fergwrx

EPT copenhagan

fergwrx — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:16:00 GMT

So, I went to play my first major live event in Copenhagen, Denmark last week. I played in day 1a my first table had Dario Minieri and Claus Nielson which both have had great success in the live poker world.

Within the first hour I had AA,KK and QQ all losing hands but KK was the only one I showed down and crippled me. At the first break I had 2800 chips from the 10k starting stack which had been down to 1250 . At the end of the first hour i had KK in sb with 4 limpers so I raised to 600 at 25/50 and get 2 callers... flop comes Qh9h2d the first caller is a scandi donkface he didnt even know that you need to leave your chips on the table at break lol and the 2nd caller is Claus Nielson who appears to be real solid. I lead out 1250, donk calls, and Nielson folds so its now heads up. turn comes 7d to make double flush draw and this players range is fairly big im thinking Q10 plus and any pocket pair because he had already limp called in a similar spot twice this being his third time. I bet 4k on turn he thinks forever and shoves for 6k so its only 2k for me to call obv i call with KK and the he flips set of 9s. that hand seemed pretty standard just annoying that it happend so early.

After that hand i was down to about 1800 and just grinded playing my stack and picking small spots to pick up chips and stay alive. Finally I get a PERFECT squeeze spot on the button...Hijack raised 3x cutoff calls and im sitting in button with AQ and 37% of my stack in the middle so I shoved, but not instantly because I wanted to entice a call from the 2nd caller. So, I paused for about 30 seconds to make it look like im calculating to see if its a good squeeze spot (obviously I already had this figured out before I was dealt cards) then shove. The intial raiser folds and cutoff calls with A4s. Flop comes A45 I dont improve gg me. It just wasnt my tourney and I had AA,KK,QQ,99,88,AQ all losing pots, so im extremely happy with the way I played and preserved my stack in this deep stack environment.

The next major live tournament I plan to play is the Irish Poker Open march 17-24th, but I might play shooting star at bay101 in northern california next week if I pull some backing together. But, for the next week or so im most likely just going to grind out some online poker and get back in the habbit of playing full time and working on my businesses full time.

Outside of poker over the last month and a half or so I have been in the process of moving from Maryland to Los Angeles. I am renting a 3 br house in hollywood hills and absolutely love it out here so far. I havent had much time to get settled, but the weather is great and the people are awesome, so I cant really complain. Commerce and hustler are juicy as hell, so it should make for some real good times.

Irish Poker Open 2008

fergwrx — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:16:00 GMT

I arrived in dublin, Ireland on thursday 3/20 to play the 2008 Irish poker open and played Day 1b yesterday. The first half of the day was pretty exciting and I am extremely happy with how well I was playing which wasnt too difficult because the irish are psycho's and terrible at poker I dont care what anyone says this tournament is super weak. They do not fold post flop no matter what which is like a dream for me.

During the 4th blind level at 100/200 I lost 20k pot with 910 on a jq7 raindbow board. I raised preflop from middle position and both the cutoff and button call. I lead 3/4 pot, cutoff reraises 3x, button folds, and I reshove with fold equity and the crazy irish man calls with AJ like a psycho. I couldnt have played this hand any better just bricked the hell out of it. This was the first hand I played at this table sorry for lack of details but typing on iphone is annoying. After this hand I am down to about 2500 at 100/200.

About 15 hands later I reshoved 89o with 2500 left in BB at 100/200 which is a perfect reshove spot since these psycho irish raise with anything and cutoff calls with ak...I bink the flop and double to about 5500.

About an hour later I raised AQ to 800 in the small blind at 150/300 with a 4500 stack and BB shoves with KJ i snap call and flopped an ace. At dinner break through 5 of 8 levels i had 9200 and avg was 12.6k.

I busted day 1 with only 1 min before the day ended. I had been grinding for 4 levels with an M of 4-8 pretty much all day so I couldnt really do a whole lot just played my stack. My busto hand was with an M of 3.8 in BB with A6. Hijack raised 2.5x standard raise and My thinking to stop and go here was it is the absolute last hand before the day is over and if I fold im going into day 2 with an M of 2 so I stop and go with A6 and an M of 3.8 flop comes 1053 rainbow I shove about 3500 into ~3500 flop he calls with AJ I didnt improve.

