Considering My First WSOPC $365 Event

[mikey4141]

Goodluck man! I hope you kick some donky asss!!

[Unkclan]

you'll get railed. don't play it

[tracyrickrobby]

most definitely go for it!! the experience is worth it! i won a 500 dollar staking package and played 2 WPT tourneys! what a trip that was!!!! good luck and keep us posted!!

[GoodGame]

best of luck to you, take it down!

[rrickir]

gl to u and u shoild play if u get a chance to go,, will be a fum experience for u.. as long as u dont b ust out rite away,, have fun gl....

[guicor30]

from here I wish you luck.
remember playing each hand carefully and thinking about the probability of the opponent.
good luck.

[bartonjoel]

I have played several WSOPC Main Events and the fields are pretty tough. But you have to take shots at playing with good players to get better. If you lose the $365 and would be upset I would suggest playing the daily tournament for under $100 at the casino if they are doing smaller tournaments. With the WSOP in the casino (most times in a conference room area of casino) the casino's regular daily tournaments' participation is way up also. And you can always test your skills there, BUT you don't get a ring for those... GL and remember to run good. If you make it deep you can look up on the website to see who at your table is the WSOPC grinders are. You will get a lot more credit for hands being an unknown and can kinda take advantage of them if you do it sparingly.

[pokertoi]

It'd be my third live tournament.

Good idea? Bad idea? Do I need to dial back the cray-cray? Amp up the aggression?

What do y'all think from what you've seen of me?

I think that if you believe that you're ready and you have the funds to play, then go for it, and good luck to you

[weewayz]

If you can afford it, then by all means go for it. It will be difficult though to do well in a tournament with this big of a buy in unless you have a lot of experience playing in live tournaments at smaller buy ins.

My advice would be to try and find out the exact structure of the tournament you are planning to play in. They usually have a printout available that shows starting stack sizes, number of players per table (it should be 9 but in some casinos they will have 10 players at the start and then change to 9 handed once players get knocked out), the length of the levels as well as any planned breaks.

With regards to having 10 players instead of 9 is so that more players can get into the tournament. A ten handed game does play tighter and there is a slightly higher probability of a pair of kings running into a pair of aces. As well as Kings vs. Queens and so on. There is also a slightly higher risk of other hands being dealt. It does take some getting used to though.

Once you have the structure available I would try to find some online mtts of same structure and number of players in the tournament. Even better would be to play in smaller live buy in tournaments with a similar structure, but that is very hard to find in smaller locations.

Even if you cannot find any games live, the experience of playing in a larger buy in live tournament is well worth the money if the buy in would not be missed if you fail to cash. Playing in large buy in tournaments have been some of the best moments in my life. Having played in several 10k buy in tournaments was a rush ( I won 3 seats in big buy in mtts, one was the wsop main event in 2004, one was in a WPT10k event in 2005 where I went out in 60th place or so out of 600 players, and one was a 5k WPT event in 2005 where I went out in 32nd place and cashed for $11k and change.

I cannot tell you how many smaller buy in events I played but there were a fair number of 200-1,500 buy in tournaments over the years. Even have a bracelet that I won in 2001 at a WPO event (it was the 2nd largest tournament event at the time. They called it the Jack Binion World Poker Open (hence the wpo) and ran in Mississippi for a number of years at the Gold Strike Casino and the Horseshoe Casino. Only wish I had was to win a real bracelet at the WSOP> Otherwise I enjoyed the time I was able to play in these tournaments.

If you want some helpful tips about playing in a bigger Live tournament I would be happy to assist you in any way I can assist you (other than how to actually win them, lol). Me I seemed to always end up going out in 2nd-5th at the final tables when I made it that far.

[weewayz]

Some more advice in regards to preparation would be to go to the online poker forums that have vast archives and read up on hand histories, situations, and the advice that these people received in their quest to improve their own game. In addition, a couple of poker books geared specifically towards tournament strategy might be worth investing in .If you don't want to buy any books, you could try the local library (a lot of libraries share their book inventories and you might be able to obtain them on loan for a 2 week period of time even though your library does not have it on their shelves).

You have plenty of time to work on your game online as well as to read a few books and gain some advice in that way too. Good Luck