Monte Carlo Wrapup
Alright so Monte Carlo has come and gone. I lost just over 40K euros playing live on the trip plus probably like another 8k playing Sundays which is pretty solid I think. Just a quick rundown of the results for people that haven't been following my twitter feed (which I now have on my blogger version of this blog at sirwatts.blogspot.com).
First was the EPT Monte Carlo main event. Day 1 went poorly for me as I ended up down from 30K starting stack with 24K, but Day 2 went well as I finished up with 133K after being as high as 180K. Day 3 unfortunately went poorly as well though despite winning some pots early with AK to get back to 180K, I then lost a couple pots in a row and went fairly card dead. I eventually got down to like 70K at 3k/6k a500 and shoved QJs in the HJ and got snap reshoved by AK and lost to bust 97th when 88 paid.
I busted just in time to play the high roller though but unfortunately that went even worse. I was hovering around the starting 50K stack when I played this funny hand:
300/600 a75 Ivan Demidov opens to 1525 in MP with like a 27K stack, I flat JJ on the button though I think just 3-betting and going with the hand is perfectly fine here too and Gus obviously does not fold his BB getting such a price. The flop comes 822r, they check to me and I bet 3250. Gus folds and Ivan thinks for like a minute before calling which is super weird but I'm pretty sure he doesn't have much. The turn is an offsuit A though and goes chk/chk. River pairs the 8 and he bets 5125, maybe I could fold because the A hits most of his rando float range on the flop and it doesn't look like he expects me to fold but I'm getting a good price in a spot where his line doesn't really make much sense so I pay off and lose to that A6.
After that I stop winning pots and bust shoving 25K with A7o at 600/1200 a100 when zigmund opened the CO to 3400 with AKs. I think against zigmund this has to be a profitable shove but I probably would have justified it somehow anyways since I was so tired and card dead.
Then in the 5k 6-max on Saturday I busted super early on another funny hand:
25/50 Shaun Deeb opens the HJ to 150, old Moroccan fish flats the button as he plays almost every hand, I call A3cc in the SB, BB calls. Flop 245ss, I lead out 500, BB calls, Deeb folds, and button calls. Turn Jh, I bet 1500, BB calls, button quickly splashes out a bunch of big chips that add up to 7K, I shove, BB folds, and he asks me "Is the maximum enough?" as I guess they don't have a similar term to "the nuts" in French or something so it's a bit of a lost in translation moment but I'm pretty sure I know what he means. He doesn't slowroll me for than a few seconds and at least I only wasted like 45 minutes on not cashing this one (and no, he was not suited).
So now I'm back in Toronto for a while. Next live tournament will be the opening 40K event of the WSOP in Vegas May 28th. Usually it takes me like 10 events at the series to lose that much so it should be fun! FTOPS starts tomorrow as well so I'll play some events when I have time and feel like it. The next 2 installments of my PLO series on PS+ should hopefully be finished shortly as well.
Mike
A Quick Pre-MC Post
Hey, sorry I have written in a while I just haven't really felt like it. WPT Champs didn't go great, I busted early on Day 2. I don't really feel like or remember all the hands I played but here's the first major pot I played:
50/100 we start with 100K in chips. David Phan opens the button to 300 I call in the SB with 88. Flop KT8r, I check, he bets 450 I make it 1525 he calls. Turn T I bet 3200 he makes it 8200 I call, River blanks I check/call 10K and KT is good. The first day actually went ok overall though and I chipped up to 105K but Day 2 nothing really went right. Congrats to Yev on the win though! I'm going to take partial credit since I loaned him some of my lucky Bellagio money for his buy-in. Also huge congrats to my fellow PS+ instructor charder for finishing 4th, and luckychewy for 13th.
I really haven't played much poker since then. Yesterday I shortstacked some good 500/1000 HA games fort he first time in a while and made 80K as I ran good. I've also played a couple short sessions of 50/100 CAP and 25/50 full stacked that went well so I've made back some of the money I've been losing to luckexpress.
