Tournament Poker | Chris Moorman - moorman1 online

My Own March Madness – Part 2

If you haven’t read the first part of this blog leading up to the WPT final table check that out here.

Coming into the final table I felt great. This was my chance to finally get the big live title that I had narrowly missed out on in the past. I liked my seat draw (on the direct left of the chip leader Michael Rocco) I felt good about the way I was playing and I felt like I had a great read on my opponents. The final table started out really well with me making a few big hands at crucial times and winning a lot of pots without much resistance. With 4 players left I had half the chips in play and could already see the finish line. Of course it’s very rarely smooth sailing all of the way in a poker tournament and I was about to hit one hell of a bump in the road.

Rocco was giving me some trouble with his unconventional style and huge overbets in situations where I had capped my range or shown some weakness. I also misplayed a couple of hands versus him and as a result drifted back into the pack a little bit. I then misread my hand in a big spot versus Glenn Lafaye when I thought I’d made a straight on the river with J3 of hearts on a Q75 hh 46 board where he had check raised the flop and check called the turn. On the river I sized my bet relatively small compared to the pot because I felt like he had a KQ type hand and wouldn’t call a huge bet. He tanked call after around 2 minutes and I proudly went to turn over my J3 hearts for the rivered straight only to look down at J2 hearts and have to muck and pretend I was bluffing. Shortly after that I lost a flip to Patrick Bruel with AK suited v 44 and now I was 4/4 in chips and bang in trouble. In the space of a 60-minute level I had practically destroyed my chances of winning the tournament. I was on tilt and my confidence in my game was at an all time low. Fortunately a break came just at the right time for me and after a chat with my girlfriend and rail to get my frustrations out in the open I was able to find a new lease of life again.

Now that I was 4/4 I felt like I had nothing to lose and the pressure of winning my first major title was completely off. I eliminated Patrick Bruel with AJ v K8 on a J8x flop and was right back in contention. From there we battled in 3-handed play for a while until I had perhaps the biggest sweat of my poker life.

At this point Glenn Lafaye had built a significant chip lead and me and Michael Rocco were very even in chips with me having him slightly covered by a couple of big blinds. Glenn opened the button and Michael shoved all in from the small blind for 20bb. I looked down at tens in the big blind and had a very easy all in shove. In this spot I am well ahead of Rocco’s range and if I could win this pot I would be headsup for the title although Glenn would have close to a 2-1-chip lead over me. To my surprise Glenn snap called all in as well and at this point I thought I was in a world of hurt especially when I saw one of his cards the queen of diamonds. I felt like the speed with which he called I was going to be looking at pocket queens for Glenn and need a miraculous ten to win the pot but to my surprise the other card was only the jack of diamonds! Rocco turned over A9 off and to the flop we went for a huge three way all in three handed on the LAPC final table; this was as big as it gets!

We had to wait for what felt like an eternity for the flop to be dealt. Finally it came down K-Q-J, which kept everyone in the hunt. Glenn would win the tournament if the turn and river bricked out, Michael needed a ten and a brick to cripple me and all but make it to headsup play and I needed an ace or 9 and a brick or a ten and a board pair that wasn’t a queen or jack to make it to heads up play even stacked with Glenn Lafaye. The turn also took an age to deal and all I can remember was a huge brick. About 5 seconds before the dealer dealt the river I felt this strong wave of positivity inside me and I uttered the words to myself “Barry Greenstein” repeatedly and then to my astonishment it came, ace on the river!!! Get in!

I’ve never been one to show emotion at the poker table, really. When you’ve played as much poker as me you try and become as immune as possible to the sick beats and swings you can have in poker. Sure it still hurts when you are 1 card away from winning a big pot only to lose it etc. but I try to keep my emotions in check for the main part. This time however, I lost it a bit. I ran to my friends railing, gave everyone the biggest hug ever and almost jumped into the crowd. I can’t wait to watch it all back on TV when the WPT airs in August because quite frankly it was all a bit of a blur! I’ve had a lot of amazing experiences and moments in poker over the years but this topped every single one of them.

After a short break in proceedings for interviews etc. we began heads up play. With only a slight chip deficit now, momentum well and truly on my side and the deep stacks I’m not going to lie, I really fancied my chances. I just had to be careful that I didn’t see that winning line too soon once again.

