PCA Qualifying Tourney Report

The structure of these tournaments is pretty good: 2500 chips to start, blinds 10/20 and 30 minute levels (double the normal length and more chips to boot) so it was my intention to play a very conservative game. I figured that most people wouldn't adjust well to this structure, being too aggressive and ending up playing big pots far too early. For the most part I stuck to this strategy until closer to the prizes when most people went a little too conservative, although in a satellite tournament with a flat prize structure this isn't too wrong. I actually get very few decent starting hands until deep into the tournament so the first few paragraphs are pretty boring. You can skip down to the later ones where more interesting things happen.

Not much happens for the first few dozen hands.. I do tight things like fold KJs to a limper, open fold 75s and 63s. The first hand I somewhat get involved with is hand #24 where I call 2 limpers and a raise with 98s and check/fold a JAQ flop. In the next 40 hands I get 88,77,22,44 and whiff on all of them except for winning with 22 in a four way shown that's checked down flop, turn and river. It's a pretty boring tournament so far. I finally pick up QQ, raise and get 4 callers!? Do they not see how tight I've been playing? I bet the 8J9 flop, get raised and reraise (a massive overbet push) and have to lay it down. Ugh. Down to 1805 now. It's still early with blinds 15/30 so not terrible yet but going in the wrong direction. I win a small pot with AQ to get back over 2000.

The blinds are up to 25/50 now and someone is doing idiotic things re-raising AKo all-in preflop with 50+ big blind stacks. Let's call this guy Pauly since he comes into play in every hand for the next little while. Lucky for him he's up against KK and obviously sucks out with an A on the river. The next hand I play (#93 - yes, quite a lot of folding.. I am both playing tight and getting no cards) I tangle with Pauly. I raise UTG to 150 with AKo, get a caller and the Pauly reraises to 750. I know if I jam here I'm getting called so I reluctantly fold and tell myself there's still plenty of time. At hand 104 I finally flop a set with TT and pick up some chips from Pauly, so I'm above my starting stack for the first time at almost 3000.

Blinds are now up to 50/100 and Pauly is still providing entertainment (and blog content). He's still got a big stack from the suckout, about 6000. It's folded to him in the SB and he jams vs the BB's 1000 stack. He's got K3o, and the BB calls with AA. No one is surprised when the flop comes 733. Although everyone is surprised when the river comes... A! Nice suck/resuck. I win a pot c-betting AQ on the flop, then lose a pot c-betting 77 on the flop. I flop a set of 44 vs Pauly and play it poorly, letting him off the hook by check raising all-in on the flop and he manages to somehow find a fold.

With blinds up to 75/150, I get some more chips off Pauly with this questionable play. I raise in mid position with TT, Pauly calls in the big blind. Flop is 347 rainbow. I bet, Paul calls. Turn 8. I push slightly more than the pot and he folds. I'm not sure what that push accomplishes since he calls with 56, a set, or an overpair and folds everything else. Or maybe he's the type of guy who would call with A7 there? Or a bare 5 or 6? Who knows. Anyway, we're 150 hands in now and I haven't seen AA or KK yet so I'm starting to feel I'm due soon. I win a small pot with AQ vs Pauly. Looking back at the record, it's amazing how many chips I've peeled off him. I think I can safely say I owe him for this win.

I build my stack up to 5000 with the blinds 100/200 by reraising all in with 44 to a mid position raiser. Image resteal there since I've been very tight. We're at hand 180 now and I've documented every hand I've played so far, which is not very much. Here's another pretty questionable play by someone else which I'm thankful for. UTG limps, I call with 22 in mid position and the big blind checks. Flop comes 6T9 with two hearts. Checked around. Turn is an off suit 8. Checked around again. River 2. Checked to me and I bet and get called by UTG's QQ. Score! I can't believe she didn't put any chips into the pot before the river. I fold AQ to another massive over push reraise and am at 6500. I get up to 7100 by reraising with AK and taking it down, then blind down to 6300. I steal the blinds with TT at hand #225.

