First Entry

Whats up guys, this is Brett from Cardrunners....haha just kidding. Ive always wanted to say that and i laugh every time i watch a CTS video and he uses that intro. Well ive been playing poker for almost 5 years now and i finally decided to start writing a blog. Shout out to my boy Tom for inspiring me to start one. I read his and decided it would be a good idea to fire one up myself.

Where do i start. Today is Saturday the 24th and i just busted out of one of the bigger tournaments Ive played in awhile. Earlier in the week i Satellited in to the $530 Ultimate Bet 25 Seat GTD W.S.O.P Qualifier.

For those of you viewing this that don't follow Poker, The W.S.O.P stands for the " World Series of Poker." Every year now for about the past 30+ the W.S.O.P is an annual poker tournament held in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Great thing about the W.S.OP is that anybody can play in it. From the Best Pros, to you average Joe's. As long as you have $10,000 dollars you can buy your way in.

Well the Easiest way to Qualify if your an Online Player is Via Satellite. Each of the Major Poker Sites run Weekly Qualifiers to the Big show and today was my first time ever playing one. The Tournament i was playing was on Ultimate Bet and cost $530 bucks to enter and had about 700+ entrants and gave away 30 Seats to the W.S.O.P.

Lets just say things didn't turn out the way i wanted it to. I got all ready to play, had a nice meal, was in a great mental state and within 23 minutes i was sent to the rail on a pretty awkwardly played hand.

Now i will be using hand history's for most of Poker Related posts. But for Some Reason Ultimate Bet is a joke when it comes to importing HH's so my first entry is going to somewhat ghetto and ill just have to tell you the action and how it unfolded.

It was early on in the Tournament, all players start with 2500 in chips and blinds start out at 5/10 and double every 15 minutes(UB always has a good structure). Now i got a pretty good table draw. I didn't really recognize any players but i Data Mined a Few and there were no Superstars to say the least, all average to sub par players.

So about 20 minutes in I'm Dealt AA UTG(under the gun) and id say 95% of the time i am coming in for a raise in this spot. Well the Table dynamics had been pretty loose in EP and somewhat aggressive in LP. Which is standard for any tournament. But i felt like if i Limped i would easily induce some kind of raise behind me and if i raised i would fold out alot of hands i crush. Players tend to not like to get into confrontations early on in tournaments and will fold alot of hands to UTG raises.

So i limped in, got another Limp from a weak player on the Button. And a pretty Decent player raised it up in the SB. Our Stack sizes were somewhat similar(again i apologize for no Hand History) and this was really an ideal situation for me. I could do allot of things in this spot, but i think the most obvious play would be to Re raise, which i did, to about 370, Blinds were 10/20 at the time. And he called, we both had about 2k behind and the pot was about 820 if i remember correctly.

So the flop comes 2s 7c 9s. Beautiful flop for my hand. I make a standard C-bet of 590, and i get insta shoved on, for the Rest of my stack. Normally i would at least be somewhat concerned with a good solid player showing up with a set(3 of a kind) in this spot. But the Fact that he raised In the blinds, really really polarizes his range to big pairs and AK and AQ type hands. I just could never see anybody raising 22 or 77 in that spot. I think 99 is a part of his range, but i was about 95% sure he had 1010-kk.

So i make a Fist Pump, High Five my monitor call, expecting him to table QQ or some hand like that. Well my heart sinks when i see 22 shown for a flopped set. I sat there in disbelief for about 5 minutes. I just dont see how anybody could ever raise a hand like 22 or even 77 in that spot. It makes absolutely no sense to put in a big raise OOP(out of position) to a couple of limpers. Especially an UTG limper and then for him to call a big reraise, is bad on so many levels. But he flopped Gin and my first chance at a WSOP was gone.

Im not too disappointed with my play. I feel like i have been playing some great poker the past 3 weeks and if i keep focusing on my game and correcting some of my Leaks, the time will come...the time will come.

Anyways, I'm sorry this first Entry turned into somewhat of a small novel. Once I'm able to Upload Hand Histories i wont have to explain hands in vivid detail and it will obviously be allot easier to read. I am going to go rest now and watch game 3 of the Celtics vs Pistons Series. I hope Boston can pull one out and reclaim home court. We shall see....said the blind man.