What a crazy week. I initially thought I could maybe show up around 9 or 10 AM and get in 20/40 relatively quickly but after getting in at 3 PM for session #1 and 4:15 PM for session #2, I realized this strategy was quite flawed. I took all of Thursday off because I had a vet appointment for one of my dogs and I had plans to hang out with my dad (he cancelled). And then I went back to work with a completely new and insane plan: try to go to bed early, wake up at 4 AM, and be at Fortune by 6 AM.
This plan worked out well. I was in the game by 6:20 AM Friday morning, 7:15 AM Sunday morning, and 6:05 AM Monday morning. I ended up taking Saturday off because our dogs would’ve been home alone for around 14 hours if I played as long as I wanted to.
Overall, I played 69 hours across 5.5 sessions over 8 days and ended up winning a somewhat disappointing $3500. I only got one high hand during the promo, so I didn’t get my fair share there even though I was usually playing in the fastest game in the room. Aside from coming in below average on High Hands, the week also left a sour taste in my mouth because I lost back huge twice. During my first session, I lost back around $1600 from my peak and in my last session I lost back over $2k from my peak. I think the games were far worse than normal all week because on 4 of 5 days there was only one 20/40 game going and I had to play with a lot of rocky day time players I never log hours with and a lot of the splashier players were frequently locked out of the game. However, the game was at its absolute best during my last session and instead of leaving up $3300 after 12+ hours of play, I pushed it to take advantage of the situation and got absolutely mauled. That’s too bad because those last four hours was the difference between a winning month and a losing month. Oh well.
In other news, I broke my epic losing streak in 3/5 at Aces/Palace yesterday by booking a +$1718 win. Prior to this session, I had lost 11 of the last 12 times I’d played 3/5 at Aces and the one time I won it was for TWO DOLLARS. My previous two 3/5 sessions there would have both been my biggest cash game losses of all-time pre-2022. It’s been a brutal stretch. Even prior to this absurd stretch, I was losing in 3/5 in 2023. The last time I won over $1000 in that 3/5 game was April of last year and yesterday’s session marks my biggest 3/5 win since December 2022. I can’t say all the weight of that game has been released from off my shoulders, but it sure felt good to walk out of there with a sizable win.
I’m going to spend May playing as much as I can while also getting ready for the 2024 World Series of Poker. My current plan is to not go too crazy at the WSOP this year and how long I stay will be determined purely on how bad or well I do. I am not going to stay for six weeks if I’m losing my ass off. Unless I fall off a cliff mentally, this is what my schedule looks like so far:
I booked a room at the Horseshoe through June 10th and I should have a room to share after that, but this will be my schedule unless I crush. If I’m doing well, I will stay and keep going, but maybe come home for a break or two. I’m also still TBD on playing the Main Event or not. I would love to, but I can live without doing so. I haven’t even looked at the schedules for the other casinos, so this is what I’m sticking with. Let’s get Team Torch a bracelet!
I went to sleep sometime after 2 AM after my Day 1 session and I was planning to be up no later than 8 AM, but my sleep was very sporadic and when my alarm went off I had no intention of getting out of bed. I still managed to get to Fortune by 10:45 and I figured it would be slower on the second day of the promo, but I didn’t get in 4/8 until 12:20 PM and I didn’t get in 20/40 until just after 4 PM.
I decided to pass on 1/3, 3/5, and 8/16 because I was playing 4/8 with my girlfriend and having a lot of fun. Plus, I was able to watch how she’s playing and give her some immediate feedback as she’s trying to learn how to play the game. I ended up winning three racks in 4/8 while waiting for my 20/40 seat.
And then I sat down in 20/40 and first hand I get dealt I raise it up with AhKx and only the big blind defends. The flop is T42 with two hearts, I bet, and the big blind check-raises me. I usually just flat here, but I decided to put pressure on him with plans to barrel any equity improvement on the turn (Q, J, heart, and pairs obv). The turn is perfection: king of diamonds. I bet and he calls. The river is an offsuit 5 and I get check-raised here. I pay it off and he somehow shows me 55. The classic “I put you on AK until a king hit and then I put you on AQ” call down. I do think his flop play is solid but that is a very optimistic turn call and it was a pretty painful start to my 20/40 session. -$220 on my first hand and hours of crushing 4/8 down the drain lol.
I didn’t get much going in this session and was down about $1200, feeling quite exhausted and wondering if I had it in me to try and mount a comeback. Fortunately, the cards started cooperating and I got back to even. My girlfriend decided to call it a session around 9:30 PM (she played for 9 hours!) and I was tired enough that I decided to book a very tiny win for the day and leave at the same time as her.
I took today off because I was planning to hang out with my dad. I had a haircut scheduled at 10 AM and a vet appointment at 3 PM, so I told him I would have to come get him and we’d be hanging out in Tacoma and he told me no lol. So I’ve just been lounging and now I’m going to see Challengers at 7 PM. I plan to be in bed by 10 PM and up by 4 AM and at Fortune by 5:30 AM. The wait is just unacceptable after 9 AM.
Two days in, I’m at 22.33 hours and +$1064. Not great. Long way to go. Definitely could be worse though.
I’m off to an unexpected start in my journey this week. My thoughts of starting my day at 9 AM were mostly Fantasy but for whatever reason I seem anxious to get back in action because I woke up at 6 AM this morning and couldn’t fall back asleep so here I am walking into Fortune just after 9 AM. I can’t say I feel well rested or fresh so it could be challenging to play 12+ hours today, especially if I’m not having a good session.
All 15 tables were full by 9 AM and lists for the smaller games are already off the chart on the app. Fortunately, the 20/40 list is short. Unfortunately, the game will probably be pretty bad for most of the day. I’m guessing decent regs are going to populate the game and weaker players are going to be mostly locked out.
I am officially on the list at 9:15 AM. Let’s see how long it takes for me to get in a game. I’m currently 4th up for 20/40, 3rd up for 3/5, 9th up for 8/16, and 20+ deep for both 4/8 and 1/3. With only two 3/5 games going and no one that just got here likely to leave any time soon, I could still be waiting for quite some time.
I’m going to be blogging my progress sporadically throughout the day, so check back in every few hours or so for an update.
11:00 AM: Officially in action at 3/5 after a 1 hour and 45 minute wait. I am currently 3rd up for 20/40 and I am not excited to be playing 3/5 until I’m in. Let’s hope I can avoid disaster while I’m here.
11:27 AM: All tables are full and lists are officially off the charts:
12:00 PM: Nothing too exciting yet. Picked up QQ a couple times and won smallish pots both times. Lost a smallish pot calling a bluff on turn and picking him off again when he made second pair. Up like $30 – only $9770 to go! First up for 20/40 now.