At hand #230, I encounter the only peril I'd meet for pretty much the whole tournament. The button raises to 600, and I re-raise to 2000 with JJ in the SB. The big blind pushes and I hesitate before calling the rest of my 4300 chips. Luckily the BB has AK and I double up on a blank board. I'm finally in very good shape now with 13,000 chips and the blinds 100/200. I pick up some more re-raising with QQ vs a raiser and a caller. I lose a bit with 99 trying to pick up the pot on a KQ4 board but get raised off it, then win the blinds with AQ. 250 hands now and no sign of AA or KK yet, odd of this are like what, infinity to 1. Pick up another pot with AQ re-raising on the flop. So far no one's played back at my re-raising so things are going very well.

At hand 266 the table breaks. A shame since I've been the same table for the whole time and have pretty good reads on most people. 6 hands into the new table I play two hands which I'm very proud of. I've folded everything so far. The first hand, with the blinds 200/400, it's folded to 'Pwnasaurus' in the SB. He raises to 1000. I figure with a name like that he's pretty aggressive so I reraise all-in (to 9400) with 44 and he folds. The very next hand, he raises again to 1000 on the button. I have AQd in the SB and just call. I figure if I reraise him again I'm going to get called and I didn't want to flip for my stack just yet. It seems unlikely he'd be trying to steal after getting caught in the previous hand. Flop comes AT3 two spades. This was the perfect flop for me since I can represent a flush draw, a gutshot straight draw, or a pure bluff and can get called with pocket pairs or other semi-weak holdings. I check, he bets 1400 and I raise all-in. He thinks and thinks and thinks and finally calls with JT! My hand holds and I bust him. I resist the urge to type 'pwned!' in the chat window. I guess he really didn't believe my two all-ins in a row. I pick up a few more blinds preflop with 88 and QQ, fold AK to a raise and reraise, fold AJ to a raise. It's been a really long time since I've been playing deep stacks and so it feels odd to be folding things like that.

We hardly see a flop anymore since the prizes are in sight now. Blinds are 400/800 and we've been playing for 5 hours now. I can quickly tell who the really tight players are and start stealing their blinds at will, meeting absolutely no resistance. There are two of them in perfect position, one to my left and one 3 to my left. Unfortunately someone else to my right also picks up on it so they start stealing those blinds before I can get to them. I win preflop twice in 5 hands off the stealer by re-raising first with AA (finally!) and AK. I'm really surprised I didn't get called the second time since a) I thought he'd have something raising again so soon and b) he didn't think I'd have something re-raising him again. But whatever, thanks for the chips. This boosts me to 29k and pretty healthy with the blinds 400/800 and very tight play.

At hand #369 I have 30k chips and am probably in the top 16 with maybe 30 players left. A pretty quiet guy with 16k raises to 4k (blinds 400/800 still). Folded to me in the BB with JJ. I fold!?!? My thinking was with such a large raise, he's committing his stack so I'm not sure I want to flip or run into an overpair. I have a healthy stack and plenty of blinds to steal. I'm not used to this conservative style of folding JJ to a single raise but I think its the right move.

At hand #397 (600/1200) I make a really questionable play that I think could have cost me the seat. I have 32k and raise to 3000 with KQs in mid position. The button re-raises all-in for 11.5k. I have seen his name before at a final table of the Sunday million tourney (more than once I think) so I know he's good and observant. So he's seen me steal a lot, especially versus these blinds in particular. So there's about 15k in the pot and I have 8.5k to call. In a cash tourney it's an easy call since I'm easily getting the right odds vs his range of hands (any pair, probably almost any ace). But in this sort of satellite survival is the goal, not winning. I think for about a minute before my finger clicks the call button without me commanding it to do so. He has A6o and I fail to suckout. I'm down to 20k and not feeling great with the blinds 600/1200. My gut says it was the wrong thing to do, but I really wanted to defend my raises to make others things twice about re-stealing from me.

Less than 10 hands later, I pick up AA in mid position and raise to 3k. I get reraised all in by someone with 23k (like I said, no small pots around here) they hold up against AQ. So with 42k, I'm comfortably in the top 10 and coast to the seat, picking up the blinds with AQ twice, JJ and stealing a little here and there just to stay even. Play is really tight and conservative and takes about 70 hands to bust the last couple of people since no mid size stack is willing to play back with anything less than AK.

WPT Bahamas, redux

At long last the blog can once again rightfully be called the WPT Bahamas blog as I have just qualified for the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure 2007 (held Jan 4-11 at the Atlantis Resort and Casino

Luck was definitely on my side this year as I played only 6 tournaments to qualify, a $33 rebuy, a $80 satellite and 3 $22 rebuy tournaments. I won one of the $22 tourneys to qualify for a $650 super satellite. In the $650, there were 318 players and 16 packages awarded. Total investment, $310.

