Tournament Date: 25-29 October 2006
Buy-In: $10,000 CAD
# of Players: 497
Prize Pool: $4,829,332 CAD

My first WPT event. What an experience! I started off the day well, playing some pretty solid tight aggresive poker. Went from the original $20,000 chip stack to 27K within a hour. Then it all went pear shaped! I got my aces chased down to the river by K J on a Jack high flop only for a King to come on the river to crack me. I lost about 7K in that pot.

After the first break I built my stack up a little to about 26K when this hand came up. Level 5, blinds are 300/600. I had just been moved to another table with Alan Goehring (Winner of the WPT Championship 2003). I am in the small blind and Alan is in the big. I have 9 J offsuit and everybody folds around to me. I limp and Alan checks. The flop comes 2 7 9 rainbow. I bet 1200, Alan raises to 2400 and I re-raise to 4500 (I didn't want anybody to think I could be pushed around so I decided to play back at him). He called. The turn comes a J (I make 2 pair) and I bet 4K, he calls. The River comes a 5. I decided to put in a bet of 2700 (there is over 17K in the pot but I want to look like I have a big hand and I want a call). Alan raises me to 9700. This made me think, does he have pocket deuces or sevens? I think he would have raised preflop with 77. Deuces is the only hand that he could possibly have to have played the hand the way he did. I must have thought about it for about 3 minutes before somebody called time on me. I folded my hand face up and said 'nice bet'. Alan looked at my hand and said 'how could you fold that hand? He flipped over his hand and showed me the same hand as I had. A few people said that I should have called in that spot but I figured that I didn't want to get crippled at this stage of the tournament, after all, I still had 15K in chips. If I called and lost i would have had only 8K.

7 hours later I was knocked out of the tournament. I had a bad run and I had about 8K in chips. Blinds were 1200/2400 I found 99 under the gun and limped, there were 2 other callers and the flop came 5 7 8 rainbow. I pushed for my remaining 5600 with an overpair and a gutshot and I ran into KK. Tournament over for me.

All in all it was a great experience and I learn't alot from playing in such a big field with such a high level of play.

Just played in a 2 table $1000+$100 Satellite. 20 Players and 2 1st prizes of $10,000 entry fees for the WPT Tournament at Niagara Fallsview Casino to be held later this month. Me and Jack Levy took it down.

I play and deal poker to make a living these these days. I wouldn't call myself a professional poker player but I would say that poker is my profession. I have been doing this since I arrived in Canada in December 2003 and so far I am doing OK.

Some tournament results before the start of this blog include:

Seneca World Poker Classic - 2nd Place Finish
Alternate Tuesdays @ Bennys - 2 1st place wins and several final table cashes
The Old River Room - 2 1st place wins and several final table cashes
The GTA Poker Tour - Winner 2004
The Training Room - 2 1st place wins and several final table cashes.
The Unit - 2 1st place wins and several final table cashes.