I won another one. I’m still pretty shocked, but I guess sometimes we run good. Never thought I’d win the first one, and I sure didn’t think I’d win a second. So that must mean I’ll win a third?
I’ll have a longer write-up for you all soon. Right now I’m focusing on getting ready for the Main Event, which I start on Sunday. Best of luck to all who are playing.
Hey Poker Fans,
I’m back in Vegas for another round of World Series of Poker. In fact, my first event is the title defense in the $1,500 Limit Hold ‘Em. During the final table in 2010, I vowed not to complain about anything poker for a year if I went on to win the tournament. I’ve tried my best to keep that promise, but once I bust from this next one, I’m free to gripe again!
If you’re interested in blow-by-blow updates of my WSOP, follow me on Twitter @Matt_Matros
Welcome, all of you who found this blog through my piece in the Washington Post! A CNN producer read the article and decided to film an interview with me. The segment should air tonight (I’ll update when I know the exact time–watch twitter for details). You never know how these things will get edited, but I tried my best to defend online poker.
Now I’m off to play Day Two of the Borgata Spring Poker Open main event. I’ll try to update throughout the day. Wish me luck!
Update: The segment is not going to air tonight. It seems some breaking news took precedence. Meanwhile, at dinner break I have 333,600. Average stack is 228K. 59 players are left, and 45 are getting paid. Don’t know how late we’re playing tonight.
Another poker trip is about to come to a close. Sadly, I went 0-for-5 in tournaments for the week; 0-for-9 if you count the four online events I played Sunday. These things happen. I hadn’t planned on playing the main event out here unless I had a really good trip, poker-wise. And though I feel I’m playing well (I was essentially a coin flip away from winning my shootout table yesterday), I am going to stick with the plan and pass on the main. My decision not to play seems to be downright shocking to everyone I tell it to. I don’t really see why. We all agree that the players are better than they’ve ever been, that ten thousand dollars is a lot of money, that the last major tournament held in L.A. (the NAPT last year) had an extremely tough field, and that the number of entrants is down in this year’s LAPC. All of which, to me, adds up to the main event not being the greatest investment. Some have countered that historically the LAPC has always had an amazing field. I say, if I could buy-in to the 2006 LAPC main event tomorrow, I would. Times have changed. After I finish making these arguments, my friends tell me they’ll buy pieces of me so that I can play for cheaper. I appreciate their confidence, but I haven’t mentally prepared to play a big tournament this weekend, and there are plenty of great events coming up on the east coast. I’ll stick to those. My next one is the WSOP-C at Caesars Atlantic City, probably followed by the Foxwoods Poker Classic and NAPT Mohegan.
Good luck to all my friends playing the main. LA…it’s been real.
I managed to blow through five FTOPS entries in time to play the LAPC Ironman event. Somehow I didn’t think they really meant it when they said, “there are no scheduled breaks.” I guess what threw me off is that they also said, “3 Meals included scheduled at 10pm, 6am and 2pm.” In my silly head, a meal necessitated leaving the table. Not so, I found out.
I ran really good in my Ironman debut for the first four or five hours. I was eventually done in mostly by cold decks, although I did have one opportunity to go with my read and possibly bluff my way into an additional pot, but I cravenly went for the “standard” play instead. The standard play failed. Still, I’m pretty happy with how I played, and my bustout happened because a bad player caught a lucky turn card against my two kings, and not because I did anything crazy (as I sometimes do). It was an interesting eight hours for me, and I definitely think my poker endurance (and there is such a thing, I assure you) has been strengthened.
In an hour I’m playing the $2500 six-max NLHE event. I might finally get to play something with more than 100 runners!
Well I’m here at the LAPC, though at least for now my wallet wishes I’d missed the flight. I played the PLO rebuys today. In one of the first hands post-rebuy, a very loose raiser opened from the hijack and a very loose caller called. With 75 blinds on the button, I looked down at KK93 and quickly decided that my opponents’ ranges were so loose that I should be three-betting with any kings. I three-bet, the raiser called, the caller folded. The flop came 983 with two hearts and the raiser led out for a near-pot bet. I shoved in and he called with T985. His hand held, and that was that. In hindsight, I think even against the loose ranges of my opponents, and even in position, I should just flat with my naked KK (I had no flush draws even). It’s a pretty bad hand. As played preflop, I think I like my shove on the flop. My top-and-bottom two pair with an overpair redraw is priced in or ahead of a decent chunk of his range, and there are probably even some hands he would incorrectly fold against my shove. Oh well.
I played some 60-120 Limit Hold ‘Em cash games after that. Since I don’t like to talk about bad beats, there isn’t much to say. I’ll summarize: I took more crazy beats in a short span than I ever have, and I’m thrilled I only lost 30 bets.
I’m taking a personal day on Saturday, and then I’m going to start out Sunday playing online. If I bust quick enough I’ll try to play this ironman (no breaks except for three meals) thing, but my east coast body is pretty worn out after one day out here, so I’ll have to really feel up for it if I’m to attempt to be Iron.
In case you missed the updates, I had a roller coaster Borgata Winter Open main event. My starting stack of 30,000 fell to 5,000 on Day One. At least 10k of that was lost when I tried to bluff a guy off of aces full (shockingly, it didn’t work). I entered Day Two with 7,600–only 19 blinds–but I managed to run that all the way up to 75k before getting a bunch in with 58% equity and losing, running into AA with AK for another chunk, and then losing the rest in a sort of strange spot with 77 against 99 (I squeezed against a likely steal opener and a caller; the raiser folded, the caller shoved, and I decided to play getting 8-5 on my money).
