I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that poker is a frustrating game. In some sense we all know and acknowledge this, but because of the way that poker media is saturated with the winners of huge prizes, it’s easy to lose perspective. It can feel like the same people are constantly winning, and if you hold your own results up for comparison to the combined winnings of the best 100 or so players in the world, you’re going to come away feeling awfully inadequate.

You don’t hear about it when these players are losing. You don’t know how much they were stuck or how much makeup they were in before their last big score. Most people are a lot more vocal about their wins than their losses, and they tend to keep their frustrations and doubts to themselves, or at least private within a small circle of friends.

Yet every player, no matter how good, experiences loss and frustration a lot more often than he or she experiences great success. And I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one for whom these experiences are accompanied by anxiety and doubt. Am I actually any good? Is the game passing me by? Am I dead money at these stakes?

I certainly don’t mean to hold myself up as one of those “best 100 players in the world”. But I’ve been a professional for nine years, this is my eighth WSOP, my lifetime ROI in WSOP events is through the roof, and I continue to astound and disappoint myself with how wrapped up I can get in short-term results. Coping with frustration and playing through doubt is a big, if rarely discussed, part of being a successful poker player. These things have been an integral part of my WSOP experience so far this summer.

It began with so much promise. For the first time ever, I planned to play not just the main event but roughly a dozen preliminary events as well, with buy-ins ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 and even a pot-limit Omaha eight-or-better event for good measure. I’ve played the main event for seven years running, but this time I was going to get the full experience: rent a car, rent a condo, play the side games, and just generally spend three weeks fully immersed in poker.

It was great fun looking over all of the tournaments going on throughout Las Vegas and putting together a tentative schedule. Of course, I hoped to make so many day twos and day threes that I’d have to skip many of the events on my list. The possibilities were endless. The package I put together sold out within hours, and I set out for Las Vegas flush and about as excited as I’d ever been to play poker.

My first event was the $1,500 six-handed. Barely an hour into the tournament, with blinds at 25/50, I opened to 125 with K7s two seats off the button, and the big blind called. The flop came 765r, he checked, I bet 175, he raised to 475, and I called.

The turn brought a 3, he checked, and I bet 725. I had an aggressive image, especially with this player, and thought I could be called by worse made hands and also charge 8s and overcards. He moved all-in, laying me roughly 2-1 on a call.

On paper this looks like an easy fold, but I got an overwhelming aura of weakness from him. I don’t consider myself a “feel player”, but I’ve rarely experienced something this strong at the poker table. I went with it. He flipped 84s, and that was the end of the beginning of my WSOP.

I don’t go with my gut like this often, and when I do I’m right more often than I’m wrong. I do believe that, especially in live poker, it’s possible to pick up subconsciously on information that can lead you to a conclusion that is correct even if you can’t articulate why. Still, it’s hard not to feel ridiculous when you trust that voice in your head and it proves to be so wrong. What does it say about me as a player if such a strong feeling proved so inaccurate? How was I supposed to trust any of my reads going forwards?

Next up was the $1,500 Millionaire Maker. I ran my starting stack of 4,500 up to about 10K without much difficulty, and then I got all-in with pocket deuces against Aces on a 5529 board. He rivered a 5 and I spent the rest of the tournament short-stacked.

Never interesting, short-stacked play is especially bland when you’re ten-handed. My eventual elimination felt more like a mercy killing.

It was more of the same in the next day’s $1K. We started with just 3,000 chips, so there wasn’t much time to run up a stack before the blinds were nipping at my heels. There was more ten-handed nittiness, and eventually I lost a flip.

I was at least looking forward to getting some more play in the $3,000 shootout, where we started with 9,000 in chips and blinds of 25/50. But someone flopped a set against my Aces in a four-bet pot, and it proved to be my shortest tournament to date.

Walking back out of the Rio barely an hour after I’d arrived, I was struck by the stark reality that this could be my entire summer. I wasn’t guaranteed any deep runs nor even any cashes. Of course, part of me knew that whiffing 13 or 14 tournaments wouldn’t be a wildly anomalous losing streak even for a top player, but you don’t show up in Las Vegas thinking that it’s going to happen to you.

Why couldn’t it? Even if I played great, it would take nothing more than a couple of coolers, a couple of lost flips, a couple of bad beats, and a bad table draw or two. Mix in the occasional mistake, and that’s an easy recipe for a lousy summer. I lost four tournaments, and already I could see the storm clouds gathering. This is how it starts. Every streak of 14 losses starts as a streak of 4. I took the rest of the day off and tried to get my head right.

The next day was the $2,500 six-handed, where I finally got both some play and some good luck. It started with a lucky table draw and a lucky turn card. Of my five opponents, only one seemed capable of giving me truly tough decisions. In our first pot together, I check-raised him with a gutshot, turned the nuts, and overbet the river to win a huge pot and cripple him.

