WSOPA over, and New Step Forward!

WSOPA is over, well done to Warren Zackey for winning and well done to runner up Melanie Banfield. This event was not a bracelet event, but rather a WSOP Circuit event where the winner wins the coveted ring for their troubles!!

Zackey has the record for going the second farthest for a South African in a WSOP MAIN EVENT with a 22nd place for over $300k dollars. This is after the legendary 3^rd place finish by Ray Rahme for $3.5mill dollars. The odds listed above on Zackey were excellent and probably worth taking! Banfield is definitely the best female poker player in SA, she is extremely consistent and knows how to make a final table. She played some excellent poker and proved her worth at the top this weekend. Well done to both.

Unlucky, but very well done to Rob Fenner for his 5th place, for just under R400k. He is my work colleague, and we see each other every day. Although we don't really have much in common, we do have the odd chat about poker and I'd like to take the credit for lending him some poker material as well as Gus Hansen’s 'Every Hand Revealed'. Hansen was the commentator during the final table. Since reading the book, Fenner’s results have improved dramatically. In the last tournament he played, he almost cashed and lost ahuge pot to Jay Sookoo when he went all-in with 88 versus Sookoo's A10suited on a low carded flop with two cards of the same suit that Sookoo required. Sookoo hit his flush and knocked Fenner out, but had he missed, Fenner would have most likely gone on to win the tourny (as Sookoo did). I must say, Fenner has a superbly intelligent mind, he is very sharp and has unbelievable mathematical skills and can do difficult sums at a quick pace like a  human calculator. He is an avid sports better, and is constantly doing well on the horses, etc. He is also known to play the occasional high stakes cash game on Piggs but has asked me to keep his nick confidential. Overall well done to Fendog! He will surely be partaking in more events following this result. Note that he has a previous AllAfrica cash a few years back, when the payout stretched to about 35 places back in the day. He won that seat online on Piggs.

So, I’ve decided to re-look at my poker path and change my course of action. It’s something I believe needs to be done. It may be the wrong decision, it may be the right decision and only time will tell but for now, I really believe that I need to take this new path forward.

If I look at my poker path over the past 3 years, I’d say that overall, I have been unsuccessful in achieving my goals. We all want to build a bankroll, whether that is by grinding or getting lucky in a big tournament, and eventually move up stakes and play higher and higher with the potential of a higher payoff at the end of the day. As long as I have been grinding, unfortunately, and most likely because Poker is not a full-time activity for me, I have not been able to build my bankroll suitably and haven’t managed to play the types of tournaments that I’ve really ‘wanted to’ throughout this time, tournaments such as Live R10k freeze-outs etc. No matter what one says, online is very different to live poker and I really would love to become a regular on the South African circuit. None of this has happened. My discipline online has undeniably been my downfall, and I’m the first to admit that I have never maintained the consistency nor obedience to carry out ‘one’ challenge at a time, without getting bored and switching over to the ‘next’ challenge that captured my interest. Often online, we tend to play what is readily available rather than handpicking the exact games we want to be involved in. Especially being confined to the South African time zone, making the big Sunday tournies impossible to play with work the next day.

So I’ve decided to cut the crap, and cut down on my playing quite a bit. I’ve decided to increase on quality and decrease on quantity. I’m no longer interested in 5 tabling 5 tournies at a time just to cash in two or three of them. I’d rather play one tournament, maximum two and go as deep as possible in one of those than have three small cashes. I really need to play to win. I need to no longer give a faak about the bubble. If I’m short-stacked on the bubble and I get Aces or Kings on the bubble - I will play to win, not to cash.

Cash game is a big leak of mine at the moment and I should just plain simply stay away from cash for a while. As great as it feels to make a big profit in a short ‘time-span’, unfortunately I have not achieved this consistently enough to stay profitable at the stakes that I played, which I do not deny has been due to poor bankroll management and lack of focus on a particular task - one at a time.

So overall, what have I got to show for my poker skills?... Not much!

I haven’t managed to break into the Live tournament circuit, and online I don’t believe I have any big cashes to be proud of. I have some excellent results, true, but no big cashes to be proud of.

We all say to ourselves, “You know, if I just had one shot at that big (live) buy-in freeze-out event, if I could just show them…” Well the truth is we all have that opportunity almost all of the time, just it may not be as big a buy-in and it may not be live, but online we do always have the opportunity to win the tournament we are in, and take is as seriously as the WSOP main event, if we choose to. But we usually don’t, we don’t put 100% of our focus in it because we’re probably multi-tabling, and we’re probably thinking about what time the girlfriend/wife will be home, or what time we need to go to bed, or, or, or….

The next question is, “If I wanted to be staked, what would I need to do, or prove?” Well it’s pretty easy to answer. Show consistent big cashes in decent tournies and you generally wont have a problem. I look at my big cashes and I think of how pitiful a $330 tourny win of 425 entrants is. It’s just not good enough. The backers will say that 90% of the field were fish at that level buy-in, and it’s hard to argue.

So ultimately, I don’t have the lifestyle to grind a bankroll, and I don’t have the bankroll to play the ultimate circuit that I’d love to. So somewhere in between I need to find my ultimate balance. Easier said than done, but I look at friends who have taken some nice shots at big tournies and done well, that are not much ahead of me, yet have organized their lives in a way which have allowed them to do so. So this tells me that I definitely need to change the way I do things.

So as I said before, I intend to cut down on the quantity, cut down on cash game altogether, and focus on quality. Hand pick the tournies I really want to play. I am not sure if there is any point in me grinding SNG’s because as mentioned previously, I do not think that I have the time or lifestyle to grind up a huge bankroll playing SNG’s. If I’m going to build my bankroll, it is going to have to come from big results in tournaments full-stop. When I’m craving to play poker and I do not have enough time on my hands to play a decent long tournament, I will have to settle for a ‘satellite’ and win my entry into a big tourny.

Do not get me wrong, I have absolutely no regrets for my path up till now. I absolutely love my entire poker experience to this point and have no qualms with where I am, from where I’ve come. I just don’t believe the same path will get me to where I’d like to go, and believe that the time to change this is now.

I may be making the wrong decision, and I may find myself further back than before, but this is something I just need to do, and I’m going to do it. I’m scared, and I don’t know what is to come, but it feels right and I will stride forward with my head held high.

So thank you for listening, as I feel I needed to get this out there. And thank you to those of you out there who support me for all your continued support. The date today is the 1^st of November 2010 (Time of writing). I hope to (hold it together) stay on this path long enough for it to become a part of me, and I shall report back regularly albeit possibly less regularly than before.

So here’s to a new foot forward!
Fin