WSOP - here I come

I've been practicing like crazy to have a run at one of the events in the WSOP in Las Vegas. Finally I decided to play in event #32. I will drive to Las Vegas on Monday and play on Tuesday. This is a smaller buy-in event ($1500) and should allow me to see how far I have come as a player in the last 9 months. It is still scheduled to take place over 3 days and probably will have several thousand players. I will drive back to California on Friday.

Part of my practice has been continuing to read books. Currently I am reading Sit N Go strategy by Collin Moshman and Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen. Both books are excellent but I think the Gus Hansen book is a little more readable. He takes us on a journey through most hands he played in the Aussie millions in 2007 where he won the tournament. He explains various details on how he played the hand, what he was thinking about the other players decisions and how position,math and his hole cards influenced his betting decisions. I am finding the whole story fascinating and quite educational.

I may also play a couple of non-WSOP tournaments while in Las Vegas. The Venetian has a deep stack tournament going on and Caesars and Golden Nugget also have concurrent tournaments. Most other casinos have their normal daily schedule of tournaments so there are a lot of options. I am really hoping to go deep in the WSOP event but if I bust out I hope to cash in a couple of smaller tournaments.

Wish me luck !!

Back in the US, back to the grind of online poker

I arrived back in California from my European trip on May 21st. This was about 20 days later than planned due to a death in my family.

I am back playing online at Full Tilt and Pokerstars and the big change is I am winning some SNG tournaments and building a small bankroll. It is a bit of a grind because I have a lot of distractions right now. I am playing for 1-2 hours in the morning and 1-2 hours in the afternoon or evening. It took me a good few days to recover from jetlag and start sleeping properly again.

I have found a groove 4 tabling the $10-$30 SNG tournaments (typically 2 Full Tilt and 2 Pokerstars) concurrently. I can play 9 seaters, 18 seaters or 45 seaters and the games are normally over within 2 hours. The only challenging thing for me is where I have 4 games all down to short play on the final table at the same time. The action is moving pretty quick and its hard to keep up with the bets while giving it some thought. I have found if I play 6-7 games in the 2 hour sessions I normally will cash in 2-3 of them making $80-$120 profit. Not much but at least its mostly positive cashflow. I say mostly because I occassionally have a session where I bubble a lot and do not make any cash finishes and this really hurts my average.

I am still trying to figure out which games to play in to make a living. It seems a number of pros grind out the cash games and a number of pros play big tournaments only. I have read some pros started with SNGs (like me) but eventually moved to big tournaments and do not play SNGs any more.

My plan for the next 3 months:

- build my online bankroll
- determine which games to play to make consistent profit / cashflow
- restart playing torunaments at my local casinos
- enter at least 1 event at the WSOP in Las Vegas

Why enter the WSOP and am I ready? - I will write more about that a little bit later.