The Summer Wind - A WSOP Trip Report …… and beyond!

Nothing wrong with taking shots and free rolling them with other people’s money.

Sounds like that had a shot for a 5 figure score. Just gotta keep putting yourself in spots like that!

I think the fact that they don't rake at the table and take it from a preloaded account can make more people pretend they are winners.

That "big" game is what happened to me in my last Hard Rock Cinci trip -- I just wasn't willing to go deep enough to gamble with those guys, even though I lost many thousands. Either you get lucky early on or you don't -- because they are just gambling.

If the Bolded is true, I don't understand how you leave a game like this?

Short term variance and all that, but you'll likely never find a game that good for the foreseeable future.

Bankroll management. I didn’t bring enough cash with me to play that big and even if I did it would still be too large a % of my roll.

Nothing wrong with taking a shot in a game like that, but you want to be in for small and amassing a stack, not buy in for 10k lose it and have to buy in again for another 10k.

Much safer to grind out 1k and 2k a time in smaller games until my bankroll is bigger to be able to play with those whales.

Bankroll management. The two most important words in poker.

WSOP-C TCH Austin
Day Five - Monday April 27th

Still swimming against the tide in the tournaments lately. Bust the first bullet today shortly before the end of late reg without ever having been above starting stack.
I max late reg’d a second bullet which I did 2x but then downhill from there.
3 tournaments so far, 6 bullets, 0 return.

I thought it would be quieter today with it being a Monday but no, the place was packed and still like a sauna unfortunately.
They had 4 tournaments going strong today. The seniors started at 10am, the high roller at noon, our 8-game at 3pm and then the first flight of the mini-main at 4pm and all drew good numbers. I thought the mini-main being so close to the 8-game might affect our numbers but we got 146 entries which is pretty good for 8-game.

After I busted the tournament I played the $5 bomb pot table for a bit until a seat opened up in the Big O game. Not much action, everyone knew what they were doing, no multi-way all-ins. On most hands two people just chop the ante’s so you’re only winning $15 each time. I think I made like $50 in the game before I got called for Big O.

The Big O table was quieter tonight with not much money on the table but it was an easy game. Mostly weak passive players. So this to me is a better spot than the ultra high variance PLO game with the whales yesterday. In this game I literally cannot lose, which is why I stayed until the game broke at 5am.
No big pots, no all-ins, control pot size, be sociable and milk them, $50 here, $100 there. Easy money.

In $1,000, out $2,000 after 5 hours.

I’ve been eating at the card house the last couple of days but forgot to take pictures. The food is okay. Had the salmon today and chicken curry yesterday and both were good.

On deck tomorrow: $600 HORSE

Let’s hope the tourney run good is all being saved for one big run

Enjoyed this video, but one of your background tracks with discordant notes at the end was stressing me tf out.

Hahaha yes I noticed that as well when I watched it back. I didn't listen to it all the way to the end when selecting it. Lesson learned.

WSOP-C TCH Austin
Day Six - Tuesday April 28th

Hi-ho, hi-ho it’s off to work we go. It’s overcast today but still very hot as we walk along the highway to the underpass where we cross.

Good news - we were only in for one bullet today.

Bad news - We’re still running bad and hit the rail not long after the dinner break. I’m beginning to wonder when it’s going to turn now.

For example twice in Stud I started with wired Aces and was called down all the way by inferior pairs. Their inferior pairs turned into two pairs while we never improved.

Then this one takes the cake in Razz:

I start 2-3 | 4 and complete it. Only the Q bring in defends.

4th street

Hero: 2-3 | 4-6
Villain: ?-? | Q-J

I bet thinking that will be the end of it, but no, he calls.

5th street:

Hero: 2-3 | 4-6-6
Villain: ?-? | Q-J-9

Villain checks, we bet, he calls.

6th street:

Hero: 2-3 | 4-6-6-6
Villain: ?-? | Q-J-9-8

Villain leads out, we raise, (knowing we’re behind but still a slight favorite and wanting to gamble) he calls.

7th street:

Hero: 2-3 | 4-6-6-6 | Q
Villain: ?-? | Q-J-9-8 | ?

We can only make a Queen. Villain had a Jack and won. To be honest I knew I’d miss it. Poker sucks when you’re running bad.

This has been my guilty pleasure on this trip. There’s an ice-cream place in the same strip mall as the card room.

Today we opted for a banana milkshake.

They don’t however dislodge Hard Rock Hollywood for the #1 spot of having the best ice cream on the circuit imo.

The Big O cash game started not long after I busted the tournament but only lasted an hour before it broke. Not sure where all the players were for it today. We were -$300 when it abruptly halted.

