It’s the run-up to a new poker year, with the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic just around the corner at the beginning of March, and my poker purse is looking a little strained. I’ve already had inquiries from two friends about WSOP plans and frankly, I’m not sure it’s going to happen this year unless I pick up the pace a bit. The droughts feel even droughtier when you’re not playing as often.
Portland Meadows Big Game Series Big O, January 10, 2025
So I did play a bit more live this month, all at Portland Meadows because of their Mixed Game Series. I made three of the games on two days, busting way early in the Big O (I was not re-buying) on Friday night.
Portland Meadows Big Game Series Big Bet Mix Dealers Choice, January 11, 2025
The Big Bet Mix Dealers Choice game went better but I barely made the end of registration (still an improvement on the Big O). I hung around the club to wait for the PLO Big Bounty tournament in the evening, and once again failed to make the end of reg. All in all, a disappointing showing.
Portland Meadows Big Game Series PLO Big Bounty, January 11, 2025
I’d opened the month with a couple of Beaverton Quarantine online games (and I played another after getting home so early after the Big O tournament). I picked up a few bounties, but didn’t even make the entry fee back for one of them. Four games, four losses, with a slight offset from the two bounty games.
Played six tournaments with the Chainsaw Poker group online, Omaha Hi-Lo for one, a PLOHi-Lo, and four HORSE tournaments. Min-cashes in the PLO and one HORSE.
Wrapped up the month with another excursion (well, a couple) to Meadows. They had a Friday night satellite to their $500 entry Big Stack Freezeout tournament, and I took a shot. $80 (including door fee) seemed like a great bargain, even though I haven’t been playing a lot of No-Limit Hold’em.
I had a good start with a player in middle position making a raise when I was on the button with aces. I 3-bet him and he went all in with kings. The board rollout quads for me. I never got near my target stack for a satellite, but it was a standard satellite, not a Milestone, so I just had to stick it out.
Portland Meadows Big Stack Satellite, January 23, 2025
My stack limped along at around 10bb most of the last half of the tournament, then after about 4 hours we were suddenly down to the final table of 9, with one person not getting anything. I didn’t catch exactly what was happening, but I heard that the player in seat 9 had somehow made it to the final without realizing they were playing for a seat into the next day’s tournament. I was in seat 3 in the small blind on the first hand, and when there were several limps ahead of me, I just folded. The flop was 973, seat 9 blasted off when it got to him, and he was called by the big blind. Heads-up, seat 9 had top-top (A9) but BB showed 73 and the race for seats was over just like that.
Portland Meadows Big Stack Freezeout, January 24, 2025
Sadly, it was all for nought (apart from the $75 cash payout that went with the satellite seat that almost covered by entry and door fee). Carl Oman ate my lunch several times during the day and I busted in round 8. Though I was glad that I made it past round 4 or 5, I was still rather disappointed that registration was still open when I was knocked out. The final prize pool ended up being an even $100K.
Portland Meadows Big Stack Freezeout, January 24, 2025. Bust-out shot.
Coming up for me this month, a couple of live home games (finally pulling my chips out of the garage to lend them to a friend); the Chainsaw Series of Poker, a series of online non-NLHE tournaments; Final Table has a special $20K GTD tournament on the 21st; then on the 23rd I need to make a choice between the Final Table Deepstack or a Portland Meadows Big O Special. Then it’s whatever I can get to for Chinook Winds the week after that.
It’s been a looooong time since I’ve cashed in one of these, and even longer since I had a significant cash in one, which is bad, because of the last 13 events I’ve played at Final Table, 10 of them have been their monthly First Friday $20K (the others were Friday night $10Ks and one special $40K).
I have to go back before the pandemic to May 2018 to an ICM deal to find something other than a min-cash in any of the $20Ks. Didn’t even make it that far in this one, where I was doing well until I got trapped by a guy who looked like an evil Kevmath who got a back-door 2 pair with five-deuce from the big blind to beat my ace-jack top pair in what started out as a raised multiway pot. All downhill from there. 134th out of 207.
Beaverton Quarantine
Five sessions of this home game on the PokerStars Lite platform. All NLHE, with two bounty games. Picked up a bounty but didn’t cash in the first one, bubbled the fourth, then made 2nd of 13 entries in the last one. Not enough to be in the black for this venue, though.
Puffmammy Home Game
The old gang got together for only the sixth time since the pandemic began (with the promise of more soon). I got off to a great start, stacking the same player twice but then ending up as the bubble after his third bullet pulled out aces versus my ace-king, taking a huge chunk out of my stack. I haven’t had a profit in this game since March 2020.
Portland Meadows Wild West Series Omaha Showdown
Probably should have taken the omens on this one seriously. I didn’t pay close enough attention to my Tri-Met Trip Planner and walked to Division instead of Belmont after work, which ended up with me getting to the 6pm game 20 minutes later than I’d planned.The Showdown was a 5-Card Omaha game, alternating between Hi and Hi-Lo. I lasted less than an orbit, flopping top two pair and turning a full house (tens full of queens) but running into queens full of tens. Congrats to Jen Barnard for the win. And to Meadows for their Saturday Pots o’ Gold tournament with nearly $93K in the prize pool for a $400 buy-in!
Chainsaw Poker
The saving grace for the month for me was Chainsaw Poker. Nine tournaments (3 x 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo, 2 x PLO Hi-Lo, 1 x PLO Hi-Lo Bounty, 2 x Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, 1 x 8-Game Mix); 3-way chop in PLO Hi-Lo, wins in Omaha Hi-Lo and 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo.
My last game of the month was one of the Stud Hi-Lo games. It hit 18 entries and by the time we were down to 9, I had a third of the chips in play and a 2:1 lead over the next largest stack. Nobody really got close for the rest of the final table, and heads-up started with me ahead about 8:1.The structures are pretty turbo, there were fewer than 20 big bets in play by that point, and the whole tournament only ran about 90 minutes.
Really loving the chance to play a variety of games in small fields. And that my record here for this month makes up for everything else and puts me in the black the first time in 2024.
Coming Up
Not absolutely sure what’s I’m doing this month, there’s a lot of family stuff coming up. But starting on the 13th, Meadows is running Friday night satellites to their $1K Main Eventon October 12th, and there’s the Chinook Winds Fall Coast Poker Classic coming up September 21st to 29th. I might make the beginning or ending weekend, but no way I can take another week off for poker this year and definitely not this month.
May turned out to be the calm before the storm of the WSOP for me. I only played nine tournaments the whole month, with most of those being in the virtual Beaverton Quarantine home game (four cashes, in NLHE and NLHE Bounty) for a meagre 126% ROI. The loss (bigger) came from the three events I entered at the Portland Meadows Poker Classic, though I did manage to pick up one min-bounty in Event #6 PLO Assassins PKO Bounty (the entire prize pool was bounties!)
