Forgot to mention yesterday that I saw Martin Kabrheltwice! between the time I got to the Paris and the time I got registered for the Big O Satellite. If you see him three times in five minutes, it means bad luck.
Orleans Summer Open $100K Guaranteed NLHE Seniors
Got up bright and early to get ready for this one. Since I was a late arrival to poker (at least in my current incarnation), I’ve been playing seniors tournaments as long as I’ve been coming to Vegas for poker. My first Hendon Mob entry is from a Seniors tournament at Caesars.
Maybe I did see Kabrhel three times, because somehow despite having kings three times and flopping quad sevens once, I never managed to get over the starting stack in more than three hours of play.
I was seated across from Bill Stabler, whom I’d never met but whose name I was familiar with, as he’d been a feature of various write-ups here over the years, including where he’d finished second in the WSOP Seniors event. Bill mentioned that he’d driven up to the Orleans with someone who pointed me out from behind and referred to me as “Simpsons”, presumably because my card cover is modeled on an accessory to a Professor Frink figurine.
Bill busted out, I made a bit of a recovery from 1/4 starting stack, ran what may have been an unknowing bluff, then immediately blew it all with a nut flush draw vs. a set of kings.
Something that was on my radar was the WSOP Online #9 PLO PKO 6-Max bracelet event at 3:30pm, which had a satellite at 1pm. But I could not get the WSOP NV app to run. Issues with the servers? There was no indication what the problem was. I didn’t want to schlep over to Paris/Horseshoe just to find out there was a systemic problem, but it did occur to me that there might be an issue with other players in close proximity, which I know Caesars exempts for their own properties but maybe not Boyd?
I got a sandwich and planned my next move. Which ended up being re-entry into the Seniors tournament. I signed up just before a break and found myself at a table two seats from Bill again, only this time he had a stack that must have been over five times the starting stack.
Again, things just didn’t go well, and I was out in about 90 minutes when I shoved J♣T♣ and was called by ace-rag from a big stack who caught an ace on the flop. Didn’t even make the end of registration.
Orleans Summer Open $10K Guaranteed Big O
There were only about 20 minutes before the start of the Big O, so I signed up for that. Things were going on reasonably well. I watched a hand where a player potted on a KxKx6x flop and was re-potted. She folded, showing a pair of sixes and her opponent showed he just had trip kings, which led to some self-recrimination. Not long after, I flopped a set of jacks on a QxJx7x board and pushed hard on the flop. On the 5x turn, I was all-in and she called for less, making an 8-high straight and low on the river, leaving me with about 10bb.
I did manage to run that up to about half a starting stack before the end of things. I headed back to the Rio.
WSOP.com #9 PLOSSUS PKO 6-Max
When I got back to my room, I checked in on the status of WSOP NV, and, indeed, the app was running just fine, so my guess about why things weren’t working at Orleans appeared to be right. Fortunately, I was able to use my debit card to add some money to my account and jump right in, though perhaps that’s not the best thing to do when the average stack is already double starting stack in a PKO. My table had one player with a 4x stack, and in the half-hour I was in the tournament, players were dropping like flies. Eventually, I fell, as well. Fun format, though.
And that was it for the day. I made calls back home, got a chocolate shake, and came back to the room just in time to catch the last 30-seconds of fireworks over New York New York celebrating the Knicks championship win.
My options for making it to the World Series of Poker this year were narrowing. Stuff at work. Family stuff. Was it really worth it with the increased cost of flights and everything else? But kind of at the last minute, I decided to take a flyer on a weekend trip.
Because of the aforementioned stuff, I was looking at the middle of June, and noticed that the $10K Big O Championship had a Friday evening satellite. Figured I’d give it a shot. So I made that my tentpole for the trip, scavenged the schedule for all my backups if I didn’t make it, and booked the flight.
Got to the airport on time, only had to wait in the TSA line for 10 or so minutes, had all my metal off and pockets emptied, but the scanner warned about something in my groin area, so I got a very thorough pat-down—I was worried that without my belt on that I was going to be pantsed in front of a couple hundred people—then my bag got shuffled into the examination line, and it turned out that what set off the x-ray was the metal card protectors I’ve been using and taking through airport security for 14 years.
Got through security thinking I had plenty of time to get to the gate, then found out I really had a lot of time, because a text had apparently come though just after I’d left the house that the plane was an hour behind schedule getting in from San Diego, so my carefully-crafted plan of getting into Vegas with enough time to get to Paris/Horseshoe, get WSOP-verified, and try to figure out where the satellites were taking place was all in the crapper.
I was traveling light, so I got to the rideshare, then the Paris. The Verification table just had one guy when I got there, but there was nobody in front of me, and it went pretty smoothly except for the part where I had to actually register for something with my card before I could get it verified. Fortunately, there was nobody behind me except for Micah (also registering for the satellite), and another staff member showed up just in time to take care of him.
