A Super High Roller “What If?”

I started the week recommending some poker podcasts. Gonna sign off here talking a little about another one, the PokerNews podcast.

Today I was listening to the most recent episode of the “PNPod,” now hosted by Sarah Herring and Matthew Parvis. Among the topics covered was that $102,000 buy-in World Championship of Online Poker event that went off earlier in the week on PokerStars, the biggest buy-in event ever for online poker.

I followed that one a bit last Sunday in between watching football, then again on Monday when it finished up with a two-way chop involving “bencb789” and Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz, both of whom ended up earning seven-figure paydays.

Holz had won that much online before, taking away $1.3 million for winning the WCOOP Main Event two years ago. He’s also won more than $1 million in live tournaments no less than four times in 2016 alone, and a fifth time in December 2015. Just nuts.

Frank Op de Woerd did live updates on the $102K event for PokerNews, and he appeared on the PNPod to talk a little about the tournament. He brought up an interesting point about how the event began with only five players there at the start time. That’s a screenshot up above of the five-handed action, included in Frank’s coverage.

Late registration (as well as the ability to re-enter) lasted five hours on Sunday. As I recall they were still only at a single table after three hours or so, then finally the field filled out to the 28 total entries. That made the prize pool $2.8 million altogether, comfortably over the $2 million guarantee.

Frank wondered what would have happened had the five players who began the event went all in on a hand, thus “ending” the tournament even before late registration was over. With that $2 million guarantee, the players had contributed only half a million total to that point, which (theoretically) would have meant a crazily huge overlay if all $2 million were paid out.

Frank’s wondering about that five-way all-in scenario made me think of others -- say, one where only a couple of players showed up for the start of the event, then one felted the other before anyone else signed up (a much less implausible scenario than a five-way all-in).

I’ve got to imagine there was some provision in place for the event that would have prevented it from being decided in this fashion. In fact, the very first item listed among PokerStars’ “Tournament Rules” would, I suppose, allow the site to come up with some procedure to avoid any of these imagined scenarios from affecting how the $102K Super High Roller played out:

“We will, at all times, consider the best interests of the game and fairness as the top priority in the decision-making process. Unusual circumstances can, on occasion, dictate that decisions in the interest of fairness take priority over the technical rules.”

Still kind of funny to imagine those other possibilities. I suppose when constructing them, we should by matter of course have Holz winning in all instances.

Image: courtesy PokerNews.

Great Deal of Fun in WCOOP Finale

Fun stuff earlier tonight railing the final table of the World Championship of Online Poker Main Event on PokerStars, mainly because of the ongoing deal discussions that began even before play got going today with nine players left.

The $5,200 buy-in tournament drew 1,995 players which meant it came just five players shy of reaching the number needed to match the $10 million guarantee for the prize pool. A total of 243 players cashed in the sucker, but over half of the prize pool -- $5.446 million -- was still up for grabs with nine left.

During the minutes leading up to today’s restart, the table’s short stack, a Belgian going by “Coenaldinho7,” was proposing to everyone a hilarious nine-way chop in which (if I remember it correctly) each would take half a million, leaving the rest (nearly another milly) up top for the winner. No one even acknowledged that he was saying anything.

The deal requests continued from Coenaldinho7 thereafter, pretty much after each knockout, and finally with five left they got to talking seriously about the possibility. No deal happened then, but one finally did with four remaining -- you can read details over in the recap on the PokerStars blog.

Interestingly, once the deal was made both Coenaldinho7 and beertjes79 (also from Belgium) willingly gave up money to ensure the chop would happen. In fact, beertjes79 -- then the short stack among the four -- volunteered to give up over $50K (taking $800K). Coenaldinho7 meanwhile readily gave up about $27K to ensure a guaranteed payout of $1.1 million. Watching that made it easy to root for both of them going forward, and it was kind of amusing in the end to see Coenaldinho7 take it down to earn a $1.3 million score.

Have written here before many times about the sometimes fascinating psychology of final table deal-making and how it really becomes in many cases an extension of the game itself. As the WCOOP ME final table was progressing, I noticed talk reviving on Twitter about the WSOP and its draconian prohibition against final table deals (again).

The WSOP changes its line regarding this policy from time to time, and depending on who is addressing the subject and when, you’ll hear different explanations. Sometimes they say it has to do with regulations from Nevada Gaming, which doesn’t really make sense. Other times they’ll suggest not allowing deals protects the players, although that, too, seems counterintuitive, given that the policy forces deal-making “under the table” (so to speak).

Meawhile in the WSOP Conference Call last May it was suggested the policy actually has more to do with spectators and fans than with players. “The general public really doesn’t want to see skill-based games played that way,” explained WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart. “I can tell you ESPN producers and viewers [also] don’t want to see poker played that way,” he added, suggesting perhaps the prohibition has more to do with what ESPN wants than what the WSOP does.

But as we saw today -- and at many EPT Main Event final tables, too -- the deal-making can sometimes be as entertaining or even more so than the poker itself.

My, My, My Such a High Roller

So that $51K World Championship of Online Poker on PokerStars finished a little while ago. Not just a high roller, but a “super high roller.” Or so the official name went. Saw it also referred to here and there as an “ultra high roller,” which I guess it was, relatively speaking.

It ended up drawing 46 entrants, making for a $2.3 million prize pool. Decent-sized turnout, it seemed to me, although it sounded like some thought there would be even more taking part.

Ben “Ben86” Tollerene took it down, earning over $616K after a three-way chop at the end. Tollerene has won a high roller ‘COOP before (a $21K heads-up SCOOP event), and is a regular in all of these high buy-in events on Stars.

José Ángel “Cejakas14” Latorre finished runner-up. As I mentioned on Friday, PokerStars offered betting on players in the event, and looking back at a list of odds from yesterday, Latorre was on there (at 16-to-1), as was the third-place finisher Nikita “fish2013” Bodyakovskiy (at 20-to-1).

Nopaleva who finished fourth -- and who won his way into the event with FPPs -- was on there, too (at 50-to-1). Meanwhile Mike “Tîmex” McDonald (who finished fifth) and 2014 WCOOP Main Event champ Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz (who finished sixth) registered late (like Tollerene) and thus aren’t on the list. They had final table betting, too, I believe. (All of that is a little fuzzy for those of us here in the U.S., of course.)

Will be curious going forward to see whether or not the $51K thing is tried again, or even bigger buy-in events, as well as whether betting on online events will become more common. In any case, the WCOOP continues to rage on, doing well as usual without the Americans.

Meanwhile, every time I see another one of these high rollers come around lately, can’t help but think of a certain Cheap Trick track:

Have a Spare $51K Lying Around?

There’s a $51,000 buy-in online poker tournament this weekend. No shinola.

I’m sure you’ve heard about it. PokerStars’s annual World Championship of Online Poker is nearing the end of week number two (of three), and on Sunday comes a special “Super High Roller” with the $51K price tag. It’ll be the biggest buy-in online tournament ever on Stars, and I think ever, period.