That leaves either well-rested or unprepared for next weekend’s trip to Las Vegas, where the bracelet events on my list are Event #27 Big O, Event #32 Seven-Card Stud, and Event #35 HORSE (the only bracelet event I’ve ever cashed in). Plus—depending on how things go—some of the Milestone Satellites and the Monday HORSE Deepstack. Maybe something on WSOP.com if I can figure out how screwed up my account is after six years of inactivity.
Chinook Winds Debuts Summer Series
Earlier, as I as getting ready to publish this, Chinook Winds dropped the schedule for their first Summer Classic Poker Tournament, featuring a $200K GTD Main Event and a mid-week TORSE event (with Limit Triple Draw 2-7 replacing Limit Hold’em in the rotation).
Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard
Key to the Leaderboard
Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
While everyone was watching Adam Nattress in Event #4 (see below), Mollala’s Smith snuck through nearly 3,600 other players to grab an exceptionally good first Hendon Mob cash.
Word went out on Day 2 that Adam was in the top 10% of the players at the end of Day 1. Then he powered his way to a not-insignificant lead by the end of Day 2. But the headline on the day-end wrap-up mentioned Jamie Kerstetter and “Miami” John Cernuto (and had pictures of both of them) but no Nattress. I knew Adam was too nice a guy to make anything out of it, but Karen-ed the heck out of it.
The Day 3 opening report had a pic of Adam but his name was initially missing from the headline. It was corrected relatively soon. Squeaky wheels, folks! You only get into these positions very rarely; make sure you get the credit you deserve!
Another month of nothing good to report! 14 shots at the Ignition Casino NLHE Jackpot Sit-and-Go, just 3 cashes and none of them any higher payout than 2x buy-in. I got a couple of tickets from America’s Cardroom for satellites and a ticket from Ignition for their $2500 GTD Freeroll and nothing came of those.
Just a min-cash in one of three Beaverton Quarantine home game bounty tournaments (and a bare bounty in another), plus three bricks in non-bounty tournaments. Thankfully, those aren’t expensive.
After a five-month hiatus, I went back to the Final Table $20K GTD NLHE First Friday tournament, where I only made it though half the field, but had a very nice interaction about the blog with Brian Barker, who won a quarter-million in a World Poker Tour tournament last fall (as well as a bunch of other stuff). It was a fun evening, but too short.
Capped off the month trying to catch the lightning in a bottle at the Portland Meadows Big Bet Mix 6-Max. I’d taken second somehow last fall but only made it to 25th this time, doing quite well sitting with the likes of Jeremy Harkin and Joe Brandenburg, then less well sitting with my nemesis Butcher.
They modified the structure to add another level before break, at 61K I’m about 10K behind my pace on the last game, but still about 1.5 average. pic.twitter.com/0fJKtnSI3x
Next week is the Portland Meadows Poker Classic, of which I’m planning to play the Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday events. (Wheel of Chaos, baby!) Not sure what the rest of May holds, but I’m just over a month out from my trip to the World Series of Poker.
Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard
Key to the Leaderboard
Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
This started off months ago as the wrap-up of my uneventful and mercifully brief trip to this year’s World Series of Poker, where I made attempts on two bracelet events (Event #7 Limit Hold’em and Event #9 Seven-Card Stud), played next to a very annoying person in an Aria $50K GTD HORSE tournament, ran a pair of aces aground in a Wynn $50K GTD NLHE Survivor that would have saved my trip, and at the Orleans $50K GTD NLHE before I headed home.
But I got bored writing about it and bored thinking about people not reading it even if I finished, so I put it off until the next month, and the next month, and by September I wasn’t sure I’d ever write another post here (it’s happened before, I have a personal blog on politics, programming, books, and games that’s gone years without updates).
That’s all water under the bridge, though. I barely remember the details.
What I do remember is, I have a database of every single cash game and tournament I’ve played since Black Friday in 2011. So here are a few numbers.
Overall Stats
Nearly 500 entries in the database with only 19 cash games. 149 profits in tournaments (31.5%), but that looks better than it actually is, for reasons I’ll get to in a minute. 4% ROI overall, 9% in tournaments. I wasn’t able to make either of the Chinook Winds series this year or any of the Wildhorse events.
Ignition Casino
Most of my play this year was online on Ignition, with 385 tournaments and 2 cash games. Most of that was in the $2 Jackpot Sit-n-Gos, 3-player turbo tournaments where the payout for first place is $4 or—in a very small percentage of the games—up to $2,400. I have never seen a payout larger than the 5x multiplier for $10. I won 117 of 320, which would have been a loss of $172 except for a number of $10 payouts, so a 4% ROI.
I played a number of Irish Poker Open qualifiers and satellites in the early part of the year, then mostly stuck to Fixed-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, POLO, and PLO8 tournaments where I had a little success early on but lost money overall.
Home Games
My original home game group only got together once during the year (though I did just get an invite to the first game of 2024!) and even though I took 3rd, since I did a rebuy I lost $20. Do not rebuy in single-table tournaments inless you’re just there for the company.
The other home game is only at home for me. One of the players from the original game introduced me during the pandemic to a group that almost always meets for some $20/$25 home games using the Home Game feature of the PokerStars play money client. There’s an accompanying Zoom call, though I’m not usually on it since I just play from the living room while my wife and I are watching TV. Often, there are two—sometimes three—games during the night, usually starting out with NLHE, then a Bounty game of some sort: NLHE or PLO8. Just a couple of tables at most. Played 44 of those over the course of the year and cashed in 15 for a 25% ROI.
America’s Card Room
I had a little bit of money left on ACR at the beginning of the year, but I’d forgotten about it. Remembered it mid-year and that ACR had a better selection of non-NLHE tournaments than Ignition, so I played for a bit during the summer until I ran down my account (or did I? I’d better check). Took 4/55 in a Stud/8 tournament on my second outing and a 2/155 in a Big O Progressive Knockout, plus a bunch of min-cashes in games where I’d done a rebuy (this is called a loss), so -22% ROI over the course of 23 tournaments and 14 low-stakes Big O and Stud 8 cash games.
Portland Area
This is The Game, Final Table, and Last Frontier (in La Center). The year kicked off great at Last Frontier, where my first poker of 2023 was a three-way chop in a $10K GTD Limit Hold’em tournament. Then I thought I’d take that run and apply it at The Game’s Big O tournament where I was the first player out (after losing 25bb in NLHE cash). Back to Last Frontier for an early out in a $25K GTD NLHE tournament, and in October, Brad Press convinced me to drive up for the $8/$16 Limit Omaha 8 cash games. Waited around for those for a while, got in, and blasted away a couple hundred pretty fast.
At Final Table, I played several of the $20K GTD NLHE First Friday tournaments, never getting into the money (or closer than about 35% of the field) but there’s something about the jumps in the top of their payout structures that’s been bugging me since I noticed it last December.
A jump of $290 from 8th to 7th. Jump of $285 from 7th to 6th. Jump of $290 from 6th to 5th. $285 again from 5th to 4th. $580 jump from 4th to 3rd. 100% increase of $2880 from 3rd to 2nd. Only $2,045 increase from 2nd to 1st. Weird.
