Yes Sir, I Can Badugi

My foray into Badugi continues. For a long time I thought I was going to have to satisfy myself with being the fourth best badugi player after finishing fourth or thereabouts time after time in 80-100 fields. 

Yet, I persisted. 

Then it was runnerup again and again. On my first attempt at headsup badugi, I was crushed. With little idea of what adjustments to make my opponent pummelled me with aggression and by the time I decided to make a stand, it was too late. My second heads-up battle was also short-lived but while I didn't win, I think I was just unlucky to be outdrawn a few times, so I left more hopeful. My third heads-up experience was a 40 minute epic back and forth battle, alas, I came up short again. But I persevered and at long last won the nightly badugi tournament outright!

I have discovered another couple of badugi tournaments on Pokerstars but they are still maxing out at a $4.40 buyin. Until... Pokerstars announced a WCOOP warm up series called the "WCOOP Bootcamp" which has... BIGGER BADUGI!

Based on the guarantees, the $5 tourney should get around 500 runners and the $55 event should get around 100 entries. 

If I had to pay the $55 outright to play the high event I would, but I fancy myself as a satellite expert, so attempted to get in cheap, and almost succeeded, four times:

I finished just outside the tickets over and over. Thankfully, that won me $11 each try, so after buy-ins I was up $22, which I decided just to use as a discount for the $55 buy-in. Annoyingly, I bust 58th out of 92 in that. I'm sure I played my exit hand correctly, my aggro opponent outdrew my 7 high badugi on their last draw, but I think it was just one of those things. The low event went a little better, finishing 68th from 721 entries but it wasn't for much more than a min cash. Despite a whole night of somewhat disappointing results my enthusiasm hasn't wavered as I look towards the WCOOP. 

Researching last year's events I uncovered the following fun facts:

• The third smallest WCOOP prize pool was the $11 fixed limit Badugi 
• The fourth smallest WCOOP winners prize was also the $11 fixed limit Badugi 
• The third smallest field WITH JUST 33 PLAYERS was the $1050 fixed limit Badugi 

That last one has caught my eye, just THIRTY THREE players! In a WCOOP? Unlike a 20,000 strong hold'em field, that's winnable, right? Right? Gonna get myself a shiny WCOOP trophy! ...I just need to gain entry to this golden opportunity!

But how?

Last year, there were $11, $109 and $1050 badugi events, assuming its the same again this year, I might buy into the medium directly but I would rather not. So I need a $109 ticket. There's no way I can buy into the high event, so again, going to have to win a satellite or two. Its likely that a satelite for a $1k will have $109 buyins, so we're going to need multiple generic $109 tickets, and how do we get them? Pokerstars Power Path. If you're unaware, Stars have a satellite system called 'Power Path' with different tiers of buyins, starting from 50cents all the way up to $109, with the chance to win packages of tickets worth between $2.5k and $10k. So that's the mission for the month ahead: win lots of tickets!