They’re even trying out letting folks bet on the outcome over on the Casino side on Stars, with the opening lines listing Jason Mercier, Daniel Negreanu, and Chris Moorman as favorites.

If betting on a winner were an option for me, I wouldn’t take it -- not because the lines don’t seem so favorable, but the sheer fact that betting on any individual to win a poker tournament, even one with a small field, is inherently going to be a longshot play.

Speaking of the field size, if I were betting on how many might participate, I’d look back at the last $21K buy-in heads-up event from the Spring Championship of Online Poker back in May where 33 players took part. Could it draw that many? More? (Many seem to think more, actually.)

It has a $1 million guarantee (20 players), which will surely be met. It also will most certainly feature many of the usual super high-rolling suspects who populate the small fields in the World Poker Tour Alpha 8 events and other live SHRs on the schedule.

Should make for some decent railbirding, I’d imagine. That costs nothing.

WCOOP Returns This Weekend

The World Championship of Online Poker returns this weekend on PokerStars, the 14th year of the festival. There are 70 events this time around -- up from the previous high of 66 the last two years -- with the guarantees adding up to $45 million.

In truth, this year’s WCOOP technically began several days ago. Event No. 1, the $109 NLHE “Kickoff” event, is being staged in two phases, with there being several “Phase 1” flights -- two per day, in fact, from last Sunday through today, then five more tomorrow and another Sunday morning to make 18 total.

It somewhat resembles the Barcelona Cup I was covering not long ago which had six different initial starting flights, each of which played down to 15% of the field, then all the survivors combined for a “Day 2” and stuck together thereafter. In the Barcelona Cup players could keep entering subsequent flights if they busted; similarly can players keep trying different Phase 1s until they make it through one of them.

I was writing earlier in the week about my personal preference for freezeouts over reentry events, although I do think there is something kind of fun about these sort of tourneys that experiment with formats and create unique conditions without altering strategy too greatly.

In the Barcelona Cup, everyone making it through an initial flight made the money -- i.e., the “bubble” always coincided with the end of each starting flight. Such is not quiet the case for the WCOOP “Kickoff,” as each “Phase 1” plays fourteen 15-minute levels (taking about four-and-a-half hours), then after the fields are combined the money bubble will burst at some point during “Phase 2,” probably early.

Phase 2 (taking place on Sunday) will then consist of fifteen 20-minute levels, then survivors from that will return on Monday to play it out to a winner, making it the first three-day WCOOP event (technically) I believe there has ever been.

The schedule is a monster, with buy-ins ranging from $109 to three different $10,300 events plus that $51,000 “Ultra-High-Roller” (starting September 20) which will surely draw a lot of eyes when it comes around.

Here’s the full schedule.

The Wonder of WCOOP

No time or energy to write today as I’m in the middle of several different projects with deadlines looming.

Just wanted to mention briefly -- and with a due measure of awe -- how crazy it is again to think of how friggin’ big the World Championship of Online Poker continues to be on PokerStars.

For the first three years after Black Friday I kept writing here about the WCOOPs doing just fine without the U.S. players, holding steady and then increasing in numbers from 2011-2013. It’s been another huge series again this year, with the $5,200 Main Event drawing an amazing 2,142 players to create a $10,710,000 prize pool.

Just think of how few live tournaments build such a prize pool during the course of the year. Still amazing to consider, even from this distance.

The Guarantee (In a World Without Guarantees)

I was thinking again today a little about the missing of the guarantee -- by a long, long shot -- at the $10 million Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Main Event, the final table of which is currently being live streamed over at PokerStars.tv.

By the way, I enjoyed last night’s stream from the SHRPO (the Super High Roller final table) enough to write an article today about it on Learn.PokerNews pointing out how great those shows are not just for being entertained but also for hearing smart strategy talk, especially from the pros who come on as guests.

Guarantees have become more and more common for poker tournaments, especially live ones with many series’ Main Events featuring them. I believe all of those tourney series I mentioned in yesterday’s post featured guarantees of some sort, though none as gaudy as what they had down in Hollywood, Florida.

The recently completed WinStar River Poker Series Main Event in Oklahoma had a $1 million guaranteed first prize which helped create a dizzyingly steep payout structure with second place only getting about a third of that amount. Even the WSOP got in on the guarantee-making this year with a $10 million guaranteed first prize for the Main Event.

Some are discussing the significance of guarantees which do tend to work as part of the marketing of tournaments, usually giving players some indication of what size field to expect. For example, PokerStars is about to start its WCOOP series this weekend, and as usual there are guarantees set for all of the scheduled events. And you can almost guarantee all of those guarantees will be met (easily), meaning those who play in the events will be almost assured of what the minimum field size will be in each tourney.

Field sizes matter to players. Prize pools matter even more. For those focused on the potential ROI when playing a tourney -- or just getting pleasure from being able to set their sights on a certain ideal payout -- guarantees can be especially meaningful.

I was thinking, though, in a more abstract way about how paradoxical is the idea of anything being “guaranteed” in poker, a game in which bad play is sometimes rewarded and good play is not. Tournament poker in particular tends to highlight that fact with the players who enjoy the greatest returns almost invariably having enjoyed some form of good fortune along the way.

That is to say, the game itself constantly demonstrates as a fundamental principle that practically nothing is “guaranteed.” Except, I suppose, for those relatively rare instances of players all in and “drawing dead.” (You know, when you really can say “the turn changed nothing” and mean it.)

Perhaps that’s why these guarantees assigned by tourney organizers to prize pools seem so meaningful, providing as they do players with at least something they can count on.

Big Money

Utterly fatigued today after sitting up until nearly dawn here on the east coast following the conclusion of the World Championship of Online Poker Main Event on PokerStars. Was a marathon final table lasting more than four hours and finally concluding with three German players -- PlayinWasted (who won), Daniel “Allanon85” Drescher, and SwissCantMis -- chopping at the end, all of whom took away more than a million dollars from the $5,200 buy-in event. Meawhile PokerStars Team Online member and blogger Shane “shaniac” Schleger took sixth in the event to earn a nifty $291K-plus payday.

The WCOOP Main Event has genuinely become one of the most significant poker tourneys during the calendar year, if one considers the attention it receives, the prestige given to those who do well in it, and, of course, the money. The big, big money.

This year 2,133 entered to create a prize pool of $10,665,000. The buy-in for the WCOOP ME has remained steady over the last few years, with the prize pool peaking back in the last pre-Black Friday year of 2010 at $12,215,000 when Tyson “POTTERPOKER” Marks won an incredible $2,278,097.50 first prize when there was no final table deal.

In 2011 the WCOOP ME prize pool dipped to $8,135,000, then increased to $9,125,000 in 2012. This year it again topped the $10 milly mark, and like most other online tournament series on PokerStars the overall numbers are edging back toward (or even surpassing) the pre-2011 totals when Americans could play on the site.