ROI for all of that: 0%. $8 profit on $2,595 costs, with everything zeroed out only by the January score at Last Frontier!
Vegas
The trip to the World Series of Poker this year was a complete bust, poker-wise. I only had one weekend, spent it at Ellis Island with my co-worker Ben, and got in a quick meet-up with Kevmath while I was waiting for Brad Press to get through to the registration desk.
My targets were two of the smallest $1500 buy-in bracelet events of the Series: #7 Limit Hold’em and #9 7-Card Stud. Didn’t make it even close to Day 2 of either one. Brad and I headed over to Aria on my third day to play the $50K GTD HORSE tournament there. I made it halfway through and suffered through a pro sitting next to me who felt entitled to reach his pinkie under my arm to flick my ante chip in when he through I was going to be too slow getting it in for the next hand. Brad did well, though, coming in 5th, and his buddy Bobby got first. I busted out and late-regged a Wynn NLHE Survivor tournament with a $5K payout that would have completely saved the trip, doubled up almost immediately, then let my aces get cracked on a paired board by Q9. My last day, it was the Orleans for a long slog in their $50K NLHE tournament where I beat two-thirds of the field but went home empty-handed.
Portland Meadows
When I was playing more often, I spent more time at Final Table than Portland Meadows, because I tried to avoid weekend games, and the bigger games at Meadows were on Saturday, while the major weekly tournaments at FT have always been on Friday night, which didn’t impact our home life as much. On the other hand, Meadows runs more non-NLHE tournaments, so I found myself drawn over there several times this year, starting with their Biggest of Os Big O tournament in February (brick), then their HEROS tournament in April (also brick). A rebuy in a little PLO tournament in August gort me halfway through the field.
Then, on a whim, I went out for a Saturday night NLHE Freezeout in September and a two-way chop. Then, the next month at the Big Bet Mix I nabbed 2nd out of the field of 55.
Back in December for the weekend of the Oregon State Championship, I busted from the NLHE day before the end of registration, but got through the 111-entry field for the Big O championship to the foinal table with the largest stack, staying that way up to the point I was heads-up with the eventual winner. Another straight -out 2nd place, no deal, no chop.
So, overall, it’s been a profitable year. More profitable if I hadn’t gone down to Vegas, but that’s probably not going to stop me from doing it again in 2024.
Enough about me! Let the wild rumpus begin!
Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard: End-of-Year 2023
The last Leaderboard was almost exactly a year ago. I didn’t think I was going to run it again, but after talking to people about this here blog at the Big O tournament earlier in the month, I thought I’d check to see if the script I wrote six or seven years ago would still do the job, even though it would need to deal with a lot more data (a year’s worth of results rather than a month) and I couldn’t be sure the formats of the Hendon Mob state/province leaderboards hadn’t changed. But everything worked!
My previous methodology was to report on every player with a cash of more than $10,000 in the reporting period, but as you can guess, with a period 12 times as long (there are nearly 250 new players on the lisrt by the old measure); I’d never get a year-long Leaderboard done because, let’s face it, nobody’s paying me to do this and I’m a lazy, semi-retired poker player. So this edition is going to be sort of seat-of-the-pants*, and I’m going to look for highlights. Apologies if you should be on here for your accomplishments last year and I didn’t include you!
* After finishing this sucker off, this is the methodology:
Only new or updated players with $120K of earnings reported on Hendon Mob over the past year.
Only events with payouts of $10K or more; many of these players have other cashes through the year under $10,000.
Only events with 400% ROI. This rules out a lot of cashes that are five or even six figures where the buy-in was substantial.
Presented in reverse order of their current standing on the Leaderboard, not by the amount won in 2023, although that’s a rough gauge.
Key to the Leaderboard
Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
Nahm hasn’t shown up on the Leaderboard before because he hasn’t had a five-figure cash since I started tracking British Columbia, but he racked up four cashes at the WSOP and one at the Venetian this summer, including the PLO bracelet.
Linde had a number of other deep-ish runs in big buy-in events that ran into six figures each, but they didn’t meet my arbitrary 400% ROI metric for reporting.
The running joke on thePoker In the Ears podcast and PokerStars Sunday Million and EPT livestreams is that it’s always #TheYearOfRomania, but I think that we can safely call 2023 #TheYearOfJordison. Coming off a win for the GPI Global Poker Awards Breakout Player early in March for a phenomenal run in 2022, Jordison and conspirator Jackie Burkhart put together the feel-good event of the year, by sponsoring (initially) eight—and so far, thirteen—veterans to play in the WSOPSalute to Warriors tournament, with packages including buy-in and expenses. She’s been doing lots of podcast appearances the past several months, including Kara Scott’s Heart of Poker at the end of the month. I can’t keep up.
Nomination/selection process is live!!
Any additional donations received between now and mid June we will use to award last minute seats to veterans that are already in Vegas and/or split up any extra money between the vets for incidental expenses (taxi,food etc) https://t.co/77jP1ETFQj
Got my Poker Tracker 4 running again. I used to be good at this IT stuff. There was some sort of issue on my Mac, the database was hinky at first, then after I got that sorted out, none of the select menus would work, which made slicing and dicing the data extremely difficult. Finally managed to import a couple years’ worth of Ignition Casino tournaments, which is good, because my old go-to for showing off hands—ShareMyPair—is no more.
Beaverton Quarantine
This little group typically plays two or three $20 or $25 tournaments on Friday night via the PokerStars Home Games play money client and Zoom (though PokerStars now has a beta video conferencing feature). They tend to be one-and-a-half tables at most, with the first game (usually NLHE) being larger and a smaller number of players for the later game or games. I usually miss the first one, but try to jump into the others when I get the opportunity. I played a PLO8 bounty tournament as my first game of the month (out 7 of 8), and my last game was a straight PLO bounty, where I took 2nd place (of 8 entries) and a couple of bounties.
Ignition Casino 2-Seat GTD NLHE Irish Poker Open Satellite Qualifier
This was my last gasp effort at making it to the Irish Poker Open, which is going on right now (click on the EPT link above to watch it on YouTube). Didn’t manage to come close.
Last Frontier Casino $25K GTD NLHE
After some success at Last Frontier early in the year in LHE, I decided to try my hand there at NLHE and ran into a bit of a buzzsaw. Ran KK into AA just over an hour in and lost the equivalent of a starting stack. With the slower structure, I still had 40bb. Managed to get to the add-on break with 5K and got an extra 15K, then ran it up to 23K (57bb by then).
18500 at the end of the first level. My buddy BP takes better photos than I do—or maybe I’m just more photogenic. pic.twitter.com/aylGyDTITy
The player on my left had been grumbling about my play most of the tournament for the first two hours after I’d raised early and called an oversized re-raise with KJs. He had TT and lost a chunk of chips early on. Two hours in, I limped K4s from the HJ, he raised to 3.5bb and SB called. I called and the flop his KKJ. SB and I checked, he bet 5K into 7K and on the assumption that #BlockersAreReal, I shoved for about 30bb. Both of them folded, he said “KJ again?” and I told him “No, king-four.” He snorted, “Figures.”
