Monday, September 22, 2008
WCOOP ME
I manned up to play the $5K last night, probably because I was still post-flu delirious :-). I busted out 40 from the money but there were some interesting points arising.
Before the tournament, I wasn't really planning to play but Stars had these hyper-turbo double shootouts that seemed worth a look. They turned out to be awesome. Basic double shootout, $215 entry (no rake !), $5200 packages to be won. The twist is 750 starting chips, 3 minute levels and antes from the off ! The later ones in particular, which offered 4-5 seats, were awesome value. Not least because correct strategy is so different from round 1 (winner take all) to round 2 (10 players, 4 seats). Anyone who just turned up and played their "normal game", or didn't adjust enough, was going way uphill. I won a seat at the 6th try and ended up 1/10 for $3K profit. Then I decided spin it up, I'm in cheap ! LOL.
Huge swathes of the event itself were unremarkable. I pretty much doubled up KK > QQ to 50K and KK > TT to 90. In the other players' shoes I would probably not have stacked off with the QQ and definitely not the TT. The most difficult part was adjusting to different tables. It was mostly tight on the first two, then I suddenly found myself on a table with lots of open-limping, min-raising and even that-min-reraise-from-20-BB-which-is-always-AA-or-KK but turned out to be 33. Finally I ended up on a tough table with around 80K (playing 1500-3K), and I busted with a bad river call which you can see here. Pretty annoyed with myself for this call, I'm still trying to think of a hand I can beat now, with no luck. Live and learn though hopefully, this kind of call may be my biggest leak at the moment.
In the aftermath, it's no big deal. Some of the guys posting on 2+2 seemed like they should be calling the Samaritans after busting, but you have to keep it in perspective. Going through to 400 players from 2000 sounds like you've done 80% of the job, but it doesn't work like that at all. I peaked at 100K, 4x my buyin. Average chips for the final would be about 5-6 million, 200x the buyin ! That's how far I still had to go. At the end of the day, I lost $2900 on the Sunday, and had $20K equity at one point but lost it. Practically standard.
It was good to play though, it's always good to extend your upper buyin, selectively of course. If nothing else you're more relaxed about playing $1Ks online in future, and so on. Onwards to the EPT, I'm definitely playing the £1500 and the main event, and have a few % still available if you're interested. Best of British to Neil in the WSOP-E £1500 today, although this is a strange one. If a friend was in a WSOP final in Vegas I'd be really stoked, but this just seems like another tournament with a £150K first prize. Is that unfair ? I know these count as bracelets for records and prop bets, but it doesn't seem the same. Maybe the only problem is I still attach too much value to Vegas bracelets. Yes, even me :-).
Before the tournament, I wasn't really planning to play but Stars had these hyper-turbo double shootouts that seemed worth a look. They turned out to be awesome. Basic double shootout, $215 entry (no rake !), $5200 packages to be won. The twist is 750 starting chips, 3 minute levels and antes from the off ! The later ones in particular, which offered 4-5 seats, were awesome value. Not least because correct strategy is so different from round 1 (winner take all) to round 2 (10 players, 4 seats). Anyone who just turned up and played their "normal game", or didn't adjust enough, was going way uphill. I won a seat at the 6th try and ended up 1/10 for $3K profit. Then I decided spin it up, I'm in cheap ! LOL.
Huge swathes of the event itself were unremarkable. I pretty much doubled up KK > QQ to 50K and KK > TT to 90. In the other players' shoes I would probably not have stacked off with the QQ and definitely not the TT. The most difficult part was adjusting to different tables. It was mostly tight on the first two, then I suddenly found myself on a table with lots of open-limping, min-raising and even that-min-reraise-from-20-BB-which-is-always-AA-or-KK but turned out to be 33. Finally I ended up on a tough table with around 80K (playing 1500-3K), and I busted with a bad river call which you can see here. Pretty annoyed with myself for this call, I'm still trying to think of a hand I can beat now, with no luck. Live and learn though hopefully, this kind of call may be my biggest leak at the moment.
In the aftermath, it's no big deal. Some of the guys posting on 2+2 seemed like they should be calling the Samaritans after busting, but you have to keep it in perspective. Going through to 400 players from 2000 sounds like you've done 80% of the job, but it doesn't work like that at all. I peaked at 100K, 4x my buyin. Average chips for the final would be about 5-6 million, 200x the buyin ! That's how far I still had to go. At the end of the day, I lost $2900 on the Sunday, and had $20K equity at one point but lost it. Practically standard.
It was good to play though, it's always good to extend your upper buyin, selectively of course. If nothing else you're more relaxed about playing $1Ks online in future, and so on. Onwards to the EPT, I'm definitely playing the £1500 and the main event, and have a few % still available if you're interested. Best of British to Neil in the WSOP-E £1500 today, although this is a strange one. If a friend was in a WSOP final in Vegas I'd be really stoked, but this just seems like another tournament with a £150K first prize. Is that unfair ? I know these count as bracelets for records and prop bets, but it doesn't seem the same. Maybe the only problem is I still attach too much value to Vegas bracelets. Yes, even me :-).
# posted by Andy_Ward @ 11:58 AM 
