By SirWatts on September 8th, 2008 (more posts by author)

Well WCOOP started this weekend. I'm off to a fairly decent start so far, cashing 3 of the first 4 events I played (I skipped Friday to go to a stag). No real big cashes though unfortunately. On Saturday I played the $215 limit holdem and $215 2-7 triple draw. I cashed the holdem event but unfortunately not the triple draw once my beginner's luck wore off. I did a lot of reading and practiced a little for that game and I think I at least have an ok understanding of the basics now. I actually like the game a lot there's a ton of action it just sucks when you keep bricking your draws. I can imagine the game would be incredibly frustrating at times and very high variance. Anyhow today was Sunday so I played a ton of tournaments. The WCOOP had the biggest buy-in online MTT ever. A $10K buy-in 2 Million guaranteed event. It ended up attracting a field of 321 players and first pays $617K. I won a really big pot in the early-middle stages when I got all-in 3 ways with KK vs AA and JJ and promptly flopped top set. I chipped up a bit from there and made the money but then was quickly eliminated in 2 consecutive hands where I shoved on the short stacked BB from the SB with A5o and lost to his KQ, and then shoved my now shortstack on the button the very next hand with AQ and ran into his AK in the SB. I got about 17.6K for 42nd though so still an ok little profit. I also went very deep in the $500 NLHE WCOOP event with over 7000 runners but busted ~270th when I made a maybe questionable squeeze play with the A8o. I think it was probably fine though since as I was quite sure the SB never had a big hand I was just unlucky to run into the button's JJ.

I've also been playing a little 25/50 and 50/100 PLO when I see my favourite fish sitting and I had a very profitable weekend at that. I was lucky enough to finally make some big hands against him and he paid me off nicely. One of my favourite parts of PLO is when the fish that play every hand complain about how I always seem to have a bigger flush than them and don't seem to have any idea why that might not just be random chance. Tomorrow there is a $200 6-max PLO and $320 8-game mixed event on the WCOOP schedule which both sound like lots of fun. I'm going to keep playing almost all the events and hopefully I'll make my first WCOOP final table this year.

Mike