Week 1 of this year's SCOOP and I have played more events than I had planned, in part because I am part of "Team Spraggy" in the inaugural SCOOP League !
Look, there I am, an integral part of the team, not just some kind of afterthought or anything. A friend asked what I got for being part of the team... and... I don't know. Bragging rights? I suppose it's up to me to make something of the opportunity, some big scores would have me scrapping it out with the pros on the leaderboard. To get those points, I need to play more tournaments and rack up some deep runs.Spurred on by being in the SCOOP League and other social media hype I found myself with some free time around the start of the first SCOOP tournament and jumped in. Ironically event #2 because #1 is the phase tournament which ironically doesn't actually conclude until the end of the series.
I should have known better, the demands of parenting means I can't really play poker until 8:30pm because there is simply no time for 5hours+ of tournament poker until after bedtime, as at any moment you might have to give it all up to attend to an injury, scare off a fly or pretend to be a troublesome emu...
Distracted and concerned by being called away, I didn't play very well and didn't last much more than an hour. Later that night, I played the carefully selected planned tournaments plus the $5 NLHE PKO which was running around the same time. Had a couple of relatively deep runs, nothing too exciting but enough to round off day 1 with a profit.
Sunday 5th Buy-in Runners Won
#02-L NLHE -$5.50 10174/13170
#05-L PLO 2day -$11 661/4235 +$17.47
#06-L NLHE 2day -$11 2089/8653
#07-L PKO NLHE -$5.50 230/7808 +$29.46
Having failed to make a day 2, I was a bit disappointed by the tournament offering on Monday night. I played a couple of low buy-in games but they weren't really what I wanted to play and shouldn't have bothered, my heart wasn't in it. Lesson learned, only play the games I think look good.
Monday 6th Buy-in Runners Won
#10-L PKO NLHE -$5.50 4688/10082 +$1.25 bounty
#11-L NLHE Turbo -$3.30 3171/7416
On Tuesday, I was looking forward to the next two day Pot Limit Omaha tournament. I registered late with just 25 big blinds starting stack and yet splashed around like it was level one and had hundreds of blinds to spare, it did not go well. I rebought, played much tighter and things went much better. With roughly 600 players left and just under 500 players paid, I was cruising with around 60bbs. I could have easily locked up a cash but instead went the aggro route and lost two big flips by pushing things on the flop, one where I had top set of a draw heavy board and then other with a wrap straight draw vs top set, and lost both. Crippled, I tried to hold on until the money but fell short. I was disappointed with myself because it was all going so well, and then I forced the action and didn't get the results I was aiming for. Yet, had a won either of those pots I would be clapping myself on the back, so maybe it was just "bad timing", as they say.
Tuesday 7th Buy-in Runners Won
#13-L NLHE -$3.30 1525/4682
#17-L PLO 2day -$11 x2 556/3199
I had no intention of playing on the Wednesday night, I'm a big omaha fan but I think the NLO8PKO Turbo is an abomination. It's two variants too far in my opinion. I played it once before and it's just carnage. It is not a sensible game, and I would discourage anyone from indulging in such nonsense.
But.... I was looking through the lobby and noticed that with just minutes of late registration left, there was around 600 players left and just 100 players from the money, and well, that seems like an easy cash, so I jumped in. Unfortunately, I miscalculated that somewhat, as it was a PKO, a min cash was actually less than the buy-in, so not quite as profitable as I had initially thought. Fortunately, there were still a lot of players who had absolutely no idea how to play omaha hilo, and by shoving decent A2xx hands, I was able to chip up through players who had no right being involved in the hands in the first place, so I was make a decent go of it and lock up a massive 95cent profit.
Wednesday 8th Buy-in Runners Won
#23-L NLO8PKO -$11 331/3521 +$11.95
I'm not a fan of bounty tournaments, it generally seems like it rewards a high variance approach, AKA gambling, and that's not really my style. However, the Mystery Bounty tournaments do intrigue me, that idea that you can luckbox your way to a big payout without needing to wade through thousands of players is appealing. As the mystery bounties don't come into play on Pokerstars tournaments until you've made the money, I had thought it would play like a normal tournament until then. I was wrong. I've never played in tourney like the mystery bounty before. Many, many players were just happy to get it in way deeper than I would expect. A constant stream of all in pre 60+bb pots with AJ vs 88 kinda hands flowed from one hand to the next, new players joined the table and done the exact same, I've never seen anything like it. Perhaps there is a strategy at play that I'm not familiar with, is the plan to get a big stack so when it comes bounty time you can collect as many as possible? Is that what's going on? I don't know. Nonetheless, I lost a flip and was out pretty early.
Thursday 9th Buy-in Runners Won
#31-L NLHE Mystery Bounty -$11 7 485/10928
I rounded off the week with my best SCOOP tournament so far. Arguably event #07 was more profitable but I enjoyed the 5 card PLO a lot more, felt like I was more in control and was the first time this week I began to think I had a chance getting to or close to a final table. Alas, didn't quite break into the top 100 but I'm getting closer!
Saturday 11th Buy-in Runners Won
#36-L 5card PLO -$5.50 125/2903 +$18.86
Not a particularly flashy first week, just under $100 of buy-ins, down about $15. Taking on board what I've learned so far, I'm leaning towards playing less frivolous nonsense and going back to the original schedule of tournaments I had picked out. We'll see...
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