1:30 PM: Still waiting for 20/40. Oof. Pretty good last 90 minutes. I had a pot where I got 3-bet to $165 after opening to $35 with AKo in a straddle pot. I started the hand with a little over $600, so I 4-bet to $465 and got a fold. My biggest pot was a KQ open and 5-way action to K93 rainbow. I bet $55 and only button called. Turn was 4x and I bet $115 and he called again. River paired the 9 and I checked to my opponent, he bet around $150ish and I snap-called and beat his K6. Currently up $600ish three hours in.
3:00 PM: I made it! Started fourth up for 20/40 and it only took me 4.75 hours to get in the game. Not looking forward to the waits in the days to come. I finished 3/5 +$860 and I’d say that’s a pretty great result. Brand new to 20/40 but I already won a tiny pot with KK so that’s a huge improvement over my last session in this game.
4:30 PM: Decent start to 20/40. Standard hands so far, winning with most of my best hands. Up about 1k for the day.
6:00 PM: I was swinging down for a bit but then I won a big blind vs blind pot when I had AJ vs J9 on JT84A and got multiple bets on turn. I got the same player again a few hands later with 76dd on the button and flopped a flush vs his Ad that made top pair on the river and paid off two big bets there. This game is actually much better than I was anticipating. Five of the biggest regulars either didn’t show up and passed on their seat, so that was a nice surprise. Currently up $1320 for the day. This is the kind of progress you love to see:
8:30 PM: Ah, I forgot how boring it is to try and write about limit Hold’em hands as I’m playing. It has been going well today. Very little negative turbulence so far. Hopefully I’m not jinxing it. I’m up over 2k now.
12:30 AM: Good lord I am tilted. It’s been a miserable last 4 hours. I had a steady climb all day for ten hours straight and this is how my night ends:
Very frustrating. I don’t feel like I was playing leaky or bad or anything, I just started losing every hand – running KK into AA, JJ into KK, 77 into 99 – that sort of thing. But the last pot I played I can only blame on fatigue and a total lack of awareness. Two players limp, I raise with J9cc and we go multiway to a flop of 962. I’m in seat 7 and I get called by s5 and s6. The turn pairs the 9, I bet and only s5 calls. The river is a 7 and he folds when I bet. The dealer says, “show it if you want to,” and I toss my cards in face down and say, “I wish I could show that one,” and then he pushes the pot to seat 2 and I’m like WTF IS GOING ON. Apparently s2 called me on the river. I never even knew he was in the hand! I didn’t look his direction once. I obviously had the best hand and flushed almost $500 down the toilet at the tail end of a horrendous finish to my day. UNBELIEVABLE. I cannot fucking believe I just did that.
Anyways, I finish Day 1 +$1000. Mega disappointing, but I’m 10% of the way to my goal. Back at it tomorrow by 11 AM at the latest I’d say.
This is going to be a massive week of poker for me. Fortune is giving away $373,000 in High Hand money over the next week and I plan to get more than my fair share of it. The actual promotion is $499 every 15 minutes and goes from 9 AM tomorrow until 3 AM next Tuesday morning. Absolutely wild. And I’m so here for it.
As it stands, I am currently stuck a shade under $6k for the month of April. It’s been a miserable month for me. I had a good mini-session of 3/5 at Fortune and I’ve been enjoying playing 1/3 lately, so I made the mistake of testing my never-ending streak of unbelievable bad luck in 3/5 at Palace/Aces.
Notable Hand #1: Zinky opens to $20 from MP, cutoff and button call, and I look down at KK in the small blind. I make it $135 and only the button calls. Flop is Q64 rainbow and I make a small bet of $60 and my opponent essentially snap calls. The turn pairs the 6 and I bet $150 and again the button calls almost immediately. The river is a 7 and I shove for my remaining $235. Now my opponent goes into the tank. We are about 2 minutes deep when he asks for a count. At this point, I was 70% sure I was doubling up, 15% thinking he might fold, and 15% remembering that I haven’t won a significant pot in the Aces 3/5 game in like a year and wondering how I would react if I somehow didn’t have the best hand here. Finally, this fucking piece of absolute dog shit puts in the call and turns over 77. I WAS SEEING RED. I don’t know this dude at all so I don’t know what the fuck this was about. There is no logical strategic explanation for his thought processes here, so he either did it on purpose or he’s a special kind of moron. With all the accumulated tilt from this game over the past year, I was having a hard time keeping my emotions in check. I wanted to slam this dude’s face into the table. Losing the hand as it played out was brutal enough, but the savage slow roll on top of it just couldn’t be real life. There was a list for the game, so I disappeared for about thirty minutes and I’d be lying if part of me didn’t hope I was picked up before I got back so I could leave.
Notable Hand #2: Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. I got moved to the main game and reloaded. I had a bit over $1K when this next hand came up. I opened to $20 UTG with 77, Bone called UTG1, another player called in MP, and a very nitty player tried to make it $95 on the button. Somehow he put a green chip from another establishment into the pot, however, and the raise was only to $70. I can’t say for sure if this made a difference in me calling, but it certainly made it easier. We all came along. The flop was a favorable looking A75 with two hearts. It checked to the button and he bet $60. I decided to flat for a few reasons: a) this is a very small bet and if the button doesn’t have an ace, he’s not going to put any more money into the pot and b) AA is very much in the button’s range (whereas hands like AQo are probably not) and is certainly a hand he would make a tiny bet with. I know this is a dangerous way to play this hand, but I was going to take my chances and see what happened. I got a nice surprise when one of the other players made it $260 to go, the button just called (which he probably would not do with AA), and now I made it $560 to go with what I was sure was the best hand. The other player was puzzled, but ended up folding and the button called. He might have AK here, but I was pretty sure he had an ace high flush draw and still a tiny bit concerned it could be AA. The turn was the 2 of hearts and with only $450 remaining and the off chance he had AxKh, I bet $300 and he snap put me all in and I called, saying, ” I hope it’s a flush.” He did indeed have exactly the AKhh and the river didn’t fill me up and I was down another $1000.
Nothing too crazy about that hand other than the fake $25 chip that may or may not have been the difference between me calling pre or not lol. Otherwise, it’s just a standard big spot cooler that I am never on the right side of in this game. The rest of my session didn’t go any better and I ended up losing over $2600.
I followed that nightmare session up with my worst cash game day of poker ever, losing a combined $3514 between 1/3 and 20/40 at Fortune last week.
So I have a goal for this High Hand promotion. I want to play at least 60 hours and I want to win $10,000. Is that absolutely stupid? Of course! Is it realistic? Hell no! Is it in the realm of potential outcomes? You’re damn right it is.
My plan is to play Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and TBD on Sunday or Monday or both. I’m hoping to be in a game by noon each day and the plan is to play until at least midnight. The only day I know I’m taking off for sure is Thursday. I want to be at Fortune by 10 AM most days and hopefully don’t have to wait longer than a couple hours if I do that.
There are 120 players in action if the room is full which I imagine it will be most of the time during the promo. That makes everyone’s fair share of the promotion $16.63 an hour. But I’ll be playing limit games which are not only substantially faster than 1/3 and 3/5, but also get to showdown more frequently. I’ll make a bold assumption that my fair share of the HH promo is closer to $20/hour. So if I actually put in the 60 hours, my HH expectation is somewhere around +$1200. Let’s hope to do much better than that! I don’t plan to do much detailed hand histories, but I think it would be fun to blog my progress during this promo, so check back for that.
