Halo7′s Poker Blog on Bluffworld.com

Here is a quick preview while I have a second.  The WSOP this year is in the same room as last year.  It is pretty cool walking into a room full of 250+ tables of all poker. 

So far my results have been mixed.  I have played 4 $525 single table satellites so far and one $1030.  They have a pretty good structure, and I would say the competition has been a bit better than last year.  I ended up chopping one of the $525′s for $3000 in buy in chips, so am slightly up overall.  We also saw the star studded Ante Up for Africa event yesterday which included most of the cast of Oceans 11 plus many other celebrities, like Shannon Elisabeth, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon.  After they busted out, Ben and Matt were playing in a $100 $200 no limit game that was fun to watch.

 More updates soon.

Well, I really wanted to play in the Full Tilt $1,000 WSOP qualifier to the Main Event tonight, but didn’t want to pony up the $1K. So I was trying to satellite in via their $160 STTs. The structure of these was 1st gets the seat and 2nd gets $290 and 3rd gets nothing. Well of course, I end up 3 handed after a long battle and actually have the chip lead for a while. The short stack starts pushing all the time and it is pretty obvious he is doing any 2 cards. Then this hand happens:

Blinds are 150/300

Button (6,730)
SB (1,670)
Hero (5,100)

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [6c Kc]
Button Folds
SB raises to 1,670, and is all in
Hero calls 1,370
SB shows [3d Td]

*** FLOP *** [4h 7d Kd]
*** TURN *** [4h 7d Kd] [Jd]
*** RIVER *** [4h 7d Kd Jd] [9s]
SB shows a flush, King high
Hero shows a pair of Kings
SB wins the pot (3,340) with a flush, King high

So much for guaranteeing myself second place $$. It went downhill after that, with me clawing back to the chip lead and then pushing 2 times right into pocket kings. What are the odds of running into kings 2x 3 handed in the course of maybe 20 hands? They can’t be that good. hehe. So I ended up going out on the bubble, which was very frustrating since S N G’s are my bread and butter and I really wanted to play in the qualifer.

After that crappy result, I only had about $110 left which wasn’t enough to play another $160 qualifier so off I go to the 1-2 no limit tables. I posted this hand over in the community, but figured I would see about comments here as well. I had only been at the table a short while so I didn’t have any reads. I will take comments on all streets, but really am not sure about the river call. It felt like spewing chips a little.

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $2 BB (9 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)

UTG ($71.90)

UTG+1 ($144)

MP1 ($99.75)

MP2 ($73)

MP3 ($200)

CO ($238)

Button ($269.20)

Hero ($187.25)

BB ($17)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Th, Ts.

2 folds, MP1 raises to $7, 3 folds, Hero calls $6, 1 fold.

Flop: ($16) 5d, Js, Jh (3 players)

Hero checks, MP1 checks.

Turn: ($16) 6c (3 players)

SB bets $12, MP1 calls $12.

River: ($40) 4s (3 players)

Hero checks, MP1 bets $20, Hero calls $20.

MP1 shows Jd Qd

Final Pot: $80

I didn’t end up getting to $160 soon enough so didn’t get to play in the WSOP qualifer. I have a friend visiting this weekend so won’t be able to play in most of the last chance qualifiers so it looks like I will have to win my seat out in Vegas if I want to play this year.