Jason Strasser Strikes Paydirt!

The World Series of Poker is the storied franchise, that of Doyle, Johnny Chan, Stuey, Hellmuth, Moneymaker, and gold bracelets. While it is still the biggest show on Earth, the WCOOP at PokerStars has surpassed it in online cache. And how do you solidify that you have a great event? With a great winner. Jason “strassa2″ Strasser, the senior at Duke who was primed to be the final table representative from his home game until a donkified runner-runner flush took out his pocket aces and Doug Kim made it instead, took top honors in yesterday’s $1k NLHE event. UK pro Barny Boatman finished third, and Jason took home $442,440 a little after 5:00AM this morning. “I have class at 8:30, which I’ll probably skip, then a job interview at 10:15.  I’m going to go get some breakfast now”

I’m not sure what time his engineering classes start this morning, but he might not be too focused after padding his Stars bankroll a bit. He final tabled a Sunday event a few weeks ago as well, and there is absolutely no question that he’s a legitimate rising star in the world of poker.

Another rising star is Lee Gaines, better known as Bill Ivey. I finished an interview with him and it snuck up on PokerWorks over the weekend. Be sure to check it out as this 19-year old’s story is pretty amazing (Bill Ivey interview). Very candid article from a great player figuring it out.

I didn’t play much this weekend, although it was an interesting tale of two extremes. I lost $141 or so playing $5/10 LHE on PartyPoker Friday afternoon when I should have lost alot more then up $436 yesterday playing $10/20 HORSE on Stars. Spiro “55lucky55″ Mitrokastas played for a good chunk of the time I was there as he waited for the WCOOP event to start. He has one WSOP final table this year as well as a 7th place at the Foxwoods WPT event earlier this year. The difference between the two for me right now (LHE vs HORSE) seems to be about two related things: number of hands played and number of decisions made. LHE is fairly straightforward now, with 80-90% of the decisions on autopilot almost (e.g., Q5o fold, raise UTG with QQ). Single tabling LHE, it requires me to bring back more discipline and patience. I have discipline and patience, but HORSE breeds a different type of play. I have to focus more, have to decide and think more (at least right now). There is always a risk that your results lead to faulty analysis, so I don’t want to overreact to Friday’s LHE session (or yesterday’s HORSE session for that matter). I’ll take the results for now.

Saturday was a great day coaching soccer. The Big Guy’s team that I’m newly coaching (5th-7th grade boys) won 2-1. This was 11v11 for the first time, and although we weren’t great it was a good start. The Big Guy played fairly well, and it was a relief not to get blown out (which I’d feared). All-In’s game (3rd-4th grade boys) was a 4-1 victory for us. We’re a 3rd grade team and will be mainly playing 4th grade boys this year, so it was a good start for us. All-In had a great game, stopping several blasts in goal (he let the only goal slip in, but it was a fairly porous defense and he still almost stopped it) plus he scored a sweet goal after an interception of a goal kick. We’re an undersized cohesive unit where everyone knows all the positions very well, are tight on defense most of the time, and should make big strides this season on passing well. It’s the highlight of my week working with them, although taking on the second team has probably institutionalized all of it a little more for me. All-In’s team is great feedback for me, as we have 17 boys with two on the waiting list trying to get on the team, not because we’re an All-Star team but because the boys improve and enjoy it.

Sweetie, All-In, The Big Guy, and I had a NLHE tourney yesterday afternoon (The Little Guy had his chips as well and pretty much didn’t toss them around too much). All-In made a pretty big breakthrough that his WSOP Final Table namesake would be proud of. He normally just shoves at will, but yesterday he made solid laydowns both pre-flop and post-flop. He got heads-up with me by knocking out Sweetie and the Big Guy on the same hand. Blinds were $8/16, I limped in the CO with 3-3 and Sweetie made it $50 to go. All-In called from the sb and the Big Guy did as well. Flop came 9-4-2 , All-In bet $50, The Big Guy raised it to $100, I called, Sweetie raised it to $150, All-In re-raised to $300, The Big Guy called, and I got out of the way (Sweetie called). 4c came on the turn, and all three got it into the pot. The Big Guy was on a stone cold bluff with Kd-Qd (he had somehow gotten distracted though the hand), Sweetie had 10-10, and All-In had 9h-4h for a boat. HU, he had me outchipped 3:1 when I called his button raise after blinds went up to $16/32 with 5c-2c. Flop came 10-5-4, he bet out, I moved all-in, and he chatted away almost ready to lay down to my $853 raise, but he talked himself into calling with Q-5o. 4 brought me more outs to chop the pot, but a rag hit the river to end it for me.

The Little Guy, after watching the Ryder Cup with his brothers and me before church, requested that we have a putting contest after poker. I got the temporary putting green thing out, and the four of us got at it (everyone but Sweetie). The Big Guy was on a torrid mix of a good stroke coupled with some major luckbox putting (banked off of a crease in the felt to prevent a penalty stroke and drain his putt). Alas, I caved to his relentless pressure and ended up finishing second. The Little Guy had a 3-iron and was whopping the ball left handed most of the time (remember, he’s two). I put him to bed last night, his 3-iron and golf ball held tightly in his hands.

Congrats to Jason and All-In on their big scores this weekend. I’ll leave you with Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where we see where the links to this blog take us. Have a good day and thanks for stopping by.

• Life of a Poker Player: Luke Kim is a professional player living in Las Vegas. He was the first interview I did for PokerWorks, and I always get alot out of his posts. He had a recent post last week where he cited the results for top players in the biggest online games, and it is pretty stunning to see the swings occurring at the top games. You can check out who’s up almost $1M lately and what big names are on a major six-figure downswing.
• The Real Kram420’s Blog: Mark Edwards is another player I’ve interviewed, a friend of Linda’s making a go of it in Las Vegas. I met him at the WSOP, and he’s still cranking away, which is good to see.
• Will Palango: He’s had a nice run in the last four weeks, building his $50 deposit to over $4,500. We’ll see how he holds up, but gl sir for sure.
• Danny Yi’s Poker Blog: Third person I’ve interviewed who has a blog (2nd I didn’t know about). He’s been on a big slide of late and is working hard at digging back out. Full-time student at Cal Tech.
• Pokur Blog: Jason Burt, Cal Tech class of 2009, grinding away to build his bankroll.
• Sound of a Suckout: Scurvy, one of my and everyone’s favorites. He’s been on a HORSE $30/60 dip and a sport betting push. I haven’t seen him at $10/20 HORSE, but it would be great to lock horns (or stay out of his way, that would be wiser).

This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 7:40 am and is filed under Uncategorized.