Day 2 of the WCOOP was a LHE and 2-7 Triple Draw tournament. Since limit is my favorite game, and basically nobody knows how to play triple draw, I was basically counting my money already.
Oh, wait, I also have to get cards as well.
Bummer.
The limit started off poorly with two river straights being caught against me and pretty much went downhill from there. Got up to almost 4k (from the starting stack of 3k) at my high point and then lost a few crucial hands. The worst was a button vs SB battle where the SB had AK and bet/raised at every opportunity. I was happy to keep putting bets in with my AJ when the flop came jack high. We went one bet on the king river.
Had a couple of comeback hands after that. Played AA aggressively and got called down by 99 on all streets. Had 57hh on a 236hh board and went a couple bets on the flop, hit a 4 turn and an 8 river to give me the super-nuts.
After that, I played A8 in position vs a loose player. The flop came down 553 giving me a runner flush draw and ace high. He bet out and I figured that he is weak here so often that I have to call on flop with plans to bet/raise any diamond or scare card on the turn. The turn peeled off a beautiful ace and I just called because I didn't want to scare him off. I knew I had the best hand and wanted to keep him in to get at least one bet on the river. The river came a 4 and the trapper became the trapee when he rolled over 22.
After that I had to find a spot to stick the rest of my stack in, and I took it with AJ folded to me. The SB woke up with AA and I was gone.
The triple draw went about as well. The thing about triple draw is that it's all about position. If you have position on a player, you have a huge advantage since you can see what they do before you act on every decision. This means you can adjust how many cards you draw based on what you see them do, you can react to bets easier (betting when they are weak, when they will never know if you are weak until after they bet), and you can force more people off of hands (or the converse, you can stay on mediocre hands knowing that you are ahead when they are drawing).
Sadly, in triple draw as well as limit hold em, you still have to make hands. I made very few hands and was out early. Here is something I typed up right after the hand played out to give you another example of triple draw strat:
The last hand before the break was an interesting example of 2-7 strat, so I'll share it. I started with 98732 in the cutoff and 3bet a raiser. The goal was to get the button to fold so I'd hopefully be HU in position. This would make me a big favorite in the hand as I could stand pat in position if he drew two and get a fold (or make him call bets with him drawing and me ahead), or break and draw to the 87 if he drew one and then stood pat on the second draw. My being in position would help me tremendously as I can see what he does, and he has to try to not make a mistake based only on how many I'm drawing. The button called 3 cold, though, and they both drew 2. I drew 1 b/c in a three way pot without position I knew I'd have to at least improve to a 87, and even then my hand wouldn't be very strong. I 2bet after the flop to try again to get position and the button called along again. At this point I was done with the hand, as I had to catch well just to have a fairly weak made hand. Everyone drew 1 on the turn and river and no bets were put in and I took it down with my J, which was a fortunate outcome to a well played hand.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
WCOOP Day 1
It's always interesting to me to see how many people come out to play these big online tournaments. 7,000 people played in the NL 6-max yesterday. 7,000. That number is so big you don't even have to write it out, grammatically. I started off super hot, getting paid with AA, making straights, and generally getting my good luck out of the way in level one. I slowly chipped up after that and hung around for a few hours before losing KK to AJ and then short stack shoving AQ into AK a couple hundred away from the bubble. Nice.
I'm not a big fan of 6-max tournaments. It's not that I have a problem with the change of aggression that is needed, it's just annoying whenever everyone else is playing hyper aggressively. There were a couple of hands that I got 3bet and let the hand go where, in retrospect, I could have 4bet and more than likely taken it down. Unfortunately, by the time I realized that a 4bet might have worked, it was too late to do anything as the hand was 30 minutes in the past. I didn't make as many 3bets as I'd like to have, but that was more a case of timing then anything else. I'm not going to 3bet with air when the blinds are 15/30, and by the time the antes came in it seemed like nobody in front of me wanted to open any pots and I'm not going to start loose 3betting out of the SB or BB. That's a good way to kiss goodbye to 1/3rd of your stack. The two 3bets I did make were with AA and KK (back to back hands) and both got folds, so I;m def looking for situations in the upcoming NL tournaments to 3bet more.
Also yesterday was the five card draw tournament. Do you know how many people know how to play five card draw? Not many. Remember when you were in school, and the teacher would always tell your parents that you were "reading on a 5th grade level", and your parents would get stoked because you were only in 2nd grade and that was somehow a good compliment? Yeah. I'd say about 95% of the field yesterday were playing five card draw on a 5th grade level.
And I only think a few of them are actually in the 2nd grade.
I stuck to my plan from last year (where I got 23rd) and basically played my hands face up and squeaky tight, until I ran up against a thinking player at which time I loosened up a tad against them and bet/drew one with draws. Doubled up the second orbit and then started the seven hour grind which ended with me busting 82nd for a double-money back cash.
I can say that I'm really happy with my overall play. Against bad players in a game that is foreign to them you can't really start making a ton of plays. You pretty much have to sit back and let them shoot their stack off into you. With such long levels, these skill games pretty much become wars of attrition, and luckily I'm very used to sitting at a table for hours and hours and not getting bored. I think I'll see this kind of thing again soon, in the 2-7 tournament and so a lesser degree in the 8-game mix. As soon as you can discern who is thinking about what, you can take advantage of it. Got a smart player who knows the game? Make moves on him. Why would he mess with you when there is so much dead money to get. Got a bad player? Play tight against him. No need to make any moves since they aren't going to work anyway.
