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Busted 116th out of 3300…
I had another deep run in a WSOP $1k/$1500 event. I’ve gotten 25th, 33rd and now 116th in huge fields at the WSOP. In 2007, 2009, and now 2010. This tournament went well for me. I was talking to my roommate and I realized that on Day 1 I only lost one showdown all day. I doubt I got to showdown more than 5-7 times throughout day one. I also didn’t see aces the whole tournament. That doesn’t really matter but I think it can definitely factor in at some point. I never woke up with a hand when a player was all in today. I battled hard and eventually moved all in for 34k at 1500/3000/400a in 2nd position with ATcc. The guy in 4th position tank called with 99 and I lost the race which would have put me at about 80k and in awesome shape.
I’m really happy with how I’m playing NLH tournaments. Hopefully I can run well and win the big flips when they matter/get some coolers/etc. I’ve still made some mistakes but luckily they have been small ones and haven’t cost me my tournament. I am going to skip tomorrows $2500 PLO event. I didn’t like how they did the $1500 event so I’m just not going to play it. If it was 6 handed I definitely would play. I will play again on Wednesday in the $1500 NLH WSOP event.
Tomorrow I will probably just hang out and relax by the pool, workout, and find a place to watch the Lakers vs Celtics game. I’m hoping the Lakers win. I made a small bet with a friend on the series. I typically NEVER bet sports or anything like that but a small bet doesn’t hurt. With that said, GO Lakers! I think they can come back and win it with their next two games being at home and the fact that they haven’t played that great lately. We will see. All is well aside from poker and everything else. Nothing is new. I’m on the hunt for a bracelet and I want to get closer than I have been. It will be nice to have a shot at it and I will do my best in the remaining tournaments. I’ll keep everyone updated. Goodnight.
Into Day 2 $1k WSOP…
Going into Day 2 of the $1k WSOP. I’m good on chips sitting on about 33k which is 77/503 I believe. We have 70 more knockouts until we make the money. I will update my Twitter on breaks (My Twitter – twitter.com/TristanCre8ive) I will update blog later after I make it through day 2. Wish me luck!
Couple Deep Runs…
Well I called my shot, kinda. I made a deep run in the $1500 6max event. There were around 1700 entrants and I finished in 82nd place for about $4000. I lost a huge flip for 150k pot at 600/1200 (my QhQs vs AKcc came A98sss and I bricked) and grinded back from it. I’m not happy with how I played the hand that I busted out on. In the moment I felt like I was making the right decision but looking back on it I don’t like what I did. It happens. The whole tournament was a lot of fun and a good experience. My buddy, Matt Waxman, was at my Day 1 table for over 3 hours until we ended for the night. That was a lot of fun and a pretty crazy time lol. We were the loudest table in the room I’m sure.
Since I made a deep run in the 6max I missed out on the $5k NLH. That tournament would have been great. I know the field would have been tougher than a normal WSOP NLH tournament but I enjoy playing against good players. On Wednesday I played the Venetian $1600. I made a deep run and busted 10 minutes before we finished play for the night and about 30-40 out of the money. I lost a huge flip AQ vs 99 in a great spot for me, then lost 88 vs a shortstacks JJ and AQ vs JJ. I was happy with my overall play.
Yesterday I played the $1500 PLO tournament. It was a weird structure. Instead of starting us with 4500 in chips like they usually do, we started with 1500 chips and three rebuy chips for 1k each. They could be used at anytime when you weren’t in a hand. I opted to take all of them at the beginning so I could start with the 4500 stack. I mixed it up, lost a flip to Charder for a decent sized pot, and then got my money in with the best hand at the time… but my equity was only 30% lol. I turned top set when my opponent hit his flush draw and now had a 22% chance to win which whiffed and I was out the door.
Tomorrow is another $1k WSOP event at noon. Hopefully I can make another deep run and have a better sweat. I’d really like to make a final table and ultimately win a bracelet. I know everyone else feels the same way, but someones gotta win.
