WSOP trip with StoxPoker

Date: Thu, Jul 10, 2008 Professional Internet

I decided to join all the StoxPoker guys in Vegas for a week to help out a bit at the WSOP convention. Nick and Jim (CEO) were planning to have a big booth displaying the website. In reality the convention could have been in Iowa for all I cared. I really just wanted to meet all the guys, hang out, and shill my ass off for a website I owe much of my success in poker to.

StoxPoker has been such a huge influence on me, even before I was a coach here. I was a paying member back when Nick just released a video or so a week, and that was it. His early videos really taught me a lot and stressed some concepts that were lacking in my game. I must have gone back and watched those videos a 100 times each. Then, Leatherass started posting videos. At first, I just didn't get his style. Over time, I grew to love it, and now think of him as my biggest influence in poker. I've taken so much from his teachings.

After arriving at the house Monday evening, I was greeted by Jared, Kyle, Digs, Jade, Ed, and Jim. We all piled into the rental mini van and went to dinner. Through the evening we were slowly joined by Hunter, his wife and brother, Nick, Dusty and his wife, Action Bob, and Bryce. I may be forgetting someone, if so I apologize but it was quite overwhelming. Bryce was one of the stragglers, and his arrival was a bit comical. He entered the restaurant, and immediately had to borrow money for his taxi fare. I was thinking "here is arguably the best limit hold'em player in the world, semi-retired at 23 yrs old, set for life, and he doesn't have any American currency on him". Quite a funny first impression. After the dinner we all went back to the house and drank a few beers, chatted, and finally called it a night.

In hindsight, the days seem to run together so all the happenings may be slightly out of order from this point forward. I'm sure I will accidentally leave out a bunch of awesome stuff in this blog, but I'll do my best to hit the highlights. The first day of the WSOP expo I wasn't scheduled to work the booth, so I slept in. Then I headed over to the Venetian for a little side game action. I only played about 3 hours, before quitting so I could join everybody at the Rio for dinner. No real fun hands occurred during the game, and overall I felt bored playing 10-handed. That night Jared, Bryce, Ijay, Kyle, and myself went to dinner at the Wynn, We then met up with Jade, his girflfriend, and Digs. We all caught a show called "La Reve". It wasn't really my taste. I think the only one who liked it was Bryce.

We all worked quite a bit at the WSOP StoxPoker booth. I thought it looked really great, and stood out from many of the other booths. Of course the Man vs Machine match definately helped to draw some interest. All the guys from the University of Alberta were real nice, and I enjoyed talking with them throughout the week. They really put in a lot of hard work, and deserve a ton of credit.

We had two booths, one was just StoxPoker, which had prime location. It was the very first booth people saw as they entered the venue. The other booth was shared between StoxPoker, Two Plus Two Publishing and Poker Tracker 3. While at the the secondary booth I got the opportunity to speak one-on-one for a solid half hour with Dan Harrington. He really had a lot of questions for me about online play. We went over certain PA HUD stats, and overall just had a very nice conversation about poker in general. It was pretty surreal having Dan Harrington asking me questions about poker. It should certainly be the other way around. He, and Bill Robertie were nice enough to sign a copy of HOC Vol. 2 for me, which I can't wait to read.

The night that was most interesting was certainly the party at Dusty's super nice suite at the Palms. Everyone from StoxPoker came. Also in attendance were Action Bob, Geoff "Zobags" Herzog, Sunny Mehta, Digs, mbolt1, etc. We all had a blast. Dusty and his wife, Nicole, ordered a ton of beer and liquor, as well as food, which room service brought up. It was quite apparant that the whole party really enjoyed themselves. At some point in the night mbolt1 decided to stake Ed in blackjack. Hunter, and his wife, Kyle, Digs, Zobags, and myself all stumbled downstairs to watch the degeneracy occur. mbolt1 is a crazy dude, and sure does have some big gamble in him. It was pretty damn entertaining to watch. Earlier in the evening he and I were flipping for money. I had him stuck about $400 or so until he got back even on a double-or-nothing. Dusty quite enjoyed watching his horse, mbolt1, take a beating while flipping. After the blackjack debacle, we hit the craps table even though no one had much of an idea how to play. Somehow everyone ended up making money though. I'll credit Kyle for that. Since he runs good at poker, he might as well run good at table games.

