Snuffy's 2011 Recap

Let's see how many people still have us in your reader.

Needless to say a lot of stuff happened to the poker world the last 12 months. I will go over how I did on my goals, Black Friday, my Hong Kong trip and some other random stuff.

2011 Goals

Let's see how I fared on the goals I set in the beginning of the year:

1. Play in two WSOP-C Main Events and one WSOP event – cashing in one of them. - Fail. I ended up playing in just one WSOP-C Main event and did not make it through the first day. I did however play two preliminary events in Tunica where I final tabled the $340 HORSE event and finished 4^th.

2. Make a realistic push to win a WSOP seat. It's safe to say that Black Friday fucked that one up for me. I was going to push hard to win a seat on PokerStars so I could get a 50k VPP head start on SuperNova in 2012. I did play a number of single table satellites at the Rio but opted to take the cash instead of trying to play a mega. We shall see how the bankroll looks in 2012 and maybe try a mega this year.

3. Learn online cash games. Again, this one fell by the wayside with Black Friday. I had no significant amount of money on any sites that still accept U.S. players and I had no real interest in putting money on either. I could start watching training videos now but by the time I would get a chance to play, I would have long forgotten it.

4. Play a minimum of three live cash sessions per month. This didn't happen either. Be it a combination of life expenses and work, I had neither the time not money to make this happen. I went multiple month stretches on two occasions this year where I didn't play any cash game sessions at all.

I don't have any real poker related goals for 2012. I would like to play more cash game sessions and try to stay away from tournaments for the most part.

Black Friday

This obviously hit everyone like a ton of bricks. I really wanted to put in the hours online this year and learn the game even more. I really wanted to make that push for SuperNova.

After being without online poker for the last 8+ months I can honestly say that I don't miss it one bit. My life is now a lot better without online poker. However, if they announced that online poker was to be regulated, I would be back at it in a heartbeat.

Right now I am getting by competitive fix by playing PS3. The Show and FIFA 12 have occupied my time.

Work

At the beginning of 2011 I had just started with the role of News Editor at Rakeback.com. I held that position until a couple months ago when I moved over to the content side of the company. I think Matt mentioned the title Content Manger once in passing and I ran with it. I am now the self-titled Content Manager.

We are now up to four sites with PokerVIP.com, Pokerbonus.net, and the latest addition, Pokerbonus.com.

I started working with the Rakeback team back in mid-2010 looking to add to the bankroll. I never dreamed it would turn into what I do now. I am lucky to work two jobs that I love doing when some people hate going to work every day.

Hong Kong

I took a two week trip to Hong Kong and Macau in October. I went during the Macau Poker Cup Championship. I played in one event and a number of step mega-satellites with noting really to show for it. By far the fun part of the trip was to meet all of the great people at Rakeback. I was well taken care of and they told me where to go, what to do and what to eat. I even had cow stomach lining.

Looking Forward

My 2012 and beyond looks to be moving along more and more with less poker, but you never know. Hitting the WSOP isn't on the top of my list this year but it looks like I will be in Albuquerque and Salt Lake City in June so a long weekend isn't out of the question. Other than that I have no poker trips planned for this year. I am looking at taking the whole family to Melbourne and the Aussie Millions in 2014. Start saving now.

This will probably be my last post for a long time. I tend to use Facebook and Twitter a lot more these days. You never know though.

Day 2 Table Draw

Here is my staring table draw:

Stanley Tavanese – 47200 - Amazon / 354 / 1
Bryan Barrile - 63000 - Amazon / 354 / 2
Humberto Brenes – 20700 - Amazon / 354 / 3
Keith Ferrera - 36500 - Amazon / 354 / 4
Matthew Livingston – 7100 - Amazon / 354 / 5
Robert Engle - 29100 - Amazon / 354 / 6
Scott Carlson – 6600 - Amazon / 354 / 7
Foster Hays - 9700 - Amazon / 354 / 8
Adam Bage – 82100 - Amazon / 354 / 9

Quick WSOP Update

First off congrats to Numbbono who cashed in the $1,500 HORSE event yesterday. He finished in 54th place for just under $4,200. Glad I had 5%.