Over on Wikipedia one can find a list ranking the largest ever poker tournaments (by prize pool). The list looks reasonably well maintained (although I haven’t tried to verify its accuracy).

Of the 30 tournaments listed, the last 10 World Series of Poker Main Events crowd the top part of the list. The 2003 WSOP ME won by Chris Moneymaker doesn’t make the list, as its total prize pool was “only” $7,802,700.

Meanwhile the 2008-2010 WCOOP Main Events sneak into the bottom part of the list. This 2013 WCOOP Main Event should earn a spot on there as well just behind those earlier WCOOP MEs. That’ll make six online events among the top 30 of all time.

How big can the WCOOP Main Event and/or other online tournaments get? It appears their potential for further growth is less limited than that of live events, although it doesn’t seem as though an online tourney could ever reach the heights of the biggest WSOP MEs with prize pools these days usually around $60 million. (The biggest ever in 2006 was $82,512,162.)

Was reading David Schwartz's article a couple of days ago in which he looked back five years to “The Day Wall Street Went Bust” and snuck in a subtle allusion to a Rush song along the way. And so with Rush on the brain -- and big money -- I much more lazily titled this post. Hey... I said I was tired.

WCOOP Back in Action

The 2013 World Championship of Online Poker is well underway over at PokerStars, having begun last Sunday. This week in fact marked 12 years of real money games on the site, and this year’s series marks the 12th year of the WCOOP, with a record 66 tourneys on the schedule this time (up one from last year’s 65).

The WCOOP remains the biggest online tourney series around, and the prestige associated with winning WCOOP bracelets has increased considerably as well.

Over the last couple of years whenever the big series crank up at PokerStars I’ve found myself looking back to those pre-Black Friday days when the U.S. could participate and comparing figures. In 2010, for instance, Americans comprised about a third of the 141,126 entrants in the 62 events of that year’s WCOOP. With no U.S. players the next year there came a dip to 119,832 (again, in 62 events), then in 2012 there were 126,041 entrants (in 65).

I’d expect this year’s total either to hold steady or nudge up further to rival the pre-BF number. Indeed, the total prize pools for in the Spring Championship of Online Poker have gradually increased to the point that they now exceed the pre-Black Friday amounts (with a few extra tourneys added over the years).

The U.S. being on the rail for SCOOPs and WCOOPs also gets me curious about how countries whose players are able to participate are faring in the series, relatively speaking. I’ll resist slipping back into complaint mode about my country’s convoluted, often hypocritical attitude toward gambling in general and poker in particular, and instead look at Canada -- where a number of U.S. players have fled to play on PokerStars -- and see how that country is doing with regard to continuing its recent success in the COOPs.

The 2012 WCOOP was fairly dominated by Canada with the country claiming top honors for bracelets won (14), final tables (80), total cashes (2,166), and total winnings ($9,567,359.96). This year’s SCOOP also saw Canada crushing, finishing that 132-tournament series first in cash won ($12,016,956.34), first in final tables (133), and second in titles with 18, which was just one behind the U.K.’s 19 wins. Those stats were fresh in mind this summer, actually, when Canada jumped out to a quick start at the WSOP, ultimately collecting 10 bracelets before the summer was done.

Just looking at the first 10 events of this year’s WCOOP, the U.K. has gotten a headstart on Canada and everyone else, winning no less than four events. Toby “810ofclubs” Lewis was one of the Brits to win a title, just a few days removed from having won a piece of Tom Middleton’s victory at EPT Barcelona as I was mentioning earlier this week and as Rick Dacey writes about over on the PokerStars blog. Jonathan “OMGjonyctt” Concepción, Dave “CrabMaki” Shallow, and “Aduobe4” also have all earned WCOOP wins as U.K. players so far (although I believe technically speaking Concepción is from the Canary Islands).

Through the first 10 events the U.K. also led other categories, too, including “Money Won By Country” ($1,497,970.05) and “Final Tables by Country” (10). But Canada finally broke through to grab it’s first WCOOP title of the year in Event #11 (won by “Tha Giggy”) and ranks highly thus far in most categories along with Russia and Germany. Indeed those four -- U.K., Canada, Russia, and Germany -- have the most participation by a wide margin currently in PS series, and thus unsurprisingly produce the most success.

Of course, when looking over these results one also has to note how besides the U.S. being missing, so, too, are Italy, Spain, and France not part of the equation as Stars has separate licenses for each of those countries with segregated sites (.it, .es, and .fr) for each. There are a number of other countries for which Stars has players register on separate domains (Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Sweden, Poland, Romania), plus a handful of countries go through the .eu domain (Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovenia). But I think in all of those cases the player pools are shared with the .com and thus players in those countries can participate in WCOOP.

So again, while it’s not quite the entire world playing in the World Championship of Online Poker, it’s a lot of it. I’d tend to think Canada will probably forge a comeback here to challenge the U.K. Meanwhile, unscientific, occasional monitoring of the other big tourneys on Stars over the last year or so suggests Russia has moved ahead of everyone when it comes to supplying players -- and winners -- on the site. (Russia currently leads w/the most entrants in the WCOOP and will probably continue to do so.)

Watchin’ the WCOOP

Last year around this time I wrote a post comparing the turnouts for the 2011 World Championship of Online Poker at PokerStars with what we had seen the year before. Was kind of curious then to find out how great of an effect Black Friday would have on the overall numbers, given that U.S. players could no longer play.

Back in 2010, Americans comprised just about one-third of the overall player pool in WCOOP, so some sort of dip was obviously expected to occur in 2011. PokerStars signaled they were anticipating such by reducing all of the guarantees across the board.

As it turned out, the decline in turnouts from 2010 to 2011 at the WCOOP wasn’t that enormous. See my post from last year for details of how the numbers compared for the first half of the series. In some cases events did lose just about a third of the entrants from year to year, although most saw much smaller decreases and in couple of cases the numbers held steady or even increased.

As the WCOOP is getting close to its midpoint again I thought I’d once more take a peek at the turnouts thus far. In this case I wasn’t really sure what to expect, although given the fact that most of the events and guarantees were kept the same from last year, I thought we’d probably see very similar numbers in terms of entrants.

Here’s how things appear through the first 30 events of this year’s WCOOP, along with figures from the last two years for similar events/buy-ins.



I left off referring to Event #s this time, since a few were moved around. Also, whereas the schedule was virtually unchanged from 2010 to 2011, there were a few more alterations this year, and so among the first 30 events this year there are really only 25 with parallels from a year ago. In a couple of cases buy-ins were changed or the format tweaked (e.g., $320 mixed hold’em became full ring this time rather than 6-max.). And a couple more ($215 razz, $265 NL Omaha H/L 6-max.) were removed from the schedule in 2012.

Looking at those remaining 25 events then, 16 saw greater turnouts this year (in some cases significantly greater), 8 saw declines (only a couple more than 10%), and one went unchanged (the $320 NLHE 6-max. shootout that’s reached its cap the last three years).

