Interim (WSOP 2015.02)

I guess this is my official 2nd report on the 2015 WSOP.  I originally thought it would be an upbeat and bubbly straight ahead report, but I first scribbled down my innermost poker thoughts on this year's sojourn to Vegas, and when I looked back at it I thought to myself, self, this is a pretty good encapsulation even if it is light on the details.

As you can see on the first report, my results were less than stellar.  Sad to say they were even bleaker on the second go round, with not even a measly min-cash to temper the beating.

The weekend of the Monster Stack I only had 3 major entries and 1 fun side event, the Omaha 8 tournament at Orleans.  While I did enjoy myself, the card-centric nature of fixed limit tournaments combined with my lack of experience and any significant skills worked together to guarantee my relatively early exit.  I chased where I shouldn't have, and blanked even when the odds happened to be in my favor.

Alas, my 3 NLHE entries, the details of which have since faded from my memory, were also fruitless.  At the conclusion of my inauspicious Monster Stack run (barely 4 hours) I made a bee-line for the airport and quickly returned home, licking my wounds and very glad to be back with the family.

I was, indeed, thoroughly disappointed.  But on reflection and with the passage of time, I am better than okay with how things turned out.

My poker brethren also partook in the Monster Stack - four others actually, more from my garage than have ever gone forth in the WSOP with their own money (though one was staked) than ever before.  All four struck out, two of them relatively quickly like me, the other two found a more prolonged death well into day 2 and nowhere near the money.

All four were no doubt crestfallen as I was, but I wonder if they look back as I do and see the big picture and thus the brighter side.

Tournament poker is exceedingly difficult to conquer, for seasoned pro, serious semi-pro, hard core amateur and total newbie alike.   Once again, Daniel Negraneau is halfway through the series with over a dozen entries and only a single cash to his name.  But still, he is one of the best tournament players in the world and has no reason to doubt this.

Carrying it further, the arrogance that we as poker players bring into a major tournament is wholly necessary not only for both our sanity and our egos but to help insure the best result possible.  Ergo, we only play as good as we feel, and the better we feel the better we play.  You have to be a bit cocky in these things, even when you have every logical reason to not be.

I didn't feel especially outclassed in the Monster Stack, but I was keenly aware that the three players to my direct left were better than I was.  The others more to my right, were for sure softer, but if they'd had position on me, I would've been forced to reevaluate this summation.

Gladly, my good friend Allen, for the first time in his poker career, found himself at his final Monster Stack table, surrounded by sharks.  I say gladly, because I feel it is a very important part of every poker players career and evolution to be confronted by the cold fact that poker is for real and truly a skill game.  Hand in hand with this, there are plenty of very skilled players out there, and eventually you will run into them; and in doing so you will realize and acknowledge that they are, indeed, better than you.

I found this out years ago, at the 2011 WSOP, but it was good to be reminded again.  Had I run better, and in more than a few instances played better in 2015, I might have been able to hang and hang on.  But I was determined not to fold my way to a min-cash, were it in the cards, which, judging by Allen and Jeff's results, it was not.

So at the time, I was dejected.  In hindsight, I am at peace and in some ways rejuvenated.

Last Saturday night 19 of us amateurs returned to my garage for a good old $40 tournament.  I ran pretty well, but I also played exceptionally well, as every opponent I faced fell squarely into the category of food rather than someone that would eat me.  There was one opponent that might occasionally take a chunk out of me, but he was on my near right, and so I was able to avoid and/or outmaneuver him just by virtue of that position.

The others were simply fodder.  The bet sizing tells that abounded were mainly what kept me in good stead.  Big bet?  Big hand.  Small bet?  Mediocre hand or air.  It really was that simple.  And it was a great reminder that skill ultimately rules at this silly game that has inflamed my passions so frequently of late.

I take solace that I wasn't a chump less than 4 hours into my WSOP event - I was simply fodder.  And so were my compatriots.  Could I or anyone of them have gotten hit by the deck a bit and gotten into the money?  Absolutely.  Were any of us destined for a truly deep run and maybe even the final table?  Well, probably not.  Stranger things have happened, but truthfully, there are not only a zillion land mines to avoid, but there is an absolutely genuine skill gap.