Aside from poker I went to the Palms pool party for “Ditch Fridays” today. It was packed and there was overcast weather. It wasn’t ideal for the pool and kind of put a bummer on the afternoon. I wanted to get some sun and work on my tan… grinding online poker can really brighten your skin color lol.
I haven’t been on the computer much. I was hoping to update the blog earlier but I have been pretty busy grinding these tournaments. I don’t want to miss an opportunity in any of these events. That’s all for now. Goodnight.
Still 0-fer…
I’ve played a couple more events since the last post and I still have no cashes. The Venetian poker tournament got a decent turnout but I busted fairly early. The WSOP events have been good but I haven’t been able to get it going deep and win those crucial pots. There are still plenty of events so I am not even worried about it.
The next event I will play is the $1500 6max and I’m really looking forward to this event. I LOVE 6max. I know a lot of poker players feel the same way. It should be an awesome tournament and I am excited to play it. It will also be fun to switch it up from the same old 9-10 handed NLH tournaments. After that there is a $5k NLH on Tuesday but I’ll hopefully still be in the 6max and will have to miss that one. We’ll just see how things turn out when I play on Monday. I’m not sure what I am doing tomorrow. I might play online for all the big Sunday tournaments. I’ll see how I feel.
Other than that things have been pretty quiet. It was my roommates birthday the other night and we went to dinner. I’ve worked out a couple times and explored Vegas a bit. I also watched the Lakers vs Celtics game. I think the Lakers will win the championship fairly easily. The Celtics didn’t look too good in game one but they are still a tough team. I just don’t see them being able to compete with the Lakers. It’s getting super hot here now. Maybe if I have some time off I will hit the pools or do something fun. All I’m really focused on is poker right now, and that’s how it should be. I will leave it at that. This is a pretty boring post lol… maybe I will have something interesting to say next blog.
Long Poker Days…
I’ve had a couple long poker days. It’s not tough to play for hours on end but playing everyday and focusing so much attention on poker can be tough. It started with the $1k WSOP event. I made it through the dinner break and busted with a couple hours left in play. I got it in for about 35bbs with AKs vs KK. The guy who had KK was pretty loose and it was definitely just a cooler spot. I actually got in another cooler pot against him before that one and doubled him up. I played my best and only feel like I misplayed one hand the whole day.
Yesterday I played online and made a couple deep runs. I managed to finish 14th in the Sunday 500. I’ve made it to the final two tables in this tournament now FIVE times with only one final table. That’s a pretty crazy statistic. That is also how tournament poker goes. You hope that when you get deep in a big tournament you can take it down. Two guys who are in the house I’m living in for the summer also made deep runs in big tournaments. Brad chopped the 100r turbo for about 30k and Tim got 9th in the FTP 750k. He lost a 1.5m pot with like 16 left KK vs QQ after a 643 flop. That would have put him at 2.1m chips with second having 1.1m chips. He would have probably cruised to a good finish but eventually ran into aces to bust in 9th.
Today I played the $1500 WSOP event. Again, I feel like I played great. I knew where I was at in almost every pot and I was able to get a good grasp on everyone’s game. I ran my stack up to 9k from 4500 starting stack, then lost a couple pots to go to 3500, got back up to 9k before dinner break and played a pretty crazy pot. There was one guy across the table from me who would limp probably 30% of hands and any suited/kind of connected hand. He limped for 300 at 150/300/25a with about a 30k stack (maybe more.) I raised with AJss on the button to 925. He called. The flop came 9s8c3d. He checked, I checked. The turn was the Ts and he bet 1100. I had 8200 behind and for a couple various reasons I decided to move all in instead of raise small/raise big or flat call. He tanked for a couple minutes and called me with 79cc for middle pair and the bottom end of the straight draw. I had 19 outs and bricked for a 20k pot. They were also breaking my table after that hand and I was sent on my way 20 minutes before dinner break.
Tomorrow I am going to play the Venetian 1k tournament. I’m hoping they have a decent field. It starts in about 10 hours and I have to get to sleep soon. A lot of my friends are doing well or have done well in the WSOP already. I’m sure it is because I know a lot of people but it is good to see some friends having early success/cashes. Tim is going into day 2 of the $1500 with a 60k stack so hopefully he can make a deep run. Check out my twitter if you want live updates. Goodnight.