Throughout the week I was subjected to much poo flinging limit hold'em talk between IJay, Bryce, Nick, Kyle, etc. It made my ears bleed... just kidding, just kidding. Even though I don't play any LHE, I still found it totally fascinating to hear all of the talk between such great limit hold'em minds. I just wish Leatherass and Hunter would have stayed at the Stox house, instead of a hotel, so the NLHE guys could have evened the odds a bit.

In all it was an exhausting week for me, but one that I will certainly cherish. Meeting all of the StoxPoker guys was incredible. Everyone was so nice, and I couldn't imagine a better group of poker players to spend a week with.

Man vs Machine HHs are Now Live

Date: Thu, Jul 10, 2008 Professional Internet

Hand histories from the MvM are now up at: http://www.stoxpoker.com/mvm/live-mark-ijay

One thing which is cool is that, due to the duplicate format you get to compare how the humans play their hands as compared to Polaris. This may also be pretty sweet if you play HU LHE in that you get to sweat me, Newhizzle, Stoxtrader, Hoss, Doughnutz and a lot of other mid-high stakes winners. Please note that Matt has requested that we edit out folded hands from his match. Also, we've got a video from my match uploaded and will be adding plenty of similar stuff over the next few days.

Some may also be interested in checking out Matt's pre-match interview about the MvM here: http://twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue43/paradis_0708.php

You can also check out the 2+2 Pokercast wherein myself and Nick discuss the MvM here: http://pokercast.twoplustwo.com/pokercast.php?pokercast=31

Moneymaker

Date: Thu, Jul 10, 2008 Professional Internet

I just wanted to do a quick blog about how impressed I am by Chris Moneymaker. Not as a poker player per se -- though at least as far as LHE is concerned I think he's quite good and that he seems to get a really bad rap about his abilities -- but just as a good guy.

I used to play a fair bit against Chris on Stars. When we did, I'd chat with him and he always seemed like a nice guy. So last week at the WSOP when he was signing autographs at the booth next to our stoxpoker booth I went over to introduce myself and say hi. Unfortunately, it turned out that he had lost his voice. I told him who I was and he seemed to recognize the name, but I obviously couldn't have any kind of conversation with him. I was a little disappointed, but what can you do, right?

Then yesterday I'm playing on Stars and Chris shows up at one of my tables. He says hi to me and apologized for not being able to talk last week, but said that it was nice to meet me and put a face to the name. He wished me luck and then left.

I'm not a big fan of people in general; my experience is that most are mean or selfish or lazy or worse. "Famous" people for the most part seem even worse. So for someone as busy as Chris, especially right in the middle of the ME, to take 2 minutes out of his day just to say hello like that really impressed me.

$100k+ after Super-Tough Day 2

Date: Thu, Jul 10, 2008 Professional Internet

Well I wish I could say I had 2.5x’d my stack some other way, but the bottom line is that I pretty much sucked out on two really big pots. Don’t get me wrong, I think I played a really solid game and always picked good spots to get my chips in. But here’s how things went down.

First I arrived at the table to have seat #9 tell me he had read my blog about day 1, and seat 1 told me he had watched my videos and stuff. So the metagame started early! They were actually very nice guys, Peter and Andy, as well as tough players. In fact, there seemed to be five tough LAG’s to my left for most of the day.

First big hand, it’s folded to me in the SB with AKo. Blinds 300-600, I make it 2200, he 3-bets to 7200, and I shove in my remaining $42k or so. Insta-called by KK and turn comes A. Hurray!

An orbit later I’m in the BB, MP LAG makes it $2k to go. Button calls. I look down at QQ in the BB at make it $9400. MP shoves another $14k or so, button folds. Gotta call, right? So I do and he slowrolls me with aces (“What you got?”). Well after I flopped a set I kind of forgave the slowroll as he took the walk of shame.

