O-Poker

I have been on a great run at the cash game tables as of late. After coming off a better than expected January, February is off to a fast start. I am averaging around 15 PTBB/100 hands on the 2/4 NL Short Handed tables with close to 2,000 hands. I know that it is not sustainable. A lot of it has been thanks to some luck – like hitting top set vs. middle set. Being on the good side of variance is a nice feeling and it has helped pad my stats in the $50k Challenge.

Below is my current status in the $50k Challenge:

Starting Bankroll (1/1/06) - $2,592
NL Short Handed Cash Games (YTD) - Profit of $6,385
SNGs and MTTs (YTD) - Loss of $206
Bonus (YTD) - Profit of $193
Sports Bets (YTD) – Profit of $319
Total Profit (YTD) - $6,690
Profit since last update (5 days) - $2,780

Current Bankroll - $9,283

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I still need to work on my multi-table tourney play. I think I need to play tourneys on a more regular basis since a lot of tourney play is based on feel of the table, stage of the tourney, etc.

I played two $109 tourneys on Saturday night.

The first one was on Party Poker. There were 422 entries paying 50 spots. I felt like I was playing great and was cruising along when we broke the money bubble. The short stacks started taking stands and players were dropping fast. I had just under an average stack with 36 remaining when an aggressive player made a standard 3xBB raise from late position and I look down at 77. I called and the flop came AJ7. We got all our chips in and I was in great shape against his Q10. A King on the turn gave him his straight. A blank on the river and I was out 36th for $253. I couldn’t help but think that the payout structure on Party is way too top/final table heavy.

41-50 $220+
31-40 $250+
21-30 $270+
11-20 $290+
1st place - $10k+

The payouts are basically flat from 11-50th, so it encourages a lot of players to gamble. You pretty much need to make the final table for any significant increase and final 3 for the big payday. Seems like they could work it a little differently. I am going to try and compare the payouts on some of the other sites.

The 2nd tourney that I played on Saturday was a $109 on UB. There were 172 players paying 20. I got short stacked late in the tourney and basically was reduced to all-in or fold poker for about 1 ½ hours. I never really got many chips but did manage to eek my way into the money and finish 16th for $172.

On Sunday night I decided to enter the $215 HORSE tourney. Not a good decision after a 12 pack of Miller Lites. I went out fairly early in the stud h/l round when I had a set and 7 high for the low both of which were no good. Note to self – don’t play HORSE while drinking.

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FTP SATELLITES TO THE WSOP $50k HORSE EVENT

I saw an interesting post on one of the forums. Someone said they sent an email to Full Tilt Poker asking about if they are going to run sats to the $50k WSOP HORSE EVENT and the answer was yes. WOW!! It will be interesting to see how these are set up.

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I have been having some problems with comments on the blog. Some have been getting deleted and others haven’t shown up. Hopefully everything is working now. Let me know if you tried to post a comment on my last post – that one was driving me crazy.

OK, enough ramblings.

cmitch