I am on to day 2 in the $1,500 NLHE event. I have a woeful 6,600 (6.6bbs) entering the day. The event drew over 3,100 players and we have 490 remaining. Top 324 will cash.

Needless to say I need multiple double-ups early on.

My chip counts throughout the day yesterday:

1st break – 8,850

2nd break – 9,950

Dinner break – 18,800

4th break – 20,500

End of day – 6,600

In the 9th level I doubled up two short stacks. I can’t even remember one of them but the other was for like 6k when the tightest player at the table moved in from the cutoff and I had JJ in the big blind. Just no way I’m folding in that spot.

gogo me

October Trip

This one should be a ton of fun. It will be a three city tour taking place around early to mid-October. I will be spending 5 days each or so in Tokyo, Macau and Hong Kong.

My original plan was to make it to Macau for the APPT event in November. The APT was also planned for the same time. When the APPT folks decided to schedule the Main Event for the week of Thanksgiving I gave up on that idea. Also happening in the last couple of days is the close of the poker room at the Hard Rock in the City of Dreams resort in Macau. This used to be the home for the APT and now they have to scramble to find a location for the event.

I have now opted for the Macau Poker Cup Championship series in October. The series has 12 events with the Main Event carrying a $20,000 HKD ($2,600 USD) price tag. I probably won’t play that one unless I can satellite my way in. A couple of tournaments I am looking at are the 6-max NLHE and the PLO events.

The first stop of Tokyo is still up in the air. My co-worker at Rakeback was planning to go to Tokyo around that time and I decided to take a look at flights to see if it would work. Surprise, the cost difference was only around $150 or so. I hope to make this happen.

The second stop will be Macau for around five days or so. I really want to see if the cash games are everything that people make of them. Last time I was there back in 2007 it was the start of poker in Macau. I played the first ever APPT event there and the only cash games were on the electronic tables.

The last stop will be in Hong Kong. One of by big regrets the last time I was in Macau was my failure to go check out Hong Kong. I mostly hung around the casino and never went out and did anything. I won’t have that issue this time as I know people in the area.

One thing I really want to do is put faces to names at the Rakeback offices. I just hope they don’t put me to work when I’m there

WSOP in T Minus Five Days…

My annual WSOP trip is just a short five days away already. Now that the WSOP has started I can feel the excitement building up. Getting a chance to play tournament poker on a daily basis will be good. Now I will probably swear off tournaments by the time I leave, but that passes in about two days after I fly back home.

My schedule will be more of a play as I feel type of thing. At most I believe I will play a single WSOP event, unless I run like god in single table satellites. The most likely event would be either the $1,500 NLHE on Saturday or the $1,000 NLHE on Sunday. If I can find a cash in that event or a significant hit in one of the other events I play, I would look to play the $1,500 Stud 8 event on Tuesday the 14th.

As always you can follow my Twitter account to see how I am doing. Also, I will be posting any blog worthy news over at Rakeback.com under the WSOP Diaries headline. You can check out my writings along with Numb’s as he plays his first ever WSOP event this year.

If you follow my Twitter you probably saw my next scheduled trip. I will do another blog post here shortly on that. Really excited about that one.

Players Try Merge Network Out With a Free $5

Warning, I’m going to try and sell you something, kinda.

If U.S. players have been hesitant to put money online after Black Friday, here is a chance to try out one of the Merge Network skins. Rakeback.com and Black Chip Poker are giving new players a free $5 with no deposit required.

All you have to do is click on the Rakeback banner add over on the right of the screen and open a new account. If you are viewing this in a reader click here and open your account.

