WWdN Tuesday

It was a good night for WWdN. After another solid weekend, I had played donkily at the blogger charity event on Sunday and through most of Monday as well. This same thing happend last week, and then last Tuesday I logged in at 8:30pm New York time to see a lofty 78 people signed up for Wil's weekly tournament, one which I ended up final tabling for the second straight week. So last night when I sat down to find 98 entrants to the tourney, I had a similar feeling of optimism about my coming performance.

Then I looked at my opening table, and the color started to drain from my face:



You can see from the comments that others felt similarly. BadBlood, StB, Trip, not-will-wonka, myself of course, in addition to former WWdN winner Heffmike and a couple of unknowns rounded out what was without a doubt the best worst starting table I've had at any blogger tournament. I could instantly feel my dreams of a Wes-esque threepeat at the WWdN final table slipping away right from the get-go.

I started out playing my usual aggressive game. I lost a decent-sized pot early when I had to fold a medium-strength hand to a well-timed reraise of my pot-sized flop bet, so I was down to in the 1200s early from a starting point of 1500 chips. But then I slow-played Kings and won my way back to even. Warning: Do not try this at home. Anyone who slow-plays Kings, in particular online, and doubly in particular on pokerstars, will regularly be slammed with at least one Ace on the flop, or three flush or straight cards, another high pair, etc. You only slow play these monster hands just barely enough to keep people guessing. And not any more often than that. Ever.

It was like that for most of the first session of the WWdN, and I was extremely card dead, getting really not one other playable hand beyond those Kings early on. Then on Hand #58 of the tournament, I was dealt ATs in middle position, with which I made a standard 4x raise before the flop. Blood quickly moves allin from last position when it folds around to him. Now, I've seen Blood do this before, mostly where he is on a shortish stack (he was here) in situations where he has medium pairs, AK or even the Hammer. I figured I was the favorite over most of his likely holdings with this move, so I called, hoping for the Hammer, but seeing him flip 88 instead. I did not hit an Ace or a Ten on the board, but I did make a runnerrunner flush to win it on the river. It didn't look pretty the way I busted BadBlood, but in my defense I have to say that I was only a 52.4% to 47.2% dog, so this was not a bad beat. And frankly, any time you can get a guy like BadBlood off of your table for good, you thank your stars and take it. In accordance with my long-term policy never to apologize for bad beating anyone, I won't say I'm sorry for anything. But I will admit, and I told Blood so, that I wish he didn't get booted like that. But I'll take it, as that win propelled me up to around 19th place out of 65 or so players remaining at that point.

In the 65th hand of the tourney, I busted unknown player Alexe55 who was also on a short stack at the time. With blinds at the 50/100 level, Alexe55 raised to 300 preflop from late-mid position, a place where I had watched (and noted) him steal-raise from no fewer than four times already in this tournament. I pegged that as "his move", so I reraised him back to 750 with my KJo, thinking I probably had the best hand, or at least 1 or two overs, so I was in ok shape regardless. He pondered just long enough to tell me he knew he was done but was going to push because he had committed himself to the pot, so I knew to call his re-reraise, and when we flipped, my read was right on:



My dominating hand held up, and I was up to 13th place out of 60 left. In fact I entered the first break after 68 hands, having won 11 out of the 68 hands (16%), but my problem was card deadness, as I only saw 13% of the flops, far less than where I am when I'm on my game. Nonetheless, I felt great to have been able to survive to the first break, and in fact to have excelled, at such a recockulously tough table to begin with.

The thing was, the second session didn't bring me any better luck with my starting cards than the first session did. In fact, I literally didn't get a single hand that you would consider "playable" for the first 50 hands, almost 45 minutes, following the first break. I basically sat around, stole a few blinds, had a couple of hands folded around to me because everyone fears (correctly) that I will raise them and steal if they have nothing, but that was it for most of Round 2. Then on Hand #118, I raised 4x preflop from middle position with AQs, my first playable hand in 45 minutes, and was reraised allin by a late-position player on a stack about 1/3 the size of my stack. Pot odds and his short stack-worthy lessened raising requirements dictated that I call, and my AQs lost out to his 66, knocking me back down to around 2400 chips.

By Hand #130, my card deadness had prolonged to such an uncommon degree that my flops-seen percentage had dwindled from an already lowly 13% at the first break to now 8%. Again, those of you who know me or have played with me before will know how abusrdly unusual it is for me so see only 8% of flops. I'm usually up around three times that, if not more, especially in just Round 2 of a nlh tournament. Let's just say that my cards were absolute cripe in the WWdN and leave it at that. So, in Hand #130, I was dealt T8o, a total crap hand without argument. It was folded around to StB in late position, who put in a standard blind-stealing raise for him of 4x the big blind which was an $800 bet at the time. Now, I have personally watched StB put in this same raise on at least twenty different occasions in a large number of blogger tournaments, and I have personally reraised him out or seen others reraise him out of pots because he's been stealing in those situations, so I knew his raise didn't mean shiat. I was so sure in fact, that I decided to take my small stack (at the time I was in 26th out of 32 remaining players) and reraise him allin, hoping to get him to fold his obvious garbage and retain his 4000-chip pile. He pondered for a few seconds, and then calls, flipping mf'ing AKo:



And IGH in 32nd place out of 98 entrants. Not a bad showing, and in fact I played great against some very tough competition with what was the worst set of starting hands I've ever consistently encountered in a tournament, but obviously you just hate going out on a hand like T8o. Oh well. Next week I'll have to start a new streak of WWdN final tables. And congratulations to Maudie for taking down the tournament, way to go. I love it when a well known blogger wins these things, that always seems to make it more fun to me.

After busting out of the WWdN, I played an 18-person sng on pokerstars with GCox, Jordan and Mookie. Gary went out first or second on some bad luck, but I messed with several people's heads at my starting table, and entered the final table with a massive stack:



Unfortunately, one of the players at the table was the resident luckbox, time and time again spiking stoopid cards at very low odds, and eventually this gem happened with Mr. Lucky to me to knock me out on the bubble:



Gotta love that one.

OK I'm going to try to play in Mookie's tournament this evening, I'd say the odds of my attendance are about 95%. Especially since it is in Drewspop's honor tonight. Hopefully I'll see you there.