Alright the next several posts are gonna be my World Series of Poker recap. I figured I'd start from the beginning and go all the way through the two weeks that I spent there, so this is gonna be pretty long.
So, to start from the beginning, we have to go all the way back to when I started trying for my seat. This was around the end of February or so. I didn't tell many people that I was going for it, because I didn't want to make a big deal out of it in case I didn't make it. So. I set $2000 out of my poker bankroll, which at the time was around $8000 or so. And I took shots at Full Tilt, Party, and Stars. If I went through that $2000 without success, then I was done with it.
I'm not even sure what spawned this idea in my head. I mean I've always dreamed about playing in the World Series. But. I've been primarily a limit grinder for the past two years. That was my bread and butter, that was how I built my bankroll. Didn't play a lot of no-limit, either in cash games or tournaments. So why now? Well, the allure of the World Series of Poker is almost magical. I just knew I wanted to be there, and I thought I had a reasonable shot at it at that time, with my allotted bankroll and overall knowledge of poker and gambling theory to make up for my lack of no-limit experience.
There are an almost countless number of online satellite tournaments to qualify for the WSOP Main Event. Ranging anywhere from $3 to $1000ish. I didn't want to waste time with the huge fields of the tiny buy-ins, but I didn't want to plunk down $1000 on a shot either. So my primary method was to play $150 single-table tournaments into the $1060 tournament on Full Tilt. The players in the $150s were not terribly tough... only 1st place got a seat into the $1060, but 2nd place got some cash. Which happened to me twice, which was pretty frustrating despite the $300 consolation prize. Anyways, eventually I got it, to play in the $1060 on Monday, March 20th.
This field was incredibly... NOT soft. People were playing back at me left and right. I felt completely outmatched, and very nervous. But then... I had a few hands go my way, which helped. There were a total of 72 entrants, and the top 6 got a seat. It wasn't until we got down to around 3 tables, and I found myself in the top 5 in chips, that I thought it actually might happen.
We got down to the final table after about 2 hours of play. From there, we got down to 7 very quickly. But THEN... BUBBLE PLAY. No one wanted to be that guy. 7th place got absolutely nothing. 6th place was just as good as 1st place, for the $10,000 seat + $2000 travel expenses. All I need is for any one of those other guys to bust out before I do. For the most part, I was around the middle in chips. But not a whole lot of "poker" was being played. It was either, everyone folds to the big blind, or, one guy moves all-in and everyone else folds. This went on for what seemed like DAYS. At one point, a medium stack moved in. The big stack called him, with AK. The medium stack had... KQ!! I thought it was all over and I could book my tickets... until the flop came KQx and no ace to come. Then... a little later, a small stack moved in, got called by A4. Small stack had Q9. Flop came with an ace, and again I thought it was all over. Then the turn comes 9, and river Q. Again I must sweat some more.
I don't even remember many of the hands but eventually the previous big stack dwindled so much that he was forced to move all-in with crappy cards that didn't find any luck. And HOORAY I won my seat :D
It took me about $800 out of the allotted $2000. Now at this point, I started thinking, maybe I should play in one of the earlier WSOP events too, to prepare for the Main Event that I just won a seat into (For anyone who may not be familiar, the World Series of Poker is comprised of roughly 40 events or so, maybe even 50 this year. The $10,000 buy-in Main Event is just one of these, although it is often what people are referring to when they just say "World Series of Poker" without specifying any further). So, there were online satellites for these other events too, so I started going for that. Now, ironically, I blew through about $1100 in those satellites, with no luck at all. Yes, I got a $10,000 seat with $800, but I could not get a $1500-$2500 seat with $1100. Funny how that works.
The next part of the story involves Rahul. See, he's a pretty good poker player too. A couple months after I won my seat, I got an e-mail from him saying that he just won one on Party. WHAT?? Yes. For real. Buuuttt.... he couldn't play in the WSOP because he couldn't get time off of work. WHATTTTT?????? Yes. For real. So, he needed to sell his seat. He asked me if I could help him out with that, since I have connections in poker forums and such. And I was like sure I'll ask around. And he said, "How much should I ask for? Do you think $8000 is too much?" and I was like DOOD you can get more than that.