Once you have an account do the following:

1. Click on ‘Rakeback Offers’ tab near the top of the page.
2. Click on the Black Chip Poker link and follow the instructions to download the poker client.
3. Go back to Rakeback and have your account tracked to get 41.5% rakeback. Simply click on the ‘Rake Tracking’ link at the top right of the page and enter your Black Chip Poker account to have it properly tracked.
4. Go to the promo page here and follow the instructions to get your free $5.

I decided to use the money and see if I can get the balance up to $100. If so I will start grinding out some cash games. Give it a try and see what you think.

Plan B???

It’s time to get of my Snarf-like streak of not posting on the blog. That would mean that Snarf would actually have to show up on the blog every once in a while though.

Well to say the last two weeks or so has been a bit hectic would be a massive understatement. Ever since the news broke the workload over at Rakeback.com has been big. First thing was trying to keep up with the news and write about it for all of the players. The second phase was adding new rooms.

Since April 15th we have added Carbon Poker, Ladbrokes and BlackChip Poker. We also added Players Only and as soon as it was posted we had to take it back down. there will be three additional rooms to launch this week (one US friendly). We are also working on a sister site that is set to open in the upcoming weeks.

So back to online play it looks like I won’t be winning my WSOP Main Event seat on PokerStars this year. I actually didn’t have a whole lot of time to grind steps sit & go’s before the ban hammer was dropped. BTW, I requested my withdrawal Tuesday afternoon via direct bank transfer and the funds arrived in my account on Friday. Even in the wake of this PokerStars is a classy organization. When online poker becomes legal again in the U.S, and it will, it would be a shame to not have PokerStars there to play.

I was planning on going to the WSOP June 7-14, until last week. Turns out my son’s graduation from pre-K (yes they have that now) is on the evening of the 7th. My new date are June 8-15. The 8th will be a wash as the only flight option was a mid-afternoon one and I will miss the start of all of the days events. Here is my new planned schedule:

• 6/8 – Cash games
• 6/9 – $235 WSOP 2p Deep Stack NLHE
• 6/10 – $235 WSOP 2p Deep Stack NLHE
• 6/11 – $350 Venetian DSE NLHE
• 6/12 – $350 Venetian DSE NLHE
• 6/13 – $240 Golden Nugget Stud 8
• 6/14 – $200 Binions NLHE 6max

One of those days (probably the 9th or 10th) I am going to most likely grind single table satellites all day. I want to play around ten $125 – $225 single tables to try and accumulate $4K in lammers. If I am able to do that I would like to get back to Vegas right before the Main Event to play one or two of the $2K mega-satellites.

If all of that works out and I actually win a Main Event seat (that’s’ a lotta if’s), I honestly don’t know if I would play it. My whole goal was to play the Main Event this year so I would have a VPP head start for Supernova the following year. That’s no longer an option so I think having the cash to add to the roll would be better.

I am in the midst of brainstorming for pre-WSOP articles. Anyone have ideas on what they would like to see? Right now I have the following articles in my head:

• Other events around town (Venetian, GN, Binions, etc.)
• Non-pokery things to do (Red Rock, damn Dam tour, etc.)
• Places to eat (need locals help here)

Levity

That Erik Seidel is en fuego.

So nice of the folks at TheMicros to give him some love.

PokerSlut Tour XXI Stud

PokerSlut Tour XXI Razz

PokerSlut Tour 8 Game

PokerSlut Tour XXI PLO8 DS

PokerSlut Tour XXI

Please join the Home Game early to ensure that you will be able to register. 

As always, the game will start at 8:00pm central.

PokerSlut Tour Moves To PokerStars

The PokerSlut Tour has had a long run at Full Tilt Poker but that is coming to an end.  The Tour will be moving to PokerStars to take advantage of their Home Game feature.  If you want to play in any future Tour events you will need to register for the PokerSlut Tour Home Game.

Three new games will be added to the rotation: 2-7 Triple Draw, 8 Game Mix and Badugi.

The Tour will be taking this week off but will start up again next Sunday night on PokerStars.

