Mark “The Omaholic” Roland

Well, the most recent FTOPS series is over, and that’s always liberating. The thing ties up so damn much of your life, but despite that, I really hate to miss any of the events with that much money on the line. It ended up being a profitable series because of a 2nd place finish in the $300 razz for 26k, but overall I feel like I had mediocre results and underachieved. I had a few other cashes during the series, but they were all inconsequential. Weekends have also been woeful recently. I’m still alive in 4 sunday tourneys as I write this, but unless something major happens, it’ll be another horrid tourney poker weekend overall. Now that ftops is over, I look forward to taking many days off before the WCOOP gets here.

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Well another Sunday has come and gone, and I’m still super overdue for a massive sunday win. I ended up chopping the $215 HORSE on stars to have a pretty decent winning day, but bricked out in every other tournament I played on the day, which is pretty unacceptable. I was running terrible early on in the day, and to make things worse I started playing noticably terrible in the middle of the day as well. It’s really infuriating when you can’t keep a level head on the only truly important tournament day of the week online, but every now and then it happens. There are just so many huge tournaments on Sundays now that you have to bring your A+ game every week. They now made the $500 250k guarantee on pokerstars a weekly tournament instead of monthly. Stars also added a $50 nlh rebuy tournament to the Sunday lineup, which was long overdue. I decided to take today off from mtt play, and may very well do the same thing tomorrow. With FTOPS coming up on wednesday, I want to be ready mentally for the long grind that will ensue.

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After taking pretty much the whole week off from mtts except for the big wednesday night ones, I was pretty eager to put in some hours in the weekend tournaments. Saturday is now almost as much of a can’t miss day online for me as Sunday. In the recent months, Full Tilt added a $200 PLO tourney at 2pm, UB added a $150 plo8 at 3:30, and Stars added a $200 plo8 at 8:30. I always look forward to playing tons of omaha tourneys on saturdays.

Although I didn’t get any wins, I ended up having a pretty great day consistency wise, making 4 final tables (3rd in the early stars 50/50, 3rd in the stars $200 limit holdem, 2nd in the stars $200 stud 8, and 3rd in the UB $150 plo8). I’ll certainly be happy with these finishes, as I’m in no position to complain about 2nd and 3rd places after running horribly for 2 months straight.

Sunday quickly got off to a good start as well, as I ended up finishing 3rd in the early $100 freezeout on stars. I ran very poorly with the chiplead 3 handed, losing 2 glorious suckout pots to the super crazy Iftarii. However, I did run godly at the final table prior to that to get in that spot, so it just evened out on me at the wrong time.

I also grinded a shortstack for about 3 hours in the 3pm Full Tilt $163, and ended up squeaking into the final table. I ended up finishing 9th when i shipped my 11bb stack allin UTG with 10-10 and ran into KK.

Those were the only two final tables of Sunday, but I did also make a serious run at the $200 rebuy on stars, which is a tournament I’ve had a lot of success in (despite the massive strength of the field). I once again found myself patiently grinding a shortstack, but ran out of steam and bowed out 15th.

I keep mentioning myself grinding the shortstacks, because it’s an important step for me. Sometimes I have the tendency in NLH tournaments to only want to play big pots, and rush myself into overly marginal spots trying to build a stack quickly. I have always felt more comfortable being in control of the table with a massive chipstack. However, sometimes you just can’t pound the square peg into the round hole, and have to settle for the limited opportunities that present themselves.

I think that a huge part of this patience this weekend comes from taking almost the whole week off from mtts and not burning out during the week. I’m pretty sure I’ll be taking this route again this week, and hopefully the positive weekend results will continue.

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I apologize for the lack of updates, but the sad fact is that there just wasn’t really anything positive to mention during wsop time, so instead of a long bad beat post, I decided to just not post altogether. Overall the wsop was extremely frustrating, because I kept making day twos and falling just short of the money. I feel like I played my absolute best, and just got hated on by the deck really late in the tournaments when it counted. There’s nothing you can do about any of that though, so I won’t dwell on it.

The last two events I played (10k PLO and the main event) were very disappointing in different ways. On day one of the 10k plo, I was playing as Phil Hellmuth would say, “Above the Rim”. I had Kido Pham and Tom Dwan (better known as Durr) at my table, so the action was pretty fierce. I had to get pretty crafty in order to take down key pots (including a super sick out of position float with Js 7s Th 8h on a 3d 4d 5d flop vs. Kido and Durr). Overall I played about as well as possible and finished day 1 with 80k in chips. However, with 50 players left on day 2 (it paid 36), I ran my As Js 8d Jd into Josh Arieh’s KK34 on a flop of Kh Jh 4d. Josh had been playing nearly 100% of his hands and running over the table, so this was pretty much the textbook definition of a cooler.

Going against every rational thought in my head, I somehow remained optimistic heading into the main event, but alas, I was disappointed again. I ended up busting in a little over an hour after I stuck in 22k in chips on a T 5 2 rainbow flop with top set vs. KK. (oh btw, a 3rd player in the hand had AK, so yes I got 1 outed).

My wsop was grossly unproductive, but I’m not really discouraged at all. I played as well as I could, and just ran into some gross negative variance on day twos. I’m extremely excited about the upcoming FTOPS and WCOOP series online in August/September. Until then, I’m going to be taking a lot more time off from poker, and play mainly on weekends. I really love to spend time with my family and enjoy the outdoors during the summer, and I also know that not grinding tournaments every day will have me hungrier to win when I do play.

