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.
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