About the Blogger Tourney, a lot of stuff has been happening these past few weeks and i just couldnt finalize things. Been working too, helping out at the Northside poker place.

Anyway, let's play the sunday tournament of 11finger online first, then the live tourney will most likely push through on a thursday maybe next week or the latest, next next week. yeah weekday i know it sucks, but more people wont be able to play if we do it on a saturday i think.

I'm gonne try to do a headcount soon and post it here.

peace out.

The first ever officially sanctioned WPT tournament ended a few days ago, with our very good friend and poker aficionado Bryan Malantic surviving three days of poker and getting that last burst of great poker playing with a mixture of luck at the right times and places to take down the first title. Awesome all-around game by Bryan, who managed to just scrape by day one at just above the starting stack after losing half his chips early on. It was about a P200++ thousand payday plus a seat into the 25K buy-in main event. It's funny, because Bryan and i learned how to play poker together, but he laid low from playing for a while, so although i knew he was a solid player, almost EVERYONE has never seen him play! Bryan will have a LOT of fans after the first episode is aired on december hehe.

Funny how he never really intended to play until a day and a half before, when someone convinced him to cancel his other plans and play the game.

I personally dint play simply because 15K was too big for me to gamble on one tournament and i was on a poker hiatus during the height of the sattelites and big MTT's giving away seats. I, along with a LOT of my other friends are SURELY going to play the next one in december though! That one will for sure be bigger and crazier hehe. That WPT TV setup was wicked! I'll have some photos to post soon, just waiting for nick to email it to me or something.

Anyway, it was awesome to see one of our very own, someone who TRULY knows and loves the game of Poker, to represent the poker community by winning the first WPT game in the Philippines. Congrats to all the players who were a part of it, as well as the Marco and the PBT who made it all possible, and of course Emi and the ACF staff for handling it very well and letting them use the awesome venue.

See you in December! TV table here we come!

Six players.

More than P600,000 in the pot.

One chance to make history...


Let's all troop over to the ACF main theater today and watch the first ever WPT final table in the Philippines! The awesome main theater of the airport casino has been primed and set up with a world class WPT stage setup complete with hole cams and the works.

And what better reason to watch it than to cheer on our very own friendly neighborhood Tournament Director and good friend Bryan M. as he fights to win the P208,000 1st prize, a seat in the WPT championship, and a shot at poker immortality as the FIRST WPT Philippines champion!

See you there at 6pm when the first cards are dealt!

Go Bryan! Wear the BBC shirt proud! WOOOHOOOOO!

Ever since i started playing poker, i have heard the saying that "Tight is Right." Turns out to have been true all along. But up to what extent is being super tight aggressive considered effective? I have made ITM 3 out of 3 times in the last 2 weeks, all in 30 player MTT's. I bubbled once in a Sit n Go, but only because of a bad beat with QQ. 100% ITM is pretty good right? i mean, 3 games isnt enough of a sample, but it's pretty consistent. I also won in the last 2 ring games i played using the same strategy (a little bit looser though), making more that double and even triple my buy-in.

Last night, i played the regular monday MTT again, in which i placed 3rd last week. I decided to stick to my ULTRA tight srategy again, since it has been effective for me the last few games. 50-100 level i got Q-Q in EP, raised it to 500 and got one caller. Flop was 5-7-6, she bet 800, i raised to 1600, she called. Turn 8, she checks, i find it fishy and check too. River is another 6, and she bet 2000 which would almost put me all in, so i fold the Queens. She shows 8-6 suited for the boat. Damn. Nice call pre-flop hehe. I was down to my last 2K but managed to eke my way into the final table with a short stack, taking down small pots here and there, stealing and using my ultra tight image.

Near the bubble with a short stack, i shifted my play to ULTRA FRICKING TIGHT. I folded AK offsuit when i was UTG, didnt even limp it in! Raised with AQ in LP, got pushed all-in by a loose caboose in the SB who had about half my stack, and i folded it. "AA or KK only" was my mantra, and sure enough, KK came along and someone raised 4K, i pushed 11K in, and got another all in to my left. Initial raiser folds, and all-in guy shows JJ. Boom, almost 30K in chips for me total.

Then i got Q-Q UTG again, limped it in, since i knew for a fact that SOMEONE was gonna go all-in at this point (we had about 2 short stacked guys). Sure enough, guy on my left pushes all-in and everyone folds to me, so i happily called. I was goddamn ready to fold those ladies if one of the bigger stacks pushed! Guy shows K-Q and spiked the goddamn King on the flop. Lost half my stack to that. Got lucky on my BB when chip leader limped and i checked my Q-5, and flop came Q-J-5, checked it, he pushed me all in, i called and doubled up. When i got ITM (5 places), i was super short stack. Called a push with A-7 and the guy had A-10, so a 4th place finish again for me.

