A month later I saw who the co-lead instructor would be, along with the permanent teacher at WPT Nick Binger - it was the one and only tournament beast known as Vanessa Selbst!
Now Vanessa, for those of you who don't know, isn't one of those "Best woman player" players - she's quite literally one of the best tournament poker players in the world - PERIOD. She has long been someone who's game I have greatly, greatly admired and I would be thrilled to learn from her.
So then I thought to myself, self, what else can I do out east that would justify the expense of this trip? Well two things popped into my mind - first and foremost I could fly into Philly which was just an hour from AC and on the way I could visit my dad's gravesite. I've never been to see him there and a visit was long overdue.
Second, I have a good friend from grade school that now lives in Cranston New Jersey, and while he lives about an hour and a half north of AC, I figured I could still drop by - especially because he has a poker game!
I shot him an e-mail, and it was on like Donkey Kong! He would host a game that Friday night, I would fly in early afternoon, visit my dad and then head out his way. Easy peezy.
The flight was uneventful, and it turns out it was also free - non-stop on AA courtesy of the gazillion miles I have racked up over the years for work. It was a good thing I was saving on airfare, the prices I checked were rather stupid, not to mention that the workshop I was attending wasn't cheap. Neither for that matter was a room at the Borgata - but I really didn't want to stay somewhere else and deal with the hassle of traveling back and forth from the class to my room.
I touched down in Philly at 230pm, made my way through the shit-show that was the Philly Airport Budget Rental car office, JHC those were some jackass morons - popping gum and talking to each other non-stop about their next break, good grief. Even though I had Fastbreak, I still had to briefly talk with one of them. They were a bunch of dummies and the lady I talked with was the queen. Oye.
Still, I made it onto the road in good time. My ride was a 2017 Corolla and it was pretty sweet. It beeped at me when I drifted into another lane, and the cruise control was crazy - it sped up or slowed down automatically when he car in front of me changed speed. Very cool and made for a much easier long drive to my friends house.
Along the way I stopped at Harleigh cemetery in Camden. It was my second visit there, I had been to bury my grandmother, but I had never visited my dad's grave. The day was beautiful, and the half hour or so I spent with him and my grandma was quite lovely.
Yeah death sucks, but no one gets out of this life alive. I'm sad he's gone, but I'm very grateful to have such a nice place to catch up with my dad, and grandma too.
So then I was back on the road and it was dark by the time I got to my friend Chris' house. I had met his wife before but hilariously she didn't recognize me when I came down into the basement. After it dawned on her who I was she was a little bit embarrassed but then proceeded to introduce me to everyone as the 'guest of honor'. Her husband also let everyone know that I had a bounty on my head, a souvenir WSOP coin would go to the player who took me out. Nice!
I must say, the chips and structure threw me for a bit of a loop!
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| Yes, these were the denominations we went by. |
But even though I was a bit lost as to how many big blinds I had - it was still a heck of a lot of fun. Chris' home poker group is like mine, full of really good folks and not a mean one in the bunch. I lasted a little over 2 hours and it was a great time. Then I just about won my money back in the cash game afterwards! Now that's something that I wish could happen more often at my tournaments! Both actually having a cash game, and then winning at it.
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| You da' man Chris! |
After a quick breakfast I strolled in to Salon A upstairs in the Borgata Event Center area. There was Nick and Vanessa, friendly as all get out and already taking pictures with students who were super excited to see them. Well, mostly excited to see Vanessa - sorry Nick!
A lovely fellow named Adrian gave me a SWAG bag and an intro spiel, making me feel very welcome and in good hands. The bag was actually a decent backpack and contained a nifty water bottle, a slick and thick workbook filled with our curriculum, an empty notebook/journal emblazoned with the WPT logo and a $60 gift card that could be used at any of the Borgata's many fine eating establishments.
This last item proved to be most useful for the trip, it basically meant I didn't pay for food for the next two days - as I got my meals at the food court, which was one of the nicer ones I had ever been to and yet still had reasonable prices. My favorite was a genuine Hoagie stand, amazing sandwich and very much a nostalgic comfort food. Yum!
