It's Sunday, so time for a recap of this past week's progress for the 2013 WSOP:
Executive Summary: This was not a very productive week on the poker prep/play front. The previous week I was in California all week as an external reviewer for another organization's project, then spent most evenings and Satukrday working on their report and catching up on my own work. Then I left at 0'dark thirty Sunday morning for a 4-day out-and-back to Hawaii for work, which involved 12+ hour days. Getting back at 2:30am Thursday morning and then having a 9am cost account meeting that same morning put me further behind (and kicked my circadian rhythms in the butt, too). Oh, and when I got home Thursday evening, my wife pointed a leak in the roof, and reminded me that I had our 2012 taxes to work through. Quack quack quack. Said another way, I had time for a total of maybe 10 minutes for playing poker in the past seven days (which I spent on a super-turbo sit-n-go). I did manage to watch a few videos on the airplane, and I read a couple of hand histories from WPT-V2, but otherwise this was a disappointing week.
- Strategy Books Read:
- Book #1: Read a couple of hand histories from Winning Poker Tournaments, Vol 2. Both were rather simple-minded and not super enlightening.
- Videos Watched:
- Video #1: I managed to watch a couple of TPE videos on the airplane. Both were by Big Dog Pocket Fives. He's a very good player, and I'm picking up a lot of tips watching his vids, but way too often he says things like, "This is an easy fold with 77 here," or "This is a standard raise with K9s" without really explaining why the play is "easy" or "standard." The user has to divine a lot of information and read between a lot of virtual lines to get the full use out of these videos. Good material, but like many of the other TPE vids, it's sometimes tough to watch. Professional play, amateur production quality.
- Fitness:
- Diet: Horrible week on the diet front due to travel. I ate at weird hours, munched on unhealthy fare, and consumed far too many empty calories. Back on the wagon tomorrow in earnest.
- Exercise: No aerobic exercise or walking this week, but I did do a series of body weight exercises (push-ups, pull-ups, squats, etc.) most mornings before work. Meh.
- Tournament/SnG Results:
- Online: Played a total of one Super Turbo 6-max $11 STSnG, which I won. Otherwise, zip.
- Live: Zippy dooo dog.
- Other:
- Made zero blog posts this week, which is highly unusual for me. I must be busy...
- On one of the numerous airplane trips, I fired up the laptop and modeled up both the $1000 WSOP Seniors event and a standard $1500 WSOP normal event in DD Poker using the actual WSOP-published blind structure information. These are the two MTTs that I'm narrowing my search to for June's WSOP. I took the blind structure for each and then went through Snyder's PTF2 book to calculate both the patience and utility factors for both tournaments. I know how to calculate the PF (which is a measure of how slow the tourney is), and I'm 99% certain I have the UF method down (UF is a measure of how much maneuvering room you have given your stack size in relationship to the blinds). The following is what I come up with, along with some paraphrasing of Snyder's thoughts of the MTT difficulty for each PF and UF category):
- $1000 Seniors: PF=63.2 ("slow, highly skilled players only should play"). UF=126.4 ("Pro-Level events in the strictest sense. If you are not adept at small-ball and post-flop play, and if you play any kind of formulaic approach that does not include solid hand- and situation-reading, do no play this MTT. You're dead money.")
- $1500 NLHE: PF=79.6 ("slow, highly skilled players only should play"). UF=238 ("Professionals prefer these tournaments because the very slow structure, where skill reigns supreme. Unless you are highly skilled, or satellite your way in, or are very rich with disposable income, avoid these MTTs. You won't money. Very little dead money in these tourneys. Don't consider these tournaments unless you're a very, very good player; you will be fish meal."
- In other words, these are both tough tourneys, and a player needs to be very solid to make any kind of deep run in either. The $1500 event will also probably be tougher because the starting field size and the number of younger gun LAgs involved. This has me considering the Seniors event.
- I've also exchanged some email with a couple readers who have each played in the WSOP. One has played in multiple seniors events, and the other has played in a handful of $1500 events. Based on these conversations, I'm leaning toward the $1K Seniors, but I've not yet fully made up my mind. If you have any comments or suggestions, please send them in.
All-in for now...
-Bug
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