One day later, I got him a buyer for $9500.
Rahul was quite happy, and said he'd give me a cut. At first I was like nah don't worry about it. But then, I remembered that I wanted to play in a prelim WSOP event. And I knew that Rahul likes to gamble. So I asked him if he would be willing to stake me in the $1500 NL event right before the Main Event. Standard staking deal: he pays my buy-in, and if I cash, he gets 50% of whatever I win. He said "let's do it."
SWEET I'm now playing in two WSOP events.
On a side note, these actually were not the first WSOP events that I ever played in. Back in 2005, I went to Vegas with Emily during the WSOP (that trip was her Christmas present to me). Her dad dropped in for a few days too (he likes Vegas, and he likes to fly his plane). Well, while he was there, he knew that we were crazy about the WSOP. And he decided to buy himself, Emily, AND me into one of the $1000 NL events that was going on while we were there. WHAT???? Yes. For real. That was an amazing experience, as my first large buy-in event that I've ever played in. I got to sit with Jennifer Tilly, and Todd Brunson. Emily sat with Marcel Luske, and Kathy Leibert. She lasted the longest out of all of us, at about 3 hours. But the experience was awesome.
So I am hugely indebted to both Emily's dad and Rahul for their contributions to my poker education. I plan to thank the both of them in my first TV interview. Even if it is 30 years from now.
Next post will start in Vegas.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Vegas in December
After finishing finals, I headed to Vegas for a 4-night trip. The crew this time was myself, Wendy (my sister), our friends Rick and Rahul, our cousin Jeff, and my friend Mike - a 2nd year in my department. Due to prior play, we got a deal for a cheap room at Bally's (~$30ish per night). Bally's has become one of our favorite places to stay, mainly due to its location (right on the strip, near Bellagio & Caesars), and the rooms are pretty good too. Nothing too luxurious, but nice and clean. Some properties on the strip can be quite sketch... we discovered this after staying at Imperial Palace once, just down the street.
Anyways, Mike is a rockstar, because he got to Vegas at 8am on Sunday. At this time I was just waking up to go to church before catching my 2pm flight. We had talked on the phone the night before, and he told me to come over to the party at their house. I told him I was exhausted and needed to finish packing, and that I'd see him tomorrow. Then after I hung up the phone, I started realizing... if he's getting to Vegas at 8am, that means his flight must leave Sea-Tac at like 6am. That means he's gonna need to be up for his flight by like 4am at the latest. It was then 11pm and it sounded like the night was still young... Is Mike going to bed at all??? Talking to him the next day, I confirmed that that was a resounding "NO." To make things worse, he couldn't even check into the hotel since it was in my name... plus 8am would've been way too early anyways. So Mike rallied all the way until about 1am that night.
vk asked me to place $75 on red for him, due to the Vincent Chase phenomenon (watch Entourage if you don't already). He chose $75 as the amount because I currently owed him $175, so he was like, if we lose, you just owe me $100. Anyways, I found a friendly looking roulette table, put my money down... and lost. crud.
Well. On Monday night, Excalibur was running a special for Monday Night Football: If you could guess the score for each quarter of the game, you'd win some money. It was a rolling jackpot for each quarter all season, so if it didn't get hit one week, the money would just roll over into the next week. So, 1st quarter was $400, 2nd quarter was $800, 3rd quarter was $2000 (guess that hadn't been hit in a while), and 4th quarter was $1200. The game was Bengals at Indy. To make a long story short, we decided to go in on it together, each of us picking different scores and splitting whatever we won. Well, we got the 2nd quarter. Unfortunately, so did 7 other people, so we had to split it with all of them before even splitting it amongst ourselves. Well, we didn't get any other quarter right, so we just won $100 as a team. We ended up spending that on lunch at the Venetian.
