New York City Underground Poker

This is a continuation of my posts on the 2009 World Series of Poker (before I got sidetracked on the Pokerstars Big Game and diatribes on safe poker).

So I settled in for a weekend of online satellites to the WSOP. Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars were both running massive qualifiers with huge guarantees. This means that the poker sites guarantee to give out a certain number of seats, whether or not enough people actually played the satellite.

Some of you might wonder why I’d spend a whole weekend in the summer in NYC playing poker. Well, first of all, my apartment has air conditioning. The less time I have to spend outside in June / July in New York the better. Second (and maybe more importantly…) the games are always best on Saturdays and Sundays. Why? It’s simple, people who do not play poker for a living actually work during the week. This means they cannot play during the day and may not want to play late into the night. So, people with money and limited time will load up their favorite online poker site on a Saturday or Sunday and play all day.

Satellites can be a lot of fun to play, but can also be extremely frustrating. In theory you should “win” more often than a regular tournament, but if you do not know how to play you can get beaten down over and over again. I do not really want to get into satellite strategy, but suffice it to say, taking as few risks as possible in order to min-cash is the ideal! The problem is, you make one mistake or get just a little too aggressive and what was once a sure cash is now a “Thanks for Playing.”

On Saturday I got lots of those messages. FullTilt… busto. PokerStars… busto. UltimateBet… busto. Absolute Poker… busto. Most of the tournaments I was playing were long shots ($200-500 buy-in), but Sunday the game started to fall in place for me. All the Sunday tournaments had huge guarantees and enormous prize pools, each giving away a seat in the WSOP along with assorted extras (hotel rooms, cash, and extra prizes for television time).

Each of the two best online poker sites, Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker was running a 200 seat guarantee, and each blasted through its guarantee to give away well over 200 seats. I built up a huge stack early on in the Pokerstars WSOP satellite by luckboxing my way to a quadruple stack early by flopping a flush against a smaller flush and two sets. My luck just continued after that AA against KK, sets against overpairs, etc, etc. Once I built a huge stack I played standard satellite strategy and played nice and tight until we made our way into the money.

The Full Tilt satellite was a little more interesting. I got short-stacked early on, losing half my stack on a crying call against a player who rivered a bigger straight than the one I turned. Slowly I chipped back up with hyper-aggressive play, 3-betting, 4-betting, squeezing, doing everything I could to rebuild my stack – I was GOING to win 2 seats that day or I was going broke in the next 10 hands. Eventually I got even and then up to a double stack, where I could slow down again and play a little poker. This hand came up when I had about 30,000 in chips at blinds 300 – 600. I raised in late position to 1500 (love the 2.5x raise) with 8d9d and got a caller on the button and in the big blind (for a pot of 4800). Flop came down a beautiful 7dTcAd. Big blind checked, I bet 3600, the button raised to 12,400 and the big blind shoved for 40,000 (having both me and the button covered). At this point I have to assume the button is coming along for the ride so I need to call 24,900 to win 90,300, which means I’m getting ~2.5 to 1 on a call. I’m obviously putting these guys on a range, but smack in the middle of their ranges are sets and either a big ace or 2 pair (and I am not terribly worried about a bigger flush draw since the Ad is on the board, so effectively I have all 15 of my outs assuming the board doesn’t pair. Getting 2.5 to 1 with about 60% equity. YIPPEEEE KAAAAAYEEEEEEEE!!!! Thankfully I hit my 6s and the board did not pair. I held to win a monster pot and my second WSOP seat of the day!