Karma, as they say, is a bitch, and poker karma is a whole pack of bitches. I picked up KK on my very next hand and raised, as one does. BB—the guy I’d run my KK into when he had AA early on—makes the call. K24 flop. He check-calls my 3.5bb bet. 4 on the turn, he checks, I bet 8bb and he calls. A on the river, He checks, I bet 8bb again and he raised to18bb. I called very reluctantly, hoping he’d over-valued two pair maybe, and he shows K3s. I managed to last about 40 minutes after that.
Ignition Casino $500 GTD PLO8 Turbo
Just 34 hands. Out well before the money.
Ignition Casino $2 NLHE Jackpot Sit-n-Go
Only won one of these of the three I played (yes, I know, that’s the random distribution) and I missed the 5x multiplier.
Ignition Casino $3K GTD NLHE PKO Turbo
Twenty percent of the buy-in goes to the bounty pool in this tournament. I managed to take down a couple of bounties, made it to the money, but never really caught wind and was pretty short-stacked by the time we got to two tables. Went out 18th when I open-shoved 6bb with Qs9s and the blinds had Ac9h and AdJd (Mutant Jack!). Flopped an open-ended straight draw, but the board double-paired and I min-cashed.
Ignition Casino $35K GTD NLHE
I’d never played this nightly tournament before but enjoyed it briefly. Never managed to get any traction above the starting stack and went out with the Portland Nuts (QcTc) v AdQd, making two pair on the river against the rivered flush.
Ignition Casino $5K GTD NLHE Thousandaire Maker
I hadn’t played one of these for nine months, and I figured I’d take a couple shots. They pay approximately 7% of the fields flat $1K on an $82 buy-in. My aces got cracked on the 20th hand of the first one when I raised UTG, got three callers, and jammed on the flop, only to have J9 with a gut-shot draw call off more than half of his stack and hit. So, nowhere near the money on that one. Did a little better on the second go, but still never made it further than the middle the field.
Coming Up
No Irish Poker Open for me, no Wildhorse Spring Poker Round-Up. There’s a lot of action here in Portland with people gearing up for the summer poker series in Vegas. I’ve already taken a stab at one of Final Table‘s First Friday $20K GTD events (they ran a special Fifth Friday $20K at the end of March). They’re running a $50K GTD on April 15th, but I’m going to miss that due to family obligations. There is a $500 buy-in Freezeout there on April 23rd, but it’s up against Portland Meadows‘ HEROES tournament and I have a hard time passing up HORSE variants. Meadows is also running a NLHE/PLO mix game on the 13th that I’m going to try to make it to. And they’ve got a Progressive Knockout with a $400 buy-in on the 29th. Then Last Frontier is running another one of their $25K GTD tournaments on April 30. And that’s just the stuff I’m trying to fit into my retired from poker guy schedule.
I also need to make my reservations for the first weekend of the WSOP. Limit Hold’em and Seven-Card Stud await!
I didn’t play much poker to start off the fourth year of my poker retirement, but it was reasonably successful, probably because of that.
Last Frontier Casino $10K Guarantee Limit Hold’em
I was both intrigued and a little worried when I saw poker room manager Chris Canter post the notice for this one last month. Washington State’s poker room regulations only allowed limit for a number of years, and it was Last Frontier’s bread-and-butter, so I was expecting some serious LHE crushers to show up for this, but I went anyway.
Never played much of it myself, except in HORSE and other mixed game rotations, and it’s definitely not my strongest game in HORSE (like every other HORSE player, my strongest game is Razz).
I got off to a fast start, despite the presence at the table of some long-time players who were re-bonding after not seeing each other at the tables for a while. They included Kevin Erickson, who was the runner-up for an LHE bracelet at the 2021 WSOP. Fortunately, he was balanced to another table after a short while. I was leading the table for a time.
Three hours in and I was still above the pack—sometimes considerably so. In the fourth hour, my stack hit more than double the tournament average, though I’d dropped down to about one-and-a-half average after that. Ran into a former co-worker of my late brother-in-law, who I’d met at the tables in the past.
The stack managed to stay healthy as we approached the money with just three tables. As I noted on Twitter, the 12th-place prize was less than the buyin+entry.
When we consolidated to two tables, I ended up next to Korey Payne, who said hello, but I knocked him out dirty A7 > AK not long after the money bubble broke.
Also got to catch up a bit with a different Kory, one of the regulars from my Portland Players Club days, who’d won the $25K GTD NLHE at Last Frontier a couple of weeks before. He took over the chip lead at the final table as the guy who came to the final with a bu=ig stack managed to blast it away, first to me, then to Kory. We started whittling away at the shorter stacks. I picked off 6th with the Robbie Jade Lew hand (J4o) when I had over 300K on the 15K big blind and just had to call 10K for his all-in.
When we hit three players, Kory had the lead by a good bit, and the other player and I were swapping 2nd and 3rd. Then I pulled in a chunk of chips, and non-Kory proposed an even chop, which I was rather surprised Kory—with more than twice his stack and half again mine—agreed to. I agreed, naturally, and #3 and I went to the payout desk. Kory went into the field of cash players and did some consulting with a friend, coming back to tell me his friend had suggested he should have held out for an ICM deal. Personally, I think that would have been a better option, rather than readily agreeing to the even chop immediately, but I just ran the numbers through Icmizer, to show him the difference.
Beaverton Quarantine NLHE Bounty
For some reason, my long-time home game never went online during the worst of the pandemic (I first got the inkling it was going to be bad when one of the guys in the group who works in virology at OHSU backed out of a game we had scheduled in March 2020). But Kate, one of the folks I met through that group, invited me last year to a far-flung Friday night game that had gotten together via PokerStars Lite Home Games and Zoom. They typically play two or three $20-$25 games—usually NLHE or PLO8—get enough players for one or two tables, and Matt handles the money. All very friendly. I don’t usually get into the Zoom conference because of where I’m playing from, and I usually miss the first game, but this night I caught the Bounty tournament, busted just short of the money, and didn’t pick up a single bounty.
The Game $10K Guarantee Big O and 1/2 NLHE
I misremembered the start time of this tournament. I was running a little late, I thought, until I turned into the parking lot of The Game and it was almost empty. I should have turned around and skipped it. When I went in, there was a single cash table running and I learned I was two hours early. I thought I’d read for a couple hours, but the urge to play got the best of me and I grabbed one of the empty cash game seats. I hovered around my buy-in for an hour or so, then got it in bad with AK < KT on a KTx flop and the two pair held. Players on the button could call some games, as well, so there were some of the inevitable bomb pots, and 5-2-2, which is a double-board Big O game that’s popular with degenerates.