You always know it’s possible to go on a cold stretch when it comes to tournament poker – I’ve certainly done it many times – but having it happen during the World Series of Poker when I’m playing my biggest schedule ever has been extremely brutal. I’m writing this on June 18th. I’ve played 15 bullets across 14 tournaments and I’ve managed just two min-cashes. In a nutshell, this is how it looks so far:
Both times I cashed a tournament, I busted a bigger tournament for more than I profited on the same day… so I actually haven’t had a single winning day in the month of June. I’ve only played cash games twice this month and those sessions went not well and extremely awful – not that I gave myself much of a chance. I played 3.5 hours the first session and about an hour the second one and both times the accumulated tilt of a bad Series overwhelmed me to the point where I didn’t feel like playing anymore.
I’ve made Day 2 in four WSOP mixed events, but I think I’ve only had one day since I’ve been here where I felt like I ran even close to above average and that was on Day 1 of Limit Hold’em. I had some bad levels at the end of the night in that one, but most of the day I was building a stack. That hasn’t happened in any other tournament this year. Everything else has been a struggle and any time I’ve had some momentum going, I haven’t been able to maintain it.
All my Day 2s have been absolute shit.
In Limit Hold’em, I 3-bet all in with the KQ and Pads 4-bet behind me. The flop came K83 with two diamonds and Patrick Leonard (Pads on Pads) bet the flop and turn and his opponent called both times. On the river, they both checked and I figured that meant I was tripling up, but the early position player was going for the trap trap trap line with 88 and I was somewhat surprisingly out of the tournament.
In Badugi, I didn’t bag a very big stack but I found myself in a crazy pot early on in Day 2. Middle position opened, the button called, Daniel Weinman 3-bet from the small blind, and I looked down at A53x. I decided to go with a 4-bet to see if I can get either of the dudes out behind me. It’s rare for people to fold in limit games once they’ve put in multiple bets preflop, but it can certainly happen in Badugi. For instance, if the middle position player opened with a bad queen high Badugi, he should just fold here. We are always pushing equity against the button, so we are indifferent on whether he puts more money in or not. Weinman obviously has at least a good 3-card dugi, so it’s probably a fair fight with him. Anyways, everyone calls. Weinman draws one, I draw one, the middle position player stands pat, and the button draws two. I don’t improve and we check to the pat player, he bets, and we all call. Same exact draws as the first time: one, one, pat, two. We all check to the pat player and he bets and we all call again. And then something crazy happens: Weinman draws one, I draw one, and out of nowhere for no reason at all the player that has been pat the whole time suddenly decides to draw a card. It blew my mind. I looked at Daniel Weinman and I could tell his mind was blown too. This was an amazing result. There’s a chance Weinman had a better 3-card hand than me, but there was also a good chance I had the best hand and now that this guy broke his Badugi, I might be a favorite to win this massive pot. I actually reduced to A43 on my last draw, but didn’t make a Badugi. Everyone checked to the button and he bet. Weinman folded so I torched another big bet just in case this dude was trying to steal a monster pot with a bluff. Unfortunately he made a 97 Badugi and won the pot. Before the river action there was 180k in the pot which was well more than average stack at this point. Instead of sitting on 200k+ and cruising to the money, I had 30k or so and was out shortly afterwards.
Razz was a pure nightmare. My worst limit showing of the summer so far. I couldn’t win when I had the best draw, I couldn’t win when I made a 7, I lost when I check-raised 7th with a 6, my bluffs all got picked off and the one time I made a wheel I was all in on 3rd street. Nothing but pain.
I lost all my chips in Razz hands in the $1500 8-Game as well. By the time I busted the 8-Game I was feeling like I wasn’t capable of winning a Razz hand. In fact, when I was mega short in the Aria 8-Game a few days later on the bubble, I came back from break with 4-5 hands of NL Hold’em and I was curious what the next game was going to be…
SHOCK
Somehow Razz didn’t kill me in that one. But I dwindled so low that I posted my big blind in limit Hold’em with one big blind behind on the stone bubble and had to defend Q3 offsuit vs a raise and a call. I was pretty delighted to see the 733 and that triple up helped me mincash my second tournament of the summer.
My Day 2 of the $1500 2-7 Triple Draw was more pain. I started the day with a below average stack but plenty enough to spin it up and make a run. The first hand I played, I opened 742 and the big blind defended. We both drew two. I improved to 7542 and she check-called my bet. She drew two again and I drew one. I made 97542 and this time she check-raised me. My hand is not great but since I was still drawing and she was a card behind, I thought she might check-raise worse pat hands or break ones that were slightly better, so I decided to 3-bet. If she called and pat, I could consider breaking my hand and draw to a 7. If she 4-bet, I could call and break. Fortunately, she called and broke her hand. Huge victory! She checked dark on the last draw and I snap checked behind. She turned over a 7 and had 6542 down. Unreal. She told me she broke a 96 so she had me beat and I got her to break the best hand. And my reward: losing the pot anyway. I was extremely short after that, so naturally I made a wheel after one draw when I was already all in. I got short again after I got dealt a pat 97653 vs a CO open and they ended up making an 8 on the last draw. I made an 86 on my all in hand on the second draw and had to fade a one card draw on the last draw to double, but he made a 7 and I was out in the first level of the day.
This reminds me of a key pot that I played (poorly) late in the Aria 8-Game mix. The button was short stacked and opened in 2-7 Triple Draw. I defended with 733xx, figuring I could fold if I brick the first draw and continue if I improve. I do improve to 743 on the first draw and check-call a bet. I catch a king and a jack and he’s all in for half a big bet so I call even though my hand and draw are pretty damn bad. I draw two and he draws one. I turn my cards over one by one to show him what he needs to beat: a deuce and a six! Unbelievable. I botch this hand completely and end up making #2 (76432) to knock my opponent out and win a key pot for myself… unless… he shows 7432 and rips over a 5 to make a wheel. Even when I play bad and get incredibly lucky and make the second nuts… I still can’t win.
I had a really good table draw in the $1500 NL Monster Stack and even though I was floating just below starting stack most of the day, I felt really good about my chances of accumulating chips because no one seemed capable of challenging me for the position of Table Captain. I was about 4.5 hours in when the spot I was waiting for came up. Someone limped in early position for 600, the next player made it 1600, one other player called, I defended the QJ of spades in the big blind, and the limper called also. The flop was QJ7 rainbow and I decided to donk lead 3500 since the pot was multiway. I didn’t want hands like TT or AK or AJ to check behind and if he had KK or AA, I figured I was going to get it all with this line. Sure enough, the limper calls and the preflop raiser does raise it up… to 7500. I fist-pump rip it in for 40k and high five all my friends in the group chat and then the dude snap calls and turns over QQ and I’m dead to running jacks. In retrospect, his flop raise sizing is mega sus (so small it should raise alarm bells), but my hand is way too good to ever consider folding and you never know what random, somewhat inexperienced players are capable of doing. Maybe he makes this raise size with AA or KK or AQ (but probably not). Just like that, I was out.