On deck tomorrow: $600 No Limit Deuce to Seven Single Draw

This is the tournament that I was most looking forward to. Before coming I watched literally every final table and steam of this format available and am looking forward to playing it. It’s part of our mix in the Bellagio cash game and I’ve played it as part of dealers choice, nine game and ten game tournaments before, but it will be my first time playing a straight no limit deuce tournament.

That is such a poorly played razz hand by your opponent that I wonder if he thought he was playing stud.

I guess he wouldn't lead into trips on the board in stud though, so I don't know what he was doing. Just clicking buttons I suppose.

The luck will flip eventually. As they say, poker is one long game.

Some consider NL 2-7 the purest form of a poker. Enjoy the event. I hope you find a bottle of 75432 sauce and BBQ many Texans.

Now I know we are destined to be great friends. My favorite ice cream is banana. Virtually no one manufactures banana ice cream. I have yet to find plain banana ice cream being sold in a grocery store. Coldstone is the only place I know that offers banana ice cream. My wife and daughters buy me a big container of banana ice cream from Coldstone for my birthday every year. And when I go to Coldstone myself and order banana ice cream, they ask me what I want added to it. I say I just want plain banana ice cream. The server always looks at me like I am crazy.

And my favorite milkshake is banana.

Most people think it is odd that my favorite flavor is banana. I'm glad to finally find an ally when it comes to this flavor.

Classic Razz-runout! 😆

I really enjoyed playing Razz on PokerStars back in the days, but now I hardly ever get to play it.

I see that The Orleans have a $600 'Razz Championship' when I am most likely in Vegas this summer though - would be fun, although I am drawing more dead than a mid-sized cemetery.

Cinnamon Vanilla at Coldstone. Yum.

Glad to be your banana ice cream brother. Not sure why more places don’t make this delicious flavor.

Sonic Drive-ins used to have banana shakes. Little chunks of banana sometimes clog the straw. Don't know if they still have them.

WSOP-C TCH Austin
Day Seven - Wednesday April 29th

Slept late and missed breakfast again. I feel if a hotel is going to partner with a card room and give special rates they should really be more accommodating of the hours poker players keep.

So we went to the Italian place Reale’s again for lunch and got the veal parm this time. A solid 8/10.

Onto the 2-7 Single draw tournament and the first hand I play might set the tone for the rest of the day:

We open with 22336 and get two callers.
They draw 1 and 2 and we pat.
They both check. We bet around 100% of the pot and they both fold.

The 1 seat of my original table lineup was a bit of a fish and donked all his chips off to the guy in my left. He’s replaced by the polar opposite in Brad Ruben, a 5 time bracelet winner and reigning world champion in the $1,500 discipline of this event.

He was active early and often and it wasn’t long before we got involved with him.

I 3-bet an open to 3k with T-8 from late position. He calls on the BB as does the original raiser.
They both take 1. We pat.
Brad leads out for 9.5k
The original raiser folds.
We think about it for a bit.
I tell him it’s getting less likely that he keeps hitting his card.
He agrees.
We call.
He shows 87654 for a straight and we’re good.

Last hand before the dinner break and end of late reg. There’s a limper and I make it 4,500 from the SB with T-8. BB shoves for about 20k. Limper folds, we call and pat. He draws one and misses.

So a pretty good opening 4 hours and we’re sitting on an above average 80k at the dinner break.

I lost a couple of friendly bets on the number of entries. I had Under 150 but we ended up with a very impressive 156 total entries.

After the break I went completely card dead for two hours. Never had a pat or a draw one. Ante’d away to only 20 bigs I 3-bet shipped it with a pat 9-8 and the original raiser called. I’m first to declare. I pat. When he pats behind that’s the worst feeling in this game because I know I’m dead. He’s never patting a worse hand and sure enough he has an 8. GG.

On a brighter note we managed to get a $40-$80 mix cash game going with a nice mix of games.

Nice plaques here but no $10 chips so we have to play with $5’s and $25’s.

I was up about $1,200 at one point but finished only +$400 when the game broke at 4am.

We played short handed the last couple of hours which can be quite swingy and that proved to be the case. There was one guy who didn’t have much of an idea what he was doing and of course he absolutely crushed it, hitting everything and was the big winner.

On deck tomorrow: Last tournament. $600 PLO

WSOP - C TCH Austin
Day Eight - Thursday April 30th

Late reg’d the PLO today, jumping in in level 5. Lost the first bullet with double suited Kings, ran into Aces, of course. Amazing how many times that happens in PLO.

But then I did manage a triple up with a double suited rundown hand making a straight on the river.

So we have a right around average 74k at the dinner break.