Got to the Bronze section of the Horseshoe Events Center (I still don’t know exactly where) as they were reading out instructions and got the first hand. Unfortunately, one big hand where I flopped a boat TxTx on a TxAxAx flop went south when the 2x hit the turn, and I never managed to recover (though I wasn’t the first or the second person to bust from our table. Went broke on a double-aces hand where I flopped a set and was all-in, but a backdoor low draw and a spade flush draw got there. Not even rebuying into that. It ended up with 353 entries, 34 $10K/seat prizes. At the time I busted only 70 minutes in, I could see Micah, Adam,and Mopar all still there.
Off to the Orleans in the morning for the $100K Guaranteed NLHE Seniors event. 10am start!
For whatever reason, the games I tend to find myself in in the Chainsaw Poker online tournaments tend to be barely more than a single table, but the first week of March, there were a couple that made it into the low 20s for entries. Not that it did me any good, as I was in the bottom half of all five of them: a couple 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo, HORSE, Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, and a smaller 8-Game Mix.
That was followed up by chops in consecutive Beaverton Quarantine games on the same Friday (No Limit Hold’em and ot Limit Omaha Hi-LoBounty. Week 2 of March concluded with another couple of losses on Chainsaw Poker (both 8-Game).
The Home Game went off on its usual Monday but I flamed out in fifth of eight after a couple hours. Then there were three more Chainsaw 8-Games, one of which I min-cashed in (just 73% ROI) and the other two where I was in the bottom half again.
Week 4 was empty up to the day I went down to the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic. I’d been hoping to make some of the non-Hold’em tournaments mid-week, but my work schedule did not cooperate, so I was locked into heading down for the $225K Guarantee NLHE Main Event on Saturday. I showed up just after the event started and made it about five hours before I flamed out. They blew out the guarantee, which was to be expected after a successful week where most of the fields leaped over last year.
After busting the Main. I walked over to the cash games to play some Big O at the table with my roommate for the night, Brad P. On the very first hand, I doubled up after a guy at the far end of the table called off against my nut-nut hand. Then I lost most of it to the guy next to me with a questionable call of my own just a few hands later. I didn’t get up, though, and ground my withered stack back up to a 33% ROI after 90 minutes. Brad stayed on at the table, I went to the room and played an online 8-Game where I ended up only 5/7.
The next day, I hung around to play the last event of the series, the $5K GTD Limit Omaha Hi-Lo/7-Card Stud Hi-Lo. Made it to within sniffing range of the money, though I was short a lot of the last hour. It only paid 5 places; I made it to 14th of 46.
My last tournament of the month was another min-cash at Chainsaw Poker, 112% ROI for 3/13 in Stud/8.
April started off much the same as March: bottom of the stack finishes in online HORSE, NLHE Bounty, Omaha/8, and another NLHE Bounty in the first couple of weeks. I’d slowed down a bit because I was sort of saving myself for some live games at the end of the month.
Portland Meadows ran a brief Bounty Series in mid-April, with a $400 buy-in NLHE Progressive Knock-Out Bounty as the main event.
I was down to half my starting stack after the first half hour before I started to catch some wind. I was back over start by the end of the second level (30 minute levels) after a guy with a flush draw shoved into my top pair / top kicker and didn’t make it. Doubled again by the end of level three after flopping a set of kings and my opponent caught a set of jacks on the river. Both of us were a little cautious because of a monochrome flop, but I still called his river bet.
Picked up a couple of bounties early (initial bounties were $50 cash, $50 toward your own bounty). I held steady at about 100K (starting was 30K) for several hours, going from 3x average to 2/3 average. The number of tables was never large, there seemed to be a lot of re-entries (total of 140 entries). We were down to 3 tables after six-and-a-half hours.
One hand with kings under the gun ended up with me getting $125 in cash and a bunch of chips, plus, I crippled another player (but someone else got his bounty chips). Seven hours in, I was up to 320K while the average was 200K. 40bb on the bubble (18 places paid).
Nearing the end of the eighth hour and the final table, I raised ace-king against an aggressive player who had a big stack of bounty chips and who’d lost a bunch of chip chips. The flop was KJx and I bet 5bb as a continuation. The aggro player shoved for a total of 8bb, then the chip leader reshoved with a covering stack. I had to call. The smaller stack had a flush draw and the big stack had king-ten, so I was ahead and stayed ahead, essentially tripling up as well as picking up a couple hundred dollars in bounties. Soon after, we were at the final table, where I had a fifth of the chips in play with 55bb.
At the final, I crabbed my way around for a couple of hours, not really picking anything up I could make a move with, drifting down to 12bb after 90 minutes. The average stack was just 21bb when we were 5-handed. My last hand, I open-shoved 9bb with KJ, and made it through to the big blind player who had just a bit more than me and a pair of fours. He flopped a set and got a good pile of bounty chips. My payout was half the amount for the top two spots, plus about $800 in bounties. Just under 10 hours and 400% ROI (after spreading the love with some tips).