I was going to skip Monster Stack Day 1B because I was over it and also because I didn’t want to be trapped on the strip if I busted early due to the parade for the Golden Knights Stanley Cup win. But against my better judgment and after much badgering from my friends…
Monster Stack Day 1B I did accumulate some chips, getting my 50k up to around 80k. I ended up getting moved to a pretty tough table though through pure magic bad luck. My table broke and the seat card I was given had a player in it already. So the floor person just had me follow them and sat me at the first open seat they saw. Chaos. I somehow managed to play nearly ten hours without winning with a single pocket pair. My medium pairs (99-JJ) were all in tough preflop spots and my small and medium pairs all whiffed. I was pretty short with about 20 minutes left in the day when the hi-jack opened to 5500, the cutoff 3-bet to 15k, and I looked down at two red kings on the button. I ripped my last 30k knowing I’m always getting called. The cutoff turns over black JJ and I’m 80% to more than double up. The flop comes quite bad – three spades – the turn is another spade and I’m completely dead and my night is over (and it took me over an hour to get out of the parking garage at 1 AM anyway).
I was going to take today off, but I heard I could put money on WSOP.com with PayPal and play a $500 bracelet event. That sounded fun so I did that and I was doing okay up until late registration ended. About 100 spots off the money, this happened:
I picked up some pots without confrontation after that and then about 50 spots off the money, this happened:
And… I was out. After the tournament, I thought I’d dabble in cash for a bit and then this happened:
I’m not going to lie. I’m in a lot of pain. I sold 30-45% of myself in everything from the jump and as the Series goes on, I’ve sold more and more of myself. Despite that, June 2023 is already the worst month of my career by a long shot. I have two small cashes across what is now sixteen total bullets for a total of -$14,420. I’ve only played nine hours of cash since I’ve been here but I’ve managed to lose another $1848 doing that also. There is still plenty of time to turn things around, but I’m losing more and more willpower by the day and there’s only so much damage I’m willing to do to my bankroll before I call it quits. In the big picture, this 2 for 16 showing is completely normal, but this is the biggest schedule I’ve ever played and I’ve put a substantial portion of my bankroll at risk. You always know a bad run like this is possible, but you really hope it doesn’t happen during the most critical stretch of your poker career.
This next week I’ll be playing the $1500 HORSE on Tuesday, the $1500 Super Turbo Bounty NL on Wednesday, the $2500 Triple Draw Mix on Thursday, the $1500 Millionaire Maker on Friday, the $1500 Stud 8 on Saturday, and… the tournament I’m most excited about: the $3000 6-max Limit Hold’em on Sunday. If this next week goes poorly as well, I’ll be taking a break until the Main Event and heading to New York City for the first time in my life to visit my girlfriend because she’s out there trying to do big things for her career right now. If I do that and then don’t make a deep run in the Main, that will be it for my 2023 WSOP. I’ll go home early and lick my wounds and spend the next year getting ready to show and prove in 2024.
Missing them a ton
It can be hard to celebrate other people’s wins when you’re drowning in your own misery, but I would be a shit friend if I didn’t mention my buddy Eric Trexler (Godzilla when I used to blog regularly with nicknames) making a sick ass run to 2nd place for a $300k score in the second biggest field for a live tournament of all-time (interestingly, my friend and Team Torch member Jared took 2nd in the biggest live field of all-time). If you have a PokerGo subscription you can watch ET boss it the fuck up at the final table and I think it might even be free on YouTube. It’s a must watch. He put on an absolute show. Here are some fun videos I took while railing him:
Anyways, let’s hope I have much better things to report next time I make an update. STOP THE BLEEDING!
Welp, if I don’t post this in the next hour or so then it’s probably never going to happen since my WSOP technically kicks off in 2.5 hours. I just figured I’d post something about how my 2023 has gone leading up to the World Series.
I think the most notable change for me so far this year is that I have transitioned back to Limit Hold’em. In 2022, 74% of my live cash hours were in NL and only 15% in LHE. In 2023, I’m at 42% NL and 49.5% LHE – but that split is even more drastic over the last few months with 67% of my live hours being in LHE since April 1st.
It makes sense though. NL has been going poorly and LHE has been going, uh, spectacularly. The results have certainly been part of it, but also the 3/5 games at Palace have largely dried up during the week. Sure, it still gets off the ground pretty much every day, but it gets really weak in the evening and frequently breaks long before I’m ready to quit playing for the day. This has led to me thinking I’m better off just going to Fortune and playing 20/40 there. Interestingly, when I was driving down to Vegas last Friday, Palace somehow had three 3/5 games going. That blows my mind. 3/5 is actually pretty steady on Fridays and Saturdays – and I was playing there on Fridays every week at first, but my doom switch is fully activated – I won on my first 3/5 Friday session of the year and I haven’t won again since. I’ve only played three Friday sessions at Palace since the end of January though but they have all gone miserably: -$1499, -$1356, -$1542. All told, I’m down over $5500 on Fridays at Palace this year – on what is supposed to be my best day of the week there. Granted, this is a 44.5 hour sample size we are talking about here – barely a week’s worth of full-time play – so this is all just noise, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some accumulated tilt going on and I have found myself preferring to play 20/40 at Fortune on Fridays the last few months. So yes, the sample size is tiny, but when I get back from Vegas in late July, I’ll be able to say I haven’t won at Palace on a Friday in almost seven months and that sounds pretty fun and dramatic, right?
Also, this one pot I’m about to share is the difference between me being breakeven at Palace in 2023 and me being a solid winner:
Worst cash game beat of my life
I feel like things at Palace have gone poorly overall, but when I filter Fridays out of the equation, my results actually look pretty reasonable: $72/hour @ 3/5 and $20/hour @ 1/3. The problem is the 3/5 tends to be fragile on other days of the week and I really don’t want to play a ton of 1/3 but smaller games have accounted for almost half my hours when I do show up to Palace Monday through Thursday. It’s just become increasingly hard for me to walk into Palace these days. I think 1/3 would be far more tolerable if they increased the maximum buy-in to at least $500, but still, I’d much rather play 20/40.
Yes, my love of Limit Hold’em has returned. I mean, it never really left. I’ve always enjoyed playing 20/40 over playing 1/3 or 3/5 whenever I go to Fortune. I just enjoy the pace of the game so much more. Yes, NL is far more complex and mistakes from opponents are far more costly, but I just love the bang bang bang pace of playing limit games.
