It's Official

WPBT here I come.




-------------------------------------------------

Arrival Date: 06th JULY 2006 THURSDAY
Departure Date: 09th JULY 2006 SUNDAY

-------------------------------------------------

Daily Rate:

7/06/06 = $57.00

7/07/06 = $111.00

7/08/06 = $121.00


*************************************************




DEPARTING FLIGHT:

From New York, NY (JFK) to Las Vegas, NV (LAS)

Thursday, 06 Jul 06 Flight 199 Depart New York, NY (JFK) at 9:35 pm and arrive in Las Vegas, NV (LAS) at 12:05 am (next day) Seat 13F

RETURNING FLIGHT:

From Las Vegas, NV (LAS) to New York, NY (JFK)

Sunday, 09 Jul 06 Flight 192 Depart Las Vegas, NV (LAS) at 10:20 am and arrive in New York, NY (JFK) at 6:25 pm Seat 22A


Total for 1 Passenger
Fare price $ 426.04 USD
Taxes $ 52.56 USD
Total price $ 478.60 USD


As I've mentioned, I will be playing in the $2500 nlh tournament for Event #13 of the 2006 World Series of Poker, using the $2000 I won in the ftp Bracelet Race last week, plus $500 of my own, from my poker roll of course. Event #13 begins at noon local time on Friday, July 7, so I am flying in the night before so that I can play poker all night like the degenerate that I am get a good night's rest in advance of the big day.

One thing you will note is that my returning flight on Sunday leaves first thing in the morning, Vegas time. It's always a long day flying home from Vegas to the East Coast, and typically I have opted for the 12pm flight instead of the 10am flight. But, if I can get home in time to help put my daughters to bed, it will all be worth it. Hammer Wife actually came up with the plan. I scheduled my flight for Sunday morning. If I actually need to get a different flight because I'm still around for the WSOP final table on Sunday, then that's all good. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Otherwise I can get home at a good hour that hopefully won't leave me too tired to keep from playing a few MTTs online that night. I keed I keed.

Not much else to report. I played decently well in the WWdN, went out somewhere in the upper 20s or lower 30s I think when my 99 ran into KK. Sadly, my proudest moment in that one was a laydown I made on the very first hand of the night. Smokkee raised preflop from EP, and I trailed in behind him with JJ, figuring fo sho I was in the lead at this point. The flop came T94 with two diamonds. I led out with a pot-sized bet of 250 chips (this was already about a fifth of my remaining stack right off the bat), thinking my overpair had to be good. Smokkee thought for a few moments and then reraised me to 550. Now, after a preflop raise and then a postflop raise on a raggy flop, I had to figure Smokkee for something. He certainly would play AT this way. Might even play KT this way. Obviously, TT, 99 or 44 was always a possibility. Knowing Smokkee's aggressive style, he might even play a hand like 88 or 77 or AK or AQ like this, figuring that this raggy flop was unlikely to have hit me since I called his EP preflop raise. But in the end, it was the size of the raise that smelled funny. Almost familar funny. As I pondered the proper response to his reraise, it suddenly occurred to me all too clearly why this betting pattern seemed familar -- it's what I would do if I had a big pocket pair! He raised it up preflop from EP. He raised my already large pot-sized bet on a raggy flop. And he didn't put in a massive raise. Nope -- this was a raise that wanted a call. At that point my pot odds were pretty much enough to make the call, and I know Smokkee knows all about the pot odds to be well aware I was likely to call that reraise. I did have an overpair after all. Over the span of about three seconds all this flashed through my mind, and I laid down my JJ. Smokkee raked in a big hand for the first pot of the night, and showed his pocket cards. Two Kings. Yay for me, I was down to 900 chips after hand #1. Anyways it was that kind of night for me. I doubled up a few times but was never able to recover from the early loss.

