Matt Stout's Allinat420 Blog

Despite the fact that I've played played 4,327,981 tournaments at Foxwoods and cashed in exactly one, I decided to make the trek across country to grind out one more stupid donkament.

After my run in such a tough field at Bellagio and being so close to my first WPT main event final table that I could taste it, I just couldn't talk myself out of playing one of the softest WPT events of the season.

The structure of the event is pretty good when it matters, even though it's a bit fast early on. We start with 30k chips at 50/100 and it's 200/400 (50) by level four, but they don't skip the 2400, 5k, or 10k big blind levels.

My table draw for day one wasn't exactly what I was hoping for in a Foxwoods tournament. It would be a great draw at Bellagio, don't get me wrong, but the field is a LOT different here.

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Well first of all, I'd like to thank my New York Yankees for taking a little bit of the sweat out of the equation for me. I have $4,500 riding on the Yankees to win the World Series, and here's why:

1) The Yankees were nearly a 2:1 favorite to win the Series according to Vegas bookies (who seem to know how things will play out with scary/suspicious accuracy)

2) I have a ton of friends from South NJ and PA area who, for whatever reason, have decided to put themselves through the torture of being Phillies fans

3) I <3 $$$

The combination of these facts led to me doing the first significant sports betting of my life. Normally I bet sports very rarely, and when I do it's $20-$100 between friends just for shits and giggles.

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We began day four of the $15k WPT Festa al Lago main event at Bellagio with 37 players remaining and 27 spots to be paid. I had ~500k going to 5/10k, which put me 14th in chips and slightly above average.

My table for the money bubble of the tournament included Chau Giang, Prahlad Friedman, Brandon Cantu, Mark Seif, Matt Glantz, and Tommy Vedes.

Another table with several million in combined winnings, and definitely a table that wasn't going to nit it up and be scared bubbling the tournament.

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I began the third day of the $15k WPT Festa al Lago main event at Bellagio with 205k at 1500/3k. I started the day at a table with Barry Greenstein, Corwin Cole, Justin Bonomo, and Bob Safai.

I was picking up a ton of big hands but was taking most down with raises and re-raises before the flop.

But just when I was getting comfortable (and it's hard not to when you have a big pair every fourth hand or so), they came to break the table.

Here was the lineup at the new table, who I believe have about $974,206,239,234 in combined earnings.

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I began the second day of Festa al Lago's $15k WPT event with 58k @ 600/1200, and arrived to find about as soft of a table draw as I could ask for on day two of this particular tournament.

In fact, the pittsy calling station that Paul Wasicka had been telling me about hands with the night before was conveniently located on my left!

I was able to chip up a bit when the station, who was a really nice older businessman, chased the nut flush draw against my top pair/top kicker and bricked. But, sadly, they broke my table about a level into play.

Even more sadly, I arrived at my new table to find some VERY familiar faces: Marco "CrazyMarco/NoraFlum" Johnson, Steven "MrTimCaum" O'Dwyer, Barry Greenstein, and Phil Ivey. I was definitely not happy with my new table, even with a few soft spots to my left.

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Just finished up play for day one of this year's Bellagio Festa al Lago main event. Despite the comically pathetic turnouts for the preliminary events, there were about 260 entrants today.

Strangely enough, Bellagio has also decided to allow players to buy in during day two of the tournament. This is the first time I've ever seen this in any live tournament.

Players will start with a full starting stack of 60k, and may register up to the end of level 8 (600/1200), which will be the third level of play tomorrow.

I've also begun updating from the table on breaks on Twitter ... which I finally caved and decided to join. You can follow me at @MattStoutPoker since @MattStout is taken by some guy who apparently regrets not acting on his dream to be an astronaut ...

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"Pokah's nice. I loves play pokah." --Chau Giang

OK, well, sometimes I do! I won't get into detail because I have yet to tell the stories from London, but I've been doing a lot of bubbling lately ...money bubbles in big events, final table bubbles in online donkaments, etc.

Well I finally managed to come through in the clutch (and be a huge lucksack) this week!

