Tourney Report: $500k Guaranteed at Commerce

I decided to play a $220 buy-in No Limit Hold'em tournament at Commerce yesterday. First prize was going to be six figures, and I wanted a change-up to the cash games. I've been on a major downswing, and I thought my confidence might benefit from the relatively easy decisions of a tournament. I have a stellar record of cashing in low buy-in casino tournaments, so this seemed like it would be a good investment.

The tourney started at 2pm, so I arrived at 1:20 thinking I'd have plenty of time to register and relax a bit before the action. How wrong I was. They had already sold all the seats (800), and the line for alternates was over 100 players deep. The way the alternates works is, as players bust out you get called in by number. You get the full starting stack, but the blinds go up while you wait to get into the game. So if the structure is fast, you probably want to be very low on the alternate list as your stack will be too weak to really contend by the time you get in. This tournament, however, had a deep-stacked, slow structure with 40 minute levels. I decided it was worth it to play, even at #168 on the alternate list.

I get into the game after about an hour and a half wait. Once I got in, I folded a few hands until I picked up Q-10 offsuit in early position. There were a few other limpers, and we took a flop of A-K-J rainbow. I had flopped the nuts on the very first hand I'd chosen to play. Even thought I only won a modest-sized pot, I felt like it was going to be a good day.

And it was. I grinded it out pretty well for most of the day for a modest cash. Had a major blowup around 1am, and then lost a race in dramatic fashion to exit the tournament. I got it in again against a guy who had me covered with 8-8 vs his A-K offsuit. The flop of 8-4-3 with two clubs had him drawing dead to running clubs or a running 5, 2 for a wheel. But it came down club, club without pairing the board, and I was finished in 98th place out of 3,293 entries. Good for a whopping $600 in prize money, a $380 profit for my 11 hours of toil.

I am going to give it another go this Saturday in the $250,000 Guaranteed, also at Commerce.

Here is a link for the entire L.A. Poker Open series.

A-Q Gets Ivey Again

Pretty brutal. I followed the WSOP Main Event updates, and it seemed like Phil Ivey was really being patient and picking his spots. Finally he ends up getting it in with A-K and Darvin Moon deciding to tango with A-Q. A Queen spikes right away on the flop, and it's bye bye Mr. Greatest Player on Earth.

I win my WSOP Fantasy prop bet with Billy, but it's a pretty joyless victory. My favorite player gets sucked out on to finish 6th ... yet another disappointing Main Event finish for Ivey. Ouch.

Legalize It.

This is probably a good sign for online poker in the United States. The national media is starting to chime in on why internet poker should be regulated rather than banned (Los Angeles Times and Washington Post). Evidently, our government is missing out on $43 billion over ten years in revenue that could be generated by taxing online gambling (only $34 billion if you don't include sports betting, but still). It makes too much sense for them to overturn the UIGEA. The people don't like it, the banks don't like it, and now columnists are stepping out to air these sentiments.

Spread the word, kids. Online poker in the U.S. is drawing live.