Cash is King [EPT Barcelona update]

SCOOP update:
Day 1 I played all the L/M events for a total of 8 events. Cashed in the 2L and 2M (the progressive KO are by far my favourite events to play in). I actually made day 2 of the 2M event with a decent stack and I was 14th in chips out of 48 remaining (5511 started). Unfortunately nothing really went my way on day 2. I peeled against a couple of 3 bets and missed completely on K high boards where I didn't feel like playing back. I made two thin 3bets IP in what seemed like good spots but got 4bet both times so I ended up short; shipped 77 on the BU v CO open from the chip leader, got snapped by his QQ and he held.. oh well.. disappointing
Had gavz101 on my table who is annoyingly aggressive and he was pretty much bossing it.. 3bet/4betting the shit out of everyone. He spew busted shortly after me tho calling a 5bet shove w AQo for 50bb

Anyways playing the L/M NL events today, I had a good run in the $82 HU event last year finishing in 12th so hopefully I can do even better this time around. Fields are a bit smaller this year compared to last, I thought it might be due to mother's day yesterday but it is still the case today.

SCOOP ended very anti climatic for me... I had my best run on the first day of the event and that was pretty much it. In total the numbers look something like:
Played ITM Invested Cashed ROI
Satellites 32 8 $3,019.80 $5,439.00 80.11%
Events 42 6 $7,246.10 $4,215.59 -41.82%
Total $10,265.90 $9,654.59 -5.95%

Overall a small loss of just over $600 which is meaningless in the grand scheme of things.. I played only NLHE evnets and only 4 high events and bricked all 4 of them. I had a decent run in the $1k main but I busted w TT vs A8 blind on blind for about 20bb all in pre with about 1000 players left and felt really tilted about it. Regardless I am quite happy with what I got to play given MTTs are not my main game. I only played high events that I managed to satellite into and although I didn't actually cash in any of them, the experience is invaluable.

Cash games have been going really well for me in May so its all good. I am gonna be heading to Vegas for three WSOP events. Planning on playing Event12 $1500 6max / Event14 $1500 SO / Event16 $1500 millionaire maker.. I wanted to get in town for the Colossus but flights & accommodation were too expensive for that weekend as I booking last minute and I am really gutted to be skipping it. I do like the Millionaire Maker's structure better so I think that works out fine. I still have hope to ship one of the nine ipoker packages for Vegas that gives entry to the monster stack for the weekend after the millionaire maker. That will be an awesome event and hopefully I can stick around for it even if I don't win a package. I have high hopes for the cash games in Vegas, everyone says they are worth going for even if you don't play any events so I am gonna try to get into some juicy $5/10 action and I may even take a shot at some $10/20 if all is going well.

Just got back from Vegas yesterday after spending a week there. I played in only 2 WSOP events (I intended on playing 3 but I had a long day before the $1.5k SO and I decided to skip it) and unfortunately I busted both on day 1.
First event was the $1.5k 6max and I was pretty excited about it as I love 6max and I play quite a bit of it online so I am fairly confident in my game. Surprisingly my table was fairly tough with 4 younger guys who seemed quite decent and 1 older gentleman that I thought might be the soft spot but he also played a rather solid TAG game. I only lasted 5 levels after losing a fair deal of small pots and one big one with 2pair vs better 2pair. So from a starting stack of 7.5k I was down to 4k and I got it in with QQ from MP vs UTG opener's AK and lost the flip. GG

Second event was the $1.5k millionaire maker and that has been one event that I have wanted to play in since they first introduced it 2 years ago. I had a slow start there too although my first table was very soft but it broke within 2 hours. My second table was quite tough and I made a big laydown early on with JJ for all my chips facing a weird 4bet shove AI for 50bb. My third table was great and I spent about 6h of day 1 there. It had a mixture of weak grinders with very obvious bet sizing tells, older recreational guys and just one tough spot in Eugene Katchalov who is obviously a very solid player. I chipped up nicely there, I brought about a 10k stack (starting stack of 7.5k) and I ran it up to about 45k. Our table broke with 2h left in the day. My 4th table of the day was not too bad. At least 4 recreational players and we were soon joined by Esfandiari who luckily was sat directly on my right.

Big Hand:
The first hand Esfandiari opened after sitting down was to 2k at 500/1k blinds out of a stack of 43k, I had 46k behind him. I 3bet him from the HJ to 5.1k with AKdd. Came back to him and he made a massive 4bet to 14.3k... at that point I took about a minute to think about it and I estimated him doing that with 99-JJ and AK with him never folding to a shove after putting in 33% of his stack. Imo his sizing is pretty poor as he is clearly saying he will not fold to a jam and I also think he never does that with monsters like QQ-AA as he should be a lot more inclined to disguise those hands against my fairly wide 3betting range by making his 4bet somewhere around 10-11k. So I basically have a slightly profitable shove w AKdd vs the range I give him, and he snaps me off with TT... given his 4bet size I think he makes a breakeven call since my stackoff range given his 4bet is TT+,AK and he has only about 34% equity against it, which is right about the price he is getting. Anyways he wins the flip and I am down to just about 3bb.