I knew I was having a really good year at Fortune, but I didn’t know exactly how good until I strung together four +$2k sessions in a row and lost that streak by booking a +$549 and wondered how long it had been since I actually had a losing 20/40 session. I was astonished to discover I was at 15 winning sessions in a row! I’ve played a ton of Limit Hold’em in my life and I’ve never come close to that kind of winning streak before. I was shocked. I’d guess that the absolute best streak I’ve ever gone on is probably like 9 or 10 wins in a row but certainly nothing like this. Variance is just so high in Limit Hold’em. Looking at my lifetime results and filtering out sessions of less than 5 hours, I lose about 4 out of every 10 sessions I play. That’s losing nearly half the time I show up to play so stringing together 15 consecutive wins is unheard of. I haven’t lost at Fortune in over four months! It’s crazy!
There was some luck involved here. I didn’t know this was happening so there were a couple times during the streak when the game broke after 2 or 3 hours and I happened to be winning at the time. At least one other time, I was summoned home early and happened to be winning. Since I’ve become aware of this streak, I’ve had three more wins, putting my streak at 18 wins in a row heading to WSOP. Now that I am aware of the streak, I do feel like I’d consider it still in tact if the game broke after two hours and I was losing. That would be a shitty way to “lose” it. Likewise, I don’t feel like I can quit after three hours when I’m winning just to keep the streak alive. I’d say six hours is probably the minimum number of hours I’d like to play for qualification. Also, this streak is specific to Fortune 20/40. I lost at Last Frontier in La Center earlier this month and I’ll certainly be playing some 20/40 in Vegas during the WSOP.
Overall, I’m somehow running at 3.64 big bets per hour in 20/40 at Fortune in 2023 and 4.32 big bets per hour during the streak. So yeah, kind of hard to talk myself into playing at Palace when I’ve been making almost $150 an hour at Fortune this year. It’s been awesome, but this isn’t real life. My LHE win rates always level out between 1.25 and 1.5 big bets per hour annually, so I’ll eventually come back down to earth, but I’ve also never had a streak like this before so my 2023 20/40 win rate will almost certainly be bigger than it ever has been before.
Pretty insane stuff. Note: I know it says 19 of 19 there, but one of those sessions was split up because the feeder game broke and I jumped in something else while I waited for the main game. Streak is at 18.
Pre-WSOP, tournaments have gone well for me so far. I’ve only played eight tourneys across parts of four different series that I mostly didn’t partake in. I have 3 cashes with my best one coming in the Main Event of the Little Creek series in March, finishing 2nd of 77 for a nearly $13k score, which actually cracks my top 5 of all time. I thought I was pretty much a lock to win it when I got heads up with an older woman that looked like a doppelgänger of my own mom, but she pretty much owned me heads up… by having the best hand every time. She played better than I thought she was going to, but I don’t think I lose very often if the cards are even remotely cooperative.
Anyways, that finish has me sitting on a sexy ROI of 191% for the year as I head into a WSOP that is going to drastically change that number one way or the other.
One last thing, someone posted a brutal / hilarious comment on my last music post. Here it is:
Love your blog man. But the music/movie lists are kinda brutal. Maybe you should make a second blog? A list of your top 20 most watched actors for the year?? Lol come on man. Give us that poker/life content. No one cares what you’re listening to, sorry.
Poogs
I mean… ouch. But also, message received. I don’t think it’s necessarily true that NO ONE cares about that stuff, but it is true that very few people seem to. I still think it’s fun to track for my own personal amusement though, so if you’re ever curious about my music stats and what I’m listening to, I’ve created a page I will update every month or two with that information, but the only posts I make on music from now on will either be album reviews (which I seem to be done with) or a year end write up. Check out my music stats here: Music Stats.
We are officially less than a month away from the next World Series of Poker. This is going to be by far the most important WSOP of my poker career. I’m planning on playing my biggest schedule ever and there is really no reason for me not to be in Vegas for seven weeks straight. My girlfriend is moving to New York City for 3-4 months this summer for her own work and she’s taking Kirby with her. I’ll have no one to telling me to come home and no one and no dogs at home I’m excited to get back to. No excuses. I’m really excited, but I’m going to spend this next month making sure I’m mentally prepared for what’s ahead.
That’s a daunting schedule I have down there. The thought of whiffing everything is pretty scary, but I’m here for it. Unlike in previous years, I will be trying to play a lot more no limit hold’em tournaments. I love playing mix game tourneys, but I’ve put in FAR more work on my NL hold’em game over the past few years than anything else and it’s no surprise that four of my top five all-time cashes are NL hold’em as it’s by far the most popular variant of poker and thus creates the biggest fields and prize pools. So why I’ve mostly been avoiding those events at the WSOP the past half decade is a mystery to everyone, including myself. I guess I’m just more comfortable playing limit games, but if Covid did anything positive for me, it certainly forced me to start focusing on NL hold’em and I feel like I have exponentially improved at it since 2020.
I will also be playing very few non-WSOP events. I want to give myself the best chance to win a bracelet so I’m thinking at least 80% of my volume will be in bracelet events. I only I have a handful of tourneys that aren’t at WSOP down there and almost all of them are bigger mix events. Maybe it will work out that I end up playing a bigger off site NL tourney, but what I really want to avoid is committing myself to multiple day events that aren’t WSOP.
It would be an absolute disaster if I played every event on this schedule below. I should be making deep runs in some events and missing others, but this is just every event I’m legitimately interested in while I’m down there. Events in purple are my must plays on those days if I’m not advancing in something else already. I’ll also noted some BIs in yellow highlighter because they are my biggest events of the series and I’m selling more action than normal for those particular ones. I’m sold out of the majority of my WSOP package but I may sell more of the bigger BIs if I am doing poorly. I will reach out to people I’m pretty sure want action if that ends up being the case.
Crazy. I was looking for my 2021 results post for reference and I couldn’t find it. Did I never post one? Sheesh. Just my 2021 WSOP results? I’ll be damned. I could spend some time talking about how 2022 was a transition year for me, but ya’ll already know that by now. Let’s just get into the numbers.
Live Cash Games
I played 1101.5 hours of live cash in 2022. My primary game was 3/5 no limit Hold’em, with roughly 55% of my live hours coming in that exact game. I played 15.6% of my hours in 1/3 NL games and 9.5% in 20/40 limit Hold’em. No other specific game accounted for even 4% of my live cash hours. Pre-pandemic – and for as long as I’ve been playing poker pretty much – I probably played 95% of my live hours in limit Hold’em games. In 2022, limit Hold’em accounted for 15% of my total cash game hours and no limit Hold’em took up 74% of my volume. It has been quite the shift. I’ve enjoyed the transition – especially financially – but I actually want to play more limit Hold’em in 2023.