Final Table Poker Club opened up in April 2011, simultaneously with the US Department of Justice coming down on online operators PokerStars and Full Tilt on Black Friday. That was my launch into the world of live poker. I’d only been playing in a home game and online for three years (at least since the mid-1980s) but when Black Friday closed down online poker in the US for the most part, I started looking for alternatives, AND BY JUNE I’D FOUND MY WAY TO Portland Players Club at NE 60th & Glisan, Aces Players Club at SE 26th & Powell (each just two miles from my house, though in opposite directions), Ace of Spades on SW Barbur Blvd. (where The Game has been for many years now), and—by late May—Final Table, in their original location at NE 122nd & Glisan.
Over the years, I’ve played more than 425 tournaments at Final Table (one of the things I had to do immediately after Black Friday was to write my own poker tracking app, because I couldn’t just rely oin PokerTracker any more), 83 of them (7 a month on average) in 2016. Back before COVID, I did a revamp of the Final Table web site in exchange for a couple years of free door fees (they add up!), which would have been an even sweeter deal if that hadn’t overlapped with me telling my wife I was ramping back my playing schedule when she retired.
So April was their 15th Anniversary Series, culminating in a $50K Guarantee. You always have (irrational) high hopes coming off a good score like the PKO had been for me. I ended up rebuying in level 1 after making a bad call. Even the post-rebuy was a struggle as I kept losing chips; despite felting three players with shorter stacks by the end of level 4 I still only had 1.5 times the starting stack.
Ten minutes before the end of rebuys, I picked up a pair of kings (K♣K♦) under the gun, and made a min-plus raise. There were a couple of callers, then the big blind made a large 3-bet. I jammed, the callers folded, the big blind called and showed queens (Q♦Q♠). J♥T♠9♣ on the flop, the nine paired on the turn (9♥), so I went from winning about 80% of the time to 75% of the time (when he picked up the straight draw), to 85% on the turn until the river Q♣ when I made a straight.
I wasn’t about to take the second (and final) rebuy after that. It was time to go home. Saved myself the add-on, as well. Brad P late registered and lasted longer than I did but busted a few hours later before the money, which was not insignificant for a $200 buyin. Happy 15th Anniversary to Ben May and the folks working with him at The Final Table!
My last two games of April were on Chainsaw Poker. Another bottom-half finish in a Limit Omaha Hi-Lo game, then an outright win in a small Pot Limit Omaha 6-Max where I made it to the money as the overwhelming chip leader, then had to battle my way back in heads-up when the challenger managed to double up a couple of times and surpass me before I finally won. Just 333% ROI, but a nice way to cap off a couple of good months (well April was good, anyway).
Big congratuations to Adam Natress, who made back-to-back first place finishes at the Little Creek Casino South Sound Poker Series in Washington and the World Series of Poker Circuit Lake Tahoe. The Lake Tahoe win was his largest-ever cash (and was the week before the South Sound event). Those cashes put him in a good spot to surpass the million-dollar mark this summer. Adam was interviewed this past week by Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud.
I’m writing this Sunday, May 10, which was the last day for long-time PokerStars announcer Joe Stapleton, a staple if I say so myself of my poker consumption diet for more than a dozen years. I’ve watched most of the European Poker Tour and many of the PokerStars Sunday Million live streams presented by Stapleton and James Hartigan. Their Poker In the Ears podcast has always been top on my list of listens (I was a contestant on Superfan vs. Stapesfive years ago this month). I always thought he was amusing, anyway.
Looking forward this next week to the Portland Meadows Poker Classic, where I’m hoping to put some of that PKO money to use in the $100K Guaranteed NLHE Main Event as well as a couple of others. No idea yet if I’m going to be able to get away to Las Vegas for Poker Summer Camp, but I’m hopeful this year!
I have to admit that a lengthy losing streak doesn’t make me rush to the keyboard to update the old blog, not even to celebrate its 15-year anniversary back in December.
October was a complete brick, with eight tournaments (only one of which was live). Then I got heads-up in a live NLHE Freezeout at Portland Meadows for my first game in November but placed in the lower 50% of the next six games, finishing off the month with a two-way chop in a very small online game.
My birthday treat was a miss in the Meadows Big O Championship Satellite, where I made it at least up into the top 25% on my second bullet (after going out on the first hand with my first). Did about the same in Final Table’s Big O tournament just before Christmas, then had a win in a small online NLHE game on Boxing Day to close out my poker year.
I picked up the pace but not the bucks in January with 17 events, hoping maybe The Year of the Fire Horse would prove auspicious. Started off with another second-place finish in a small NLHE tournament, then losses in a PLO/8 Bounty, PLO Heads-Up, another NLHE Freezeout at Meadows (though with a bigger buy-in), an 8-Game Mix, and a NLHE Bounty.
