WSOP Coverage

This coming Tuesday there is a decent chance I will appear on the coverage during any hand involving Eric Seidel. I am directly across the table from him sitting next to Kevin Stammen. However, if I do not appear in the coverage I am surely likely to on the Day 4 (or bubble day) coverage at the secondary feature table with Peter Eastgate, Joe Hachem, and Burt Boutin. This will be in 2-4 weeks from now.

Nationals Update

We got smoked in the final 3 games yesterday (the previous day got rained out). Our team was outmatched in pretty much every conceivable way. Honestly, it wasn't too much fun getting your ass kicked every game, but I did get to see fastpitch played at the highest levels.

On a side note this may have been may last truly competitive game. My desire has been dwindling this past year as I have been more focused on other aspects of my life. This may change when next spring comes around, but I don't know. I probably will play at some point in the future, but more than likely, it would be more just for fun or if someone needed me for a weekend. The only thing that kept me around this long is the guys on my team. As most of you know, my summers are crazy hectic, and I usually miss half of the season anyways. However, the comraderie of these guys has kept me around. That's what I would miss the most.

Nationals

It will be hard to match last year's NAFA national tourney where we won the whole damn thing. First of all, we haven't been playing nearly as well as we did last year. More importantly, this is a much higher quality tourney. The comparison is like the difference between A and AAA baseball I would think.

40 teams qualified for the ISC II tourney. They have the top 30 of these teams ranked (we are not in that group). The format is 8 5-team round robin pools. The top 3 teams from each pool advance to a 24 team single elimination bracket with all the 1 seeds getting byes. Our bracket has the 8th, 9th, 15th, and 25th ranked teams.

Our first game was against the 8th seed and we lost 6-1. Most likely we will need to win 2 of the last 3 games to advance. I would consider this a successful tourney if we can. I will keep you updated. Our next game is tomorrow at 12:30.

Soooooo Close!

I finished 8th in the Sunday Warmup on Stars today. This seems to be my money tournament this year (if you look back a couple posts ytou can see why). I had a great shot at some really big money for the first time online in a looooonnnngggg time, but it was not meant to be this time. I am out of the hole on the year; so that's good.

I really like where my game is right now. I seem to be making a lot of good reads that are minimizing my losing hands, maximizing my monsters, and picking up pots that shouldn't be mine. Yet, I know I am making a couple bad plays here and there that I need to cleanup.

Oh and Wolf - you still owe me some :)

FT (R U KIDDING ME?)

1 for my last 47 FTOPS.

I really think Fu(ck)ll Tilt has it out for me. I've started tracking my allins there in the NLH tourneys (just for info purposes to see if I'm crazy). My results there over time are ridiculously bad.

Tournies
ROI (courtesy of official poker rankings)

2009 FT -59% Stars 70%
2008 FT -12% Stars 8%
2007 FT 48% Stars 105%
Overall FT -7% Stars 32%
My stats (which go back 1 yr further) FT 5% Stars 32%
other sites Party 4% Live 67% UB 83% Cake 68%

Cash Games

2009 FT -6k Stars -10k (stars double the hrs & higher limits)
2008 FT -56k Stars +75k (stars about 25% more)
2007 FT -4k Stars +24k (stars more than doublte the time)
Overall (includes some pre 2007) FT -58K Stars +94K
other sites UB +44K Party +81k (this one's dubious pre-uigea) Bodog -10k Cake +9k

The disparity among Tilt and pretty much every other site is crazy. The fact that cash games and tournies pretty much look the same is odd too. I first started to notice this during my short -term short stacking phase. I played Tilt and Stars during it, and I used Poker Tracker which you could load into some software to measure your allin luck (to see how you ran during allins, this was all that mattered really for a short stacker). On Tilt I ran so far below expectations that I was a slight loser. On Stars, I ran slightly above expectations, but this meant I absolutely crushed the games.

I know the disparity on Tilt could be mathematically explained through standard deviations from the mean. At the same time, eventually reversion to the mean is expected if your sample size gets large enough. As time continues to go by, I am really beginning to wonder............................