Anyways, at the Excalibur, we were all ordering drinks fairly rapidly. I think I took the lead though, particularly because I was drinking straight whiskey. Despite the inebriation I managed to score about $100 playing 1/3 NL, even including a pretty bad suckout against me towards the end of the session where I flopped a straight against a pair+higher straight draw, which came after we got all the money in. Around midnight we left to head over to Alladin for their notorious 2am tournament. But we got there early, so we decided to play some craps. That was a bad idea... I don't really remember what happened, but I do know that we all lost $100 sooooo fast.
However, then Rahul went on a mad heater at blackjack. He sat down with all the chips he had left from craps (about $65), with us cheering behind him. First he started betting small... $15. lost. Another $15. lost. Screw that, put the rest on. WIN! Let it ride. WIN!! Unfortunately I don't remember any of the hands. But before I knew it, he was playing 3 hands at $100 each. Where did all those green chips come from??? I do remember that he had to pull from his wallet twice to double down. I think they were both successful, haha. When he ran up to $900, I told him that now seemed like a good time to stop. He agreed. He then tried to hand me a black chip since I lost that much in craps. I was like no dude that was my money, I lost it! Rahul is crazy-baller.
Meanwhile Jeff is getting clobbered in poker. In fact, around Wednesday, I think all of us are down. A lot. Mike suffered two massive suckouts at his 2/5 NL game, with all the money in already, $500 stacks each time. What else can you do but get your money in with the best hand. Me, I kept playing tournaments and not cashing. Things were looking pretty grim.
Then on Wednesday night, it seemed like rock bottom for Jeff. He was down well over a grand at this point, all at 1/2 NL. He came up to the room where I was checking e-mail, and told me of his misfortune, including losing with an ace-high flush to a straight flush (both of them using both cards). Then he was like, "I think I'm gonna go play some blackjack." Now, you all know I'm not the type of person to try and daddy somebody, but I seriously wanted to stop him. Things were looking so bad, I didn't want him to spiral out of control even further. Well, for better or for worse, Jeff in fact went on a heater of his own at the blackjack tables!! He sat with $100, and every time we went to check in on him, he had tall stacks of greens, and sometimes some blacks. About an hour later, he comes running over and was like "I cannot believe what just happened!!" Final total: +$2450.
After this, we all went to a nice dinner at Chinois in Caesars. The mood had changed dramatically over the past few hours, not just because of Jeff, but also Rahul and Mike each took some money down at the Wynn, Wendy and Rick won at Bally's 1/2 NL and Wendy was also very drunk, and I just ran up about $100 playing online in the room (shut up... :P). But Jeff had by far the biggest swing. But when he started saying things like, "man I just wanna go back there and see if I'm still hot, the cards were just loving me," I had to jump in and say "You do realize you're talking to two statisticians here right?" while laughing and pointing at Mike and myself. I didn't want to spoil his fun too much though so I didn't give him much more of a hard time than that, heh.
As for me, I still ended the trip down. Tournaments took a big chunk of money. I got deep in two of them (final table of one, final two tables of another), but no cash either time. I did get in one session of 15/30 at the Wynn... it was a pretty good table. Pretty aggressive though, which always causes headaches. I had some suckouts on me early, then came roaring back, but could not break above what I sat down with; took a small loss on that session. I got up from the table because it seemed like they all knew each other, which is never really a comfortable thing. I'm also not really rolled for 15/30 right now, so I figured I'd just get out.
oh, also, vk sent me another text saying "Put $100 on black for me, if we lose then you owe me nothing. If we win then keep $25 for yourself and you owe me $175 again." So yeah I did that at the Wynn, and BOOM we won. I actually just talked to vk today and said I'd send him the $175 soon, and he said, "Wait, I thought we lost all of that." hahaha. I was like dood didn't you get my text back when I told you black was good?? Anyways I set him straight. Man I'm such an honest guy... ;)
Around 5am we headed back towards Bally's, for the $3.99 breakfast at Barbary Coast. Wendy doesn't remember much of this meal.