Was leading the field in a HORSE tournament but tripped up on a couple of Razzhands and ended up just in third (but a cash). Then losses in PLO/8 6-Max (2), HORSE (2), 8-Game Mix, Omaha/8, and 7-Card Stud/8. Heads-up in a small, live NLHE, then min-cash in 8-Game Mix 6-Max, and a bottom half finish in Omaha/8.
February started a lot quieter, with a shot at Final Table’s $20K GTD NLHE First Friday (made it into the top third but still a long way from the money), an online 8-Game Mix, another little online NLHE chop, and a fifth of seven finish at the old home game, then 4/5 in a PLO online. But the month finished with two cashes in Chainsaw Poker games: 3/17 in PLO/8 6-Max and 2/14 in 8-Game Mix.
I’m hoping to make some of the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic at the end of March and some of the special events in town (though probably not the $1,000 Heads-Up tournament)!
It’s the run-up to a new poker year, with the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic just around the corner at the beginning of March, and my poker purse is looking a little strained. I’ve already had inquiries from two friends about WSOP plans and frankly, I’m not sure it’s going to happen this year unless I pick up the pace a bit. The droughts feel even droughtier when you’re not playing as often.
Portland Meadows Big Game Series Big O, January 10, 2025
So I did play a bit more live this month, all at Portland Meadows because of their Mixed Game Series. I made three of the games on two days, busting way early in the Big O (I was not re-buying) on Friday night.
Portland Meadows Big Game Series Big Bet Mix Dealers Choice, January 11, 2025
The Big Bet Mix Dealers Choice game went better but I barely made the end of registration (still an improvement on the Big O). I hung around the club to wait for the PLO Big Bounty tournament in the evening, and once again failed to make the end of reg. All in all, a disappointing showing.
Portland Meadows Big Game Series PLO Big Bounty, January 11, 2025
I’d opened the month with a couple of Beaverton Quarantine online games (and I played another after getting home so early after the Big O tournament). I picked up a few bounties, but didn’t even make the entry fee back for one of them. Four games, four losses, with a slight offset from the two bounty games.
Played six tournaments with the Chainsaw Poker group online, Omaha Hi-Lo for one, a PLOHi-Lo, and four HORSE tournaments. Min-cashes in the PLO and one HORSE.
Wrapped up the month with another excursion (well, a couple) to Meadows. They had a Friday night satellite to their $500 entry Big Stack Freezeout tournament, and I took a shot. $80 (including door fee) seemed like a great bargain, even though I haven’t been playing a lot of No-Limit Hold’em.
I had a good start with a player in middle position making a raise when I was on the button with aces. I 3-bet him and he went all in with kings. The board rollout quads for me. I never got near my target stack for a satellite, but it was a standard satellite, not a Milestone, so I just had to stick it out.
Portland Meadows Big Stack Satellite, January 23, 2025
My stack limped along at around 10bb most of the last half of the tournament, then after about 4 hours we were suddenly down to the final table of 9, with one person not getting anything. I didn’t catch exactly what was happening, but I heard that the player in seat 9 had somehow made it to the final without realizing they were playing for a seat into the next day’s tournament. I was in seat 3 in the small blind on the first hand, and when there were several limps ahead of me, I just folded. The flop was 973, seat 9 blasted off when it got to him, and he was called by the big blind. Heads-up, seat 9 had top-top (A9) but BB showed 73 and the race for seats was over just like that.
Portland Meadows Big Stack Freezeout, January 24, 2025
Sadly, it was all for nought (apart from the $75 cash payout that went with the satellite seat that almost covered by entry and door fee). Carl Oman ate my lunch several times during the day and I busted in round 8. Though I was glad that I made it past round 4 or 5, I was still rather disappointed that registration was still open when I was knocked out. The final prize pool ended up being an even $100K.
Portland Meadows Big Stack Freezeout, January 24, 2025. Bust-out shot.
Coming up for me this month, a couple of live home games (finally pulling my chips out of the garage to lend them to a friend); the Chainsaw Series of Poker, a series of online non-NLHE tournaments; Final Table has a special $20K GTD tournament on the 21st; then on the 23rd I need to make a choice between the Final Table Deepstack or a Portland Meadows Big O Special. Then it’s whatever I can get to for Chinook Winds the week after that.
It’s been a looooong time since I’ve cashed in one of these, and even longer since I had a significant cash in one, which is bad, because of the last 13 events I’ve played at Final Table, 10 of them have been their monthly First Friday $20K (the others were Friday night $10Ks and one special $40K).
I have to go back before the pandemic to May 2018 to an ICM deal to find something other than a min-cash in any of the $20Ks. Didn’t even make it that far in this one, where I was doing well until I got trapped by a guy who looked like an evil Kevmath who got a back-door 2 pair with five-deuce from the big blind to beat my ace-jack top pair in what started out as a raised multiway pot. All downhill from there. 134th out of 207.