That’s all done now.
On to the Los Angeles Poker Classic! My first event will be the Pot Limit Omaha with rebuys on Friday. There should be a ton of action in that one. Hope to see some of my fellow east coast sickos out there.
As promised I played the Borgata’s 2K No Limit Hold ‘Em event today, but good times were not had by all, and especially not by me. I couldn’t have asked for a much better table draw. I got only one internet player and I had position on him. But it was the kind of table where you needed to showdown a hand to win a pot, and I didn’t get dealt any hands. All in all a great spot, but nothing comes of the investment this time. Oh well.
Tomorrow is the 1k six-handed event. I busted in eight hours today. The equivalent bustout in tomorrow’s tournament would be, oh, an hour and a half? I’ll try to last slightly longer.
In case anyone in the New York area is looking for something cool and worthwhile to do this weekend, you can join me and John Starks playing poker for charity!
$200 donation for a chance to win a $10,000 WSOP seat.
My first World Series of Poker event was the main event in 2004, which I played immediately after stepping off the plane having come directly from my graduate school commencement ceremonies. I didn’t cash in that tournament, but I cashed at least once in every WSOP from 2005 to 2009, with 14 cashes overall in that time period over 56 events. I made two final tables, but no really big scores. Still, I maintained a 97% ROI for those 56 tournaments and had no complaints about those results, save one. I wanted the bracelet.
I started my 2010 WSOP with a quick bustout in a NLHE event, followed by a long run in a PLHE event. On Friday June 4, I played another NLHE event that started at noon, and gathered a bunch of chips quickly. I then decided to four-bet all-in with 55 on a flop of 664, because I thought my opponent was three-betting light. He thought for a few seconds before calling off the rest of his chips with two queens. Soon afterwards I was out, and I realized I still had time to enter the $1,500 Limit Hold ’Em, albeit an hour late.
I didn’t make many hands on Day One, but I loved the value of the event. There was a guy at my first table who open-limped from early position with 43o, and another guy who didn’t know you were allowed to raise bets in Limit Hold ’Em. (He apparently thought the big bet was the most money you could put in on any street.) Clearly this was a good tournament to enter, but I still found myself with only eight blinds at the end of Day One.
I started Day Two by defending my blind with J9o, check-calling a bet on the A93 flop, and then check-folding to a bet when a queen hit on the turn. I’m not really in the business of folding pairs in Limit Hold ’Em, but I felt strongly enough that I was behind that I chose to lay the hand down and solider on with five blinds in my stack. I’ll never find out if my read was right on that hand, but I doubled up on the next hand when I reraised from the small blind against the button, and flopped top pair. From that point forward I roller coastered up-and-down the rest of the day, making runner-runner full houses, flopping the nuts and losing, making a set against a pair of aces, making a full house blind-on-blind and losing. I ended the day with 272,000 against an average chip stack of 216,000. There were 13 people left.
I ran really bad to start Day Three. I put in five bets preflop with JJ against AJ and 88, and had to fold on the ace-high flop. I got rivered when my QQ couldn’t beat A3, after I’d raised the turn and my opponent took the heat with just a three on board. I entered the final table in eighth place out of nine. My comeback started when Mark Burford had AK on an ace-high board and I made aces up on him. Mark busted shortly thereafter, but I increased my chip count fairly steadily as we stayed eight-handed for a long time and some of the other players were jockeying for position, trying not to be the next one out. It wasn’t without its downturns. I lost three big pots to Limit Hold ’Em terror and longtime friend Terrence Chan: once when I barreled the whole way with king-high and he called me with ace-high, once when I lost a set-over-set hand, and once when my pocket sevens couldn’t fade the overcards against his AJ. But I won enough pots to make up for those, and I was in decent shape when we got four-handed.
The turning point came when I three-bet Georgios Kapalas from the button with A7o, and Terrence woke up with two aces in the big blind. I hit the miracle flop of 773 and we got a lot of bets in—20 percent of the chips in play in fact. I took over the chip lead for the first time after that, and held onto it all the way to heads-up, at which point I had a 2-1 advantage over Ahmad Abghari.
Ahmad plays a conservative style, so I liked the spot. But he won almost all the pots for the first 25 minutes, and I soon found myself at a 2-1 chip disadvantage. Of the entire tournament, I’m most proud of the way I played for the next 45 minutes. After playing 15 hours on Day One (between the NLHE and the Limit), and a long Day Two the day before, I was able to take a deep breath on Day Three even after conceding the lead when heads-up for a bracelet. I focused, played as well as I’m capable of playing, and slowly retook the lead. Ahmad eventually got down to six blinds. I opened with Q8o and he three-bet me. When the flop came Q44, I knew I had a chance to win the tournament on this hand. We got it all-in on the blank turn card, and Ahmad tabled AT. An eight fell on the river, improving my hand to queens and eights, and more importantly, giving me the victory.
It is hugely gratifying to get this victory after so many years of playing tournaments. I thank all of you readers for all the well-wishes I’ve received in the past few weeks. Some good articles have even been written about me and the tournament. Here’s one of them.
Now I’m moving on to other things, most immediately to watching the Algeria-U.S. match set to kick off in a few hours. Then it will be back to the WSOP grind, as I have a few more events to play before the Main in two weeks. No matter what happens the rest of the way, however, I will always remember the 2010 WSOP with a smile.