I then managed to win an all in and get up to 9k and the next big hand comes up. A loose older guy open jams for 13bb in MP with J9o, I call AI on the BU w QQ and the BB calls AI covering both of us with JJ. So this is a dream spot for me in a 3way AI with more than 80% of the equity and a chance to move to about 30k in chips which puts me right back in it. Unfortunately the board runs out J high for the case jack to come and bust me... GG but I think I played pretty good for 13hours or so in that event. Happy with all my decisions...

On the side of those 2 events I played 9 sessions of $2/5 NL where I made back almost all of my MTT investments. That is in spite of making a bunch of mistakes including getting it in with an overpair vs a relatively tight guy who check/raised me on a 28Thh board 4ways for like 130bb.. and paying people off where they just couldn't be bluffing. I definitely think I could have played a lot better in the cash games but I still did well overall. My most memorable hand:

$2/5 game at the Bellagio with $500 effective stacks, I open 23ss on the BU to $15 and a loose aggressive kid in the BB defends.
Flop is 4x5s9x, (pot $30)
he checks, I bet $20, he calls
Turn 6s (pot $70)
he checks, I bet $50, he calls
River 7s (pot $170)
he bets $125... wtf I move AI for $415 total
he thinks for about 3minutes exposing his hand.. Q9ss!!! Eventually folding it?!? LOOOL when I saw it I was sure I just punted off $500 but somehow he talked himself into folding... I don't think I had a tight image at all and for him to assume I am only shoving here with the K high flush or better is just absurd.. for all intends and purposes I probable jam river w T8 for value given how loose he has been.

Overall I would say that this trip to Vegas has not been worthwhile money wise, the total cost of a week including flights/accommodation/transportation and food has set me back about $1500 and I have been super economical!!! I barely took cabs, stayed in a cheap ass hotel and ate at Chipotle 5 times! Even just playing $2/5 it wouldn't really be very profitable to do this kind of thing again alone. If I share cost of hotel & transportation it might be better and also if I play higher like at least $5/10... Tournaments seem to be great value but to realize my ROI I would have to play a lot of events and that is really not my thing overall. I really wanted to play a WSOP event as that has been my goal for a long time so I am glad I got to do that this year.

Next thing for me is a trip down to New Orleans to visit an old friend next week and I know they have a few casinos there so I will probably play some poker at Harrah's. But for now I got a nasty cold so I will be taking a few days to recover and not go back to my online grind until I am at 100%.

Cheers and GL!

Awesome update!
LOL at the J9o guy but if it wasn't for likes of him you would be playing sharks everywhere so embrace that he tripled up - he will be coming back in following years as well.

Haven't updated this in a while so I thought I drop line here finally.

I barely played online poker in June as I spent a week in Vegas and then a week in New Orleans. I only played online for 9 days in June and it was basically a break even month for me. In live games I lost $3.5k in MTT buyins and made about $4k playing cash so pretty much even as well. I expected Harrah's in New Orleans to have more action but I guess I was there while the WSOP was still on in Vegas so there was hardly any action on weekdays. They had only one $2/5 game during the day and the waiting list was brutal and nothing bigger, so I ended up playing $1/3. There you can buyin for as much as the biggest stack at the table which is pretty neat. I haven't played a game that small live in a long time but I gotta say action was great... $1k pots all the time, people playing awful I almost felt like my win rate at this $1/3 game would exceed my win rate at the $2/5 games in Vegas.

As far as online goes, I have been doing well in July mixing it up from $2/4 and up. I got into a bit of $10/20 short stack action of FTP to get my feet wet in the bigger games. I know all the players as I play $5/10 with them all day so its not really anything different just more money. There is so little action on FTP that I can never really get much volume at these stakes but I am just happy to be able to get a seat when there is a rec player on, as with all the seating scripts on stars that would be next to impossible for me.