Speaking of which, the Big O tournament lasted less time than I waited for it to start (at least for me), because I kept insisting on risking things with just low draws. I could have just lit that money on fire (see below).
Beaverton Quarantine Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Bounty
The second game in the last BQ poker night for the month was somewhat successful, I took 2nd place (out of 6, plus a rebuy) and two half-bounties (split-pot knockouts).
Snowman Num-Num
For years, a piece of They Might Be Giants 20th anniversary swag was my go-to hoodie for playing poker. It featured a piece of art from their first EP: a cartoon snowman warming their mitts over a fire of burning money. It just somehow seemed appropriate.
Poker Mutant goes to the 2012 Pendleton Poker Round-Up Main Event.
I was wearing it the night I won a seat to the Pendleton Poker Round-Up Main Event at Players Club (and my wife had an unrelated heart attack the next morning). I was wearing it when I had my largest-ever cash, at Chinook Winds, placing 3rd out of a 462-entry field (how is that five years ago?).
But given tat TMBG has been around forever now, the 20th-anniversary hoodie is itself two decades long in the tooth, with the black faded and the screen printing cracked and the seam on the hood torn several inches. They hadn’t ever revived the design for a hoodie.
Until this winter, when they announced a red version. Which I promptly ordered two of. I didn’t need a daily-use poker hoodie any longer, but I do walk a couple miles to work and back, and I can always use a couple extras during the winter (I did get a very nice PokerStars hoodie when I was on the Poker In the Ears podcast a couple years ago).
The package arrived quickly and when I got home I opened it immediately, only to have that familiar sausage-squeezed-into-casing feeling when I slid the first of the new hoodies on. Had I put on (more) weight? Was XL the new XXL? No, the invoices and packaging said XXL, but the tag on the hoodie itself said XL.
So that seems like a big screw-up, probably on the part of the clothing/silkscreen contractor, and probably something that wasn’t particular to my order, which was confirmed when I contacted the seller to swap them out.
So, if you play against me anytime this month, it’s the old, ratty hoodie you’ll be seeing.
NOTE: I started this a month ago! And I’m just now finishing it up. Sorry for the delay, in the meantime I’ve qualified for the WSOP Super Seniors event, been to New York City for the anniversary of my marriage to Mrs. Poker Mutant, and Hawai’i to spend a couple days with my dad—things are just that busy! Happy Holidays!
The WSOP Main Event is over and done with, with al of the PNW participants out before the final tables. I have to admit that after including Mitchell Halverson and Jesse Lonis in the 2021 WSOP Main Event Trackerbecause WSOP has them as Oregon players, that I was disappointed to see they were listed on the Nevada and New York leaderboards at Hendon Mob, so they aren’t included in the combined PNW leaderboard.
Even without them, there’s a lot of territory to cover.
Let’s start with Kenn Pluard from Happy Valley, Oregon, who was 25th in the field of 1,441 at the Wynn Fall Classic $1.5M GTD NLHE. That, and a career-high cash at the Main Event (338th) bounce Pluard from #978 to #584.
Maxwell Young reappears on the Leaderboard with a 12th-place finish at the Venetian Deepstack Championship Poker Series II #35 $400K GTD NLHE UltimateStack. The tournament got 1,408 entries and pushed the prize pool to $1.35M. Calgary’s Phil Wright nabbed 4th in the same event, for a career-high score and a jump on the Leaderboard from #2508 to #505.
Bellevue’s Brian Orrico took 48th in the 5,404-entry tournament, going from #2725 to #1814 on the Leaderboard. The Seniors is typically one of the largest fields; previous years with only one entry day set records for the largest single-entry-day live poker tournaments. This year’s run with two entry days generated $4.8M for the prize pool. Coming in at 34th was Victoria player Rhonda Shepek, with a career best and a jump of 2500 places to #2133. Robert Sun from Anchorage came in 22nd and climbs to #1932 from #4026. Coming in at 17th was John McNaughton of Innisfall, Alberta with a biggest-ever cash and debut on the leaderboard at #1349. Every two years, Robert Davis comes out of Eagle River, Alaska to cash in the Seniors tournament—he has exactly 3 Hendon Mob entries: 2017, 2019, and this year—all in the same event. This year he hit it big, with 2nd place, far eclipsing his previous totals, and leaping from #4320 to #162 on the Leaderboard. Davis is now #7 on the Alaska state leaderboard.
Robert Davis
Red Deer, Albeta’s Jason Volk was runner-up in the Venetian #36 $150K GTD NLHE MonsterStack. It’s Volk’s largest cash (this is the season!) and he moves almost 1800 spots to #870.
Dwayne Hillock from Prince George, British Columbia came in 14th in WSOP #55 NLHE Colossus out of 9,399 entries. The prize pool was just over $3.1M. Hillock rises over 800 places to #1533.
The Wynn $3M GTD NLHE Championshipmade a prize pool of $5.7M with 1,775 entries and Brett Kennedy of Sattle took 50th, climbing forty spots on the Leaderboard to #319.
It was a biggest-ever cash for John Nielsen (Sylvan Lake, Alberta) with a win in the Autumn at Aria $40K GTD NLHE. Nielsen goes up more than 600 spots to #958.
Monroe, Washington’s Roger Hammond is up 800 places to #1937 with a 7th-place finish in the Venetian #40 $150K GTD NLHE MonsterStack. 358 entries and a $347K prize pool.
The Super Seniors event (60+) got nearly 1,900 entries this year, makng a prize pool of just under $1.7M. Sad to say, I’m qualifying for this by next summer. Three PNW players made the final two tables. Alberta’s Gary Bain got a largest-ever cash placing in 16th and jumping eighty spots to #846. From masco, Washington, Anthony Simpson took 13th for a climb from #536 to #476. And you may remember Bill Stabler of Salem having been the runner-up in the Seniors event the last time everyone got together at the Rio in 2019; he came in 4th in this tournament.
Bill Stabler
Chris Brewer got shafted by The Bet that Limon won back in 2015 because people picked Koray Aldemir for their slate of players in the Main Event. Hopefully, his 5th-place finish in the WSOP #60 Poker Players Championship 6-Max is some consolation. There were 63 entries at $50K each. Brewer maintains at #16 on the Leaderboard.
Final result of the 144 players drafted in main was $9,832,700 (thanks @kooraay90 ) for 680% roi. Not sure how much to take away from this. The result is clearly top 5-10% run, but also a bet like this always going to be won because one of the drafted players went very deep
Portland’s James Haddad made it to 12th in the field of 725, which is good for a move from #126 to #125. Dylan Wilkerson came in 8th, and stays at #13. Sterling Lopez out of Anchorage took 4th, for their biggest recorded cash and a move from #2961 to #708.
Nearly two thousand entries in this event pushed the prize pool to just under $1.9M. Sean Banahan from Twin Falls, Idaho made it to 24th for a career-high cash, and moves about six hundred spots to #1666. Coming in 9th was Jimmy Lee from Edmonton, which moves him two notches up to #77.