Win Rates
3/5 NL: 16 big blinds per hour (7.52 bb/hr in 2021) 1/3 NL: -5.33 big blinds per hour (18.7 bb/hr in 2021) 20/40 LHE: 2.97 big bets per hour (1.45 BB/hr in 2021)
All no limit Hold’em: 9.86 big blinds per hour (14.81 bb/hr in 2021) All limit Hold’em: 2.89 big bets per hour (1.3 BB/hr in 2021) Non-Hold’em cash games: -$21.21 per hour** ($11.19/hr in 2021)
**Mixed games made up only 10% of my live cash hours and I’m not sure how to best express how well or bad I did. Overall, I lost money – and a decent amount. Some of the games had no limit or pot limit mixed in, so expressing my win rate in big bets isn’t super accurate. Basically, my year in live mix games can be summed up like this: I did well in home games; I did well in the 10/20 HORSE game when Little Creek was running that; I did poorly the few times I played 10/20 O8 at Palace; I got crushed over two sessions in a 30/60 mix game in Houston.
Top 5 Sessions
+$5808 at Fortune in 20/40 LHE +$4390 at Bellagio in 40/80 LHE +$2921 at Palace in 3/5 NL +$2870 at Palace in 3/5 NL +$2742 at Palace in 3/5 NL
Bottom 5 Sessions
-$3900 at private game in 5/10 NL -$3329 at Palace in 3/5 NL -$2675 at private game in 5/10 NL -$2400 at Prime Social in 30/60 Mix -$2324 at Palace in 3/5 NL -$2215 at private game in 5/10 NL -$2084 at Palace in 3/5 NL
Notes:
-That 20/40 session at Fortune was not only my best session of the year, but it was also my second best cash game session of all-time. -My pain threshold found new levels this year. I’d never lost more than $2300 in a single session before 2022 and then I went it did it five times just last year. -I included more than 5 sessions for my bottom because three of those results were in private cash games that I’m staked in. While they technically count when looking at my overall performance, they don’t affect my bottom line nearly as much as sessions where I have 100% of myself. -Ignoring the private game results, the -$2400 in the 30/60 Mix was a record worst loss for me at the time – and then I demolished that mark with the -$3329 in 3/5 @ Palace. Good times!
Live Tournaments
I played 330+ hours across 47 entries in live tournaments in 2022. I managed a mere 7 cashes for a paltry 14% rate of finishing in the money. I made trips to Houston, Vegas, Lincoln City, Sacramento, and Pendleton – and I only had one winning trip the whole year. But it was a big one. I took 1st of 388 entrants in the Lincoln City Main Event for around $52,000 – a career high tournament score. Thanks to that win I finished the year with over $66k in cashes versus $46k in entry fees and a 44% ROI for 2022. After never having a losing year of tournament poker in my life, I booked losses for 2019, 2020, and 2021, but managed to snap that cold streak this year. Sort of. Without my big win, I would have had BY FAR my worst year of tournament poker ever. Tournament poker is funny that way – one score can change EVERYTHING. Also, even though I ended up regretting it, not playing the $10K Main Event helped my end of year numbers, as bricking a tournament that is over 10x my average buy-in has a huge effect on my final numbers and is largely why I had a losing 2019 and 2021 in poker tournaments.
Top 5 Cashes
$50,174 1st of 388 at Chinook Winds in $600+$200 NLH Main Event $4440 19th of 471 at WSOP in $1500 Stud 8 or Better $3900 28th of 522 at WSOP in $1500 Limit Hold’em $3700 8th of 269 at Wynn in $600 Omaha 8 or Better $1525 30th of 407 at Wynn in $600 PLO Turbo
Career Numbers (since summer of 2013)
ROI: 55% ROI (excluding WSOP Main Event): 83% ROI at WSOP: 57% ROI at WSOP (excluding Main Event): 122% ROI in NLH: 100% ROI in HORSE: 93% ROI in O8: 38% ROI in all other games: -33% ROI in entries of $2500+: -63% (2 cashes/9 entries)
WSOP cashes: 20 Current GPI Ranking: 3526th Washington All-Time Money List Ranking: 72nd
The Hand That Won Me $50k
It’s been over three months since I won the Main Event in Lincoln City, so this hand history might be a little fuzzy. But it was something like this: we were already pretty deep in the tournament – in the money already with maybe 3 to 5 tables left. I had heaps. Both my opponents in this hand had heaps. I think I started with something like 900k and they both had me covered. We were all well above average chip stacks. I think the blinds were 5k/10k with a 10k big blind ante and I was in the big blind with 77. Under the gun opened to 20k, the very next player called, and it folded to me and I defended the big blind.
The flop was 987 with two diamonds. Pretty nice. I check, the preflop raiser checks, and I believe the next guy bet 40k. This is obviously an extremely wet board. Our first instinct is to raise and be willing to put all the money in the pot. However, this board also absolutely smacks this player’s range as well. 99, 88, and JT suited are all hands I can see him flatting an under the gun open with from early position. He can also have some overpairs – like TT-QQ – some big diamond draws, and some straight draws. I end up deciding to check-call to keep things under control and see what develops on the turn. The preflop opener folds.
The turn card is perfect for our hand. It’s an offsuit four. None of the draws get there, but it also doesn’t really change the dynamic we had on the flop. I check and he bets 100k. I think about raising here also, but again elect to go with check-call.
The river pairs the four. What else could we want? Quads? I strongly consider leading out, but after giving it a lot of thought, I end up checking again. He bets 200k. It seems like I have an automatic jam here but the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t come up with hands that he was likely to call with that I could beat. JT was about the only one. I thought my opponent was a sharp dude, so I didn’t think he would call a jam with hands like TT+. If he was blasting off with a busted draw he obviously wasn’t calling with those hands (and he probably wouldn’t bet this sizing on the river either). So if he’s only calling with JT suited, 99 and 88, that’s six combos of full houses and four combos of straights. I shouldn’t have to do that math for anyone to know that jamming would be bad in this scenario. I didn’t see the merit in going all in and finally said, “this is probably a mega nit roll but…” and put out the calling chips. He turned over 99 for the nut full house and I continued on with a stack that was still well above average.
I’ve talked about this hand a lot with my friends and I still can’t explain exactly why I played it the way I did. Sometimes your instincts are going off for a reason. I’ve learned that not trusting my instincts is usually to my own detriment and trusting them in this exact spot absolutely saved my tournament life and allowed me to go on to make the biggest tourney score of my life.
From 8-1 Underdog to Champion
Sometimes when I go really deep in tournaments, I start fantasizing about winning the whole thing, particularly in bracelet events, but during this Chinook Winds Main Event run, the thought never really crossed my mind until the first big pot I won during heads up (although I did have a brief moment after that 77 vs 99 hand where I wondered if destiny was calling). The guy I was playing against was applying tons of pressure at the final table and doing most of the heavy lifting. I was basically just sitting there watching everyone else get bullied and knocked out by him, so when I did make it to heads up play, he had a MASSIVE chip lead and I was rather content that I was probably going to finish 2nd.
And then he opened his button and I defended with the 98 offsuit. The flop was 822 and I checked it to him. I can’t remember blinds or stack sizes but he made a c-bet and I decided to jam on him since a pair of 8s wasn’t exactly the kind of hand I was looking to check-call down with on the majority of runouts. He snap-called and I figured I was drawing to two outs. I rolled my hand and he was immediately disappointed because he thought I had him outkicked. But then he turned over his hand and was even more disappointed: he had 75 offsuit. In a stunning development, he turned zero equity and I quickly had a full double with a mediocre pair with a mediocre kicker and absolutely no sweat.
