Posts Tagged ‘colossus’

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WSOP $565 No Limit Hold’em COLOSSUS & Kate Hoang Heads Up For A Bracelet

June 4, 2018

So after busting the Aria O8 event on Saturday, I went to the Rio to quasi-sweat Kate Hoang’s deep run in the $1500 WSOP Omaha 8 tournament and play some $20/$40 O8 cash myself.

My O8 game was actually very good but there was no love for me and I ended up finishing -$643 over about four hours and multiple extensive breaks away from the table watching Kate’s final table.

I ended up cashing out around 2 AM and the WSOP staff called it a night around the same time and added a fourth day to Kate’s event and she was due back at 2 PM Sunday with four players, left sitting second in chips.

I am very much rooting for Kate – and anyone from the Pacific Northwest really – so Tormund and I got to the Rio a little after 2 PM hoping to see her close out a win before our HORSE tournament started at Venetian at 4 PM. There was early good news as we passed one of the remaining players at the entrance indicating that they were now down to three players.

The short stack was pesky and hung around for a while, but they eventually eliminated him and Kate was heads up for a bracelet for the second time in three years. In fact, she took an insanely brutal beat against Josh Arieh at the $10k PLO8 final table last year that cost her a huge chip lead and eventually the tournament. So three straight years with a final table and at least two second place finishes locked up. Needless to say, Kate is on everyone’s radar now.

Tormund and I hung around to watch this heads up battle until about 4:15 and it looked like Kate might close it out before we left, but the other guy fought back and eventually took a commanding lead. The players went on break and that was our cue to try to go make our own money and root her on from afar.

They ended up battling heads up for nearly four hours, constantly changing chip leads and forcing the staff to add at least three levels of play that previously did not exist. Alas, Kate ended up finishing in second place for a hefty cash of $148,150. Amazing.

And yet I really feel her pain. Kate has been nothing but humble when I’ve heard people talk about her success but I know she had to really, really, REALLY want that bracelet. Hell, I would.

Still, it was another amazing performance from one of our area’s top players and I’m personally quite confident that Kate has bracelets in her future.

In other local player news, The Sandman is making waves in the $2500 Mixed Triple Draw Lowball tournament. He bagged a top two stack after Day 1 and was still alive with 12 players left after Day 2. I slept in super late today and wanted to catch up on some things otherwise I would have shown up to the Rio early today to sweat his sick run. I’ve been keeping an eye on it via PokerNews and he currently sits 7th in chips with ten players left and a guaranteed payout of nearly $12k.

Yesterday I played the $600 HORSE tourney at Venetian and while I did manage to accumulate some chips for the first time this trip, it was another incredibly disappointing finish. I made it to dinner break with about 30k, which was well above average, but came back from break and immediately lost three pots in a row and was back to nearly starting stack.

Some brutal run outs in the stud variants crippled me. First I had four to an ace high flush and a gut shot in a three way pot in stud high only to finish with an ace high hand. Then in Stud 8 I was facing an opponent clearly trying to punt by betting an obvious pair of 2s with no low draw and I had four to a low working plus all my cards as likely winners if they pair. I missed my low and made a pair of kings on 7th, but he rivered fours and deuces to scoop me. Why not raise my hand at some point, you say? Because punters don’t fold. This guy was going to 7th street no matter what our boards looked like or what I did.

I was down to 6000 in chips with blinds at 1000-1500 when we arrived at limit hold’em and I had 1500 in the big blind holding AJ. Matt Grapenthien, a notable mixed games player, opened in early position, the button called, and I 3-bet to get my stack in. They both called and I bet my last 1500 in the dark before the dealer brought the flop. It was a pretty favorable AT3 rainbow board and I was quite happy to see Grapes make it 3000 to go. The button tanked for quite some time and called two bets cold. The turn paired the ten and Matt bet again. I don’t love that card because tens are definitely hands Matt would raise on the flop to try to isolate with a player all in, but I still thought I had very good winning chances. The button called again. The river was a 5, Grapes bet, and the button called. Grapes rolled over A6 and I was pretty happy to see that I had tripled up.