It was a largest-ever cash for Puyallup’s Jason Diaz, placing 4th out of 355 in the Aria $40K GTD NLHE. Just about triple the guarantee with 355 entries. Diaz jumps up about four thousand places on the Leaderboard to #2699.
Anchorage’s Young Ji won the Aria $30K GTD PLO8 in either a 3 or 4-way deal (186 entries, $74K prize pool). Ji is a 2015 WSOP PLO8 bracelet winner. He climbs 5 spots on the Leaderboard to #130.
Noah Bronstein was heads-up for the WSOP #64 NLHE/PLO 8-Max bracelet. There was a field of 579 entries at $5K each. Bronstein moves up nearly twenty places to #34.
Donald Kehler of Prince George, British Columbia bounced more than a thousand places to #1849 with a win (and largest-ever cash) in the $400 Rio Daily Deep Stack Series NLHE. The tournament on 3 November got 184 entries and whipped up a prize pool of over $60K.
From Redmond, Washington, Karimon Umarov placed 27th in the 3,821-player Mini Main freeze out, which had a prize pool of just over $3.4M. Umarov debuts on the Leaderboard with their biggest-ever result at #3601. Prasad Dobbins from Anchorage got their biggest cash and a boost from #4173 to #2256 with 20th place. And Seattle’s Matt Jewett got 6th in this event just before he jumped into the actual Main (more to come).
Reminder: Just doing the big winners here. This thing’s long enough as it is, I apologize if you cashed and didn’t get on the Leaderboard round-up, if you didn’t get something like a 300% ROI or better, I can just say, “Good job!” That leads us to Rittie Chuaprasert from here in Portland, who came in 259 out of this year’s field of 6,650 entries. That’s within the top 4%, with another 11% of the field cashing but not making it into this write-up, if it’s any consolation. Chuaprasert goes from #367 to #295. Viola, Idaho’s Michael Faulkner picked up their largest cash at 124th in the Main and goes up over five hundred places to #646. Another biggest cash was for Weston Pring of Calgary, at 101st (just before Ali Imsirovic’s father Salko at 100th, who—I believe—still lives in Vancouver, Washington, but is listed in with the WSOP and Hendon Mob as a Las Vegas resident). Pring is up about a hundred and fifty places, to #347. At 90th was Fatima Nanji out of Vancouver, British Columbia. Nanji is up ninety-one places to #239, with their own biggest cash. Nanji was one of the last two women remaining at the beginning of Day 6. Adam Walton jumps sixty-five places to #102 by coming in 42nd (and another personal best cash). Matt Jewett from Shoreline, Washington came in 28th, and doubled his lifetime earnings with the single cash, climbing more than four hundred places to #135. Finally, it’s Bellevue-based Jung Woo, whose 19th-place finish was (yet another) best-ever recorded cash. It’s just the fifth cash for Woo and makes up 96% of his total winnings. Woo’s standing on the Leaderboard goes from #5358 to #247.
Fatima Nanji
Vikas Sundhi from Bellingham and Edmonton’s Alemu Makonen came in 10th and 6th, respectively in the Wynn Fall Classic $400K GTD NLHE, a 1,438-entry tournament with a prize pool of $1.4M. Sundhi got their largest-ever cash and moves up one hundred and fourteen places to #550; Makonen holds at #54.
Jose Mendoza took 3rd in the Venetian #44 $100K GTD NLHE MonsterStackin a six-way deal that gave the Kennewick player their biggest-ever cash. Mendoza moves nearly three hundred places on the Leaderboard, to #670. Almost six hundred entries tripled the guarantee.
Seth Davies continues to put up numbers ever edition of the Leaderboard, with a 3rd in Aria/PokerGONLHEHigh Roller30. 5 players cashed in the 30-entry tournament, with former PNWer Ali Imsirovic at the top. Davies is still #1.
Renton, Washington’s Kao Saechao picked up 2nd place in Venetian #46 $75K GTD PLO,ahead of 319 other players (the prize pool tripled the guarantee), then made the final table at 8th in WSOP #71 PLO Bounty 8-Max at 8th That event had 860 entries. (Note: Bounties are not reported as part of tjhe earnings for the tournament.) Two final tables takes Saechao from #890 to #549 on the Leaderboard.
It was a win for Calgary’s Doug Lee, who bested 327 entries at the Autumn at Aria $40K GTD NLHE on 10 November. It appears from the payouts that there may have been a five-way deal.Lee holds at #26 on the Leaderboard.
In a blast from the past, Esther Taylor-Brady is still on the Oregon list at both Hendon Mob and WSOP. Taylor-Brady made 5th place in a field of 372 at WSOP #69 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo. Taylor-Brady remains at #28.
There were 5,252 entries in this tournament, and three players from the PNW at the final three tables. Maria McAlpin moves from #646 to #577 with a 26th-place finish. 23rd is good enough to help Adam Croffut slide up four places to #96. A newcomer to the Leaderboard are Deer Kim, whose 33rd-place is enough for #3601.
New on the Leaderboard at #813 is Matt Mayima from Seattle, who posted an impressive 2nd place in WSOP #71 PLO8 Bounty 8-Max as their first recorded live cash. The field had 860 entries. That’s a nice way to start off.
Matt Mayima
Back over at theAutumn at the Aria $40K GTD NLHE on 12 November, Burnaby, British Columbia player Alen Bakovic was 2nd in a five-way deal for their biggest score and a jump of more than nine hundred places on the Leaderboard, to #1721.
Another Canadian made the (unofficial) final table of a WSOP mixed-game event when Edmonton’s Nohad Teliani came in 9th in WSOP #72 Mixed NLHE/PLO 8-Max. Teliani gets a boost of almost two hundred places, and is now #828 on the Leaderboard. There were 856 entries in this event.
Nohad Teliani
And finally,Mans Montgomery out of Eagle, Idaho notches up four spots to #156 with a 4th-place finish in the Venetian #59 $150K GTD NLHE MonsterStack. The prize pool beat the guarantee with 204 entries.
That’s it for this long-delayed edition of the PNW Poker Leaderboard. Next edition will get us caught up. I will report that I was playing a tournament online on the way to Hawai’i that I thought would be over by the time we had to shut off our computers but even though we weren’t in the money when they shut off the on-board wi-fi, I managed to glide into a min-cash because I had enough chips. The dream is alive!
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am not a professional poker player. The last bracelet event I played at the World Series of Poker was in 2013. I’ve only ever played two (well, now three) bracelet events, and they were back when the WSOP first introduced $1,000 events. This year, I sunk even lower and entered a $600 bracelet event.
It’s been a long haul, folks, Years ago, I’d heard about folks grinding satellites, and even though I felt I was decent at playing them, I’d never had the discipline to sit down and just do it. So many tournaments in the summer (or anytime I was likely to be going to Vegas), so many variations. Never mind that I’d done reasonably well in the Ignition Casino Thousandaire Makers (only to blow the money I made on MTTs). Never mind that I had Dara O’Kearney’s Poker Satellite Strategy on my Kindle mostly unread.