SWAG bag in hand, I found a seat and got ready to get some knowledge in my brain!
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| The Workbook |
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| The SWAG |
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| The Master |
As I detailed in this post from 2014, I had done the poker training thing before. I found it to be very helpful and well worth it - I was eagerly looking forward to what the WPT had to offer as opposed to the WSOP Academy.
I have to say, after two full days under the instruction of Nick Binger and Vanessa Selbst, I was thoroughly, thoroughly impressed - and if I'm being honest, Nick's course kind of blew Bryan Rast's away.
The WSOP had the hand labs, which were a lot of fun - LearnWPT didn't have those, instead it was just two days of lecture, interspersed with interactive quizzes where the whole class would lock in their answers and respond with one of these three cards by simultaneously raising them in the air.
A very effective way to test our knowledge, also pretty fun and illuminating at how many people got what I thought were mostly pretty simple questions entirely wrong. I myself was wrong on a couple of the more challenging situations.
So while there was no hand-lab fun, the curriculum that Nick has crafted over 8 years, supplemented by Vanessa who was simply an outstanding teacher, kind of knocked me on my ass by how good it was.
I won't get into too much crazy detail - but two giant things that I really got into were...
1). Calling Criteria
Nick has created a three point check list for tournament players to go through to determine if we can call with a hand. If the hand doesn't meet any one of these points we have to fold or bet/raise. Because most hands don't meet these requirements, we end up being more selective about entering the pot and we also become a LOT more aggressive as poker players. The criteria are -
- Is the hand a speculative hand? Nick's definition is, a pair 99 or lower, suited connectors and suited one gap connectors. That's it!
- Is the pot multi-way? Meaning, is there at least one more caller in front of you?
- Is the bet amount less than 5% of the effective stack in play?
This one tool alone, even if a player disregarded everything else in the seminar, will transform most recreational poker players games. I know it will not necessarily transform mine that dramatically, as I'm already more aggressive than most amateurs, but it will make pre-flop decisions a LOT easier and will also bring an expert level of consistency and aggression to the fore.
The other massive help for me was...
2). Making Moves - the Toolbox
This was the real meat of the course - the pre-and post flop conditions to look for that give us the green light to get aggressive regardless of what our cards are. An absolutely essential skill for any serious poker tournament player. Very thorough, much more than I can share here, and very illuminating.
To sum up the course - what I said to Nick at the end of the second day - what makes it so compelling is that it is a true strategy and system that you can systematically and consistently apply to your game right away, and it will for sure give you dramatic results right off the bat.
You can really tell that Nick has done the work with this course, it genuinely feels like 8 years have been poured into it - always improving and refining it.
Brian Rast, as wonderful as his instruction was - it really wasn't much more than him talking us through how he approaches the game in general. There really weren't that many specific strategies, well there were some, but not like Nick's course - where every page of the work book has specific guidelines of what to do in specific situations.
Nick's curriculum, in tandem with Vanessa's additions and nuggets of wisdom, made for a great and somewhat brain numbing two days of immersive instruction.
By the end of the first day I felt a bit overwhelmed, but I still had the desire to play some pokers that night. Adrian, the guy who checked us in and handled other matters with students, mentioned that the Borgata tournament staff would deal a Sit-N-Go for us that evening if we liked. They could only deal a full table, meaning either ten or twenty of us, and it turned out there were 15 who wanted to play, so we had to draw for seats. I missed out and drew a low card, so I didn't get to play. But that was fine, I went down to Bally's and played in their $100 5K guarantee.
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| I see you keep your chips as clean as they do in California |
Finally it was my BB and he indeed, opened the pot once again. I defended with 33 (it met the calling criteria) and then proceeded to check call three full streets to his barreling, including his all in shove on the river. Needless to say my hand was no good and I was out.
Yes, I was exhausted, but it was still aggravating, my stupidity and stubbornness, after soaking up all that good info - I just punted off my chips by refusing to believe a maniac who clearly knew what he was doing. Bah.