A few hands later, he raised his button and I defended with the 86 offsuit. The flop was pretty solid: T97. I checked, he bet 200k, and I raised it to 650k, he called. The turn was an unfortunate 6 and I decided to check it over to my guy since he had shown a tendency to attack weakness and overbluff. He obliged with a bet and I merely called. The river was a blank and I again checked it over to him and he didn’t disappoint by jamming for several times the size of the pot. I didn’t play my hand this way to fold to this kind of player, so I snap called and all he could produce was K3. We were pretty close in chip count at his point, but when the dust settled, we realized I had him covered and that was it. My biggest tournament win of all-time.
A Note About Volume
Altogether I played 1432 hours of live poker in 2022. That number is up from 1206 hours in 2021, but I only played 13 hours outside home games during the first three months of 2021. The rest of that year, I played an average of 123 hours a month. In 2022, I only averaged 119 hours a month. Somehow I went from being married to not being married and played less poker. Huh.
I addressed this problem of mine in a previous blog and I made a bet with a couple friends that I could play 320 hours of live poker over the last two months of 2022. It was a lock. I had trips to Pendleton and Vegas planned. And I still fell almost 30 hours short. Amazing. Granted, we didn’t bet enough for me to care about losing, but damn! That’s embarrassing! I think a reasonable goal for 2023 is to play 1600+ hours. That’s about 30 hours a week and since I plan on studying WAY more in 2023 and that number still represents a 15% increase in volume, it feels like a fair challenge.
2023 Goals
-Play more limit Hold’em at 20/40+ stakes
-Maintain my win rate at 3/5 locally
-Get out of makeup with my cash game backer
-Show a profit at 5/10+ NL
-Travel somewhere I’ve never been before
-Play more live mix games
-Play more live NLH tournaments
-Play WSOP Main Event
-Play 1600+ hours on the live felt
-Study at least 2 hours a week
-Teach my girlfriend how to play and get her in 4/8 games by spring
-Have my best year ever in poker
Overall, I’m pretty happy with my results in 2022. I wish I would have played more. I wish I played the Main Event. My cash game results were great and my tourney win added some nice cushion to my bankroll. After three mediocre years, I’m back to the level of success I enjoyed from 2016 to 2018. I fully expect 2023 to be my best year yet.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately – not about what my biggest leak is but about the thing I’ve come to realize is my biggest leak. It’s something that has come up over and over and over again throughout my poker career. I keep trying to come up with ways to fix it and it just never happens. And the funny thing about this massive leak? It wasn’t a problem when I had a day job. And it makes zero sense why that is the case.
I have a feeling this might come across a tad arrogant, but it’s the truth. Nothing else I do costs me more money than this one particular leak. I know I don’t play perfect poker. I have other issues that need to be addressed and would certainly improve my win rate. Paying attention and staying focused while I’m playing is a huge one. I’m legit terrible at that. But it’s not as damaging to my bottom line as what I’m about to share. Neither are any consistent technical mistakes I make while playing. Without a doubt, the number one biggest leak in my game, that unquestionably costs me more money than anything else… is… DRUMROLL… not playing enough poker.
I’ve been using the session tracker on my phone since July of 2014, which means I have over 8 years of poker data to filter through. I created a spreadsheet that has every month since then and how many hours I’ve played in each month. That’s 98 months since I started tracking, but I only played two full months in 2020 because of Covid and I missed the first three months of 2021 for the same reason. So that’s 85 months of potentially full-time play since I started using this particular session tracker. As a full-time poker player, there is no reason for me not to be playing 40 hours a week or 160 hours a month. Sure, things will come up here and there, but at the end of the month, I should typically be very close to that 160 number if I’m doing my job as often as I should be. So in those 85 months, how many times have I actually hit that 160 hour threshold? Answer: 14. That means that 83% of the time, I fail to hit my 160 hours. It’s also worth noting that 5 of the 14 times I did reach 160 hours, it was because I was playing in The World Series of Poker. So in the 79 non-WSOP non-Covid months, I’ve hit 160+ hours less than 11% of the time. Absolutely pathetic.
Here’s a breakdown of my average monthly volume by year:
2014: 71 hours/month 2015: 124 2016: 132 (went pro in October) 2017: 144 2018: 152 2019: 142 2020: 114 (January and February only) 2021: 124 (April through December) 2022: 115 (through September)
As you can see, that’s a considerable number of hours I’m missing out on. Even in the year I played the most poker (2018), I was coming up an average of 8 hours short each month – or basically taking an extra day off a month. In 2018, I was making $62.54 an hour in cash games. So in the year I played the most poker since I’ve gone pro, I still left over $6000 on the table. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve shorted myself an average of 45 hours a month in 2022. I’m making $79/hour at 3/5 NL this year, so if I put in all those extra hours at 3/5 and ran at my 2022 hourly over that span, I’ve cost myself ***wait for it*** $32,000!!! Just this year. Absolutely sickening stuff. I’m not going to do the math on all those other years, but I’m sure it’s plenty disturbing. It wouldn’t surprise me if I’ve cost myself around $100,000 since 2016 just by not playing as much as I should be.
I don’t know why this is so hard for me. But it’s extremely hard. It’s not like I hit 50 hours here and there but then come up short in some other week. I never hit 40 hours in a week. Ever. Unless I’m out of town. If I go somewhere for a tournament series, I am definitely capable of hitting my goal. But otherwise? Naw. Never happens. If you look at my numbers for the last three years, I might not even be averaging 30 hours a week over that span. Pathetic.
I’m not sure what the best solution is. I probably have to force myself to work five days a week. Most of my sessions are 8+ hours. I’m consistent with that at least. If I play five days, hitting 40 hours should be easy. If I take three days off, I have to average 10 hours a session and that’s pretty dicey. I basically never step foot in a casino to play cash games before 4 PM and I generally like to quit by 1 AM so I can stay motivated to hit the gym in the mornings. So most days I’m gonna play less than 9 hours. In all likelihood, if I’m going to consistently hit 40 hours a week, I need to be playing at least five sessions.
Ideally, I’d like to try my hardest to hit 320 hours over the last two months of this year. That might be a tall ask with Thanksgiving, my girl’s birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve all occurring during that span, but I’m gonna do it, dammit. It’s already too late for October, unless I just go marathon monster mode and I know that’s not going to happen. Next year, I’d like to get my volume back up to at least 150 hours a month. Those are my goals.
But yeah, not playing enough poker has to be my biggest leak as a player. I don’t play mistake-free poker. There’s plenty still to learn. I don’t pay nearly enough attention. But I doubt there’s anything one thing I consistently do that has cost me tens of thousands of dollars like not putting my volume in has.
