Poker Blog

I played about two hours of 10-25 NL at the Rio yesterday. The table wasn't full of spewmonkeys but I wasn't anticipating a lot of tough decisions. Mostly it was just a boring game. I say that, but I did actually bluff my entire $5K stack on my first hand.

Let me tell you another story first though. There was this wealthy Texan at the table who, when I first sat down, was on the phone placing sports bets. That's always a good sign. I later changed seats and ended up with him on my immediate left, meaning I was privy to the next two phone calls he made.

We're about 3.5 hours into a 1K multi-table satellite for the WSOP main event. Blinds are 300/600/75. Short stack moves all in for 3600. Button doesn't realize there's someone all in ahead of him and says "call", planning to call just the blinds. I have 99 in the BB and a little under 10K in chips. I shoved, Button called with JQ. Short stack has 66 and Button ends up busting us both with a hand he didn't even mean to play.

It was down to the wire whether I was going to play this, but I managed to cash my check about 10 minutes before the start of the tournament. I ran down to the registration and found a line out the door. It was moving quickly, though, and I managed to register and get to the table at 12:04. The tournament was actually late getting started, so I hadn't missed anything. In fact, I was the first one there. Apparently we were in an overflow room they'd just opened up.

I hate and suck at FLHE, so I didn't play this one. I just wanted to give a big congratulations to Terrence "Unassigned" Chan, who won both the $500 and $5000 tournaments. I had the privilege of meeting, playing with, and losing a big pot to Terrence in Barcelona. He was a very nice guy, and I've been following his blog ever since. He's also a phenomenal poker player, probably one of the best FLHE players in the world, and it's hard to think of a guy more deserving of a big win than Terrence.

Once upon a time I considered myself a pretty decent Stud/8 player, but I've probably played fewer than 1000 hands in the last 6 months. Consequently, $1500 was a little more than I wanted to put behind my skillz. I did play the $150, though, and had a good time doing it. I can't say I recall a lot of interesting hands, but here's one where I play second-man-low:

PokerStars Game #26838991298: Tournament #200904122, $200+$15 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo Limit - Level IV (80/160) - 2009/04/07 17:54:53 ET
Table '200904122 30' 8-max
Seat 1: xmrstyle (5557 in chips)
Seat 2: GoodOleBoy (5051 in chips)

To top off a great weekend, I played and won my second $2000 satellite to the $10,000 WCOOP main event. The first one I played, which I replayed for Poker Savvy Plus, had only 9 runners and paid one seat plus a lot cash. This one got 52 runners, paying 10 seats plus some cash for 11th. Naturally it was a very different satellite dynamic. Here are a few of the more interesting hands:

This one occurred with 25 players left. With fewer players left, or a slightly weaker hand (JJ, even), I think it would be very close. Even here, I wasn't happy with Queens:

Awesome town!

Note: Cross posted at thinkingpoker.net

For those who didn't see Calmer's comment yesterday, I didn't last long at all on Day 2 of the WPT. My table was fairly tough, not that it mattered. There were a few, young internet players who seemed pretty tough, one or two middle-aged guys who were probably the soft spots but weren't particularly bad, a dealer in one of the local card rooms who played well enough, then Men "The Master" Nguyen and Erick Lindgren.

note: cross-posted on www.thinkingpoker.net

I decided to play the Bay 101 because of the combination of a nice location, great structure/tournament director (thanks Matt Savage!), and interesting people I thought it would attract, both because of the area and the number of pros who play as "shooting stars" with $5000 bounties on their heads.

note: cross posted from Andrew's blog at http://www.thinkingpoker.net/Blog/

Full Tilt Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 2 Players

Hero (SB): $2,434.50
BB: $3,954.50

Pre-Flop: T K dealt to Hero (SB)