WSOP '10 - Run Good or Bust

The temperature gauge in my car has been approaching triple digits, which means that the most anticipated two months of every poker player's year is on the horizon. If you've had a good start to the year, there's no better time to feel confident and ready to crush against some of the softest fields around. If you've been downswinging recently, the WSOP represents a chance to reverse fortunes with one deep run. Even in extreme cases like my own where a player has lost confidence and has no desire to play poker, fields of amateurs dropping thousands of dollars a piece can do wonders for someone's mindset. I could brick the first few events but still feel reenergized competing against terrible players for seven figure prize pools.

That feeling of encouragement tends to last for a few weeks, but quickly fades as the day one exits pile up. A big cash early is enough to make the rest of the WSOP feel like a freeroll, but the frustration of running badly at the worst possible times can affect a player's mentality before the series is even half over. I've experienced both ends of the spectrum, hitting rock bottom last year when I failed to cash in a single event. By late June, I was expecting the worst every time I was all in, counting down the chances I had left to turn my WSOP around, and finding myself heading home before sundown on a daily basis. Busting out of the main event was obviously disappointing, but it almost felt like a relief to be done with such a brutal series.

In contrast, my '07 WSOP was one of the highlights of my poker career. I final tabled one of the first events I played, and regardless of how I did during the rest of the series, felt on top of the world until I busted from the main event. In fact, my results that summer started me on a tournament kick, one that has lasted until the early parts of this year. Ironically, my results in the upcoming WSOP will likely dictate whether I continue playing tournaments or shift my focus to something completely different. My desire to grind tourneys disappeared earlier this year and has yet to return, undoubtedly correlated with my unsatisfactory results. I suppose it's only fitting that the fate my MTT career, one that has experienced the extreme ups and downs of variance, will be decided by the results of no more than two dozen tournaments, fewer than an average Sunday online.

For now, I'm looking forward another summer spent grinding at the Rio. I don't expect that feeling to last long if things don't go well in the first few weeks. My future as a poker player is very uncertain, and spending the end of the series worrying about my future plans sounds like a surefire way to make life miserable. Right now, my bankroll is slightly over $100k, the lowest it's been since my eight month heater in 2008 began. My plan is to play around 20 WSOP events along with a few at the Bellagio and Venetian, enough to cut my bankroll in half if I brick them all. The odds of that happening for a second straight year are pretty slim, but I'm still going to sell action in some of the bigger events, something which makes me cringe but is 100% necessary. If there was ever a time to run good, focus and play as well as I can, this is it. I'm tired of breaking even, playing without confidence, and perhaps most of all, not enjoying what I do for a living. As absurd as it sounds, a few good days could make everything all better.

This will be my fourth WSOP since moving to Vegas in 2005. Here are some stats from my first three series:

2007 - Eight events, two cashes, +$82,282.
2008 - 23 events, three cashes, -$38,252.
2009 - 21 events, zero cashes, -$52,500.

Totals - 52 events, five cashes, -$8,470, -6.3% ROI.