Heads up play started out great for me I won the first few small pots and then a medium one to take a significant chip lead. I then played a crucial pot where I limped for the first time heads up with A9 off suit. This turned out to be a very interesting pot and although I would normally raise A9 especially heads up I decided to limp for a couple of reasons.

The first of these reasons is because of the history Glenn and I had from 3 handed play. Twice I had limped blind on blind and he had raised both times. Only once had it got to showdown and Glenn had won a medium sized pot with 54 off suit. I was limping 3 handed at this point blind on blind because Glenn and I both had big stacks and Rocco was short, therefore I didn’t want to get into a huge pot where I ended up busting. I was trying to keep the pots small preflop versus Glenn because I was out of position and I didn’t want to put myself in marginal spots with Rocco being short and likely to be all in very soon. I assumed that Glenn would see this limp as weakness and raise it preflop and represent an ace very strongly if I was fortunate to flop one. Another reason why I didn’t want to raise was because he was three betting a decent percentage of the time but my hand wasn’t good enough to play for stacks preflop and I didn’t really want to call a 3 bet in position with it and commit to calling down with ace high on a bunch of boards. Also, 4 bet folding seemed like a bad option for me because I didn’t want to give Glenn the momentum of winning a big pot if he was to go all in.

As expected Glenn raised my 150,000 limp to 600k and I made the call. The flop came down K85 rainbow and he continued for 450k. I called figuring I had the best hand the majority of the time and I would get to see a turn card in position. The turn was the 6h which put two hearts out there and gave me a gutshot to the top end of the straight. Glenn fired again and at this point when he fires on such a good card for my overall range which he rarely expects me to fold on I wasn’t anywhere near as confident that my hand was good. However I had a bunch of outs and I also planned on bluffing some river cards especially if the backdoor flush came in with my nut blocker. The river was a 4 and now any 7 made a straight. Glenn checked and at this point I was sure he had something and was looking to show his hand down cheaply. I put out a large bet of 2.7 million and he went into the tank for 3-4 minutes. Eventually he ended up folding and I won a crucial pot.

After this hand the blinds went up and Glenn was reduced to 20bb and would have to overcome the 3-1 chip lead that I had built up. He managed to double once but I grinded him back down a bit before I found pocket aces. He limped in for 200k and I made it 600k. He called and then Jammed over my flop continuation bet on K78 with 2 clubs. I obviously snap called and was shown 65 for an open ender. I was two cards away from my first big live title and incredibly nervous. I remember saying to myself at least give me a river sweat just don’t put the straight on the turn! The turn was a brick and the river was a 5. For a split second I thought he had binked the river but then I realized it was over and I had finally done it. I felt overcome with emotion and could barely get out of my chair to begin with. Glenn congratulated me and I gave my honest assessment to him that he’d been a really tough opponent throughout the final two days where I had played a lot against him. I then went over to celebrate with my rail that had been phenomenal throughout. Even though none of the Brits could make it out there for the final the American and Euro stand ins (particularly Athanasios and Marvin) had carried me through the day and even done their best to make up hilarious British chants.

Winning a live tournament felt even better than I had ever imagined it would and quite honestly I’ve now got the taste for more. I was very fortunate that I got a second chance this time after I almost self destructed in four handed play. It’s crazy to think that no matter how much experience you have in poker that pressure and tilt still have the potential to affect you so much and bring down your normal level of play to unrecognizable levels. I had so many regrets on hands that I played on the final table compared to the previous 6 days but somehow I found a way to win and that’s all that matters at the end of the day. I’m sure this experience will help me handle a similar situation much better in the future and hopefully my first big live title is only just the beginning.

My Own March Madness – Part 1

February was an amazing month for me poker-wise which I touched on in my last blog. Little did I know though that March was going to be even better in every aspect.

