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Those of you who have been following my tweets know that I’ve made it to Day Two of the Borgata Poker Open WPT event with above-average chips. Day One was broken up into two days, and I chose to play Saturday so that I would have the option of playing the WCOOP main event on Sunday. Now that I’ve got through Day One of Borgata it’s decision time.

You see, WCOOP main event is a two-day event. If I do well enough in WCOOP to get to Day Two, it would start at 5 p.m. eastern on Monday. Borgata Day Two starts at 11 a.m. on Monday, and it’s a five-day event all together. WCOOP ends late Monday night.

So should I play? Here are some relevant facts.

- I project about 250 players/10 percent of the field will be left at the end of Day One of WCOOP. Remaining players will have locked in about one buy-in ($5k) of profit.
- About half the field survived Borgata Day 1a.
- At the time that WCOOP Day Two starts, we’ll be at Level 13 of Borgata, and about 25% of the field will remain. There is about a 65% chance I will still be in the tournament at this time.
- In the worst-case scenario for the Borgata event, I would miss levels 13-16, which would cost about 77k in tournament chips (EV =  $8;470; it was a $3300+200 event, and we started with 30k in chips). Of course, in that “worst-case scenario,” I probably do very well in WCOOP.
- Day One of WCOOP will finish around 5 a.m. Day Two of Borgata starts at 11 a.m., so not much time to sleep.
- WCOOP main event has a guaranteed prize pool of $10 million, Borgata’s guarantee is $2 million. They got about 300 people for Day 1a, and are expecting significantly more for Day 1b.
- The televised nature of the Borgata event adds some to the equity.
- The WCOOP field will be significantly tougher than the Borgata field.
- I thought I played well with a deep stack today, and I’m a pretty good deep stack player in general, but playing with a deep stack is definitely not my greatest strength as a tournament player. Both events are extremely deep stacked.

After writing all this out, I know which way I’m leaning, but I want to hear from you, the masses. Please post advice in the comments, although please try to refrain from saying, “yeah, play!” and nothing else. Even one reason is enough.

Good luck to everyone playing the big one online later today.

This one didn’t go as well as my other recent big buy-in events. I made a few good hands, took a few bad beats, and was right around my starting stack of 30,000 when the following situation went down in Level Four. With blinds of 200-400 and a 50 ante, a tight-straightforward player opened for 1,400 UTG. I called UTG+2 with two queens, and a loose-ish, decent player called in late position. The rest folded. With 5,225 in the pot, we took the flop three-handed. It came J62 rainbow. UTG led out for 5k. I called. The LP player thought for a while, asked both of us how many chips we had (UTG had similar to me), and eventually raised to 20,000. UTG muttered and folded, and I had a decision. I had about 23k behind after calling the 5k, so i would be getting about 1.9-1 to put all my chips in. My read was that my opponent could have AJ as easily as a set, and so I would win the showdown often enough to show a decent profit getting my chips in.  I don’t know if that read was right, but that’s what it was. It turned out my opponent had a set of deuces and I didn’t hit any miracles. Good game, me.

Another aspect of the hand is that there were two legitimate preflop choices. Even before the tournament I was going back and forth about what hands to reraise with and what hands to call with in spots like the above one. This is to say, I knew going in that by flat-calling preflop I risked going broke to a small set. I thought the benefits outweighed the risks as part of my global strategy, but I’m certainly willing to listen to counter-arguments.

I’m not sure yet what my next big brick-and-mortar tournament will be. My next focus will be on the FTOPS currently taking place. Good luck to all playing events in that series.

I know I haven’t posted since the tournament–and I feel really, truly bad about it–so I wanted to share one story with you.

Very deep into the event, with the tables playing shorthanded (maybe there were 14 players left?), Erik Seidel opened on the button and a young player called him on the big blind. (The age limit for this tournament was 19, so this young player might’ve been very young indeed, but I don’t know for sure.) The flop came down ace-high with two diamonds and the young player led out with a bet. Seidel called. The turn brought a blank and the young player checked. Seidel bet, and young player called. The river brought the third diamond and young player checked again. Seidel tossed a big stack of chips into the pot, and they scattered around his area of the table and took a while to count, but they represented a big bet on Seidel’s part. The young player went into the tank for a long time and eventually called, immediately tabling a weak ace, for top pair-no kicker. Erik tabled two diamonds for the flush and raked in the pot.

As Erik stacked up the chips, the young guy said to him, “please tell me you’re sometimes floating there.”

