2013 | Chris Moorman - moorman1 online - Professional Poker Player

Reentry Tournaments

After reading an article from well known tournament director Matt Savage (pictured left) last week I decided to make my latest blog post a discussion about reentry tournaments. Like them or loath them reentry tournaments are a huge part of the modern day tournament scene. In the past few years the number of reentry tournaments have grown exponentially and it now seems like the majority of tournaments are of a reentry format.

In my opinion they are in general bad for the game and are unsustainable long term. I’d like to make it clear that I’m not talking about the huge 100k’s that have become the norm over the past 5 years as I think that actually helps to provide some value in these tourneys (from the rich businessman who can readily afford to reload) but events such as the World Poker Tour, which I played in Montreal last week.

WPT Montreal is a $3850 reentry event with three separate starting days. In theory you could be in for $11,400 when the minimum cash is only $5204. In fact if you played all three bullets in this tournament you would need to make the top 5 percentile of the tournament (45th place out of 862 entries.) This means that in a reentry tournament there are very few winners. However, in a freezeout tournament with no reentrys, normally around 15% of the field make the money and are all guaranteed to be ‘winners.’ Not big winners of course but especially for recreational players coming back with more money than you started with is seen as a big thing.

Another important issue with reentry tournaments is that they cater for the pro players and allow them to have an unfair advantage over the recreational players as the pros generally have bigger bankrolls or backers which allow them the luxury of playing the event multiple times if necessary, whereas the recreational player might only have played the event because they won a satellite.

WPT Montreal only managed 862 entrants this year compared to 1173 last year. The buy in for the event did increase by $550 overall but I find it highly unlikely this had that big of an impact on the field size. Also I found it to be one of the most well run events and the players were incredibly well looked after by the Playground Casino so I don’t think the loss of 311 entrants was down to negative experiences of last year’s event. I believe that the loss in players was to less satellite winners, as they didn’t want to play one bullet where their opponents would be able to take advantage of up to three bullets.

The reentry format means pros can effectively gamble with their first couple of bullets in order to try and build a huge stack which they will be able to use to their advantage later in the tournament. It also takes out a lot of the ‘pureness’ of the game. For example, it would be silly to put Daniel Negreanu or Phil Ivey all in for their tournament life as a bluff on day 1a when you know they can easily rebuy and the money means very little to them, whereas in a freezeout tournament it would be much more of a feasible option as you know they are unlikely to want to bust such a big event early.

Reentry tournaments also threaten the longevity of the live poker scene because the best players are more likely than ever to rise to the top in these formats (see Seminole hard rock example later in the post.) What chance does your random live satellite winner stand with 1 bullet against pokers elite with three or sometimes even more opportunities in the same tournament? Even if they are fortunate enough to make it into the money they are likely to be surrounded by pokers biggest sharks when the serious money becomes involved rather than in a non-rebuy format where the mixture of players would be of a much greater spectrum. Although we are yet to fully see the effects of this in the live poker scene we can look to the Full Tilt Poker model before Black Friday of their reentry tournaments to see the likely results of reentry tournaments long term. Even though they were only widely ran for a 6 month period many players went bust or went on a significant downswing during this period with the only real winners being the people who were fortunate to hit a huge score in one of them or the elite regs who are the only players this tournament format really benefits.

Reentry tournaments are not all bad, though. Without them the guaranteed prize pools would be nowhere near as large in these events, which in turn would mean that a lot fewer players would make the effort to travel which then decreases the field size and prize pool further. For example, if WPT Montreal was a $3850 freezeout it really wouldn’t be worth it for a lot of people to travel to play when you consider the expenses with flight and accommodation costs.

What I am proposing in these cases is perhaps increasing the buy in amounts in certain events and making them freeeouts instead, which will make it more of a level playing field once again. At the WSOP they used to have $1k rebuy events but they got abolished because they didn’t want people to be able to ‘buy’ bracelets. In a way rebuy tournaments are similar to reentry tournaments so I really hope that the WSOP doesn’t start to introduce them to the most prestigious series of all because that could be very damaging indeed.