I'm not a big fan of 6-max tournaments. It's not that I have a problem with the change of aggression that is needed, it's just annoying whenever everyone else is playing hyper aggressively. There were a couple of hands that I got 3bet and let the hand go where, in retrospect, I could have 4bet and more than likely taken it down. Unfortunately, by the time I realized that a 4bet might have worked, it was too late to do anything as the hand was 30 minutes in the past. I didn't make as many 3bets as I'd like to have, but that was more a case of timing then anything else. I'm not going to 3bet with air when the blinds are 15/30, and by the time the antes came in it seemed like nobody in front of me wanted to open any pots and I'm not going to start loose 3betting out of the SB or BB. That's a good way to kiss goodbye to 1/3rd of your stack. The two 3bets I did make were with AA and KK (back to back hands) and both got folds, so I;m def looking for situations in the upcoming NL tournaments to 3bet more.
Also yesterday was the five card draw tournament. Do you know how many people know how to play five card draw? Not many. Remember when you were in school, and the teacher would always tell your parents that you were "reading on a 5th grade level", and your parents would get stoked because you were only in 2nd grade and that was somehow a good compliment? Yeah. I'd say about 95% of the field yesterday were playing five card draw on a 5th grade level.
And I only think a few of them are actually in the 2nd grade.
I stuck to my plan from last year (where I got 23rd) and basically played my hands face up and squeaky tight, until I ran up against a thinking player at which time I loosened up a tad against them and bet/drew one with draws. Doubled up the second orbit and then started the seven hour grind which ended with me busting 82nd for a double-money back cash.
I can say that I'm really happy with my overall play. Against bad players in a game that is foreign to them you can't really start making a ton of plays. You pretty much have to sit back and let them shoot their stack off into you. With such long levels, these skill games pretty much become wars of attrition, and luckily I'm very used to sitting at a table for hours and hours and not getting bored. I think I'll see this kind of thing again soon, in the 2-7 tournament and so a lesser degree in the 8-game mix. As soon as you can discern who is thinking about what, you can take advantage of it. Got a smart player who knows the game? Make moves on him. Why would he mess with you when there is so much dead money to get. Got a bad player? Play tight against him. No need to make any moves since they aren't going to work anyway.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Pre Blog 1
Three days before the first event and I'm getting pretty anxious. It's been a few years since I had a plan to grind out a long series of tournaments like this (last one was WCOOP 06 I believe) and I always like to lay out a few ground rules for myself.
No sleeping, no drinking, no fighting.
While I've used a little bit of hyperbole, those three golden rules are key to being in the best mindset during a long tournament series.
No sleeping? Well not literally of course. A problem that I have is that my lifestyle leads itself to snoozing whenever I'd like. Currently I'm going to bed around 7am and waking up around 3pm. This obviously isn't going to work out with tournaments starting every day at 11:30. That problem is easy to fix, I'll just stay up for a while today and tomorrow and by Friday I'll be waking up around 10am (which is ideally when I'd like to wake up every day during the series).
No drinking? The easiest of my rules to follow since I'm not a big drinker as it is. The problem isn't the actual drinking since that would take place in a bar after the tournaments are done for the day, the problem is that going out leads to staying out late and feeling shitty the next day.
No fighting? This is pretty much a catch all for not doing anything that's going to put me in a bad mood. Your mood is a key contributing factor to how well you play. If you are in a sour disposition an hour or so into a tournament, there is no way that you'll be able to stay focused for the entire 14+ hours that it may take to close it out. I'm not saying that people need to be in a euphoric mood all the time to play ideal poker, but not being in a bad mood is key to being able to take the ups and downs of tournament poker in stride.
That out of the way, I can look at the schedule for the first couple of days and get excited. I'm pretty amped to play some of the bigger niche tournaments, like the PL 5 card draw (strategy: play like the tightest nit ever), the 2-7 triple draw (strategy: position is more important in this tourney then in any other tourney), and the 8-game mix (strategy: beat the five other people at the table in games that most of them have never played before). Those, coupled with what I feel is my strongest event (full ring lhe), and a bunch of staples that I've played a ton of times before and am very comfortable with (nlhe, plo), should lead to a great start to the series.
No sleeping, no drinking, no fighting.
While I've used a little bit of hyperbole, those three golden rules are key to being in the best mindset during a long tournament series.
No sleeping? Well not literally of course. A problem that I have is that my lifestyle leads itself to snoozing whenever I'd like. Currently I'm going to bed around 7am and waking up around 3pm. This obviously isn't going to work out with tournaments starting every day at 11:30. That problem is easy to fix, I'll just stay up for a while today and tomorrow and by Friday I'll be waking up around 10am (which is ideally when I'd like to wake up every day during the series).
No drinking? The easiest of my rules to follow since I'm not a big drinker as it is. The problem isn't the actual drinking since that would take place in a bar after the tournaments are done for the day, the problem is that going out leads to staying out late and feeling shitty the next day.
No fighting? This is pretty much a catch all for not doing anything that's going to put me in a bad mood. Your mood is a key contributing factor to how well you play. If you are in a sour disposition an hour or so into a tournament, there is no way that you'll be able to stay focused for the entire 14+ hours that it may take to close it out. I'm not saying that people need to be in a euphoric mood all the time to play ideal poker, but not being in a bad mood is key to being able to take the ups and downs of tournament poker in stride.
That out of the way, I can look at the schedule for the first couple of days and get excited. I'm pretty amped to play some of the bigger niche tournaments, like the PL 5 card draw (strategy: play like the tightest nit ever), the 2-7 triple draw (strategy: position is more important in this tourney then in any other tourney), and the 8-game mix (strategy: beat the five other people at the table in games that most of them have never played before). Those, coupled with what I feel is my strongest event (full ring lhe), and a bunch of staples that I've played a ton of times before and am very comfortable with (nlhe, plo), should lead to a great start to the series.
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