Damn the WSOP is flying by! It’s like I want it to take forever but it always goes by so quick. Now that we are nearing the home stretch it’s time for that final push to make the big bucks. The past two weeks of the WSOP have been decent for me. I’ve had two more cashes in the 8 events I’ve played in that time. Solid cashes but nothing huge. Regardless, it’s been a cheap WSOP for me thus far because two of my three cashes have been the day before a $5k event. Of course I would’ve loved to play the $5ks but obviously I’m not going to blow the tournament I’m in just to play a superiorly structured one. So my buyins haven’t been more than $30k and I’ve made $16k back in cashes. I’m okay with that right now. My goal for the series was to cash 4 tourneys and right now I’m 75% there. I’ve unfortunately never made a final table at the WSOP. I’ve come excruciatingly close with an 11th, 14th (lost heads up in the 2nd round of a $5k shootout), and 25th in a $5k. I just needed that one last pot to get me there. It’s the way it goes though and I know I’ll get there eventually.

My 2nd cash of the series was in a $1500 and I started short on day 2 but had some amazing skills when all in. My first dub came when I had A5o vs AJo and the flop came J32. Turn 5, river 5!!! That was epic. I then won a nice pot with top pair top kicker vs a weaker top pair to get to 120k at 1k/2k. After that I lost a couple all ins and then made a bad shove with AQo vs QQ to cripple myself. I busted shortly thereafter but there’s nothing I hate more than losing a huge pot due to a mistake made on your end. I can deal with taking bad beats or losing flips but man it hurts when it was something you could’ve controlled. It happens to everyone from time to time though and you have to move on and erase it from your memory. It wasn’t a huge mistake but I hold myself to a really high standard that even the smallest of mistakes I will really get mad at myself for.

My 3rd cash was in the $1500 triple shootout. I truly love shootouts. In order to be good at shootouts you have to be versatile being able to play ten-handed, shorthanded, and then finally heads up. My table had a few good players but it wasn’t particularly tough. I knocked out a couple of the short stacks and was able to chip up to 8k from the starting stack of 4500. Once we got shorthanded I couldn’t get anything going. If I 3bet light someone would 4bet and I kept missing a lot of flops. Luckily while I was sitting back and folding players were busting and after Hevad Khan lost a massive pot to the fish at the table, I found myself 3-handed with 10 bigs with the fish and a solid Russian guy. First hand I pick up QQ and the Russian has KK but I bink my Q on the flop. Then the fish loses a big pot to the Russian guy and I finish him off with A8ss holding vs K9hh. When I got heads up, I really started running sick. I was backdooring gutshots, hitting sets and getting paid, and then I rivered two pair against what seemed like a worse two pair to get him down to 900 chips at 200/400. I then proceeded to double him up 4 times in a row and he was almost back to even at a point until I got 1010 in vs his 88 to win the table. The next day I had a very good table and was slowly chipping up until I ran into Chau Giang’s Aces 5 handed with AKo to bust. It was a pretty brutal way to go but I was okay because like I said before, I didn’t play bad. It was just a simple cooler.

Next week I’m playing 5 more WSOP events and then after July 4th the main even starts and I can’t wait for that one. It’s the best structured tourney in the entire world as well as the one that pays by far the most. Seriously, it can’t get here soon enough. So good luck to everyone and hopefully I’ll see you guys in the main event too!