ChipMeUp–Buying A Piece of the FossilMan

I was scanning for poker news two write about and I see that Greg ‘FossilMan’ Raymer was selling pieces of himself on ChipMeUp. I have looked at the site before but never more than a passing glance. I decided to delve a little deeper and see what it’s all about.

I opened up an account and it was fairly easy to deposit money. I opted to throw $40 on the site and had to sent it to Tony G on PokerStars followed by an e-mail to ChipMeUp. After I sent the money and e-mail I had the balance in my account within five minutes.

I bought five shares of Raymer in the NBC Heads-Up event this weekend. My $15.55 investment could net me $450 if he goes on to win it. He won his first round match and only needs to win one more to get me a small return on my investment.

Rungood FossilMan, rungood.

Vegas Summer 2011 Plans

I have my hotel booked already for Vegas this summer. I am at Harrah’s from the 7th through the 14th of June. Couldn’t really beat the $35/nt weekday rates. I have taken a look at the schedules that are out so far (WSOP, Binions and Golden Nugget). The Venetian schedule will probably be $300s and $500s throughout.

My tentative schedule looks like this:

6/7 – $200 HORSE (Binions) or $230 HORSE (Golden Nugget)

6/8 – $1,500 NLHE Shootout (WSOP)

6/9 – $300 NLHE (Venetian) or $200 NLHE (WSOP)

6/10 – $1,500 HORSE (WSOP) or $300 NLHE (Venetian) or $200 NLHE (WSOP)

6/11 – $1,500 NLHE (WSOP) or $230 PLO (Golden Nugget) or $300 NLHE (Venetian) or $200 NLHE (WSOP)

6/12 – $1,000 NLHE (WSOP) or $230 Stud (Golden Nugget) or $300 NLHE (Venetian) or $200 NLHE (WSOP)

6/13 – $230 Stud8 (Golden Nugget) or $300 NLHE (Venetian) or $200 NLHE (WSOP)

I’m not going to play four WSOP events. I will pick one or two of these to play. Depending on how the trip goes I am contemplating coming back right before the Main Event to play in one or two of the mega satellites.

I am still going to try hard to win a seat online on PokerStars. I was planning to start in February by building up as many step 5 tickets as I could so I am ready to play each of the $700 megas on Saturdays/Sundays when they launch. Work has killed me and I have only had a chance to play a total of six step 2s so far. I somehow finished in 3rd or 4th in five of them for a redo and finished 5th in the remaining one. That drop down to step 1 ended in a 4th place finish for me good for $1.50.

I will keep grinding these in March and will probably make it to SilverStar this month, as long as work doesn’t get in the way.

WSOP-C West Palm Beach Recap

Since I am writing this as day two is ongoing you can guess how it went. I am going to break this post into two parts, Odds and Ends followed by the Main Event.

Odds and Ends

When I arrived at the poker room on Saturday afternoon around 4:30 I wanted to walk around and see what kind of a place they had and also register for the 7pm mega-satellite. The room or rooms had a total of 65ish tables split between two levels on complete opposite sides of the building. The walk between them was no more than a couple minutes though.

In the state of Florida apparently it’s difficult to add additional tables for a tournament series, or so I have been told. It will be interesting to see how the WPT gets around this when their event at the Hard Rock Hollywood goes down. Not adding additional tables and the split between the rooms seemed to cause problems from what I saw. Throughout the two weeks they had to routinely shut down cash games in order to make space for tournaments. When I looked at the cash game lists on Saturday and Sunday they were endless, unless you wanted to play $2 straight limit hold’em. I would imagine your wait would be multiple hours.

The other major bummer was the lack of single table satellites. I believe I saw lists for $40, $65 and $125 ones that were quite long. Not once when I was there did I hear one go off. WSOP officials are going to really have to give the location a second thought if they are going to keep it on the schedule.

I tried registering for the 7pm mega about two hours before it started. That didn’t happen as their ‘system’ didn’t have it available yet. When I went back at 6:45 or so I registered without a line to speak of so it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t great either. When playing the mega we didn’t have a tournament clock as three events were going on already and they only had three clocks available. Guess that $60 license for an additional clock was too much.

