Posts Tagged ‘WSOP’

The second installment of my trip report from the main event of the 2010 World Series of Poker, covering Days 3 and 4, has just been published in the September issue of 2+2 Magazine. Here’s an excerpt:

I came into Day 4 with a monster stack relative to the field. I had over 500,000 chips, when the average was about 180,000, ranking me 27th among the more than 1,200 players who remained. Day 4 was a particularly good day for this, as it was also the day that would separate the players who would win nothing from those who would take home at least $19,000. With 747 players to be paid, no one wanted to be eliminated in 748th place (or 762nd, for that matter), which meant that most people were playing more conservatively than usual.  Read the complete post...

The first installment of my 2010 WSOP main event trip report, covering Days 1 and 2, is now appearing in the 2+2 Internet Magazine:

“We began play with 30,000 chips each and blinds of just 50 and 100. On the very first hand, about half the table folded before the player on my right, a young French Canadian in a red hoodie who looked sort of like a raccoon, made a small raise to 200. I was next to act holding K5s. I re-raised to 600. Everyone folded, and just like that I was up to 30,350 chips. It was the most I would have all day.”

If you want to find out what went wrong on Day 1 and why I got called a “douchebag” on Day 2, then read the article. And of course, let me know what you think of it!

I know a lot of you have seen these already, but I promised a few people big clear links in the body of a blog post, so here we go:

Poker News Video Interview

Poker News Hand Analysis

Let me explain for the record why I am wearing the ridiculous backwards hat in the video. I’d been wearing a hat all day, which I usually do when playing poker. They wanted me to take it off because the brim was casting a shadow over my face, but I had awful hat hair. So we compromised on a backwards hat.

This year’s WSOP journey ended for me about an hour ago. Out of more than 7000 players, I finished 87th and won just shy of $80,000. There was nothing dramatic about it. I lost two very standard pre-flop hands to Eric Baldwin, once with A4s < KJs for a 700K pot and once with A8s < JTs for a 1.6M chip pot. Then I made a standard preflop shove with A7, got called by QQ, and lost.

There is always a modest amount of disappointment when it’s all over, but of course all in all I’m quite pleased with the result. I’m also very happy that for the first time ever I feel like I played through this whole tournament without making any big mistakes and with only a few small ones. That doesn’t mean that everything always went my way, but as they say you play the cards you’re dealt, and I believe that I would play most of them the same way if I had it to do all over again.  Read the complete post...

Thanks to piefarmer for finding and posting this.

Seat 1: David Baker (951000) NOT Bakes of FTOPS final table fame, I’m told
Seat 2: Andrew Brokos (1223000) table chipleader
Seat 3: Eric Baldwin (292000) Basebaldy online, 2009 Cardplayer player of the year, WSOP bracelet, UB sponsored player
Seat 4: Russell Rosenblum (152000) lawyer from Bethesda, MD; final tabled the main event in 2002
Seat 5: Brian Jensen (521000) 2007 PCA winner; played with him on Day 3
Seat 6: Rafael Sansrodrigo (440000) can’t find anything but chip counts
Seat 7: Breeze Zuckerman (738000) last woman remaining (I played with the second-to-last yesterday)
Seat 8: Paul Evans (305000) middle-aged guy, a lot of lifetime cashes, including two 2nd places in WSOP prelims
Seat 9: Adam Levy (1147000) Roothlus online, played with him deep in the 2008 WSOP, also UB-sponsored

Sure would be fun to bust both of UB’s horses today….

The starting table was about what I was expecting. There were a couple of good players, one of whom quickly lost a flip to me with AK to my JJ to get busted, and then a few quite weak players. Even more to my good fortune, a few of the weak players took sizable pots off of a few of the good players, which helped to keep the latter out of my way. In addition to the coin flip, I won two big pots that skyrocketed me over a million chips in the first half hour:

I call an early position raise with 22, and the SB calls also. Flop 7s 4c 2s. We all check- against better players I might bet here but right now I really felt like it was overwhelmingly likely these guys had nothing. Turn 3s. SB checks, other guy bets 26K, I make it 90K, SB folds, guy calls. River 3, guy bets 100K, I shove for like 300K more, he folds.  Read the complete post...

I woke up this morning convinced that I would be assigned to the table of tournament chipleader Tony Dunst- the first time we met in real life was just moments before learning we’d be seated next to each other in a 5K 6-max- but I was spared that fate at least. Here’s how we’re currently fixed, though naturally a few of these names will probably change pretty quickly:

Seat 1: Vincent Chahley (167000) investment banker
Seat 2: Dorothy VonSachsen (112000) has final tabled WSOP prelims
Seat 3: Dimitri Rassam (529000) there’s an actor by this name, but he looks too young, as the poker player took second in a senior’s event at the Bellagio
Seat 4: Neil Tyler (220000) online player TheOracleAA
Seat 5: Andrew Brokos (487000) 4 for 5 in WSOP ME cashes
Seat 6: Steven Burkholder (356000) PiKappRaider online, won two FTOPS events, a WCOOP, and several Sunday majors, runner up in a $1500 PLO WSOP event
Seat 7: Gary Kostiuk (253000) no info
Seat 8: Lou Barlow (361000) not the musician. He won an online contest (not a satellite) to get his seat
Seat 9: Nikolay Losev (181000) a lot of deep cashes on the European poker circuit. I do like that his last name is “Lose EV” though.

Couldn’t find much on most of these guys, which is probably a good thing:

Vincent Lodato 134,700 AMAZON/322/1
Andrew Brokos 503,300 AMAZON/322/2
Andrew Jeter 124,300 AMAZON/322/3
Simon Ravnsbaek 233,200 AMAZON/322/4 (couple of shallow cases on the circuit: WSOP, WPT, EPT, Aussie Millions)
Daan Slutter 172,900 AMAZON/322/5 (sponsored by Everest Poker, but only one live cash)
Spencer Hudson 167,600 AMAZON/322/6 (online player UHBigTex, won the Sunday Million, second in a WCOOP FLHE event, his P5’s profile lists JJProdigy as one of his favorite players WTF)
James Coca 121,000 AMAZON/322/7
William Schweinebraten 200,500 AMAZON/322/8 (5th in a WSOP circuit event, no other cashes)
Shane Rose 414,400 AMAZON/322/9 (LA live player, won the CA State Championships but no other notable cashes)