After playing a lot online in Vancouver in February I decided to take a break from online in March and focus on playing a couple of big live tournaments and writing my book. With the long hours that I play online it’s virtually impossible for me to grind online and write my book at the same time, therefore I figured a break from online was the only way that I was going to get started on the huge task I had ahead of myself. An added bonus was that I got to play a couple of big live tournaments as well. I flew back to Los Angeles end of February and stayed at my girlfriends place in West Hollywood for LAPC. This was perfect as I didn’t have to live out of a hotel for the tournaments duration and I was still only a 30 minute drive from the Commerce Casino where the tournament was being held.

The tournament started off pretty slowly for me in that I remained close to the starting stack for the majority of day 1, it wasn’t until the penultimate level of the day that anything significant happened for me. I played a big pot where I missed both my straight and flush draws on the river but the board happened to get very scary for my opponent. On the river he checked to me and with 9 high and less than pot behind I went for it and shoved all in. The LAPC event is not a reentry so if I was called it would be all over for me. Fortunately after a little sweat my opponent ultimately ended up folding which lead to me increasing my stack to close to 50,000 chips after the hand (30,000 starting stacks) and with the blinds only being 150-300 this put me in a very comfortable spot at this early stage. The very next hand I looked down at pocket kings in the small blind after the cutoff had open raised. I made a very standard three bet, which he quickly four bet. He then proceeded to six bet all in with pocket jacks and my hand held up for a huge pot that catapulted me into a top 10 stack to end the day.

Obviously my day 1 had worked out really well for me and I would have close to 200bb to start day 2, however, the structure in the LAPC main was incredibly slow (as is the case with a lot of live tournaments) and it would take 6 days of playing every day for me to make the final table. I had no doubt in my mind that there was a very long way to go and that I had to remain level headed throughout the swings in my stack which would inevitably follow.

Days 2 and 3 were far from smooth but I made it through them, which was the main thing. At this point I had managed to keep my stack healthy throughout and had not been all in for my tournament life.

The bubble occurred at the end of day 3 and ended up lasting for nearly 2 hours! After playing live poker for 3 days no one wants to bubble let alone an amateur player therefore my strategy was to step it up on the bubble and to try and build a huge stack. Unfortunately I played a couple of poor hands which cost me some chips and although I had a good stack once we made the money I felt like I could have performed a lot better had I trusted my gut more in a couple of spots.

Day 4 started with me sitting on 359,000 chips which equated to over 70 big blinds blinds with 63 players remaining. I knew that the tournament would move faster for a while now because of there being so many short stacks. My plan was to sit back for a few levels and make sure that I made the final 36, where the tournament would transform into 6 max until there was a winner. 6 max is my best format of poker and I knew I had to make it to this point. Even if I was a short stack I felt confident I would be able to turn it around.

When it got down to 36 players remaining I was actually in the top 10 in chips. At this point I felt really confident and I altered my game so that I didn’t take high variance spots preflop as I felt I had a decent edge post flop versus the majority of my opponents. Things went really well for me and I ended the day in 3rd place of the remaining 18 players.

On Day 5 the plan was to play down from 18 to 6. As expected the bustouts came fast to begin with and then the pace of play slowed down as we approached the final table of 6. I found it tough as I was incredibly card dead for most of the day. With 8 players left I was 5th or 6th in chips and going in the wrong direction, however back to back hands were about to change all of that! On the first of those I won a very big pot when I coolered Josh Neufeld with J9 v AJ on a JJ9xx board. Unfortunately the flush came in on the river otherwise I probably would have gotten a full double.

The very next hand I made a huge bluff versus Adam Friedman. He opened the cutoff 4 handed and I 3 bet the big blind with A2 offsuit. He called and I fired flop turn and river bets on a K-Q-2-3-10 board which also put a backdoor flush out there on the river. Adam tanked for around 10 minutes on the river constantly trying to converse with me but fortunately he was unable to pick up a read on me and he ultimately ended up folding.

My a2 off play in this hand is far from standard but I decided to take this aggressive line versus Adam for a number of reasons. Firstly I had not 3 bet him once in the 2 days we had played together therefore I felt like a 3 bet from the big blind would get a lot of credit here when I could easily just call a min raise. Secondly I had not shown the propensity to barrel with air versus him in the hands we had played together. Finally I had seen him correctly call a couple of times with ace high in big pots previously versus other opponents. Normally this would be a red flag to trying this bluff, however, I felt that being a good player himself he would realise that I had seen all of this and had labeled him unbluffable and that’s why I hadn’t been applying excessive pressure in the pots we had played previously and that I was in fact waiting until I had a hand versus him. I decided that he would take all of this information into account and be more inclined to make a hero fold rather than a hero call. I’d be lying if I said I felt 100% comfortable throughout the 10 minute tank though!