Beaverton Quarantine
Five sessions of this home game on the PokerStars Lite platform. All NLHE, with two bounty games. Picked up a bounty but didn’t cash in the first one, bubbled the fourth, then made 2nd of 13 entries in the last one. Not enough to be in the black for this venue, though.
Puffmammy Home Game
The old gang got together for only the sixth time since the pandemic began (with the promise of more soon). I got off to a great start, stacking the same player twice but then ending up as the bubble after his third bullet pulled out aces versus my ace-king, taking a huge chunk out of my stack. I haven’t had a profit in this game since March 2020.
Portland Meadows Wild West Series Omaha Showdown
Probably should have taken the omens on this one seriously. I didn’t pay close enough attention to my Tri-Met Trip Planner and walked to Division instead of Belmont after work, which ended up with me getting to the 6pm game 20 minutes later than I’d planned.The Showdown was a 5-Card Omaha game, alternating between Hi and Hi-Lo. I lasted less than an orbit, flopping top two pair and turning a full house (tens full of queens) but running into queens full of tens. Congrats to Jen Barnard for the win. And to Meadows for their Saturday Pots o’ Gold tournament with nearly $93K in the prize pool for a $400 buy-in!
Chainsaw Poker
The saving grace for the month for me was Chainsaw Poker. Nine tournaments (3 x 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo, 2 x PLO Hi-Lo, 1 x PLO Hi-Lo Bounty, 2 x Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, 1 x 8-Game Mix); 3-way chop in PLO Hi-Lo, wins in Omaha Hi-Lo and 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo.
My last game of the month was one of the Stud Hi-Lo games. It hit 18 entries and by the time we were down to 9, I had a third of the chips in play and a 2:1 lead over the next largest stack. Nobody really got close for the rest of the final table, and heads-up started with me ahead about 8:1.The structures are pretty turbo, there were fewer than 20 big bets in play by that point, and the whole tournament only ran about 90 minutes.
Really loving the chance to play a variety of games in small fields. And that my record here for this month makes up for everything else and puts me in the black the first time in 2024.
Coming Up
Not absolutely sure what’s I’m doing this month, there’s a lot of family stuff coming up. But starting on the 13th, Meadows is running Friday night satellites to their $1K Main Eventon October 12th, and there’s the Chinook Winds Fall Coast Poker Classic coming up September 21st to 29th. I might make the beginning or ending weekend, but no way I can take another week off for poker this year and definitely not this month.
This trip had been on the books for a couple of months. My long-time poker travel partner David had been making a lot of trips to Vegas for cash games and offered me part of a comped room at the Flamingo. Booked the flight on Alaska for a Sunday morning to Friday night with points; how could I not go?
David and I booked the same flights by sheer chance, so we met up at PDX early Sunday morning, split a ride to the Flamingo, and checked into the room early because of someone’s Diamond Plus status (not mine).
The view was pretty good, once you overlook the roof. I mean, we really overlooked the roof. My wife says the towers at Caesar’s Palace remind her of grain elevators.
We got settled in, then headed over to the Paris/Horseshoe complex. I’d pre-registered through Bravo Poker Live for WSOP Event #27 $1,500 Big O but needed to go through FasTrac verification. No line at the desk, got my tickets there, then wandered off to see where my table was.
Micah Bell stopped by my table before play started, telling me I should play better than I did when I knocked him out of a Big O tournament last December. Apparently, I didn’t take his words to heart, because I only lasted about three-and-a-half hours while Micah made it to Day 2. That was it for me for the day, though I did go get set up with a new WSOP.com account. I did have the honor of holding up the bottom of the chip counts because I was updating with the MyStack app from PokerNews
I was at the bottom of the listing even before I busted the Big O.
So that was an inauspicious beginning. Down $1,500 to start the week. Went back to the room and headed over to Ellis Island, where Dave picked up the bill for the $10 prime rib dinner at their restaurant.
Monday
The next event on my schedule wasn’t until the afternoon; Brad Press convinced me to head over to the OrleansCasino for a $30K GTD with a $300 buy-in that started at 11. Didn’t go great, managed to get tens in against queens and I was out before the end of re-entry.
The new-ish Milestone Satellite format they’re running for the mega satellites at the WSOP was something I hadn’t played, and I wasn’t sure how my style of play would work; I’m not usually a big stack until the end (if ever). As it happens, my first experience with it in the 3pm $250 buy-in (paying out $2K chunks) did not go well, with me buying out of Level 1 with 20 seconds to go. Tens again.
There were only 23 players in the satellite by then (it got up to 85 by the end) but I elected to jump into the Monday HORSE Deepstack, in preparation for Wednesday’s bracelet event. I lasted longer there (after waiting about thirty minutes for tables to open up), but nowhere near long enough.
