www.twitter.com/craigthedeac

Been tweeting updates of all the tourneys I play, apologies for not writing blogs lately. I've played ~14 tourneys so far and have cashed in 4 (all were mincashes or slightly higher than mincashes). I think I'm roughly even overall on the series. I've been very happy with my level of play thus far, especially today. Mincashing is annoying but hey it could be worse.

Today I played Day 1A of one of the 1k WSOP tourneys. I made it through with what I'm guessing is a slightly above average stack of 22,850 with 25 minutes of 300-600 remaining. Making Day 2 (Saturday) means I have tomorrow off when I would have otherwise played the $2500. Unfortunately, my housemates went to the club Tao at the Venetian which I am banned from and nobody else seems to be up to anything. (http://www.leggopoker.com/blogs/crai...etian-872.html)

So now I'm just hanging at home alone writing a blog. Might have to crack a brew and chill in the hot tub in a few minutes.

I'm registered for day 1A of the main event on the 5th. Hopefully I have to unregister and sign up for a later day because the final table of the 1k would be on the 5th.

Random story I want to make sure to blog about... a couple of weeks ago on Day 2 of the $5000 NL WSOP I played with Phil Hellmuth. I've played with just about every big named pro but it was my first time getting to play with him. I will admit I get excited when I get to play with the celebrities. I actually think as a result I play much better because I try extra hard to beat them.

Phil was up to his usual antics, whining whenever someone raised him, etc. I played only 2 pots against him, once I 3bet him with QQ and he folded while berating me. The other hand I opened TT in EP he called from his bb and donked like 4k into 20k on a A38ss flop and folded to a small raise, obv he whined some more before folding to me. When I was thinking about calling/raising he said to me "there's 4k kid what you gonna do?" or something along those lines. haha

Phil played pretty well overall. He is loose (but not particularly aggressive) preflop and really nitty postflop when it comes to getting in a lot of chips. He takes lots of random cheap stabs at pots (sometimes with good hands) but if he gets in a lot of chips, he will have a strong hand. Somehow people still donate to him postflop. I guess his table talk and preflop looseness somehow trick people into thinking he can be light in spots where he just consistently has it. He literally even tells all the "internet kids" how he will eventually trap them or something and get it in way ahead, and he's not kidding.

If you're playing him without history he will act fast in spots with huge hands because he thinks you will interpret it as weak. Preflop he tends to flat too much with his good hands, so I think he is generally great to 4bet as his 3betting range seems too weighted towards weaker hands plus he loves to hero fold good hands. He severely overvalues tourney life and likes to keep pots small so trying to blow up pots against him will get you a lot of FE.

Not really sure why I decided to post reads on Hellmuth. If they turn out to be of any use to anyone, buy me a beer or something.

Craig