First I took down the $10k guaranteed $55 tournament on Lock. While it was on the smaller side, it had been a while since I'd had an outright win in any MTT. Sometimes a little push like that is all you need to get the ball rolling again.

And roll it did. On Monday night I did something that I've been trying to do for a lonnnnnnnnnnnng time: ship Tilt's Monday night $1k buy-in.

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Finally got home from my Jersey and London adventure the day before last. I'll get to telling all the tales from the road eventually, but for now I just wanted to post a quick blog before I fire up another lonnnnnng Sunday session.

In my last blog I mentioned the guy who absolutely lost it and berated me when I bubbled him during the Borgata $400NL preliminary event. It was truly entertaining to me in a way...

While we were getting close to the bubble there were several players who were playing ridiculously tight to try to squeeze into the money. One of whom, a short stocky white guy from New York, was down to about ten big blinds and seated on my left.

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OK, so they weren't complete blowups ... but I'm definitely not happy with myself in the wake of the Borgata Poker Open.

When I left off in my last blog I had a big stack in the $400 NL opening event of the series. Although my 240k stack had me near the chip lead to start day two, it was only thirty big blinds in a somewhat quick structure.

Even though Borgata has some of the best structures in the country for big events, they really should include all of the blind levels that they include in their main event structure for the preliminary events.

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I should have been asleep about an hour ago, but I figured I'd get a quick blog out there because I had a blast at my first trip back to Borgata (aka "home") since moving to Vegas in February.

Jason Young and I had been toying around with ideas for a couple of prop bets, one of which was a bet on who would cash for more money during the series at Borgata.

Since I'm skipping several events to play online we decided to do most gross winnings across five tournaments: today's $400 NL, the two $1k NL non-HU events, the $3.5k WPT main, and we each get to pick one other tournament.

We added this to the bet because I'll be playing the $1650 NL, which he can't make. He's going to pick one other event that I'll be playing online during to compensate for this.

The bet is $10k, but there is an interesting "pity rule." If one if us wins six figures and the other doesn't, the person who cashed for more will instead owe the "loser" $10k.

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I finally left the Vegas and CA area for the first time since February, when I moved to Las Vegas. After arriving at the Philadelphia Airport I decided to stop at a store to pick up a few things before I headed down to the Atlantic City area to stay with my friend Kenny "Kenny Rap" Weinstein.

I'd like to thank Kenny for his hospitality. Had I just been playing the main event at Borgata I'd probably have just stayed at the hotel, but I flew in a week ago so that I'd be out here and settled in before the World Championship of Online Poker kicked off.

Besides, I don't get to see Kenny enough now that I've made the move out West. We used to play a lot of online sessions together in Jersey before I moved, and he's fun to talk hands with since he has an interesting and sometimes unconventional approach to the game.

I'd also like send some hate and ill will towards the slew of mentally challenged roosters who live outside his place. These evil creatures will roost at ANY time of the day.

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Well it's now 4:21am and I've officially given up hope of going to bed before my flight leaves from the airport in Vegas at 9:10am, so I might as well get a blog post in before I get to Jersey. I'll sleep when I'm dead I suppose. Oh, and on the flight.

Anyway, I'm really excited about what I mentioned in the title. Lock Poker, a member of the Cake Network, recently signed a group of pros including myself, Jason Young, Lee Childs, Mike 'GoLeafsGoEh' Leah, Joe 'JoeytheB' Brooks, Kyle 'kwob20' Bowker and Jonathan Jaffe.

Eric 'Rizen' Lynch, who was the first Lock Pro before the rest of us were signed, was also announced as VP of Product Development in the same press release.

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Well Biggie was close, except you can replace "women" with "Legends of Poker $10k WPT @ the Bike" since I have a girlfriend. =)

Since they're playing out the final table right now while I sit at home watching Tommy Boy after a long online session and writing this blog, you can probably tell that it didn't go too well!

I continued my strange streak of having a heavily stacked table on day one of a major event, which is ironic because the later days are usually where you find the toughest tables after most of the soft spots have been eliminated.