There are various factors in play here, obviously, including the fact that this year there are certainly more U.S. players participating in WCOOP from Canada, Mexico, and other countries than was the case in 2011. A few had done so last year, but it seems like considerably more decided the WCOOP was worth traveling for this time.

I say that in part because of anecdotal evidence, with Twitter and forum buzz suggesting a lot of American players have trekked up to Vancouver or Toronto this month. Also, the fact that Canada is currently leading all countries thus far in cashes, money won, final table appearances, and WCOOP bracelets is probably an indicator, too, that some Americans have found their way back into the WCOOP. (Canada did lead in cashes in 2011 although by a slimmer margin, and didn’t have as high a frequency of final table appearances or events won.)

Looking ahead a bit, it will be interesting to see going forward what effect the launch of Full Tilt Poker 2.0 by PokerStars (likely to occur in early November) will have on tournament series like WCOOP, SCOOP, and others. Meanwhile, as the rest of the online poker world continues to endure various struggles, PokerStars and the WCOOP keep on keeping on.

2012 WCOOP Begins Today at PokerStars

The 2012 World Championship of Online Poker begins today on PokerStars. What began as a nine-tournament series back in 2002 has now grown to a massive 65-tournament schedule lasting over three weeks.

I was noting here last September when the WCOOP came around how it marked the first one in which Americans couldn’t participate, and was thus wondering how that might affect the popular online tournament series. Back in 2010 just over a third of the 141,126 entrants were from the U.S., with Americans winning 33 of the 62 events that year. Total prize money for those 62 events in 2010 was more than $63.1 million.

Last year there were again 62 events, and while the total number of entrants and the prize pools were indeed down without the Americans participating, the totals were still staggering. The guarantees were scaled back in anticipation of smaller fields, the series total going from $50 million guaranteed to $30 million. However, the tourneys still drew a total of 119,832 entrants, thus building prize pools exceeding $47.1 million.

In all players from 137 countries cashing in WCOOP events in 2011. Russia and Canada ended up seeing the most players enter, with each country comprising about 11% of the total entrants. And Russia took the most titles with 10, followed by the United Kingdom with eight.

When following some of the major tourneys on PokerStars such as the Super Tuesday or Sunday Million, I’ve noticed that Russia and Canada are being heavily represented in those tournaments, with the U.K., Costa Rica, Ukraine, and Mexico starting to come on as well.

For example, a couple of weeks ago there was a Super Tuesday (a $1,050 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament) which saw four players from Canada make the final table, two each from the U.K. and Costa Rica, and one from Ukraine. Four more from Canada made the Super Tuesday final table last week, too, as did Shaun Deeb playing from Mexico.

Of course, as Deeb’s example suggests, a lot of those players designated as being from Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, and elsewhere are in fact U.S. players who have relocated to play on PokerStars. I have been seeing a ton of tweets in my Twitter feed from U.S. players describing how they are traveling out of the country just for September in order to play the WCOOP.

The guarantees for the 2012 WCOOP again total $30 million, even with a few additional events to bring the total to 65. Have to believe that’s being conservative -- i.e., guarantees for most tourneys will surely be met, and the overall numbers will likely end up challenging last year’s totals.

Check the WCOOP site for the full schedule, including information about satellites. They will be running the always-entertaining WCOOP Radio show, too, with shows happening every day at 15:00 ET throughout the series.

Best of luck to those able to play. And for those who can’t (or even if you can), let me invite you to play in the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Game tonight on PokerStars, either in a 6-max NLHE tourney (at 20:00 ET) or a Razz one (at 21:00). It’s free to play -- check the sidebar for info on how to join my Home Game.

2011 PokerStars WCOOP Rolling Along

The World Championship of Online Poker continues to roll along over on PokerStars. They’ve already crossed the halfway point for the 62-tournament series, with turnouts continuing to be big, routinely crushing the scaled back guarantees for the tourneys.

Shortly after this year’s WCOOP started, I wrote a post noting how the first few events seemed to be attracting healthy numbers despite the fact that Americans couldn’t participate.

A few days after that I noticed how one event -- the $215 Deuce-to-Seven No-Limit Draw (Event No. 17) -- actually had a larger field this time around when compared to 2010. A total of 390 played this time, up from last year’s 367. The guarantee had been halved, actually, from last year’s $50K to $25K this time around, meaning the $78,000 prize pool was more than triple the guarantee.

Thought it might be interesting to see how the numbers are comparing across the board, so here’s a quick look at how the first 31 events in this year’s WCOOP are comparing to the same events/buy-ins in 2010:



Almost all of the first half of the WCOOP schedule featured events with identical games/buy-ins to 2010. Just two did not, with one other (Event No. 14) having a only slightly different buy-in ($260 last year, $265 this). (Any mistakes here are mine, obviously.)

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when the WCOOP first started how last year a little over a third of all entrants (34.7%) were from the United States. In only a few cases among the first 31 events this time around did the overall total number of entrants drop by as much as that, and in most cases the declines have been considerably less.

I also was talking a little in that earlier post about the American players relocating to play, including Shane “shaniac” Schleger who moved to Vancouver. In fact, Schleger won a WCOOP bracelet last night, taking down Event No. 34, the $320 2-7 Triple Draw. That’ll probably help with those moving expenses.

Still believe we’re talking about a very small number of players -- relatively speaking -- who’ve made that same move. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see how PokerStars has filled the void among its player base following Black Friday and the site’s leaving the U.S.

Speaking of following the WCOOP, Joe Stapleton and Nick Wealthall are back again, bringing the funny with daily “Radio WCOOP” shows. Kind of tough hearing about giveaways and other stuff not available to those of us here in the states, but the hosts are consistently hilarious and the interviews genuinely interesting. They are also posting shows daily in Russian, German, and Spanish, further proving that poker reaches well beyond the English-speaking world.

PokerStars’ 2011 World Championship of Online Poker Kicks Off

Might have titled that differently. Said the “Not-Quite-the-World Championship” or something.

As a lot of us surely noticed on our Twitter feeds yesterday, PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) kicked off on Sunday. This marks the 10th year of the WCOOP, which began as a modest nine-event series of tourneys back in July 2002 and has grown to a three-plus week, 62-tourney spectacle.

Saw numerous instances of pros I follow talking about how they’d joined the exodus and moved to Canada or elsewhere to play the WCOOP. “First Sunday back, kind of surreal,” tweeted Shane “Shaniac” Schleger early yesterday, having newly settled in Vancouver in order to play. “Feels really weird that my friends can't play because they are in America.”

Since its inception, the WCOOP has consistently remained the largest online tournament series in poker. And while the numbers will surely be down this fall from last year thanks to the non-involvement of U.S. players, yesterday’s turnouts prove that PokerStars and online poker is doing just fine without America.