Besides WPT Montreal, one of the more recent live tournaments that I played in was the Seminole Hard Rock $5k reentry in Florida in August. Without the reentry format there is no way that it could have got anywhere near the $10 million guarantee they offered. I for one wouldn’t have made the long journey without that guarantee and the chance of multiple bullets if I busted out early.

Overall the tournament proved to be a major success and looks like it will be having a permanent place for poker players on the tour in the future. The long-term problems of reentry tournaments are highlighted in the final results of this tournament, though, with two of the best players in the field, Blair Hinkle and Justin Bonomo, ending up heads-up. It was a case of fifth time is the lucky charm for Justin as he had already managed to bust the tournament four times over the previous two days of reentry. A number of other pros with deep pockets also made it deep in this tournament, which highlights the fact of how much of an advantage it is to have a big bankroll for the reentry format of tournaments.

I am not arguing for reentry tournaments to be abolished in the live poker tournament scene but I think it is essential that they are monitored and don’t keep increasing at the rate they have over the past few years. In the end, if the poker rooms and casinos keep seeing doubled prize pools and rake, what is going to stop them from making every tournament a reentry?

London, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Cool New Promos

Hashtags for Hand Histories

I wanted to kick off this blog by announcing that I will be having some fun promotions over the next few months. I’ve decided to do this to try and connect with other players more closely. I have been receiving a lot of messages from people asking me for strategy advice/videos and unfortunately at this time I have decided against making poker strategy videos. However, I have three interactive promotions over the next 3 months in place.

The first of the 3 is as follows: I will review players hand histories and give my opinion on the hands, what you did good and what I would have done differently. I want you guys to tweet at me @Moorman1 with the reason why I should pick your hand history and use the hastag #moorman1 in the tweet between now and Nov 10th. I will select 5 different people and review up to 3 of their hand histories. I will post the picture of winners names on my Instagram @moorman1 account on November 11th. From there I will contact all 5 winners directly to get their hand histories and go over the hands in a blog post within the next week after the competition ends.

London, Los Angeles

Since WCOOP finished I’ve remained pretty busy. Firstly I rushed off to London to make it intime for the UKIPT High Roller event and the EPT London main. Unfortunately neither of these worked out for me. I did however have a great trip to London where I got to meet up with my family and many friends including a mini uni reunion with some of my closest mates from that time. It’s cool that even though we hadn’t seen each other in so long we all got on great still and it almost felt like yesterday that we were kicking it at the Essex University student union.

Later in the week I made it to Wembley with a few of the British poker lads for the England v Montenegro European Championship Qualifier where (surprisingly for England) we managed to play really well and win 3-1. It was my first time at the new Wembley and I must say they really did a great job on redeveloping it (even if it did take forever!)

The next day was truly epic. Toby Lewis, Chris Brammer and Tom Middleton (Middy) organised an all expenses paid trip to the races at Newmarket for the lads in order to celebrate Middy’s EPT Barcelona victory. At 11am 35 of us boarded a party bus that the boys had hired out. There were so many legends on the bus that it’s impossible to give everyone a shout out but some of the bigger personalities included Sam Grafton, Kev Allen, Richard Trigg and Paul Brammer (Chris Brammers Dad!) The atmosphere on the bus and throughout the day was electric and some of the boys even managed to land a 50-1 winner in the last race. The day served as a great celebration for Middy’s achievement and shows how close the UK poker community is. Poker is essentially an individuals game so it is really nice to have such a close knit UK group to fall back on when the going gets tough / if you need advice or on the flip-side to come and rail you to victory on that WSOP or EPT final table!

