty sure Kongsgaard was just tilting hard from losing some big pots, but I always thought he was complete nutcase at tournaments too. I don't see how getting 2 times the pot in on this flop this way can ever be good for him though.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2607445 - can't blame him for thinking he has 11 outs, but he's obv drawing to runner runner against my luckbox.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2607440 - Sometimes it's ok to check! (and get there obv)

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2607461 - They finally outflop me but I still have a lot of outs and get there of course.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2607471 - This is probably the pinnacle of running good. I mean seriously this isn't even fair.

Hand Pot equity Wins Ties
AhAcKcQh 85.12% 639 118
Kh9hQs6s 14.88% 63 118

Here is a graph of the last 2 days because everyone loves pictures! Pretty much all 3/6 and 5/10 PLO.



I even had a nice winning holdem cash session too. I haven't seen many good 25/50 games lately but I can usually track down some juicy 10/20 games. Anyways more FTOPS tomorrow. I haven't made it out of the first hour in my last four FTOPS events (not counting the HORSE event because it's limit) due to ridiculous coolers. There are 2 good events tomorrow but they may be the last 2 I play since I'm probably going to my roommate's cabin for the weekend. It'll hurt to miss the $2500 event and $500 final event but I've been grinding so hard lately that it can't be a bad idea to get out of the house for a change. I guess.

Mike

Well I haven't posted in a while, I guess i didn't really have much to write about because I've basically just been getting my ass kicked all week. I've started playing some 2/4-5/10 PLO full stacked to try to learn the game, and while I feel like I'm playing reasonably well the results just haven't been there so far. I might be running bad, but I don't really have the experience playing PLO to really be able to tell. I've even been taking a bit of a hit at Holdem cash games lately, though for the most part I'm pretty happy with my play in those and I think I've just been running bad. Here is an example in which I get "Matusowned" (when he made his little speech I thought he had AA for sure hence my chat).

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2592084

Even tournaments haven't been going that well. I've been playing a lot of the step 5 and step 6 WSOP satellites. I won 6 or 7 seats for the main event last year but this year I haven't been able to win a single one. I've been heads up for the seat in Step 6 three times against fish who probably qualified from like step 1 or something and lost every time. Unfortunately a lot of that is my own fault for playing poorly. MTTs have been going a little bit better but still far from stellar. FTOPS began on Wednesday and I've played several events. I got heads up in round one of the $500 triple shootout, but I lost again. This time I feel I played pretty well though, and I was very unlucky to lose on this hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2592104

I also final tabled the Stars Super Tuesday this week but finished 7th for just $12K. Today I had a big stack deep in Event 7, $100+rebuys NLHE, but in the span of a single orbit I went from a top 10 stack to busto 69th. First I doubled up a shortstack with 99 vs AK, then another with AQs vs K9, and I still had an average stack when I lost AK vs JJ for the rest in three completely standard boring coolers. Today there was also a sick tournament on Everest, a $3000 buy-in with a $1 million guaranteed prize pool against almost all the complete morons who play on that site who satellited into a tournament way above their bankroll. Unfortunately I lost this sick pot to end my tournament really early.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2592132

I probably should have folded the river because satellite winners usually don't have the guts to run a bluff like this, but I was almost certain he didn't flop a set from the flop action and his timing, I was pretty sure he'd raise the turn with AQ, so that just left a KJ or KT type hand and I had one of the kings.... On the other hand he instashoved the river which seemed super strong, but it's especially hard to fold the hand in practice after having been so huge on the flop. Anyways tomorrow night I have a softball game which seems infinitely more fun than poker right now, so I think I'm going to just play some of the early tournaments and go to that assuming I don't go deep in anything. If I do then cool hopefully I make some big money or something.

Mike

The PLO heater came to a crashing halt the last couple nights, as expected really. At my peak I was up around 100K but I lost most of that back. The thing is that PLO is such a sick high variance game and shortstacking it in particular is even swingier that winning/losing 12 buyins or whaetver is really not statistically significant in any way. It's a whole lot of money at these stakes though obviously. Anyways seems only fair I post some of the hands that led to my demise if I'm going to brag when I win. This time I will include some strategic musings for my benefit as much as yours.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551339 - The flop is weird. I will often run into the straight, but I have a ton of equity against the straight and there is a lot of value in protecting my hand when it's best. I will also get called by worse hands sometimes (smaller sets especially) so there is definitely a lot of value in betting. My hand is so strong that if it's beat I will be getting all-in regardless since I have a short stack, so I need to play in such a way to maximize value when it's not beat. In holdem this often might mean checking and taking some line where i give worse hands a chance to bluff. In Omaha you've got to bet to protect your hand a lot more in these situations and inducing bluffs is not a big part of your overall strategy.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551404 - Sigh.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551409

Preflop:
7c 5c 3c 4d 30%
Ac Ah 9h 5s 34.9%
Qs Kd 9d Jh 35.1%

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551421 - This spot really sucks. I should probably just fold preflop too. I'm pretty much either dead to a set or flipping against a wrap straight draw but I'm getting 2:1. Oh I have backdoor flush draw too that's pretty hot.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551433 - Another weird one where I bloat the pot preflop with likely a small equity edge and everyone calls. The flop is awkward though because I'm pot committed. Betting didn't really seem to accomplish much, maybe I should anyways because two of the guys are being squeezed in the middle and may have to fold a lot. Anyways I call the shove obviously with my gutter and backdoor nut flush draw and some random overcards and incredibly the others fold and I have 40% equity.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551459 - Sigh again.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551462 - Benyamine takes more of my money. He was me and timex nemesis when we shortstacked the big NL Holdem games.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551468 - Yawn

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551473 - I dunno I think I have to call the flop because there's so many ways he can be drawing and I do have at least a few outs regardless getting big pot odds.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551483 - Dang.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2551485 - Sigh this was a tilt hand. In general I think my bluff on the turn is a very strong play. Against this player it's just awful and I need to check behind and get there.