Last year the WCOOP had the same number of events (62), with pretty much the same schedule of buy-ins and games being offered again this time around, although the guarantees have all been lowered.

Those events in 2010 saw a total of 141,126 entrants, with 48,978 of them (34.7%) from the United States. U.S. players won 33 of the 62 tournaments, and overall players from America claimed just over $28 million of the $63,157,150 in prize money that was awarded. Canada was the next closest in terms of total cashes with about $3.93 million.

The first three events of the 2011 WCOOP began yesterday, featuring the same stakes/games as the ones offered on Day 1 of the 2010 WCOOP.

Event No. 1, a $215 buy-in, six-handed no-limit hold’em event attracted an even 7,500 entrants yesterday. Last year the same event drew 9,001 players, meaning a dip of 16.7%.

Event No. 2, the $10,300 NLHE “High Roller” event, saw exactly 200 sign up on Sunday. That’s down a bit from last year’s 313 (36.1%).

And Event No. 3, a $215 full-ring NLHE tourney, had 10,107 turn out yesterday, compared to last year’s 12,066, a decline of 16.2% (similar to Event No. 1).

The majority of the events on the WCOOP schedule are in the $215-$530 buy-in range, and I’m going to guess the numbers for those will probably remain similar throughout the three weeks, with around a 15-20% drop in participation those events from 2010.

So while Americans comprised a little over a third of the entrants a year ago, it looks like for many events about half of those missing U.S. players were made up for with players from other countries. Or Full Tilt Poker players who’ve secured other funds with which to play.

Or folks like Schleger who’ve moved on.

Daniel Negreanu -- another player who has relocated from Las Vegas to Canada to play the WCOOP -- played in all three events yesterday. He tweeted early on regarding the turnout in Event No. 3.

“Poker is flourishing all over the globe,” he wrote. “10,107 entries in the $215 PokerStars tournament If you love online poker and can do it #MoveoutofUS.”

A pretty huge “if” there at the end. For most, anyway. Still, for the serious online tourney grinder, it isn’t hard to see why they’re making the move.

WCOOP 2010 Concludes

Was an intense 12 hours last-night-slash-this-morning watching and live blogging Day 2 of Event No. 62, the $5,200 buy-in, no-limit hold’em Main Event over at PokerStars. F-Train and I were on duty, and even with the short breaks we’re talking nonstop scribbling, editing, and publishing.

You can check out the live blog for a comprehensive account of how they went from 271 players down to just one, POTTERPOKER, who ended up taking a still-amazing-to-think-about $2,278,097.50 for winning the sucker. Took about 23 hours of playing time altogether over the two days, so that’s about a hundred grand per hour there.

Not a lot of energy left to write still more about what happened, but I will share a couple of quick thoughts. About the good and the not-so-good, I suppose. Will start with the latter.

It was pretty early yesterday -- within the first 45 minutes of play -- that we noticed one player suddenly break from the pack and surge into the chip lead. He’d already gotten close to the 1,000,000-chip mark, then won a big pot with pocket eights versus an opponent’s A-A to move up to almost 1.38 million, which at the time was a good bit ahead of the rest of the 185 players still in it. Indeed, he was the only one over a million at that point.

When reporting on these online tourneys, we operate similarly to the way we follow live events. In other words, with that many players still left, we track notables while also keeping an eye on the leaders. The logistics are different, of course, but the “storytelling” goals are not.

So I started tracking our new chip leader, and was fairly amazed to watch as it took less than hour for him to lose all of those chips and go out in 140th place.

There were three big hands I saw, all pretty darned reckless. The first came less than 15 minutes after having amassed that big stack, a hand in which he lost about 750,000 -- a lot of it on a pretty thin semi-bluff on the turn. He’d lose about 400,000 more on a similar hand shortly thereafter, jamming with two overs and a gutshot and getting called by a player with just second pair who obviously suspected he was light (and perhaps tilty).

He’d build back to over 400,000 -- which was still above average at the time -- but got all of that in the middle on the turn again, this time drawing as close to dead as might be possible. The board was 2-2-A-2, his opponent had an ace, and he had K-J, so I guess the case deuce would’ve brought him a chop.

When this player had gotten to 1.38 million or so, the blinds were 3,000/6,000 (with 30-minute levels). That’s about 230 big blinds. So that rapid exit was some not-so-good, I think it’s safe to say. Now for the good.

Once they were down to three tables or so, the quality of play appeared to increase considerably. I say “appeared” as a kind of double-disclaimer, as I don’t want to suggest I am the best judge of such things, nor can anyone know with 100% certainty how folks are playing without seeing hole cards, anyway. There were a couple of hands where players seemed to have made a misstep here and there, but for the most part, these guys all looked like they had a more-than-good idea of what the hell they were doing.

Probably the most interesting hand of the night came with 17 players left and involved the eventual winner, POTTERPOKER, Bryn Kenney, and two other players. (Kenney, incidentally, finished 28th at this year’s WSOP Main Event.) A good example, I thought, of the relatively more shrewd decision-making we were watching toward the end.

With the blinds up to 30,000/60,000, a player in early position raised to 123,113, and POTTERPOKER, sitting to that player’s left, called. A late position player also called, then Kenney reraised to 420,000 from the blinds. Looked like a squeeze, and it did force the original raiser to fold.

POTTERPOKER then reraised again, however, to 720,500. That forced out the other caller, and sent Kenney into the tank. Kenney finally made his decision and shoved all in for about 2.6 million. POTTERPOKER quickly called, showing pocket queens to Kenney’s pocket tens. The board didn’t help Kenney, and he was out. An intriguing hand all around, I thought.

That hand put POTTERPOKER close to the chip lead, I believe, and by the time they reached the final table he was well out in front. He’d been very aggressive at the final table bubble to extend his lead, then after running well for a short stretch once they got to nine had built what was essentially an insurmountable lead.

A lot of interesting poker, then. And for the highest stakes ever for an online tournament!

Speaking of high-stakes, interesting poker, I plan to look in today to see how that WSOPE Main Event plays out. Though perhaps it will be slightly less interesting now that both Phil Ivey and Viktor Blom (a.k.a., the man thought to be “Isildur1”) have been eliminated.

That delayed live stream (over on ESPN3) has proven to be a bit of a disappointment, insofar as it isn’t available to all (or most, seemingly). Might be just as well for me, though. I could probably stand to step away from the computer for a day or five.

For the To Do List

Looks like another busy weekend for your humble scribe. Hell, it’s been a busy week.

Among the various scribbling I’ve done lately is a review of a book called Peak Performance Poker by Travis Steffen which went up over on Betfair today.

I liked this book more than I thought I would, and can see myself going back to it again to reread some of its advice.

It’s really more of a sports psychology book than a poker book per se, but the advice readily applies to the situation faced by poker players, I think. All about improving the body and the mind, and how those two necessarily go together.