And then the button rolled his hand. Why is he rolling his hand? How can he ever have the best hand here? Maybe he has an ace with a slightly better kicker? Surely, he would call the flop much faster if he had AK or AQ. Nope. He doesn’t have either of those hands. He doesn’t have an ace at all actually. Nor does he have trip tens.

He has pocket fives. A rivered full house. A hand that 98% of poker players would snap fold on the flop for two bets cold without giving it a second thought.

This is one of those poker stories that sound almost too unbelievable to be true. I mean I don’t really believe it and it happened to me. I think I actually sat in my seat for a full two minutes after I busted out in disbelief. It was such a sick parlay for it to happen. In a no limit tournament, my four big blinds would never get a fold from 55, but in a limit event, with a third player in the pot, THAT RAISED THE FLOP TO ISOLATE, there is no way I should have ever lost here. I had Grapes drawing dead to a chop on the turn and he gave me another chance at protection by betting his A6 again.

Ugh. I wouldn’t have had a great stack after that, but it would have been a full triple up and would have given me some hope of getting back into the fight. Alas, it was my fourth consecutive bust out in Vegas so far to go along with two small losses in cash games. It has not been a good first week.

I’m about to hop in the shower and head to the Rio to play the 5 PM (and last) flight of the Colossus. The structure in this event is one of the worst at the WSOP and no limit tournaments are not my preference, but I have cashed the Colossus in back-to-back years. Hopefully I can run deep again and maybe make my first Day 2 of the trip? That would be pretty cool.

I will post updates here – and keep an eye on what Sandman has going on – but probably won’t get too in depth with it as I’m playing.

5:10 PM: Great planning on my part. I’m currently four rows deep in line to register the Colossus. The Atom was walking out of registration as I walked up and said it took him a solid 30 minutes to get through.

Sandman update: 5th of 8 left. I’ll see if I can snipe a pic on my way to my seat.

One more interesting piece of info: Phil Ivey played the Colossus yesterday. Let that sink in.

He’s baaaaaaaaack.

5:31 PM: And I’m in. Starting with 5k and blinds at 25/50. I recognize zero players at my table, but superficial judgement is it looks promising.

5:35 PM: Just lost half my stack on the third hand.

Not really. Blinds are 50/100 now.

5:58 PM: Sandman is at the Triple Draw Mix final table, sitting 5th of 6 left, and guaranteed at least $22.3k.

I’m down to 3375 already after whiffing a 3-bet pot with KJdd and giving up with 77 in a raised pot on Q43A.

6:29 PM: I stole the blinds.

And this is officially the coolest thing to happen to me so far this trip:

6:36 PM: Tormund finally making his way through the Colossus registration line.

Stole the blinds again… with KK.

Tormund just walked by my table, looked at my stack, and shook his head.

7:06 PM: I made it to the break. I have 2200 coming back to 100/200/25. That’s 11 bigs. Wonderful.

Sandman down to final five. He looks like the short stack. Scott Seiver and Chris “DeathDonkey” Vitch are still in there. $31.8k guaranteed.

Just watched Sandman double.

8:12 PM: Got a 3-bet jam through with AQ but dwindled back down to 10.5 bigs and got it in at 100/200/50 with AJ vs 55 and 99 and found no help.

Standing in line to re-enter and sit down with 25 bigs.

🏉🏃🏻‍♂️

8:25 PM: First hand at my new table finds five players all in: A5ss vs JJ vs QQ vs AQ vs JJ.

Flop: Q22.

GG, fellas.

8:28 PM: This may have been my worst use of $565 ever. I’m basically sitting down with 12 big blinds: 4850 @ 200/400/50 now.

8:43 PM: Jammed 3600 with 55 right into KK.

GG.

Having a great time so far.

9:11 PM: The Atom and Tormund are still in the Colossus. Just got texts from Tormund saying he busted JC Tran and crippled Ishmael Bojang. He must have a decent stack going and just dispatched his toughest opponents.

11:00 PM: Sandman busts the $2500 Triple Draw Mixed Lowball event in 3rd place for almost $72k. Another sick run from a PNW player. Congrats man!

