Unfortunately I didn't get too far in the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker. I was playing very well. managed to get an above average stack then was knocked out shortly when I had a big pair but ran into aces.

I should have known better. When a player accumulates a big stack and sits out then all of a sudden they come back, flat call a big raise, they generally have a big hand, usually aces. I was pretty sure that was the case here but the dry flop made it hard to resist getting it all in.

Only cashed in one event in the series for an $11 SCOOP ticket.

Even though I didn't win a ticket in the main event, I did manage to earn a small cash due to a prop bet another player posted. On Twitter I noticed the following tweet before the WBCOOP Main Event:

Daleroxxu forget that "Outlast The Pro" nonsense. Tonight is "Outlast The Turtle" @ #WBCOOP ME. MI_Turtle giving $1000 between those outlasting him.

I had dreams of getting to the final table with MI_Turtle and finishing 1st to his second but that obviously didn't happen.

However MI_Turtle busted out pretty early when he got it all in with Aces vs a straight draw that hit on the river.

As bad as it was for MI_Turtle, it was worse for Daleroxxu who was escrowing the bet and was faced with having to send a small amount of money to over 600 players.

The PokerStars tweeters were following the bet and offered to see if they could help make the payments easier. When PokerStars support offers to help it seems they usually come through. This morning I received the following email.

Thank you for participating in WBCOOP 2010 - we hope you enjoyed the experience!

This is just a quick email to inform you that you have been credited $1.58 from the player 'MI_Turtle'. He kindly offered to share $1000 amongst all the players that outlasted him in the WBCOOP Main Event. His final finishing position of 635th place meant the $1000 was divided between the top 634 players.

If you have any questions regarding this unusual prize, please let us know.

Playing in these games has made me realize my MTT game seems a bit rusty. I need to come up with a good schedule and hopefully get my game back.

Event #5 of the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker was pretty interesting. It was a short handed 8 game mix. The games consisted of Limit 2-7 Triple Draw, Limit Hold'em, Limit Omaha Eight or Better (Hi/Lo), Razz, Limit Seven Card Stud, Limit Stud Eight or Better (Hi/Lo), No Limit Hold'em and Pot Limit Omaha.

It was the first time I was playing some of these games but I read up a little on the ones I didn't have much experience with. 2-7 Triple Draw turned out to be a fun game and I did pretty well in it.

Through the first 2 breaks I was in the top 50 in chips. I got as high as 10th near the third break.

Around the bubble though, I kept getting moved to different tables where I didn't have a good sense of how the other players played.

I made some mistakes and other players made bigger mistakes but got lucky and I burned through a lot of chips pretty fast.

I don't play a lot of short handed games, throw in playing some games that were new to me and I'm surprised I got as far as I did. My biggest problem short handed around the bubble is I got too aggressive in the wrong spots.

I made it past the bubble which was good for an $11 SCOOP ticket. Going from 10th to busting out of the top 100 is a bit disappointing but not bad for my first 8-game MTT.

Seemed like there was some cool stuff happening on Twitter in regards to poker so I decided to sign up. Don't know how much I'll be using it or what for but you can follow me if you'd like.

In my first day I followed a bunch of people, got a few folowers and had some cool exchanges.

The Good:

Able to keep up to date on what's happening with PokerStars, some of the top poker players and general poker happenings.

With the WBCOOP going on it's pretty cool to see live tweets from fellow WBCOOP players during the games.

Getting live tournament updates from @barrygreenstein, @Annette_15 and @howardhlederer was pretty neat. Barry Greenstein tweets a lot at tournaments.

I've railed Greenstein a couple of times when he was playing online and he's always willing to chat with us nobodies which I thought was very cool. Seems like a really nice guy. Even though Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) is the current star of Team PokerStars (with good reason), watching Greenstein play and interact with his railers makes playing on PokerStars seem that much cooler. Just for Pete's sake stop asking him if you get his book if you knock him out! :)

Some interesting tweets from @Andy_Bloch and @joesebok. Joe Sebok is getting his new place decorated by Kristan Cunningham (@kcdesign) from HGTV's Design on a Dime. I used to be a big fan of DIY shows so it'll be cool to see how it turns out. She's posted some before pictures of Sebok's beach house.

The @PokerStars_com tweeters are pretty cool and reply quickly if you send them a message.

The Bad:

It didn't take long to get followed by a couple of spammers. Not that big a deal though.

I was very excited to get 3 direct messages from some of the big name poker players I followed; @gus_hansen, @Patrick_Antonius and @Erick_Lindgren. Unfortunately they all turned out to be spam for Full Tilt Poker. Very uncool! You don't want to provide real updates that's fine, but getting DM's like that is such a turn off.

I don't have any money on FTP, I sometimes jump in a freeroll, win a few bucks and then quickly lose it. There's always this thought that I should deposit there and play more but little things like this keep turning me off to the site.

Once a year PokerStars sets up a series of freeroll tournaments for poker bloggers. The World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP). This year prizes are tickets into the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), which is one of the biggest online poker tournament series with some pretty big prizes.

Gaining entry into the WBCOOP is pretty simple. You just need to have an active poker blog that has been online for over 2 months. You also need to display your registration code on your blog which includes a couple of links to PokerStars.

For no money you get 7 chances to win one of 272 SCOOP tickets totaling over $63k with some additional prizes thrown in for best live blogging and best tweeter.

