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General/p1: Possibly too level-headed
On the 2+2 pokercast in two hours
by Adanthar on 07/15/08
WSOP - Day 1b Voice Blog -- High Hopes, Bad Endings
by Adanthar on 07/06/08
Networking > poker
by Adanthar on 07/02/08
My final 2 prelims turned out to be a standard 0 for 2 - I won 1 hand in one of them and 0 for'd the other. (When you 3 bet ~5 times in limit and wind up flopping/turning 2 pairs (1 top, 1 middle), neither of which are good at showdown, you're not gonna get anywhere in a donkament.)
On the other hand, in the last 2 days, I *did* meet about a thousand people I badly needed to meet, and a couple of those are going to result in what I feel is a solid opportunity down the road. Poker is such a small world that almost everybody who's anybody is in the middle of the Strip right now, so there are a lot of different parties, constant networking, and everyone's collaborating on something or other. With the amount of money behind the scenes of this game, it shouldn't be a surprise, but I do feel extremely lucky to be in the position I am right now.
With that said, it's not all a total loss poker-wise, either. As I said earlier, I'm switching games to PLO/razz as a way of temporarily unstressing from donkaments (where, frankly, running bad is getting old). All of my PLO games so far have been on Cake so I don't have graphs, but in the last 2 weeks, I'm up 2K at midstakes PLO and 3K in midstakes/HU razz in less than 3 thousand hands (and about 25 HU SNG's), mostly due to good game selection but definitely having improved in both. At this point, all signs point to me playing them full time - especially since, due to being at the Rio constantly, I'm only playing for an hour or two a night right now and on only a couple of tables at a time. Once I'm back home, I can do way better than that.
Or, I could just FT the ME and spend the next four months getting coached by CTS or something.
On the other hand, in the last 2 days, I *did* meet about a thousand people I badly needed to meet, and a couple of those are going to result in what I feel is a solid opportunity down the road. Poker is such a small world that almost everybody who's anybody is in the middle of the Strip right now, so there are a lot of different parties, constant networking, and everyone's collaborating on something or other. With the amount of money behind the scenes of this game, it shouldn't be a surprise, but I do feel extremely lucky to be in the position I am right now.
With that said, it's not all a total loss poker-wise, either. As I said earlier, I'm switching games to PLO/razz as a way of temporarily unstressing from donkaments (where, frankly, running bad is getting old). All of my PLO games so far have been on Cake so I don't have graphs, but in the last 2 weeks, I'm up 2K at midstakes PLO and 3K in midstakes/HU razz in less than 3 thousand hands (and about 25 HU SNG's), mostly due to good game selection but definitely having improved in both. At this point, all signs point to me playing them full time - especially since, due to being at the Rio constantly, I'm only playing for an hour or two a night right now and on only a couple of tables at a time. Once I'm back home, I can do way better than that.
Or, I could just FT the ME and spend the next four months getting coached by CTS or something.
Last couple of days
by Adanthar on 06/29/08
Not much to report. I very uneventfully busted from the 2K (there was some hilarious stuff at the table, but not much of it involved me), then felt a little under the weather today and skipped the 1500 - not that it made any difference, because it was apparently sold out long before I would've gotten there. I'm also skipping online tomorrow (Sunday) to go meet a few people I've been planning to talk to for a while, although, if the stars align and I get out of there early, I might get to enter the 1500 HORSE event at 5 PM only an hour or two late.
In other, only tangentially related news, it turns out there are actually some HU razz SNG's going off on FTP at fairly high stakes. My record so far is a nice 14-6 and only about 3 people I played against haven't been terrible/I felt like I had a small edge vs. the #2 guy on the leaderboard for the year, so it seems like I'm gonna be doing a bunch of that along with a bunch of PLO. NL is dead to me :p Along with being much tougher than it used to be, almost every other poker game allows for more creativity. I may change my mind if I ever get into HU NL, but so far, midstakes PLO is a much more action-oriented game that leads to much tougher decisions if you like playing big pots than those at the equivalent NL stakes games.
Next week's schedule loosely looks like this:
-$1500 NL Monday (if no HORSE tomorrow/I don't make day 2)
-$1500 limit shootout Tuesday
Several days off (possibly playing that energy drink freeroll thing Wednesday...seems +EV?) There's also a Cardrunners party in the middle here, and I'll also be grinding some sats if I can make it to the Rio.
-Main event Sunday. For a few different reasons, the house has collectively decided on Sunday registration. In other words, I'm guaranteed not to bust out before roughly 3/4 of the field *and* save yet more money on online buyins :p
One thing about these summer poker boot camps that spring up around the WSOP - everybody goes home having learned a bunch of new things. Seeing as how I've chronically busted out too early to actually play any poker, I don't know if I'm better at tournaments than I was a month and a half ago...but I am definitely way better at three separate non-NL games and will make it a goal to learn more about all of the facets of HORSE when I make it back home.
(Except stud high. That's pretty much the devil.)
In other, only tangentially related news, it turns out there are actually some HU razz SNG's going off on FTP at fairly high stakes. My record so far is a nice 14-6 and only about 3 people I played against haven't been terrible/I felt like I had a small edge vs. the #2 guy on the leaderboard for the year, so it seems like I'm gonna be doing a bunch of that along with a bunch of PLO. NL is dead to me :p Along with being much tougher than it used to be, almost every other poker game allows for more creativity. I may change my mind if I ever get into HU NL, but so far, midstakes PLO is a much more action-oriented game that leads to much tougher decisions if you like playing big pots than those at the equivalent NL stakes games.
