From May 24th until about Jul 11th my hobby time focus was on the World Series of Poker of which I mostly played mixed game formats like Razz, Omaha 8, Triple Draw etc. I had been getting coaching pretty actively for the preceding 6 months specifically in mixed games and it mostly paid off.
In my first series dedicated to mixed games, I cashed in 3 world series tournaments with the best being in the Omaha 8 limit WSOP event, where I got 24th out of 1150 or so runners. My best result in any tournament to date. Despite getting to the final 3 tables out of like a starting 130 tables, it still hurt, and it still felt like worst thing ever. I have a feeling that nothing but a 1st will be satisfying, what a terrible hobby to choose for gratification 🙂
I had chip lead at one point even got some attention from the poker press (and the cool photo below) but alas, I wasn’t able to close it off and made the final 3 tables before busting shortly after. The blinds increased pretty quickly towards the end and a series of bad hands just decimated my stack. No regrets though, just unfortunate luck.
After that, I ended up playing in the Razz 10k and it was a bust but I did get berated by Phill Hellmuth for about 3 minutes which made it all worth it. It’s almost a mixed games initiation. Made my whole series worth it. It might have been worse than this clip
I then ran into a series of bad luck hands that busted me in two day 2s. The worst being a 2-7 triple draw hand where I made #2 on 1st draw (7-6-4-3-2) and got beat by #1 on his 3rd draw. Horrible. Same as this hand
The next one was in a Razz hand where I had a 2-3-4-5-6 and ended up losing to a wheel. Both day 2s and both near the money. I did end up cashing in the triple mixed event in 49th and the 9-game mixed event for 40th (most difficult tournament and skill requirement). Successful bunch of events especially the 9-game.
In March, I had ended up getting 56th in the Wynn Millions no limit tournament, my first tournament after the WPT world championships, I felt pretty confident after this run lol. This was one of my deepest runs in no-limit. I didn’t mind busting this one, felt like I had as much luck as I could have. This December, they’re running the millions with a 40mm guaranteed, the biggest prize pot guarantee ever I believe. I’ll be there! Probably the first tournament I’ll play since the July main event (which I busted on day 2 with AA).
So the year for poker was kind of successful, I had the big score in December of 2022 at the WPT world championships, the deep run in the Wynn millions and the 3 mixed game deep runs. I’ll take it. I’ve taken a long break from poker (kind of like I did with this blog) and haven’t studied or looked at it since July. I don’t plan to until November.