Got back to the room too late to catch David for the prime rib dinner, and feeling a little burned by four straight whiffs, decided to fire up some low-stakes online action. Played a $500 GTDPLO 6-Max PKO through about half the field, then caught some wind in a $1K GTD NLHE 6-Max Super Turbo and came in fourth out of 82. Busted out of a $150 GTD PLO 6-Max Turbo and another NLHE 6-Max Super Turbo (with a $400 guarantee), so by the end of the day I was only down $2,264.
Tuesday
Tuesday was the second bracelet event I had on my list, the $1,500 Seven Card Stud. It’s the smallest-field bracelet event in my budget—only 406 entries this year—but I decided to pass it by for some smaller games. Struck out in a quick $1K GTD NLHE Turbo before I headed out to South Point Casino to meet up again with Brad before he headed home. I was hoping to pick up some of his turnaround energy—he’d had a bad few days on his trip before final tabling at South Point three times and once in a Milestone Satellite at Orleans.
I battled through about three-and-a-half hours of a $10K GTD NLHE tournament, making it past the end of registration and about 60% of the field before the end came (Brad went on to another final table; he also won a seat to their $50K Tournament of Champions Freeroll).
Late-registered the $4K GTD Omaha Hi-Lo that was about to begin and managed to bust in Level 4.
Back to the Horseshoe for the 7pm $580 NLHE Landmark Satellite. That only lasted 4 levels, too. Tens were once again my bane. Ended the day $3,064 in the hole.
Wednesday
Event #35 $1,500 HORSE didn’t start until 2pm, so I started the day started playing 0.10/0.20 PLO on WSOP.com. Clawed back $5. Jumped into a $1K GTD NLHE Turbo and made the final table out of 172 entries ($49). Just missed the money in the $1K NLHE Fast Mini Mystery Bounty but I picked up $6 in bounties. Busted the $750 GTD NLHE Deepstack Super Turbo, then took a bit of a flier on the $55 buy-in (all my buy-ins so far we’re $11 or less) $5K NLHE Fast Mystery Bounty, but only made it half-way through the field.
Shortly after the tournament began, one of the floor people pulled the chair out of seat 3 and maneuvered a fancier chair into place. Then Mike Matusow showed up and pointed a stick at the table and said “What’s your name?”
View from Table 53, Seat 1.
“Uh, me?” I managed to get out, not recognizing the box on the end of the stick as a camera.
“Yeah.”
“Uh, Darrel,” I said, using all the wit assigned to me at birth. Matusow then went around the table getting peoples’ names and said it would be online (still don’t have any idea where or if, so you can’t see me making a doofus of myself).
A repeat cash in HORSE was not to be. I don’t believe I ever managed to get above the starting stack, and a guy on my immediate right had me pipped on every hand where I thought I might be a winner, including one hard-contested Razz hand where he rivered a wheel on my A2346. Just could not beat him.
I got the full dose of the Mouth, more than four hours of complaints about how he’d only won 24 hands in the series up to that point, and some reactionary politics when Jeff Lisandro joined the table at the other end.
Back to the Flamingo after five-and-half hours, where David and I had a late dinner at Virgil’s on the LINQ Promenade. It was still warm outside according to the thermostat on the wall next to us.
THURsday
Back to the smaller stakes. Orleans had another $30K guarantee at 11am and I headed that way even though it was just Hold’em. It had a very late end to registration—about seven hours—and I only lasted about 4, but I did see one of those crazy hands that crop up all over Las Vegas during the summer: a four-way all-in pre flop that pitted jacks against queens against kings against aces. The aces somehow held to scoop.
I texted Brad to verify my decision on whether to play the Razz tournament that had just started or get back in the $30K with just 20bb. Razz it was. I figured it was time to start drinking.
Razz was another strike for me. Four more hours, made it through about half the field of 199. But overall a pretty pleasant experience. One of the players from my HORSE table who’d been sitting on the other side of Matusow was there, and I met the gregarious Carlos, who introduced me to an online group of mixed-game players. So, not an entirely fruitless day at the Orleans.
David had some free drink coupons as a valued Caesars Diamond member and had already picked up a Bailey’s slushy at O’Shea’s on the promenade, so we headed over to get three more. When we got back to the room, I jumped into a $55 $3K GTD NLHE PKO 6-Max Turbo, got a couple bounties then knocked out and re-entered to place 6th of 84. Not a huge profit, but something. Played a $150 GTD PLO 6-Max Turbo and a $500 GTD PLO PKO 6-Max, then min-cashed (17/158) a $1K GTD NLHE before I went to bed.
FRIday
My flight (and David’s) didn’t leave until after 8pm. I’d noted that when Brad made the final tables of his South Point events, it was six-ish, so I figured that if I made it to the money in their morning event I should have just enough time to get to the airport.
Reasonably certain I got angled on my second hand when a player tossed in 5100 (still at 100/200) with a “Did I do that?” speech. I shoved my A9s and he had AQ. It was back to registration.