Then Mike and I headed over to the Bellagio, I was hoping to get into another 15/30 game there, and he was gonna play 2/5 NL again. Well we got there, and the floor said "no 15/30 right now... we got 30/60" and I said, "ok... yeah, I don't have THAT." Then she said "hmm... no 8/16 either, but we do have 4/8." yeah not really what I felt like doing right then. They did have a 2/5 NL game for Mike though which he sat in. I watched it for a bit and if it looked good then I was gonna sit, but there was one aggro-Asian dude who seemed like trouble. I saw Mike get check-raised a few times while standing there. Anyways that seemed like enough of a sign for me to go to bed, so I did. Mike stayed a few hours, and said he came out a couple hundred up.
All in all it was a good trip. I think next time I go, I shouldn't play as many tournaments. I mean, even a championship tournament player expects to go through droughts of countless tournaments without cashes, which can be a big toll on the bankroll. I see each tournament as practice though, for the big one in July...
Anyways, Mike is a rockstar, because he got to Vegas at 8am on Sunday. At this time I was just waking up to go to church before catching my 2pm flight. We had talked on the phone the night before, and he told me to come over to the party at their house. I told him I was exhausted and needed to finish packing, and that I'd see him tomorrow. Then after I hung up the phone, I started realizing... if he's getting to Vegas at 8am, that means his flight must leave Sea-Tac at like 6am. That means he's gonna need to be up for his flight by like 4am at the latest. It was then 11pm and it sounded like the night was still young... Is Mike going to bed at all??? Talking to him the next day, I confirmed that that was a resounding "NO." To make things worse, he couldn't even check into the hotel since it was in my name... plus 8am would've been way too early anyways. So Mike rallied all the way until about 1am that night.
vk asked me to place $75 on red for him, due to the Vincent Chase phenomenon (watch Entourage if you don't already). He chose $75 as the amount because I currently owed him $175, so he was like, if we lose, you just owe me $100. Anyways, I found a friendly looking roulette table, put my money down... and lost. crud.
Well. On Monday night, Excalibur was running a special for Monday Night Football: If you could guess the score for each quarter of the game, you'd win some money. It was a rolling jackpot for each quarter all season, so if it didn't get hit one week, the money would just roll over into the next week. So, 1st quarter was $400, 2nd quarter was $800, 3rd quarter was $2000 (guess that hadn't been hit in a while), and 4th quarter was $1200. The game was Bengals at Indy. To make a long story short, we decided to go in on it together, each of us picking different scores and splitting whatever we won. Well, we got the 2nd quarter. Unfortunately, so did 7 other people, so we had to split it with all of them before even splitting it amongst ourselves. Well, we didn't get any other quarter right, so we just won $100 as a team. We ended up spending that on lunch at the Venetian.
Anyways, at the Excalibur, we were all ordering drinks fairly rapidly. I think I took the lead though, particularly because I was drinking straight whiskey. Despite the inebriation I managed to score about $100 playing 1/3 NL, even including a pretty bad suckout against me towards the end of the session where I flopped a straight against a pair+higher straight draw, which came after we got all the money in. Around midnight we left to head over to Alladin for their notorious 2am tournament. But we got there early, so we decided to play some craps. That was a bad idea... I don't really remember what happened, but I do know that we all lost $100 sooooo fast.
However, then Rahul went on a mad heater at blackjack. He sat down with all the chips he had left from craps (about $65), with us cheering behind him. First he started betting small... $15. lost. Another $15. lost. Screw that, put the rest on. WIN! Let it ride. WIN!! Unfortunately I don't remember any of the hands. But before I knew it, he was playing 3 hands at $100 each. Where did all those green chips come from??? I do remember that he had to pull from his wallet twice to double down. I think they were both successful, haha. When he ran up to $900, I told him that now seemed like a good time to stop. He agreed. He then tried to hand me a black chip since I lost that much in craps. I was like no dude that was my money, I lost it! Rahul is crazy-baller.