Details to follow tomorrow.

Some more pics

The crowd to fight your way through to get to the tournament area

Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher from ST:TNG) who now writes for PokerStars

Still happy before it started

Finally thanks to everyone for their support and for reading this!

WSOP Wrap Up

After having some time to reflect on it, I think I have a lot to learn about deep stack live tournaments. I'm going to attempt to write down these thoughts in hopes it'll be useful if I ever play any other large tournaments.

Small pots - I'm sure I could have conserved a lot of chips by playing less aggressively and keeping pots small. Ironically, I went into the tournament with the intention of playing more aggressively and stealing more pots. Those kind of were at odds with each other since everytime I took a stab at pots I'd be bloating them up and it would result in more chips required to push someone out and making it more likely to get called since the pot is so large.

Physical tells - not sure if I had any but I got picked off on two big bluffs so it's something I need to consider. I think I need to pause and act more deliberately each time. It would also help a lot at thinking through the hand. I'm still too used to having only 15 seconds to think online and usually just go with my instincts. Against most of the people at the table I wasn't too worried about giving off tells but there was one guy who was obviously much more comfortable playing live most of the table.

Identifying the fish - one thing I've read a few times is that you must identify the people who can't get away from top pair types of hands and stack them early before they lose their chips to someone else. Very good advice. I think I did a good job of doing so, but just wasn't able to get involved with them with a decent hand.

I'm pretty sure I'm able to play strong hands much better than I can play mid/weak hands. That might be an obvious statement but I think I am reasonably good at getting max value out of strong hands, as opposed to keeping the pots smaller for weaker hands.

Some other interesting hands, from memory:

Early in the first level I get QQ UTG+1 and raise to 150. Aggressive guy makes it 500, everyone else folds and I repop him to 1500. He reraises to 3000. I think, look at him and ponder. He has been very active but says reasonably confidently "I have a monster, no bs, I'll show you if you fold". Immediately I discount AA but not 100%. But what does he put in a 4th raise with? And a min raise at that. Hellmuth says 4th raise = AA. So I think KK is most likely. I fold, he shows QQ I quietly puke in my mouth and manage to agree when someone asks if I have AK.

Last hand before a break. I pick up JJ and raise. Bad/loose guy (who raises KJo UTG, plays many Ax hands out of position) reraises out of the SB. Knowing he over values hands I reraise him and he calls. Flop Axx. Most of the table has left for the break but one guy stayed behind to watch the action. the SB leads out with a healthy bet into the pot. I think and he says I'll show if you fold. Ugh.. that dreaded line again. I ask him if that means if it's good or bad and he shrugs. I think AK is most likely here since AA and KK probably would have gotten all the chips in preflop. I think I make the easy decision to fold and he shows QQ. Bah.. at least I was behind but I really didn't think he had it in him to make a move like that with and A high flop and so much raising going on preflop. The guy watching says I laid down KK there and I don't do anything to disagree with him. So the moral is if they want you to fold (by offering to show), it's usually a good hand that can't stand too much action.

The bust out hand. I think I cold called because I gave the UTG raise too much credit. I had only played about 2 orbits with that table and the normal raise was 800 (too high in my opinion). I didn't expect much action but I think Agustin might have been right for me to reraise and hopefully isolate with position or fold to a reraise. I also regret leading out and bloating the pot but after two checks to me I habitually stab at it. I think that was a big mistake though because someone has AA/KK/QQ/TT/JJ and none of them are going anywhere. Once I did that though I was committed.. running the numbers I'm 33% vs a set, 55% vs QQ or KK and 45% vs AA. So an easy call even if I go home 2 out of 3 times.

The day after busting out I played about 6 hours of mixed games at Treasure Island (they call it "tangerine" for some reason). We played Razz, 5 card draw (no one ever plays that anymore), stud (high), omaha hi/low, 2-7 triple draw low, crazy pineapple and eventually badugi got thrown in. It was originally 4-handed with 3 other internet players who had been up all night playing those games for mostly the first time. It was a friendly game with lots of discussion about the hands. I was extremely impressed with how sharp they were in their analysis of other players hands, making good value bets or making good folds. I mean really impressed, especially since they had been up for more than 24 hours. I was a lot of fun until some local pros showed up and actually tried to play seriously. Very educational though and much more fun that just grinding out hold'em even if I gave back all my winnings from the previous days. I think we'll start to see these other games grow in popularity on the online sites pretty fast. Stars is going to start offering HORSE soon and it'll even be their biggest tournament ($5000) in the upcoming World Series of Online Poker.