Monday, December 17, 2007

fergwrx — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:14:00 GMT

So, this Sunday started off as the normal get a bunch of top 30's in small stuff along with my 3rd Pokerstars sunday warm up cash in a row then BAM I won the UBOC main event $1k buy-in with 804 entrants for $181,575 first prize.

sorry for short post ill try to make a longer one tomorrow

Saturday, February 9, 2008

fergwrx — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:14:00 GMT

I know! I know! i said I was going to keep up with this blog, but between traveling so much, and just being lazy with the blog has prevented me from posting as frequent as I should. Anyways, This is going to probably be a really long post about everything going on in my life right now.

So, first lets start with how I have been doing in tournaments. I have been playing a very low volume of tournaments since my big score, but since my big UBOC win on December 16th 2007, I have the following final tables:

Ultimate Bet:

3rd in the UB bounty for $2464

PokerStars:

4th in Sunday 2nd chance for $14,425
7th in a $109 for $1770
3rd in a $55 1 rebuy 1 addon for $1161
1st in a $50r for $15,721
1st in the Nightly $100k guarantee for $27,818
5th in $55 for $2843
6th in the sunday $215 heads up matches for $1792
5th in $33r 6max for $1429
8th in saturday $320 for $3385

Full Tilt Poker:

2nd in $75 for $6502

Bodog:

8th in the 100k guarantee for $2400
1st for a $12k live package

Cake:

1st for a $12k live package

So, even though I havent been putting in full time hours I have still had alot of success since my UBOC win. After I completed my backing deal with The-Toilet I told my self I was going to take a much needed break from playing MTT's online full time, because it is much more profitable for me to focus on making money in the real world. Dont get me wrong there is great money to be made playing online poker, but its just capped to a certain point whereas my time spent in developing new websites/businesses is far more profitable and uncapped income. If you think about it even live poker is capped. Even if your incredible at poker and run incredible your not going to make anymore than 10-50 mill in a lifetime and to make that much your saying your the absolute top tier of all poker players in the world. My point is not to show that I am greedy, but just that I realize my potential is FAR greater outside of playing poker, but for now I still want to pursue both until my growth as an entrepreneur prevents me from being able to play under the same circumstances.

In between grinding online tourneys over the last month I decided to put school on pause and took the time to travel with some friends from my hometown that I haven't kept the closest touch with over the last few years because I know to pursue what I want is just impossible living in maryland, and I wanted them to understand what I have been doing the last few years while i was away at school before I move across country.

So, Last friday I moved out to Los Angeles (Hollywood hills) with two friends from home. The first project I am working on out here is a new website within the music industry that has never been done or even tried. I want to talk about it more than anything, but until we reach the right time to go public it is in my best interest to keep it to my self. My friend Larry came up with the idea and it has HUGE potential, but I dont want to get into talking about this project so much just yet. Just keep checking back on this blog and I will do my best to keep everybody updated on whats going on, but I wanted to show how excited I am about starting another new business.

Over the last week or so we have just been living out of a hotel because it was ALOT harder to lease a house than I thought. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to spend your money simply because your not old enough. I cant even count how many times I have been turned away just because of my age which nobody says because its illegal to discriminate because of age, but its fairly blatant what they are doing every time I go look at a new house. But, anyways I finally found a real estate agent that isn't super old school and found me a house in Hollywood Hills, California. I will be signing the lease and moving in on Monday morning, so im really excited about moving into my first house.

Thats all I have for now I hope you like it and don't be afraid to post comments which will also help motivate me to keep this blog updated :)

Sunday Report for 12/9/2007

fergwrx — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:13:00 GMT

I didnt have any final tables again this session. I have not had a final table since I final tabled the UB 200k 3 weeks ago.

The only tournament I cashed on Pokerstars was the Warm up and I placed 197th which was in the money.

On Bodog I cashed the 100k coming in 63rd when 63 paid.

On Full tilt I cashed both night tourneys the 75 and 163 for a top 30 finish in both but nothing great.

So, I am still cashing a large percentage of my tournaments just not getting any significant cashes for about the past month or so.

UBOC event #1

fergwrx — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:12:00 GMT

Last night was the first event of the UBOC (Ultimate bet online championship). The first event was a 6max event which had about 700 entrants. This was the only tourney I played and I busted somewhere around 160th when 66 paid.

