WCOOP-ing, Anyone?

This is the first year that I've had enough of an online 'roll at Stars to seriously consider playing any WCOOP events, and that's what I plan to do. I've therefore taken a break from playing too many of those inexpensive turbos I've become addicted to of late, though I did run into Jordan at one just a few days back. I also ran into one of PokerNews' Brazilian staffers, Giovanni Torre, at several similar tables; he was showing a PN logo as his avatar, which automatically gets me curious.

But idle chitchat aside, this year's WCOOP looms, and I've informally dedicated a few hundred either to trying my hand in satellites or buying in directly. The "steps" satellites have been okay to me so far, if not great. I don't care for the Step 1 payouts so I've been buying in at Step 2, and have either moved on to Step 3 or gotten my Step 2 entry back on most occasions. At Step 3 to date I'm 1-for-3, which means I'll now be in one of the $215 WCOOP events, with one more Step 3 and a couple of Step 2 buy-ins remaining out of what I think has been seven Step 2 purchases to date. There's one or two of those $215s I have my eye on, along with a couple of the $320s, such as the 8-game tourney.

The steps are great fun, methinks. I've been tending to play uber-conservative early in the NL steps, trying to let some of the looser players bang heads and figuring I can win some of those chips later on from the luckier of the loose players. In the 8-game and HORSE steps I've played I've seen some wretched play in the stud and lowball rotations and have consistently chipped up there; it's the weak spot, for sure.

Hope to see some of you in there in the next couple of weeks.