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Sunday, January 27, 2013

WSOP-2013: Week #22


It's Sunday, so time for a recap of this past week's progress for the 2013 WSOP:
[Note: this is the new format for my weekly recaps. Hopefully, it will be more useful to me than the old format, which was slowly but surely turning into a lot of cash game stuff and little actual MTT prep. The idea is to simplify, prioritize, and focus the remaining few months leading up to the WSOP specifically on MTT play...]
  • Strategy Books Read
    • Poker Tournament Formula, V2. Bought the Kindle version, and then (re)started back in on this book, which focuses on higher patience factor events, like the WSOP MTTs. So far in the early chapters, the book focuses on something called the Chip Utility Factor of a tournament, which is related to, but not quite the same thing, as a PF. As I mentioned before in an earlier blog post, Snyder takes conventional wisdoms about poker tournaments, and turns them on their head. Take for example his Fundamental Law of Chip Utility, which states, "The more chips you have, the more each of your chips are worth" and "A chip you win is worth more than a chip you lose." Argh. This is so contrary to what I've always been taught and understand, I'm not sure if I fully buy it yet. Some deep thinking on this subject is in my future.
    • Winning Poker Tournaments, V3. Reviewed one hand (#7) from the book. The set up is that you're deep in an online event, with a healthy 40 big blinds. Action folds to you in the CO, and the remaining three players to act after you (button and two blinds) each have around 10-12 big blinds (read: unhealthy). You're dealt 66. Unaminous decision by all four authors that a shove is in order, primarily because you do not want to face a reraise if you open smaller, and you want maximize fold equity by putting your opponents to a decision for their tournament lives. Just take it down now with an open shove. Another key point mentioned in PearlJammer's analysis of the hand was about range balancing, in which he wrote, "...because of the limited number of hands you play against other opponents in tournament poker, it is often not necessary or optimal to balance your range..." For this reason, he says that he'd probably min-raise with AA in this same situation and try to induce a reshove. Interesting.
  • Videos Watched
    • Brokos' Hand Reading. Watched another thirty minutes of a Brokos hand reading video. Same story with this one: excellent underlying material, horrible presentation that is almost physically painful to watch/listen to. The guy is brilliant, but damn is he boring to listen to. 
    • Hagbard's $1K WSOP HH. I only got 15 minutes into this video, which was a hand history review of a live WSOP event. Again, great and useful material, but incredibly hard to watch, especially when on my elliptical exercise machine. Tiny little fonts for the written out hand histories, stuffed onto one page, droning presentation, etc.. I mean come on, how hard would it be to spend five minutes and put these hands into replayers and actually make it interesting to watch?
  • Fitness Progress
    • Exercise. Mixed results this week on the get-my-fat-ass-in-shape front. Been walking most days, plus the wife and I did a couple of mornings of free weight exercises. 
    • Diet. My diet has also been a mixed bag. Did very well yesterday for breakfast and lunch, for example, but then slipped a bit when I came home to find big bowls of chili freshly made, hot tortillas, etc. Biggest issue I've got facing me is that I'm leaving on a jet plane tomorrow morning for a week-long business sojourn to Pacific isle. Diet and exercise both will be in mortal danger. Sigh.
  • Tourney Recap/Results
    • Online. Played just one $11 ST SnG and busted mid-pack. Was disappointed in my play, as I focused very well for the first half, built a nice stack, and then started doing other things on the computer and got blinded down. Grrrr.
    • Live. Played in the $160 buy-in Talking Stick event on Saturday. Played very well, but got coolered and sent home with zero dollars to show for the effort. Good time with good company, though. Recap can be found by clicking here.
Summary: Life and work continue to get in the way of serious progress, but my freshened-up reorganization/prep plan that I laid out here seems to have reinvigorated my focus. With the biz trip coming up this week, however, it will be interesting to see how focused I can/will remain.


All-in for now...
-Bug

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