First time WSOP player, advice?
Good afternoon,
I've done fairly well locally (van) in early birds and the weekend tourneys etc, but I know the WSOP will be a whole new ball game..
Im not worried about my game since im pretty confident with it right now, however, I am much more concerned about the shock of playing in a room with 4-500 tables with poker pro's and/or celebs. Ive never had to grind it out in a 3 day tournement either, longest one i played in went about 10 hours...and if I do well enough that would be 3 days of 10 hours!
If anyone has gone through the first time WSOP thing and has any usefull advice please let me know!!
Cheers
A
I've done fairly well locally (van) in early birds and the weekend tourneys etc, but I know the WSOP will be a whole new ball game..
Im not worried about my game since im pretty confident with it right now, however, I am much more concerned about the shock of playing in a room with 4-500 tables with poker pro's and/or celebs. Ive never had to grind it out in a 3 day tournement either, longest one i played in went about 10 hours...and if I do well enough that would be 3 days of 10 hours!
If anyone has gone through the first time WSOP thing and has any usefull advice please let me know!!
Cheers
A
Comments
The size of the room and all the tables are definitely huge....as said earlier just focus on your table and think through your big decisions. Get a good sleep the night before and relax and play your game.
Good luck
1. buckle down for the long haul, the game isn't won in 1 hand or 1 day so remain focused.
2. Keep hydrated and eat properly....you won't mind it at hour 4 but hour 8 you will thank yourself you ate and drank well.
3. Play each hand the best possible way but if you lose a hand or get rivered etc don't let it rattle you. (similar to 1)
4. Worry about your table but don't worry about who is at your table. There will be many online pros/live pros that play really well but once again at the end of the day the cards speak so play them strong.
Most importantly enjoy yourself and take lots of pictures
When getting short don't push allin preflop with cowboys from MP after 2 limpers and have guy behind you wake up with Aces.
In 2007 I played my 1st WSOP event, it was a $1500 buyin. I cashed ok enough. I decided to wear sunglasses because I thought it would help me but aside from that it was likely the most turbulent flight (redeye going to Vegas from Memphis) I've ever been on and it made me feel lucky to be alive. After that flight (I've been on about 200 planes) sitting down at the table seemed like such a minor event. So repeating part of the advice already given, relax and enjoy. I don't think you can parachute, zipline or bungie jump etc. in Vegas but maybe do something thrilling the day before to deal with possible anxiety or nervous energy.
I don't have too much body fat so for me I need to keep warm in there. Decide if wearing long sleeve shirts or possibly short sleeves and a light jacket. You'll be planning for playing when packing.
The structure is good. When I played it was a noon start and somehow we voted late at night to, A) quit on time or
Use those breaks. I would walk fairly briskly to a washroom close to the entrance of the hotel. There and back in 20 minutes is doable.
I might play event #56 too but hope to be occupied in the 1k long weekend event.
Last thing comes to mind, it might be very minor, I don't think it's a good idea to be the 1st to sit at the table. I also don't think it's a good idea to come late to the 1st event you play.
Good luck!
eeeeek. I was 30 min late for my first event???....not by accident or anything though.
You can zipline from the top of the Stratosphere for $100. I did it last time I was there and it was awesome, scary and fun.
Right and some pros are definitely not 'wasting time' playing the 1st few levels. In 2009 Binger on my right showed up about 30 mins late. If Anton81 questions the ETA to his chair, I'd be interested to know what others think about seat timing and table scoping.
Was thinking about the sunglasses thing, but im going against it since I wont play my game %100 if i wear them, i like to see and hear everything, so no headphones either.
Getting a good sleep and eating good is for sure a top priority...Not sure if there are any stats on this but ive heard that generally the field is cut in half on day one of these NL events, can anyone confirm??
My goal is to play tight and survive day and then make moves on day two for a decent position hopefully going into day 3..
For the nervous energy i may just have 1 beer and watch fireworks since i arrive 4th of july...i figure i can go register, walk around the RIO for a bit and soak in the atmosphere catch a firework or two and hit the sack, I think the nervousness wont go away until im sitting at my table and have cleared my first few hands..
For example event 32 had 2828 runners, at the end of Day 1 there was around 330 players left and money was around the 294 mark. We made the money in just over an hour of play on Day 2
Get a massage first level, helps will the nervousness. Also getting involved in a little bit of convo at the table relaxed me a little too, just dont give any info away about how much you play and stuff like that.
No happy endings here
He's got it and it matches up with my 2007 exp as we played late to get into the money. It's fairly consistent outcome. Here's the last 1.5k event from CP website:
"Day 1 of the $1,500 no-limit hold’em event is officially in the books after ten levels of play. The tournament attracted a monster field of 2,857 entrants that created a total prize pool of $3,856,950.
With 385 players remaining, it won’t be long before they reach the money bubble at 297, "
Thats crazy!!! So there must be some intense action going on! I was thinking that it would be a bit tighter with the blinds only at 300-600 after 10 hours of play, the local sit n go has us at 300-600 after 2 hours!
I will wait and pick my spots carefully...
Is it true that some pro's like Phil Helmuth wont event start playing any hands until about 4-5 hours in? Blinds are small so you wont take a big hit on blinds and a big chunk of players would already be ousted...thoughts?
I think up to about the $2500. level you will find that 80-85% of the field is gone day one, in other words to be at avg stack you should be around 4 times starting stack going into day 2.
As for missing 4-5 hours, what a waste. Remember that there are so many players that will stack off with marginal holdings you don't want to miss the opportunity to pick up some easy chips. Play tight if you want, ie look for pairs that trip up, but don't miss the opportunity.. My opinion anyways...
Good luck, relax... and play well.. Trip report for sure..
everyone at my table had about 20-30k in chips average with the exception of the chip leader at the time who was at our table too, i was at about 5k, blinds were 400-800 with a 100 ante, so if i blinded/anted out till the end of the level i would most likely hav to go all in with about 1.5-2.5k in chips (depending on how fast we went) first hand the next morning. A pro to my right who was totally drunk as well, called my all in with AJ, he flipped over a Q9...hit a Q on the flop and im goin home...overall was a great experience and witnessed some amazing gameplay, also was interesting to be in the same tourney with Dwan and other notables just sittin across the way..i will try to find out the name of the pro that busted me.. he was talking with one other pro across the way about props bets he was making with the some of the LA lakers and blah blah, couple guys came to shake his hand and he had some railbirds...I guess its quite common to hear that banter as this is the big show...until next year
I wish that type of info was right there on the site..
actually the structure sheet filed with each schedule on the WSOP site has them.
They are always 3x the buy in. 1k=t3000 1.5=4500. 10k=30,000 and 50k=150,000
Insert palm slapping face here...
I think that started about 3 years ago...