That next Sunday I woke up feeling a bit the worse for wear after the previous all day shenanigans, but It being a Sunday I was more than ready for the online grind. After a few days off I was feeling particularly hungry and ready to go and I actually managed to have 1 of my best Sundays of my career, winning 3 tournaments! These were the Brawl and Trex on FTP for around $75k combined plus the Party 60k guaranteed for another $14,000. Those results with another 4 final tables meant that by the end of the day I had cashed for $100,000 and was two thirds of the way towards a record setting 18th triple crown. That triple crown would have to wait though as I had a flight booked to LA the very next day to stay with my girlfriend for the week.

While in L.A I’ve been taking some time off poker after a hectic few months. I did a photoshoot for the Bluff Europe cover and an upcoming All In Magazine feature which I think turned out real well and should be out very soon. Apart from that I have been up to a few non poker activities which were all really fun. My favourite activity of these was Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios. This was much better than your typical halloween haunted house etc. Universal Studios is turned into a giant halloween horror park for the night with six walkthrough zombie mazes/scarezones.

Here is a small preview of whats in store for someone who braves it:

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Also I was privileged to attend the Magic Castle which is a showplace for some of the greatest magicians from around the world. You get to see the tricks from close up and it isn’t overcrowded because its a members only club.

Off to Vancouver

For now though its time to get on that online grind again. I’m flying to Vancouver tonight to stay with two friends of mine Rhys Jones (Floppinhel- the face in my stars avatar) and Jonas Mackoff (Donut604) and hopefully I can put in some more big Sunday scores. From there I will be back in L.A for my first American Halloween (pics to follow) and then I’m off to Montreal for the month of November where I’m hoping to put in some serious online volume to hopefully reach my target of regaining the Pocketfives number 1 ranked online player in the world.

Wish me luck and I look forward to hearing from everyone about their hand histories! Remember to use #Moorman1 on all your tweets!

Poker Beginnings & The story of how I met Dave Gent

My last blog about Dave Gent’s wedding had me thinking about how we first met. He has had perhaps the greatest influence out of anyone on my poker career and the story of how I met Dave (geeforce1 on Tilt and sexygee on Stars) is pretty random.

It was 2005 and at the time I was just a $1-$2 full ring cash game grinder on the Tribecca network, who occasionally played the odd tournament. My game was very basic and was based on just being incredibly solid and relying on my opponents to make mistakes to win money. Fortunately everyone was pretty awful at poker back then so my opponents didn’t stop to think that I might have a set every time I check raised them and I still got paid off.

One week I decided to play their Sunday tournament and ran really well to get deep. Unfortunately I went card dead once I was deep and everyone kept stealing the guy on my lefts big blind as he had been disconnected for the last 30 minutes. Eventually I found a hand I had been waiting for (AK) and reraised all in over the top of a Geeforce1 steal. He called me with Ace Queen and hit and I was out in 23rd place for peanuts.

Obviously at the time I was upset and thought it was a terrible call etc but as I started to think about it more It began to dawn on me that I should of been reraising him with weaker hands because there was no way he could of had a hand every time! Obviously very basic stuff now but it was an epiphany moment for me at that time.

Rather than go and sulk over the bad beat, I carried on watching the whole tournament as I was impressed with how he had played. Geeforce dominated the whole way and ended up winning it for $35,000. I congratulated him in chat and I half jokingly asked him for his email address for some advice never thinking he would actually help me.

Much to my surprise he added me on MSN messenger and became a poker mentor for. He let me watch his hole cards at the higher stakes games and answered all of my dumb noob questions. Over the next few months I gradually jumped into these games myself when there were softer lineups and this is where I really started to become a pro player.

That summer I qualified for my first WSOP and finally got to meet Geeforce and another guy he had introduced me to, Paul Foltyn or Badpab2, in person. Looking back now it is hilarious as I remember being more nervous about meeting them than going on a first date with a girl you really like, but we all got on great and they were no longer Geeforce andBbadpab to me but Dave and Pab.