I do honestly believe that I have been narrowing that gap little by little every year, as I study and work on my game - but I refuse to buy into hype, either my own or ESPN's, that I'm only a few lucky hands away from a six figure score.

Poker is very much like life, in that there is a statistically infinitesimal amount of people who have hit it big mostly by luck.  But by far the vast majority of those who do succeed and especially the ones who succeed big, get there by doing the work.  It's not enough to splash around with play chips a few times a week, or hit Commerce once or twice a month.  It truly isn't.   The poker players who learn how to accumulate chips in a tournament and hang on to them don't take short cuts or read books or attend a poker clinic - they put in the time at the tables.  Period.  The ones who play every day, and work hard at improving, those are the ones we end up seeing under the hot lights.

As a man with a family and a job, I recognize that I will likely never be in this group; and frankly, the amount of work and devotion that is required to climb that mountain is beyond not only my budget but my sanity as well.

It has been said over and over that poker is a tough way to make an easy living; I can easily take that farther and say it's a miserable way to go through life if that's all you have to think about.  I love, love, love poker - and I want to continue doing so.   Therefore I can wholly accept that the odds of a five figure cash in the WSOP are truly pretty long, and the odds of getting into the six figure / final table club are basically nil.

This thought is both sobering and liberating.  It gives me both the pause and the spark I need to carry on, playing when I can, but always putting my family and livelihood first.

How's this for a strange metaphor?  Poker is like the Okavango Delta in Botswana.  Wild, vast, and yet obtainable with a bit of cash and a sense of adventure.  But stay too long and you're likely to get malaria.  Wander into the wrong area and you very well might get eaten.

Go to a photo Safari camp.  Pay your $1100 a night for a week and enjoy.  Take photos and video.  Then get your ass home.  You are not a Nat Geo film maker, you aren't in the delta every day and you really wouldn't want to be.  Sure, on some random vacation you may stumble across a lion taking down a zebra and get the footage of a lifetime; but odds are - you won't.   Doesn't mean you can't enjoy the splendor and the journey.

And so that's it for me - I'm looking at the WSOP like I would a Safari.  I would love to see a leopard fighting a hyena, but I'll be very happy seeing an elephant browsing on leaves at sunset.  I know it's going to be expensive, but I know that it's disposable income, and I'm not paying for a two month stay at the most expensive resort.  I'm going for a week, and I'm staying on a local reserve where the chef is good but not great and the camp could charitably be called 'rustic'.

The Colossus really seems to me to be the best value, the budget Safari that still has a chance of capturing a great moment or two.   I would be thrilled to have a WSOP cash on my Hendon Mob page, and this seems entirely reasonable and obtainable, my first two tables were amazingly soft.  I would rather do this every year than drop another grand and a half and go up against sharks who splash around every day in the Monster Stack.

Still, I have no regrets and I'm glad I did it.  Next year - a different approach.   I would love to stay in Vegas for a full week, but instead of flying I will drive up, instead of Aria I'll stick with the Orleans.  No rental car and no flight means I can afford a half a dozen more buy-ins to smaller events.  Ideally, I would play local dailies (not tiny turbos, but real events like at the Aria or Binions) during the week and then fire two bullets in the Colossus come the weekend.  In a perfect world I would have cashed enough up until then to free roll into it.

We will see.   Until then, I'm going to remember to appreciate the game as a vast and beautiful (though sometimes dangerous) savannah - a place that I love to visit on occasion, but one that I respect and stay away from a good amount of the time.

WSOP 2015.01

And so it was that I found myself Vegas bound on a Thursday afternoon, headed out to play in the largest poker tournament in history.  Thank goodness my flight had a crack cockpit crew. Or maybe they were just on crack.

Damn bugs.

With the bugs off the windshield and everything in order, we took off on time and arrived while it was still light outside.  My rental car had a mere five miles on the odometer...

Spankin' new.

And even better, it was named after the home of the World Series of Poker!

Fortuitous?  

But before I could make my way over to pick up my pre-registered ticket to the Colossus - yes, the aforementioned BIGGEST TOURNAMENT IN POKER HISTORY, I had some degenerate gambling to do.  No, not poker, well not a real tournament anyways.  I met up with my pal Jason and together we indulged in the silliness that is the Treasure Island 10pm $65 Donk-A-Ment.

