Friday, October 16, 2009

Tomorrow is the big day.

Back in the day, you know, all of 2 and half years ago, I started this blog with Bodie25. Back then, the idea was to chronicle my rise to poker greatness by winning the Minnesota Poker League state tournament. Yeah, delusions, but delusions can keep us warm at night...just say'in.

So here we are, October and two years older. Yippee ding. My dad always says, "You are only as old as who you feel..." and thankfully OhCountess isn't old yet :-D but maybe I am wiser then I was back then. I've learned a lot about my poker game and the game itself.

Way back in August, I wrote a quick post about winning my bar poker league. Fun times. Tomorrow, I head up to Running Aces Harness Track for the state tournament.

I'm actually feeling fairly confident in my live game right now. To win the league, I did it quite convincingly. Check this out. You get 20 points for showing up. Depending on the number of people (we averaged 32) you get points for placing in the top 30%. Example: for the first week of this league session, there were 36 people. 11 people made the points, 11th got 61, first got 201. I finished the 8 weeks with 798 points, 2X1st, 2nd, 7th and 8th winning the 8 week session by 82 points. The even cooler part of this run, the total promotion was 16 weeks, with two 8 week sessions. The guy that with the most points total for the 16 weeks beat me by 13 points and showed up for every single week. Why is that cool? I missed 5 weeks of the first session and by miss I mean, I wasn't there. Show up for one more night, I win that too.

Rumor has it that this tournament's structure is gonna be a bizarre mix of tournament strategies. All the contestants will start with 10,000 chips and play down to 20 people, at which time, the tournament will be reset and we start over and play to the grand prize. I'm thinking I probably play phase 1 like a satellite and phase 2 like a 2 table sit-n-go. Thoughts?

This is my 3rd trip to the state tournament for a promotion. I think I've learned a lot about these things, I've also played more casino tournaments since then. Normally, I'm quite nervous heading into these. No idea why, but I was. Today, I'm pretty calm and actually mostly just excited to go. I'm really looking for to hooking up with Drizz as this place is right in his Minnesota relative backyard (relative backyard here is a bit larger then other places...). Gonna try me a nice cocktail before it's shuffle up and deal time. I think he's also promised to harass the other people at my table while being an obnoxiously drunk railbird. My guess, he finds a juicy PLO game and cleans the burbs of their milk money.

So, consider this a warning, if past performances are any indication, if my phone is working and with a functioning battery, I'll posting and tweeting up a storm tomorrow. Let's hope it goes on for hours!

8 comments:

Gentleman Jim said...

TAKE IT DOWN!

Jennifer said...

Best of luck!

Memphis MOJO said...

GL. I'll be checking your tweets, and I expect good things.

BLAARGH! said...

I looked at the tourney page... top 9 pay a 2k package. You DEFINITELY need to play both like satellites. You need 1 chip to win 2k, let the other idiots bust.

Having said that, what's worked for me in the Token sats is to mix it up early with the donks as cheaply as possible, work up a decent stack, then coast to the $$.

First thing I always do is figure out the av stack to make the $$. I can't tell from the list they have whether you're playing 127 or 242 (session 1 + session 2 + regional qualifiers)

If it's 127, you'll need 63,500 chips to be average at the 20 mark.
(10k x 127) / 20 spots paid
If you have that many anywhere near the bubble you'll make it in. If you're way under, you have some work to do. If you're way over, you can shut down and cruise.

if it's 242 you need 121,000 (10k x 242) / 20 spots paid

When you get down to 20, assuming 10k chips again you only need to double up once (22,222 chips) to get to the top 9. I assume play will be much tighter and it will be a little tougher to get to average, unless you find folks that freak out about the prize and make huge mistakes, or unless you find a massive donk that lucksacked his way through the first part.

I always do these calcs for sats, and keep an eye out for the average while I play. I'd imagine you know all this, but there ya go :)

AND GOOD LUCK!!! Slay them donkies.

BLAARGH! said...

I was thinking about the 2nd half of the tourney... you probably need to play it like the double up tourneys on Stars - if you have an account there I'd reccomend playing a few tonight if you can to get a feel for the strategy - it's exactly the same strategy you'll need for the last 2 tables.
Not sure if you can glean anything here - I bet there are good posts somewhere if you google:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/36/stt-strategy/official-don-strategy-thread-read-op-390910/

Heavy Critters said...

You play poker??? WTF? You shoulda told me!

Heavy Critters said...

Also, break a leg!

Sean G said...

Good luck, I hope you're able to make it to that final final table.

Those league scores are pretty amazing, by the way. Nice work!