Vegas June 2014 (WSOP)

Planning

Last Updated: 2014-06-10 14:38:36

Short version: Going by myself 6/25-29, playing in WSOP on the 26th. Joann will drive out if I get past first two days. Going back out following weekend for "normal" annual trip with Joann.

Long version:

I've had a couple of monkey wrenches thrown into this trip, but things have worked out such that I'm going forward with it.

The 2014 WSOP schedule came out the evening of Tuesday, 2/5 and I had Aria booked for Joann and myself for the last full week of June later that evening. I wasn't thrilled with the WSOP schedule (see below), but I had a list of WSOP tournaments to choose from that week. Most likely was going to take shots at PLO8 and NLH but also still was slightly thinking about the 8-game...

But then my list of options was drastically cut back.

Something came up that requires that Joann be at home the week we were planning to go. I've made other plans in other parts of June and co-workers have made plans in June that require me to be at work certain days, and all said and done there is literally no week in June Joann and I can be in Vegas for the WSOP together...but we can be there in July the Main Event.

And THAT is a story for another BLOG...

So the new plan for June is that I'm going to Las Vegas myself to play in Event #51, the $1500 buyin "Monster Stack" tournament. I am leaving home the day before and I've booked a cheap room through Sunday, the day of the final table. I was thinking about playing more than one this year but now I'm pretty well locked into only this tournament...tho I'd be lying if I said the PLO8 the following day isn't a little tempting either "instead" or if I don't make it to day two...

If I don't make day 2 and/or 3, I'll play dailies somewhere Friday and Saturday. Aria has a poker series going themselves with higher buyins so they don't have their usual $125 dailies. I might try out a WSOP deepstack side tournament. If I somehow make it through to final table I'll just find a room and unfortunately miss Peter's birthday after all.

Joann has been my rail for every minute of my WSOP adventures to this point, so it's definitely a bummer that she's not going to be there for it. But there is no choice if I'm going to play in the WSOP this year so this is just how it's going to be this time. But if I do make it past day 2, she is planning to come out and watch me on Day 3. Well, really if I went into Day 2 with a big stack she might come out Friday afternoon but she'd have to feel pretty good I was going to be around for a while to have us have two cars to drive back home.

I will drive back home when I'm done, I'll be home for like 3-4 days and then Joann and I will go back to Las Vegas together for our trip the first full week of July.

My whining about the schedule below aside, it's really hard for me to skip this tournament based on everything I've said over the years. It's without question the best format for the money for as long as I've been playing in the WSOP when you look at cost vs starting stack and blind schedule. Probably the best ever, since they used to only give you in chips what you bought in for.

Seriously, any of my friends out there who have ever wanted to play in the WSOP but haven't should try and make this tournament IMHO. This really is as good a deal as you're going to get. I am wondering if this tournament ends up being as wildly successful as I think it will be if more of them will appear next summer.

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The rest of my original blog for this trip below:

The bad news is I'm very bummed out by this schedule. 65 events, 37 $1500 or less buyins, 16 $10,000 or more and another four that are $5000 buyins which only leaves EIGHT tournaments on the entire schedule that are in the middle price range that I much prefer. 3000-4500 chips is not a lot, and you can assume that there are going to be a lot of people who are going to sit down and quickly get into "double up or go home" mode in these low buyin tournaments. And the fields are usually enormous, which makes it all that much more challenging to get not only into the money but deep into the money.

I've much preferred starting with a deeper stack in a smaller tournament, and I think my getting to "day 2" three straight years is evidence it works for me. So the lack of tournaments in what I view as my sweet spot is a huge disappointment. But, having said that...

Since I can't buy in for as much as I want to, I have the budget to play in more than one. I quickly narrowed the schedule down to two candidate weeks and ended up picking the last week of June. It gives me several options (all $1500 buyins unless otherwise specified):

NLH Saturday
"Ante only" NLH Monday
Pot-Limit Omaha 8/b Tuesday
8-Game Mix Wednesday
NLH MONSTER STACK Thursday
$3k Pot-Limit Omaha 8/b Friday

This leaves me with a big quandry...having gotten to Day 2 in the 8-game in consecutive years I really want to play 8-game again. I feel like I have some unfinished business. But if I want to play in that I can't really play PLO8 the day before and I will then be trying to miss the monster stack tournament the following day (we always plan on making day 2!). And a tournament of this kind with just 4500 starting chips is rough, moreso than hold'em with such a short stack. With hand edges always being a lot closer to 50-50 in stud and 8/b games and no way to push people out of pots in the six limit games you have to win a high percentage of hands you decide to play. The luck factor goes up a lot and the skill factor goes down with that small of a stack.

And, after all my whining about the schedule above, here's the deal with the monster stack - it's a 15,000 chip stack to start and blinds start at 25-25. You can't make it up. I think this is going to be a MASSIVE field, I can't believe they're not planning two starting days.

Folks this is as close as anyone can get to feeling like they're playing in the main event without dropping $10,000. It may "only" be half the ME starting stack size, but it's still one of the largest starting stacks relative to blinds in the entire series. Probably THE biggest starting stack relative to blinds (the really big buyins with huge stacks also start with much higher blinds). You also get three early rounds that don't exist in the ME (rnd 1 is 25-25, rnd 2 is 25-50, rnd 4 is 75-150, none exist in the ME) and you still have hour long rounds (vs 2 hrs in the ME). For the WSOP, this is about as good as it gets especially at that buyin-level. I will be very surprised if it doesn't break records for field size.

So how do I NOT play in that monster stack tournament? Seems to me the only way I don't play in it is if I make the final table in PLO8 from Tuesday...

My only problem - the final table is Peter's birthday. So if what I expect to be about a 1 in 500 shot at getting to a final table comes through I guess I'll have to figure out a way to make it up to him.