Four and a half hours in with 18bb, I squeezed from the SB with A7s over there lines. One of the limps was 99, he called, I hit the ace on the turn. When I texted back to Brad about the hand, his response was “Stop it!!! You’re killing me”.
By the time we got to the bubble at 36 players, my stack was down to 18bb, but that was still 150% of the average. It wasn’t exactly a leisurely structure.
I mostly folded for the next 40 minutes, drifting down to 11bb—though that was still above the chip average. Then just before the break, I picked up TT on the button, two short stacks before me shove, and I swoop in to the pot against a lower pair and a ragged ace. I hit a set on the flop to seal the deal.
Next orbit after the break, QQ on the button and I double up to 700K after making a full house against T9s.
The inflection point for me was another 20 minutes on, about six hours into the game, when I 3-bet QT of clubs and the table chip leader shoved. It folded back to me and I thought about it for longer than usual, then put my trust in the Portland Nuts and called against AK. Two clubs on the flop and another on the turn, and I was over a million chips.
We were still at 14 players and it was creeping closer to the time I was going to have to start thinking about making it to the airport. Action went fast, though, and in just ten minutes we were down to the final table. Half an hour later, we were at 5. We had a break and an ICM chop was proposed. There was a little tussling about who’d win the seat into South Point’s Tournament of Champions, but the rules said it had to go to the person with the most chips at the time of any deal and that they’d penalize people if they thought there was any dumping going on.
Anyway, it took a few minutes to run the numbers. I came out on top by just 0.3%. Plus, I got the ToC seat that I can’t play because I’ve got a thing in Portland that day. The list of eligible players was just posted, with 158 names on it. There’s $50K guaranteed with $10K up top and 60 places paid, so the EV’s pretty high to start with and with people like myself not able to make it, even better.
Congratulations to our Final 5 in today's 10am $100 daily tournament. Darrell finished as our chip leader so he earns his ToC seat and $2200+. We had 257 entries and a $20k+ prize pool#MorningGrind@southpointlvpic.twitter.com/WLyaOpWESZ
It didn’t come anywhere close to wiping out the losses from the first five days, but it did stanch the bleeding a bit so the losses were basically down the cost of the two bracelet events.
Other Poker for June
The week before Vegas, I just played a couple of the Beaverton Quarantine home games, then three more in the weeks after I got back. They were a complete loss.
The only other live poker for the month was the Portland Meadows NLHE 50/50 Bounty, where half the buy-in goes into your bounty. I came in late and watched a guy who’d open-jammed twice with 40bb. I raised the queen-ten on my first playable hand and he jammed a third time. I snapped it off and doubled up versus nines. Didn’t quite make it to the money, but I did take a bounty.
First orbit went great, but after that it was just a downhill slide with not a lot of Playable cards. Made it down within sniffing distance of the money but no luck. Not a total loss I did get a bounty. pic.twitter.com/P34TEiF0cY
My new poker venue is a private online club with nothing but mixed games, 1- or 2-table fields for the most part, running six or seven tournaments like Razz, Badugi, 5-Card PLO, Stud8, 8-Game, PLO8, 2-7 Triple Draw, and more. I love it, though I’m only 1 for 10 so far.
#PNWPokerLeaderboard: I’m Not Human, I’m a Mutant
For more than seven years now, I’ve been running the Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard in one form or another. First as a series of write-ups of manually-selected standout players from Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and eventually as a list that included everyone who fit my criteria and including players from British Columbia, Alberta, and Alaska.
Throughout that time, the Leaderboard was made possible by a certain amount of automation. I wrote a routine that pulled in data from The Hendon Mob‘s state and province leaderboards, then stuffed the player and income data into a database which allowed me to compare earnings over time to see who’d made the most money since the last Leaderboard.
The Leaderboard suffered only one major snag (apart from the amount of time it still took to put things together after the routine had done its thing), a few years ago when THM slightly modified the code of the leaderboard pages and the routine choked. I had to make a decision then whether to spend the time to figure out how to fix it or not. I did it.
Then last year, I kind of ran out of steam myself as I was playing less and less often. I said it was the end, then lit it back up at the first of the year.
But I think we’ve reached the end of the journey for real this time. Not because I’ve given up on poker, I was just down in Las Vegas (as you can see above), not because I don’t want to talk about all the people cashing big-time in the first month of this year’s WSOP. Nope, it’s a CAPTCHA issue. Hendon Mob has implemented a tool to prevent robots from crawling their site scraping information, as is their right. It’s been a fun project, but there’s no way forward. My apologies to anyone who was hoping to see their 2024 WSOP cashes represented.
