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Poker Nuts News is the new Internet Texas Holdem Newsletter. All ITH'ers are NUTS ABOUT POKER, and this is our news. Strategy articles, hot forum topics, poker tools out the wazzoo, IPOY tracking, the latest bonuses and more. (Just like internettexasholdem.com, but delivered to your door). Also in the Poker News Section, is our Press Room. Look over some of the memorable events in ITH's history, or check out our Poker News Feeds for the latest poker news. |
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| Tunica, Mississippi - January 7-12, 2004 |
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World Poker Open: I spoke at the Poker School Online conference and played a couple of poker tournaments
My trip to the 2004 World Poker Open in Tunica, Mississippi was an exciting and profitable poker trip although I had the disappointment of poor results in the two poker tournaments I played. The poker trip started out with a speaking engagement on Thursday at the Poker School Online Conference. My talk focused on poker strategy differences between online poker games and live poker play while also offering some poker tips to “mastering the luck” or as I explained “managing a bad run in the game of poker.” There was a good turn out and it was great meeting some of the people who have been reading my articles and lessons at the Poker School Online. I was in Tunica a few months ago for the midsummer poker tournament and expected that more people would know who I was on this trip. After all, poker book sales have been fantastic and the poker website keeps growing so I expected at least a few people would start up some conversations with me. I sported the new InternetTexasHoldem.com polo shirt and hat so it was pretty easy to identify me. But the few people who did speak to me were mostly interested in “What is InternetTexasHoldem.com?” After responding that I wrote a poker book by the same name, one player asked, “Are you famous?” I laughed as it was quite clear that I have a long way to go before reaching famous status. The only poker players out of over 900 poker tournament players who knew me were poker players from Poker School Online. This was great news for me as it is apparent that I have only reached a very small market segment so far and that there is a tremendous amount of room for growth with the poker book and website. Before going into the poker tournaments, let’s look at the upside of the poker trip. I did very well in the cash poker games to be able to pay for my poker tournament losses and trip expenses and still come home with a nice profit. I played about 25 hours of $20-$40 and just a tad of $30-$60. I couldn’t imagine the $30-$60 poker games being any better than the $20-$40 poker games so I stuck with $20-$40. The play was quite loose pre-flop and very passive post-flop. The ideal poker game! The typical poker game had at least 3-4 players see each flop with 4-5 players pretty common. I would need more than two hands to count the number of seven and eight-handed flops. This type of loose poker games is unheard of on the Internet. At every poker table, I heard discussion of collusion and cheating in Internet poker. Many long-term poker players are afraid of Internet poker. I also heard a lot of poker players comment on had bad Internet poker players are…this while five players see the flop in a $20-$40 poker game. Internet poker players bluff a lot more, make more deceptive plays, and occasionally get quite crazy, but overall they are not nearly as loose pre-flop as the live poker games. Although Internet poker play has gotten easier over the last 6-8 months, I still back my argument that Internet poker games are tougher than live poker games at comparable limits. This was surely true of the $30-$60 poker games I played at the Bellagio a few months ago and the $20-$40 poker games I played in Tunica on my last two poker trips. Play at poker tournament is a different story. Live poker tournaments are much tougher than Internet poker tournaments. I suspect that many live poker players are playing their “best” during a poker tournament while maybe gambling during the cash poker games. Also, the higher limit poker tournaments on the Internet have a lot of poker players who win their seats through satellites. Many of these poker players have no chance of winning. The live poker tournaments at the $100 to $500 levels don’t really have very many satellite entries so the poker playing is generally much better. So speaking of poker tournaments, let’s look at the two poker tournaments I played. The last time I was in Tunica I played in the mid-summer poker tournament and placed in a Limit tourney and finished close to the money in the NL tourney. I was hoping to improve on those results, unfortunately, things did not go as planned. The first poker tournament I played was the $550 Limit poker tourney on Friday. There were 918 poker players which made it the largest field ever for any poker tournament in the world with a $500 or more buy-in. John Phan from Long Beach, California took home the $160,950 first place prize. The poker player who knocked me out made the final table although I am not sure of his name…I just saw him sitting there with some of my chips! Levels were 50 minutes each and all poker players started out with $800 in chips. I played some great poker the first three levels while getting some good cards. I managed to increase my stack to $1500 by the fourth level. In a limit poker tournament, there is always a level that either makes you or breaks you and in this poker tournament it was the 4th level with $50-$100 blinds. If you play a poker hand to the river without raises, it costs you at least $600 and generally more since you usually come in for a raise pre-flop. Since the poker players started out with $800 in chips, if you lose a poker hand here you are either broke or in jeopardy of going broke. A key poker hand came when I was dealt JJ from early position. I raised and only the big blind called. The flop was KJ9. Woohoo! I was check-raised on the turn and made a good decision to only call to conserve my chips. My opponent took a big chunk of my stack when he showed QT. The blinds were raised soon after that poker hand and I found myself going all-in with KQ from the cutoff and was called by 77 from the big blind. I finished somewhere in the middle of the pack. The next poker tournament was the $550 no-limit event on Sunday. In this event, 30% of my poker winnings would be divided equally between three members of the poker Forum for winning contests last year. It turns out that I could have been giving away $50,000 with a first place finish! Of course, we all know that didn’t happen as I would have wrote about it first, :). Among some of the big name poker players playing in this poker tournament: Chris Moneymaker current World Series of Poker champion Devilfish current World Poker Open champion of poker Humberto Brenes 2002 World Poker Open champion of poker Scotty Nguyen former World Series of Poker champion Jennifer Harmon, top woman poker player TJ Cloutier, poker book author My table was rather soft so I was quite pleased. I unfortunately got off to a bad start. Nothing seemed to work right and my timing wasn’t very good. It seems every time I raised someone went over the top of me and by poker players who hadn’t done it before so I knew I was up against something big. My stack dwindled down to $200. I buckled down and tried to settle down. I kept telling myself to be patient. The cards just didn’t come though. I made a desperation raise with A7 from early position and won the blinds. A little later I finally get what I need and am dealt KK from early position. I go allin with my short stack and am called from the big blind with A6. The kings hold up. A couple of poker hands later came a key poker hand for me. An aggressive poker player from the cutoff raises to $150 and the button calls. I have about $350-$400 in chips and look down at 22 in the small blind. I felt I had a rather conservative image at the poker table so I decide it is time to make a move and go all-in. They both fold and I take home a nice pot. By this time we were at level 4 again. About 500 poker players have been eliminated from the poker tournament. The blinds were again $50-$100. A solid poker player under-the-gun makes it $400 to go. He has a bigger stack than me. I look down at JJ from middle position with about $700 in chips. This isn’t the greatest poker hand to go against a solid player. I don’t have enough chips to get him to fold. It is either a 50-50 shot or I may be a big dog. There is also the chance he is the big dog if holding TT, 99, 88, or 77. There are still poker players to act behind me. I decide to go all-in and get knocked out of the poker tournament. I’ll post this poker hand in the poker Forum with results to follow to see how others would have played the poker hand. Bob Mangino from New York took home the $166,700 first place prize. Poker book author, Bob Ciaffone, was 3rd while Juha Helppi from Finland and last year’s Ultimate Classic winner placed 4th. Next poker trip is in Las Vegas where I have two speaking engagements. See you there! |
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