Ok, i was ITM in my last 3 MTT's, but 4th, 3rd, 4th place lang. I was going for the win last night, and i knew i could do it, but sadly the tide turned on me when my Q-Q got screwed by the K-Q. If i took that pot down, i KNEW i could win it.

So, do you guys think that super tight is right? Or will playing this way get me stuck in ITM limbo forever, never letting me win First Place unless i get lucky?

For now, i'm gonna be sticking to this gameplan. Super tight is right!

I got a text from one of our good friends and poker buddies yesterday. He's in the US right now and is of course checking out the tables and playing poker. Here is the message in it's entirety:

" Hey dude, it's Ram. (Perty to most- mav) In a $120 tourny, had 88 vs JT suited. Flop QQ8. I flopped a boat! He bluff bets, i called. Turn was 9, giving him the straight. Perfect! He bet big, i raised most of his chips, he called. River was... 8! I had QUADS! We tossed the rest of our chips in and HE WON! The last 8 gave him a straight flush! An hour later they tell me that hand wouldve won me a $70K jackpot in the casino. Odds.. 2.5 million to one. Fuck. Now i've seen it all."

Sick huh? hehe. Quads beaten by straight flush. In a tournament too. No bad beat jackpots to be won. Well, That's poker! We signed up for this. hehe.

(wrote this last thursday after we first got our power back, but only managed to post it now due to internet connection problems)

Sometimes things really have to be taken away from us for us to appreciate them even more. After super typhoon Milenyo struck about 7 days ago, we lost our power, water, and phone lines. Ok, no problem, we’ve been through this before. Little did we know it would take the authorities 7 days to restore everything back to normal in our area. Yesterday, we got our normal lives handed back to us a week of living in the dark ages.

Lying in my own bed has never felt so good in my life.

Man, what a storm though. A huge tree in our yard literally cracked in half! I even went driving around the metro the very night after the storm hit us, and it was as if Godzilla himself passed through Metro Manila. I saw cars crushed under huge billboards that fell on the road, vans and trucks tipped on their sides, trees all over the place, and all kinds of devastation.

A few days after the storm, we were all bitching about the lack of power and all the inconveniences that came along with it, and the utter ineptitude of the authorities to do something about it as fast as we wanted them to.

Then I came across this article in the paper about a simple farmer in the province who had been saving up for his birthday for 3 whole months so he can treat his wife and kids to Jollibee. Yes, he was saving up for THREE MONTHS, to save P1, 000. The typhoon tragically struck a few days before his birthday, and a flash flood killed his entire family, his wife and kids.

He ended up spending the money to bury his family on his birthday.

Kinda shut up my bitching.

Puts things in perspective huh?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So on to other, more mundane things like poker. I’ve been playing more the past weeks with some good results. Mostly I play the SnG’s at JG’s place, and ive only monied once in several games. Last night I was sure I was gonna take it down when I was cruising with about 3k in my stack all the way till we were 4 handed on the bubble, then I shifted my super ultra tight gear to a more aggressive one and had about 5K+ in the 200-400 level. I look down and see pocket queens UTG and raise it 2x BB, getting re-raised by the new guy on the table who has never really played poker much and has been playing for two months. All night he has been surprisingly lucky and has the biggest stack on the table! I push after the re-raise and he calls quickly with AQ, the perfect scenario for me at this point. If I double up, I’m surely gonna take this win. Ace on the flop says otherwise and boom, bubble boy again hehe.

Two days before that, I played the northside Monday 30 player MTT and played the tightest poker I have ever played in my life! I just wanted to play it like I would an online game, never tried to be “cute”, and just played straight up. Folded AK, 10-10, KJ’s, QJ’s, all pre-flop, JJ on the flop with one overcard, things like that. Only played AKs, KK, AA strongly, all of which got me rewarded. KK tripled me up and AA doubled me up.

I got to ITM with a decent stack of 20K+ in the 1k-2k levels. Got it down to 3 players at the 2k-4k level with about 24K in chips in my stack. I had been playing ultra tight all night and everyone knew it, so I decided to make a move when Ariel (big stack) raised AGAIN on the button about 2.5xBB. I had pocket sevens and decide to push him all in for about 20K more, figuring if he called, I would be a slight favorite. He instantly calls and shows A-A which sealed my fate for the third place finish.

Night before that, I was at a friend’s home game MTT at the fort, 3 tables with bounties of 200 per player. Ended up taking 4th place and took out 3 people along the way!

So the past week, I’ve been playing really good and have so far only lost when I had my money in way ahead. I’m hoping to keep up the pace and play a lot more in the nest few weeks, and maybe build up my bankroll again so I can play the bigger MTT’s.

Watch your backs!