Sunday morning came early, and we dove right into post-flop play. I eagerly consumed all that I could of the "Making Moves Toolbox" and before I knew it, the class was at an end.
But at 4pm our class was scheduled to play a 'free-roll' tournament with the first prize being a $3500 seat in the Main Event of the Borgata Poker Open. Cool!
The arena was the main room where all the Borgata Poker Open events were taking place, including the Main Event that had already had it's day 1A. Day 1B was on Monday.
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| Some day... |
Before we shuffled up and dealt - we all posed for a pic...
A great bunch of folks, many of whom with I had nice chats with over the weekend.
One lady in particular, who had the record for longest distance traveled - no, it wasn't me, though I think I was the only one from California, she came from England - we chatted a bit about the SNG the night before. I asked her how it went and she told me, not so great. She said that she was trying to remember everything from the course and trying to apply it - but basically no one else was. Everyone simply fell back into their bad habits of being too passive and loose.
This was not too surprising to hear, and so I really wasn't shocked when I witnessed it first hand and right away in the free-roll. I myself had committed to following the Calling Criteria and also trying to remember and implement what I had learned the best I could. Hardly anyone else did, and so I chipped up pretty early.
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| It's some dope ass FUN NITE chips! |
Then, disaster!
60 bigs effective. With Ac9c from the cutoff I raised the limp of an MP player nice and chunky, 3x plus the amount of his limp. The big blind defended, the original limper folded.
Flop - 7c10c8h - yahtzee!
The big blind led out about half pot, I raised him 3x his bet, he shoved all in, I snap called.
He had flopped bottom set, I had every out in the world and missed all of them.
I stood to exit, and got the old familiar "Wait a minute, you might still have chips..." from several players around the table. Yes, I still had chips, down from a starting stack of 10K which I had built to 15K in less than an hour, down to 1300. Yay.
So things got a lot simpler from then on and I managed to gradually claw back up.
We started with four full tables. One table broke, and then we broke at table #3, as the 3 hour mark approached.
Nick had told us that the tournament was designed to run for about 4 hours, so that we could make it for the WPT Players Party in one of the nightclubs downstairs. So we all knew it was a turbo.
I reached the final table with an average stack, and then got into a hand with the only guy in the entire course who appeared to be younger than me. You can see him kneeling on the right hand side in the picture above. He was also easily the best player in the tournament, I had seen him in action earlier and resolved to stay away if I could.
I was in the big blind and it was folded to him in the small.
22 bigs effective. He opened for 2.5x, I defended with 55.
Flop - 4cJh7d.
He led out for a bit less than half pot. I jammed, figuring if he's got a jack I was going to find out super fast. He snapped and turned up QQ.
Five on the turn.
I have no problem with my line here, he just happened to have a real hand. He had shown himself more than capable to be aggressive with and without the goods, this time he happened to have them and he got massively unlucky.
He was crippled and shortly out. I was flush with chips at the final table.
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| Easy game. |
There were other prizes besides the big seat. 5th got a fancier SWAG backpack and a WPT Sweater.
4th would get the same bag and sweater plus a WPT Poker Chip set. (Hooray for excess luggage charges!). 3rd would get a year long membership to the online LearnWPT site. 2nd would get a free LearnWPT live seminar, similar to what we had just taken. I wouldn't mind winning that at all.
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| In the "money". |
So raise and re-raise I did, best I could. As the 'bubble' burst, I took stock at the stacks - as usual I calculated the total number of big blinds on the table. There were 42 big blinds, spread out among four of us.
And yet, and here's where my mind kind of got blown, the other players were still trying to accumulate chips by opening 3x or even larger, and then FOLDING if they encountered resistance before or after the flop. What. The. Actual. Fuck.
As soon as it dawned on me that this was happening, I really threw caution to the wind. NONE of these guys wanted to bust, and they were TERRIFIED of getting their money in 'bad' despite Nick's many admonitions that results are quite literally the last thing we poker players should be concerned with.
So I jammed. And jammed. And jammed again.
I was fearless. If I thought I was close to being ahead of my opponent's range, I went for it, because I knew they were all folding WAY too much.