11:10 PM: Tormund and The Atom are both still in the Colossus. Tormund has 67k and The Atom is sitting on 18k @ 500-1000 blinds. They have three hours of play left tonight and I’m debating whether I want to play cash until Tormund is done or go to sleep at a decent time. I’m tentatively planning to play the Triple Draw Mix tourney at Binions at 11 AM tomorrow.

11:33 PM: Tormund just lost most of his stack so I’m gonna sit down in 20/40 O8 and hope something good happens in the time I’m here.

3:35 AM: I guess I should post a wrap up of sorts. The Atom min-cashed the Colossus and Tormund is actually putting something together and is currently 15 minutes away from bagging.

I’m actually having a good o8 session. I am up well over $1k and leaving soon.

Yet another local is doing big things. I’ve been crossing paths with Adam Coats for years now and he’s no stranger to deep WSOP runs, having finished 131st in the Main Event in 2014 and 8th in the $1500 O8 the same year. Well, Adam is at it again, bagging up the second best stack after Day 2 in the $10k O8. There’s $418k up top in this one and of course I’ll be keeping an eye on that and rooting Adam on.

Tormund just bagged up 116k and is headed to Day 2 of the Colossus and I cashed out a +$1440 winner while I was waiting for him. A nice change of pace for our household.

I will be taking it easy tomorrow, catching a movie with The Atom and playing O8 cash at The Orleans so I’m fresh and rested for the $1500 HORSE on Wednesday.

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2015 Poker Goals: April through June update

July 6, 2015

I have to say I’m a bit disappointed with my dedication to elite poker play the past three months. My focus level has fallen off tremendously and the fact that I never even posted wrap-ups for April or May is pretty telling. Granted, it’s been a busy few months. Since my March wrap-up I’ve gotten married, been to Vegas for the World Series of Poker, spent a week traveling down the coast to San Francisco, celebrated my wife’s birthday, and moved to Tacoma. And today I finally got my internet up and running. For the first time in months, I have nothing on my plate in the foreseeable future. I can once again turn my attention to crushing at the poker table. This post will focus on how I did the past three months and how I’m doing on my 2015 poker goals.

log 1200 live hours

Over the past three months I played 314 hours of live poker – just over 100 hours a month – putting my YTD total at 764 hours, well on pace to reach my goal but a noticeable dip in play compared to the first three months of the year. I now live about 10 minutes away from the Palace in Lakewood though and seeing as how parenthood is probably in my near future I should be granted the freedom to go on the super grind for the next year or so.

focus on how well I played, how well I controlled tilt, and how well I paid attention to the game flow instead of on how well I ran.
Continue taking notes throughout all my sessions and combing through them later.

And here is where my lack of focus comes in. I literally kept notes for ZERO sessions over the past three months which means I’ve basically been playing on autopilot and spending very little time thinking about my game off the table. My mindset has remained strong during this time, so it’s nice to see the mental muscle is actually building, but it’s important not to get lazy and I will be turning on the laser focus again starting… now.

spend less than 20% of my total hours in 4/8 games

One of my bigger goals for 2015 was to quit spending so much time in a game both my ability and my bankroll have outgrown. The past three months I played 112.5 hours at the 4/8 level with 82 of those hours coming on the clock. That means I played 30.5 hours of 4/8 off duty out of 156 personal, non-tournament hours – or just under 20%. That’s a happy ratio and meets my goal, but it also means I only averaged just over 50 live, off duty cash game hours a month, which is a pretty poor output.

log 100 hours of spread limit

I did get some no limit hours in while I was in Vegas, but not very much. I am now at 30 hours YTD halfway through the year. There’s a chance my output will increase over the second half of 2015 as my bankroll (hopefully) increases and I dabble in the Muckleshoot 3/5 game a bit more. I now have Sundays off permanently and live 20-30 minutes away from Muck, so Super Sundays will be a must for me going forward. I should reach 100 hours just playing the next six Super Sundays.

continue reading about mental game, develop mental game profiles, and improve my c-game

focus my learning – don’t study multiple variants at the same time or games I’m not playing frequently.