Funny, one bit of advice Steffen gives concerns making “to do” lists, something I already tended to do before but was encouraged to keep doing after reading his recommendation. Helps me a lot just to stay organized and get things done, not to mention the small but significant pleasure one gets from striking those items off the list one by one.

Anyhow, I did like the book, so if you are looking for something like this to read you might consider putting it on your list.

On the “to do” list for me this weekend are a few items, including a last bit of work with the PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker which finally comes to an end after three-plus weeks. The big one is Sunday -- Event No. 62, a.k.a. the “Main Event,” a $5,200 buy-in, two-day, no-limit hold’em tournament which not only comes with a jaw-dropping $10 million guarantee, but also a $2 million guarantee for first. That’s gonna be one decent ROI for someone, come Monday.

Last year 2,144 entered the big one at WCOOP, meaning it eclipsed the $10 million guarantee. Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko took it down, earning a little over $1.71 million. J.P. “djk123” Kelly made the final table, finishing fourth, as was Jamie “Xaston” Kaplan (whom I was writing about earlier this week), who took fifth.

I’ll also be continuing to follow the Main Event (Event No. 5, £10,350 NLHE) over at the World Series of Poker Europe this weekend. Looks like they ended up drawing 346 entrants this time around, which is up from last year (334) though not as high as the 362 who played in both 2007 and 2008.

And this afternoon I’ll definitely be checking in to see who wins the rubber match between Jim “Mr_BigQueso” Collopy and Gus Hansen in the finals of WSOPE Event No. 4, the £10,350 NLHE heads-up event.

(EDIT [added 9/25/10]: That third match was postponed, as both players were involved in Day 1b of the WSOPE Main Event on Friday. Again, as I wrote about earlier this week, the situation reminds me of what happened this summer at the WSOP at the Heads-Up event there. Also makes me wonder about the best way to handle structures in heads-up tourneys.)

You probably heard about Dwyte Pilgrim winning the World Poker Tour Borgata tourney last night. I have to say Pilgrim and Collopy might be two of the most entertaining players I’ve covered at events this year, so it is kind of fun to see both doing well this week. Hansen is always an interesting guy to watch, too -- definitely too bad the WSOPE heads-up event isn’t being televised anywhere.

Heard over Twitter Hansen was playing Angry Birds earlier today. Have you played that game? I wouldn’t think Travis Steffen would recommend it as part of one’s “game day” preparation. Those damn green pigs! Puts me on tilt just thinking of ’em, sitting there staring at me with their dumb grins after I’ve failed to take ’em out.

Another thing for the “to do” list, I guess. Smash some green pigs.

Anybody Here Ever Read...?

Up ’til five in the morning or so, following the exploits of Jamie “Xaston” Kaplan in PokerStars’ WCOOP Event No. 47, the $500+$30 buy-in stud hi/low event. (Recap here.) Kaplan won his second bracelet of the series, having earlier taken down Event No. 6, the $200+$15 no-limit hold’em turbo tourney. (Dr. Pauly wrote that one up a couple of weeks ago here.)

There were a lot of familiar names in this particular event -- familiar to those of us who follow a lot of WCOOPs and SCOOPs, anyway. Kaplan outlasted Jon “PearlJammer” Turner heads-up, despite the fact that Turner had a more than 3-to-1 chip lead when heads-up play began. And finishing third was James “Andy McLEOD” Obst, who always seems to be there at the end of these things.

Had sort a mild bit of déjà vu last night while watching the tourney. With about three tables left, Kaplan piped up in the chat box, asking his opponents whether or not any of them had read the 2003 novel Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. No one had, but one opponent asked him about it and Kaplan recommended it. Kaplan would bring the book up again at the final table, where yet another opponent said he was adding it to his reading list.

I’ve never read the book, but had heard about it around the time it came out and was getting a lot of attention. It’s apparently somewhat based on the true story of the author, an Australian bank robber and drug addict who famously escaped from prison and was on the run for a decade (in the 1980s). Sounds pretty intriguing.

When Kaplan brought up the novel in the chatbox, I had a “wait a minute” moment and realized that I’d covered a final table back in the spring involving Xaston where he’d also brought up the book. It was a SCOOP event (here’s that recap), and in the write-up for that one I’d reported the chat and even worked in a reference to the book, comparing its story to an attempt by Kaplan to “escape” a poker trap in a subsequent hand.

You might’ve heard Kaplan interviewed on last week’s TwoPlusTwo Pokercast (episode No. 140), the one with Kathy Liebert I mentioned on Friday. An interesting (and obviously talented) guy. Otis interviewed him, too, for a profile over on the PokerStars blog, in which the Roberts novel comes up -- check it out.

You can imagine how I like hearing a young poker player talking about a novel meaning a lot to him and recommending it to others. As a lifelong reader -- and someone whose thinking has been influenced by the many novels I’ve read -- I obviously subscribe to the notion that stories can shape us. And as I’ve expressed here many times before, I think that the written word can convey meaning in ways other kinds of storytelling never can.

Thus do I keep reading novels. (And writing them, too!) And, like Kaplan, recommending them to others.

Think I may just have to pick up a copy of that Shantaram, see what it’s all about.

On Heads-Up Tourney Structures

Over the weekend I spent a lot of time focused on Event No. 38 of the World Championship of Online Poker over at PokerStars, the $500+$30 buy-in no-limit hold’em heads-up tournament. Was a two-day affair, lasting 10 rounds altogether before Fabrizio “SixthSenSe19” Gonzalez took it down last night. (Here’s the recap of yesterday’s action.)

There was another heads-up event yesterday, too -- a “high roller” one with a $25,000+$500 buy-in (Event No. 39), won by a player named “RaiseOnce” (suspected by some to be Phil Ivey). A lot of big names in that one. You can read F-Train’s recap by clicking here.

In the WCOOP heads-up tournaments, the structures and starting stacks remain the same from round to round. For example, in Event No. 38 saw players begin with 7,500 chips and play 20-minute levels with the same schedule of blind increases in each match, beginning to end. (No antes in HU play.)

Live heads-up tourneys -- such as the $10,000 “Championship” event at the WSOP this past summer (Event No. 35) -- sometimes operate a little differently. At the WSOP, for instance, players kept the chips they won in one match and played with them in their subsequent matches. In other words, the starting stacks doubled from round to round, and the structures changed, too.

I helped cover Event No. 35 this summer for PokerNews. It was originally scheduled as a three-day event, but it ended up taking four days to complete because the final round took so long. I wrote about that crazy Day 3 (which lasted until dawn) here in a post called “The Match Without End.”

The event was capped at 256 entrants, and that’s how many played. That made for an eight-round, single-elimination tournament, with the final match played best two-out-of-three. Players started with 30,000 chips in their first-round matches -- i.e., they had “triple stacks” in that one just like in other WSOP events. That meant the winners started with 60,000 in Round 2, 120,000 in Round 3, and so forth. By the finals, Ayaz Mahmood and Ernst Schmejkal each had enormous stacks of 3.84 million to start.