May turned out to be the calm before the storm of the WSOP for me. I only played nine tournaments the whole month, with most of those being in the virtual Beaverton Quarantine home game (four cashes, in NLHE and NLHE Bounty) for a meagre 126% ROI. The loss (bigger) came from the three events I entered at the Portland Meadows Poker Classic, though I did manage to pick up one min-bounty in Event #6 PLO Assassins PKO Bounty (the entire prize pool was bounties!)
That leaves either well-rested or unprepared for next weekend’s trip to Las Vegas, where the bracelet events on my list are Event #27 Big O, Event #32 Seven-Card Stud, and Event #35 HORSE (the only bracelet event I’ve ever cashed in). Plus—depending on how things go—some of the Milestone Satellites and the Monday HORSE Deepstack. Maybe something on WSOP.com if I can figure out how screwed up my account is after six years of inactivity.
Chinook Winds Debuts Summer Series
Earlier, as I as getting ready to publish this, Chinook Winds dropped the schedule for their first Summer Classic Poker Tournament, featuring a $200K GTD Main Event and a mid-week TORSE event (with Limit Triple Draw 2-7 replacing Limit Hold’em in the rotation).
Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard
Key to the Leaderboard
Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
While everyone was watching Adam Nattress in Event #4 (see below), Mollala’s Smith snuck through nearly 3,600 other players to grab an exceptionally good first Hendon Mob cash.
Word went out on Day 2 that Adam was in the top 10% of the players at the end of Day 1. Then he powered his way to a not-insignificant lead by the end of Day 2. But the headline on the day-end wrap-up mentioned Jamie Kerstetter and “Miami” John Cernuto (and had pictures of both of them) but no Nattress. I knew Adam was too nice a guy to make anything out of it, but Karen-ed the heck out of it.
The Day 3 opening report had a pic of Adam but his name was initially missing from the headline. It was corrected relatively soon. Squeaky wheels, folks! You only get into these positions very rarely; make sure you get the credit you deserve!
Another month of nothing good to report! 14 shots at the Ignition Casino NLHE Jackpot Sit-and-Go, just 3 cashes and none of them any higher payout than 2x buy-in. I got a couple of tickets from America’s Cardroom for satellites and a ticket from Ignition for their $2500 GTD Freeroll and nothing came of those.
Just a min-cash in one of three Beaverton Quarantine home game bounty tournaments (and a bare bounty in another), plus three bricks in non-bounty tournaments. Thankfully, those aren’t expensive.
After a five-month hiatus, I went back to the Final Table $20K GTD NLHE First Friday tournament, where I only made it though half the field, but had a very nice interaction about the blog with Brian Barker, who won a quarter-million in a World Poker Tour tournament last fall (as well as a bunch of other stuff). It was a fun evening, but too short.
Capped off the month trying to catch the lightning in a bottle at the Portland Meadows Big Bet Mix 6-Max. I’d taken second somehow last fall but only made it to 25th this time, doing quite well sitting with the likes of Jeremy Harkin and Joe Brandenburg, then less well sitting with my nemesis Butcher.
They modified the structure to add another level before break, at 61K I’m about 10K behind my pace on the last game, but still about 1.5 average. pic.twitter.com/0fJKtnSI3x
Next week is the Portland Meadows Poker Classic, of which I’m planning to play the Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday events. (Wheel of Chaos, baby!) Not sure what the rest of May holds, but I’m just over a month out from my trip to the World Series of Poker.
Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard
Key to the Leaderboard
Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
Another month in the red, though I briefly had hopes for this one.
No need to recap all of the thrill of min-victory and the agony of defeat at the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic in the middle of the month, it’s all right here if you want to read about it.
I cashed 7 out of 17 Ignition Casino NLHE Jackpot Sit-and-Go tournaments, with just one of the winners being a 5x payout, which means…exactly $0 profit.
Because I spent an entire week at Chinook Winds, no other live play for me, though I did play five Beaverton Quarantine games via PokerStars Home Games, min-cashing a 10-player NLHE game and winning a NLHE Bounty tournament with three bounties (including my own) for a whopping 320% ROI. Not enough to cover my losses at the PacWest series!
There’s a whole bunch of fun coming up May 6th–12th at the Portland Meadows Poker Classic, though I’m going to have to skip their High Roller because I’ve got tickets to see Michelle Wolf. And I can only do the evening games because, you know…job.
I’ve booked my flight to the WSOP already. Got a lot of $2K and $5K satellites on my menu, along with HORSE, Seven Card Stud, and Big O,
Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard
Due to some fast reporting by the Chinook Winds tournament officials, this edition of the Leaderboard includes the big results from the recent PacWest Poker Classic!
Key to the Leaderboard
Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
This is Heang’s debut on the Leaderboard, though he has a couple other cashes that would have qualified him last year when I wasn’t keeping the Leaderboard updated.
Davies had six other cashes in the Triton Jeju series (for a total of eight cashes in seventeen events) each large enough to put most players’ career winnings to shame, but their ROI was less than 400%, so they do not appear on the Leaderboard.