Seven chances to grab a portion of over $63k worth of SCOOP tickets and all you have to do is post a link? Sounds like a pretty good deal to me, but apparently not to this guy.

I was expecting a better-run series from PokerStars. I'm not going to bother promoting them for the rest of the series, regardless of the extra value I could be giving up. I won't be seriously playing them. They're just too much time invested for not enough return.

I'm more upset at PokerStars for promising an interesting series and then getting us all to promote not only PokerStars, but their upcoming SCOOP... and then not delivering on all of our efforts.

I know this is a freeroll, but my time is not free. Every second I spent and still am spending typing, blogging, tweeting, etc., about this and playing in these is valuable time I'm giving up. My time is much, much more valuable.

One of the problems he has is with the pre-registration. Once you receive your ticket, you can register to all of the events, days in advance in some cases. Because of this, a fair amount of players sit out the whole tourney because they pre-registered and then either forgot or had other things to do.

So you're playing in a MTT freeroll with pretty decent prizes where a good portion of the less than 2k entrants are sitting out and that's a bad thing? Gimme a table full of players with VP$IP of 0 and Fold BB to Steal 100% any day.

He's also been complaining on Twitter, and as usual, PokerStars has been very open to his criticisms; as nuts as they sound to me. One other issue seems to be that one player knocked him and a few others out, then sat out. That's a pretty common thing in freerolls. People build up a stack they think will get them in the money and then move on to more profitable games.

It's true that everyone is helping to promote PokerStars, the WBCOOP and SCOOP but that's a small price to pay. It's not like the majority of blogs (mine is no exception) have so much traffic or such a high Google PageRank that a link is all that valuable.

Seriously dude, relax. Deals this good don't come by that often.

Event 2 in the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker is starting shortly.

Event 2 is a Pot Limit Omaha tournament. I don't think I've ever played a PLO MTT and it's been a while since I've played PLO cash games.

I had some free time today which I used to give myself a refresher on PLO strategy, which I hope helps a bit. I don't have huge expectations for this tourney but you never know.

I noticed some of the PokerStars Pros are in these games. In WBCOOP Event 2 I noticed acoimbra, Boku87, Goral and Henrique. P.

First break update:


I made it to the first break which was a bit of a surprise and through sheer luck.  I missed a lot of big draws but I got it all in with the nut flush draw on the flop against 2 pair and an open ended straight draw and managed to hit.

Later on I was holding 2 pair and made a bad call all-in and managed to suck out with a rivered full house against someone that couldn't let go of an over pair. I got really lucky but considering the board he should have slowed down.  Lots of people play Omaha like NLHE which gets them into trouble.

There are a ton of people sitting out. I'm a bit rusty at PLO and short handed PLO doesn't make it any better for me.

I'm in decent shape. About half the field is gone, a good number sitting out and I'm in the top 15%.

Shortly before the 2nd break and I busted out on a pretty crappy draw. I over-adjusted to a short handed table and an aggressive player and wound up picking the wrong spot to tangle with him.

The first tournament in the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker has started. It's a no-limit hold'em game with 2,000 starting chips and blinds increasing every minute.

I didn't intend on live-blogging about any of my play in this game but I'm so disgusted with myself I wanted to share.

First thing I did while waiting for the tournament to start was check out the stats of the players at my table. Considering you can only get into these events if you have an approved poker blog, I'm pretty surprised I only found one winning player.

Unfortunately for him, he busted out early when he ran his big pair into a bigger pair.

I made a horrible move myself. Not one that knocked me out but one that should have tripled me up.

I limp in from late position with a medium pair. I know that's my first mistake there. My thinking was if I hit my set on a good board I'm likely to get action from the players in the blinds that are likely to be in the pot with me.

Flop comes and I hit middle set on 7 high board. Flop is suited and connected. Not that great but I'm pretty sure I have the best hand.

Small blind checks, big blind bets 2/3rds the pot, I reraise 3x his bet. Now the small blind check raises all-in. Almost 2k chips into pot that's only 300 chips! Big blind has the SB and me covered and shoves as well.

Maybe I've been playing too many double or nothing's lately cause I did the nitty thing and folded. It's very rare that I fold a set. I got my action and then I chickened out. Reason was we were early in the game, I didn't have many chips committed and didn't want to be up against 2 players with so many draws out there.

Big mistake. I fold and small blind shows TPTK (on a 7 high board!) with a backdoor flush draw and BB has bottom two pair.

SB improved and took a big chunk out of the BB and I just stared at the screen with my mouth wide open. Obviously a bad lay down for me but in an unraised pot against blinds that are willing to go broke, I think it wasn't that bad.

A few hands later, the BB had chipped up again and I was in a raised pot with him. He kept playing back at me and all I kept thinking was bluff me once, shame on you, bluff me twice shame on me.

I wasn't very happy with my hand but after watching him play I was pretty sure I had him beat. We got it all in, my hand stood up and he was gone.

Now I'm trying to find a way to get the chips the SB owes me :)

Didn't work out too well... I busted out just before the second break with a couple hundred left till the bubble when I decided to race with the big stack to try and get some chips. I flopped a set but they made a 1 card flush to knock me out. Hopefully the other events go better. I'd like to win some SCOOP tickets.