Tonight I leave for Monte Carlo and should arrive early Monday afternoon. I'm planning to play the 10K euro main event, 25K euro the high roller, and the 5K euro PLO championship, though hopefully I'll do well enough in at least one of the first two that I have to skip one of the latter ones. That's all I've got for now, check out my two latest videos on PS+, I do a decent 3/6 PLO video and a HU PLO match with Tom that turned out really interesting where you can watch our commentary from both sides and see both people's cards. 5/10 PLO and 10/20 PLO will be my next two vids, I've already recorded the 10/20 but I need to do the 5/10 since it has to get put up first. Wish me luck in the coming week!
Mike
SCOOP Wrapup
Ok this will be my final SCOOP-related post. I cashed the $10K main event but lost a flip to bust 33rd for $30K. That cash probably put me around even on the series, not a great result by any stretch but 9 cashes is very solid I just didn't run good deep in any of them unfortunately. I also had a 2nd place finish in a Stars $100 rebuy for $22K which was a solid result, but Shaun F Deeb runs too good at final tables for me to close. Next up is the WPT Championship at Bellagio. It will be my first time playing this event but it should be really sick; $25K buy-in, 75K starting chips and hopefully a big field. The turnouts for their preliminary events have been terrible but Bellagio usually gets a crowd for the main event regardless, especially this tournament with it's huge buy-in has always been much bigger than you would expect. so I'm pretty optimistic it'll be a good turnout. I'll be giving the live updates on Twitter thing a try so follow me on there (SirWatts) if you want to read how I'm doing at each break beginning Sunday.
In other news there's really not much other news. I don't really feel like playing a whole lot right now before Bellagio so I probably won't. I'm going to watch baseball (Jays off to an unexpected good start), the hockey playoffs (go habs go!), and hang out with my friends here before I hit the road again. Take it easy homies,
Mike
SCOOP Update
Hey kids, what's up? I've been SCOOPin hard the last week playing most of the M and H events. My in the money % has been really high as I've cashed 8 events, 2 H (high buy-in) events and 6 M (mid buy-in) events. As a sidebar the 6 cashes in the M events is tied for most in the series. Unfortunately they are basically all small cashes except last night when I final tabled the (M) $425 8-game mixed event but busted 6th for a bit under $6K. I also have bubbled two additional (H) events, so I've been getting chips early and hanging in there but I haven't had quite as much luck in the later stages. Last night was particularly frustrating seeing as I went on a huge heater with 12 left to take a big chip lead, then ran KK into AA against the guy in 2nd place in the NLH round. Luckily I still had an average stack after that hand and hung in until the final table, but I spewed a few bets in the limit games and ran out of luck to bust 6th.
I haven't played all that much high stakes cash lately. The few sessions I have played went well enough despite another frustrating losing session against luckexpress. The games haven't been running a lot lately though and I've been content to go back to grinding tourneys mostly while SCOOP is on. I'm really enjoying playing the different games and feel like this is good experience to have before WSOP this summer where I want to play a lot of non-holdem events. I'm starting to become more confident in my play in the limit games which is very good news. Anyways I'm grinding some SCOOPs as I write this so I'm goign to go focus on them. Hopefully next time I write I'll actually have that win to write about!
Mike
PS. I'm giving this Twitter thing a try as SirWatts. I dont know how much I'll use it but I've been talked into giving it a shot since it's the big craze and all.
Last Week and Scoopaloop Day 1
Yoooo. So I've been in Montreal visiting my sister and haven't played a whole ton of poker lately. But with the SCOOP starting on PokerStars that is quickly about to change. OK first, I don't remember exactly when these hands happened but I played some good PLO/HA games and lost like 100K since whenever I last updated. It was a pretty crap session but whatever it happens. I had a great time in Montreal though and got to relax and not think about poker too much which isn't a bad change of pace.
So today was the inuagural day of the inaugural SCOOP and I played 4 events and cashed three of them. Unfortunately they were all min-cashes but fortunately I cashed both of the high buy-in events. In the 500r I was given a ton of chips early through run good and various opponents being huge spazzes and the same in the 50r. I ran good early in the $1K PLO8 as well. Unfortunately towards the middle stages of these tournaments things stopped going so well. I made a bit of a run in the 55r event but busted around 150th/4000 or something, and in the high buy-in events I managed to survive long enough to barely limp into the money in both.