Over the years we became even closer which resulted in a big group of us renting out a Vegas house every summer and going on various trips around the world together.

It’s crazy to think how a bad beat could actually help you in the long run. If I’d won that tournament sure I could have been $35,000 richer at the time, but I might never of became the player that I am today.

London, WCOOP and $10 Million in Cashes

After Los Angeles I returned back home to the UK for my good friend Dave (geeforce1) Gent’s wedding to his fiancée Giselle (Zel.) Although I don’t get to see them very often they are two of my best friends and along with Paul Foltyn are the first people I met through poker.

The wedding was a really good time. They had hired out a wonderful venue Stupton Hall and it was good to catch up with a lot of old friends which I had met whilst travelling with Dave and Zel.

After this I decided to spend a month in London and stayed with Liv Boeree. She has an unbelievable penthouse and was an awesome host. I grinded FTOPS there and almost got my 2nd FTOPS jersey but finished short in 2nd (yes a 2nd, hold the comments) place in the $129 KO FTOPS which was good for $62k.

Liv even convinced me to help her put together a new couch for her patio. Although very daunting at first with the millions of different pieces and limited instructions I managed to get it done just in time before the BBQ she was hosting that night.

Florida for a week to play the Seminole Hard Rock $10 million guarantee. The format of the tournament was a $5k rebuy with unlimited reentries. I know people who fired off about 8 bullets, but fortunately I managed to run up my first entry into a very workable stack after day 1. Matt Savage did a great job organizing the tourney and it was surprisingly well ran for its inaugural year. Also it totally crushed the guarantee by $2 million.

My table on day 1 was pretty absurd with 2 people dusting off their 300bbs in level 1 and crazy hands throughout the day. I even got to play against rapper Nelly for a bit! Day2 didn’t go as smooth and I found myself short approaching the bubble. Fortunately I managed to hold with A-K v K-10 to double up 10 spots before the money. From there things went much better for me until I got jacks all in versus tens for a top 20 stack. The AQT board gave both of us a sweat but I couldn’t resuck on the turn and river and busted out in 261st place for a small profit.

The rest of the week I spent resting up and enjoying myself before the WCOOP grind that was about to commence. I did find time to hit up a theme park and a water park, though. Bush Gardens was a place I had been to as a 12 year old boy and found amazing. Although some of the rides seemed nowhere near as big or scary as when I had been on them previously they had introduced some new rides including Sheikra, which proved to be a thrilling ride. The animal part of the park was something I didn’t remember too much from my childhood but was particularly well done with the feeding of giraffes being a highlight.

The water park I went to was Blizzard Beach, which is part of the Disney Resort. This was the park I had wanted to go to the most as a kid when we were on holiday in Florida, but unfortunately we had left it till the end of the trip and there had been a hurricane so the park was shut. That meant I had never got to go on Summit Plummit which is a 120 foot drop slide which you can reach speeds of up to 60 mph. I had been waiting to go on this slide for 16 years and it was well worth the wait. The rest of the park was a bit of a letdown with it being more for kids than adults but the layout of the park was in true Disney style; picturesque and very well done.

Since I was already in Florida I decided to return to one of my favorite places for the month of September, Playa del Carmen, Mexico for the WCCOP held on PokerStars. Evidently it is hurricane season down here so I haven’t felt too bad staying in grinding all day, as the weather here is starting to resemble London.

Grinding went pretty well here right from day 1 and all in all I managed to win 11 tourneys this month with the biggest being the FTP 1k for $56k. Despite cashing 10 times in WCOOP events I was unable to go deeper than a 13th place finish in the $320r 6 max PLO tourney. The big news of the month though, was that I hit the $10 million in lifetime online cashes mark.