Meanwhile Jeff is getting clobbered in poker. In fact, around Wednesday, I think all of us are down. A lot. Mike suffered two massive suckouts at his 2/5 NL game, with all the money in already, $500 stacks each time. What else can you do but get your money in with the best hand. Me, I kept playing tournaments and not cashing. Things were looking pretty grim.
Then on Wednesday night, it seemed like rock bottom for Jeff. He was down well over a grand at this point, all at 1/2 NL. He came up to the room where I was checking e-mail, and told me of his misfortune, including losing with an ace-high flush to a straight flush (both of them using both cards). Then he was like, "I think I'm gonna go play some blackjack." Now, you all know I'm not the type of person to try and daddy somebody, but I seriously wanted to stop him. Things were looking so bad, I didn't want him to spiral out of control even further. Well, for better or for worse, Jeff in fact went on a heater of his own at the blackjack tables!! He sat with $100, and every time we went to check in on him, he had tall stacks of greens, and sometimes some blacks. About an hour later, he comes running over and was like "I cannot believe what just happened!!" Final total: +$2450.
After this, we all went to a nice dinner at Chinois in Caesars. The mood had changed dramatically over the past few hours, not just because of Jeff, but also Rahul and Mike each took some money down at the Wynn, Wendy and Rick won at Bally's 1/2 NL and Wendy was also very drunk, and I just ran up about $100 playing online in the room (shut up... :P). But Jeff had by far the biggest swing. But when he started saying things like, "man I just wanna go back there and see if I'm still hot, the cards were just loving me," I had to jump in and say "You do realize you're talking to two statisticians here right?" while laughing and pointing at Mike and myself. I didn't want to spoil his fun too much though so I didn't give him much more of a hard time than that, heh.
As for me, I still ended the trip down. Tournaments took a big chunk of money. I got deep in two of them (final table of one, final two tables of another), but no cash either time. I did get in one session of 15/30 at the Wynn... it was a pretty good table. Pretty aggressive though, which always causes headaches. I had some suckouts on me early, then came roaring back, but could not break above what I sat down with; took a small loss on that session. I got up from the table because it seemed like they all knew each other, which is never really a comfortable thing. I'm also not really rolled for 15/30 right now, so I figured I'd just get out.
oh, also, vk sent me another text saying "Put $100 on black for me, if we lose then you owe me nothing. If we win then keep $25 for yourself and you owe me $175 again." So yeah I did that at the Wynn, and BOOM we won. I actually just talked to vk today and said I'd send him the $175 soon, and he said, "Wait, I thought we lost all of that." hahaha. I was like dood didn't you get my text back when I told you black was good?? Anyways I set him straight. Man I'm such an honest guy... ;)
Around 5am we headed back towards Bally's, for the $3.99 breakfast at Barbary Coast. Wendy doesn't remember much of this meal.
Then Mike and I headed over to the Bellagio, I was hoping to get into another 15/30 game there, and he was gonna play 2/5 NL again. Well we got there, and the floor said "no 15/30 right now... we got 30/60" and I said, "ok... yeah, I don't have THAT." Then she said "hmm... no 8/16 either, but we do have 4/8." yeah not really what I felt like doing right then. They did have a 2/5 NL game for Mike though which he sat in. I watched it for a bit and if it looked good then I was gonna sit, but there was one aggro-Asian dude who seemed like trouble. I saw Mike get check-raised a few times while standing there. Anyways that seemed like enough of a sign for me to go to bed, so I did. Mike stayed a few hours, and said he came out a couple hundred up.
All in all it was a good trip. I think next time I go, I shouldn't play as many tournaments. I mean, even a championship tournament player expects to go through droughts of countless tournaments without cashes, which can be a big toll on the bankroll. I see each tournament as practice though, for the big one in July...
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