I did put my plan into action when I came down in 2018, but bricked out. In 2019, when I ‘retired’ from poker, I had to cancel the trip at the last minute because of work, and you know what happened to 2020. So I really wanted to take advantage of this revival year—and experience a WSOP that didn’t melt me when I walked outdoors.
I made my plans as soon as the schedule was announced, centering the trip around three bracelet events: #24 $600 PLO 8-Max, #27 $1500 HORSE, and #28 $1000 PLO 8-Max. Plus the usual $180 mega satellites and the daily $580 mega satellite. I figured either this WSOP would be one of the easiest (with so many players choosing not to or unable to travel to the US) or really hard (with the people who were dedicated to making it to the WSOP being concentrated with pros).
Up at 4am to catch the first flight to Vegas today. Disregard the enticing $250 offers from the airline to give up my seat for a later flight—we’re on a schedule, man!
Plane lands around 8:30. Now, spite months of mental preparation for this trip, I made a very essential error: fucking Columbus Day (I’m using that instead of Indigenous Peoples’ Day because this is a comment about how the day screwed me over). I wasn’t planning to travel with a huge wad of money, just enough to get me through the first day or so, but Friday was a bitch and Saturday I had stuff to do around the house, I old just pick up my cash from the bank on Monday, right? Did I remember that banks were going o be closed on Monday? No. And even the cheap-ass PLO game was more than an ATM puts out.
So, when I get to Las Vegas, I need to get to a branch of my bank, of which there are a number in town, one just a couple miles from the airport. It even opens at 9. I get there a quarter hour before it opens and it’s a cubbyhole inside the student union at UNLV. I just hope it has money.
Branch opens up, the very nice branch assistant tells me my specific ask is no problem, until they get to the part where they give me the money and they tell me that there’s some weird thing about the way the business account I have had for my sole proprietorship for more than a quarter of a century is set up in their system and I’m somehow not the “owner” of the account. Fie on you, Christopher Columbus! Anyway, it’s resolved by me transferring the amount I need to my linked personal account and taking it out of there. I was reminded that when I had some a paycheck—from Caesar’s Entertainment, one of the largest employers here—to my account a few years ago, one of the branches in a grocery store couldn’t take my deposit without the branch manager being there, which they were not. It was not, dear reader, a large sum of money.
The Rio at 9:30 this morning was quiet. Hardly any line for the registration cage. Mid-week mornings are good. I was bought in an hour before the event and kicked around. It was surprising to see what’s operating next what’s not. There were a fe people sitting at the tables inside Starbucks, but the lights were off and I didn’t see anyone behind the counter. That’s fine, I don’t drink coffee except socially.
So, how’d my first bracelet event in eight years go? Not so great. I was in a steady drift down for most of my time in the tournament, with a couple of players—one at the far end of the table and one just to my left—picking off chips. I looked at their stacks a couple of times before anyone had been knocked off the table and was a bit puzzled at where they’d all come from, I’d lost a lot but not that many, and it seemed like other people had more than me, too. I shrank down to less than a fifth of the 30k starting stack over the first four levels, then suddenly caught some fire in Level 5.
AA44 late pot over a raise and call does not go well. KKxx hits the flop and a wrap takes it with a straight. Should have got away on the flop even though I would have been back down to 20k. pic.twitter.com/PmSHjno5gb
Our little corner of the Brasilia room didn’t see any water service for a couple hours. I was damned if I was paying for some other drink. I wanted my 10oz/$1 water. Maybe the lack of hydration was messing with my game.
My stack got up to almost where it had started three-and-a-half hours before before I potted with a rainbow AA44, got called by two players, then shoved on a KQx flop where I ought to have known I was beat. Both players shoved, one with an open-ended draw and the other with a set of kings and the wrap made a king-high straight.
So naturally, instead of looking for something t eat or drink (all I’d had since the night before was airplane biscotti, which was pretty good), I went back to the reg cage to get into the $580 mega. Now the lines were a bit longer, it took about 40 minutes to get my ticket, even though the line—full of anxious PLO re-entries—didn’t reach the main hall. It’s almost enough to make me go sign up with Fastrac, which I was discussing with a couple of the folks in line behind me, only to have someone who’d just signed up have some serious frustrations with the machine outside registration.
So I got to the mega almost 90 minutes in, with 10k of chips and 400/800/800 blinds. Just the way I like to burn $580. This went a to better, even though there were a couple of large stacks. I was one of the later entries but there were only 24 by the end of registration, which was going to yield two payouts of $5k in lammer chips and one of $2k.
I was playing tight (12bb!) then less than half an hour in I had to call with AK and the guy who’d been opening a bit too much a little sheepishly turned over Q2 after raising 10x. The the big stack on my right raised a hand and I caught trip 9s on a flop with [ts 9s] which knocked him out. So I had a quarter of the chips as we went into a break and consolidated to a table of 9.
But then work interrupted. Something back home att the job was messed up. It was probably my fault, and I’m getting calls from the client who I don’t usually talk to, what with me being a worker grunt and not the face of the enterprise. I faltered and raised [qs js], then called an all-in from a player at the other end of the table, who had enough to halve my stack, which was more than everyone else, but not especially deep.
The highlight of the evening was probably when I called with [kx qx] against an all-in from a two-time bracelet winner (someone I should have recognized, but it’s been a few years since it was my job to know these guys) and cracked his Ax hand. That wasn’t long before he shoved a small stack with tens [ts tc], got called by [th 9h] and the board ran out [4s 8c 4h 4c 4d] for a chopped pot, which must just have been crushing, even to a pro.
We got down to 4 players, on the bubble and K, the player on my left and I were tied at about 37k, less than 10bb. I was getting the best of it, because the other old man at the table, P, gave me a couple walks and K wasn’t getting that, so he got a little shorter than me. T, the player with the most chips, proposed a chop, with him taking the full $5K, and P and myself passing a lammer chip each to K. Who am I to turn down a deal that pus me in the red for the day (not counting other expenses.
Everyone agreed to the deal, we went through the process to get out lammers, and that’s how I got my first-ever payout at the WSOP, though it’s not technically money. All for of us waved to the payout room together, T got his chips first, P went up to the window, but even though I had to wait in line for a little to get my paperwork and payout, P was still at the window. Both T and I hung around to make sure K got his other chip (I’d flipped him one right after I got them), and P paid off his part in casino chips for some reason. Everyone satisfied (except for the part where I blew $3500 in equity) we headed our separate ways. I got checked in, got some fluids, and had a nice pork-fried rice.