This has been another area of my game that has fallen off tremendously the past few months. I did spend some time reading up on and developing my mental game, but it’s nowhere near as developed as I would expect it to be by now. While I haven’t had any notable mental game problems the past few months, I basically just treaded water. I should have a lot more free time for poker study in the future as my wife is switching to week days and it will be easy to schedule a designated time solely for working on my game away from the tables.

treat poker like a job with set hours and not like a hobby.

I did a poor job in this area the past few months as well. Poker felt more like a hobby than something I was putting my heart and soul into. The most telling point: I spent 54 hours in my bread and butter game – the 8/16 at the Palace – or just 18 hours a month. Considering I’ve been averaging over 1.5 big bets per hour in that game my lack of output is pretty inexcusable. Obviously I have been busy with other stuff, but still… Now that I live ten minutes away, there is really no reason I shouldn’t be able to play 90+ hours of 8/16 a month going forward.

watch opponents closely in tournaments and develop exploitative styles for each of them.

take my time in critical pots and really think things through before acting.

set a new career high tournament score.

I played 21 tournaments over the past three months and cashed three times (15%). Two cashes and nine tournaments were at my job with entry fees of $40 or less. Yawn. The other 12 tournaments had an average BI of $266 and I only managed to cash once, which fortunately was a first place finish.

In mid-April I went 0 for 3 at Wildhorse Casino during the Spring Round Up series. I finished 3rd at my table during the Shootout tournament and I remember feeling pretty unlucky about that. I don’t remember getting any momentum in the Omaha 8 or HORSE tournaments. I am planning to play a full slate at the Fall Round Up this year and I have a pretty good feeling about a breakout.

During the 2015 World Series Of Poker, I continued my drought at the Rio by going 0 for 4 in World Series and daily deep stack events, bringing my lifetime showing there to a sad 0 for 9. Whiffing nine tournaments in a row is a pretty standard stretch, but it’s not how I was hoping to start my World Series career. I was extremely disappointed with my showing in WSOP Event #1, the Casino Employee Event. I can’t remember any particular hands but I do remember feeling like I was not super happy with my play and that I didn’t set myself up for success very well.

In the $565 Colossus I fired one bullet and received an absolutely brutal table draw. On my direct left, I had notable pro Maurice Hawkins (top 130 in the world according to the GPI Rankings); on my right I had WPT champion Jordan Cristos. In fact, of the eight other players at my table, I knew for certain that I was better than one of them and he wasn’t much of a drooler either. In a tournament with a record-breaking 22,000+ entrants (and a sea of fish) I couldn’t believe how tough my starting table was. Maurice was playing every hand – seriously, I saw him call off over half his stack pre with 92dd once – and I quickly learned that I wasn’t going to be able to open lightly and he was going to make me “prove it” every time I took the lead in a pot. He was playing the Colossus like it was a $10 tournament and I was playing like it was $1500 and I wasn’t about to bluff off my stack trying to outlevel him. Being one of the top players in the world, I was shocked at how unprofessional and rude Maurice Hawkins was. He was a total ass. Possibly the least pleasant person I’ve ever played with and that’s really saying something. I had the pleasure of watching Jordan Cristos check-raise jam the turn, getting Maurice to fold an overpair, and then showing a total airball bluff when Maurice caused a MASSIVE scene after folding his hand face up and throwing his cards at Jordan. “Let’s move on to the next hand, cause this one is no good. So let’s just play the next hand.” All said with such aggressive, negative energy and repeated ad nauseum. It was a pretty cool moment for the whole table when Jordan flipped over the king high and shut his arrogant ass up. After that hand, Maurice decided to focus on someone else and picked on him relentlessly. That player handled it like a champ though and I think the whole table breathed a sigh of relief when Maurice busted… of course, he guaranteed to all of us as he was walking away that he would win the Colossus. The dude is the epitome of how a professional should NOT act at the table. A total disgrace to the game if that’s his constant MO.

