WPT | Chris Moorman - moorman1 online - Professional Poker Player

Busy Busy Busy

Yesterday I realized that my last blog was nearly three months ago! So I made a conscious effort today to sit down and write about everything I’ve been up to lately. The last 3 months have actually been non-stop with the release of my book and traveling across three continents to play live and online tournaments.

September was WCOOP on Pokerstars and I decided to go to one of my favourite places in the world, Playa Del Carmen in Mexico. In my opinion the time zone for playing here is the best out there because you get to live as normal a life as possible which really helps for such a long series. On the rare occasion that I was able to take a day off in the series it’s also really nice to have great weather and a beach within 50 metres of our place. Unfortunately for me the WCOOP grind didn’t go as well as I had hoped. I started off strongly by winning the Winamax €300 6 max PLO event for just under €20k but although I had 8 WCOOP cashes none of them were that significant. Particularly disappointing was bubbling both the $10k high roller event and the $5k main as they are two of the biggest online tourneys of the year. All in all though I was happy with how I played which is the main thing.

From Mexico I headed off to London for a month which I was really excited about. I hadn’t been home for a long time so it was great to catch up with family and friends and competing in EPT London is always very compelling. EPT London is my dream tourney to win because my parents and all my friends would be able to watch the final table live and EPT’s are also very prestigious themselves. I ended up making a real run at the main event but ultimately came up short and finished in 38th place. My tables throughout the tournament were incredibly tough and it increased my hunger to win an EPT because it really is the best of the best who play them. During this tournament I ran a competition with the winner getting a free % of myself. It was great that I went deep and the woman who won, Truly Ko, got a sweat at winning a nice sum of money. Unfortunately she had to settle for $200 but hopefully she can spin it up in the poker challenge she set for herself over the coming months. I’m determined to win big for one of my poker fans in the near future and have a huge promotion involving my book which I will mention in my blog next week.

Another reason why I was in London was for my official book launch at the Vic Casino. It was really cool that they supported me and were able to provide us with such a wonderful venue for it. The whole event was a blast and went really smoothly, even my speech! It was awesome to finally get my hands on a real live copy of the book and I felt a great sense of accomplishment with what I had achieved. All those hours putting it together were definitely worth it in the end. It’s crazy to think that I’m a published author now, something I would never have imagined even a year ago. The reviews I have read for the book so far have been great and I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from people. I really do think it can help your game considerably and I can think of much worse Christmas gifts!

From London I headed off to South Africa for the WPT there and more importantly a holiday in Africa (a continent I had never been to before.) This trip more than lived up to my expectations. Katie and I spent 2 weeks there but the time flew by and even though we packed so much into our trip (safari, shark cage diving, elephant sanctuary and lion parks) there were so many other things that we wanted to do that we didn’t have time for. My two favourite parts of the trip were the short trip to Cape Town we took and a visit to the monkey sanctuary that we hadn’t actually planned for. The monkey sanctuary happened to be right next to the more well known elephant sanctuary and in our rush to make sure we got to the Elephants on time we actually had a spare hour to spend with the monkeys beforehand. The monkeys were incredibly friendly and unlike in most zoos I’ve been to before they had a huge area to live and play in. All of the monkeys seemed incredibly happy and most were bold enough to approach us and hangout. One guy in particular, named Mr T, had no fear at all and for the course of the next hour we became best mates. When it was time for me to leave he even refused to let go and clung to me so much the guide had to practically pull him off my shoulders.

Cape Town was perhaps the most beautiful place I have ever been. I hate to sound cliché but it really did look like a postcard there. While we were in Cape Town we took a tour out to Gansbaii where they have a large population of Great White sharks and cage diving tours. Funnily enough it was almost one of the most disappointing things I’ve ever done because it was out of season for sharks. The first two hours on the boat were spent anxiously searching for sharks to no avail. My mind was starting to drift and become frustrated that I was missing the Kickoff online for nothing. Then out of nowhere we saw a huge great white shark and there wasn’t even time to get nervous as we were jumping right into the shark cage and less than a foot away from the sharks mouth! The diving was a huge buzz and something that I’d highly recommend others to do.

As for the poker in South Africa I ended up playing two live events. The first of which was a $6k high roller event with a small field of 55 entrants after rebuys. I was happy to only be in for 1 bullet and despite nearly bubbling was a huge chipleaer with 4 players left having nearly half of the chips in play. From there things didn’t really go to plan though. I ended up making a bad river call getting 4 to 1 on a call with trips but in reality my opponent always had a flush or straight in this spot. After that things didn’t go my way and I ended up getting third for $37k. All in all it guaranteed me a profitable trip but I really wanted to have the problem of trying to transport their cool trophy home!

The last part of my trip was the WPTUK in Nottingham at the Dusk Till Dawn casino. Simon Trumper and Rob Yong run things at DTD and if you’ve never played there before I urge you to in the near future. They really look after the players and are always setting ambitious guarantees. Without them who knows where UK poker would be right now. As for the main event it was a £3k re-entry and after quickly dusting off my first bullet I managed to double even quicker with my second. Day 1 went really well for me as I finished with a top 10 stack and even managed to sell 10 books to my opponents at the table!

Day 2 was much more of a grind and at one point I even had to fold AA with the Ah on a 234 all heart board. It was a weird situation where I knew I was behind because of the heavy 3 way action in a 4 way pot but there was so much money in the pot that I was almost getting the right price. In the end I decided to fold because I felt it was likely that the two all in opponents both had a flush and being only 10 places till the money it would be ICM suicide to draw at the remaining 4 hearts. Luckily my decision was vindicated when my opponents had KJ and Q8 of hearts. Obviously we should never be results orientated in poker but it definitely helped that the board ended up bricking off!

Day 3 started with 51 players left, 45 of which would cash. There were going to be 6 very disappointed people and obviously I wasn’t trying to be one of them but I figured that I would go into hyper aggressive mode because with a big min cash of £6k and people playing for 3 days and not being in the money yet there would definitely be some scared money about. Things in poker don’t always go to plan though and after I lost a big flip early into the day I found myself being the one sitting out until we made the money! Shortly after the bubble burst I reshoved KQ into AJ and couldn’t get lucky. Another cash and deep run though is good for confidence and I feel like I’m in a great position to make another big live final table at either GUKPT Grand Final or EPT Prague which will be my last two live events of the year.

Lastly, I have an exciting huge promotion coming up which will be open to anyone with a copy of Moorman’s Book of Poker. Check back for my next blog next week where I will share all of the details and don’t forget to buy your copy to be eligible..this will be a prize you don’t want to miss.

Link to buy the book is here: http://www.amazon.com/Moormans-Book-Poker-successful-tournament/dp/1909457396/ref=sr_1_1w

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.

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?