Monday Update

OK first and most importantly, tonight is the weekly Mondays at the Hoy homegame, on pokerstars as always:

WHAT: Mondays at the Hoy
WHEN: Every Monday, 10pm ET.
WHERE: Pokerstars, "Private" Tab
BUYIN: $20 + $2
PASSWORD: hammer

We've had 20 people each of the last two weeks since I opened the game up to bloggers. And, more of my homegame guys have been playing each week as they've seen how much fun we're having. Hoying folk only, pleaseThe game is open to anyone and everyone, even if you out there have friends who might like to play, just give them the password and they are more than welcome. Jules will try to defend her title as the only two-time casher in the MATH event so far, and I of course will still be looking for my first cash as well. So come one and come all.

Also, a hearty congratulations goes out to poker blogger Studioglyphic for his 6th place finish in the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker on pokerstars this weekend. Also congratulations are in order to Hacker59 who scored a 15th place finish of his own. While Hacker won a $370 buyin to an upcoming WSOP ME qualifier (nice job, Hack!) Glyph actually won himself a $1500 WSOP seat for his top-ten finish, so a huge congrats to you both on your incredible performances out of a field of 2247 bloggers, at least 60% of which actually showed up to play in the event. I significantly outperformed my dismal bad-beat-ended performance last year by lasting through more than 75% of the field before going out in a respectable 465th place as my short-stacked 99 ran into a steal-position's limped KK from one in front of the button:



What can you do with that? The way I play, there was not much shot of me avoiding disaster on that hand, not with a short stack already. Anyways, nice job to both Glyph and Hacker for representing the poker bloggers so well in what was, after all, a poker tournament for bloggers. We should have done well, and these two guys helped ensure that we did.

The other highlight of the WBCOOP for me was my starting table itself. In addition to Fishy McDonk who never showed up that I recall, across my starting table from me was Felicia Lee herself. Now, to be fair, Felicia's blog this morning indicates that she did not play and that it was her man Glenn instead. And that may be, I don't know. All I do know is that I waited and waited for Felicia to make some kind of comment to me, about having the "hammer" in my name, or about "misquoting" her on Wes's blog when in fact I was directly quoting Felicia from her own blog, or just some other general nastiness. Instead I got nothing, and proceeded to double up while Felicia donked and donked, struggling to stay above 50% of the starting stacks almost right from the getgo. If I were her and that was me playing in the blogger freeroll yesterday, I would claim it wasn't me this morning either. But I actually tend to believe Felicia, because I know she is a solid poker player, and in the WBCOOP she most definitely did not play well. Anyways I got moved from her table after doubling up for the second time, maybe 40 minutes into the event, and did not hear from her again although I did notice that she went out fairly early in the event, somewhere around 1500th or so as I recall. I definitely enjoyed the anticipation of not knowing if or when Felicia would lay into me (do you ever really know with her?), or, I was hoping, lay into my play. Unfortunately it didn't happen, and the whole thing blew over. But those of you who have chatted with me about it can imagine how psyched I was to see her sitting there as the WBCOOP started at 4pm ET on Sunday. Oh well, next time, Felicia. Can't wait to catch up.

Other than the WBCOOP, I basically just donked a lot this weekend. I played so-so in a couple more Bracelet Races on ftp, with one 12th place finish where only the top 4 received $1500 buyins. I totally donked out of the party millions tournament on Sunday afternoon which I played while the WBCOOP was going on. I busted out of last night's ftp 19k tournament about 50 spots before the money, playing well but never really being able to get anything serious together to make a real run at the cash. I also made my triumphant return to the party 40k, the first time I've returned to the scene of the crime since The Domination in late May. In that tournament, I took a horrendous beat with a big stack against an even bigger stack when I got allin preflop as a monster favorite, and then lost anyways when the board came Jack-high:



I mean, a nearly 4 to 1 favorite, you just can't beat them apples in a game like holdem. Though I guess I can't complain too much -- I did crack someone's pocket Aces with a 96o earlier in the tournament when I flopped two pairs (how much do I fucking love when that happens?!). In all it was not a particularly good weekend playing poker, though I probably only lost a total of about $35 over the entire weekend thanks to some good sng play as well as using Jennifer Lopez (G) tokens for all of my ftp MTTs for the last few days. I'm looking forward to winning the Hoy tonight, and then following it up by scoring my 4th MTT final table of the month sometime in the next few days.

FYI I'll be making my reservations for Vegas some time in the next couple of days. Right now I'm actually still just waiting for April to return my email from last week about registering for the live WPBT event on Saturday July 8. What up, April? So everyone who is reading this, go click on the link to April's blog, in the hopes that she will be tracking her referral links, see my blog entry here, and then respond to my email. I guess I'll leave a comment on April's blog this evening if I still haven't heard back. But in general, it looks like I will be most likely getting out to Sin City late on Thursday the 6th and staying for the WPBT weekend. And playing in WSOP Event #13, the $2500 buyin nlh event, which starts on Friday, July 7 at noon. I'll post more about the details once the reservations are official, but I expect that to be sometime in the next couple of days.

See you tonight at Mondays at the Hoy!