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So after a long and unproductive FTOPS series, my roommate and I decided to go jet skiing on Lake Mead to relieve some stress and get away from the soft glow of our monitors.

Had I known what was to come, I'd have stayed home for some R&R instead ...

The day started out well, even though my roommate and I got split up from the start. I was still signing my contract for the rental as we were leaving the dock, and he left a few minutes ahead of me.

I couldn't find him once I got away from the docks, but I figured he'd headed over to the Hoover Dam to check out the view since that's what we were planning on doing.

Apparently I overshot the Dam...guess it wasn't big enough for me to see. But I was having so much fun jet skiing through canyons and finding new coves that I just kept going. I took a break for a little while and headed back in the direction I came from ...

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It's that time again, the time we wait literally weeks for, FTOPS!

Seriously ... I haven't done a timeline on it yet or anything, but I'm pretty sure that FullTilt is slowly closing the gap between the different FullTilt Online Poker Series at an ever increasing pace.

They probably won't stop until they're running one continuous FTOPS series. But hey, if they can keep the fields huge I'm not complaining!

My FTOPS hasn't been great so far, but it hasn't been terrible. I made a deep run in the $215+rebuys event, which is always one of my favorite FTOPS tournaments. I was one of the chip leaders for a decent portion of the tournament but ended up fizzling out not too long after we got into the money.

I also cashed in one other event of the series so far, the $500 6-max PLO. I ended up getting it in on a pretty standard Omaha post-flop flip, holding bottom set and a straight draw against top two with a flush draw, and cashing for barely more than the minimum.

This is just going to further my recent desire to improve my Omaha game through books and training videos, because I seem to go deep in a lot of PLO events even though I'm self-taught and relatively inexperienced.

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I might as well stop putting off writing this blog before I manage to completely block this tournament out of my memory...because I'm pretty close as it is, thankfully!

As I mentioned in the first part, my starting table looked more like a tough final table. I wouldn't be surprised in a WPT event, but since this is the softest $10k buy in tournament of the year it was pretty bad news.

Unless I managed to get in a good spot against one of the softer spots at the table it was going to be tough to accumulate.

But since the first day is all about survival I just decided to lay back, taking a lot of flops with the soft spots and picking my spots against the better players.

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In my last blog I was pretty tilted after a brutal session of 20 or 25 online donkaments. I was down to just the $215+rebuys on Stars, and decided to blog while I was one-tabling because I can still pay enough attention when it's only one table.

As the Editor's Note mentioned, I finished 2nd in the tournament for $28.5k. It felt pretty good to get back on the right track after a pretty significant downswing. Not out of the hole yet, but am off the starting block and ready for another heater!

It also felt great because I was pretty tilted from that session and hadn't had a single cash yet...unless you count the MONSTEROUS $95 I cashed for in the Turbo Takedown $1M prize pool freeroll. That only left me down $4-5k for the day!

But seriously ... I managed to stay focused and keep playing my A game, even though I only had 4k chips at 75/150 after rebuys were over. I managed to overcome the desire to dust off my short stack and play Mario Kart and turn it into a solid cash.

There weren't too many tricky/interesting hands in that tournament, despite the fact that so much of the field in that tournament represents the best players in online poker. The fact that I put coolers of three of them deep in the tournament helped out...in more ways than one.

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I'm going to interrupt my WSOP Main Event story because there's just no need for me to write about something that sucks that much right now. I'd rather focus on the positive at moment...after just a couple more lines...

As I write this, I'm down to one table after another brutal Sunday session. I lasted a grand total of eight hands COMBINED in two of the biggest tournaments of the day: the Warm Up and the $750k guaranteed.

This was partially due to something that was such a statistical anomaly that I have to share it. I busted out of three different tournaments by running into quads, twice when I had boats...all on paired boards, not ones with open sets.

To be fair, I also flopped quads once during the session. And a note to all of the people who think all online poker is rigged for action: I've never seen quads this many times in a session (25-35 tournaments), let alone hold or be up against them that many times!

