Today was the $215 “Big Antes”. I had actually never played an official PokerStars “big ante” tournament before, but I was already excited about my chances in it before the first cards were dealt. With an ante structure like that, it really becomes “correct” to raise preflop more often, and I absolutely love playing as laggy as possible provided it makes sense to. 500 hands into the tournament, I had raised 25% of hands preflop and was in the money having never been all-in for the duration of the tournament.

A while later, 60k turned into 300k and a final table started to seem like a possibility worth allowing one’s self to get vaguely excited about. By the time just a few tables were left, the cream had definitely risen to the top; most players were eager as hell to open the pot with a raise hoping to steal the blinds, a sign of what a truly great strategy that is in the “Big Ante” tournaments; it certainly wasn’t a coincidence that all of the players that went deep had a propensity to raise a lot of hands.

With about 40 left, I re-raised all-in with King-Jack suited and got a call from King-Queen. I spiked a Jack on the turn and basically just viewed the tournament as house money from there forward. Unfortunately my stay of execution didn’t last very long: I got Queen-Ten of hearts all-in on a Jack-Nine-x, one heart board against an individual’s Ace-Jack. I was really jonesin’ for some more runhot to win that sizable pot and start getting more focused on actually maybe possibly one time winning the tournament, but no such luck was had.

At any rate, WCOOP has the propensity to leave you burnt out and frustrated, but I’m happy to report that this hasn’t really been the case for me this year. Despite the close calls and their naturally accompanying frustration, I’ll take being teased with a few deep runs in place of a series full of washouts any day.

WCOOP has been running for a couple of weeks now. I’ve played a handful of events with limited success. I bubbled a couple of tournaments in a really disappointing fashion including a $265 PLO Knockout event where, despite turning a 5,000 starting stack into 45,000, I bubbled out on some dumb standard PLO flip and somehow managed to not even score a single bounty. That was super frustrating since I felt like it was a pretty good chance to make a deep run in a tournament format that, inexplicably, I feel like I’m pretty solid at despite fairly limited experience. That same day was the $215 heads-up event which also proved super frustrating. Most players only had to win 3 matches to get into the money. But a handful of us, myself included, had to win a “play in” match just to join the field of 2048 (it started with like ~2300). I’m pretty sure Stars determines who has to do those play-in matches at random. In other words, it’s not based on the order in which you register or anything. I’m not sure how I feel about that one way or another. I guess it just is what it is. At any rate, it’s frustrating when your number is up to have to win an extra match, which I did, along with my next two, for a total of three matches won, which for most everyone else would have been enough to reach the money, but not for me since I needed to win a fourth, which I didn’t do because I drew Dan “Lenny” Heimiller who apparently never loses hands in WCOOP. Spaghetti sentence ftw!

One event I did have some success in was last Sunday’s $215 event that started with ~9,500 players. I chipped the 10,000 starting stack up to 140,000 and into the money without ever being all-in. Normally getting in the money in an online tournament while avoiding being all-in, called, and covered is basically impossible, but the structure in WCOOP events is so absurd it can be done. Once I got in the money, I played well/ran-hot my way up to a million chips with < 100 players left before having an unfortunate hand where I turned a set of 4s after checking behind a T76 flop only to get it all in against 98 and go out in 80th place. WCOOP events can be frustrating because even after playing well and running hot for 12 hours, I was still a solid 6-8 hours of rungood away from any serious money. The structures are so good and fields are so huge that lasting long enough to make any serious money almost seems impossible.

I'll probably only play a couple more WCOOP events. I think I'm going to Louisiana later this week for a $1,000 tournament at Coushatta, an Indian-owned casino about 3 hours from Houston. It looks like it has a ridiculous structure and I can only imagine the field will be awful. Even still, you definitely have to derive some entertainment value from this trip to justify 6 hours of round-trip travel for a $1,000 buy-in event. I can justify the trip on account of random casino trips to Louisiana being fun from time to time and live tournaments, something I haven't done since busting out of the WSOP Main Event two months ago, also being fun.

That's enough poker talk for now. I've been on a really big documentary binge lately. My girlfriend has a Netflix subscription so I've been watching a lot of movies online. There's some pretty amazing stuff out there. My previous movie-finding method of just wandering into a Blockbuster left me out of the loop on a lot of really interesting documentaries. I love documentaries. I find a really good documentary way more enjoyable than a really good film. Fiction is great and has it's place and all, but there's just something awesome about being able to learn about real-world issues while being entertained at the same time. My only beefs with documentaries is when they're a.) unfairly one-sided which can sometimes be hard to tell or b.) too dumbed down (which is a bit easier to identify). I realize all documentaries have to be dumbed down to some extent, but it annoys me when they're like absurdly dumbed down.

I'll mention a few good ones I've seen:

I.O.U.S.A. - This was very dumbed down, but mostly to it's credit. It's about America's debt situation explained in a way a middle-schooler could understand, which is good since most of our population is probably about that intelligent re: economics. On the whole, it's pretty terrifying. Basically if we continue with our current fiscal practices, the federal government will be broke in a couple of decades and have to allocate all of it's tax revenues to paying down the social security trust fund and foreign-held debt which means no more funding for stuff like NASA, national parks, etc, etc. This, way more than terrorism or mosques in New York City, will be the end of the American empire.