The fellow on my immediate right quickly grew frustrated with my 'all-in' madness. "Is that all you can do?" he sputtered. I just smiled. I wasn't about to educate anyone here, Nick and Vanessa had done that for two days, all to no avail apparently.
We hadn't gone into detail on short stack play, but we had covered it - and both Nick and Vanessa were perfectly clear - under 15 big blinds? Get it in and don't waste your fold equity by playing passively or raising and then folding.
Finally, I let it rip 4 hands in a row with A7, KK, A10 and AK respectively. All but the last one got through, the guy on my right had had enough and called off with A3. My hand mercifully held and now I was the prohibitive chip leader.
No, that is not a picture of us coloring up - that's my stack. The TD had gotten called away, and then replaced, and didn't tell the new TD where the bigger chips were. So I used the racks of blacks as plaques. Good times.
The third place player, who was hanging on by a short stack the entire time, finally busted and then we were heads up.
The fellow I battled with was super nice, and he managed to double up through me twice and take a slight chip lead. But truthfully I wasn't too concerned. I couldn't control the cards of course, but I knew I had a HUGE advantage as he was still playing as if he could raise 3x and fold with no consequences to his equity. I think he might have even been raising 4x at one point. Absolutely absurd.
In a short time, I caught right back up. As he was also limping his button, and unbelievably even folding it a fair amount of the time, it truly was inevitable. The monster hand that crippled him for the last time was me ripping with A7 and him calling with A3. A bit of deja vu as A3 was the calling hand when we were four handed as well.
Then I pounded him down to the nub and finally finished him off with one of my old favorite trouble hands QJ soooted.
I was exhausted. I was elated. It frankly seemed a bit like a dream.
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| We couldn't remember that my QJ was soooted. We just dug these out of the muck. |
I briefly put in an appearance at the WPT Players party afterwards, I wanted to make sure to again shake Nick Binger's hand and thank him profusely for such a great weekend. On the way out the door I ran into one of the Executive Producers of the WPT and we had a nice chat about poker and the television biz. Then I staggered off, exhausted, to bed.
Though I was dead tired I actually finally fell asleep at about 2am, my brain still throbbing with excitement at having taken down the event.
Morning came early once again, and so with about 5 hours of sleep I spent the last of my $60 gift card on a nice breakfast (thanks WPT for 2 full days of 'free' meals!) and then took an uber over to the Golden Nugget to play in their rinky dink $100 green chip bounty tournament.
The Borgata WPT event of course had their main event, day 1B, going on but they also had a $400 turbo in the am. I didn't much feel like taking on a bunch of grinders for that much money, so I chickened out and went for the high rake, fast structured donkament in the next hotel over. I avoided getting my car out of the parking lot, because AC doesn't have the parking thing dialed in like Vegas. The day rates are expensive (at Bally's it was $25 were it not for my hotel voucher) and confusing. Uber worked just fine for just a few bucks.
I walked into the Nugget poker room, which was pretty nice compared to the ghetto-ish confines of Ballys. It was entirely empty at less than an hour from the tournament start time at 11am. I was worried that we wouldn't have a tournament at all, but by the time it was time, we actually had 7 tables.
Once again my plan was to try and stick with the calling criteria and also implement to the best of my ability all that I had been taught for the past two days.
Most of the table was regulars, but most of them were soft and passive. The one exception was a mouthy young fellow at the opposite end - who talked as often as he entered hands, which was most of the time.
I had no desire to tango with him, but I found myself looking down at KK in the small blind, and so when he limped his button I had no choice but to get involved.
Let's back up - from my notes
60 bigs effective. 150/300
I'm in the SB with KK. UTG limps. MP2 limps. Chip leader on button flats as well. Villain has been very active with min-raises from middle and late position, regardless of number of limpers, so a call is a bit of a red flag.
I 3 bet from SB for 1900, in hindsight I think this is a little bit too small of a bet considering the number of limpers, but all fold but the villain.
Flop 7cAs2h
I lead for 2000, a bit less than half the pot. Villain calls.