As for PS+ stuff I was happy to see all the very positive response to my last MTT video. Next up is going to finally be the HU PLO video between myself and Tom. We just recorded it and I got my ass kicked. Hopefully when I do the commentary I can at least tell you all why. After that I'm supposed to do a video on moving up from midstakes to highstakes PLO, but with all the SCOOP going on it's going to be hard to fit that in around playing 10 hour days every day. If I get deep in any SCOOP events I'll definitely be looking to record or do a hand history review possibly as well from those. Anyways I really don't have anything super interesting to write about this time, I'll write again when I win my first SCOOP event.
Mike
PS. As of when I'm writing this Bond is still in with 19 left in the 500r. gogogo Tony!
Swingy Weekend!
I've basically spent the last 4 days on the couch watching the NCAA tournament with my laptop on my lap. It's been really fun! There were a lot of good high stakes HA games going on the weekend so I was pretty busy grinding those while trying to keep an eye on any close games. I crushed the 500/1K games but got owned pretty hard at 300/600 heads-up by luckexpress. Maybe heads-up just isn't my game but other than a few questionable plays it's mostly just been me being on the wrong side of a bunch of coolers. Maybe I could have lost a little less on a few of them or something but it happens. Luckily 500/1K > 300/600 so I still made money. My sessions for the weekend went something like this:
+120K, -60K (after being up >120K at one point), +150K, -90K. Guess which ones were heads-up.
Fun times and I still finished with a sizable profit (though it's not all that much considering the stakes), but at my peak I was up almost 3 times as much as I finished ahead so slightly disappointing from that perspective. I don't really have much else I want to write about right now. I've got another video coming out shortly for PokerSavvy, it's an MTT vid this time, and I'm going to have to get another one done at some point too before the end of the month. That could prove tricky as I'm going to Montreal to visit my sister and friends there on Wednesday. In any event, happy March Madness kids, enjoy the games!
Mike
March
It's a pretty good month to be home from traveling. We've got the NCAA tournament starting next week. We had the World Baseball Classic here in Toronto last week, though Canada's embarrassing loss to Italy almost makes that a negative. I went and saw the Canada-US game live though which was awesome. If any of Canada's top pitchers were available they actually would have had a pretty decent team. A lot of other fun stuff is happening this month too! I'm going to go visit my sister and friends in Montreal soon. My friend Tim is moving to Toronto in a week. And today is my roommate Alicia's birthday! As such I am taking the day off to celebrate. And of course there's St. Patrick's day....
Poker-wise I've been playing a lot online lately instead of taking care of various errands I should be running while I'm home. I had an up and down week at high stakes, first losing a bunch at what was probably an ill-advised shot playing Gus heads-up 500/1k PLO. I then won all that back yesterday playing luckexpress heads-up 300/600 HA and some 500/1000 full-ring HA. Full Tilt has raised the minimum buy-ins to 35xBB in those games which is just stupid. While I feel perfectly comfortable playing that deep instead of just shortstacking 20xBB deep like I used to it's a lot of money to risk. Lately I've been selling half my action when I take shots at these games and only playing when the lineup looks very favourable. It's pretty stupid, the only high-stakes games that run are 25/50 with a 5K or maybe 10K max buy-in if you want to play deep, and then 500/1000 with a minimum 35K buy-in. Oh well, I guess I'll stop complaining and just hope I keep running good.
I played a few tournaments this week as well, had a few cashes but nothing big. My best result was finishing 4th yesterday in an iCOP event on the Boss network. It was just an 88 euro PLO8 tourney with a huge overlay on the 25K euro guaranteed prize pool. I finished 4th for 2K euro which was disappointing considering I had the chip lead at one point at the final table, but it was a fun tournament and I ran good right from the start, and that combined with no one having any clue how to play the game let me build a solid stack quickly.
Alright I don't have much else to write about. Just gotta give a shout out to timex for coming close to going back-to-back at EPT Dortmund. He final tabled and finished 5th for 200K euro. It would have been so sick if he could have repeated, and if he hadn't lost his two huge coinflips at the final table he very well may have. Alright I'm out kids, enjoy your day. Don't lose too much playing donkaments.
