Lagging my way to WCOOP #15

I earned a $320 seat in the WCOOP #15 at Poker Stars. It's the 7 card stud event with $100,000 guaranteed. By way of explanation, WCOOP = World Championship of Online Poker. It's put on by Poker Stars and is considered to be "the" online world series of poker, basically. The only other major online tournament event is Full Tilt's FTOPS.

I won my way in through a $48 satellite. About 10 minutes in, I lost my cable connection and had to play the rest of the way on a dial up connection. Laggy as everything and I'm sure the other players were none too happy! My nick is coachkf at Poker Stars, and is currently preregistered in WCOOP #15. Woohoo!

It was easier to qualify than I thought. I've never attempted to qualify for any of these events. Heck, I've only played a handful of 7 card stud tourneys for that matter. I stick to cash games generally.

I played two $27.50 turbo satellites and just missed a seat on each, but landing high enough to get my buyin back on both. I struck out in a $9 turbo stage one satellite to the $48 satellite. I decided to go ahead and cough up the $48, and definitely glad that I did. Only 40 players entered, and 5 seats were awarded. When #6 busted out, I was #3 in chips, I think.

So total spent to earn the seat came to $57. Not bad for a $320 seat. This WCOOP #15 is shaping up to be a lengthy affair. The starting stacks will be doubled to 3000, and antes/limits increase every 30 minutes. In the satellite we started with 1500 and increased every 15 minutes. The turbos were a sick 1500 starting stack and increases every 5 minutes!

Finally, the hand that really put me into this event was really a bit lucky. I was dealt TTT, and it was folded to me with 2 players behind me so I just called. Player to my left completed with a king doorcard, and again, I just smooth called. Heads up going to 4th street. He catches another king to show a pair, and possible KKK. I groaned, but this guy was super aggressive and I had fully expected the completed bet, even if he had deuce, seven, king rainbow to start. At any rate, I raised him on 4th to see his reaction and he just calls. Not really much info there. Could be slow playing trips or might have just KK and garbage.

5th street I catch another ten for quads. We cap 5th, 6th and 7th. His trip kings are pretty obvious now. Long and short is, I got all my chips in, and when the hand was over he had ~20 left and was out the next hand. I had ~3000 and the chip lead. I stayed in the top 5 from that point forward with more good cards and good breaks.

Here's hoping WCOOP #15 event will be as kind!