It was five months ago today that I playedmy last hand of live poker, the longest gap in my live play since I started playing home games with a group of guys my cousin’s husband introduced me to back in 2007. And that last live session was with what remains of the same group, which has been whittled down considerably from the days when we regularly needed two tables. Maybe I drove them away…
It’s not that live poker hasn’t come back to Portland, albeit in a somewhat reduced fashion. Both of the largest poker rooms in the city and state—Final TableandPortland Meadows—are open, and a number of the smaller rooms have games running. I haven’t partaken myself, as I’ve been on the deck for helping out some folks with medical issues and can’t really afford an accidental exposure because of my love for poker.
Without any live tournaments, the Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard has been dead. I’d been hoping to have something to report after the WSOP.com online replacement for the World Series of Poker’s 50th anniversary (yes, you read that right, last year was the 50th WSOP but this would have been the 50th anniversary), but the last event was over a week ago and they’re apparently not adding them to the database.
So, all I have left is me.
I’ve played a wider variety of online the past five months than I had in a long time. I started off on my tried and true Ignition Casino. I didn’t have a lot of cash left there but the first NLHE Jackpot Sit-n-Go I played after lockdown went well, and I got another one that day, but meanwhile dropped five times my winnings in a $25K GTD, a PLO Turbo, and a 6-Max Turbo. I finished out march with a few small Jackpots.
Portland Meadows—which had just reopened before Oregon locked down—had a deal with the Bitcoin-only Nitrogen Sports (home of The Poker Guys). I bought some Bitcoin and transferred it to Nitrogen to play a few of the Meadows-branded events, busting out mid-field in the first couple. Then I started playing their micro stakes PLO cash games and did fantastic, with one of them putting me up 850bb in about 20 minutes. Of course, I promptly booked a session with a loss of 700bb. Then another for nearly 1500bb. Thankfully, those were both smaller stakes than the win, but still.
Meanwhile, Kheang Tang convinced me to play part of the America’s Cardroom High Five series. I played a $30K GTD PLO8, $40K GTD NLHE, and a $1K GTD Stud8 without even getting into the top half of the field.
The cash games for me on Nitrogen were still going well, but the tournaments were a complete bust. Back on ACR. I min-cashed a $20K PLO8 after being in the top 5 for a good section of the tournament. April ended with me still cashless in tournaments at Nitrogen and a couple of losing PLO sessions in a row depleted my balance there. I made the final table of a 45-player PLO tournament at ACR, but a rebuy made me just break-even.
I got back over to Ignition on May Day, intending to focus on 6-Max and satellites. It didn’t go so well. Booked a couple of profits at 2¢ PLO cash, but it was just losses in satellites, PLO Turbo tournaments, and 6-Max for over a week before I cashed in even a $2 Jackpot SnG. Three weeks and more than 20 tournaments in, I finally picked up an MTT cash with 60/851 in a $30K GTD. Not much, but something.
Meanwhile, I was also plugging away on ACR. Apart from a satellite ticket and a negligible profit in a $500 GTD 6-Max, that was going nowhere.
Near the end of the month, I psigned up with Big Dog Pokerthrough Jeremy Harkin, so I could try my hand at Big O during a weekend series they were running. Tried my hand at four tournaments and a few cash games and let’s just say I’m not as good at the game as I used to be back in the Portland Players Club days. And that was never that good.
My ACR play petered off in early June along with the rest of the money in my account. I did get to play one last Stud cash session, which is something Ignition doesn’t have.
Over on Ignition, I had a run of 0.1/0.25 PLO cash sessions that gave me hope, with profits in 10 out of 15, but other than that: nada. I played almost nothing the last third of the month, between my last session on Big Dog and my last on ACR. After July 1, it was Ignition and only Ignition.
Not that that was going all that well.
I had a couple min-cashes (142/1095 in a $10K GTD and 23/155 in a 6-Max Turbo) but many more bustos, mostly sticking to 6-Max, and PLO/PLO8. Then things started to turn around after the middle of the month. 11/175 in the nightly $44 buyin 6-Max. A satellite ticket to their summer series $10K GTD O8 (where I got 14/145). Another min in a $3K GTD Turbo, and 2/176 in the 6Max, with only two busts in-between (and one of those was a $250K GTD I’d satellited into).
I busted a couple of tournaments, cashed 6/215 in a $5K PLO8, busted a couple more and won a satellite into a $35K GTD 6-Max (busted), had a couple more bust days, then played two tournaments simultaneously (which I rarely do because I am old and slow), making the final tables of both.
A min-cash with rebuy meant a small loss in my first-ever NLHE Ante Up tournament (do not late-reg one of these things when you get just 12bb to start).
I noticed the last couple of Thursdays there are multiple 6-Max tournaments to lay during the series. I was considering playing all three the other day, but two of them start before I’m off of work. I wanted to sit in the living room so I could chat with my wife, so I ended up just playing the $215 buy-in because of the size of my laptop screen (if I’d been in the office, I would have used the big computer). This led to a major screw-up.
I got into a confrontation early in the game and lost a third of my chips, then drifted down further to 1/3 of the starting stack. It seems like I was down there for a long time, but looking at the hand history, it seems like I managed to recover back to a starting stack by the end of the first hour.
Nearing the end of the re-entry period, the player came in on my right with 75bb and proceeded to shove over nearly every raise made by another player. He shoved the second hand he was dealt at the table. He shoved the third hand with [ad jc] and went down to 60bb when he doubled up a pair of tens. He 6x 3-bet the next hand. Hand 4, he doubled up another player shoving [9d 8s] and getting called by [ad qh]. Down to 30bb, he shoved hands 5, 6, and 7.
On hand 8, he open-shoved from the button and I called with [ts kc], exposing his [qs 8h]. He doubled me up that time, and I was up to 40bb. He was down to 12.
This did not stop the insanity, however. The next hand there was an UTG min-raise from a 35bb, and the maniac shoved with [7d 5h]. The original raiser called with [ts qd] and the maniac doubled back to 40bb.
He took a hand off, but did it again, then just limped into my BB (and won a small pot), shoved over a 4bb raise, stayed out of a hand where I doubled up to 66bb, and at least slowed down a bit.
Which may have been why I took my eye off the ball at the wrong time. Blinds were up to 600/1200/120. There were only four players at the table at the moment, with a little over 100 left and about half of us getting paid. I was well-situated with almost 75bb which put me in the top 10 at the time. The maniac was at 40bb. I had [4s qs] in the BB, which I might call a small raise with but I had no real intention of playing. The button (22bb) min-raised, and the maniac in SB shoved and—not seeing the all-in—I called. Button folded and I was up against [9c 8c] Racing, but a nine and a club on the flop turned into a club couch by the river and nw the maniac had almost 100K and I was well out of the top 10.
My last hand against the maniac was just 5 hands later when he open-shoved SB with [9c kd] against my [jh ks] and again hit a nine on the flop.
I did a re-entry but lost a race on my first hand and was down to 1.5bb. Quadrupled up on my second hand. My last hand, I had [as 7c] and 4bb in the BB, a big stack shoved [2h 4h], and I called. He got a full house.
