Well.. I’m not playing the main event.. so the best I can hope for is to win a $1500 event which would pay out somewhere between $400,000 - $600,000 for the top prize. Subtract 30% in taxes that the American government takes from Canadian winners and well… I’ll stick with the Rounders quote.. it just sounds better.

I’m heading to Vegas June 11th until June 20th, back home for a week of work and then back to Vegas again for more poker and to watch UFC 116 - Lesnar vs Carwin. Should be an exciting couple of weeks.

My tournament schedule is roughly:

Sat. June 12 - $1000 WSOP
Sun. June 13 - $230 Binions Poker Classic
Mon. June 14 - $340 Caesars Mega Stack
Wed. June 16 - $1500 WSOP
Thu. June 17 - $340 Caesars Mega Stack
Fri. June 18 - $560 Caesars Mega Stack

For an excel file containing all the las vegas tournaments going on this summer Click Here. It contains all the world series events, venetian deep stacks, caesars mega stacks, binions, etc as well as all daily tournaments.

Only a few more days of getting ready before I fly out!

New Changes include:
New Shallow Tables for Cash games that allow a minimum buyin of 20x the big blind and a maximum of 50x the big blind.
Regular Tables now have a minimum buyin of 40x the big blind and a maximum of 100x the big blind.
Deep Tables that have a minimum buyin of 100x the big blind and a maximum of 250x the big blind that also include an Ante of 20% of the big blind.

I’m extremely happy about these changes as I basically avoided pokerstars cash games because it was near impossible to find open tables that didn’t have at least 3 players short stacking and rat holing.

More of the changes are explained in detail here.

Rush Poker Stats Graph

I’ve had some decent success and have ran very close to expectation during all in scenarios which is a nice change.

I’m hoping to able to put in more hours playing poker and get back to playing more $2/$4 No Limit to $5/$10 online so I’ll try to post updates more frequently that will include some hand history analysis for both cash games and tournaments.

They have some pretty cool videos being used to market the site including Antonio Esfandiari being shot by Dan Bilzerian and Dan blowing up a R.V. in the nevada desert.

Anway, Click here to Sign up and get a nice bonus when you make your first deposit

I’ve been playing the majority of my cash games over at Full Tilt Poker. They’ve made some great changes lately to drastically improve the quality of games. They’ve increased the minimum buyin for their tables to 35 big blinds rather than 20 in attempt to put a stop the short stacking which is rampant on pokerstars and other sites. They’ve also added a new type of table called “rush poker” which allows you to play far more hands per hour than at a normal table.

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to put in about 30,000 hands this month. I’ll try to post a graph with my results at the end.

Pokerstars has updated its VIP system and added new “stellar” bonuses. Click here for details.

Pokerstars has also launched the North American Poker Tour (NAPT) which will have it’s first event at the Venetian in Las Vegas very soon. There is a rumor that Vancouver will be running an event soon at the River Rock poker room. Click here for details.

Looks like it can be a very good year for poker.

My last 1500 games have been pretty brutal. I’ve been running worse than I’ve ever imagined possible which combined with some mistakes has led to me having a very ugly graph recently.

Definitely a far cry from my previous 2000 or so Sit and Goes.

In an attempt to plug leaks I’ve decided to cut back from 24 tabling and play smaller sets. I’ll probably stick to running a maximum of 8 or 10 sit and goes at a time for the month.

I’m also planning on spending more time reviewing my sets once they are completed to make sure my pushing / calling ranges preflop are optimal. I feel as though my bubble play has been fine but that I’ve been making mistakes during the mid-stages of the games. Hopefully reading “Kill Everyone” again combined with session reviews with SNG Wizard will fix my leaks.

I’ll post a small update in a week or so with my progress.

For the $1500 6 max event I managed my to get my first World Series of Poker cash. I managed to finish 52nd out of just under 1500 entrants. I got through day 1 with a good stack but eventually busted bet / 3 betting all in with a flush draw + open ended straight draw into my opponents 2 pair and not getting there.

Aside from those 2 events I played in only a few other smaller tournaments and spent the rest of the time playing the sit and go satellites at the Rio and 1/2 and 2/5 no limit games which were quite profitable.

It was a lot of fun spending almost 6 weeks in Las Vegas and I look forward to doing it again next year. Hopefully I will be able to cut back a little bit when it comes to spending and I’ll be able to come way ahead instead of a little. I managed to see a couple shows, the finale of the Ultimate Fighter and spent way too many nights out buying bottles at Pure, LAX and XS.

Since coming back home I’ve managed to hit the worst downswing in my 6 years of online poker. I’ve now reached over 1000+ Sit & Goes of Break even & Downswing on Pokerstars.

In my latest attempt to change up my luck I’ve been branching out and playing on a few different sites instead of strictly pokerstars. One of the main hassles I’ve come across in spreading out my play is having to download all the sites software on all my computers which can be a real pain. Lately I’ve been playing on no download poker sites which lets me play poker in my web browser which is far easier and quicker.

So far the change has gone well and my luck may be changing!

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/online-poker-carbon-emission.php

I’ve got a hotel room booked for thursday night in Vancouver near the airport which will make things easier so I don’t have to get up as early to drive out their before my 10:00am flight friday morning. I’ll probably kill time in Vancouver thursday night by heading over to the River Rock casino poker room and splash around a bit in a 1/2 or 2/5 game for a few hours.

I should arrive in Vegas friday around 1pm which should give me plenty of time to get settled in to my house and get registered for Event #4 on saturday which is a $1000 buyin world series of poker no limit hold’em. Once I have that taken care of I’ll probably check out some cash games for a while or single table sattelites before meeting up with my vegas roommates and fellow vancouver poker players for dinner at Joe’s in Caesars.

From there… it all depends on how much success I am having. Here is a rough list of events I am planning on playing unless I go deep in an event and run in to conflicts.

Saturday, May 30th WSOP $1,000
Sunday, May 31st Caesars $330
Monday, June 1st Caesars $540
Wednesday, June 3rd WSOP $1,500 (6max)
Thursday, June 4th WSOP $2,000
Sunday, June 7th Venetian $1,070

Not sure what other tournaments I plan on playing. Alot depends on how I do in those and how I do in the side cash games at the rio.

I will do my best to update this blog every few days with my progress. I’ll also be regularly posting tournament updates on my twitter account located here: http://www.twitter.com/accordingtojosh.