The Pokerstars WBCOOP prelimanary events started this week and I was looking forward to a good run in some of these tournaments like I had last year.

Alas, it appears this won't be the case.

The first tournament kicked off on Monday night. A straight PLO tourney with 540 players, and 153 places paid prizes (in the form of SCOOP tickets). So more that 25% of the field was going to get paid.

My PLO skills are not too bad, so I was confident that I stood a good chance of getting paid. Unfortunately the deck wasn't kind to me. Out in 408th place after getting in all in with 2 pair vs a straight draw on the Flop. The Turn improved my hand to a set but the river completed my opponents straight. That was the 3rd of 3 big pots that I lost on the river as the stats below show:

32 hands played and saw flop:
 - 2 times out of 4 while in small blind      (50%)
 - 2 times out of 4 while in big blind      (50%)
 - 6 times out of 24 in other positions      (25%)
 - a total of 10 times out of 32      (31%)

 Pots won at showdown - 0 out of 4      (0%)
 Pots won without showdown - 2

So onto last night. This was the first of the No Limit Hold'em WBCOOP events and drew a field of 720 players. Again 153 places got prizes (approx 21% of the field), so again a good chance to catch a prize. Unfortunately, I ran into one of those players who seems to like picking on one particular person on the table and found that we was constantly raising and re-raising me in the few hands I was playing. It might have been just me, but I'm sure he didn't do this to anyone else on the table.

After losing half the starting stack (to the player I just mentioned) I busted in a blind on blind battle that saw an Ace high flop. As I was holding A-4 in the big blind the and the small blind initially just completed pre-fold before flat calling my pre-flop raise, the flop came down As 8d Kc. He shoved. Given the pre-flop action, I put him either on a King or a weak Ace like me and called. He showed A K :-(

OK, possibly a bad call but I had got so short at that point I had to gamble to try and get back into the tourney and didn't think the chances of the small blind having a Ace was that high especially one with a strong kicker. Oh well.

I'm now working for the next 3 nights, so can now only play in the final preliminary tourney on Saturday evening.

Here's hoping for better cards and a bit of good luck!