Though the starting stack has improved, they now give you 10,000 in chips instead of 4,000, the structure has not.  If anything it is slightly worse, as they skip the 400-800, 500-1000, 800-1600 and 1500-3000 levels, among many others.

So it was, after the second break, Jason was long gone and I hobbled my way to the finish line, flipping coins for a min-cash of less than $200.  Ah well.

It was almost 2am and I thought I would be smart and hightail it over to the Rio where the line for pre-registration pickup would surely be short.

WRONG.

After 45 minutes in line, followed up by another hour waiting in the casino cage area, they found my lost ticket and I was well on my way to a delightful 4am bed time.

Morning came 3 hours later and I had scrubbed my sweaty bits clean and made my way to Mecca.

As I approached the convention center area, I caught sight of some old school goodness in a rather shitbox car.

Binion's - bitches.

And then, I was there...

I was quite a bit early, and so I commenced to people watching, occasionally staring at my golden ticket in hand.

And checking out the new Poker Hall of Fame banners - including cold blooded killer Benny Binion!

Finally they let me into where I would be playing - the vaunted Amazon room.  A bit smaller than the other two rooms with very cool lighting, this is typically where the higher buy in events and the day 2's take place.  It also has the final table tv area, which was dark when I was there.

My section, around the corner, where I've more than once watched the 50K players championship.

My table...

And my stack.

And so it went.  First they played the fanfare from the movie The Natural, which gave me goosebumps.  Then Jack Eiffel, the tournament director of the WSOP entire, gave an emotional and rather rousing speech just prior to the shuffle up and deal.  The actual announcement was a bit of silly business with a Roman gladiator in full costume that I ignored - he said, "Shuffle up and kill - I mean, deal!" which was barely legible at the time.

And we were underway.  My first table was surprisingly tight and soft.  I cued off of this and got engaged early, dragging a half dozen or so small pots within the first 40 minute level.  Barely into the second level, the table broke, as I knew it probably would.  We had been warned by the floor in our section that we would be first to go.

I found myself in the center of the main Amazon section, at a much more seasoned table, and this is where I took my first few couple of hits.  Tangled up with a fellow who knew how to get me to come along to value town almost willingly.

There was another dude who thought he was God's gift to poker, I spanked him a bit, ripping my flopped broadway straight on the river and he paid me off.  Despite my earlier missteps I found myself around 50 big blinds at the first break and I was excited.  I was playing well and reading my opponents expertly.

Shortly after my return, our table, and about ten other tables around us, all broke at once, and we were in the Pavillion room.  The Amazon room has the prestige, the Brasilia has the bracelets, but the Pavillion is still by far the most impressive.

Nearly 300 tables and 3000 poker players, going at it.  Still gives me the chills.  The first time I walked in to this room in 2010, I got a similar feeling that I had experienced at the Great Wall of China, the Taj Majal and the Pyramids of Giza.  Echoes of that still lingered in 2015, as I realized that every single table save for about a dozen set aside for high stakes cash games, was dedicated to one tournament.

That included tables down at the opposite end of the casino in the Rio's everyday regular poker room...

All the cash game players were kicked out at 9am to make way for Colossus players.

As well as about 20 tables jammed inside the food court!  Crazy!

Oh I'm sorry, did you need to eat?  Too bad.

There were in fact a few well known pros in the Colossus, including Greg Reymer and Antonio Esfandiari, and this guy Dan Heimiller, winner of last years WSOP Seniors event and a WPT champ as well.

And so it was that my third table was the toughest of all, with nary a limper in sight.  3 bets abounded and my stack began to shrink as the blinds and antes ate away.  I was a bit frustrated at my dearth of cards, even though I have long learned that it isn't cards I should be looking for, but rather spots.

I found what I thought was a good one with a baby ace in the highjack.  UTG, who was one of the only passive players at the table, had limped.  Another player who had been fairly active flat called to my right.  With 12 bigs I happily let it rip.  It folded around to the flat caller who hemmed and hawed and somehow found a call to my shove with 10-8.

Well he had a monster stack right?  Wrong.  He barely had me covered.  How he found that call, to this day I will never know.  I had not been particularly active, I had even shown pocket queens once.

A 10 in the window and that was it, I was walking the long halls of the Rio.