Mike
How I Do
It has been widely reported that the first person eliminated from the WPT Celebrity Invitational was Antonio Esfandiari. This however is simply false. I know this because I had been standing in the hall outside having a conversation for two minutes before they made that announcement. Now you're probably all wondering how that nit Watts managed to bust twice (I of course took my $200 to charity rebuy) in half an hour before a single one of numerous celebs who don't really have much of an idea how to play. Fortunately you've come to the right place because I'm going to tell you the story.
Gobbo and I got there around 6pm for the cocktail party to mingle and so I could have some free cocktails. We bumped into some friends and checked out whatever celebs we could find. Other than usuals such as Jennifer Tilly, Don Cheadle, Mekkhi Phifer I also saw William Hung, Tony Aleida and Agent Pearce from "24", and probably some others I'm forgetting. What can I say I've never been a huge fan of celebrities but it was still pretty cool. After some quick speeches Bruce Buffer gave us his special rendition of "shuffle up and deal" which was freaking awesome and it was time to gamble. First of all, I am playing 2 out of every 3 pots at least, often without looking at my cards. I am "straddling" every UTG and have got others doing the same. If I catch any piece of the flop I do not fold. If they check to me I will almost always bet.
So I've lost some chips doing stuff like limp/calling the Q3o when I finally pick up a real hand and make my standard raise to 200 at 50/100 with the 45o. 4 players call and the flop comes Q64 with two clubs. I make a strong continuation bet of 200 and the guy on my left calls, then Mimi across the table from me makes it 700. I obviously call as does my friend on my left. The turn is an offsuit 5. DING DING DING DING DING!!!! Two checks and Mimi bets 1100. I quickly make it 4 dimes and my friend cold calls the whole thing with what is almost certainly a flush draw. Mimi calls as well. The river is the 2c which means I lose. But I bet the 3 or 4K I have left anyways for some reason and then rebuy.
I quickly begin rebuilding my stack though. For whatever reason I have 93o and flop a 3 so I call a bet. I turn a 3 and bet out but somehow everyone folds. Go figure. Then I call Chau Giang's raise with KThh and flop ATx. I call his 500 bet and when a T turns I bet 1k which he calls and then 3k on the river which he somehow folds to again!! Gah! So despite being 3 for 3 on 5-outers I am still down like 7K chips.
Then there are two sweet hands in a row where a young asian guy whose name I should know but I don't opens to 250 in EP and I reraise to 500 in MP with the 5h and the 2h. He calls and snap folds to my 500 bet on A44. I just know I woulda hit the living hell out of my gutshot too why couldn't he have an ace. Then the next hand he limps correctly fearing another reraise so I know hes weak and quickly raise to 200 with 23o to try to isolate. Unfortunately I get reraised to 700 and decide to fold my hand face up.
Now on my BB at 75/150 the same young asian guy makes it 500 in the CO and I call with AQo. The flop comes QT7 with 2 spades and I bomb out for 1k, and he raises to 3k or 4k or something like that. I quickly jam all 12K or so of my chips into the pot while fistpumping and doing double backflips of pure joy in my head but he calls with Q7 and I lose all my gold. SIIIIIIIGH.
After that I hung out for a bit with Kristen and Gavin (busto not too much later) and Jennifer and Heather (and a hilarious visit from Noah Schwartz) but when gobbo busted we decided to just head back to the hotel. Now at this point you may be thinking "Watts, what the hell is wrong with you? First place in that tournament was $100K", and that is a reasonable thing to ask. But as usual I am thinking about 5.3 steps ahead of you. Don't feel bad it's just one of the skills I've developed from poker. So we get back to the room and there are a few pretty ok looking 500/1000 HA tables going on Full Tilt. I sit and start winning lots of pots. PLO is just such a ridiculous game. Last week I felt like I could not win money at the game to save my life. This week I feel like I just can not lose a hand. By the time the games break a couple hours later I'm up $120K. As you may recall first in the freeroll was $100K. I believe the moral of the story is that the gambling gods love you when you just degen it up for them from time to time.