One hand I raise 22 on the CO and get 3-bet shoved by Andy in the SB. These are the decisions that I specialize in with an SNG background (short stacks baby!), and I called for a slightly +EV spot getting 3:2. He flipped A8 and took it. Another hand I’m UTG during 400-800-100 and raise to $2200 with AdKd. Andy 3-bets to $6200 or so, and then this wild Brazilian dude 4-bets to $30,500. This guy was out there … earlier he 3-bet Peter pre-flop, and then made a really big overshove at the flop when he got led into on a three middle card board. Peter eventually folded and the dude flipped a random gutshot bluff.

So back to the Ad Kd hand … at this point I had well over $100k, and I just wasn’t able to pull the trigger. I guess he might have folded JJ or AQs, sometimes I’m racing against QQ, and the rest of the time I’m screwed against aces or kings. Who knows…

I also played the last level of the day with the guy whose been on ESPN before who plays entirely with one foot. While I really admire what he's able to do, he didn’t play well IMO. First hand at the table UTG limps $1200, button shoves $16k or so, and he flat-calls in the BB. UTG folds and he flips Kc Qc.

Anyway it’s 2:30 am here and I’m playing again in 9 ½ hours, so it’s off to bed. Tomorrow we play to the money, and hopefully I can be one of Gus Hansen’s "regulators" at the bubble :)

Discussion at:

http://www.stoxpoker.com/forums/showthread.php?p=93974#post93974

WSOP Final Update For Me

Date: Thu, Jul 10, 2008 Professional Internet

Well, I went busto about 90 minutes into Day 2 unfortunately. It was just as well because I pretty much hated playing the tournament and to top it off I got sick about 36 hours before day 2. I feel pretty congested and have a sore throat and the whole works. So when I went bust today I didn’t even really care as I just wanted to go back to my room and relax/sleep. The competitor in me obviously wanted to do well, but other than that I just don’t find playing live poker for serious to be much fun.

Day 2 started poorly with none of my steals working and not getting action when I did have something. I ended up busting out of the tourney when I got it all in preflop with KK vs. ATo and the guy turned a straight….sigh. It was just one hell of a boring tournament. I never even played a pot worth over 5k chips in the middle except of course my bust out hand versus a somewhat loose call with Ato. It just is what it is though. It sucks to bust, but it also is going to be nice to get home and play some cash games online again.

When I do get back home I will have some pretty cool pics to post in my blog. There are tons of pics of my penthouse suite as well as of the Stoxpoker party. I think there are also some of the Poker Stars party which was pretty sick. I saw a lot of pretty well known people there and saw Barry Greenstein in the VIP area as well. I figured he was little, but I didn’t know he was that tiny. He looks like he’d blow away in a stiff wind…lol.

Anyway, I think I am getting a bit delirious on these cold medicines. I should probably take a nap or just outright go to bed for the evening. I played a little bit of 6 max yesterday and today and was able to win 11k points in just a few thousand hands so I’ll take it. I may do some of that tonight, but I probably shouldn’t.

Discuss this blog here:

http://www.stoxpoker.com/forums/showthread.php?p=93952#post93952

Matt Blogs the WSOP: Touching Base

Date: Wed, Jul 9, 2008 Professional Internet

I'm sorry I've been silent in this space since my final table. To be perfectly honest, I've never been more exhausted in my entire life than I was after those six straight days of long hours of poker that culminated with my sixth-place finish in event 51. I rested for two days before I had to play the main event, but I hadn't totally recovered and felt feverish and dead-tired through most of Day 1C.

The good news is I've had three days off since then, and I've been sleeping a ton, and I finally feel great. I go into Day 2B today with 66,475 in chips, safely above average, for now. That could, of course, change in an instant.

I'll be updating my chip stacks on FTSweat, and I promise a long WSOP post when I eventually get finished out here. For now, I'm just trying to focus on my routine, and my game. Wish me luck.

VEGAS July 10th

Date: Tue, Jul 8, 2008 Professional Internet

I am arriving at the Stratosphere around 7pm to get settled in. I will probably play some at the Bellagio or go to a night club or something. If anyone wants to meet up and say hi or hang out I am obviously down for that. I'd like to meet some of the members and have some people to go out with. Feel free to just PM me tonight or tomorrow. Trip updates to follow when I get home.

-Reese