Back In Vegas…
It really doesn’t seem like it has been a year since I’ve been in Vegas. Time flew by and here I am again. I had a good time in Oklahoma and made it safe to Vegas.
I flew here with some of the DeepStacks crew and hung out with them on Sunday night. We went and checked out the new casino Aria. It is pretty impressive. I didn’t get to see everything they had to offer but what I did see was very nice. The poker room is pretty neat and they have a room called “The Ivey Room.” Apparently it is supposed to rival Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio. Below is a picture of the Aria poker room. You can see the Ivey Room in the back.
On Monday I rented a car and was invited to Tom McEvoy’s wedding. I attended the reception and it was awesome. He seemed really happy as did everyone else in the room. It was a fun reception and I had a great time. On Tuesday afternoon Tom was holding a $230 buyin tournament at Caesars to celebrate his marriage. There would be 10 pros with $1k bounties on their heads.
I woke up around 11am on Tuesday and found the nearest 24 hour fitness center. I worked out for about an hour, came back to the house, grabbed some lunch and headed to Caesars. There were about 180 players that decided to play in the tournament. I got off to a quick start and slowly built my stack up. The blind levels were 20 minutes long and we started with 4k in chips so the tournament would be over pretty quickly. My first table broke and I had a healthy 12k stack when the average was probably around 7-8k.
I was moved to a table that had a pro bounty, Kathy Liebert. The very first hand I had to post the big blind of 400. It folded to Kathy on the cutoff and she made it 1200. The action got to me and I looked down at J4ss. She had roughly 2k behind and this was a very easy shove on my part. Tom was watching and I told him “This won’t be pretty.” I obviously wanted her to call with any two cards. She obliged and called with A9o. The board ran out J94Jx and I won the pot and collected her $1k bounty.
I won and lost a couple pots/races and found myself down to 12k at 400/800/100a. About thirty minutes after being at the new table they filled Kathy’s old seat with Mike Matusow. There was only one problem, he had everyone at the table covered. A woman I had played with all day limped for 800 to my right and I shoved KJss in mid position for about 12k. Mike called in the small blind with AQo. I lost the hand and Mike started berating me “I busted the Internet kid! These Internet donkeys suck!” Haha… he was just having fun with me, no harm done.
After the poker tournament I went to the Palazzo with Chris and Buff (From DeepStacks.) We went to Lagasse’s Stadium. It’s a sick sports bar with stadium seating in front of a huge TV screen as well as lounge seating all over the place. It was packed because the Suns were playing the Lakers and we had to sit outside. We found a table/couch next to a TV and ordered a great lunch. The food was really good there and I will definitely be going back to watch some sporting events there. Most of their seating appeared to be couches and comfortable chairs. Let me find a picture…
That’s the area we didn’t get to sit in but the seating is like that all over the place. It’s different and fun to sit and relax while watching a game. I don’t think that picture does the place justice.
Today I got some things done around the house and went over to Dan O’ Brien/some other’s house. Their house is definitely sick. Their setup in their living room with desks, computers, and a big TV is perfect. The whole house was very nice. I watched Jason Mercier play some 400-800 8game and then me and Dan played ping pong. The matches were pretty good and we ended 2-2. We ate some Chipotle and then I participated in the INSANITY workout with Dan and his two roommates. That workout is tough, especially after eating a chicken burrito from Chipotle lol. I managed to get through it and got my workout in for the day.
I’m still getting settled into the house. Brad (Smerks) will be coming tomorrow and then Tim (Tim0thee) and others will be getting here Friday. I will be playing the $1k WSOP event on Saturday. I’m looking forward to it. Goodnight.
Live From Oklahoma…
Hello world. I’m in the middle of nowhere, which happens to be in the middle of the United States. The location is Quapaw Oklahoma at the DownStream casino. I got here Friday night for a Deepstacks one day camp. I flew into Tulsa and then I had about an hour and a half drive to the casino here. It’s a pretty nice casino and I have enjoyed the trip so far.