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Unfortunately I’ve been getting routinely teased at the wsop so far. I’ve been building a good stack on day 1, and running awful on day 2. In the 10k mix event, everything was going smoothly until with 5 tables left, I made a huge pot size raise for over 80% of my stack with A Q J 6 double suited on an 8 9 10 rainbow flop. Evgeni Edakov went into the tank for quite a while (as he usually does), and finally decided to put me all in with the Td Th 2d 6d. The board immediately paired, and I lost the 110k pot and hit the rail.

The 2k omaha 8 event was even worse, as I had about 48k in chips with about 80 people left, which was easily a top 10 stack in an event that paid 54. I somehow managed to get one outed, two outed, miss a 27 outer with 2 cards to come on a 2d 3d 4h 5c on a Ad 5d Th flop, and get coolered with the Ax 2x 4x 5x vs. K K J 7 on a K 5 5 flop.

The 3k HORSE event was also a massive disappointment. Early on, I kept making great hands in all of the stud games and getting paid off on every street by multiple people to build my stack up to 38k by midnight. However, due to running insanely horrible in just one razz level by making a 7 low or better by 5th street on 4 consecutive hands I participated in, and losing on the river each time, I ended the day with 10k in chips. Day 2 never really provided any opportunities, especially after losing a large multiway razz pot with 8 7 6 4 2 vs. max pescatori’s 8 7 6 3 A (ugh)

Aside from poker, things have been going well. I’ve been spending a lot of time with the lovely Jen shopping, eating, and seeing shows. I also got to hang out with world renowned poker player matt vengrin and play some pool, which I love to do but never have anybody to do it with. Also, last night after I busted from the $2500 PLH/PLO tournament, I noticed there was about 5 minutes left in game 4 of the Lakers/Celtics finals matchup. The Lakers had led by pretty much infinity in the first half, and had somehow choked away the entire lead. All of the degenerate poker players who clearly had more money invested in the basketball game than in the piddly $2500 tournament they were playing decided to crowd around the TV in the brasilia room and watch the Lakers’ championship hopes get flushed down the drain, as the celtics shocked them on their home court.

I think I’ll be taking today off of poker so I can go see the new shyamalan movie The Happening. The next wsop event I figure to play is the $5000 stud 8/b championship. Stud 8 is probably my best game, so if I don’t have a good result in that one, I’ll probably instantly retire from poker and pursue my underwear modeling career.

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Day one of this tournament ended up about as I had hoped result wise, but I took a crazy path to get there. My starting table consisted of myself, chris reslock, david benyamine, john d’agostino, mel judah, and a few other capable players I wasn’t familiar with. There was initially some confusion surrounding the structure, but Harrah’s got it 100% right by deciding to have exactly 8 hands of each game no matter what before switching each game, and having only the blinds/antes controlled by the clock.

The first two hours were uneventful, as I hovered around the starting stack. However, after the first break I started running insanely bad in both 2-7 triple draw and razz. In the 2nd 2-7 orbit, I lost with an 8-5-4-3-2 twice, which was costly. Also, all night long in razz, I had the propensity for starting with 3 to a wheel, immediatly improving on 4th street with a 6 or 7, and then triple bricking out for the loss. At one point I even found myself down to 2400 in chips at the 800-1600 betting level, but thanks to a massive rush of great starting hands scooping pots in the stud 8/b level, I found myself up to 28,000 with 2 hours left to play in the night.

Although razz continued to murder me, all of the other games were going smoothly. There was a very key triple draw hand where I bluff 3-bet heads up after the third draw with 8 4 3 2 8, and my opponent instantly mucked. The last stud and stud 8/b levels of the night also went very well, and by the end of day 1, I was up to a healthy $52,000 in chips. Play resumes tomorrow at 3pm local time, so the only goal in the meantime is to get some sleep and a good breakfast.

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I realize as I post this that the World Series has already started, but I won’t be leaving for Vegas until June 2nd. I plan to play every event that the schedule will allow, starting off with the inaugural $10k mix event, which has all the H.O.R.S.E. games, in addition to NLH, PLO, and 2-7 triple draw. One thing I don’t like about the series is that there are at least two events scheduled almost every day. I realize that for most players, the WSOP is already long and grueling enough, but it just seems like a shame to have to be shut out of a bracelet event just because you’re already playing another one. Unfortunately, there’s probably no perfect solution to this.

I am lucky enough to have my long time girlfriend Jen come out with me for the first couple weeks of the series. She has always been supportive of me through the good times and the bad, and I’m excited to have her back in vegas with me when I need her most.

We will both be staying with my good buddy Daryl, who I tease endlessly for looking exactly like the Adam West character in Family Guy. He is kind of invisible in the online poker scene, because despite being loaded, he refuses to play anything worthwhile on the internet. However, I suspect he’ll probably play a couple $10,000 buyin events on a whim, especially the 10k pot limit omaha championship.

That’s about all for now. My next entry should come from Las Vegas

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Goodbye FTOPS

Mediocre Sunday

big weekend

wsop departure

world series of disappointment

$10,000 mix event day 1

Countdown to WSOP