Matt Glantz’s Blog

Well, at this point I can safely say I am having a good start to WSOP 2009.  Guaranteed cash of $72k vs the alternative of being stuck $40k after the first event certainly has its advantages for the psyche.  And after cashing last month in the $25k WPT Championship, it feels like a sense of relief cashing in both of the two biggest buyin NL tournaments for the year.  It would feel great to final table this one, but at least the sense of relief has already been achieved from overcoming the two largest NL bubbles for the year.

So I started day 2 with slightly less than avg chips around 240k.  I was able to chip up to about 400k in the first hour or two without any showdowns and then this silly hand came up.  3000-6000 500.  Scott Seiver and I get involved in a hand.  He is one of the growing list of internet superstars and clearly has a handle on NL on par with the best of the best.  Very personable kid with a super table presence which will no doubtably serve him well as he continues his journey through poker.  The table presence factor is way lost on so many of the young superstars.  There are so many great young NL players in the fields today but the ones that will seperate from the pack in the future will be those that can produce a likeable and at the same time respected table presence.  So Scott open limps for 6k in the cutoff.  SB folds, I check with A7.  Flop A74  with two clubs,  I have the ace clubs.  Scott has me covered as I have 392k to start the hand.  I lead for maybe 15k.  Scott quickly raises to about 38k.  I reraise to about 115k.  He pretty quickly shoves.  I insta call for my stack of 385.5k.  Fortunately for me he didnt have the 44, he had the A4.  And I was able to double up to almost 800k with avg stack around 360k.  Those cold deck gifts are so rare that I just feel so lucky when I am on the right side of one of them.  It really was a miserable spot for Scott.  Once he open limps, I think he played the hand optimally post flop.  Just one of those things - who is luckier at this moment?

So soon after I was up to about 1.1m with no showdowns and no resistance.  Now in top 4 in chips with about 50 players left.  I proceeded to fold my way down to about 650k the rest of the night from 50 players down to 23.  I dont remember ever folding a higher percentage of hands for a longer period.  I believe I opened 2 hands in that stretch.  Not due to any ‘master plan’.  Strictly because in each hand the situation seemed best served by folding.  Very frustrating.  But I look back now and can feel confident I made the most of every situation which is really the key to winning in poker.  Even when that optimal choice is to continue to fold.

Day 3 today:  I enter 14th in chips out of 23.  I have 670k. avg is 1.05m.  I am about a 2-1 dog to make it through today and reach the final table.  But one thing is for sure.  It will be fun trying.

Results for Tournaments:

I played a $1,570 satellite for the 40k and did not win a seat.  I had a $5k piece of Bryan Colin in the 40k.

-$6570

Results for Cash Games:

Have not played any as of yet.  Also including prop bets in this section.  Had 5k on the under 250 entrants for the 40k with Eli.

+$5,000

The World Series of Poker has begun.  We had our first big buyin event yesterday.  The 40k NL Holdem event.  The Rio was able to get 201 of the most recognizable poker players to shell out the 40k for this star studded event.

My starting table included  Daniel Negreanu, Dario Minieri. Jeff Lisandro, Phil Galfond, and Dale Pinchot.  Each player started with a stack of 120k.  I was able to pick up chips in a few small and medium size pots right off the bat and I was pretty close to chip lead in the tournament all the way through the dinner break.  By dinner, I had 400k which was fairly close to the chip lead while avg stack was about 160k.

After dinner I was able to chip up to about 475k when the most interesting hand of the day came down.  Blinds: 1200-2400  300 ante.  Mike DeMichelle raised utg+1 to 6700.  I called from the cutoff with 44.  Heads up to the flop.   Mike had about 500k also.  We were both near the chip lead in the tournament as avg stack was about 190k.  Flop 466  2 hearts.  GIN FLOP!  He leads out for 15600.  I quickly raise to 40k.  He thinks it over for quite a while and reraises smallish to 95k.  At this point do give him credit for aces or kings.  Mike and I have played quite a bunch of poker together before and I have noticed he doesnt play nearly as aggressive against me as he does other players.  He is also not the type to fold a big pair here so I figure if I min raise back here to 150k, with our stack sizes, he might just push the remaining 325k and then one of us will be a huge chipleader with close to a million in chips.  So I do the min raise to 150k.  Mike goes into the tank and comes out after about 3 mins and just calls.   Turn card is the devil.  Turn is a 6.  Mike checks.  Now I figure I can either just give up here and lose the pot or turn this into a bluff and just hope he finds a way to fold thinking at this point if I bet again with our stacks that I must have the flatted him with the 56s or the 67s.  I would have played those hands the same way with our stacks.  So I fire out 125k on a last ditch attempt to win it.  Mike check raises the balance.  I light my two fours on fire and am left with 200k.  Uggh!   I end day one with 238k.  Avg is 271k.  89 players remain.

The VIP Players Lounge:

Each 2 hours in the tournament today we had either a 20 min or 30 min break.  Plus dinner break which was 90 mins.  So each break a group of 5 of us would rush to the lounge to play Chinese Poker.   This was a real good way to break up the monotony of the tournament.  The contingent included Doyle, Eli, Hellmuth, and Matusow.  This will most likely be the normal routine for all the big tournaments this summer.  The lounge is extremely comfortable with butler service, computers, tvs, food and drinks.  It is very secluded as you need an invitation to enter but at the same time right outside the lounge is the complete zoo atmosphere of the WSOP.  Its like half bat cave, half country club.

I will be arriving in Vegas on May 27th and from that point on I will be providing frequent blog entries to update my friends and followers with the details of my trip.  So the big request from so many is for me to update the profit and losses of my trip.  Everyone wants the hard numbers.  So to satisfy that curiosity, I will be putting out a P&L statement at the bottom of each blog.  It will include tournaments and cash games.  Be prepared for some serious volatility.

I sold 50% of myself for the 40k NL tournament to a couple friends.  This will be the only tournament where I sell any piece.  I only did this because the field will be particularly tough and this is the very first tournament for me when I arrive.  I didn’t want to start out stuck 40k.

This will be my first extended trip to the WSOP ever.  I will possibly enter more tournaments in this WSOP than the total number of WSOP tournaments I have entered in all previous WSOPs. In previous WSOPs I have a 4th, 3rd, and 2nd place.  So I am hoping to fill in that missing hole and finally grab a win.

Goals for WSOP 2009

3 Final Tables
1 Bracelet
+$400k between tournaments and cash games

I will be putting out consistent chip count updates for tournaments on twitter at http://twitter.com/mattglantz     :link on the bottom of the page

Feel free to comment if there are any suggestions about what I should include in the blog and if there are any specific questions I will do my best to answer in the following blog.