On Friday night I ate dinner at the casino’s Steakhouse. It was absolutely incredible. The chef is a 6’2 380lb beast and he knows exactly what he is doing. There was about ten of us at the dinner including Mike Matusow, a couple of people from DeepStacks, a few people who run the casino and some regular poker players here. It was an excellent dinner and a great time. After that Mike, Chris (DeepStacks CEO), and I went and played some 5/10 Holdem/PLO. It was a great game and I had a lot of fun.
Today I taught with Mike for a couple hours. It was a one day course so it wasn’t too time consuming. I then relaxed for about an hour and ate at the Steakhouse again. Yes, it is that good. After another delicious dinner I played some 5/10 Holdem/PLO and here I am now. It’s pretty late. It’s almost 5 in the morning. It’s the first time I’ve been on the Internet since Thursday night so I have been wrapped up in things for the last couple of hours.
Tomorrow I am going to Vegas. I’m really excited. I’m expecting something great from myself this WSOP. I’m going to do my best and hopefully things will work out. If I play my best at all times I won’t care about my results. With that said, If I am playing my best at all times I can’t imagine not doing well. I will be staying in a house with a couple of my Canadian poker playing friends (Tim0thee, Smerks and some guys they know.) I will have a couple days to relax, get settled into Vegas and prepare for the next couple of weeks. I should be blogging and twittering frequently.
A couple days ago I did the free coaching session I had talked about earlier in the year. Sorry for those who didn’t get to check it out. I did it on UStream and probably had about 20-30 viewers. I reviewed a hand history of mine and talked about Super Turbo Tournament strategy. I think everyone enjoyed it and it was pretty simple. Coin flip, shove, fold… not rocket science, but still informative. I will probably do some more UStream things in the future but I am not sure exactly how much “coaching” or giving away free knowledge I will do. Probably not much, but I can figure out something that will be fun.
I also Made bluffmagazine’s top tweet list three weeks in a row! My best poker accomplishment yet. BLUFF’s Poker Tweets of The Week. Maybe I am mildly entertaining, I am not sure lol. I gotta head to bed. I’ll get back in the rhythm of blogging soon. Goodnight.
USteam…
Going live in an hour or so.. Little late/short notice since I talked about it on Tuesday night.. Anyone who is around come check it out. Will blog more later this week before I head out to Vegas.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tristan-cre8ive-wade
Here’s the SCOOP…
FTOPS finished about a week ago. I made a couple more deep runs in some of the events. I finished 23rd in the $500 Super Turbo and finished in the top 100 in the Rush Rebuy tournament. SCOOP hasn’t been going so great either. It is a little more than halfway through the series and I think my only close call is a bubble of the $1500 2x chance turbo. I was one of the chip leaders the whole way through and then lost AQ vs A7 blind vs blind to be a dominant chip leader on the bubble. With 65 people left and 63 getting paid I shoved AJ got called by KQ and lost the pot. That was a super frustrating bubble/loss considering I had a lot of chips before the AQ/A7 hand and knew I would do well in that.
The structures in the SCOOP tournaments are ridiculous. It is a positive thing to have good structured online tournaments but sometimes it can be a little overboard. Playing online for 22 hours straight is way too long. I think they need to adjust their structures and either make more events two-day events or just make the tournaments shorter. I guess the longer levels and deeper structures allow for more “play” and “skill” but even in structured tournaments like the FTOPS you have to be skilled to be aware of the structure and adjust. My point is that in tournaments like the SCOOP it allows more room for postflop play whereas in faster structured tournaments you need to have better preflop play. Both structures take skill, just different types of skill. With postflop play you do get more information and have more room to maneuver. I understand that those structures are better overall. I do enjoy the better structures but playing online for almost a day straight doesn’t seem right to me in an online setting. That’s like playing three days consecutively in a live tournament; Maybe even longer. I find it hard to be able to play my best when I’m awake for such a long period of time. I haven’t final tabled a SCOOP tournament yet so I don’t know how tough it really is. 
