Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Quick Thoughts on Heads-Up Poker

What is heads-up poker about? It's about skills. Sure. It could be about luck. Except most poker players won't agree. It's about tilt. The real game of heads-up doesn't happen until one guy is on tilt. It's about figuring out how to tilt your opponent. It's about knowing when your opponent is on tilt and when he is off it. So you can put him back on.

It's about destroying your opponent and dismantling his game, down to pieces. There's no room in playing nice. Because when the game is two people, if you're not the winner, you're the loser.

It's about control. Control the tempo of the game, control when your opponent tilts, control yourself so you don't tilt.

It's about aggression. Aggression is a good way to gain control. But over-aggression is a good way to lose control, of yourself. It's about passivity. Being passive while maintaining control is an art, but it's an art worth mastering.

Most importantly, it's about making the table a living hell for the guy sitting across from you and making him regret ever sitting down.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

WCOOP: 9 days to go. 9 predictions.

Nine days until I'll be losing A LOT of sleep for three whole weeks. I'll also have an amazing amount of fun (together with the proper dozes of heartbreaks) and hopefully some decent paychecks. And since this waiting game sucks, I'm gonna look into the crystal ball and predict my results:

* I'll somehow cash more PLO events than NLH despite playing 6 PLO and 12 NLH;

* I'll definitely definitely DEFINITELY make money in 8-game;

* I'm hopeless in NLH fullring freezeouts so I expect to cash no more than 1 of the 4 that I'm playing, very likely zero. In this case plssssss be the $1050;

* In contrary PLO 6-max is where I put my head down and get to work, I expect to cash 2 of the 3 that I'm playing;

* Historically I run extremely bad in Round 1 of HU events, so I'll go deeep if I make it past Round 1 in Event 38 and 58;

* There will be overlay in at least 1 event I'm playing;

* I'll end up not playing 5 of the 20 events;

* I'll also end up playing 1-2 events which aren't on the list, most likely to be the Main Event (duh);

* And err 1 final table. pls?

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

WCOOP 2011 - Events which I'll play (version 1.1)

I'm using this post to host a list of WCOOP Events that I expect myself to play this year. This is obviously mainly for guys who might buy my action. This list is bound to change over the course of now until the start of the first WCOOP event, and since I have no better way to keep track of said changes, I'll use the most geeky way, versions and changelog.

Consider this initial list version 1.0:

Event # Date Day Time (ET) Name Buy-In Fee Guarantee
*1 04-Sep Sun 10:00 $215 NL Hold'em [6-Max] $200 $15 $1,000,000
4 05-Sep Mon 11:00 $320 PL Omaha $300 $20 $300,000
*10 07-Sep Wed 06:00 $265 PL Omaha [Knockout] $250 $15 $225,000
14 08-Sep Thu 11:00 $265 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Knockout] $250 $15 $500,000
*16 09-Sep Fri 11:00 $215 PL Omaha [6-Max] $200 $15 $250,000
*19 10-Sep Sat 10:00 $109 NL Hold'em $100 $9 $800,000
*21 11-Sep Sun 10:00 $215 NL Hold'em $200 $15 $1,250,000
*23 12-Sep Mon 11:00 $215 NL Hold'em [4-Max] $200 $15 $500,000
28 13-Sep Tue 17:00 $1,050 NL Hold'em $1,000 $50 $600,000
31 14-Sep Wed 14:00 $320 8-Game $300 $20 $100,000
32 15-Sep Thu 06:00 $320 NL Hold'em [6-Max] $300 $20 $350,000
33 15-Sep Thu 11:00 $320 PL Omaha [6-Max, 1R1A] $300 $20 $300,000
*35 16-Sep Fri 11:00 $215+R NL Hold'em $200 $15 $550,000
38 17-Sep Sat 10:00 $530 NL Hold'em [Heads-Up] $500 $30 $350,000
*40 18-Sep Sun 10:00 $215 NL Hold'em $200 $15 $1,000,000
43 19-Sep Mon 11:00 $320+R PL Omaha [6-Max] $300 $20 $350,000
46 20-Sep Tue 11:00 $320 Mixed PL Hold'em/Omaha $300 $20 $225,000
49 21-Sep Wed 06:00 $215 NL Hold'em [1R1A] $200 $15 $400,000
*58 24-Sep Sat 10:00 $530 PL Omaha [Heads-Up] $500 $30 $125,000
60 25-Sep Sun 10:00 $215 NL Hold'em $200 $15 $1,250,000

That's a total of 20 events (!) and total maximum damage is $9,400. (this is assuming a max of 4BI in the $215+R NLH and 7BI in the $320+R PLO.) Any event that I end up not playing will be refunded as part of the final payout.

I also have a plan to blog each event into a separate post. But it's a plan that'll be hard to stick to after the fifth event. We shall see.

Changelog
V1.1: Correction: the total amount should be $9,400 not $8,800.