WBCOOP Final Table, SCOOP Here I come…
I guess it wouldn’t be right to win a seat at a $215 PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) Event VIA Final Tabling a PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP) event without coming here and bloggin about it. (Man, that was a mouthful) So here it goes…
1st of all I have give props to gavin555 for having the WBCOOP banner on his blog otherwise I never would have known to enter into this thing. So thanks bro! I saw this on his blog and then went through the somewhat painless process of registering for the Tournament Series. It consists of 4 or 5 events with tickets ranging from $11 to $1090 to the SCOOP events coming up later in the spring. It’s an extremely top heavy payout structure where you can get like $33 for finishing in the last 4 tables, but to win a bigger ticket than that, you need to Final Table the bitch. And what a bitch it is.
A wierd thing about this tournament series is the times they’re being played. The 1st couple started right at 5PM (which is when I get off from work) so that could create a bit of a problem.
I had my strategy set up in advance for these early events. On the day of the 1st (NLHE) event, I figured if I went home without trying to get some chips 1st, I’d be crippled and have no stack, so my plan was to go allin on my 1st playable hand and hope to double up. This way, when I got home, with a little luck, I’d have something left to play with. So wouldn’t you know it, the 1st hand I get dealt 88 in middle position. It get’s limped by a couple of players before it gets to me. I shove and get called by someone with KQo, (it is a freeroll afterall). Anywho, I lose the flip and we’re onto to Day 2, Event 2.
This event is Pot Limit Omaha (PLO), a game I’ve never played beyond a few cash hands. Same start time as the day before, so same stategy applies. I had nothing for the 1st 2 or three hands, but then wake up to a handful of suited connectors in the BB. It got limped and limped and limped again before it got to me and I raise the pot. Everyone folds to the BTN who ends up re-raising the pot which is enough for me to go all in to double up or bust and go home. I end up making a flush to more than double up and so I get to go home and see how many chips I have left to play with.
To my surprise, I get home about 50 minutes later and I still have over $3000 in chips (Starting stack was $2000), so this is what I had hoped for. I suck at PLO, but I figured what the hell, let’s see if I can get lucky enough to get an $11 ticket out of this thing.
Well one thing led to another and I’ll keep this short just by saying I pretty much got slapped in the face with the cards for much of the game and when I needed to make a hand I did. I cruised passed the $11 ticket and had a chance to move up to the $33 ticket. The nice thing about PLO is, the pots can get huge, especially when they’re multi-way. People love to limp and see cheap flops. The good luck, mixed with a little bit of well timed aggression and bluffing (yeah bluffing in a freeroll, lol) led me to a decent stack at the final two tables. I ended up sweating it out and more or less folding to the final table waiting for 3 or 4 ministacks to bust out before me. I ended up taking 8th getting it in about as good as you can aipf with AAKQ double suited, but the hand missed and who cares, ’cause I walked away with a $215 ticket to the SCOOP coming up in a few months. WooooHoooo!!
Oh, I almost forgot to mention, the Main Event of WBCOOP is this Sunday (WIth a $3k ticket to the winner) but I probably won’t be playing in it as it’s my birthday. I don’t think I could expect a better outcome anyways as there will be many more people in that one and again a bigtime topheavy payout structure.
Anyways, stay tuned & hopefully I’ll have something to blog about after the SCOOP event. 
January 29th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
Nice Job, BigL. The structure wasn’t too bad and you might have been able to get home without having to shove early from work and still have something to work with. But things worked out!