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I started writing the above paragraphs a couple of days ago and didn’t get to finish. SCOOP ended yesterday. It almost ended for me today though. I busted in 39th place in the $1k SCOOP Main Event. First place was roughly 580k. Another close call. I got knocked out about 30 minutes before play was done for the day. It was a two day tournament and I would have finished today if I had survived. I had a couple deep runs in other tournaments yesterday too but nothing panned out. That is how the cookie crumbles.
Now that I survived the FTOPS/SCOOP I will be heading to the WSOP (World Series of Poker) in a couple days. I am actually going to fly to Oklahoma for a DeepStacks camp and then onto Vegas after that. Fellow DeepStacks pro Tom McEvoy is getting married the day after I get in. I will probably attend that and get settled in to Vegas and have a couple days to myself before the WSOP hits. It will be nice to have a couple days of down time before the madness starts.
I have been slacking on the blogging. I was playing poker literally everyday and there wasn’t much to say. It would have been the same old repetitive writing which I feel I succumb to every now and then. Sorry If I am boring, I try not to be! I will be blogging and tweeting (www.Twitter.com/TristanCre8ive) very frequently while out in Vegas. If you want to know how things are going just check my twitter which will probably be updated every couple of hours.
I will be doing the free coaching I promised this week! Thursday night is the only day this week I will be able to do it. I will shoot for Thursday at 9 PM EST quite possibly 10 PM EST. I will update the blog before then to make the time certain, but it will be going down on Thursday night. Sorry again for taking so long with what I promised to do. Hopefully this is enough notice and everyone who is interested can check it out. I will be talking about Super Turbo Tournaments and strategy for them and also answering poker related questions/anything else. It will most likely be done on UStream. I have to set it all up and make sure it’s a go but I will figure it out by then.
One last question. Who is more famous GLOBALLY…Lebron James or Michael Phelps? Goodnight.
F the TOPS…
It’s Thursday night and FTOPS is nearing the end. I just cashed in my third straight FTOPS event. Yesterday I made a deep run in the $500 HORSE but ended up getting 36th place. Today I finished 95th place in the $200 FTOPS Cubed and 19th in the $300 Heads Up PLO event.
Overall I’ve been really happy with how I’ve been playing. There are always some hands I misplay or do something stupid, but in general I feel like I’ve been playing pretty well. I especially feel like I played the HU PLO very well. In my final match I had a chance to knock out the player twice. One hand I was 44% to win vs his 35% with 21% chance to tie. That hand brought him back down 2-1 in chips I believe. I grinded him down some more and got in a 50%/50% flip which I lost to get the stacks about even. The only hand I feel like I misplayed was the last hand. I had 33% equity but I just don’t think it was the best spot for me. I realized I need to play more PLO. I definitely enjoyed playing heads up PLO today although it was a tournament and not a cash game.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the FTOPS events and hopefully I can get the ball rolling again. The SCOOP is also starting this weekend which I am excited about. I was looking through the SCOOP schedule today. I’m not sure how good the HIGH buyin SCOOP tournaments will be. It really depends on the satellites and who is playing them. I doubt they will be worth playing. I probably won’t play any of them unless the fields are pretty large or I satellite in. I’ll have to wait and see.
About 4-5 months ago (wow I can’t believe it’s been that long) I talked about doing some free coaching. I haven’t forgot about that. I want to give enough warning so that everyone who wants to watch/partake will have enough notice. I don’t want to do it last minute and exclude a bunch of people. I promise I will pick a date before I head out to the WSOP at the end of May. It will most likely be a Friday/Saturday night. It will be best if I just wait until SCOOP is over and do it sometime after that. I haven’t forgot though and I’m sorry it has taken this long. In the coaching lesson I will review some super turbo strategy and answer questions. That seems like the smart thing to do. I’m sure a lot of people might be upset about offering a free poker lesson but there is enough information out there. I don’t feel like talking a little strategy about Super Turbos and answering some questions will hurt the profitability of poker at all.
Let’s see how this last weekend of FTOPS goes. It hasn’t been so great to me yet but there are still a couple more events. Good luck to everyone who is playing and I hope to see some of you at the final table.