Botany of Desire - Based on Michael Pollan's (who is awesome by the way, check out his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma) book of the same title, this documentary explores the evolution of the apple, tulip, marijuana leaf, and potato from the plant’s perspective. It shows you a glimpse of how humanity has impacted the evolution of plants we are familiar with. I think most people probably just take plants for granted. Like, “oh, apples are just apples.” But there’s so much more to it than that and it’s pretty rewarding to take a look at things from the plant’s perspective.

The End of the Line – This is about the world’s fishing practices and how we’re basically eating all of the fish in the ocean faster than the species can sustain themselves. I found it depressing and horrifying. There’s good evidence out there to suggest that a lot of the fish we’ve come to enjoy in sushi restaurants and beyond won’t even exist by the middle of the century. One day, I’ll bet humanity finds this issue far more important than it currently does. This issue seems like it’s just getting started (think: global warming in the 1980s).

There’s been a few other good ones, but those three are the ones that stick out the most.

Alright, I guess this wasn’t as concise as I pledged it would be; I should try to blog shorter entries more frequently.

I think the worst thing that happened to me was cashing in the first event. It got my tongue a little wet with what a modicum of WCOOP success tastes like and so I wanted to play as much as reasonably possible thereafter. I was 0/14 in the subsequent events.

I wish I was of strong enough mind to say that it doesn’t bother me to go 1/15 while watching guys like ElkY and djk123 win multiple events, but it does. Not that I think I’m anywhere near on the same level as those guys, but I certainly expect and hope to have at least a couple of deep runs.

In the Main Event yesterday, I got former tennis star Boris Becker all-in with pocket Queens against his pocket Tens. He hit a Ten on the flop. My would-be chip count had he not hit that card was more than I ever wound up accumulating despite remaining in the tournament for another six hours. The structure of the WCOOP Main Event is so ridiculous that a cash actually started to seem possible for a while. After nine hours of play, I had just the starting stack which was still enough chips not to feel too desperate. How many online tournaments allow you to do that?

I re-raised all-in for 17 big blinds with pocket Jacks and was looked up by Ace-King to bust out somewhere around 570th (306 paid).

My gloomy mood was exasperated when I woke up this morning to see that TheMasterJ33 is the chipleader. Here is a hand involving him and Bryan Devonshire from my starting table:

PokerStars Game #33081236533: Tournament #200909045, $5000+$200 USD Hold’em No Limit – Level I (25/50) – 2009/09/20 16:26:53 CT [2009/09/20 17:26:53 ET]
Table ‘200909045 164′ 9-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: D.K.5 (18150 in chips)
Seat 2: KidPokerJD (22375 in chips)
Seat 3: TheMasterJ33 (19075 in chips)
Seat 4: Taknapotin (20825 in chips)
Seat 5: badbeatninja (19450 in chips)
Seat 6: jcada99 (20500 in chips)
Seat 7: Ozone23 (22300 in chips)
Seat 8: Boris Becker (10500 in chips)
Seat 9: GeoffRas22 (26825 in chips)
jcada99: posts small blind 25
Ozone23: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Ozone23 [4h 6c]
Boris Becker: calls 50
GeoffRas22: folds
D.K.5: folds
KidPokerJD: folds
TheMasterJ33: calls 50
Taknapotin: folds
badbeatninja: raises 200 to 250
jcada99: folds
Ozone23: folds
Boris Becker: calls 200
TheMasterJ33: calls 200
*** FLOP *** [7d 8h 4d]
Boris Becker: checks
TheMasterJ33: checks
badbeatninja: bets 500
Boris Becker: calls 500
TheMasterJ33: raises 1450 to 1950
badbeatninja: raises 3470 to 5420
Boris Becker: folds
TheMasterJ33: raises 13405 to 18825 and is all-in
badbeatninja: calls 13405
*** TURN *** [7d 8h 4d] [6d]
*** RIVER *** [7d 8h 4d 6d] [Ac]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
TheMasterJ33: shows [Kd 3d] (a flush, King high)
badbeatninja: shows [8d 8s] (three of a kind, Eights)
badbeatninja said, “sigh”
TheMasterJ33 collected 38975 from pot

When you see a guy get 400 big blinds in the middle with a non-nut flush draw and no pair and go on to be the overnight chipleader… it… well… I don’t really know how to finish that sentence… so I guess I’ll just say it leaves you speechless.

I hadn’t planned on playing quite as many events, but I ran well in the big Sunday $10 rebuy a few days ago and took 5th for close to $5,000. I love the ante structure in that tournament. The antes are like 1/3rd the size of the small blind, so it makes raising with a high frequency more sensible than it usually is. I got really lucky at the final table though. With nine players left, doubledave22 raised UTG while I was holding Ace-Queen in the big blind. As soon as he raised, I told myself “ugh, I really should probably fold here,” but for some stupid reason as soon as the action got to me I shoved all-in and he snap-called with Ace-King. I hit a Queen on the flop and another one on the turn to make the King on the river harmless. The difference between 9th and 5th was like $3,800 which is basically all of my WCOOP buy-ins. Gotta love tournament poker!

I’ve got a prop bet with Leif Force today that there will be under 6,417 players in WCOOP #1. The tournament starts in an hour and there’s 3,800 players registered. So far I think our line looks pretty close, but when we made the bet I actually thought it was just a $1 million guarantee (turns out it’s $1.25 million), so I think I like his side a little better.