Thoughts on the New WSOP champ and my bankroll

My wife was coming home from the hospital yesterday so I had a convenient excuse to leave work early and watch the WSOP final table. I ordered it through Cox and per usual, it did not work. It took them over 4 hours to get the broadcast up and running.

In the mean time, I went to the ESPN website and ordered it there for another $20. That worked great but the picture quality was not very good. The one bonus was that I discovered that I can plug my laptop into my TV and watch it on a bigger screen. Maybe I'll try playing poker on the big screen once my wireless mouse arrives.

Jerry Yang won the title coming back from a short stack with an incredible rush of cards in the first 2 hours of the final table. He went from approximately 8 MM at the start to over $70 MM before he calmed down and started playing patiently. The top two chip leaders at the start were the first players to bust. That had to hurt.

They showed an interview where Jerry said on day two he was getting short stacked. He was in the big blind and there was a raise and a reraise in front of him. He figured he better move now, so he moved all in with A-5 suited. I remember that one player turned over pocket Kings. Anyways he hit a miracle 4 on the river to give him a straight and almost triple up.

That hand was a great example of how bad Jerry's playing strategy was when it came to deciding whether to call big bets. Jerry could possibly be the worst poker player to ever win the Main Event.

Unlike last year where I was able to study how a great poker player like Allen Cunningham plays, I was unable to do any studying. The picture quality was not good enough to try and pick up any tells and the play was so slow that I was often losing interest while someone thought about a decision for 5 minutes.

The best part of the broadcasts were when Phil Gordon and Ali Nejad would have a guest poker player in the studio. Phil made it a point to ask the players what their strategy would be in different situations in the tournament. Phil tends to catch a lot of crap on the message boards, but I really like him and I think he does a great job on these broadcasts.

As for my bankroll, it is sucking even worse. After the burglary last week that made my stash of $80 disappear, my roll is around $200. I swear I am playing better than I was a few months ago. I even have a new desire to play more limit poker after reading Howard Lederer's chapter in the Full Tilt strategy book. I realize it was written more for tournaments but I think a lot of what he said in there will apply to cash games as well.

I am trying not to break down and add money to the accounts. I did make a promise to Michele a long time ago that if I ever lost that money, I would quit. That was an easy promise to make when I had $3,000-$5,000. I can definitely afford to add to the account without any crimp in my lifestyle. I keep thinking about Chris Ferguson's quest to turn $1 into $10,000. He did it once and he has been trying it again for the last few months. The big problem for me would be that I don't play enough to reach that goal within 5 years.