Mission WSOP

So, July was a pretty rough poker month for me.  I had a shot at a $225 bonus at Full Tilt so I went a little nuts with playing.  After the month wrapped, my bankroll dipped to $3650.  A tough month, indeed.  Part of the issue was playing too much Pot Limit Omaha and the other issue was my inability to play many tournaments because I just lost some of the stamina needed to play.  I can see how some of the pros just fall into these dips when they are way up that really crush their bankrolls.

I feel like I play better in short periods of time when I really want to play.  When I force it, things just go the other way.  Hopefully, I’ve learned my lesson and won’t do that anymore.  We’ll see.

This weekend is our last home tournament before the main event.  We’ve really built up a nice prize pool for our final event and I really screwed the pooch last tournament by going out early.  Now, it is a ridiculously tight race at the top of the points standings and I need to do well in this final event to put some pressure on those who want to knock me out of the top spot.  I’d really like to go into the final event on top of the points list.  Either way, I should own the money list which is not a bad consolation prize!

Anyway, you should see more of me here in the coming weeks.  I’m also still writing for Baseball Digest Daily, Seamheads and I recently joined the team at MVN which has already been a fun time.  I also got to meet Josh Hamilton, Milton Bradley and a few other members of the Texas Rangers on the day the All-Star rosters were announced when they were playing the Orioles in Baltimore earlier this year.  It was the highlight of my year so far.  I look forward to covering a few games before the end of the year for Baseball Digest Daily in Baltimore and think the Orioles’ public relations team are a definite class act.

Hey everyone still willing to look here and see a complete and utter lack of updates on a day to day basis.  Thought I would drop in and provide some updates and throw out an idea that I’m working on for the site.

First, let’s hit the updates.  Online, I’ve gone to playing mostly PL Omaha for the past month or so.  This has been a positive bankroll move and I am currently sitting at $3900 on Full Tilt, $270 on Poker Stars and $110 on Bodog bringing the Online Poker bankroll to a highwater mark of $4280.  So, in roughly a year, I have turned $50 into $4,280… that’s a 8460% ROI if my calculations are correct.  I would say that is money well spent.

Some minor issues with my online game have been my inability to devote much time to poker.  I went to Niagara Falls last week and have been focused on my writing for Baseball Digest Daily and Seamheads and loving this baseball season which totally provides me with little time to play.  I qualified for the WSOP qualifier on Poker Stars and then forgot about it and missed the final qualifier on Saturday… DOH!!!!!!!  I haven’t been following the WSOP as religiously as I normally would since I am still a bit disappointed that I wasn’t there this year but it is amazing to see how many pros have won bracelets this year… I think it will be a good thing for the game.

Live poker has been nearly non-existent for me.  I played in the $200 Buy-In Stud event at the Borgata Poker Open, lasted about 6 hours and busted out somewhere in the middle of the pack.  In our home games, I notched a 2nd place finish and won last night.  Last night’s game was pretty amazing from the standpoint that I was never really in trouble until I got heads up and then had to double up by hitting an 8-outer to get to even in chips.  Then, I slowly but surely took out Drew who is one of the tougher players there.  I haven’t calculated the points for the site after last night’s results but I am pretty sure that win will catapult me to a place I don’t think I’ve ever been in in a season — first on the points list.  I am always near the top but this is my first stop there.  I also notched my fifth win and 18th cash in 46 tournaments.

As far as my thoughts on this site.  As soon as this season’s WSOP ends, I will be focused on accomplishing building a poker bankroll big enough to tackle at least one event at the WSOP in ‘09.  If anyone out there reads the site and has a desire to do the same in ‘09 and also has an interest in blogging about it, I will be looking to add a few writers to the site in the next two months.  My e-mail address is bjoseph22=at=comcast.net (sub @ for =at=).  One thing I’m looking for is people willing to practice similar strict bankroll management practices to prove that a smart player can work their bankroll successfully.  This would all be discussed prior to giving access to the blogging piece.  If no one responds, then it will just continue to be me.

Long time, no blog… I haven’t had a chance really to blog about my latest poker escapades but I have had a few nice cashes recently to bolster the bankroll.  First, I took down the $4,000 Guaranteed HORSE tournament on Full Tilt for an $1,100 cash and then added a $109 Super Satellite to the FTOPS Main Event but cashed it in instead of using it.  Now, the bankroll sits at somewhere above $3,500 which is a nice jump in the bankroll.  I also am close to cracking the Top 100 on Bluff’s PokerDB Razz rankings.

It wasn’t all good as I tried to satellite into the FTOPS Razz event but fell short.  I wanted to play in the event but a $300 buy-in was just a little too rich for my blood. 

I don’t think I commented on the recent change made to the WSOP Main Event but since everyone else in the poker world has, I figured why not me too.  If you haven’t heard, the Main Event will play down to the final table and then will be stopped and play will resume 4 months later and played on tape delay on television.  This gives Harrah’s and ESPN a chance to market 9 players before it is decided rather than 1 player afterwards.  From a marketing standpoint, I think it is genius but opens the game up to some integrity issues as well as a number of other factors that many have mentioned… although I am still for the change.  If anyone who makes the final table and is unhappy with the decision, I will gladly take their spot.

Here’s the pictures of my recent results from my big win:

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.

Saturday’s Picks

Denver -8 Golden State
Memphis +2.5 L.A. Clippers

1-1 to move to 38-35-4 (52%) in the NBA.

New York/Toronto OVER 195.5 (WIN)
Washington/Sacramento UNDER 204.5 (LOSS)

I finally lost a Final Four team when Stephen Curry kept up his end of the bargain in helping his team to their 25th straight win.  I still have Carolina, Texas and Xavier remaining.  I’m still in good shape.

MIDWEST: (10) Davidson 73, (3) Wisconsin 56
MIDWEST: (1) Kansas 72, (12) Villanova 57
SOUTH: (2) Texas 82, (3) Stanford 62
SOUTH: (1) Memphis 92, (5) Michigan State 74

Conference-By-Conference

Southern (1): 3-0
Conference USA (1): 3-0
Big 12 (2): 9-4
Big East (1): 11-7
Pac-10 (1): 7-5
ACC (1): 5-3
Big Ten: 5-4
Atlantic 10 (1): 3-2
Sun Belt: 2-2
Horizon: 1-1
Metro Atlantic: 1-1
SEC: 4-6 <— OUT - 6 Teams In And None To Elite 8
Mountain West: 1-2
West Coast: 1-3
America East: 0-1 
Atlantic Sun: 0-1
Big Sky: 0-1
Big South: 0-1
Big West: 0-1
Colonial Athletic: 0-1
Ivy: 0-1
Mid-American: 0-1
Mid-Continent: 0-1
Missouri Valley: 0-1
Northeast: 0-1 
Ohio Valley: 0-1
Patriot: 0-1
Southland: 0-1
Southwestern Athletic: 0-1
Western Athletic: 0-1