Unfortunately, Jordan Cristos was also playing this tournament like $565 is nothing to him. One of his standard plays was to isolate a limper by making a huge raise in late position – something like 10+ bigs, which is a bigger bet than most three bets would be. One time he did this, I flatted him with two black aces and got it in on the KQJ all heart flop, expecting to hit the rail most of the time, but somehow holding against his QTo with a royal draw. Later in the tournament, he made a similar move and I looked down at AQ sitting on about 16 big blinds. Jordan had shown down so many trashy hands – and almost never passed on an opportunity to try to steal – that I didn’t think for a second about folding, but I also realized that I had no fold equity and that I would be playing for my tournament life. I jammed it, he was priced in, and I ended up losing to his Q9, a pretty depressing end to my day, but quite a huge improvement on my one hand exit in the Millionairemaker last year!

I decided to play the $100 weekly HORSE tournament at The Orleans and I took the majority of the money in a four-way ICM chop as the substantial chip leader. Even though I had a hefty chip lead, the blinds were large enough that one hand could change the scope of the tournament and I couldn’t say no to better than second place money without having to play it out. I played good overall and ran really hot at the final table to earn the victory. It was bittersweet. Obviously, when you enter a tournament the ultimate goal is to win it, so I was happy to take it down. On the other hand, it’s a bit frustrating to run red hot in the tournament with the smallest buy in and field size of my trip. Even with the first place victory, I still lost money on my tournament entries in Vegas. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but if there’s a time to run amazing, this is not the tournament I would have picked.

Two days later I played the $240 HORSE event at the Golden Nugget, got an amazing table draw with some of the worst play I’ve ever seen, and had absolutely no luck. I peaked in the first ten minutes of the tournament and I was barely above the starting stack at any point. I missed most of my draws and lost with most of my made hands and could never take advantage of the horrendous play that was rampant at my table. I’ve never wanted a mulligan so bad in my poker career.

I’m reaching a point where I’m getting pretty fed up with tournament poker. Excluding smaller tournaments (< $100), I have cashed 2 of 19 times this year for an ROI of -34%. In the past twelve months, I’ve cashed 3 of 29 times for an ROI of -56%. As someone with so much cash game success, I have to ask myself why I continue to punish myself with tournament variance. Or is it variance? 29 tournaments is an absurdly small sample size so it’s certainly possible. Prior to this past year, I had been a tournament crusher, so I have good reason to think things will turn around eventually. I am fully confident I am capable of a life-changing score. On the other hand, in comparison to cash games, I play tournaments so infrequently that it is much harder to develop my game plan. With cash games, I can study off the table and apply what I’m working on immediately, multiple times a week. With tournaments, I might go weeks in between events and even when I play I might not be able to apply the concepts I’m currently learning in a given tournament. Still, I’m not quite ready to give up just yet. I feel like my time is coming and I’d hate to deny myself the opportunity. I’m planning a full slate for the Fall Round Up in Pendleton and I’m going to start planning for next year’s WSOP immediately. Hopefully I will be in a position where I can sell action for and play up to five events or more. Also, now that I'm residing in Tacoma and my availability is changing, I think I will start playing Muckleshoot's Tuesday deep stack regularly. With that event and some of the weekend tournaments, I should be able play somewhere between 5-7 tournaments a month and hopefully turn my ROI around.

double my current bankroll size

maintain a 1 BB/HR win rate at 8/16

I posted a small loss in April and followed that up with two mediocre winning months in May and June. I had to use my bankroll for all the extra traveling we’ve been doing and various other expenses, so despite making a modest profit the past three months, I actually have less in my bankroll now than I did when April started. I loathe the feeling of running in place and getting complacent, but that’s how these past few months have felt. I’m ready to start grinding and really focus again.

Over 648.5 hours, these are my current YTD win rates:

1.67 big bets per hour at 8/16 (1.81 past three months)
0.77 big bets per hour at 4/8 (0.2 past three months)
0.42 big bets per hour at 10/20 and higher (all in the past three months)

I’m looking forward to doing some serious grinding and bankroll building over the rest of the summer and hopefully I can put together a hot stretch of tournament runs!

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