Mission WSOP

http://www.surferspoker.com/showthread.php?p=101862#post101862

Check out the thread to see how it went.  I played really well but couldn’t win a coin flip with 5 left.  The good news is that I cashed for $300.  The bad news is that if I win that coin flip, I’m most likely guaranteed $500 with a shot at taking it down for $1000.  OH well… I played well and now have brought my bankroll to a new high: $2600+! 

Also, on Full Tilt, I will be running a Charity Tournament next Friday at 8:00 to support MS research.  The password is charity and the tournament can be found in the private area.  Hope to see y’all there!

I haven’t been playing very many tournaments lately but on a whim after all of the Razz cash games died down, I decided to jump into a 90-player Double Stack Turbo KO on Full Tilt.  The $3.30 buy-in was super easy on my bankroll (that was inching toward $2400 prior to the tourney) and I ended up practically dominating the entire tournament.  I picked up 7 knock outs and won the tournament for a total cash of $75.50.  That’s not a bad ROI!  I have posted the link to some of the Final Table hands that I posted on Surfers.  It was almost too easy for once.  Every hand held and I think I only had to win one race. 

http://www.surferspoker.com/showthread.php?p=101341#post101341

As for my bankroll, my Full Tilt bankroll went over $2000 for the first time since starting this and I have another $400 spread out over 4 other sites.  That puts me at $2400+.  The big improvement to my bankroll has been my switch to Razz cash games which I’m tracking.  I’ve played roughly 1600 hands and about 21 hours and am making about $12/hour playing Razz cash games.  Not bad so far. 

Some time last June, I came up with this idea to win $7/day or so and earn $2,000 to play in the World Series of Poker in 2008.  After long deliberation and a look at my current bankroll which is above where I needed it to be but not by much (right now, I’m just a few dollars shy of $2200), I’ve made a couple of decisions:

1. While I’m where I need to be as far as my bankroll is concerned, I’m not ready to start back at the level I would have to if I were to deplete my bankroll to pay for the $1,500 buy-in and the additional expenses of a trip to Vegas that I wanted to use my bankroll for.  So, I’m putting off the trip to Vegas to play in the WSOP until I have double in my bankroll to pay for what I need.  So, in this case, I would have to be at at least $4,000 in my bankroll to make this possible.

2. I am focusing on solid cash game play to build my bankroll.  From now on, whenever I play cash games, I am tracking my results in Excel and keeping track of my hourly rate and my BB/100 win rates.  I’ve designed a spreadsheet and so far it is working out well as I have been focusing on $0.50/$1 or $1/$2 Razz. 

3. I will take some bigger risks with my bankroll to play in some larger online tournaments in the big special events on either Full Tilt or Poker Stars.  The first one I’m contemplating is the $300 buy-in Razz event on Full Tilt in early May. 

4. I will play in at least one preliminary event in a poker series in Atlantic City prior to the end of the year.  Right now, I’m targeting the $200 buy-in Stud event in June at the Borgata Summer Open.

When all is said and done, while it is disappointing to concede that the play is to skip the WSOP this year (although I still may make the trek to Vegas for a few days), I think it is the smart play.  I would have had to payout from my bankroll now to have it for Vegas and I’m just not ready to drop down in level as much I am supposed to to go back to below $700 in bankroll.  Maybe losing the imaginary line of $2000 will help spark a bankroll run to really ignite my play as I feel there was something about that magical imaginary line that was affecting my play.

I’ve also decided to devote more of my blog to poker and less rambling about nonsense.  We’ll see how that goes.

Poker at such low limits is such a grind, I had not been having a lot of fun playing.  Hence, my lack of blogging about poker.  But on Sunday, on a whim, I entered a $75 satellite to a $1500 WSOP event on Full Tilt and came as close as you can to winning the seat without winning it.  I finished 3rd and top 2 got the seat.  I knocked out Full Tilt pro and Card Player writer, Roy "The Oracle" Winston and earned $208.  Definitely not the $1500+$500 spending money but I DID have fun because I felt like I had something to lose.  The constant playing for $1 or $2 here and there really made me lose my passion to play.  And I think that kept my bankroll stagnant since January.

So, I have bumped it up a little.  I have been playing bigger Sit & Gos (instead of $2 on average I’ve been bouncing between $5 & $10 buy-ins), I have been playing bigger cash games ($0.50/$1 NL and $0.50/$1 PL instead of $0.25/$0.50 NL and $2/$4 or $3/$6 Limit) and bigger tournaments.  Plus, I’ve tried to jump into tournaments and cash games with Full Tilt pros to keep me interested.

So far, I’ve landed a bunch of Full Tilt pro bust-outs in my poker playing:

Andy Bloch
Richard "Quiet Lion" Brodie
Michael Craig
John D’Agostino
Kristy Gazes
Jennifer Harman
Chip Jett
Lee Watkinson
Roy Winston

I missed out on my chance to get Scott Fischman yesterday after donking out of a $10 PL Omaha MTT.  In addition, I played a $0.50/$1 PL Omaha cash game with Jim McManus and won $20 in about 30-40 minutes of play and then ran over a $2/$4 HORSE game with Roy Winston and picked up $85 in about 50 minutes.  So, yesterday was prettay, prettay good.  I’m almost over $2200 and I think I was down to about $1800 about a week ago.  I’m still not outside of my bankroll management rules (with the exception of the satellite) but I am making poker more entertaining to play which is definitely helping me.

So, for the 5 people that read this, there will probably be a little more poker talk coming.

In addition, check out Seamheads and see some of the articles I’ve posted there.  I actually think they’re pretty good.

• 0-2 in my last NBA picks - I’m now 38-37-4 (51%).
• My bracket is completely busted.  I only had Carolina advance to the Final Four.  So much for upsets… four #1 seeds in the Final Four.
• I’m irritated with my cash game play and continue a down turn.  I want to take a break from the $0.25/$0.50 NL game but I don’t want to lose my Iron Man status. 
• The Phillies lost.  It was wall-to-wall baseball on Monday as I watched all or part of 7 games.  I’m thoroughly enjoyed the Braves 2 losses even if one of them was at the expense of one of my fantasy team pitchers.

Other than that, nothing new.