Since I’m in the mood for digging into stats and looking at my tracker, I might as well post some other interesting numbers.
Lifetime Tournament Numbers:
ROI in live No Limit Hold’em Tournaments: 112% (180 tourneys)
ROI in live NLH Tourneys (excluding Main Event): 224% (177)
ROI in live Omaha 8 or Better Tournaments: 34% (30)
ROI in live HORSE Tournaments: 111% (36)
ROI in live non-NLH, non-O8, non-HORSE Tournaments: -31% (51)
My next event is always a marquee WSOP tournament for me: the $1500 Limit Hold’em. Granted, I’ve been playing mostly no limit cash games the last two years, but I spent almost all of my live cash game hours in limit Hold’em games the 17 years before that. It’s surely my best game and I figure most of the elite mix game pros don’t spend much time playing it.
I started off keeping notes for this tourney, but it didn’t last long. I felt like I was the strongest player at my starting table but a solid margin so I was playing a lot of pots and by the first break I had already increased my 25k starting stack to 34.1k and soon after hit a WSOP limit event peak of 41.4k.
With roughly 45 tables in play and some 450 players left, my table either broke or I got high-carded to a new table and one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me in a WSOP event happened:
I got seated on Joker’s immediate left. For the rest of the night. I was having a good day and after nine levels of play I had built my stack up to 52.9k and Joker had his at 37.1k. We actually did a fair amount of battling too. I should have probably at least kept notes on those hands. The only one I remember distinctly was raising under the gun with JJ, the next player called two bets cold (wearing an honorary Team Torch patch!) and then Joker 3-bet his big blind like an absolute psycho. I know this range is strong as hell, so I just called and so did our third opponent. The flop was Q52 and when Joker led out, I raised it to try and get the pot heads up. Perhaps this is foolish considering the range Joker is repping. He’s probably not betting that flop with AK. But he would bet it with TT, so raising can’t be that bad. The third player called though and Joker punished me with a 3-bet. I peeled looking for a jack only on the turn, but it was a 7 so I folded and Joker got raised by the other player in the pot. He ended up calling down and getting shown a set of fives.
Both of us managed to build our stacks a little over the next three levels and going into the last break of the night I had 58k and Joker had 41k. And this is where our fortunes completely switched course. I got absolutely decimated over the last three levels and Joker crushed. I ended up bagging a measly 10k in chips and Joker bagged 135k. I barely had one big bet left and Joker was top 15 in chips.
And Patton didn’t make it through the beer levelMy Day 2 starting stack
I was pretty much counting myself out as I’d need to win several hands in a row to even think about being back in contention in this tournament. In another improbable turn of events, Joker started Day 2 seated on my immediate left. I was positive he was going to be the one to knock me out because when I put chips in the pot, he usually can’t help but wake up with some sort of hand.
Spoiler alert
To make matters worse, I started under the gun on the first hand. I was going to have to put it in with anything reasonable or go all in from the big blind on the next hand. I ended up getting a piece of cheese and taking my chances in the big blind. It folded around to the small blind and I snap-called blind when he put me all in. I turned over the absolutely beautiful T4o vs his J7o and flopped a ten and turned him dead for a double up. Then I picked up JJ vs AK and won that race for another full double and found myself at 42k and halfway to an average stack! The ball really got rolling for me when I played a 3-bet pot with 88 against KK and flopped a set for another full double up. This had me at 82.5k when the average stack was 102k and feeling like I was really back in this thing. By the end of the first two levels, I had dipped down to 60k and Joker had surged to 265k, about double the average stack with 100 left and 79 of us making the money.
My rise continued after the break and I rather comfortably made the money and when the bubble burst, I found myself sitting on an average stack, in position to actually make a deep run. Plus, Joker and I were getting some coverage from PokerNews.
After four hour long levels, I was nearing 200k and Joker had a massive 325k stack with 58 players remaining. Meanwhile, our friend Lee Markholt, #2 on Washington’s all-time money list, had a massive stack that was near the chip lead. So three of us PNW boys were in the hunt with less than 60 players left. We had tried to get Lee to wear a patch but he said he needs to get paid to do so. I was like, “bro.” BROW. Come on.
Joker and I eventually switched tables and I ended up on the right of 2015 Main Event winner Joe McKeehen. I’ve actually played with Joe before and I don’t think he said a word to anyone the whole time. That’s the kind of dude I expected him to be. This time was a completely different experience. First, he said something to the dude to his left about a tweet Brock Parker made thinking that he was Brock (he wasn’t) and then said, “and that’s why I never talk to people.” I was watching a hand he played and he was wondering if he took a different line if he would have saved a bet and I commented that it would have saved him half a bet because his opponent never bets the river and he agreed. After that, Joe didn’t stop talking to me for hours. I guess he felt like I knew my limit Hold’em? It was strange, because I’ve always heard he basically doesn’t like anyone, but here he was yapping away at me to the point where I was thinking, “dude… give me a break.” Plus, he’s a mumbler so I kept having to ask him to repeat himself. One thing he did mention to me was that I needed to stop defending my big blind. It made me think… in cash games, I’m a liberal blind defender. Anything connected, most suited hands, anything remotely playable, I’m seeing a flop – especially from mid-to-late position openers. But the thing about poker tournaments is that you can’t put more chips on the table and playing marginal hands out of position can be very costly – and unlike a no limit format, the implied odds of making the best hand are limited to the fixed bet sizes. The lesson: tighten up from the big blind, avoid those marginal spots, and save your chips for when you have the range and positional advantage. It makes sense to me. Thanks, champ!
Here’s a key hand I played vs. Joe that he said I played perfectly and that he thought he could arguably fold preflop:
In a shocking turn of events, Joker busted out in 38th place and I had 240k with average stack at 350k as I headed to dinner break with 35 players left. Just goes to show how swingy tournament poker is and how important it is to have a chip and a chair. Joker started the day with a top 10% stack and I had to put my tournament life on the line the second hand of the day with two random cards. And six hours later, he was out and I still had a chance to win a bracelet. Wild stuff.
The pot that unofficially ended my run in this tournament was when I opened with the JJ under the gun and only the big blind called. The flop came KQx and I checked back. The turn was a blank and I called a bet. The river was also a blank and I called another bet and lost to K3. Maybe I can save a bet on the river – especially with two straight draw blockers – but I feel like my hand is too good to fold when I check back the flop and show weakness. The whole point of that line is to get to showdown cheaply and/or pick off bluffs.
I didn’t note any of the hands I’m talking about, but here’s what my input in the Team Torch chat looks like over the next 50 minutes:
And that was that. 28th place for $3900 and probably the least annoyed I’ve ever been busting a WSOP event. Why? Because I had no chance at the start of Day 2! And I made a deep run. And I sat right next to one of my best friends (and worst enemies) for most of the tournament! It was an absolute blast and an experience I hope we get to duplicate many times over the next several years. You know, if Joker can ever escape from Arkham for more than a few weeks each summer.
The Bat Cave 