Also happy to report that I shipped a seat for EPT Barcelona so I will finally get to play an EPT event. Really pumped to get that experience. I will probably play the Estrellas main event as well since I am going there anyways. I plan on spending about 10 days there and combining it with a trip to my home country of Bulgaria. So August should be lots of fun and travels and then back to the grind in September where I have already made my schedule for WCOOP. I plan on playing about $10-12k in buyins depending on how things are going (not including the ME) and hopefully satellite into the $5k as that event is aaawesome. Also started learning PLO and been playing PLO50 zoom when I have no NL action. I feel that with zoom I will not really improve my game much as I play very mechanically (still winning surprisingly) so I might switch to regular tables where I can build more of a dynamic and get a stronger feel for my opponents. I find that I make the most money when I exploit specific reads and dynamics that I have with my opponents and that element is missing in zoom games. I am a notorious note taker in game and that can be a huge factor when making close decisions.

I also bought a house with my girlfriend and we should be moving in there towards the end of the month so I will probably be playing very little poker between the end of this week and the EPT.

If you guys have any questions for me please let me know!

congrats on winning the seat to EPT, nice work sir

Thought I offer some of my thoughts on the new FTP update as I have spewed most of my opinion over at the 2+2 forum.
All in all I can understand why FTP would be interested in making this type of change as in theory it would eliminate game selection and it should force more reg on reg battles. However, in reality I think it will drive away a lot of traffic from a site that seems to already be struggling for traffic (I am referring specifically to the $2.5/5+ NL games). The reason being, first of all you can't start a table heads up which can be very annoying especially at $5/10 where in non peak times there is barely anyone playing. Second you can't see the player pool, which I understand why they may want to hide it, but at the same time I think it acts as more of deterrent than anything.

If you consider the current state of the online poker market for cash games it typically revolves around 6max games that run with 5 regs and 1 recreational player and in my opinion that is perfectly fine. It is also probably the best case scenario for a poker site to have that sort of ratio as it would be their best bet to get more funds get converted into rake by having a 5:1 ratio (obviously an 8:1 ratio if playing a full ring game would be better but those games run rarely). Certainly if you have a game with 3 regs 3 recs it would be ideal for virtually everyone I just don't see how you can realistically accomplish that even with the new update.

So yes there is a lot of bumhunting but I think any game without a soft spot is a dead game, it has been the case for years and I can't imagine it ever changing. You will always have the guys that want to prove themselves and battle it out vs anyone and play anyone to chase leaderboard status or supernova elite.. whatever.. but if you are in the game to make money you need to have an edge. 6 regs battling each other with rake is not a proposition for long- term profitability.

Poker needs new blood coming into the game. The Asian market seem to be the obvious choice as people there are getting wealthier and wealthier and love to gamble. Sites need to market better to people in places like China, Malaysia, Korea, India etc. and work with local regulators to legalize online poker and keep it growing. Without new blood it will be hard to stop the decline. There is enough untapped potential out there. Making changes like the one FTP just did will not solve the underlying problem. This is just my opinion and I could be wrong but I thought I share it.

On a separate note, my girlfriend and I attended the Pokerstars VIP bash in Toronto this past Saturday and I gotta say WELL DONE STARS! Oh wow they organized an exceptional event, hands down. The venue was fantastic, no line ups to get in, no line ups at the bar, plenty of entertainment, great food, everyone they advertised to attend did in fact attend. I just couldn't praise the hosts enough. It is the first stars party I have attended but it makes me want to go to the next one that much more. Even my gf who disliked Negreanu prior to the event had a change of mind. Super nice guy, very approachable and great fun to be around.

I am flying out to Bulgaria tomorrow, gonna spend a couple of weeks there, a couple of days in Greece and just over a week in Barcelona. Getting back to Canada at the end of August where I have a week to move all of our stuff into the new house before WCOOP gets under way! I also qualified for the Estrellas ME so I am playing both the EPT and the Estrellas and I hope to have no spare time to play any other ones TIME TO SHIP ONE!

Cheers and I will do another update after Barcelona!

EPT Update:

I just finished playing my first EPT and I gotta say Barcelona was an amazing experience. In terms of organizing and running an event, Pokerstars really knows how to do things. Top tier dealers, good tournament staff, new CLEAN chips (WSOP chips are the filthiest things I have ever touched) decent structure and top notch tables (with phone chargers on every seat!). Everything surrounding the event has been great including things like a wifi network that is still really fast in spite the thousands of players using it.

Issues I had in Barcelona were with the fact that the cash games were ran poorly (not sure if stars had anything to do with that). Basically you can't even get into a €3/6 game (the smallest stakes available) cause they only open 5 tables and have 200+ ppl on the waiting list at all times. So if you want to play you are looking at €5/10+ (approx 1h wait at most times). I only played one 5/10 session and the game was pretty reg heavy something I am not used to seeing in Canada/US. With 5% €20cap rake I can't imagine this being all that +EV to play unless you are playing 3-400bb deep where you can really push your edge. At €5/10 I am not really comfortable buying in for €3-4k so I don't exactly feel like this is the game for me. I dusted off 100bb fairly quickly and didn't plan on rejoining. Kids were buying in for €6k, so yea it plays pretty big.

