I Wish I Was At The World Series

I have been reading CardPlayer.com and looking at some of the other blogger entries about the first weekend of the WSOP and I am very envious. I still think about my AA being cracked by King-5 in the satellite at the Rio. It looks like there will be over 1000 people in every major tournament during the world series. I heard they even capped the main event at 6600.

I guess I'll have to get the gamble out of my system this weekend when I go down to Tucson for our annual golf/gamble fest at Ventana Canyon. Last year was awful. I think I lost over $500 to Bill over the weekend. It made up for about 6 months of me just killing him in every sports bet, so we probably broke even on the year. The first big loss was during our initial round of golf. I think we started with $5 skins with carry overs. After nine holes I was only down $10 so we made it $10 skins. Time and again I had chances to get even and blew easy shots. Finally it came down to the 18th hole, a short par 5. If I won, I would only be down $40. If I lost, it would be $200. I cranked out a monster drive while Bill hit his standard 2 iron 200 yards. I was only a five iron into the green, so there was no doubt I was going for the green in two. Bill laid up to about 100 yards. I hit my approach in the right greenside bunker, however I had a good clean lie and it was on the upslope, so I should have been able to get it close. Bill hit his 3rd shot to about 25 feet. I totally choked on the bunker shot, almost leaving it in. I now had 35 feet for birdie. I proceeded to hit a horrific putt and leave myself with 6 feet for par. Bill had already 2 putt, so now I needed my putt just to tie. Of course I missed.

Later that night after playing poker for way too small a stakes, I was frustrated. I wanted to play for bigger stakes so I could win some of my money back. Bill wanted to deal blackjack to me. I knew that was a mistake, but it was the only way to win any money. I decided to play for just a little while and ended up winning approximately $80. Then I got the bright idea to play Bill heads up in poker for the rest of the money I owed him from the previous bets. That lasted about an hour and Bill finally ground me into nothing and now I was down $400. I still had 2 days of golf left to play.

The rest of the days were a little better as my game started to come around and Bill started thinking about going home and watching Phil Mickelson play in the British Open. I made a small recovery at the end, but overall it was a very expensive weekend.

This weekend I am seeking my revenge. I shot a 79 and 84 last weekend at Phoenix CC and I switched back to my standard putting grip. Hopefully this will put me in good shape.

As for poker.......

I have adapted to playing 4 tables at a time in the 3-6 limit games at Party Poker. After 5,000 hands I am up, but only at 1.86 BB per hour. I need to get it over 2. I decided to pony up and buy the playerview software that I had tried out earlier. It is impossible to make notes on players when playing 4 tables. The playerview software allows me to track all of my opponents hands and give me great stats on VPIP, pre flop raise %, and money won and lost. This way after about 30 hands I can get a general read on all of my opponents.

This along with updating my ratings of players in my poker tracker data base should help me with my game selection. I think I need to look for better tables at 3-6. This seems to be the rock haven for many players where there are not too many players preflop and after the flop, there are very few players that will try to chase you down with a worse hand. I will see if technology will help me figure this out, or I might have to go to a different level.

I have also started playing in the $50+5 sit n gos at PP. They seem to be about the same difficulty as the $33's. I've only played 8 of them so far and I've finished in the money 50% of the time. The nice thing is you can start with 1000 chips instead of 800 so you can afford to limp in a couple of times and see if you can hit a big hand. In the 8 I've played so far there have been 1 or 2 players out by the end of the first round due to big all in bets with top pairs against flushes. I still can't believe people are that dumb. There is almost no reason to ever go broke in the first round of these internet sit'n'gos. Why risk all that money, when you can steal a couple blinds in the 4th and 5th levels and win the same amount of chips?

Also, I think from now on, when I go to Vegas that I need to stop playing cash no limit games. It's obviously not my best game and the stakes make me uncomfortable. If I want action, I am much better off playing at 6-12 or 10-20. I am a much better tournament player, because I realize that my chips in front of me are just chips. When I play a cash No Limit game I am acutely aware of how much real money I have in front of me.