After dinner we whiffed some flops and then got it all-in 3-ways with 3567 on a 3-3-T flop that contains two hearts. Can we triple up again?
Villain 1 has Aces with hearts. Villain 2 has a Ten, also with hearts.

Despite them both having hearts, the river is indeed a heart and we don’t fill up. GG.

So that’s the tournaments done. Pretty frustrating to go 0 for 6, but completely normal in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully saving our run good for Vegas.

The 40/80 mix was running again with an open seat so we jumped right in. It was the same mix as last night expect for one extra game. There was a guy from Ontario playing and he wanted to include a game he had invented from his home game. At first I was like GTFO but when he explained it it sounded interesting so we all agreed to play it.

So we called it Ontario and it’s a mix of hold’em, stud and draw as follows:
It’s a button game with a SB and BB
Everyone gets 3 hole cards.
There’s a betting round.
You then have the option to change any of your hole cards, but your new cards you get face up in front of you like Stud.
There’s then a two card flop followed by another round of betting.
Then everyone gets a card face up in front of then like Stud.
Another round of betting follows.
Then a final up card in front of everyone like Stud.
And a final round of betting.
So everyone has 5 personal cards, some of which are face up, and there’s two community cards. Best 5-card high hand wins.

Might sound a little weird but it was pretty fun. Try it out in your home games.

Unfortunately not much else exciting happened for us and we booked a -$600 loss when the game broke at 4am.

Not the greatest trip then…guessing that’s the life of the tourney pro but hopefully some deep runs around the corner

Ontario sounds like a fun game. I'm assuming it played as 40/80 limit?

Hope you found Texas to be hospital and will return despite recent results.

Yes we played it limit, and yes I’ve enjoyed my time here despite the results. All the dealers, staff and players I’ve interacted with have been very friendly and hospitable. I would definitely come back.

WSOP-C TCH Austin
Day Nine - Friday May 1st

Last day. Do I go sightseeing or grind cash? Well the fact that it was raining pretty good swayed the decision. Also I’d asked the locals where to go for the best BBQ and there was a consensus between two places; Franklin and Terry Black, but when I did some research it seems you have to show up real early at both places and wait in line for hours which also put me off. So grind cash it is. Let’s see if we can win some bullets back.

I know there won’t be a Mix game today as some of those players have gone home so I play the $5 bomb pot game while waiting for them to open a Big O table.

It’s very tight. No action players. Maybe only one weak spot who I get to fold on the river of the only significant pot I played. I had a full house on bottom and a flush on top but there was also a full house possible on top which villain had but it was a bad one and he laid it down for my pot sized bet.

Interesting flop:

So I played in that game for about 3 hours winning $200 before they called the list for Big O.

The Big O table wasn’t good. Not much action except for this one hand:

The $10 straddle is on, there’s a couple of limpers and the guy on my right makes it $50.
We have AK247ds and make it $150
3rd player pots it.
Original raiser folds.
We call all-in for $600 and change. (Bought in for $1,000 but was losing at the time)

The board runs out K-7-4-8-J and we scoop with nut low and two pair.

Villain had AA5xx. I didn’t notice the other two cards but I think it’s a bad 4-bet by him. I mean if there’s two raises in front of him for sure they both have an Ace so the aces are dead and he’s not got a great low draw working. Need to be careful in this game and not go crazy with Aces.

Salmon and potatoes for supper. The picture doesn’t do it justice. It was pretty good, as was everything I ate in the card room.

Had enough grinding for today. Not going to win any big money. Just +$300 to show for 5 hours of Big O and that will do it for this trip.

I played 50 hours total of cash games on this trip but was only able to win $1,600 to offset the tournament losses.

Final thoughts. The field sizes were really good for all the tournaments and they crushed all the guarantees, creating very nice prize pools. The tournaments were well run and the dealers good on the whole.

Despite having 70+ tables they were all in use and space was limited. Cash game lists were very long because they simply didn’t have any tables to open new games until late in the night.

The location isn’t the best. It’s quite far from downtown and there isn’t much else to do, especially when you don’t have a car.

Everyone was very friendly and welcoming. The food was good. Cash games were unfortunately prevented from becoming drunken spewy affairs because they cut off alcohol sales at midnight. Apparently because they’re too close to a school so they can’t get a late license, so I was told.

And that’s a wrap.

On Deck: WSOP in Las Vegas

A Year In Review

I’m going to put this thread to bed as I’ll be starting a new one for this year’s WSOP so I thought I’d do it first with a look back at some of the highlights from this thread, and then present my plan for the WSOP.

This thread has covered a full year of my life and my journey on the poker circuit.

