MATTMATROS.COM

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.