Party Poker
Bonus & Reviews

party poker million

An excellent cruise and poker tournament which I plan on making an annual event. See how I did in my first World Poker Tour event. The PartyPoker.com Million III cruise left San Diego March 13th, 2004. I won my entry online and was excited to be making my first appearance in a World Poker Tour event and I fully expect that this will become an annual poker tournament for me. An excellent cruise and tournament which I plan on making an annual event. See how I did in my first World Poker Tour event. The PartyPoker.com Million III cruise left San Diego March 13th, 2004. I won my entry online and was excited to be making my first appearance in a World Poker Tour event and I fully expect that this will become an annual trip for me. I had a great time, had some limited success, and met some great people. This was a world-class poker event run by some world-class organizations. Party Poker, CardPlayer Cruises, and the World Poker Tour planned a great week with very few glitches which is quite impressive given the coordination required to host such a large poker event. I would think that every serious poker player would want to try and qualify for this excellent poker tournament. First I want to say how impressed I was with the Party Poker organization. I had the pleasure of meeting with the Managing Director of Party Poker and spoke with several of the key people in Party Poker. Once you have met them it is apparent why they have been so successful with their keen sense of business and focus on the customer. They ran a couple of working sessions where all poker players on the cruise were able to attend to offer suggestions on how Party Poker could improve their operations and service to their customers. They recognized some of the techical problems they have been experiencing but it was clear that they are working hard to correct them and Party Poker seemed genuinely interested in the feedback from the poker players. Some of the changes expected in the near future… - Upgrade of their servers to allow for 125,000 simultaneous poker players - Bigger poker tournaments - Improved speed of the poker game at the end of poker tournaments by minimizing the time poker players can intentionally slow down poker playing. I also was quite impressed with the running of the poker room by Card Player Cruises. Their experience shows and both the poker tournament and cash games were run quite smoothly and all of the dealers were quite good as well as very friendly. Linda Johnson, part-owner of Card Player cruises and previous editor of Card Player magazine has been one of the most influential persons in the growth of poker over the last 15 years. Mike Sexton has also been one of the most influential personalities in poker, especially during recent years as host of Party Poker and announcer of the World Poker Tour. I am quite impressed with the vision he showed a few years back predicting the rise of Internet poker and poker on TV, but more importantly, reacting on this vision to poker’s rise and aligning himself with the right people to help drive and participate in the growth of poker himself. He truly has a keen sense of business and is an excellent public speaker. The cruise had many of the big names in poker including Howard Lederer, Phil Helmuth, Chris Mortenson, Men the Master, Scotty Nguyen, and Daniel Negreanu. Actor James Woods also attended showing once again that poker is the new thing in Hollywood. All of these top poker players are quite friendly and interacted great with everyone. During the poker tournaments I knocked out a couple of notables including James McManus, the author of Positively Fifth Street, and Vince Van Patten in the NL poker tournament on Friday. The highlight of the poker trip was meeting our very own Ammon Brown from the poker Forum and his very nice wife Christine. It was fun hanging out with them between all of the action and boring our wives with our war stories. We talked about the four of us joining a $2-$4 poker table which never materialized due to time so we’ll have to wait until next year to see which couple can reign supreme! So let’s get to the poker tournaments...My results in the World Poker Tour main event were disappointing but I felt like I played well in the poker game and made the most of the cards that came my way. In nine hours of poker playing on the first day of the poker tournament and close to two hours on the second, I only remember winning one significant poker hand when I hit the nut flush. Aside from that flush, I don’t remember any other flushes, straights, or sets the entire poker tournament…except for flopping quads in one hand! I was dealt KK four times, winning the blinds twice and losing the two times I received action. One of these was a monstrous pot late the first day where I three-bet and had two callers. My two opponents in the poker hand both hit sets on the flop and I was fortunate enough to escape on the flop relatively unscathed, but lost the opportunity at a pot that was over $15,000 in chips. I ran into aces three times during the last two hours of the first day of the poker tournament which also put a nice size dent into my stack. The timing just never seemed right as I couldn’t win any showdowns to the river…so I had to survive by winning a lot of small pots and stealing a few pots when the situation presented itself. I survived the first day although I was short-stacked with 11,500; however, I was by no means out of it as evidenced by the eventual victor Erick Lindgren who finished the first day of the poker tournament with 13,500 in chips. All I needed was to come out of the shoot with some good cards the first hour or two on the third day to build some chips to survive the increasing blinds. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to work for me. I defended a few blinds from late raises with decent hands but couldn’t hit. Then I am dealt AKs in the big blind against the same aggressive poker player so I reraised only to miss the flop and ended up dropping another $5K. Whenever I raised from middle or late position with decent poker hands I seemed to run into bigger poker hand. I was lucky to last as long as I did as the only pot I won that day was a suck out by hitting a two-outer with JJ when I was allin on a flop of Q rags. The final poker hand was AQs from middle position and both the small blind and big blind called. The flop came down QJ8 and I went allin only to run into 88. It just wasn’t meant to be…so let’s talk about my bittersweet success in the next poker tournament... On Friday, they ran a $540 no-limit poker tournament with 300 entries. The format was as follows: they ran 30 single-table poker tournaments and the 30 winners advanced to a final poker tournament to compete for the majority of the prize pool. The winner of each single-table poker tournament received $1000 and then the final poker tournament paid out the final nine spots with over $30,000 going to first place. I won my poker table but made a deal headsup before the final poker hand with my opponent that we would split the $1000 prize money. The blinds had gotten so high that it was basically going to be a coin flip over the next couple of poker hands. Unfortunately my A7 did not stand up about 10 poker hands earlier against K5 or I could have taken home the entire $1000. Nevertheless, I basically won back my buyin and in essence got to play in a 30 player freeroll with some nice prizes at stake. In the final poker tournament, I thought I played quite well up to the two poker hands that led to my demise. I finally got some action with a big poker hand and was able to double-up early with AA against AK. I think the key to this poker hand was overbetting the size of the pot preflop with my reraise to try and communicate a weaker poker hand. I was called and the perfect flop came of K rags. When it got to be bubble-time, the blinds were quite high in relation to everyone’s stacks. I went on the aggressive and believe I won four straight pots with allin moves to build up a decent size stack. The final poker table was nine-handed with no single poker player holding a huge stack. The blinds were quite high so it was going to finish rather quickly. This is where I made my first major mistake which led to my demise.   The blinds were $300-$600 and I had about $2500 left in chips. A solid poker player from early position made it $1500 to go and was basically pot-commited if anyone made a play at him. I was next to act and looked at AcQc. My thought process went something like this… “oh no, I hate calling AQ against a solid poker player who seems to have a conservative poker playing style. Remember Matthew, the suited part doesn’t add that much value in a two-handed pot.”   Then I looked to my left at all of the poker players sitting behind me…“Wow, any of those guys could also have a big hand and I would be in big trouble. Play poker smart and lay this poker hand down!”   Up until this point, my thought process was actually quite good. In fact, in most situations this would be a clear fold; however, I didn’t continue my thought processes to look at additional variables that were involved. First, the blinds were about to go up at any minute. Second, the next blind increase was to $500-$1000! That is a big jump and would basically make me pot-committed when I got to the big blind. These blinds were just too high in relation to our stacks to be able to wait it out for premium hands. Third, I would be seeing the big blind in only three more poker hands!   I failed to evaluate these important considerations in the heat of the battle and ended up outsmarting myself. I folded and my opponent told me after the poker tournament that he had T8s. The next poker hand the blinds went up! Arg! I look down at K2 offsuit. The next poker hand I am under-the-gun and the next poker hand I am pot-committed in the big blind. I decide that maybe my $2500 may be strong enough to win the blinds now rather than trying from under-the-gun so I went allin. The next poker player called with AK. I saw a beautiful flop of 852 only to see an ace fall on the river and I was knocked out in 8th place. If I had won either the AQ hand or the K2 hand I would actually have had one of the top 3 stacks which shows how close everyone was at the end of the poker tournament.   So I walked away with a nice prize of $4200 (in addition to the $1000 prize won earlier), but it was bittersweet knowing that I made a mistake costing me the opportunity to compete for the 1st place prize of over $30,000. In Internet poker, sometimes you are forced to make quick decisions but there is no excuse in a live poker tournament to not thoroughly think through all of the different considerations and alternatives you have available. The good news is that I learned a valuable poker lesson that hopefully I will not repeat when I am battling it out at a major poker tournament.   One final poker tip to end this trip report. One amatuer found his way to the final poker table in the big poker event and had a huge chip lead over his five opponents. In fact, his five opponents stacks all together was approximately the same size as his one stack. He was extremely aggressive at the final poker table and I believe he got caught up with what I call the “bully syndrome.” Basically this is an attitude where you refuse to be bullied over by the “professionals.” I remember having this attitude when I first started playing with very solid poker players and I thought to myself, “I am not going to let them run over me.”   Unfortunately, you have to play your cards in the game of poker as even the professionals get good cards sometimes! He gave away a lot of chips by being over-aggressive in many situations. So if you ever find yourself against an intimidating opponent, don’t let him run over you but also don’t get caught up in the bully syndrome and carelessly give away your chips to him. Fortunately for this amatuer he was awarded over $450,000 for his efforts so I am sure that he won’t dwell on his mistakes for that long. That is a nice size bankroll for the game I saw him playing the next day with $1 chips!   Hats off the Erick Lindgren for winning the poker tournament and to Daniel Negreanu for his second place finish in the World Poker Tour . Erick won his second World Poker Tour event this season with three final table appearances. I also had the pleasure of meeting Daniel and he is every bit as nice and friendly as his reputation makes him out to be.   It is time now to start preparing for the World Series of Poker. Not having played in a lot of live poker tournaments lately I am pleased with the limited success I had here and in some of the smaller Vegas poker tournaments I played recently. I feel confident that I am ready to start competing at a world-class level. Hopefully with a lot of work and effort I’ll be able to take home my first big poker championship soon. I hope to see some of you in Vegas!