At the beginning of the month I had noticed that I was about $250,000 short of this mark and I always knew I had a shot at getting there during the WCOOP due to the insane prizepools at this time of year and that I would be playing 23 days straight! My dream was to win a WCOOP to get over the line and I had a few semi sweats at it but in the end I had to settle for the next best thing, which was winning a regular tourney to make it. This was still amazing though as I got the normal jubilation of shipping a tournament plus the once in a lifetime feeling of hitting the $10 million line. PokerNews and PocketFives were reporting a lot on my progress and I was overwhelmed by the responses I got from my friends and fans when I finally made it.

As I write this I’m flying off to London today for the EPT there. I’m hoping I can final table two EPT London events in the same year, but this time finish 7 places better. To get so close last time at my home event only increases my desire to get myself in that position again. It’s going to be great to meet up with all my friends again who I haven’t seen for a few months and I’m particularly looking forward to Tom Middleton’s belated EPT celebration party. The plan is to hire out a party bus for the day, hitting up the races and then partying through the night. Hopefully my next blog will be good news about that EPT!

What’s new in 2013 – Part II

I spent most of May back in my favourite place, Playa del Carmen, Mexico playing SCOOP. It ended up being a great time as several other pros came down to hang and play there as well. I shared a place with my girlfriend, along with Maria Ho and her boyfriend Noah Vaillancourt (Dirty.brazil). Calvin Anderson (cal42688), his girlfriend Kami, and his horse Connor Drinan (Blanconegro) got the condo above us. Amit Makhija (amak316) and his girlfriend were already living there. Even British live superstar Jake Cody came down for a couple days to try his luck in the SCOOP Main Event after deep runs at the EPT Grand Final and The $25k Bellagio main event.

Between the lot of us we were able to put up some good scores. I made a SCOOP final table in one of the most fun events of the series, the $530r 6 max action hour, but ultimately finished a disappointing 6^th. Cal finaled two SCOOP events, Maria finaled the last chance turbo SCOOP high event, and Noah made several big final tables including the brawl. It was great to talk poker with some people I haven’t really discussed strategy with too much before and I think we all benefited from that.

From Playa I headed straight to Las Vegas for the WSOP. I got in on the morning of the $5k nl and although I was lacking sleep I soon woke up when I managed to take the chiplead a few hours into the tournament. Unfortunately, though, I peaked too soon and ended up bubbling that first event of the summer. However, to get that many chips in my first event was great for morale.

Sadly the rest of the series continued in pretty much the same vain with a lot of stacks but only 3 cashes to show for it. That was until the last week of the series where I managed to final table Event 45 the $1500 ante only event. I really enjoyed the format of this tournament, as it required a lot of adaption to your particular table whilst also thinking about outside of the box plays.

For anyone unfamiliar with this format the basics of it are that there are no blinds throughout the whole tournament but that the antes increase each level with the bring in increasing when the lowest chip available is no longer required. The player to the left of the dealer button begins the preflop and postflop betting with the button moving around the table as it would in a normal tournament. The first player to act has three initial options. These are to either fold, to bring in the action with the lowest denomination chips which is in play or to raise.

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The above is an interview I gave deep in the event which outlined some basic strategies one might use to progress in an event like this. The final table played out quite crapshooty due to the incredibly high antes, which made for a rollercoaster ending. At one point 6 handed I was the chipleader but after losing a couple of crucial hands and blinding down for the next couple of orbits I ended up getting very short and in the end I busted 5th for $44,227 to make me about break even on the summer at least.

Even though Poker was my main focus on this trip I still managed to have a few crazy Vegas nights out along the way. Two of the most memorable were my girlfriend Katie’s birthday and Matt Perrins bracelet rail/afterparty. For Katie’s birthday we got a couple of tables at Ghost Bar and got most of the poker community to come out with us. Although a lot of the night is a blur luckily a lot of photos were taken to remind us of all of the adventures.

Matt’s final table rail and after party was truly epic. Ash Mason bought custom made Pez t-shirts for all 35 elite railers and Matt was even kind enough to throw in free beers for everyone who came down to rail. As you can imagine things soon got out of hand with countless shoe bombs (chugging your alcoholic drink out of your shoe) and the chants and noise from the thunderdome increasing by the minute.

