Monday

On the weekend I was following some of the action from the WSOP. The main event still going on is the 50,000 Players Challenge which had lots of notable names. While that was interesting my interest was more on Event 3 the first of the 1000 dollar buy in events. The reason that this event captured my interest is that it has the same structure as Event 34 the event I will be playing starting on June 18th. The structure is you get 3000 chips (yep not many) and blind levels start at 25/25 and go up every hour. I wanted to see how fast people were getting felted and it was unbelievable. They split event 3 into Day 1A and 1B. Day 1A had about 2700 entries while day 1B had just over 1600 for a total of 4345. Guess how many survived?? Just 481. That is crazy. There was just over 200 from both days. So 3864 players did not make it through a Day 1. That's about a 85% attrition rate. That's got me concerned. I play much better with bigger starting stacks usually so I definitely will have to make some adjustments when I get there. Now being a seniors tourney action will probably be a lot tighter than the open events as the OLD NITS tend to play like that. If anybody has some suggestions or has played one of these events with this structure I would love to hear their advice.

I played online on the weekend several times mostly in cash games and in all but one session ended up making a profit. The only SNG that I played I managed to win so generally it was a great couple days. The one negative thing that happened was my amazing win streak with Aces finally came to an end.

If I remember right I was in EP and I raised it up about 4.5 X the BB. Got 1 caller. Flop comes J 10 8. I made a just over a pot sized bet. He insta called. I didn't like that quick call. Turn was a 2 I think. Now I was going to bet again but I just had this feeling he had hit trips so I checked. River was a 7. Now that's not a great card. I checked. He made a small bet which smelt like I was beat but I called. He had pocket 9s. The river gave him his straight. Now I might have gotten him off that hand if I had bet on the turn but then again I might just have lost more. Who knows?

Heading out tonight to play live as the regular Monday game is back running. Be nice to get some live action.

Coop

Aces 20/29

Bluff Article

I didn't go to my regular Sunday night tournament as I was pretty bagged after playing 7 hours on Saturday night so I caught up on my reading. I usually read a couple books a week and I always try and get the latest poker magazines.

So I am reading this months Bluff magazine and there is an article about Jeremy Fitzpatrick (pictured above). If you don't know who he is (I didn't). He is Bluff magazines Online player of the year.. His online handle is daisyxoxo. Of course everybody knows my disdain for the online game so I won't get into that here. What I will get into is how much this guy played last year. He played 9,639 online tournaments made 522 final tables and won 99 of these tournaments. He won over 1.8 million. All I can say is WOW. It's not a good wow either. Well those are impressive stats. Very impressive. My question is WHY?? Why would you play so much online?? Its mind boggling..

I did the math (with the help of a calculator). That's over 26 tournaments a day. That's each and every day..... I know he multi tables. Nobody could possibly do it any other way. He also multi screens.. But why..In the article he said some days he was playing for 15 hours. That's 15 hours of staring at a computer screen..Can you imagine? I can't. Heck I get bored after a couple. That's why I love the LIVE game so much.

In the article it says his girlfriend was there supporting him. She deserves a medal. Either that or she needs some help. Why would you sit there and watch somebody else play poker on a screen for that length of time?? Is it the money...... 1.8 million is really nice..

Of course one wonders when he had time to eat, drink, go the bathroom etc. Then I remembered that Pokerstars has that 5 minute break each hour... Gee that's almost enough time.........of course there is that other necessity in life which I wont go into here but 5 minute might not cut it with that.........

All I can say is Jeremy Fitzpatrick congratulations. You did something I could never do. Heck I wouldn't last one day doing what you did and I have run several marathons...

Poker Boom

In the last 10 years there has been an incredible increase of poker players and poker rooms in casinos around the world. Now some are wondering whether the bubble has burst? Sure there are still dozens of online poker rooms and the major tournaments like the WSOP will always be popular but some are saying the interest has peaked. My thought on this is all things go in a cycle and I certainly haven't noticed a decrease in interest. In fact if anything with the ease of learning holdem more and more people are enjoying the game. You can turn on your computer and play 24 hours a day. I personally love the game of poker and hope that I can continue to play as long as my mind is alert. I only play for money in casinos but use the online rooms to sharpen my game. Many people have asked why I don't play online for money. Simple really,I enjoy the human aspect of poker, being able to interact with my fellow players and if I am putting money at risk I want to see the cards dealt and the chips in front of me. I want to feel the table vibe. I love playing live.

On a different topic. What a day yesterday. A gunman in Germany goes nuts and shoots students and down in The U. S. another gunman shoots several people. Both gunman fortunately took their own lives in the end but the senseless deaths of others is just mind boggling. Its a strange world we live in. Very sad.