News / Imper1um / 03 September 2008 / Leave a comment

Back on the circuit!

After a long (2 month) break from intense poker following the WSOP, I am finally ready to start traveling the circuit again and playing in enough tournaments in enough different countries to keep me living out of hotels until at least February. Until further notice, this is what my tournament schedule is looking like right now:

PPT Main Event - Cannes
September 3rd - 7th

EPT Barcelona
September 7th -14th

London
October 2nd - 5th

Toronto/Niagara Falls WPT
October 5th - 26th

EPT Budapest
October 28th - November 1st

EPT Warsaw
November 1st - 20th

APPT Sydney
December 2nd - 31st

Aussie Millions - Melbourne
January 1st - 26th

EPT Copenhagen
February 17th - 21st

EPT Dortmund
March 10th - 14th

EPT San Remo
April 17th - 24th

Monte Carlo
April 24th - May 3rd

The tournaments don't necessarily start or end at the times I've stated but just estimates of what dates I'll be in each city for each tournament.

I'm in Cannes right now and on the way here I am proud to say that I have finally read my first poker related book. It was written by the legend himself, Gus Hansen and called "Every Hand Revealed". It was very well written and gave me insight into what was going on in that sick mind of his. I was definitely surprised to read that a lot of his decisions were based heavily on math and not just instinct or gut feeling alone. This inspired me to do something I should have done a long time ago. Learn how to calculate pot odds. LOL, yes believe it or not I have gone all this time in my poker career without knowing or wanting to know how to calculate pot odds. I use to have rules for myself when I was faced with an all in situation after raising preflop.

Rule 1: If he has less than 10x the BB I HAVE to call (obviously I factor in antes as well)
Rule 2: If he has more than 10x the BB I don't HAVE to call with any two cards but if I think my opponents range is wide enough I will.

Simple, right? At one point I was afraid that if I learned how to correctly calculate pot odds it would be counterproductive. I guess I followed the old saying "If It ain't broken, don't fix it". But I want to take my game to the next level and I think that being able to do something as simple as figuring out pot odds is essential to that. Back to Dr. Hansen's book... Playing SNG's so regularly has slowly caused me to become less creative in my tournament game. If you're not careful, SNG's can suck the creative juices right out of you without you even noticing it. I won't give too much away about the book, but reading it really reminded me of the optimal decisions I make when I'm on my A game. So thank you for that Dr. Hansen.