Whilst this hand was going on someone else had busted out on the other table and after Adam had folded we merged for the unofficial final table of 7. Before I even had a chance to catch my breath though Michael Rocco and Dan O’Brien played a huge pot with the latter busting. I had made it to the final 6; second in chips and with a great shot to get my first big live title and a million dollar pay day! Stay tuned for the next blog and to hear about the rest of an amazing month.

Off to a ‘Flying Start’ in 2014!

My first stop in 2014 was another trip to the Bahamas but this time a poker related one for PCA (one of the biggest annual events in poker). Although there are over 50 events throughout the 10 day festival I only managed to play two of them, the $10k main event and the $25k high roller. The main event started off strong for me despite an incredibly solid starting table where 7 of the 9 players were top pros. I ended day 1 with an above average stack and started day 2 strong, quickly doubling once more. Unfortunately the next few levels didn’t go so well and my stack dwindled as a result before I ended up busting around 100 spots before the money.

In the high roller I had the eventual winner Jacob Schindler on my left on day 1 and got into a couple of tough spots versus him and on my final hand my KK couldn’t beat his AK all in pre flop and just like that I was out early on day 1 for a very disappointing tournament. The trip as a whole was awesome, though, with one of the highlights as always being a group lazy river ride. I also managed to get out of the hole for the trip with a big Sunday which included a win in the Super Size Sunday on FTP and a 5th place finish in the Whale on 888 for $50k combined.

After PCA I headed back to La for a week. Rather than rest up before embarking on the online grind I convinced Katie to go skydiving with me. I’m scared of heights so this was actually a pretty big deal for me and up until the last minute I wasn’t sure that I was going to go through with it. I’m so glad that I did though, as it turned out to be an amazing experience. I’m not sure I’ve ever been happier in life than when I was gliding through the air at high speed. That happiness ended abruptly though when my parachute opened and the harness began to crush my groin.

After braving skydiving I hopped on a short flight upto Vancouver to grind TCOOP with some good friends of mine, Maddison Bergeron, Noah Vaillancourt and Maria Ho. The TCOOP festival was actually a disaster for me as I only cashed 1 tournament out of close to 40 events. Luckily I ran super hot in other stuff and have been on a permanent heater since I arrived. In the past 25 sessions I’ve only had 1 or 2 losing sessions. Throughout everything else I’ve had 10 tourney wins on 4 different sites including the Party Major. Also I final tabled both the Stars 1k and Ftp 1k buyin tourneys last week which shows the work I’ve put in on my game is really paying off right now. Obviously the past few weeks have been a pretty absurd run for mtt’s and completely unsustainable but I feel like I’m playing the best poker of my life at the moment which is really encouraging for the rest of the year and particularly the WSOP which has already given me goosebumps thinking about this year after the recent schedule announcement.

Whilst here in Vancouver I managed to drag myself away from the computer for a few days and headed upto Whistler. I didn’t realise how incredibly beautiful the place was actually going to be as I’d never been to a ski town before let alone ski! We were really lucky to get snow the week we went as well because apparently there hadn’t been fresh snow for at least a month before that. I did a 3 hour private skiing lesson with Maria and amazingly I managed to stay on my feet for the whole time.

My time in Vancouver is nearly up and I’m hoping to take some of that online run good into the live arena as I’m going to be playing LAPC and Bay101 as a shooting star in early March. In addition to a trip to the Napa Valley for wine tasting and Maria’s birthday.

Lastly I’m super excited to announce that I will have a poker strategy book being released by the end of the year. I’m putting a ton of work into this and I really hope it will help aspiring poker players to reach the next level. This is the first time I’ve done anything strategy related so I’m thrilled to have my first venture be a poker book.

PokerNews Announcement:

The Exclusive Pre-release of my “Moorman’s Book of Poker” Poker Strategy Book

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?