Oh well I still made a little money and overall it was actually a really good learning experience. I'll take it easy on the high stakes PLO again for a while but if I see a game that's just really good since I know all the players now it might be hard to resist. There's definitely money to be made in these games. The stats on here are just crazy:

http://www.highstakesdb.com/results.aspx

Mike

Well I had an interesting weekend from a poker perspective to say the least. There were some really big special tournaments this weekend so I played a fair bit. On Saturday there was the sickest tournament ever, the Pacific $1000 buy-in $3 Million guaranteed. It got 2200ish runners meaning around $800K was donated to the prize pool by the site. The payout structure was really top heavy to try to attract players: 1st = $1 million, 2nd = $400K, and then more gradual from there. Also, basically everyone on Pacific is terribad so it's really awesome. Sadly it wasn't my time as I held on for a while on the short stack before losing AA to JJ around 5 hours in but still short of the money. I also busted everything else I played including the PokerRoom/Mansion grand which is also awesome, and I was even down slightly at my 10/20 and 25/50 cash games after a decent number of hands. Yup, it was time to tilt, and as people who have been reading this blog for a while will know, that usually means shortstacking high stakes pot-limit omaha.

Following the standard "move up to get even" theory of tilted shot-taking I sat at 200/400 PLO with my usual minimum $8K buy-in. Finally luck was on my side for once that day and I quickly doubled up. Success! Out of the hole and showing a small profit for the day, time to quit and go out for the night right? You must not be very good at tilted shot-taking. You see now I'm freerolling on my next $8K buy-in! And look how easy it was to randomly win that coinflip and make a bunch of money, surely I can just do that again no problem. So I bought into the other table and, sure enough, within a few hands I had doubled my buy-in again. Easy game, I thought, but now I couldn't sit back in for 30 minutes anyways so I quit and went to dinner. As it turned out not much was going on that night so I stayed home. When I got back I noticed 3 200/400 PLO tables going. Well, gotta play the rush right? In quick succession I won big pots on all 3 tables and quit for good this time. In total I played 34 hands of Omaha and made $53.5K. Here are the big pots I won, minimal comments on strategy because I probably still suck at omaha.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2533002

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2533004

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2533007

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2533011

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2533014 - MSampoerna is a billionaire that owns Mansion among other companies, and he had just taken a very bad beat on the previous hand so I figured he was just trying to tilt the rest off in this hand. As it turned out I looked it up and I had 35.8% equity all-in 3 ways preflop, and I outskilled them on the river card.

Sunday went similarly, I took some rough beats in the 3 tournaments I got deep in and busted everything, then played a bunch of PLO to try to get even. This time I swung up and down all over the place but luckily I came out ahead ~$10K in the end to put the day in the black. The PLO games seem really good right now, I imagine a good player with a sufficient bankroll could make a lot of money as there seemed to always be one or two players that were pretty weak. I guess I'll keep taking shots at them buying in for the minimum when they look good and see how things go. Anyways I'm back to Toronto tomorrow. Peace,

Mike

Update!: Checkout my poker commentating debut. TwoRags has posted a couple clips from the live $1000 sit and go we played in LA back in January. Check out the links at the top of the TwoRags main page.

Well I'm back home in St. John's for the next week. Saturday was my 24th birthday so between that and the fact I'd been on the road for 3 weeks already in Europe I decided to skip the WPT Championship 25K event. I'm actually not planning to play any more live events until the end of May when I'm making the move to Vegas for a month and a half again for the World Series of Poker. Last year I was extremely burnt out from poker by the end of the series so this year I'm going to try to do a few things different to avoid that including taking the next month off from live poker.

I haven't played much poker in the last week or so. I busted out of the 2K euro event in Monte Carlo pretty quickly and then spent most of the rest of the trip drinking in the player's lounge. PokerStars really did an amazing job with this. The player's lounge had free drinks: water, coke, redbull, and beer. It had a wii and a PS3 set up on big LCD screens, as well as a foosball table and a couple laptops set up in the battleship format to play heads-up against each other or often some of the Team PokerStars pros. Considering the prices for drinks throughout the rest of Monaco (20E+ at the hot local night club) hanging around there was a pretty popular option amongst the players when there wasn't much else on the go, and it's really pretty incredible of them to treat their players so well.

Finally, I promised pictures from the trip so here are a few. I only have pics from Pisa on my camera at the moment, I'll see if anyone else has some from Florence or Monte Carlo that I can steal.



The Cathedral.



The leaning tower obviously.



Me at the top of the tower with the cathedral below.

Mike