Next week's schedule loosely looks like this:
-$1500 NL Monday (if no HORSE tomorrow/I don't make day 2)
-$1500 limit shootout Tuesday
Several days off (possibly playing that energy drink freeroll thing Wednesday...seems +EV?) There's also a Cardrunners party in the middle here, and I'll also be grinding some sats if I can make it to the Rio.
-Main event Sunday. For a few different reasons, the house has collectively decided on Sunday registration. In other words, I'm guaranteed not to bust out before roughly 3/4 of the field *and* save yet more money on online buyins :p
One thing about these summer poker boot camps that spring up around the WSOP - everybody goes home having learned a bunch of new things. Seeing as how I've chronically busted out too early to actually play any poker, I don't know if I'm better at tournaments than I was a month and a half ago...but I am definitely way better at three separate non-NL games and will make it a goal to learn more about all of the facets of HORSE when I make it back home.
(Except stud high. That's pretty much the devil.)
The Scotty Nguyen story
by Adanthar on 06/25/08
Taking a couple of days off between NL events (I think my next one will be the 5K 6 max on Thursday.) In the meantime, here's the Scotty story I promised earlier:
My first table of the 1500 had an empty seat on it for over 2 hours. If you've played any WSOP events, you know that an empty seat at your first table is *always* a pro running late, but usually, they tend to show up within an hour. This time, the stack was being blinded off all the way to the 100/200 level, so by the time the pro - who turned out to be Scotty - showed up, he was already down to 1800 chips.
Naturally, Scotty was unhappy about that and asked the dealer why he didn't have 3K. But at the WSOP, only late registrations get their full 3K chips (and get seated in Seat 10); everyone else gets a regular seat and then gets blinded off if they're late, which is normal. Scotty, though, obviously didn't like the idea of starting out with a 9 bet stack, said "I'm not playing", and went off to find the tournament director. I think he just wanted to be allowed to unregister, but instead, a couple of minutes later, the floor showed up with a full stack and gave it to him. On the one hand, this is pretty much blatant cheating - it's a free 1200 chips that nobody not named Scotty Nguyen would ever get; on the other, I a)kinda sympathized with the guy and b)personally was of the opinion that I was better off with Scotty having 15 BB at my table than him having 9. (Don't get me wrong; he clearly plays well. But much like every other live pro, the guy's not particularly math-oriented and doesn't know short stack strategy.)
Also naturally, he then owned my soul by proceeding to suck out on me when he pushed A5 into my queens. Whatever; no harm done, and I guess vaguely condoning the floor cheating meant I had it coming? Heh.
The better part of the story is why Scotty was late. Apparently, his young kid opened the cage containing two very rare, $6,000 capuchin monkeys. The female stayed in the cage, but the male immediately ran off to the nearest tall tree, and the three fire engines Scotty called to his house couldn't get him out. By the time Scotty finally gave up and showed up at the Rio, the plan was to leave the female monkey outside in the cage in hopes of luring the male back there. I've got no word on whether the plan was successful or whether the Las Vegas wild monkey population just increased by 1, but if you do, I'd totally love to hear it!
My first table of the 1500 had an empty seat on it for over 2 hours. If you've played any WSOP events, you know that an empty seat at your first table is *always* a pro running late, but usually, they tend to show up within an hour. This time, the stack was being blinded off all the way to the 100/200 level, so by the time the pro - who turned out to be Scotty - showed up, he was already down to 1800 chips.
Naturally, Scotty was unhappy about that and asked the dealer why he didn't have 3K. But at the WSOP, only late registrations get their full 3K chips (and get seated in Seat 10); everyone else gets a regular seat and then gets blinded off if they're late, which is normal. Scotty, though, obviously didn't like the idea of starting out with a 9 bet stack, said "I'm not playing", and went off to find the tournament director. I think he just wanted to be allowed to unregister, but instead, a couple of minutes later, the floor showed up with a full stack and gave it to him. On the one hand, this is pretty much blatant cheating - it's a free 1200 chips that nobody not named Scotty Nguyen would ever get; on the other, I a)kinda sympathized with the guy and b)personally was of the opinion that I was better off with Scotty having 15 BB at my table than him having 9. (Don't get me wrong; he clearly plays well. But much like every other live pro, the guy's not particularly math-oriented and doesn't know short stack strategy.)
Also naturally, he then owned my soul by proceeding to suck out on me when he pushed A5 into my queens. Whatever; no harm done, and I guess vaguely condoning the floor cheating meant I had it coming? Heh.
The better part of the story is why Scotty was late. Apparently, his young kid opened the cage containing two very rare, $6,000 capuchin monkeys. The female stayed in the cage, but the male immediately ran off to the nearest tall tree, and the three fire engines Scotty called to his house couldn't get him out. By the time Scotty finally gave up and showed up at the Rio, the plan was to leave the female monkey outside in the cage in hopes of luring the male back there. I've got no word on whether the plan was successful or whether the Las Vegas wild monkey population just increased by 1, but if you do, I'd totally love to hear it!
