Month: December 2008

I had high hopes for the Guiness World Record event.  After all, I had probably won 20 seats to the damn thing.  Unfortunately, I busted in 8,860th place where 8,750 got paid.  I was short and shoved KQs which got looked up by A9.  I didn’t hit any of the cards I needed and I was out without collecting my $20.  I lost a big pot for about half my chips a short while earlier when AK whiffed on the flop and a big stack moved in on me.  I struggled along with my short stack for quite a while, doubling with AQ against AT, but never really got much traction.  I got three bet a lot in the middle stages, probably by legitimate hands but it was a rough slog.

I also won another seat into the Sunday Million.  In a feat of stupendous bankroll management, I went ahead and played it.  A whopping 16,260 runners showed up and I had a pretty good run.  I was really finding a lot of good spots in the early going and ran above average for pretty much the entire event without really taking much risk.  I didn’t get very far out of line and certainly never showed anything that would suggest I was out of line.  I was above average when the bubble broke and I collected $325.60 with my FPP investment.  Unfortunately, I had no cards whatsoever after the bubble during the silly period when there were called all-ins on almost every hand.  I went from 150% of average to below average without playing a hand in fairly short order as people busted right and left.  Unfortunately, the next payout level was about 2,000 bustouts after the money, so I needed to get something.  I got down to 42k when the blinds were 3k/6k/600, playing a very patient short stack.  I found QQ in EP and got isolated by AJo in late position.  Seemed like a great spot to chip up to 100k and be back around average, but the flop was AAJ and I didn’t hit runner-runner quads.  I was still happy with my return and felt like I played a good tourney.

The real highlight was my slug chop.  I started out with $0.71 from Dan Kimbell in the Guiness WR event.  Then I picked up $8.33 from Wack in the Full Tilt Holiday points freeroll thingie.  Then Matthew went ahead and won the damn thing, so I got a cool $500 for that.  So I won about $850 on my FPP bankroll rebuild quest in one day.  I’ve spent almost half of my FPPs now, but my roll is like $1,700 now.

The Guiness event seems to have made the FFP sats even softer than usual or I’ve just been lucky.  I have cashed in 2 of the set of 4 sats at least three or four times and I’ve even cashed in 3 of the 4 once.  In addition, Stars gave me some free money because they have been so slow with my cashout.  Merry Christmas to me!

I’ve now seen at least 100 2 outers and 3 outers in these things. You see silly all-ins in the early stages when people seem to think gambling it up is the most fun way to proceed and then you see them later once the blinds get crazy. As a result, I’ve seen more bad beats in a week than I saw in my whole life!

I’ve taken to playing these sats four at a time. I fire up a 210 and then three 70s to run at the same time. The one table 70s actually take a bit longer. I pretty consistently win one of the four sats. That means that I earn 11 T$ per 420 FPPs. We’ll call that 25 T$ per 1,000, which would translate to an earn of $1,750 or about a 50% premium over concierge.

I’m pretty sure that I actually do better in the 210s than the 70s. The bubble play in the 210s is shockingly bad. The last one I played was a classic WTF? example. There was a player who was certain to be all-in in exactly one more hand. He had only enough chips to pay the antes. The hand before he is set to go all-in for less than the big blind, a player calls all-in with A7s. My brain almost exploded. Somehow, his insanity was rewarded when he caught an Ace to crack 88. The next hand, the shorty is all-in and four people have enough sense to call the big blind to minimize his chances of surviving. The flop comes down A65hh and one of the four people who called him shoves! This actually lowered my IQ by 20 points as I attempted to make sense of it. If any of us win the hand, the game is over and we all win. What could be possibly be thinking to make that bet? In classic donk fashion, he had A2o. The all-in player had J5. If he had caught two pair, I think it would legally justified to hunt the guy down ad shoot him. It would be merciful, right? He can’t possibly survive in the wild.

I also played in the Blogger PLO8 tourney tonight. I busted 110/396 where 72 pay. I had a huge stack, when a guy raised the CO with QQxx unsuited. I re-raised pot with KKxx double suited. He shoved (for like 5% more) and of course flopped his Queen. I then lost a big pot when all the money went in on the flop. I had top set on a JT7r board and got called by AK32. The turn was a 6 (I just knew he would split the pot with me) and the river was a Q. I guess the split would have been better. I busted with KQJTss on a JT7 board against a set of 7s. He actually played fine, as I didn’t have many chips left on the flop.

I should have just sat out when I was among the chip leaders so that I could lock up my seat in the main event, but I’m too stupid to do that.