Turn 6h
I check, planning to call his bet and reevaluate on the river. He indeed fires 3500, about a quarter of my stack. I know if I call here, he for sure has an ace in his range and it will be up to me on the river to get him off of it if I am to win this pot. As he is an experienced player, I think I can give him enough credit to figure it out if I represent a bigger ace or two pair or better.
However, specifically, there's a very narrow range I have here from his perspective, it's basically AK or a premium over pair. I don't know if a river bluff would make sense here, I doubt he thinks I'm ever checking TPTK on the turn, especially with a second heart popping up. But there's so much money out there at this point, when I call I am determined to go for it. This is very likely a mistake. I call, planning to lead with a jam of my remaining 18K on most rivers.
As it turns out the river is a great scare card, Qh, and recognizing this instinctively I indeed jam right away.
He tanks for a full two minutes. About half way through this period of time he starts chatting to me and at one point asks "You didn't just lose your mind here with pocket kings did you?" Gulp. I smile but inside I'm thinking I'm dead. He for sure has an ace, maybe even a hand as strong as two pair, and his plan from the beginning was to get all the chips in the middle. I figure the call is inevitable.
He bitches and moans and flips his cards into the muck.
Bullet dodged, chips accumulated.
I tell him when he asks that I had AQ, I don't know if that adds up. He seems to be indifferent about my answer. I am really anxious to take him aside in the break and ask him if my line made sense. He seems like a nice enough guy, and I wouldn't mind disclosing the truth in this low stakes tournament to him if he could give me some insight on what exactly tipped him off to the EXACT two cards that I had in my hand.
But a little bit later I notice he has been hoarding the green 25 tournament chips to make his stack look bigger, and a dealer calls him out on it and asks him not to slow the game down and he gets mad and indignant and turns into a bit of a dick. Well, guess I don't need to chat with him at the break.
I win a few more hands, without this villain involved, and even score a couple of bounties. Once with QQ vs J10 aipf against a short stack and another time when I was in the big blind, defended the buttons open and flopped the nut straight versus his over pair of pocket nines.
Finally after the second break, our table broke and I found myself rather flush with chips and four bounties including my own.
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| Looking good! |
To my immediate right was a lovely old lady who was an absolute hoot. Very chatty with a thick New Jersey accent, commenting on just about every hand. She was holding court. I loved it and thought she was hilarious. The two home game players to my immediate left both had bigger stacks than I and were not amused with her jibber jabber.
About two orbits in I had determined that the table was WAY too passive, hardly ever raising, always a bunch of folks calling and hoping to see a flop. Since I had over 50 big blinds, I was bound and determined to put a stop to it.
I raised two limpers, including the queen bee, and to my chagrin both big stacks on my left flat called and so did the two limpers on my right. Boo. I was done with the hand unless I smashed the board, and I didn't, so I let it go. Queen bee and one of the home gamers got into a fairly big pot and showed down AK vs 88 on the river, after a bet/call, bet/call and finally check/check on the river.
The home gamer had slow played AK and the queen bee had fallen in love with her pair with only a single ace on board. She was now fairly short stacked. Not a difficult hand to figure out - the action made perfect sense given their holdings and both of their propensities to play passive and fearful of a monster, while at the same time being distrustful and disbelieving of any aggression. The typical home game player who's been around and thinks they know a lot.
The very next hand I opened in MP after the queen bee limped, I had QJo.
This time my raise was substantially bigger, and I only got one caller to my left, the other home gamer, and of course queen bee came along. The entire time jawing about how I needed to be careful and how I wasn't going to get to bully anyone any more. After playing a grand total of two hands.
The flop was all low cards, she checked, I fired half pot, the home gamer let it go, queen bee jammed. Unfortunately she had far too few chips left in her stack for me to fold. I had noticed this when she called my raise of her limp, it was about a third of her stack. She was committed to the hand, and so was I against her if she decided to push, and I knew it was likely she would.
I quickly called, figuring she either had an ace or a pocket pair, or had somehow connected with the flop. It was the second possibility - she had 88, again. I would take a hit, but I would still be okay if the board didn't bail me out. Well it did, a queen turned immediately.