Also during the mega we had to bag our chips and move from the first floor room to the second floor room. This killed a little over five minutes of play. When the levels are 20 minutes and you only start with 60bbs its kind of a big deal.

The mega ended up generating 24 seats and I busted with six tables remaining. Only interesting thing was when I was down to t1400 and blinds jumped to 200/400 I doubled two hands in a row with AQ vs 1010 and KK vs QQ. I ended up busting when I shoved my 10bb stack in the cutoff with J10dd and the button found a call for 80% of his stack with A5dd. Soul read obviously.

Main Event

I opted to play the 11am flight which ended up getting 469 players. Surprised actually that only 244 played the late flight but a total of 713 is a solid number. Play was only scheduled for nine levels to accommodate the two flights and would end at the 300/600 level. With t20k to start a number of people would be advancing to day two, or so I thought. Only half the field survived the day.

All tables were set for nine handed and the five seat was in the well for late registrants. When cards were in the air there was only myself and one other player to my direct left at the table. The nine seat checked in but didn’t show back up for over an hour. We actually played heads-up for about 15-20 minutes. I was able to win about 600 chips in that time. A younger kid was the third to arrive and promptly tried to bluff me on the first hand when I flopped top pair and turned top two and wound up winning a t1500 pot.

As players slowly made it to the table by the end of the third level I was able to work my stack up to around t25k. A lot of small pot wins and nothing major of note. The game dynamic was good and most people were making 2.2x – 2.5x raises. Played a lot more hands because of that.

In the 4th – 6th levels the story would be win a few small pots and then turn around and lose it all back in one hand. One of the late arrivals was playing about 80%+ of his hands and was willing to throw chips in the middle. When we lost our first player about the 5th level he was replaced with a t40k stack who was a fairly aggressive player. I played a few hands where I flopped top pair, marginal kicker but folded after I faced big flop raises. I went to the second break with around t22k.

In the 7th – 8th levels the wheels fell off. First hand back I raised, flopped top pair and threw out a cbet of t900 and faced a raise to t3300 and folded and was back to the starting stack. The first of two big hands that would spell my fate occurred when I called a small raise with QJ along with two others. Flop comes 109x and ep player cbets for 900 and I call. Next to act flats and the 4th player puts in a raise to 2300. Original raiser calls, I call, then the 3rd to act who flatted shoves for 14k. Fold, fold, fold. Obvious set in that spot.

The hand that pretty much ended it for me was against the older guy in the nine seat. He raised UTG+1 and it folded to me in the BB and I called with QJ (again). The player was fairly straight forward and cbet every flop and turn. Flop comes KK7 rainbow and I check called his cbet looking to check raise any turn card. Turn was an ace. I checked, he bet t2300 and I check-raise to t7100 thinking he can’t call unless he has one of the two kings. If he does have one of them he is insta-shipping on me. He thought for about 20 seconds before calling. After my raise I had about t7400 behind. River is a brick and I bet out t6k. Dunno why I didn’t just shove. He gives the big sigh and two seconds later throws in the chips and turns over AJ. He really thought he was beat but decided to call. If I win that hand I am sitting on t30k or so and in plenty good shape. I didn’t and I busted less than a lap later.

When I was down to t15k at 250/500 I felt like I was short but really knew I still had 30bbs which is plenty. Not the best performance I have put together. I thought about staying for the last $345 the next day but ended up taking off.

Sorry to the people who had percentages of me. Figures I would cash the one of three events in February that wasn’t a part of the deal. I did offer a free cut of that one so all was not lost for them.

Next up is Vegas in June.

PokerSlut Tour XX $1 Rebuy

ZIPS Survivor

Well this should be interesting. Decided to sign-up for ZIPS Survuvor. Details are at the new web site here. I have a feeling I need to keep winning to survive in this one.

PokerSlut Tour Stud Hi/Lo