WSOP.com Online Championship

Save for Later

As many of you have probably heard, Nevada now has fully regulated online poker.  Ultimate Poker was the first to launch. Soon after, the WSOP launched their online site. A month or so ago my backer presented me (and the other guys in the stable) with the opportunity to travel to Nevada for their first big series, the WSOP.com Online Championship.  With $500K being added to the prize pool, this was way too good of an opportunity to pass up, so I booked my flight and headed to Las Vegas for 9 days.

First things first.  Stock the fridge.  I took care of the beer shopping.

Now, with that out of the way.  We settled in to our house, which was really nice.  All of the guys staying in the house were super cool.  It was my first time meeting any of them, but with a few hours we were already busting balls and getting along great.  Rivermen123 was one of the guys staying in the house.  He got in a couple of days late, but it was great to get to meet him in person!  Our backers had provided us all with monitors, so all we had to bring were laptops.  We staked out our various areas around the house and set up our grind stations. It was time to crush!

The WSOP.com software is REALLY nice!  I would argue that it even rivals Full Tilt as the best software I have played on. As you might expect, the fields for the series were super soft. That being said, I did not have a ton of luck in the first 7 events. But that was OK.  I was saving my rungood for the last two events, the $215 6max and the $215 Main Event.

I was able to make a deep run in the 6max event. Sadly, I would bubble the Final Table (actually being knocked out by my housemate Patrick, who would go on to win the event!  Still good for about $7500 though (with swaps) I also cashed the Main Event, but was unlucky with ~40 people left losing KK to AQ all in preflop to Sketchy1 for what would have given me 40+ BBs and a nice opportunity to make another run.

Overall the event was awesome. Had a great time hanging out in Vegas with everyone and grinding really really hard for 9 straight days.

I know we have talked about this on podcasts and stuff in the past, but if you ever get the chance to live with other grinders (even for a short period) it will absolutely change your grind mentality. When you wake up and three guys are alrady grinding and another is making breakfast for everyone before starting his session, you are just super motivated to sit down and your computer and go to war. So yeah, if you get the chance, DO IT!

While in Vegas, we had to escape the house at least a few times. We mostly hung out at Red Rock, as it was close to our house.  It was a blast playing live cash, especially because you typically had one or two other guys from the house at your table.  I had a decent session our first night out winning about $500 at 1/2.  Then I have back about $300 of that the next session.  But the final session, after a great team dinner, was the best of the trip.  Cashed out for ~$1600 on one buyin!

So all in all it was a great trip.  If they run another series I will most definitely try to make it out for it again. If you are in Nevada and are paying on WSOP.com I’d love to hear your thoughts on the software, the series and also on what the fields and games are like now that the series is not running.

As always, follow me on Twitter @derektenbusch

See you at the tables!