Alright that's about as much as I can possibly write in this tone. I'm back to Toronto late Monday night. Looking forward to seeing everyone I've missed while I've been off hiding from winter, but especially the kitties! Take it easy,
Mike
Another Week in LA
Yoooo. So I decided to stay in LA for the Celeb Invitational freeroll today. It should be a really fun tournament, I'm definitely not going to take it too seriously although first is 100K so if I get deep I'll have to focus up. I've had a week here in LA with no tournaments to distract me. I'd like to say I used that time to go out and see the city and then party with movie stars all night. But in typical Watts style I've mostly just slept away the day and stayed up late playing PLO, mostly online but some live as well. The good news is that I've been on a pretty solid heater in the 500/1k HA games as as well as 10/20 and 25/50 PLO, up over $200K. The HA games have been very good this week so I was back playing them again. They're pretty fun win you win most of the flips.
Oh yeah as for the LAPC main event itself I made Day 2 but busted early on. I was up and down a lot. I'm not really happy with how I played a few hands but I don't think I made any super clear cut mistakes. So overall happy enough with my play and I definitely had my head in it unlike at Aussie Millions where at times I was very unfocused. I think that's about all I've got for now though I'm probably forgetting some stuff. Just wanted to post a quick update. Keep it real,
Mike
LA and PS+
Hey y'all, I've been in LA for the LA Poker Classic for almost a week now. The WPT main event starts tomorrow and I'm hoping to improve on a deep run I made last year when I ended up finishing 10th. So far I've had no luck in the few prelims I've played, just a $1K and a $5k event. Unfortunately I couldn't play any more as I'm pretty low in cash here. They wouldn't change my Australian $$ at the casino here because we are in the ghetto, or at least that was the reason I took from the whole thing. I probably would have played the $10K HU event, though the field was so tough that missing out on that is not a huge loss really. I also might have played the $10K PLO but it only got 54 players and was on Sunday so again no big deal. After the main event I was planning to stay around for the Celebrity Invitational freeroll event, but depending how deep I get in the main and how much cash I'm able to get to play live games here I may change my flight and bounce early.
In other news I'm on a pretty big PLO downswing because 500/1000 is just way too big. I'm pretty upset that Full Tilt made all these tables instead of just leaving 200/400 as the biggest game. Essentially no one actually has the money to play that high so obviously most people have to buyin short if they want to play as it's the only games over 25/50 that runs at all regularly. I do still think I have an edge short stacking the half holdem half omaha games against a lot of lineups though so I've been gambling a bit and playing with not so great reults. Anyways I'm probably going to take a break from playing these games except when the lineup happens to look really good.
I think my new goal in poker is going to be to get a lot better at limit mixed games. I play a few of the HORSE games fairly decently and a few others pretty mediocrely and I also want to learn 2-7 triple draw so that I can play most of the new Pokerstars SCOOP events, as well as play a lot more non-holdem events at the WSOP this summer. There is just no way I will survive the summer playing a 2000 person $2K NL event every day again. I need a new challenge and the smaller fields in the mixed games are nice too so maybe I could actually finally final table a bracelet event. Speaking of which, look at all the money I get to lose beginning in April:
PokerStars SCOOP: April 2-12 Probably around $40-50K in buy-ins.
WPT Championship at Bellagio: April 18-24 $25K main event.
EPT Monte Carlo: April 28-May 3 10K Euro main event. 25K Euro high roller. 5K Euro PLO championship among other side events. ~$60K USD.
World Series of Poker 2009 (and Bellagio Cup!): Begins May 28th with the special $40K buy-in tournament. Likely to spend close to $150K in buy-ins this summer.
Countdown to busto has begun.
The final major announcement which I haven't written about on here in a while is that I have officially joined Poker Savvy Plus as a core pro and will be contributing three strategy videos a month beginning in March. I'm very happy to be on board and hope some of you sign up and enjoy my videos, and most importantly learn from them to make some $$$! This blog is now being cross-posted over there, so a special hello to everyone reading this on PokerSavvy! I really think PS+ now has a very strong team of core pros and you're going to see a lot of really good videos coming from there this year. That's all I've got for now, going to the gym for a bit, wish me luck beginning tomorrow!
Mike