I'm out

Well, that didn't last too long. The table broke shortly after the break and I got moved to another table. Folded for a round or two then comes the fateful hand. Utg raises 800 with the blinds 100/200/25 ante. I call with AKc. Late position calls and BB calls. Flop comes J6T two clubs. BB checks and utg checks. I lead 1500 and the limper raises to 5500. I'm getting ready to fold when the BB cold calls 5500. Ugh. I've got about 7500 behind. At this point I figure that there's got to be a set out there but I have the nut flush draw and the gutshot queen draw also should be be good. So I jam in the rest of my chips. Some contraversy occurs about whether the limper can reraise (he can't because I didn't raise enough). With the pot so large I don't think I can fold there. So obviously the turn and river brick out and I'm going home.

Dinner break

Down to 7000 pretty card dead and only played about 6 hands all during that level. Lost a sizeable pot with JJ vs QQ on the last hand before the break. Ah well, still got some room to maneuver and I'm certainly due for big hands now.

Second break

Back down to about 12000. Not much action. Made one full house and got paid off then chased 3 flushes and didn't hit any and got 2 bluffs snapped again. No more bluffing!

Sick sick poker

I started out ok, calling with pairs and high cards and completely missing flop. Got involved with some aggro guy and bluffed off about 2000. Got involved with another ok guy and bluffed on a 789Q board and got snapped off for another 2000 or so. Ugh, I have a terrible image now. I get AK twice in two hands, raise and get called and get checkraised off my hand both times, once in a raised pot and once ina reraise flop. I almost called once but the guy had been so agg that I didn't think he would do it again. After about an hour and a bit I was down to 2000 ish and was having my dreams crushed once again. So sick.

  I tighten up and decide for a hand to commit to and double up but nothing comes. About 20 mins before the break I get AA utg+1 and limp 50. I had limped a fair amount in various places so not strange. Utg+2 raises to 300 and I repop to 1000 hoping its not too obvious. He makes it 1500 and I call and my hand holds up vs his QQ. Very next hand I get KK utg and raise to 200. Late position makes it 700 and I call. Flop 642 and I check raise him all in and my KK holds against QQ again.  About 10 hands later I call a raise on the button with 86o with about 4-5 players. Flop comes 975 two spades. Aggro bets, I call, the QQ guy from the first hand makes it 3000.  Aggro folds and I jam for about 4000 more. He flips 55 for a set and I sweat the board not pairing.  I snap a bluff with 94o on a 6433K board and feel like I can do no wrong.  I end with about 23000 in chips after being down to 2000 in the first break. So sick.

Table 164, Seat 5

That's where I will be for awhile I hope. One interesting technology they're using for photos this year is FaceIT. You basically sign up by giving your name and having them take your picture. Then as they take pictures throughout the event, they use face recognition technology to automatically label the pictures so you can search for people you know. I've signed up so I'm curious if I'll eventually end up in their DB.

Here's an article about it:
http://www.pokernews.com/news/2006/6/high-tech-wsop-facial-recognition.htm

To search for pictures, go here:
http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/photo_store/

Warming Up

Yesterday I played a bit of baby NL (1-3 blinds, max $500 buyin) to warm up. Good thing I did, since it's been quite awhile since I've played live in a casino - perhaps not since the WSOP last year?

Anyway, I had a pretty bad case of the shakes on the first hand in but got over it pretty quickly. Originally I planned to play at the Wynn but the list was was too long there in mid-afternoon. I ended up back at Treasure Island since it was unbearable to walk more then across the street in mid day. I sat down at 4:00pm and didn't end up leaving until 11:00pm since the table was pretty juicy. There were a couple of really weak tight locals to my left, a couple of ultra aggressive pros to my right, and enough tourists to build pretty big limped pots so perfect position. Many people would sit down with only $100 or so, blow them off and rebuy, repeat then leave. One pretty good guy racked out about $3400 although he had been there longer than I had. Apparently some guy sat down with a ton of blacks ($100 chips) and just blew them off before I got there, although I'm not sure how he managed to get more than $500 in play. Normally you don't see black chips at a 1-3 table but there were about $1000 in blacks in play here.

