Sunday 30 October 2011

....Get Set....

The VPP race continues for me from now until the end of the year.  Last updated October 10th.  As I sign out for the night tonight, I have 166,628.08 VPPs....33,371.92 to go to get my next Milestone Cash Credit. 

Brag:  Will be great to get, just in time for the Bahamas baby!  :)

Monday 24 October 2011

Canada Cup, Januar-eh Nine and Bonus Brags

Woke up early (10am) yesterday morning and got to a yoga class as quickly as I could.  I had been during the week but other than that, very neglectful.  Class ended at 1140, giving me just enough time to get home, showered and ready to start my tournaments.  I have really tried to focus more on cash games, but the weekend tournaments are such good value and hard to stay away from.  Quickly registered in the Women's Sunday, the Sunday Million, the Daily Bigs and some PCA/Canada Cup satellites.  Things did not go well.  It felt like I had a bounty on my head in each (of course in the Women's I did...), which is a good thing, but I was falling prey to two and three outers galore. 

The Canada Cup opened up....and I tried to leave everything else behind me.  As always, easier said than done, but a double up KK vs QQ put me in a better mood.  I will have to review my hand histories, but after that I didn't have many show downs that stick out in my memory.  Just tried to gather small amounts of chips whenever other players were leaving them lying around.  I especially got to make my move at the cash bubble, chipping up from 28k to almost 60k without a showdown, it was a great hour or so.  Once in the money, there was no question....final table was where I needed to be. 

The rest is history...

The incentives offered by PokerStars are awesome.  Hotel, flight, spending money in the Bahamas, not to mention....whoever ships this tournament gets to freeroll the 25k high roller tournament.  I get really excited just thinking about potential! I slept only for an hour or so last night, will have to get over that ASAP. 
So, now I have the "Januar-eh Nine" in my sights, and have some fun preparation work to do because I have every intention of showing this field how an Edmonton girl plays poker.  I will dust off a spot on my mantle for the trophy.  Stay tuned....I will show you how I train!

Then....as if I wasn't already pumped, Ryan shipped the last WSOP Circuit even in Hammond!  Now he has a big old ring to show off!

He was there today, in large part because our favorite....Eric was working at shipping the Main Event, unfortunately, it wasn't to be today, but 4th prize and a six figure score will be a decent consolation!

These guys have set the bar high...but I am so pumped and ready to crush my own final table....just a few more months...

Hopefully, I get some sleep tonight.  





Wednesday 19 October 2011

Tick Tock Tick Tock....

Every so often, PokerStars will run a tournament on a trial basis and a few weeks ago I found myself playing one of them to give it a try as the concept really appealed to me.  It was a $2 turbo that lasted only 30 minutes.  I have fun in tournaments that employ different strategies, whether it is the game type (split pot, 8 game, etc.), the structure (turbos, deep stack, etc.) or now the hard stop of a tournament.  In these timed tournaments, you could see many different styles of play coming together, including the player who was quickly gambling and trying to amass all the chips for the impending chop (these tournaments pay out according to the size of each players stack), the player who was taking their time for every decision (trying to hang on to min cash) and the player who was playing a bit more cautiously recognizing that building a table image had less value.  

In my opinion, one of the greatest drawbacks of tournaments can be the uncertainty of when it will end.  Grinding tournaments can be tough on your social life, it is hard to commit to a set time for anything, whether dinner, a movie, or a sporting event!  These Time Tourneys give you the fun of a big multi table tournament, without having to commit your whole evening to poker.  It is also nice to be able to get a good nights sleep before heading off to work in the morning!  Needless to say, I am happy that the trial of this style of tournament was a success and that Time Tourneys will now be in the regular schedule at PokerStars.  

Look for these tournaments in the lobby, they will run for a varied amount of time (from a minimum of 15 minutes to a maximum of 180 minutes) at which time the payouts are established based on stack size of the remaining players.  You can give this tournament a try, for as little as $1, they are most easily found by looking under the “Tourney” tab, they have a little stop watch icon, or you can use the Tourney Filter at the bottom to find them.  

If you can, make a deposit of $30 or more and use the code “TIME” until October 21rst and PokerStars will give you one ticket for a $5.50 Time Tourney Ticket that can be used until 23:59 EST on October 21rst.  

These tournaments are a perfect addition to the lineup, and will suit so many recreational players, or in general people who lead busy lives that want to play tournaments, but can’t commit 8 hours (or longer) to a session.  If you are allotted two hours to play some poker on a weekend....be sure to look at the newest addititon to the Saturday Line-Up, it’s a $22 Time Tourney (two hours total) that will fire up every Saturday starting at 13:00 EST.   The prize pool is a guaranteed $10,000 (check it out on the 22nd...for a DOUBLE guarantee)...so come get whatever piece your stack is worth after two hours!  

As always, if you have any questions get in touch with support@pokerstars.

Monday 17 October 2011

Supernova Dinner - Edmonton style

Something happened last week.  I had heard of it happening before, just never had the opportunity to partake in the fun!

I opened my email in September and there it was, an email from a man named Rich, the VIP representative for PokerStars in western Canada.  He was coming into town in early October and wanted to know if I would like to join him and other Supernova players on PokerStars for an evening out....on PokerStars (of course).  

As a member of Team Online as well as Supernova, Rich allowed me to pick where we would eat.  This gave me some trouble, there are some great places to eat in Edmonton, but would what appealed to me be suitable for the other Supernova guests??  So I went with the safe choice of Ruth's Chris.  In Alberta, a steak house has to appeal to most!  

We arrived and were escorted down to a private meeting room, with vault type doors.  The table composition was interesting, the players who had been able to join us for the night were a multi table tournament player (with affinity for the turbos and hyper-turbos), a heads up sit and go player, a limit hold em player and myself.  

With a table like this, Rich had his work cut out for him, but he kept the conversation going and it was really interesting to hear how each player got their start in poker, WSOP adventures, plans for PCA, thoughts on Black Friday, 2+2 and other sites.  

Rich asked us each what we thought PokerStars could do to be a better site and what kinds of promotions attracted us.  It was nice to know that our opinions counted as he wrote down every suggestion/comment and even talked a bit about the ideas that came out of the dinner he hosted earlier that week in Calgary.  

I didn't take any pictures that night....protect the identities of these Superheroes, but I did catch a few screen names.  So in lieu of pictures, I figured I would attach some pictures of the foods we sampled.  Everything was really incredible!

Stuffed mushroom caps, onion rings....

Soups and salads...oh my!

Followed my entrees of steaks with decadent sides....

Who could then resist chocolate pieces of heaven?


If this isn't incentive enough for you to work towards Supernova....I am not sure what would be!

Oh yes....by the way Rich, thanks for letting me pick the bottle of wine, and for not cringing when the waitress said "Oh wow....you picked a really good bottle of wine", it was wonderful down to the last drop!



Monday 10 October 2011

On your marks....

I was reviewing my VPPs for the year and trying to examine how quickly I am accumulating them.

I will make a push for 200,000 VPPs this year.  As of today at 11:40 MST (lol) I have 145,579.77 VPPs, so will have my work cut out for me....but there is a bonus of $2,600 at the VIP store waiting for me when I get there! 

:)