Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Looks like I won the WSOP seat last night

First of all, I want to remind everyone that my chat is currently banned at FTP for being a bad boy so I can't communicate during the blogger tournies. I wish all of you well too and thank you for the kind words. I just am unable to express them.

The key hand was against the one guy I definitely needed to beat, twoblackaces. The blinds were $60/$120 and pureprophet raised to $360, both TBA and the cutoff called the raise and I had QQ in the BB. I decided to repop to $1,100, hoping pureprophet didn't have a hand to push in. She folded and then to my surprise TBA pushed in. Obviously, this gave me some pause, but not enough for me not to go with my gut. Considering both of our situations here, where if one made the points and the other didn't the one making the points would get the seat, I figured two things about TBA's play here: 1) he wouldn't flat call with AA or KK after a raise for fear he gives another hand a cheap chance to suck out on him postflop and possibly ending his chances for the seat, and 2) he knows that I know I have to beat him so that allows him to be more aggressive against me with weaker hands hoping I will fold. Figuring these two things to be true, calling with QQ was easy since I stood to be no worse than a flip against him (and honestly thought he could be doing this with hands I dominated). Unfortunately it was a flip when he showed AK. After a scary three diamond board came by the turn, giving him 14 outs, my hand held up on the river and TBA was out.

I still needed to make the points to guarantee a seat since a few players could win the event and overtake me. Once I made the final 16 it was over. I had some breaks along the way this month, particularly the J8 push against AA on Sunday preflop when the subsequent flop came JJ9, but for the most part my 12 times making the points in the last 14 tournaments was just smart, solid play. I heard MiamiDon tell TBA that I won as an underdog 12 consecutive hands Sunday night and I am preplexed by that. Far from the truth. I won several major hands as a 70 percent favorite against dry aces or as a 75 percenter against underdog kickers. Yep, it takes luck, but it didn't take 12 times luck, and I often had bad luck once we reached the points in these events, hence the few cashes and final tables.

As far as what event I would play at the WSOP, my first choice is the $1,500 HORSE tournament. I feel I can play all five games well and many players can only play a few of them well so I hope to give that a shot. The $500 extra will go a long way toward bringing Amy back to Vegas again this summer. She's hooked almost as much as me. I had hoped to get a free room at Planet Hollywood if they advertised with Rounder, but the deal fell through so it may be back to Binion's with Ted for me until Amy gets there. Wonder how the old fart is doing these days?

Now, here's a real question for you. Do you think it would be uncouth for me to keep playing the blogger tournaments in a real effort to try to win another $2,000 package? Obviously I am going to play the end of the series TOC for seats and the freeroll for another seat for putting the banner on my blog, but I am talking about the April and May prizes. There's still the overall leaderboard where I could win $700 for first. Granted the chances of winning a second monthly prize is slim, but if I really tried would that speak poorly of me? Would I seem like a greedy bastard?

13 comments:

WillWonka said...

I say winning one monthly leaderboard has nothing to do with the next. The slate is wiped clean and you should be able to play just as much as the next guy..

Congrats on the seat!!

SirFWALGMan said...

haha. Yeah. I would totally respect you if you pulled it off. More so than I do already. Good job getting the seat. I have usually seen you play really solid poker and never like you at my table.

AlCantHang said...

Congrats on the Player of the Month.

And damn skippy try to win the April PoM also!

corron10 said...

Good Luck with the HORSE tourney. Great job this month... 12/18 times in the points is awesome. looking forward to the April race..

lucko said...

Congrats! Very well done!

lj said...

congrats. i see no reason why you shouldn't shoot for another monthly leaderboard title if you feel like playing more events!

BWoP said...

Congrats!

Go for the back-to-back. The rest of us would if we were in your shoes.

Fred aka TwoBlackAces said...

Go for the back to back, I need the motivation. ;-)

Congrats again.

Julius_Goat said...

It would be foolish not to keep playing for another seat when you've already shown yourself capable of winning one.

Come get us.

And, congratulations! Gotta feel good.

Unknown said...

I'd say keep it going, and congrats!

lightning36 said...

Hands off the other seats, you greedy bastard!

Seriously, congrats on winning the seat. I think that any blogger's goal would be to win every seat. Good luck (but not too much) this next month.

bayne_s said...

Greed is Good

Alan aka RecessRampage said...

Dude, go for as many seats as possible, keep the cash if you want. It's your winnings, you can do whatever the hell you wanna do with it, IMO. Like Bayne said, greed is good.

I remember one time, at my table, this one guy was kinda tilting against this other guy. Well, so he was trying to isolate and then in one hand, he softplayed a hand against me saying you're a nice guy (cuz we were chatting it up) so I didn't want to take too much of your money... at which point I made it very clear and said, "woah, well thanks but I want to make it very clear that I want to make money and I don't care who or where it comes from."

Point being, win as much as possible and do what you want with it. This isn't some social gathering. It's poker.