As I say, the schedule of increases for blinds (again, no antes) changed from round to round, too, although the changes weren’t perfectly uniform. That is, it wasn’t as though the blinds at each level were simply doubled from round to round, but there were some extra levels thrown in (or removed) and other subtle differences along the way. Here’s the structure sheet for Event No. 35, if you’re curious to examine further.

Also worth mentioning were a couple of other differences from round to round in the structure for the WSOP heads-up event.

Levels lasted 20 minutes for the first four rounds, then 30 minutes for the next two, then 40 minutes for the semifinals and finals. Also, the starting stacks, when translated into the number of big blinds players had, didn’t stay consistently “deep” from round to round. Players began with 150 big blinds in each of their first two matches; from the third round through the semifinals they began with 120 big blinds; then in the finals they started with 128 big blinds.

As noted, there were some subtle differences in the structures from round to round, too, which translated into slight differences in the relative “deepness” of stacks as the matches progressed. To give you an idea of the changes, here’s a look at what players faced after two hours of play for each match (if their matches lasted that long, of course):

Levels with 20-minute rounds:
Round 1, Level 7: 50 big blinds on the table (starting stacks 30,000 each; blinds 600/1,200)
Round 2, Level 7: 60 BBs on table (start 60,000 each; blinds 1,000/2,000)
Round 3, Level 7: 60 BBs on table (start 120,000 each; blinds 2,000/4,000)
Round 4, Level 7: 48 BBs on table (start 240,000 each; blinds 5,000/10,000)

Levels with 30-minute rounds:
Round 5, Level 5: 80 BBs on table (start 480,000 each; blinds 6,000/12,000)
Quarters, Level 5: 96 BBs on table (start 960,000 each; blinds 10,000/20,000)

Levels with 40-minute rounds:
Semis, Level 4: 128 BBs on table (start 1.92 million each; blinds 15,000/30,000)
Finals, Level 4: 128 BBs on table (start 3.84 million each; blinds 30,000/60,000)

You can see how the schedules were tweaked to ensure the possibility of more “play” in the later matches, although the progression isn’t uniform, with the stacks being relatively more “deep,” then less, then more again.

I don’t know which is better, to be honest -- having each round start with the same stacks and structures as in the WCOOP, or watching players begin with bigger and bigger stacks as they go deeper in the event as is the case at the WSOP. (I do know the scheduling of the heads-up event at the WSOP will probably need to be revisited, as this marked the second year in a row they couldn’t finish within the allotted three days.)

I can see the desire to introduce more “play” in later rounds -- especially since the payouts are so much greater (relatively) later on -- although I would think it would be desirable to keep that progression uniform. Of course, it’s possible to keep the same starting stacks throughout, but change the structure (longer levels, different blind increases) so as to ensure “deeper” stacks as they go. In fact, it might even make for a simpler math exercise to do it that way.

If you were tournament director for a heads-up event, how would you set up your tourney?

Round-the-Clock Poker

Am back on the WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) beat again this week, helping cover the events for the PokerStars blog. Was up late last night with Event No. 26, the $320 mixed hold’em event (recap here), and I’ll be writing up other events over the next week as well.

Yesterday started with my dialing up PokerNews’ coverage of Event No. 1 of the World Series of Poker Europe, the £2,650 six-handed no-limit hold’em event. Looks like they attracted a healthy-sized field of 244 for that one, and this afternoon (or evening in London) they are down to nine players at the moment with Phil Laak, Chris Bjorin, John Tabatabai still with chips.

David Peters, whom I saw come heart-breakingly close to winning a bracelet this summer at the WSOP (in Event No. 54, a $1,000 no-limit hold’em event), is there, too, currently in second behind Andrew Pantling. They will play down to the final six today -- unless they get through 10 more levels first, which is unlikely -- with that bracelet being awarded tomorrow.

That event had begun by the time I woke up here on the east coast yesterday. Then I was up until about four in the morning with my WCOOP event. A long day-slash-night-slash-morning of poker.

My WCOOP event was the first to conclude last night, actually, with both of the other events lasting another hour or so. In one, Event No. 27 ($320 Badugi), John Monnette won the bracelet, outlasting (among others) Greg “Fossilman” Raymer who finished third.

Our buddy Dr. Pauly wrote up the story of that Badugi event early this morning (see here). He was a guest on yesterday’s episode of This Week in Poker, and if you happened to watch you might’ve noticed he had his laptop open and at one point mentioned he was covering the event.

Another good episode of TWiP, by the way, including some conversation in there about about Pauly’s book, Lost Vegas. Worth catching, if you missed it. Oh, and Lacey Jones is on there, too, in a bathrobe, if Pauly ain’t enough to get you over to watch.

I spent a couple of hours last night watching ESPN’s coverage of Day 4 of the WSOP Main Event as well. I was especially interested to watch last night as I was covering the two feature tables for PokerNews that day, and so had been there for a lot of the action that was shown last night. Even caught a number of glimpses of an out-of-focus Shamus last night, too -- mostly over Johnny Chan’s shoulder -- which Vera Valmore got a kick out of. (And maybe I did, too, a little.)

That Day 4 of the Main Event was one of my favorite days of the WSOP this summer, actually, the day the money bubble burst. I wrote at length about it back in July here in a post titled “Your Roving Reporter.”

By the time I packed it in early this morning, I found myself thinking about how full the day had been, poker-wise, taken up as it was with following all the tourneys and shows. Poker players and fans certainly have plenty to occupy themselves these days, never mind actually getting to the tables (online or live) and playing themselves.

Gonna rest up a little for another late night. Meanwhile, I send you over to PokerNews and the PokerStars blog for more pokery fun on these here intertubes.

Kicking Myself (Rather Than Letting Someone Else Kick)

NFL Football kicked off last night. You’re asking if I am I ready for some football? Yes, please. Lots.

As I did last year, I joined a pool again this time around in which we pick winners for all the games (straight up, not against the spread). No fantasy football stuff for me, I’m afraid. Never did get into that whole phenomenon, and I still can’t quite figure out how it can be enjoyable to watch games pulling for particular players to perform rather than teams to win or lose. But lots of people do.

I managed to pick New Orleans to beat Minnesota last night. The Saints won 14-9, meaning I begin my year of picking games 1-0. Just 255 games to go, I believe.

I did notice that the line for the game -- at least when I checked it yesterday -- had New Orleans favored by six points. And I also noticed how the N.O. kicker, Garrett Hartley, missed a couple of field goals, including a chip shot from 32 yards midway through the fourth quarter, meaning those who bet on the Saints versus the spread lost their bets. And those who took the Vikings and the points were winners.

The second missed field goal -- the one that would have pushed the lead beyond the point spread -- reminded me of that helpless feeling I tend to associate with betting on sports. You can educate yourself, studying trends and weighing probabilities with a careful eye before placing your wagers. But in the end, others are gonna decide your fate. Every single time.