Also they ended up having so many ppl for this EPT I feel like the staff were a bit overwhelmed. Alternate lists for every event except HR ones. Estrellas broke records, EPT main broke record so it was pretty cool to be part of it. I wanted to play the Barcelona cup (€330 buyin) and I got there 1h before the start and it was sold out and I was alternate #316... so I waited for 1h after the start and refunded my ticket.. I didn't feel like joining and playing a 15bb stack after waiting for 2h as the structure was quite fast for that event.

I played the €1.1k Estrellas main where with 45min levels and 25k stacks things went rather quickly. I chipped up to about 35k and then I got 4bet twice when I was 3bet bluffing and barreled a couple of draws that I missed and got looked up, so I found myself down to about 16k. At 4/800 (100) I raise UTG w QQ, mega aggro fish 3bets from UTG1, I jam, he snaps with 66 and flops a set. Not much to be said, the field was reasonably soft, definitely worth playing.

The €5.3k EPT Main went a bit better although I still didn't cash. With close to 1700 entries I busted around 540th near the end of day 2. I had a great table for most of Day1 with about 3 fish for most of the time and I managed to chip up to 60k from a starting stack of 30k. I flopped 0 sets had no AA/QQ/JJ all day, no flushes, no straights so it came down to winning small pots and making timely bluffs, no real hands all day.
Day 2 started with a great table draw again with 2 fish and 3 tight mediocre regs where I chipped up to 95k early on. Then once that table broke I got moved to a shitty table which was pretty much all regs. I preserved my stack there for about 2h until that table broke too. My last table of the day I was moved to Ryan Riess' table and I gotta say he seems like a genuinely nice guy (thought he was a douche having never met him before). Nothing went right for me there.. got caught 3bet bluffing, missed all flops that I defended from the BB with except for one. I called to make a 3way pot w Q9 from the BB and the board ran out K98Q5r. I got owned by K9 so I lost a big chunk there. Finally I got it in on the BU with AJ and a 35k stack at 1/2000 (300) vs MP open from the most active player who called off with KQ and flopped a K. GG

All in all awesome experience I got to play with some heroes and had a lot of fun towards the end of day 1. Got to play with Bryn Kenney who seems like a very cool chill guy. I think I played well and executed the strategy I came in with. Tried to play small ball and pot control where possible and not push thin edges against good players. Structure allows for a more patient approach and there is no need to force the action especially on Day 1. If I managed to make a couple of more hands things could have been different but you gotta play the cards you are dealt and I think I did as much as I could. Now I plan to do a lot of MTT training and work really hard on my game during WCOOP and hopefully qualify for one of the next EPTs and get to mix it up again. I have an interesting hand from Day 1 that I will post here next.

Cheers!

Curious hand from Day1 of the €5300 EPT Barcelona ME...

blinds are 300/600 (75 ante)
Hero is MP2 and starts the hand with about 70k

Folds to me and I raise 7♣:6♣: from MP2 to 1400
HJ (LAG strong reg has 3bet a ton since joining table and played very solid has about 80k) 3bets to 3500
BU (loose and a little spewy high stakes reg has about 40k) cold calls 3500
BB (fish ~35k) cold calls 3500
Hero calls 2100

Flop: (pot 14,975) 7♦:3♦:5♣:

BB donks 4500
Hero call 4500
HJ calls 4500
BU calls 4500

WTF...

Turn: (pot 32,975) T♣:

BB checks
Hero checks
HJ checks
BU bets AI ~32k

BB mumbles to self and folds rather quick
Hero hates life eventually folding
HJ folds

BU wins pot

I played this pretty poorly... upon thinking about the hand later I have a perfect opportunity on the turn to take the initiative and make a bet as I do have all the sets in my range. The HJ never has this board crushed nor the BU and the BB has pretty much capped himself at 99 there when checking the turn (he is not the type to check/shove there with a big hand/draw). So I should just be bet/calling off turn vs BU & BB. Howver, when faced with an AI from the BU for a pot size bet I can't see myself calling off with the big stack reg behind me in the HJ.

BU range pre should be something like KQs, ATs, AJs, AQ, 99-JJ and I am very inclined to think that he probably jams flop with 2 overs + FD so I honestly have no idea what he has here.. he claimed to have turned a monster so I guess he has TT or ATdd there but I just don't know if I believe him.. very weird hand any feedback on the turn spot is appreciated as I don't think I would do anything different pre or on the flop (could 4bet pre but probably not ideal here)

Cheers