I turned around and lost a lot of that with an ambitious semi-bluff that failed to deliver either a fold, a six-outer, or either of my back-door draws. Luck bailed me out again, though, when I got it in with 77 against AK and TT and flopped a 7.

After that I was rolling. The table got tougher, but I rose to the occasion. I made some good reads and picked off two river bluffs, one of them a check-raise from a world class player. This did a lot to renew my confidence after the disastrous call that ended my earlier six-handed tournament so quickly. I was proud of myself both for the reads and for having the courage to trust them despite that fiasco.

I didn’t want to jinx it, but with half an hour to go until dinner break, I had an above average stack, so I texted a friend and made plans to meet at break. Ten minutes later, I was out of the tournament. It was nothing spectacular: I ran AQ into QQ from the most (over)aggressive player at table, then AK into JJ.

Five events into the series, and I was yet to make a dinner break. What fun! Not only that, but I’d run well in this one. I’d been lucky with my table draw, sucked out in a big pot, nailed a gutshot and gotten paid off huge, and it still wasn’t enough. How much run good do I need to make the money?

Thinking that a change of venue and a smaller field might be good for me, I headed to the Venetian the next day for a $2,500 deepstack. Only 26 players were registered when play started at noon, and I didn’t recognize a single one of them, which seemed too good to be true. It was. By the time registration closed, there more than 90 players in the field, and the late registers were quite a bit tougher than those who’d arrived on time.

Worse, I was randomly pulled off of my table, full of on-time arrivals, to balance a table full of late registers. The level of pre-flop aggression was through the roof, making it tough to be card dead. I was playing extremely tight and still kept getting raised anytime I entered a pot, being forced several times to fold either a rare bluff or the very bottom of my value range.

I nitted it up as my stack dwindled. Still, I stayed patient and managed to keep my head above water for hours despite never accumulating more than 30 BBs. The best hand I saw during that period was AK. The first time I ran into another AK and chopped. The second, I ran into two other players with AK and chopped for an even smaller fraction of the pot.

Finally, the second-most aggressive player on the table opened with a raise from the hijack, the most aggressive called on the cutoff, and it looked like a pretty easy shove for me holding AJo on the button. They both had QQ, which is actually not such a bad outcome, but I didn’t get there and busted about half an hour before the end of the night.

Be careful what you wish for, I guess. As frustrating as it was to feel like I wasn’t even getting a toehold in any of the tournaments I played, playing for twelve hours and not cashing was pretty unpleasant, too.

March 13 2012, Chad Holloway

The 2012 PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP) recently concluded its eighth annual series, which ran from Feb. 23 through March 4, and included 30 tournaments. The competition brought together many of the industry’s top bloggers who competed for various prizes and titles.

The 2012 WBCOOP determined three notables from the poker blogging realm, including Agnes Archibong-Omon, who won the “Best Live Tweeter” award and $1,000 for her tweets throughout the 2012 series.

Likewise, Bartisz “wilczybobek” Oder from Poland earned the distinction of “Player of the Series” with 295 points and took home a WBCOOP 2012 trophy, a live/online event package for a PokerStars-sponsored event, a special chip set, and a 2012 SCOOP Main Event Medium ticket.

2012 WBCOOP Player of the Series Leaderboard Final

Finally, the most prestigious award, the “Best Blogger Award,” was given to Paul Jones of Ireland for his blog, The Royal Raiser. In his video submission, Jones explained what he’d do with the $5,000 prize. Combined with his blog and promotion, Jones’ efforts were enough to catch the eye of PokerStars officials, who declared him this year’s Best Blogger. PokerNews recently talked to Jones to get his take on the 2012 WBCOOP.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Serious, you really want to hear all those boring details? Just kidding, I’d be delighted to tell you but it will bore you. I’m no star poker player, that’s for sure. I’m a regular kind of guy, 37 years of age and a stay-at-home dad. The first poker game I played was about two years ago, but it’s only since July of last year that the bug has taken over. Still a micro-donk after all that time, but I do try to improve my game. I’m an avid blogger and player at the moment and try to give it as much time as possible. I have a good record at online sit-and-gos, but my cash game leaves a lot to be desired.

You write a blog called The Royal Raiser. Tell us about that.

Well, I blog in a couple of great places including pokergob.com, which is a great place to blog. I also help out as a volunteer moderator on pokerschoolonline.com, which without doubt, is a wonderful place to learn the game. It was my own personal BlogSpot, though, that I submitted to the WBCOOP promotion. Most of my blogs are about personal challenges and goals that I have set myself. I find this a great way to get my head around some of the concepts of the game. I’ve also reviewed a few books that I’ve found helpful.

