Earlier in summer, I confided in a few people that I would be taking my position as a professional poker player very seriously after I finished my summer classes, because, well, I would be officially be a professional. Somewhere in those conversations, I explained that the WCOOP would be my first big tournament series as a professional, and I planned on taking that very seriously as well.

In preparation, I printed out the list of tournaments and divided the tournies into four groups: 1) Had to play 2) 2nd tier 3) 3rd tier 4) Not playing. Logically, I would play in the group ones no matter what, and then group twos and threes depending on how burnt out I felt. Most of these tournaments were over 1k entries, so I needed either to: get better at tournaments, or qualify into them. I decided to do both. As a personal sign of good intentions, I bought $10k worth of W$.

I have spent the last week trying to qualify for all the bigger buyin tournaments that I wanted to play. This included everything 1k and up, but most importantly the 10k NLHE High Roller, the $2100 PLO 6m, the $5200 Main Event, and the $2100 8-game. So far, I've qualified for the first two, I'm 0/2 on attempts at the ME, and no sats have run for the 8-game tourney. During this time period, I've also gotten really comfortable with tournaments in general (i.e. the pace, "when" you really need to make moves with short stacks -- something I think all cash players tend to do prematurely).

So, I'm hitting the WCOOP events full steam. The tournaments that I plan on playing amount to $29,670 in buyins (If you played every event it would cost you I believe $60,493, with $25,500 being the High Roller HU event. Ignoring that, there are $34,993 worth of buyins). From these tournaments alone, I am setting a goal of $60,000 profit. I know this is a very high number, but I will be very focused, playing less tables than most tourney players, and believe my poker IQ will make up for tactical deficiencies in games such as badugi.

More importantly, I have a bet with Craig and Mike. We are using the points system being used in the 2p2 MTT forum, and the highest score wins one embarrassing act in public from the others. Hopefully I could cash it in in London. Here's to the poker grind!

NB: I realize I am ignoring all the second chances. For the purpose of this blog, pretend they don't exist

For those not interested in tournaments, here is a link to a hilarious picture of Bill Chen I found while searching 'WCOOP' on Google. When you click it you'll know why I didn't post it.