(LHE) Tournament Planning 2011, WSOP?

This blog entry I’m trying to avoid writing about the “mindset” in poker. It’s actually something I never really plan to do but it seems that lately most of my blogs have been about that subject. It’s just something that is constant on my mind but today I’m going to write about some of my plans for 2011.

After playing the PCA Main Event I’ve realized again, that my tournament game is not nearly good enough to play tournaments with a buy-in of $10.000. It’s certainly something I don’t regret I have done and I see it more as something I did for the fun of it, then something I did as part of my poker job. I do however have one of my SNE packages left and I haven’t decided what to do with it. I could play the just announced EPT Grand Final in Madrid (May 7-12). The good thing about that package is that it includes a €10,000 buy-in stead of a $10.000 buy-in for most other tournaments so there is a little more value in that package. Madrid is however not really a place I would like to go to. I’m a person who loves to be around water, so I prefer cities who have beaches like Barcelona, San Remo or the old venue: Monaco. Now I know that I’ll probably be playing poker all day anyway when I’m going to play the EPT but Madrid just isn’t going to do it for me.

Now the other option is to play the WSOP Main Event 2011. I’m planning to go to Las Vegas in September/October with my party friends again but I do like to go down there for poker as well this year. I could combine that with the party trip I’m going to do and just stay an extra week to play poker but I could also go down there during the WSOP. The downside of the WSOP is that the weather in June is to hot to enjoy the swimming pool but the WSOP is just such an amazing event. Everybody says the Main Event is the best valued tournament there is and normally PokerStars has a sweet deal if you play it under their terms. In 2009 I got 100.000 VPPs for free which for me was worth $5.200 because I could buy an extra Milestone Cash Credit. That means that I actually only paid $4.800 to play a $10.000 event! Last year they gave you 50.000 VPPs to start with in 2011 and in case you made it in the money you would get a PCA package for free, another amazing deal. Whether I’m going to play the WSOP Main Event really depends on the deal that PokerStars comes up with for this year. If it’s as good as the last 2 years I might just not be able to pass up the deal, I’ll just have to wait till probably the end of March before they announce it.

I do however have a third option on what to do with the SNE package. I could just take the $10.000 and put it in my bank account or go and get a LHE bracelet. I of course have a lot of confidence in my limit game and would love to go and play the LHE events they hold at the WSOP. I had the same plan last year but I decided that I rather watch the World Cup which I didn’t regret for sure! Now I might be a better LHE player then a NL one but the variance in Limit is also a lot higher, especially in tournaments. So yesterday I looked at the schedule and listed the LHE events:
– June 3, 2011  Limit Hold’em (3 day event) – $1,500
– June 8, 2011  Limit Hold’em (3 day event) – $3,000
– June 11, 2011 Limit Hold’em / Six Handed (3 day event) – $2,500
– June 15, 2011 Limit Hold’em Championship (3 day event) – $10,000

I have to be back before the 24th of June as my mother is getting married so the Limit Hold’em Shootout Tournament is not an option. Now I could play all four events or skip the first one as I probably don’t want to go down there for more then 2 weeks. The idea is to play the cheaper events and based on how that is going, play the $10.000 event. Sure 3/4 events is still not a big sample size but I do think I have a good chance of making some money playing these events. My poker buddy is also playing LHE so it would fit us both and now that I’ve listed this myself I really can’t wait to go actually. The downside is that I lose some value by not picking the other packages but playing a game I’m 100% comfortable with is worth a lot of money as well. I probably just can’t decide before the WSOP 2011 deal is announced but at least I know what my options are. I might decide to just pick the $10.000 and put it into my bank account but where is the fun in that?

Coming weekend I’m having my monthly tournament weekend again. Playing the $215 Weekly Limit Hold’em en Freeroll on Saturday and playing the Sunday Warm-up/Million and Turbo Takedown on Sunday. I’m already looking forward to play some tournaments again and I have been thinking about mixing in LHE SNG’s as well. The thing is however that I don’t really know how these play. I don’t know if they are a regfest and I don’t know how often they go, I do however think it’s a good idea to play them as I will get more used to playing shorthanded LHE. I was first thinking about mixing them in playing cash-games but now that I think of it, Saturday will be a perfect day to try them out as I’m playing the weekly $215 Weekly LHE anyway.

I also booked a short trip to play the Venlo Vip Days. I’ll be playing the €300 NL event on Friday the 1st of April and the €1.000 NL event on Saturday the 2nd of April. I was actually planning to play the €200 event on Thursday as well but I can’t because of a course at work. It should be good fun and it might be a bit softer then the PCA so hopefully I can do some damage.

A small brag: I had to pay my taxes this week and didn’t want to get any money from my savings account. Since I still had a shitload of FPP’s I finally cashed some of them out. My top was  2.198.703 FPPs, so close to the 3.000.000 to get a Porsche 😉 I still have over 800.000 left in case I want to buy a live event package but I loved stacking up my FPPs. With the *5 Multiplier I get from being SNE the points go so fast, I wish I was going for SNE again 🙂

This week wasn’t the best but I made a small profit, I’ll be writing about my results next week again as it’s then time for a February Recap. I’ve tried to leave out the word “StarCraft” in this blog but that’s what I’m going to do now (just 1 game) and then it’s time to study some poker before playing again tonight.