Matt came through for the rail and managed to win literally every big all in pot he played. Before we knew it he was heads up for his second bracelet, with a monster chiplead, which is the stuff dreams are made of. What happened next was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen in poker. Matt and his opponent Arthur Pro took a quick break from the tournament to do unison celebration shoe bombs by the rail. Undeterred the two legends got back to work and battled for the bracelet, however it wasn’t long before Matt was victorious and had his second WSOP bracelet. The party had only just begun though and carried on throughout the night first at Gillys and then at the mirage fountains (but that’s another story!)

After Vegas I made a quick stop in LA for my birthday to go to Six Flags. I love rollercoasters and that location is one of the best for the biggest and fastest rides. I first went to Six Flags a few years back and was amazed by the variety of rollercoasters available. The flash pass VIP ticket that you can buy makes your experience so much better as you get to avoid all of the queues that come with your regular trip to an amusement park. Every year they bring out new coasters which makes me keep coming back for more. This time I got to experience Full Throttle which was definitely a solid ride, however, it’s still no match on my favourite rollercoaster of all time X2.

What’s new in 2013 – Part I

So far 2013 has been a great year for me. I’ve accomplished a lot of goals, including an FTOPS win, my first EPT final table – which was made even sweeter by achieving it in London, and another WSOP final table. One of the most important though, has been working to conquer my 10 million dollar target. Obviously I’m talking about online cashes, and I’m so proud to be the first person in the world to hit 10 million.

So what has most of this year included besides poker scores? Well I’ve been quite active off the live and virtual felt as well. I’ll break down the last couple months.

I kicked off the New Year at PCA enjoying the mostly sunny weather. Between tournaments I found time to get up to some shenanigans including swimming with stingrays with my friends Sam Chartier and Trishelle Cannatella and a night out with the brits.

From there I headed to Las Vegas to participate in the NBC Heads Up Invitational. I was so honored to be asked to compete, and was hoping to show everyone that even though I am known for getting second, I actually am decent at heads up. I played great in round one to beat poker legend Carlos Mortensen, but unfortunately the draw wasn’t too kind to me and I ran into Jungleman (Daniel Cates) in the second round and found myself coolered in a 3 bet pot pretty early into the match. I still had an awesome time being able to be a part of the whole thing. It’s an event that is really great for poker as a whole.

I spent most of February checking out Playa del Carmen, Mexico. First off let me start by saying if you haven’t been, go immediately! This place is great; a perfect beach town, with awesome people and an incredible vibe. I definitely found it hard at times to have a balance between poker and life outside of that, but I made sure to take in as much of the culture and scene as possible. One highlight was checking out one of the seven wonders of the world, Chichen Itza and then ziplining through the jungle.

In March I was back home in London for the EPT, and needless to say that turned out well for me. I built a stack quickly on the first day before a huge mistep that almost brought about my demise. I six bet queen ten suited into pocket queens versus an extremely aggressive opponent but managed to make a flush on the turn. From then on I felt like I was freerolling and really brought my A game for the rest of the tournament. Unfortunately I lost a couple of huge hands on the day leading up to the final table so I ended up making the final table with only 20bbs. I knew I was going to need some luck to double up, but it just didn’t happen for me this time when I ended up going out in 8th place after losing a flip versus Theo Jorgenson. It still was an awesome experience because most of my family and several of my friends were able to be there and see me on the final table in my home city.

In April I was off to Berlin for the following EPT hoping to build on my run in London. I really love this city, mostly from my awesome memories with the lads from the last few years (a second place finish in the High Roller event the previous year also helps!). Although the main event didn’t go to plan with an early day1 exit Berlin still remained good to me as I was able to score another second place finish in the 2k euro side event.

Category: 2013