She admirably tried to play it off, turning abruptly gracious in her exit, though she was obviously steamed under the surface. I was actually sad to see her go, but I was glad to get another bounty.
The two home gamers on my left were relieved to see her exit, this is when they confessed to me that they really did not like all her yammering. I shrugged. I found her truly endearing.
The gentlemen also clucked their tongues at me in a subtle way about my quick call on the flop. Very reassuring that they indeed were fish.
Play continued and I started to accumulate simply by opening frequently with a min-raise and c-betting most boards against 2 or less opponents when I was in position. Almost all the players at the table were fit or fold, including the two gents on my left who had seen plainly that I was a crazy person that would call with anything.
Just before the third break, nearly 5 hours into the tournament with 3 tables remaining, this happened.
Effective stack 30 bigs (my stack).
I open 2x with KK utg. MP chip leader flat calls. Short stack button jams for 15 bigs. I re-ship my 30 big blinds, MP tanks and then calls!
Short stack - AA, big stack AcQc. Flop 7c5hKc, turn 6c, river 5c. Suck, re-suck and re-re-suck!
Yay poker.
Now I had another bounty, and after the break I was the chip leader at the table, and we quickly got to two tables.
After another big three way pot where I had AA and they held I was also chip leader going into the final table when I took this shot. At this point I had 8 bounties total including my own.
Despite still being the chip leader, by the time we were 8 handed I had a grand total of 30 big blinds. Yes, it had been over 6 hours and we were at the point where the blinds had deigned that the tournament was at it's end.
A lot of chatter arose about doing an ICM chop, and the only other guy at the table with almost as many chips as me wasn't having it. I have seen this situation play out so many times before, that I was pretty bored with the whole thing, I just hoped that by the time he saw the light I hadn't gotten tangled up in an unlucky hand and lost a lot of equity.
Thankfully, I was still doing fine when the other big stack took a hit and finally gave in.
We were 5 handed and my share would be $760 $200 better than the second place prize of almost $524. First place was just under 1K, so I was okay with this because we also had decided to let each other keep our bounties and so that meant I'd be paid another $200 for a grand total of $960. Sweet!
And so everyone was mostly happy and handshakes all around. The fine poker room at the Golden Nugget, pleasant, clean, smoke free and for the most part friendly (in the east coast style, which was a bit gruff but had a good heart) it turned out, did NOT facilitate chops. Huh?
So we all had to 'sign' out for an actual prize amount, then walk across the casino and get the cash and come back and spread it out on the table and then divide it up the way we had agreed. A giant pain in the ass and also a little nerve racking that some bozo would grab more than his fair share of the money at the cage and scram.
Thankfully, the three locals at the table had it all well in hand, they signed for the top 3 spots to get the points for their local monthly free roll, and we all knew they would be coming back. I singed for fourth place, I guess I looked trustworthy, and we all came back and split up the monies how we had agreed. The floor barely took notice until it was time to toke them. I reluctantly threw them a 10 spot. With 25% juice plus another quarter of the prize pool devoted to bounties, it seemed like the room had plenty of money already. Not facilitating our chop really kind of put me over the edge on this. I usually tip close to 10 percent which here would've been about $80. Not this time. Oh well.
And so I Ubered back to the loverly Borgata, my room was now more than paid for thanks to my tournament score. I was happy and satisfied and looking forward to getting back to LA and family and work.
I must say, this trip obviously exceeded my expectations wildly. I didn't expect the LearnWPT program to be so much better than the WSOP Academy, and I certainly in a million years would never think that I would be the one to take down their free roll for a big seat in a big tournament next year.
It was also very gratifying to head out to a local daily tournament the very next day and implement what I had learned and then make a biggish score of 9 times my buy in.
The trip back was mercifully uneventful, even the shit show Budget rent a car office took my vehicle back with no hassles. The flight was pleasant and my bed at home very welcoming.
As I drifted off to sleep on Tuesday night, I couldn't help but smile. What an amazing trip it was and I can't wait to punch my return ticket to AC and the Borgata Winter Open! Stay tuned!