It was a great playing experience, and best of all I had made no colossal mistakes in the Colossus.  I now had time to decompress a bit.  I decided against playing a 7pm tournament in favor of picking up my old homie Noah at the airport, a dear friend who was the best man at my wedding.

We had a great time catching up and getting our grub on before heading back to T.I. and the ridiculous but fun lottery that is their 10pm tournament.

Saturday morning came a bit later than Friday morning had, which was great because I needed the rest.  I meandered down to the Rio just before kickoff; and rather than firing another entry bullet (which I couldn't have anyways because it was sold out) I chose to rail my buds.

Noah in the Pavillion

And Jason, trapped in the regular Rio Poker room.

The Colossus - Colossally impressive.

Noah managed to bust out before I could leave to go play poker elsewhere, so he joined me on a sojourn downtown.

Dorkus-Maximus

               

Old school shiz...

The closest Noah or I ever got to a 7 figure score.

 And so we were in plenty of time to register for a $160 tournament at Binion's.  Noah lasted quite a bit longer than me, as I managed to suck fairly hard.  I underestimated my opponents as they were almost all older than me and very passive at the table.  Of course, I realized in hind-sight, that most of them that I tangled with, likely play tournament poker just about every day.  In any case, while I had been gently led to value-town once in the Colossus, in this Binion's tournament it seemed I was determined to take the grand tour.  Over and over and over and over.   I sucked pretty hard.

So I bid Noah adieu, but not before I saw this guy sit down at his table.

 Yes, Oakland A's fans, that's Jose Canseco!  Noah said he was friendly and chatty as all get out.  Too bad I missed out.  But I didn't miss out on the Aria 7pm.  I arrived well over an hour before start time, plenty of time to register right?   Wrong.

Yep, a line.

 Yep, there was a line alright.  The Aria was also running a high roller and a charity tournament so they only had 20 tables available.  I was alternate 51, and by the time the first break rolled around, I still wasn't in and there were over 250 more alternates to go after me!

Still, I got to sit down in the third level with over 50 bigs, which wasn't too bad.  I dragged a few pots before stumbling with my top two pair losing to a set and me once again visiting my favorite town.  Thankfully my opponent didn't just shove on me, I likely would've given him my whole stack.

And so, down to 15 bigs, I found a good spot to rip against a very active big stack.  I was in the small blind with A10 and he had opened from the cutoff for the umpteenth time.  This time though, he had queens.  Oh well.

I finished off the night with another trip to T.I., though I was far too late in arriving to get into the tournament.  I said goodbye to Noah and Jason, who had both failed to make day 2 in the Colossus, and headed for bed.

The flight out the next morning was uneventful and I was happy to be home with the fam.

I wish my results had been better on this trip, but I can honestly say that everything else was fantastic.  If online poker somehow manages to become legal in California and then eventually the country, we are for sure headed into another poker boom.

The game to me seems almost as popular as it's ever been.  Over 20,000 people played in the Colossus, and every other poker room I visited while it was going on was packed to the gills as well. Even better, even at my toughest table, the third table I sat at in the Colossus, I never felt intimidated in the least.  Even in 2015, most people know how to play the game with only some amount of skill - there is a lot of profit to be made by playing aggressively and by paying attention as I know I can when I have had enough sleep and am in the right frame of mind.

So that said, when I return, maybe this year maybe next, I will do a better job of getting sleep the night before a big event, and I will schedule my return better in advance.  This year I set my hotel and flight basically assuming that I would bust.  Next year I'm scheduling my return on the day of the final table, so I'll be well into the money when and if I have to make any changes.  I think this will help my mental state as well, as I don't think I was feeling competitive enough this time around.  I also plan to fire multiple bullets like Jason did.  Even though he failed to cash, he did get quite a bit farther than I did, and I know the multiple entries helped him play more aggressive and more effectively.

As for the looming Monster Stack in two weeks, I'm not sure if I'm going or not.  That will all depend of course on family, job and other commitments - right now it is looking like about 50/50.  We will see.  In any case, I look forward to playing the Colossus again and again and again, as many years as they'll have it.   I really think, despite the occasional wrinkles such as losing a few entry slips here and there (mine included) it could not have gone much better.  We started on time, and the event, as 'Colossal' as it was - seemed to go exceptionally smooth.

Stay tuned, there may or may not be a part two.