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This summer, I decided to take the WSOP plunge and moved to Las Vegas for six weeks, with the intention of playing about ten events. Originally, I had planned on staying at the RIO Hotel by myself for the entirety of the tournament, but as the date drew nearer, I realized I was hardly alone in my desire to spend the summer enduring the mind-melting 117-degree heat chasing bracelets. In fact, several of my internet poker friends, with whom I have spent the last four years dissecting the game, similarly agreed that this was the year: we were all ready to take on the WSOP.
It wasn’t long before I was cancelling my suite at the RIO and packing my car for Henderson, Nevada, a sprawling planned-community only 15 minutes from the RIO, with coffee shops and grocery stores on every corner. Our rental house was perfectly situated, since it was simultaneously close enough to – and far enough away from – all the action.
My roommates were Pckt Bullets, Randers (who chopped the Paradise Masters event for 500k), B_O_K_E (#2 ranked 2006 internet tournament player on internettexasholdem.com), Elop2555 (a dominant player who just quit his high profile job as a mergers and acquisitions specialist to concentrate on poker), and late arrival Wake All In (a long time respected PokerRoom.com player/chiropractor). We had all been friends for several years, having spent countless hours online discussing hand histories, strategies, and poker theory, and also meeting up occasionally at different live events.
Nothing compares to living poker 24/7. Even when we weren’t playing in events, there would still be plenty of laptops going, and everyone would be online following the action. If someone got deep in a big tourney, we would all gravitate toward his game, and observe and discuss how he was playing his hands. It was an incredible learning experience, watching how someone would play his small pairs in early position, noticing how often he would bluff, and analyzing in which situations certain plays worked best. Elop2555 was up over 50k online in the first month, all from tournament play.
Translating a profitable online poker game into a profitable live poker game takes a minimal amount of tweaking, but those tweaks are invaluable. One thing we all realized early on was how much slower the pace of the tables was. Sometimes an orbit took as much as 15 minutes. Without the rapid-fire cacophony of stimulation we were used to in front of our computers, we needed to exercise a lot more patience than normal.
One mistake I would see people making in the smaller buy-in events ($1,500 to $2,500) was that they would imagine themselves very short-stacked when they sat down and would play accordingly. This is the wrong approach. Blinds would start at 25-25, giving players an M of 30 for the first hour with a stack of $1,500. Experience has taught me that this is a good time to try and see some hands, play some flops, and start figuring out how people play their hands on your table. You need to learn who the donkeys are – and cheaply – in order to take full advantage of this information later on.
The third event at this year’s WSOP had highly-ranked internet star RIZEN at the final table, and he cashed in third place. RIZEN had the online world buzzing. We couldn’t have been happier seeing him do so well. Suddenly winning a WSOP event was very real.
B_O_K_E was the first to cash in a WSOP event. He cashed in 68th place in event #5, the $2,500 NL Hold’em Short-handed. It was very gratifying for our house, because at this point we were all about 0-3. Although our spirits were still high, having someone close to us finally under the bubble gave us all a shot of renewed confidence, causing a domino effect that reverberated throughout the rest of the tournament. Randers knocked through the barrier in event #9, a $5000 NL Hold’em event where he busted 51st. He continued this with a 37th in event # 17, a $1,000 NL Hold’em tourney. Elop2555 then reset the bar with a 10th place in event # 22, $2000 NL Hold’em.
I busted 17 before the money in that event (after being equal-stack with Elop2555 at the time of my demise) and decided that I shouldn’t worry so much about chip accumulation at the bubble time (as I do online), but should instead concentrate on staying alive and making the money. First of all, there is a big difference for my bankroll in bubbling a $150 event online versus a $2,000 event live. Secondly, as I watched Elop2555 get in the money and start increasing his stack, I realized just how lousy some players actually were, and how many golden opportunities remained for a short stack to chip up.
Both events #23 and #24 were won by internet players whom I’ve had the pleasure of playing with repeatedly. They are both very deserving, dominant players. If we didn’t have a fire lit under our asses to win an event before, we sure did now! Internet players, without a doubt, could hold their own at the WSOP.
Event #27, a $1,500 NL Hold’em tourney, was the event in which I finally got my feet wet. It was déjà vu for me as I neared the bubble on Day One, nursing a short stack. I saw that B_O_K_E was still in the tourney (as well as numerous other online pros, notably BodogAri, Colson10, and ImSoLucky) and I rededicated myself to surviving to the money, at all costs. Before long, the bubble broke, I found my spot, and was able to triple up with J-J versus 8-8 and K-Q. From that point on, I tried to play small pots and steadily accumulate chips as people went broke around me. My strategy worked, and I survived well into the final table, where I busted fourth for $145,100.
As I am writing this, Wake All In, who arrived in Las Vegas just in time for my final table, has himself final-tabled in his first WSOP event of 2006, the $2,000 NL, event #31 (he is accompanied there by two other prominent internet stars, Colson10 and Micon), while Randers is in the top ten in chips going into the second day of the Razz event. Internet player Premier took second in event #29, $2500 Pot Limit Hold’em. Everywhere I look, internet players are elevating themselves to the top of the fields.
In internet terms, I’ve found the competition at these events is slightly better than the fields found in the Sunday major tournaments held online at the various sites. The $100 rebuy on Stars has a much tougher field than the WSOP. There will be variance in any game, but it seems evident to me that internet players have shown that they can compete and win at the highest levels.
Playing online has afforded me many great opportunities (including starting a business with poker money: coolasunblock.com). My fiancé and I have been able to travel, put money down for a house, and generally enjoy a higher standard of living because of online poker. Online forums such as Pocketfives.com foster a sense of community for online players. Hopefully, online poker will enjoy a sustained lifespan, and I can continue doing what I love to do in the privacy of my own home. If the fascist legislation against online poker does, indeed, go through, watch out poker world… you are going to see some new faces pretty quickly. And boy, they can play.
I would also like to remind everyone to write to their Congressmen and Senators, asking them to strike down the Goodlatte Bill. This is our livelihood, people, so we’ve got to do everything we can to keep it safe.
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