Viva Las Vegas

Greetings from sunny Las Vegas!

Last time I posted an update the UK was coated in snow, but now I find myself halfway round the world and the weather couldn’t be more contrasting.

But more on my Vegas jaunt in due course...

2011 Update

I must apologise that my blog has fallen by the wayside this year. Life is good and poker has been going alright – as ever things could be better, but could be much worse.

As a sort of half-arsed attempt to summarise 2011 so far, I’ve reviewed some of my bigger tournament successes. In a sort of reverse, but really rather arbitrary order, for dramatic effect...

5. Up To Speed

I have enjoyed continued success in my regular speed/turbo tourneys, with several outright wins including two biggies on bwin/OnGame:

1/284 in the daily $55 Turbo for $3k.
1/827 in Brazilian Rebuy for $2.4k (the second-largest field I have bested)

In March I finally took down PartyPoker’s $120 buy-in Speed, in doing so belatedly crossing off one of my resolutions from last year:

1/103 in $10K Gtd Speed for $3,172

I’m faring well in my regular haunts on Party:

1/300 in $11 Speed Rebuy for $2.5k
1/218 in $11 Speed Rebuy for $2k

1/133 in $33 Turbo for $1.1k
1/93 in $33 Turbo for $1.1k

Also I took $1.8k for shipping a PokerStars €30 Turbo Knockout against a field of 295.

4. The Big Game

In February I reached my first ever final table in one of the big-field Sunday majors, scoring $3,747 for a 9th place finish in PartyPoker’s $250K Guaranteed Sunday. There were a couple of interesting key hands that I should dig out some time, including a sort of hero-call with bottom set against the chip leader deep in the game.

Also encouragingly I’ve final-tabled Party’s $215 buy-in Friday Special twice, taking $2.3k for a 6th place finish in January after taking a bad beat (obv!) and also final-tabled the $90 rebuy $40K Super Thursday.

3. Big Guns

I’ve been holding my own against some of the big guns on the tougher sites, notably PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.

In March I bubbled the final table of Full Tilt’s $129 Knockout, which had a huge $90k+ prize pool. After coming through a field of field of 936 players I had a big stack on the penultimate table, and induced the chip leader to 5-bet jam A9s into my QQ for 490k pot – a pot that could have catapulted me to second in chips. The dreaded ace fell on flop and I had to settle for a comparatively disappointing $1k. It was $10k just for coming third in this, a cool $21.5k for the win.

I really enjoy this tourney, and typical of mid-stakes Full Tilt MTTs it has a broad spectrum of players ranging from LOL-bad to scary-good. I felt very much in my comfort zone and made some powerful plays against the stronger players in the late stages.

Then in May I final-tabled the PokerStars $100 1R+1A Turbo, placing 5/331 for $4,625 – one of my biggest ever scores, although rather less exciting than the $15.8k first prize. Again I rate my play as spot on, and had a couple more flips gone my way that fifth place could well have been a third or a first.

I’ve made a number of other final tables on Stars and Tilt, including a runner-up finish in Full Tilt’s $55 buy-in $12.5k Gtd, placing 2/298 for $2.4k. No wins though.

From a glass-half-empty perspective, with all the near misses I feel I’m running somewhat below expectation. Some of these are high variance games though, so I have my own game selection to blame. It is exciting playing the bigger games and makes poker feel less of a grind.

From a glass-half-full perspective, the repeated brushes with big-field tourney success are highly encouraging, and the variance isn’t too big a problem for me. That elusive $10k+ score is surely just around the corner.

2. Top Scores

My other biggest wins of 2011:

In March I finally accomplished one of my New Year’s resolutions from last year, taking down Sky Poker’s weekly six-max Primo, placing 1/300 for £3,750. At approximately $6.1k this clocks in as my second-biggest ever online cash, after my $8.1k win in iPoker’s Super Tuesday $100 rebuy at Christmas.

My success in mid/high stakes tourneys didn’t stop there. In April I shipped Party’s $109 buy-in $15K Gtd, placing 1/160 for $4.4k. I enjoyed a ridiculous chip lead on the final table after speculating with Q-J against a fellow big stack who I suspected was trapping another player with A-A or K-K. I flopped two pair, check-jammed the flop, and sure enough he called with Aces. My hand held up and there was no looking back. Two other strong players made the final table, but I played my A-game, used ICM to my advantage, and 3-bet, 4-bet, floated and bluffed my way to victory. Weeee!

Recently I final-tabled Party’s Sunday night $109 game, the enhanced prize pool $20k Gtd. With 294 entrants the prize pool was actually almost $30k. Four-handed and short-stacked, I hesitantly agreed to chop for a reasonable $3k. It’s been a long while since I agreed to a deal, but the chip leader, strong player RheumaKaiser, opted to chop because apparently he wanted to watch the baseball!! It was a close decision for me, as there was still one bad player on the table and moreover I rather fancied a shot at the $7.6k top spot, but with a short stack and a strong player able to put pressure on me I agreed to take the cash.

I’ve also taken 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th places in Party’s nightly $99 freezeout, shipping it in February (for the second time) for $2.4k.

1. Going Live

I’ve been getting some more experience playing live poker. As well as some minor successes in local low-stakes donkaments, I have qualified for a couple of bigger live games, including PKR’s £750 buy-in PKR Live VI in London. This took place in May and unfortunately I busted at the end of day one. It was a fun experience, and although I struggled to make any big hands I had a good time and met some cool people.

I have landed another £1k GUKPT Main Event seat which I will play towards the end of the year. I qualified on Blue Square Poker and can choose between any of the remaining 2011 events, so I will probably play my local one in Blackpool.

Onto the big one:

This year I made a serious effort to qualify for the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. I started playing satellites to the WSOP Main Event in February, suffering a near-miss at the start of April when I bubbled winning a $12k package on Full Tilt, placing 2nd out of 81 in a $216 Shootout qualifier. There was only one prize package available, although I did take a $2.1k cash prize for my runner-up finish which slightly softened the blow. (FWIW the $2.1k means I’ve made a net profit from all the WSOP satellites I’ve played this year.)

On April 17th I finally took down a $13k WSOP package on iPoker, placing joint first out of 55 entries. There were two packages available in the $535 satellite, for which I had qualified by winning a Super Satellite for $126 earlier in the week.

My fellow package winner was none other than fellow PartyGrinder PhilGreen111. As well as entry into the $10,000 Main Event, I get to stay in the prestigious Wynn hotel for seven nights, and also there’s about £1,000 towards flights and other expenses.

Of course I’m elated about qualifying for the biggest game in poker, and the icing on the cake is that several of my online chums on Party have also qualified. As well as PhilGreen111, I would also get to meet THEKID_88, ThundrXpress and KASABIAN_LSF for the first time.

Instead of just flying to Vegas for the WSOP Main Event, I thought I would get there a bit earlier, get settled, and get some practice in at the poker tables.

And so I find myself in Las Vegas, grinding live tourneys as a warm-up for the biggie, which begins two weeks from now.

I’m not going to promise much in the way of full blog updates while I’m here in the US. It just so happens I woke up early the last couple of mornings and have been seized by the compulsion to write something. (It’s my first ever experience of jetlag as I’ve never flown so far from the UK before – I have been warned the jetlag will be far worse when I get back to England, oh joy!)

I have created a Twitter account so I can post the occasional concise update on my donkament successes and failures, not to mention my experiences of American culture (i.e. stuffing my face with obscene quantities of food).

Time to sign off. Wish me luck at the tables...