How did you find out about the WBCOOP competition?

Honestly, I think it’s hard not to find out about a PokerStars promotion, they do such a great job of advertising them. Whether it was on a forum, in the PokerStars lobby or on Twitter that I saw it I’m not sure, it seems like such a long time ago, but it’s a safe bet it was one of the above.

How long did it take you to put together your winning video? And what inspired you to pick out that soothing music?

The video was an afterthought. I just wanted to try my hand at making one and thought it was a good idea. It was the main blog, though, that I submitted as my entry. As for the music, that’s an easy one. It was the best of bad selection in my Windows library that was copyright-free, and yes, it is very soothing. I thought it was a good fit for the theme.

After you made your submission, what did you do? Did you promote it, etc.?

Again, the video was not the entry, it was my main blog, and boy did I promote it! Relentless tweets and Facebook posts went out over the duration of the promotion. For all those family members who got bombarded with poker-related posts and tweets over the week, I hereby sincerely apologize. Guess is was worth it though. Please unblock me Mum!

How did you find out that you won the World Blogger Championship?

The moment I found out will be imprinted in my memory forever. The kids had just got home from school, and I said to my wife that I would play online for about an hour and then leave it at that. It was our wedding anniversary and we planned to have a meal together that night. I loaded up a few micro-cash tables and settled into what I thought would be an hour’s grind.

About ten minutes into it, my Twitter and Skype notifications started going a little crazy. The first one I looked at was a Skype message from a good friend called Mark. ‘Hey, did you win the WBCOOP?’ he asked. I replied that I wished and that I wouldn’t be that lucky. I told him I had won a few SCOOP tickets alright. He sent me a link to a Twitter post from PokerStars, and I nearly fell off the chair. I could not believe it to the point where I emailed their support to see if it was true. Apparently I was chosen by the PokerStars Blog team as one of the two wildcard entries for the competition.

Did you think you had a realistic shot at winning or did it come as a surprise?

Surprise would be an understatement. It was total shock. I’ve never won anything this big before in my life. It means a lot to me on so many different levels. It’s not every day you get to be crowned World Champion at something. Also, there were hundreds of other great blogs submitted, and well done to all who took part.

You stated that you’ll be donating 50 percent of the prize to charity. Do you know which charity yet? If so, how did you come to that decision?

One of the easiest decisions ever. I said from the very beginning that I will donate half the prize money to the Temple Street Children’s Hospital in Dublin, Ireland. The thing is that, although I’m not wealthy, I believe that money is not the most important thing in life. One of my daughters has trouble with her eyesight, and I regularly have to bring her on trips to this amazing hospital for check-ups. The staff there has been very kind to us, and I challenge anyone reading this to walk around a few of these hospitals for a couple of hours. When you are done, you’ll really see what’s important in life, health and family. Once I make the presentation, I will post a photo up on my blog for all to see.

You said that you’ll be using 25 percent of your prize to buy into a UKIPT event. Have you ever played in one before? Which event will you be choosing?

It has to be the Dublin event, but haven’t even looked yet to see when that is on. I’ve never played in one before and I’ll probably be way out of my depth. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

How did you do in the 30 WBCOOP events?

Poorly. There were so many good players playing the events, and I, sadly, wasn’t one of them. I scraped into the prizes in four of the events, though, winning three $5.50 SCOOP tickets and one $16.50 ticket. I liked the mix of the formats and thought the selection of events really spiced it up a bit. I enjoyed the H.O.R.S.E. game the most because I’m a regular at a play-money home game called ‘The Drunk Tank’ where they play H.O.R.S.E. every Monday night. There’s a great bunch of guys and gals in that home game, and they surely taught me a thing or two about poker. Actually, if I remember right, my ‘Bad Beat’ of the WBCOOP happened in that H.O.R.S.E. game. It’s in my blog if anyone wants to look.

Have you seen in increase in traffic on your blog since becoming the World Blogger Champion?

Without a doubt. My blog hits have nearly doubled. I received hundreds of messages since being announced the winner. Mostly, about 95 percent positive good wishes from great people, and if I haven’t thanked you already, then I do so now. I’ve tried to respond to as many messages as possible. I received about 5 percent of hate mail, too, but I guess that’s to be expected. That won’t bother me as I’m too old in the tooth to get upset about these things, and I won’t let it take away from the fact that I was crowned World Blogging Champion for 2012.

I will continue to promote the game as best I can in the coming year and respect each and every player I meet along the way. I’m a believer in good karma. What goes around comes around so they say. Thanks to PokerNews for the interview, it’s been the icing on the cake of a wonderful week.

For more information on the 2012 WBCOOP, visit the PokerStars Blog.

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