Sunday Report from 12/2/07

fergwrx — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:11:00 GMT

This past sunday was a pretty annoying day I played all of the majors across stars, full tilt, UB, and bodog as usual, but only got in the money on one tournament which was the Pokerstars warm up and I came in 97th out of 2400 entrants. I bubbled 4 or 5 other tournaments which could have made for a pretty wild sunday had I broke through a few of them.

First Post

fergwrx — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:08:00 GMT

So, I woke up this morning feeling like I have alot to say and needed to find something to help clear my mind. I am not much of a writer, but I feel like starting this blog and posting on a regular basis will help keep my head clear, help my investments, and my poker game as well.

My name is Andrew Ferguson, I am from Maryland, and I'm currently a senior at University of Maryland as an economics major. Despite never really being motivated for school I still feel like the situations that are thrown at you while being in college are extremely important to growing as a person and an entrepreneur.

Back in 2003 everybody knows all too well that Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP main event and created the "Poker Boom." After all of the attention poker received from ESPN it lured me in not as a poker player but as a business opportunity. Unlike many professional poker players out there I first entered this market as a poker affiliate.

My First website in the poker industry was cfpokermoney.com which I focused mostly on promoting Pokerheaven, and a few other small sites. This was by far the tackiest looking website I have ever seen and it did not make a dime until I had the idea of creating a Pokerheaven poker gift card. The poker gift cards worked just like any other gift card except it was for online poker. I started out by selling these on ebay which I was selling anywhere from 10-20 $50 gift cards a day which had an incredible conversion rate because people realized this was a new easy way to deposit money onto an online poker room.

So, after starting my first poker website and establishing myself as a poker affiliate I started to meet all of these people that played poker for a living which i thought was just complete nonsense because I didnt really understand the game and just thought it was gambling. I found this incredibly intriguing that you could actually make a substantial income playing a card game, so I began playing with play money on party poker, and freerolls on basically every website that offered any type of freeroll because I knew if I used my own money it would just be throwing money away. Shortly after starting these freerolls I realized how much I sucked at poker, but actually managed to win a freeroll on pokerroom for $500. Still not really knowing anything about the strategy or theory of poker I went on to play 1/2 Limit Holdem, occasionally jumping up to 5/10 without any knowledge of bankroll management and soon enough busted my first poker bankroll. After this I wanted to really take the time to learn and study the game, so I read basically every website I could find information on Limit holdem. After reading an abundance of information on Limit cash games and bankroll management I decided to start playing freerolls again even though I still didnt know much about NL or tournaments in general. I managed to win another freeroll on Pokerroom.com but this time for only $250. For the most part I stuck to Limit cash games up to 30/60 using proper bankroll management for the next year and grinded up a decent bankroll. Eventually, I got very very VERY bored with limit holdem and couldnt even force myself to sit down and play anymore even though I was making decent money doing it. So, I took a fairly extended break and joined twoplustwo.com and a few other forums and began learning NL holdem and tournaments.

Back in February 2006 I started a website called PSMoney.com which is now one of the largest Pokerstars T$/W$ exchange services. Just this past week I sold the website to get equity out of it, but I will still be the CEO and own a decent percentage of the company. Another website that I started which has been more of a hobby than anything is PSStakes.com which is a community that brings together investors looking to "stake" or "back" poker players.

While running PSMoney i have had the privilege of meeting and speaking with many professional poker players which has been nice because I was very interested in learning more about NL cash games and tournaments. I read as much as I possibly could and talked strategy with many other players on AIM and began playing 1/2 NL cash games in august of 2005. So, this is how I met my friend Faraz Jaka aka the-toilet who is an absolutely incredible NL cash game and tournament poker player. He offered to coach and back me in all online poker tournaments, so we agreed on a deal and for the last 10 months I have been working with him on my tournament game and played 2/4 to 5/10 NL 9max cash games on the side with my own bankroll, and moved up to 10/25 to 25/50 heads up NL and 6max cash games on UB in September.

Currently I have stopped playing all cash games, so that I can focus on becoming a dominant tournament player, and continue building my block of businesses.

Well that pretty much sums up my life in the poker world up to this point, and will be posting details on my sessions, investments, business stuff, hand histories, random drunk posts, or just whatever I feel like posting hopefully on a regular basis.