The World Championship of Online Poker is starting on PokerStars Sept 1. This is the highest paying set of tournaments in the online poker realm with over $50 Million in guaranteed prize money. Spanning 62 events including the high-roller events, this promotion will conclude with the $5,000 2 day Main Event that will have a $10 Million prize purse! Yes, $10,000,000.00 purse for 1 tournament!

   Of course, you can satellite into events for as little as $1 and those satellites are running constantly up and during the WCOOP, so find the events you would like to play in and try to win your way in if you don't want to pay the entry fee. There are many NL events, lots of PLO and also Razz, HORSE and 8-game to choose from. The 1st high roller event is a $10k buy in with a $2 Million guarantee on Sept 2nd.

   This and Full Tilt's FTOPS series are the largest paying series of tournaments online and 2 that I never miss. If you are a tournament player, you want to play in as many of these as possible. Start planning your schedule while WCOOP is still a couple weeks away and get in on some life changing money!

   After busting out of Event #4 Omaha/8 FL on the 1st day of the tournament (about the same time Negreanu did!) I was looking forward to the $1500 NL Event #8a couple days later. One nice thing about this event is that it started at noon as opposed to 5pm, so even though you play a long time that first day, it seems a little more bearable.

    In any case, I my share of bad beats in the first few hours, of particuliar note was a young kid who could not give up his pocket J's when the board came Ad-Td-Ts. I had him crushed with my A-Q and he then proceeded to call my bets and hit runner-runner diamonds giving him a flush. That was kind of a tough hand to take. I had doubled up and then some and then lost it again, so nearly 6 hours in, I was at about 6K in chips when my table was finally broken and I found myself sitting next to a big stacked Jean Robert Belland! Just what I needed going into the last 3-4 hours of day #1, that's for sure.

    The blinds were getting up there at this point, so playing short stacked was no picnic, and it was soon to get worse as about an hour later Phil Hellmuth was moved to the table! So now I am short sacked with Belland on my left and Hellmuth across from me, just great! The other players came in and went out as I played with those 2 guys for the next 3 hours. My chip stack was down as low as 3k and I doubled up against Hellmuth once and Belland once, finally climbing back up to about 22k with 15 minutes left in day 1. I had now played for over 12 1/2 hours and felt pretty good that I had stayed alive for so long being short stacked at such a tough table.

   With less than 10 minutes to go I was dealt pocket K's in early position. I raised and Jean Robert re-raised me. The action then folded back to me when I pushed all in. He flipped up A-Q off suit and I flipped over my K's making me a 4:1 favorite before the flop. The Flop was good, 8-6-2 or something like that, the turn a J and as I was about to sit back down, the river was an Ace! There went my tournament 12 1/2 hours into it. I finished in about 280th place and the top 243 made the money. Maybe I have had a more crushing defeat, but I don't remember when it would have been. I do have to say, Belland was a gentleman about it, shaking my hand and telling me I played well, small consolation at that point.

    So, for now, that is the result of my first 2 events for this year. One miss and one excruciating near miss. Have to think about whether I want to go back this year or not.

  Some players have been asking me about what games to play while in Vegas for the WSOP when they are not playing one of the bracelet events. With most events being 3 day events, a player will have quite a bit of time to get involved in other games if he wants to and make some pretty good money on the side.

   Of note is are the nightly games that will run at the Rio, the 7pm $340 buy in NL and at 11pm the $200 buy in. These will have some really nice prize purses and are a great distraction from the bracelet events if your day has ended early or your event doesn't start until the following day.

    Also, some of the tournaments around town will have larger prize pools than usual as players come to town who are not playing in the WSOP or players simply want to go somewhere else and get out of the Rio for a while. The Ventian nightly (and noon) tournament will be of interest and Caesar's and Bellagio's games will certainly attract more players than usual.

    Over all, WSOP time is a great time for poker in Vegas in general. Just playing smaller tournament either at the WSOP or at other casinos can turn a nice profit.

     Timing is running out to win your 2010 WSOP Main Event seat for only $1.10! Full Tilt is continuing with their Main Event seat qualifier promotion that has been (and will be) taking place every Sunday at 1:30pm EST. For only $1.10 you can win your way into the Main Event in Vegas. Not only is your $10,000 buy in paid, but you will also get $2,000 for spending money.

    Now the bad news: there are only 5 seats awarded every Sunday and you will be up against about 30k-40k other players. As of this writing, there are still about 3 hours until the tournament begins and there are already nearly 19k players signed up. So, yes, the odds are not good and there is a ton of competition, but Hey, for $1.10, you will not find a better opportunity to win $12k, that's for sure.

     So, if you have some time or are playing poker on a Sunday anyway, get on Full Tilt and look for the Main Event qualifier, somebody has to win!

  The in 'vogue' style of playing poker these days is the ultra aggressive, raise with any 2 cards preflop, post flop, on the turn, and on the river, style of play. Probably mainly originating in Europe, this hyper-aggressive play can be somewhate difficult to deal with if you do not have much experiience against it, especially in a NL game. However, the style of play that I normally play and like to teach to my students is more of a tight aggressive play that will always be competitive, even agains the go-for-broke Europeans.

    First of all, playing too tight will get you in trouble these days, especially on the internet. When I hear a player say that they play really tight, this generally means that they only like to play perfect cards, such as A-A or A-K, Q-Q etc. Obviously, it is easy to bet when you have a great hand. However, waiting for these cards to come, especially in tournament play will get you broke more often than not. If you are going to compete in online play, you can still play tight, but you have to play aggressively when you do make plays.

    Let's say that you are at a table of insane ultra raisers and you end up with A-K in early position. You put in a raise and of course get 2 calls along the way. The flop comes T-6-2 rainbow which is obviously a total miss. You are up against players who will play any two cards, so what do you do in this position?

     You bet. Not only that, you bet anywhere from 2/3 of the pot to pot-sized bet. This is where you have to be aggressive. Sure, one of them could come over the top of you, but most of the time they are going to have to have hit some piece of that flop to do it, if you bet enough. Remember, this maniac play is not based in going all in with nothing. It is based on stealing, stealing, stealing. If you lead out with a big bet, the fact is, they have to have a hand in order not to fold. If you check, they can and will bet with anything.

    It is still ok to play tight poker against overly aggressive players if you follow it up with aggression. These players are not hitting any better cards than you are. They are just more willing to throw their chips around. If you play the hands that you don't fold aggressively, they will have a hard time pushing you around and be forced to respect it more when you do play a hand.

    Tight aggressive play will always be a winning style of play. However, if you just play tight, it will always be a losing style of play as well.