WSOP – Travels and Trades

WSOP and Mixed Game results

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.

Jun 12 – Update

Long ass 6 days of poker. I was able to finish 150th out of 8,809 in the WSOP (World Series of Poker) Millionaire maker. Pretty wild, 5 of 12 of us in the coaching group finished in the top 150 the other 4 were pro (coaches). Pretty wild result and testament to the studying. I am utterly exhausted. It’s been 12-14 hour days and there’s no chance I could play any more tournaments right now. I busted the 1k and marathon pretty quickly and entered a 1k in the Venetian which had a fantastic structure and though there was re-entry I think I made a few mistakes that was telling me I was fatigued.

Hand 1:

I’m CO, I open 56hh to 1600

BB raises 4,100 so I call given size

Flop AA7h

He bets 1/4th pot. I call

Turn 8h

He checks. I think to myself that he’s most likely missed and unlikely to have an ace given the sizings of his flop bet and he insta checks turn so I pot it (stupid) to fold out everything else in case I miss the million outs on the river. He jams…Ugh oh. Now I am forced to call w/ those million outs… I miss (no 9 or 4 or heart). I also thought I had much higher equity in the pot but I didn’t and I should have checked back and folded a missed river. Too high variance in a weaker tournament.

I should have checked behind and c/f on a miss. I forced myself into an all-in pot with a pot sized bet.

Hand 2: AA MP

I raise and BB calls

Flop is 873 rainbow

Check, I bet pot, he min click raises back to me. I jam for the remaining 25bb. My initial gut was that I was beat and I could make an exploitative fold but then thought that was nuts on a 783 board with AA. I’d mandatory call the min-raise and probably a small bet on the turn and fold rivers if he triple barrels. I wouldn’t normally jam here and it was a rec player so a min raise back is probably pretty strong. I call one all day long here against anyone else but def not jamming. Instead, I think that I can get max value out of all pockets lower than mine and any pair of 8s and jam. I am obv wrong and I end up with 30% equity against 78 two pair and missed. Way to borderline a spot to get it in. I doubt rec player min-clicks back like that with anything worse. Maybe a small pair but I block A8. He has all sets and two pairs. Meh.

Not a whole lot going on with the trades. The run-up makes things boring (though tonight it seems like we’ve had a bit of a market fall). Might make for some STT opportunities tomorrow.

I am stuck right at about 24% and I don’t have a whole lot of opportunity for big increases until I can get on more trades.

Summer Travels

An update on the travels portion of this blog :

This should be a different summer than usual as I usually do a 3 month road trip in Europe. We won’t be doing that this year rather we’ll be back and forth from Cayman in mini trips from April till August.

April:

We’ll be kicking things off by starting a 22 day road trip up the west coast starting in San Diego and reaching Seattle. We got an Au Pair meeting us in San Diego so there will be plenty of adult time. The plan is to stay in San Diego for 4-5 days, before making our way to LA for another 4-5 days. We booked a brunch at Crossroads which should be cool. We’ll hit up Universal and maybe the LA comedy club and of course every stop we will frequent every famous vegan restaurant that we can find. After that we’ll hit up San Fran and make our way to Portland then Seattle to finalize the trip. Looking most forward to Portland.

May:

We’ll then head back to Cayman for a few weeks. Then we’ll do a 3 week trip to Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and finally Denver as well as the Moab Desert. We’ll see a band called The Architects play (a great metal core band). I am not a huge fan of their latest album but it’s OK. I would much rather see Heaven Shall burn or Hopesfall but alas, they will do.

The day after that concert I will play the Millions North America (Party Poker tournament), good timing. We will then make our way to Ottawa and see Iliza (comedian) and end the Canada portion of the trip in Toronto. That will be followed up by a week in Denver and the Moab Desert for a wedding

June:

From the Moab, I’ll depart solo to play a handfull of WSOP tournaments (Millionaire maker, Marathon and a few others) before returning to Cayman for another 2 weeks.

Jul/Aug:

On Jul 1 I then will return to Vegas for the WSOP main event. At the end of July we’ll take off for Europe but just for a 3.5 week mini trip before returning for the kids new school year. Busy busy.

Busy but fun summer. I’ve got a poker coach now so I’ll be studying hard for those run of tournaments. Hoping to cash a few this time around. I want another deep run 🙂