And then Seidel: “I don’t even know what that means.”

Hah!

I’m heading to Foxwoods next week for the main event of World Poker Finals. In the meantime, remember to vote! And in case you’re unclear who to vote for, know that Barack Obama’s campaign has said that he believes internet gambling should be regulated (i.e., legal), and John McCain has said, “I haven’t thought about the issue.”

Good luck to everyone playing poker the next few days. I’ll post again soon.

Well, I finished in 7th place. Not what I was hoping for, obviously, but I’m trying my best to apply the Bill Chen Rule. (For those who don’t know, that rule is: If You Would’ve Taken the Result Before the Tournament, Then You Should Be Happy.) I ran good for a while today, but then ran less good. Eventually I fell victim to a crazy play when we were eight-handed, and then ran my top pair into Gavin’s better top pair to finally go broke. By the way, Gavin should never be allowed to get top pair. In all seriousness, Gavin is a friend of mine and I really hope he wins this thing now that I’m out of it and he got my last million in chips.

I’m now considering heading out to Vegas for Festa al Lago, since I seem to be on a roll with going deep in these things, but at this particular second the prospect of further travel seems…less than ideal.

I’d be happy to discuss any of the hands you might’ve read about from today’s play. For what it’s worth, I thought I played pretty well again and probably came one pot away from getting to the final six with good chips.

Time to head home. Ain’t that always the way?

I had a third consecutive good day in this thing, although it didn’t start out that way. No, I’m not talking about the 100k in chips I lost in the first level. I’m going back even further, to when my last good contact lens ripped at 11 a.m., about an hour before the cards went in the air. (I’d already gone through the one backup lens I’d brought with me. Idiot that I am, I only brought the one.) I had to scramble around to find an eye doctor, but somehow I did. Miraculously, I had my prescription with me, and even more miraculously, the nice lady at the eye doctor’s office simply handed me a single “trial” lens for free and I was in and out of the office in three minutes. By 11:47 a.m. I’d ordered breakfast at the coffee shop back at the casino. Pretty sick.

As for the poker, I enter Day Four with 943,000, which I believe is in third place out of the 27 remaining players. (Gavin Smith and Vivek Rajkumar, excellent players and also both great guys, are first and second.) I had my share of good luck and bad luck in Day Three, but again I was pretty happy with how I played. I’ve put myself in position to make some noise, which is all you can really ask for. The blinds will get big tomorrow. Let’s hope that works out to our benefit.

I had another very good day today, and it ended with a stack of 383,800. I ran good again, but I played better than I played on Day One, in my opinion (with the exception of one horribly misplayed hand, which was worse than anything I did on Day One). The misplay was a result of my not taking enough time to go through my usual routine of reviewing the pot size, my hole cards, the action, and my read. I could give you the hand, but it’s not interesting. The mistake was in the process–the bad decision it led to is not really relevant. The misplay was probably a blessing in disguise though, because it was a very small pot, and I refocused very well after the hand which definitely helped me to run my stack up over the next few hours.

Day Three is coming up in less than 12 hours, so I’m going to get some sleep. Wish me luck.

I had a good day–got my starting stack of 30k up to 106.9k by the end. I wish I had a bunch of interesting hands to report, but mostly I just ran really good. OK, I’ll give you some stuff.

Level one, blinds 50-100. This is one of the day’s first hands so we all have about 30k. Young online pro opens UTG+1 for 300. Two callers, I decide to call from the small blind with AhQd. The big blind comes along for the ride. Flop comes QhJh4h. Checked to the last caller who bets 1000. I call, the rest fold. Turn is a blank. I check, he bets 2500, I call. River is an offsuit king. I bet 3000, he calls with 5h3h. There really isn’t a BIG MISTAKE moment for me in the hand, just a bunch of style choices. As it turns out, having seen this opponent the rest of the day, I’m pretty sure I lost the minimum. I say this partially because…

Level three, blinds 100-200, 25 ante. The opponent from the last hand opens after three folds for 600. I make it 1850 two seats to his left with AhQd (yes, same hand as last). The rest fold, he calls. Flop comes 7h6d2d. Check, check. Turn is Ad. Check, check. River is 4d. He bets 3100, I call. He shows Jd7d!

Other stuff that happened: I made a successful squeeze, and a few successful resteals, and flopped a few huge hands and made money off them. Fun.

Day Two is Monday. Expect an update then.