Probably my favorite moment came early in the thread on the very eve of the WSOP when we took down the $1,100 Big O at the Wynn for $33,000 beating Adam Friedman heads up.

In August we battled Kristan Lord heads up for more than two hours into the early hours of the morning to secure our 2nd Hard Rock trophy in the $600 HORSE for $14,000.

September was a great month. We started it at Borgata with a runner-up finish to Chance Kornuth in the $1,100 HORSE for $8,000 and followed it up by absolutely crushing the cash games there.

Then we finished the month winning a 2nd WSOP circuit ring at Thunder Valley in Omaha 8 for $13,000.

November saw us back at Borgata and in BEAST mode shipping a baby borg.

December was family time in the Bahamas and a pair of $25k bounties.

We saw in the new year in Las Vegas and just two days into it we won our 3rd WSOP circuit ring. This time in PLO for $8,000

And my final highlight came in February when we stepped up in class and went into the Poker Go studio and came away with a runner-up finish in the $5k Eight Game for $36,000.

So all in all not a bad year.

WSOP 2026

Looking ahead now to the big dance and I want to play a full schedule and give myself the most chances possible to win a bracelet and make a big score.

Last summer I played tournaments all around town. Playing not just the WSOP, but also Wynn, Aria, Orleans and Golden Nugget. This summer I’m only going to play WSOP tournaments to maximize my bracelet opportunities.

Last year I played 12 bracelet events. This year I have 25 pencilled in and for that reason am selling action again.

So I was originally going to sell for one big package at $50,000 like I did last year but then a couple of things happened so I came up with a cunning new plan.

Let me explain. So I listed all the events individually on Pokerstake last Friday thinking that between there, some here on the forum and some friends that I’d arrive at the desired amount I want to sell, which is 40%. But then someone snap bought 40% of two events on Pokerstake (It was actually someone I play with in the $80 Mix at Bellagio and whose game I respect a lot, so I was flattered that he thinks enough of my game to buy all my action in a couple of events) which already makes selling a full package complicated. I’d have to say all events excluding event x and event y which isn’t great.

Then someone who regularly buys some of my action said to me he doesn’t want to take a small piece of the whole package but would rather take a bigger piece of a handful of events which made a lot of sense to me. A 5% stake in 5 or 6 events can be more meaningful than 1% of the whole package.

So this year instead of selling a full package to all events I’m breaking it down into 3 smaller packages, although there’s nothing to stop people buying a piece of all the packages if they do want everything.

NLH & Mystery Bounty Package
(This package includes only these 5 events)

#1 $550 No Limit Hold’em Mini Mystery Millions
#34 $500 No Limit Hold'em Colossus 
#63 $1,000 No Limit Hold’em Mystery Millions
#86 $600 No Limit Hold'em Ultra Stack
#87 $1,000 PLO Mystery Bounty

Budget includes $4,000 in re-entries. Any unused entries will be refunded. Total package cost including markup at 1.1 = $8,415
1% = $84, 2% = $168, 5% = $420

Big Bet Package
(This package includes only these 7 events)

#12 $1,500 No Limit 2 - 7 Single Draw
#14 $1,500 Mixed PLO 8, Omaha 8, Big O
#20 $1,500 Dealers Choice
#21 $1,500 PLO 8
#22 $1,500 Big O
#83 $1,500 PLO Double Board Bomb Pot
#91 $1,500 Pick Your PLO

Budget includes $6,000 in re-entries. Any unused entries will be refunded. Total package cost including markup at 1.1 = $18,150
1% = $181, 2% = $363, 5% = $907

Mixed Games Package
(This package includes only these 8 events)

#40 $1,500 Razz
#45 $2,500 Mixed Omaha 8 / Stud 8
#52 $3,000 Nine Game Mix
#58 $1,500 Limit 2 - 7 Triple Draw
#69 $1,500 Seven Card Stud Eight or Better
#74 $1,500 Eight Game Mix
#77 $2,500 Mixed Triple Draw Lowball
#92 $3,000 TORSE

Budget includes $6,000 in re-entries. Any unused entries will be refunded. Total package cost including markup at 1.1 = $25,300
1% = $253, 2% = $506, 5% = $1,265

So please PM me if you’d like to take a piece of any of the above packages. If anyone just wants only one or two specific events then you can do that via Pokerstake.

I also have some $10k’s listed on Pokerstake. If anyone is interested in taking a piece of those at zero markup please do get in touch as well.

Information for Investors.

In this google sheet you will find financial, profit and loss and performance details from all the tournaments I have played since WSOP 2024 to current date:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ajXsBeDttvOvLDrUW65TxLDCl4HhWSDq6dRWJbKOpic/edit?usp=sharing

Google Docs

Investors