I'm in the middle of playing in a qualifying tournament for the World Series of Poker's championship event. We started with just over 3600 players and as of now, the second break, we're down to 150 players. The average stack is about $49,000 and I've got $64,000. I dodged a real bullet when I flopped a set of aces with A3 suited. Another player had AJ, but for some strange reason didn't bet to maximize his win. It only cost me about $15,000 in chips when it could easily have put me out of the tournament. 3500 players down, 150 more to go. Then another 8000 at the WSOP for the $10 million first prize. I estimate the odds of winning as about equal to the chances that Carrot Top will win best actor at next year's Oscars.
Update: And just like that, it's over. I had pocket queens under the gun with blinds of 3000/6000. I made it 24,000, got called by a short stack and then the big blind went all in behind me. I called. Big blind had pocket aces and the flop came A 10 10. As they say in the Chinese poker rooms, I go home now. I finished 123rd out of 3638, which wins me absolutely nothing.
- Log in to post comments
That's the problem with tournaments - you may be playing great but it only takes one unlucky hand and you're screwed.
Notice how a lot of bad (loose) players have won the WSOP in the last few years - each individual loose player stands little chance, but since there's so many of them (due to the explosion of interest in poker over the last decade) there's usually a couple who get lucky and end up at the final table.
Ouch. You have my sympathy.
Shh! Didn't you know that online gambling is illegal!?? The NSA AI data miners have already alerted the appropriate authorities and they are tracking you down as I type...
Seriously, if there is ever a set of laws that needs to catch up with the reality of living in the 21st century, it's the gambling laws. Not least because the odds of winning the legal state lottery are far worse than making it to the WSOP (and maybe worse than winning that $10 million first prize you mention).
Ed, could you translate this into English? What are pocket queens? Under the gun? Blinds? Short stack? Big blind? Flop? I played poker when I was a teenager, but I have no idea what you're talking about.
Jolf wrote:
Oh, sure. The game is hold em, where each player receives two cards in their hand, then there are 5 community cards on the table that are in everyone's hand. The two cards in your hand are your "pocket cards". When I say I had pocket queens, it means that I had a pair of queens for my two cards, the third best hand you can start a hand with in this game. Those 5 community cards are turned up in sequence: the first three cards are flipped over (this is the "flop"), then the 4th card (the "turn" card), then the 5th card (the "river" card).
There are also blind bets, meaning bets that have to be put into the pot before the cards are even dealt. The person to the left of the dealer is the small blind; the person to his left is the big blind. In this case, as I said, the blinds were 3000 (small blind) and 6000 (big blind), so that's 9000 in chips already in the pot before any betting begins or anyone sees their cards. The betting then begins with the first person to the left of the big blind; that person is "under the gun".
So I was sitting to the left of the big blind with 9000 in the pot and I raised to 24,000. The person on the button (that's the dealer, just to the right of the blinds) called me all in (he had to put all his chips in the pot to call my bet - that's what a "short stack" is - a person with a relatively small number of chips compared to other players at the table), the small blind folded, then the big blind raised me all in (he had more chips than I did, so I had to go all in to call his bet, which I did). I had the third best hand you can possibly start with. The only two hands I would be an underdog to in that circumstance are pocket kings and pocket aces. Unfortunately, the big blind had pocket aces. And to make matters worse, the flop was A 10 10, which gave him a full house and meant that I was all but "drawing dead", which means that it didn't matter what cards were turned up in the community cards, I couldn't win (technically, I wasn't drawing dead - if the turn and river cards had been the other two queens in the deck, I would have four of a kind to beat the aces over tens full house. But the odds of that happening is extraordinarily small and it didn't happen).
Hope that helps.