32Red Poker Blog

For kids, it’s Christmas. It’s that time of year when the excitement starts months beforehand, and steadily builds to a fever pitch. For poker players, that special time of year is the World Series of Poker, and the adult equivalent of writing a letter to Santa is to pour over the schedule of events that has just been released. I’ve been taking a look at it myself, and have come to a pretty interesting conclusion.

The logic behind my plans all hangs on the reason why I’ll be braving the 10-hour flight and the crazy town of Vegas. Is it for money? No, the best way to achieve that would be to sit in the cash games on the tourist-crazy strip. Is it for well-structured tournaments? Not really, the starting stacks at the Rio are pretty meagre, and so to best idea to that end would be to play in the wonderfully structured tournaments at the Bellagio and Caesar’s Palace.

No, there really is only one poker reason for me to want to head to the crazy inferno in the desert; it is to chase that tiny hope of winning a bracelet. And so the logic goes, why not play in the events that have the smallest number of entrants? Whilst the most popular no-limit holdem events at weekends can attract thousands, some more random events have as few as 150 or 200 entrants. And so, the only sensible way to set about trying to win a bracelet is to play in the kind of events that are now lost to Wild West films. Seven-card stud, Omaha hi-lo and 2-7 draw lowball, these are the kind of names I’m going to rush to get familiar with before the 1st of June.

So, how much have I played these games before? Well, I played in an Omaha tournament once, and that is about it. And so begins what will be an interesting experiment to test a theory of mine. I’m pinning my hopes on the belief that these games, although seemingly so different, are actually very similar. Though they have different rules, they all rely on the skills of reading your opponent, playing position well, and using a chip stack to your advantage. My theory is that, with a lot of experience in the one discipline of Holdem, I might have a good head start in taking on the other games.

It will be a lot of fun, and I’m going to try to work out a schedule on here soon. I think I might actually decide to miss the Main event in favour of events like the Pot Limit Holdem Championship, and the exciting $5k six-max event. For the moment though, forget these silly simple two card games; it’s all about the World Championship events in 7-stud and Omaha hi-lo!

As for plans closer to now, I’ll be heading down to London tomorrow to play in the Main Event on a new venture called the London Poker Circuit. Much more importantly, however, the Blog Freeroll is about to start! Good luck to everyone, I’ll be writing a report on here about it soon!