I played two cash tourneys with some of my accumulated T$ last night. I played a $4 limit tourney and a $5 NL tourney. The limit tourney was slightly softer than the WSOP limit event! I got bad beat like three times and busted out of the limit event early.

The NL event had 909 runners and I made a fairly deep run. I wound up finishing 27th for a massive $18.19 payday. It was a lot of fun. I actually blew up at the end a bit. I doubled up a guy in a blind v blind situation where I flopped middle pair on a raggy board and he flopped two pair. I knew I was behind, but I figured I had outs. After that, I ended up shoving A5s on the Hijack and getting snapped off by TT.

I’ve also cashed in a couple more 210 FPP sats. Ho hum.

I have mostly been playing the Two Hundred Grand sats because they run pretty much continuously.  My record in the 70 FFP sats that pay one person $11 has been fairly dismal.  I think I’ve won two of them in 16 attempts.  I’ve run a bit bad, since I got heads-up in six and only won the two.  They play really insane and the structure is very fast, so they really are a bit of a lottery.  I also played a 5,400 sat to the Sunday Million (10 runners, 4 get paid) and I won the only one I played.  My net winnings from FPPs thus far is $336 and I’ve spent a total of 9,000 FPPs.  If I can keep up this pace, I’ll have won over $2,000 by the end of the run.

There are some better sats that run on Sunday, but I was too busy to play any of them.  There are a million sats to the Turbo Takedown, which (as Elmo pointed out) is a decent shot at a few more dollars.  Unfortunately, it only runs once a month, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it or not.

I might start parlaying my T$ into MTT buy-ins as I build up a roll.  I guess at this point, I’m only technically rolled for $4 or $5 buy-ins, but I’ll probably assume I will have in excess of $1,000 of the exercise and consider myself rolled for $10 buy-ins.  Plus, I could always redeposit, although I’d consider that a failure.

Also, there are some freeroll opportunities associated with the blog:

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 002964

I tried four of these last night, cashing in two.  They seat 20 players and award 6 seats.  Each seat is worth 11 T$.  This particular sat is worth about $3.39 at the concierge rate, so you need to cash in about a third of them to make the concierge rate.  I cashed in half, which seemed fairly sustainable.  One of the ones I busted in was one where I was all-in preflop on the first level with AA against Q7o.  Of course, the board came Q7x on the flop and I didn’t catch up.  So, the quality of play is somewhat poor.

The downside of playing this particular sat is that the upside is also quite limited.  You cannot possibly win more than 11 T$ on any individual sat.  If you were able to cash in 67% of the sats you entered (which is likely impossible, even as weak as the fields are), the most I could grind out playing these is about $5,000.  Although that would be a nice upgrade from the $1,100 I would get from the concierge, that doesn’t have the excitement of the bigger field tourneys which potentially offer much bigger paydays.  Also, I’d have to play 330 of these and they don’t run often enough to multi-table, so It would likely take me three or four months and I don’t have that much patience.

They are turbos and have a very flat payout, so they run very quickly.  I might use them when I have only a short while to play, but I don’t think they will be my main FPP purchase.

I have officially cashed out of online poker.  My last Stars withdrawal is on the way to the bank and my last Cake check is headed to me.  I actually have some money still at Bodog and WPEX, but I’m not 100% certain I’ll ever see that!  I’m working on them, though.  I have realized a very nice profit on my initial $500 investment and even won and played enough to enter the main event of the WSOP on money I won and to play what I think is a total of nine WSOP preliminary events.  I’ve cashed in two of them, so I guess I’m fairly happy with that.  I know that I had a tremendous time both years, so I’m really happy with that.

I’ve decided that my quest will be to see what I can turn the bonus FPPs that I have accumulated into.  I currently have a balance of exactly 69,976 FPPs.  If I had continued to make SuperNova and had access to concierge they would be worth $1,128.65 worth of stuff.  Since I wimped out and don’t have access — I will have to sing for my supper.  I am looking around and trying to find the best bang for the buck in FPP tourneys and see how much “free” money I can generate.  I’ll update periodically.

I managed to earn enough points to get back on track for SuperNova in October, but essentially completely droppped out again in November.  I think I played about 400 hands in November and I guess I’ve officially given up on the quest.  Although SuperNova would significantly increase my rakeback, I just can’t seem to get into it.

I have a half-formed idea for my next poker quest.  I think I might cash out my bankroll completely and try to see how much cash I can generate from my FPPs.  It sounds like an interesting quest, but perhaps the reality of it will not be very exciting.

I am playing in a small private tourney that is set up by Darus Suharto.  It will be a very soft field, featuring Darus, Eric Lynch, Matthew Hilger,  yankees31, chrisjp and some frieds of each of them.  I predict I will be first to bust.