As an aside, I read somewhere the other day something that is so true for the regular MTT player. Missing out on opportunities to win chips in the early rounds of an MTT is very negative EV, even though it's also generally true that it is usually early enough with low enough blinds that you don't need to try to push any action with poor hands in the early rounds either. The reason that not missing your opportunities is so crucial in the first few rounds has to do with exponential growth. Here's the issue:

Say you start a WWdN tournament with 1500 in chips. You sit out the first 5 hands because you are a few minutes late getting back from work. During those first 5 hands where you are blinded out, you autofold AA and KK. Let's assume for purposes of argument that you would have worked up from 1500 chips to 2500 chips with those two hands. Instead, you have 1450 chips when you log on after Hand #5.

Now fast forward ahead two more rounds. You missed only the first 5 hands of what is now a 45-hand tournament, and let's say you've folded every single hand since you joined in. So, you're sitting on a stack of 1250 chips. Or, you would have 2300 chips left if you had sat in for the first AA and KK hands, per our earlier assumption. Now, you get dealt AA again, make a masterful play, and double through someone. In the first example, you just doubled from 1250 to 2500 chips. But in the second example, where you got to sit in for the first few hands, you just doubled from 2300 to 4600 chips.

Now fast forward 2 rounds later, when let's say you've blinded off another 300 chips folding mostly everything since the last double up. Now you are dealt KK, and again you manage to double up with this premium hand. In the first example, you were down from 2500 to 2200 with the blinds, and then just doubled to 4400. But in the second example, you were blinded down from 4600 to 4300, and then you doubled to 8600. Now we're looking at an 8600 chipstack, instead of a 4400 chipstack. All because you missed out on the opportunity to make an extra 1000 chips early on. And it just keeps going and going like this. If you end up doubling up 6 times in a deep run in an MTT, that 6x doubling up ends up translating into 64,000 in lost chips by the time you're at your peak. And that my friends is nothing to sneeze at. It really is important that you don't donk out in the early rounds with nothing, but there is a delicate balance between that interest, and making sure you pick up pots when you can, and don't waste the few opportunities given to you.

Anyways, I was also in the $216 buyin Winners Choice tournament last night, along with Smokkee. Smokkee outlasted me, and the last I saw of him he was in around 22nd out of around 24 remaining players in the event, so I assume he didn't make the top prize (but hope I'm wrong). As for me, I didn't get one playable hand the entire way through, and it was just one of those tournaments where every time I raised with garbage because of some positional consideration or read I had, someone behind me reraised big and I had to lay down my hand. I saw exactly 6 flops out of 91 hands (you can do the math there, but 6 out of 100 is 6% so it can't be that good), and had to make several laydowns that hampered me from ever making any kind of a run. It was one of my worst overall set of cards and conditions in an MTT in recent memory. I still managed to last through more than half of the field of 115 players, including a couple of pros and some other big-time players/bloggers as well, and went out in the 40s somewhere when, again, I ran into another big pair, but this time it was my usual Aces against my AQs, and IGH.

I also played very well in the Bracelet Race last night, and was in 21st out of 40 players remaining when I got another large stack to move allin preflop with TT and I called him with JJ. The turn card was a T, and I got knocked down to around 2600 chips remaining, good at that point in the tournament for the bottom few spots remaining. Then Hammer Girl #2 woke up crying, and I ended up just getting her so Hammer Wife could sleep through the night for once. I came back an hour and a short cat-nap on the rocker later to find that I had blinded out in 24th place. Ahh well. Truth be told, I was pretty disgusted after that recockulous turn card beat in a spot that would have vaulted me up to the top 5 in the Bracelet Race where the top 3 won the 2k first prize. It didn't kill me to get up with the Hammer Girl, especially after Hammer Wife has done most of the late-night baby duty while I've been final-tabling MTTs and really didn't want to throw that away. And although that certainly is not the way you want to end you run in an MTT, I'm perfectly fine with the whole thing this morning. I enjoy rocking our daughter and like putting her to sleep, and I love that Hammer Wife can sleep through some nights. I wouldn't have it any other way.

OK so enough about yesterday's donkage. I'm going to Las Vegas for the WPBT and the WSOP! What do you say to that?!