But despite being on another brutal, six-figure downswing, I've managed to remain positive and still be pretty happy overall. It's probably partially due to my move to Las Vegas, which I'm very happy about so far.

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Now that I've spent about a week and a half barely playing poker while getting over busting the WSOP Main Event, I suppose it's time to tell the tale.

Not that the interim has been too bad...I'm really working out the kinks in my Mario Kart for Wii game, have become better acquainted with my new digital VOLCANO vaporizer, and re-watched (I somehow got a hold of these when I was about 11) half of the gruesome, sick, and highly controversial "Faces of Death" movies.

I'm also starting to get back into roller hockey, in the hopes that one day I may be in shape again...or at least a shape that isn't round. =)

Anyway, back to the lecture at hand...

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I made a rare decision to skip online tournaments last Sunday to play the $3k Triple Chance tournament for a couple of reasons.

First, I feel that I've played very well throughout most of the WSOP with a few deep runs, and have little to show for it.

Second, the $3k NL is the tournament in which I've had my closest run to a final table (even though I consider my 118th place finish in the 2007 Main Event my best WSOP finish), finishing 13th place last year when John Phan won his first bracelet.

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So I guess I inadvertently lied to you all in my last WSOP blog.

I said I would be back in action on Saturday unless I played the limit shootout on Friday, but out of the boredom derived from the mixed game players having their way with the WSOP schedule last week I decided to head over to the Venetian.

They're running another one of their highly popular Deep Stack Extravaganzas, and on Friday they spread a $2k NL event. I expected a decent turnout, but since it was such a big buy in (relative to most Venetian prelims) and it wasn't a WSOP event I thought there would be around 200-250 players.

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OK, so I hate the idea of turning my blog commercial ... but it's for a good cause ... and a great product. In conjunction with GUNNAR Optiks, I'll be making a charitable donation for each sale made with the code PPIStout at their site www.gunnaroptiks.com

I can't decide which charity yet, but probably Second Harvest (formerly Feeding America, www.secondharvest.org) or Habitat For Humanity (www.habitat.org).

I did a lot of work with my college's chapter of Habitat, and even served as their Vice President for a term. I've also been making donations to Second Harvest recently, because around Christmas-time I started thinking about how badly the recession must be hitting our nation's food banks.

Anyway, the story with GUNNAR goes something like this (I'm paraphrasing from a phone conversation over a month ago, so this is sort of the story =).

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Event 32 - $2,000 No-Limit Hold'em, Event 34 - $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em, Event 36 - $2,000 No-Limit Hold'em, Event 39 - $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em.

What do they all have in common? Soft fields, huge prize pools, and my buy ins donated to each of them without me even sniffing the money or day two in any of them. Brick, brick, brick, BRICKKKKKKK!

I'm still feeling pretty good though...except for this cold that I'm just getting over. I skipped the $1,500 NL and the $5k NL shootout that were held on Sundays in favor of playing online.

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Event 19 of this year's WSOP was one that has moved up to replace the now defunct (damnit!!!) $1k rebuy events as one of my favorite prelim events of the Series: the $2,500 shorthanded no-limit event.

It drew 1,068 entrants and paid out 114 places with $552,745 going to the winner.

I had a pretty crazy rollercoaster ride for most of day one, which shorthanded tournaments tend to be. I was probably the chip leader at one point with over 80k.

Unfortunately, I frequently have trouble believing re-raises from European players (or anyone under 55 for that matter)...so I ended up hitting the spew button at the end of the day and finished up with 35k going to 600/1200.

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At the end of my last blog, I mentioned that I was really looking forward to the $1,500 NL six-handed event. It turned out to be a very soft field, as expected, of 1,459 players.

Many of the inexperienced players either played way too aggressively, or too tight and passive in the short-handed format. I was able to capitalize on this and chip up pretty slowly throughout the day without too many big confrontations.

We made it into the money (144 places) well before the end of the day, but I was stuck in reverse from the bubble until the end of the day.

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