The aggressive pros would straddle to $10 whenever they could, and induced some tourists to do so as well. Turned into a pretty volatile game but I had great position on the deep stacked pros and managed to win and lose my share of pots chasing straights. The two aggressive pros busted multiple times and probably were down over $1000 each. One of the other locals was just so weak tight it was unbelievable. He was sacred to play post-flop. Some examples: early raise to $10, a caller, and he jammed to $100 from the big blind with JJ, saying he was happy to win the $20 because he didn't want to see overcards on the flop. Another hand, I raised to $10 with QJs on the button and he makes it $40 from the big blind. I make a motion of kissing my chips goodbye and throw them in. Flop comes Kxx and he checks!? I check behind. Q turn and he checks again!? I bet and he folds!?

I stacked AK with 54o, on a A23 flop, called down a bluff with 22, flopped a few sets, standard stuff like that. Nothing too memorable but cashed out up $425, down from a peak of over +$600. One comment from a guy about me: "I'm scared of this guy, he probably does all the math and stuff".

A nice warm up but I will definitely have to tighten up and be more aggressive today. I didn't bluff a single hand last night but that will have to be part of the game plan today.

So it begins again

I arrived in Las Vegas last night on my first ever Westjet flight. Not too bad, with leather seats and live satellite TV. It arrived about 20 mins early, but traffic at 10pm on a Friday night in Vegas was terrible and it probably took atleast 30 mins to make the short trek from the airport. Oh, I ran into Steve Paul-Ambrose at the airport who was waiting there for his family to arrive on the same flight I took. Steve was the winner of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure this year and hails from Waterloo. Other than him, I haven't seen any well-known poker personalities so far.

I'm staying at Treasure Island this year - tried to slip the front desk clerk $20 to upgrade, but either she didn't see it (I'm just too smooth) or they actually were full. Ended up with a corner room overlooking the strip on the 34th floor anyway which is just fine.


One neat thing about the poker room here is they actually have the waiting list available on TV. At 6:30am there wasn't much of a wait but I thought that was useful.. and signs poker is quite popular, if you hadn't noticed.



I picked up my goody bag of stuff, shown below. Shirts, hats, jerseys, a nice jacket, bag teddy bear, a baseball and trading cards. Not too shabby. The strange thing this year is that Harrah's decided not to allow .com advertising, so all players sporting shirts from poker sites have either had to wear .net (play money) gear or tape over the .com portion of the logo. So there are plenty of people walking around with duct tape on their clothes.



I went to the Rio to finalize my registration which went fine. I was a bit worried because I heard people were getting their days changed without notice but everything is fine and I'm playing tomorrow as expected.

They had a "poker lifestyle" exhibition which was a small trade show. All the major sites had booths with girls handing out free stuff. I managed to accumulate about 10 lbs of hats, shirts, bags. The biggest score was a 1GB flash drive.

PokerStars had a booth where you could play "Battleship Poker" for prizes. It's basically laptops set up face to face and you play a heads-up match. I was out pretty quickly with AQ vs 74s on a Q72 flop (7) turn and the guy who beat me draw a video ipod for a prize. That would have been sweet.





Some more pics from the trade show

PokerStars Aston Martin (they're a sponsor)

A view of a poker table with built in screens - no dealer required!

The Bodog poker bachelor pad - complete with lingerie clad girls upstairs. You could line up for a pillow fight with them.


A case with all the bracelet from members of the Full Tilt team in their hospitality suite

It is a happy Canada Day indeed

I just qualified for the 2006 WSOP Main Event, after weeks of trying. The tournament I won was a $33 rebuy (same as last year) where I beat out 198 other players for the single prize. Near the end of the rebuy period, I was allin preflop twice within 4 hands when I hit a set vs an over pair (TT vs QQ and JJ vs KK) to emerge from the rebuy period with the chip lead. From there I maintained the lead almost wire to wire, never dropping below 15th spot and winning 4 huge coinflips vs other top 10 players including the last hand.

Total investment in this tournament, $93. Total investment trying to qualify this year - too scary to add up.

The tournament starts July 28th in Las Vegas.