In poker, we’re similarly subject to forces outside of our control, but we’re usually given lots of opportunities to decide how much or how little we want to subject ourselves to those forces. That’s one way of describing the difference, anyway.

For example, yesterday I jumped into an $8.80 satellite to one of the WCOOP events on PokerStars in which I came up short. As happens in these things, I made a key decision at the end that ultimately affected my result -- in this case, negatively. And while I fell victim to an unfortunate card falling, I still felt as though I had something to do with how things turned out.

The satellite was for today’s Event No. 16, the $215 buy-in six-handed pot-limit Omaha event. (See the full WCOOP schedule here). The tourney was set up as a six-handed turbo (five-minute levels) and was actually a rebuy, too, although I managed to chip up enough during the rebuy period to avoid having to do so. I didn’t take the add on, either, meaning I was only in for the original $8.80. Forty players entered, and with the rebuys and addons that ended up meaning the top four finishers would get spots in the event, with fifth-place getting a decent payday (like $180 or something) as well.

I bobbed and weaved my way into the final nine with a below average stack, then won a couple of pots after that to sit with 15,885 chips -- fourth out of the remaining nine, I believe. At the time, I had the biggest stack at my four-handed table, with the others having 12,625, 6,500, and 3,400. Looking back, I’m thinking it might well have been time to put my head in the turtle shell and tighten up, but that isn’t what happened.

I picked up under the gun and raised pot to 1,750, half-anticipating a possible showdown with one of the shorties. The one with 3,400 was on the button and (strangely) just called the raise. The SB folded, but then the big blind -- with 12,625 to start -- decided to reraise to 7,250.

I could well have let go here. I am capable of folding aces preflop in PLO, which in some cases can be warranted, especially if they aren’t suited or have any other big cards to go with them. I did have that small diamond draw, but really this wasn’t such a great A-A-x-x hand. Right or wrong, I went for it, reraising and we ended up having a three-way, all-in situation. The short stack had and the larger stack in the BB had .

I glanced at all three hands and decided I liked mine best, and in fact, according to Two Dimes, I’m 51% to win here. But I was hardly feeling comfortable.

The flop was decent -- . I was still ahead and still a slight favorite. But the turn was the -- the case king! (ack!) -- giving my bigger-stacked opponent a set, and the on the river sealed it. That knocked me back to just 3,200 or so, and it wasn’t long before I was all in against two players with a marginal hand and got bounced in seventh place.

Was kicking myself afterwards over it, but I can’t say I felt nearly as helpless about it as I would have if I’d lost a bundle thanks to a player missing a short field goal late in the game as happened last night. After all, I made the call, one of many decisions I made during the course of the tourney. Wasn’t like I just sat there and let it happen without me.

Gonna go study the Sunday schedule now to see if I can keep up my streak. Meanwhile, I have a new piece up over on Betfair called “A Game You Cannot Quit,” if you’re looking for more reading material. Am kind of curious to get feedback on that one, actually.

Enjoy your weekend, all!

Triple Stud Ain’t Flipping Pennies

Another late one with the World Championship of Online Poker, this time following Event No. 8, the $215 buy-in Triple Stud event (recap here). PokerStars introduced Triple Stud just last month, another mixed game variation which rotates between seven-card stud (high), razz, and seven-card stud high/low eight-or-better. So you go high, you go low, and then you try to go both.

I don’t play these stud games all that often, aside from when I occasionally sit down in the 8-game mix games. (I also will play razz now and then.) And when I do play, it is just about always in ring games and practically never in tournaments.

While watching the action last night, I thought more than once about John Lukacs’ denouncing of “seven-card stud, high-low” is his 1963 article “Poker and American Character.” That’s the piece I took a couple of posts to discuss last week (part 1 & part 2).

Lukacs, raised on five-card draw (which he deems “classic” poker), says in his article that “seven-card stud resembles a gambling game with poker nomenclature but not very different from flipping seven pennies and betting on them in turn.” Too much luck, not enough skill -- or at least too much diminishment of the “psychological factors” -- says Lukacs.

I suggested last week that Lukacs may not have understood seven-card stud especially well. It’s true, I suppose, that any game for which we lack a familiarity with strategy and/or an appreciation for its required skills has the potential to look like “flipping pennies” to us. As I said, I don’t play these games a lot, and I guess there were times last night when I might’ve talked myself into thinking it was just a card-drawing contest, if I didn’t know better.

Heck, for someone who hasn’t played golf before, even that game perhaps might look like a collection of random actions compiled together in the name of competition. But for those who have played the game seriously, they know how complicated the strategy can be, as well as how greatly skill does affect players’ relative success.

Last night’s event featured a number of skilled players, and once the final table began it was apparent from the rapidity of players’ actions that generally speaking all knew exactly what they were doing with pretty much every decision they were making. There was one notable exception, however, right at the final table bubble when there were nine players remaining.

The game had just moved to razz (from stud high). The way the tourney worked, they played 20 minutes of each game before switching, with each game change also bringing an increase in the stakes. There were two tables left, one four-handed and the other five-handed.

At the four-handed table, a few hands had gone by with a player named CianoMar having won a couple of pots to move his stack to around 325,000. That was below average at the time, but there were three or four other players in much worse shape at the time. Not sure, but I think in those hands he won CianoMar had started with an ace and was able to bet his opponents out of the hands by fourth or fifth street.

Then came a hand in which CianoMar bet with a queen showing, then kept pushing the action as he drew a nine and then a jack. Finally the player folded on sixth street, but it was odd to see him remain aggressive with two face cards up.

On the next hand, he stayed in again with a king showing, and when he stuck around after drawing a ten on fourth street it was obvious he hadn’t realized the game had changed to razz. I noticed railbirds in the chatbox starting to type “omg” and the like, noting there that CianoMar was in error. I also saw players on the other five-handed table start to talk to one another about how he didn’t realize the game was razz.

Finally a player at CianoMar’s table typed “it’s razz dude” (or something) and CianoMar quickly corrected his course. By then he’d slipped all of the way down to 75,000 -- 9th out of 9! -- and was in danger of bubbling the final table. But he caught some cards and scraped back to nearly 500,000 by the end of the level. (He’d eventually finish fourth.)

A bit of an ethical dilemma there, I suppose, for his opponents, one of whom decided it prudent to let him know of his mistake. I’d say it was unfortunate that observers in the chatbox could’ve affected the action there, too. (I believe it isn’t until the final table that observer chat is finally turned off.)

Was kind of wild to see that happening at such a crucial moment in the tournament. Of course, we’ve all been there, I imagine. I know I have when playing mixed games, not realizing until after a hand or two the game had changed.

I guess in a way those few hands which CianoMar misplayed could be said to help prove the point that these games are in fact very different from “flipping seven pennies.” After all, the player who thought he was playing stud during the razz level clearly didn’t have an equal chance to win those hands!