Mondays at the Hoy, and FTP Winner's Choice

Last night was a really fun night of poker in Hammerland. In addition to taking down three Anna Nicole ( ) tokens in three attempts last night on full tilt, Monday evening also brought our weekly Mondays at the Hoy tournament, a $20 buyin no-limit holdem tournament on pokerstars (password is "hammer"). A lot of the same faces as in previous weeks were there again to reenter the fray, along with some new ones as well, including 23skidoo, cc, and non-blogger jeciimd all making their first appearances in the Hoy weekly game. Things got underway at the regular 10pm ET start time, and I have to say, the crowd was definitely a bit rowdier than usual. And this without our dear friend Waffles who got scrooged early on with a horrendous flop hit by his opponent (more on that shortly), but drraz, who cashed for 2nd place and $120 last week in the MATH tourney, picked up the slack nicely in the deficiency in Waffles-talk last night after our man's untimely elimination.

Here is my starting table (there were once again three near-full tables to start the event):



People say this all the time in these blogger events, but in this case I really see this as one of the all-time nastiest starting tables I've ever sat at. You've got Surf, Smokkee, 23 skidoo, myself, Guin (Mungo), Waffles as well as still non-blogging for some crazy reason slb. Any one of these players is capable of crushing a tournament like this, literally, and it's not often that I would say that. But the weekly MATH tournament does get a lot of good players, and offers up solid paydays with its $20 buyin, so the skill guys definitely tend to come out and try to make a run at the Hoy, and this table was no exception.

Once again, I really have to hand it to Smokkee, who sometimes single-handedly has a way of getting the party started early in the weekly Hoy tournament. Last night, just a few minutes after getting busted by me on the first hand of a token sng on ftp, Smokkee was right back at it again just a few hands into the MATH tourney. Check him out chatting me after he has called multiple bets from me and then bet at me on the river with this monster:



But that's the way Smokkee plays. That's why when you pick up 99 and he raises you preflop, you end up reraising and being eliminated when he flips KK. And that's the way I love to play the game.

About 20 minutes into the tourney, Waffles took his aforementioned beat, at the hands of Gary, whom Waffles had earlier referred to as "tight whitey" in the chat:



That's a sucky way to go, especially when you've been running bad. Waffles has been having a tough time lately, so go click over to his blog (still one of the best regular poker reads out there) and tell him you hope his luck turns around soon. This was a tough beat and a great hand by Gary. Oh and another thing about Gary Cox: stop saying he is ubertight! That was the old Gary. The new Gary is not loose -- I don't ever see that term applying to GCox's play -- but he is definitely out there taking a whole lot more chances than he used to. Gary is like a miniature version of Action Dan Harrington. Everyone thinks he's so tight, and he takes advantage of that image big-time. And I don't want someone getting that kind of advantage at the tables, so I am proclaiming it here. Keep treating Gary Cox like a stone cold rock, and he will keep abusing you. I for one am not falling for that shizz anymore. Gary, it was fun while it lasted, hope you enjoyed it. But no more special treatment for you at the tables. You'll have to earn your keep like everyone else from now on.

Anyways, here is my little bro Aqua making an ill-advised allin raise against drraz, and being eliminated:



giving drraz a pile of chips at right around the same place he started amassing last week on his run to 2nd place behind Jules, who btw was unable to play this week due to being on her way out to Las Vegas via Canada to meet up with the WPBT. Anyways, drraz added to that lead when he eliminated Surf on this hand about 5 minutes later:



The phenomenon of the Resuck once again did not escape us during the weekly MATH event, as Ski and I went into a race:



Ski naturally hit his card on the flop:



And then the river brought back peace and harmony to all things:



A nice showing for Ski in his first MATH tournament.

Stump from Texas got knocked out before his time as we approached the Hoy final table, with tournament first-timer cc doing some Ace-cracking with a lower pair:



And we were to the final table:



Katitude, playing I believe at her first Hoy final table, made the first elimination, knocking out Mr. Used-to-be-tight-but-isn't-really-all-that-tight-anymore with her Aces:



Gary, at least you didn't go out on the bubble this week. Hoyazo: *smiles wryly

Three hands later, I accidentally mis-clicked and reraised a large preflop raise from jeciimd with just K2o (don't you multi-tablers out there hate when that happens?!). He called allin, and this board hit the felt:



Another nice job for a first-time Hoyer in jeciimd, out in 8th in a very tough record MATH field of 22.

After stealing with a couple of bluffs, and then winning a nice pot with QQ that was an overpair once the flop came, I was at my high point for the tournament, in first place out of 7 remaining players. A few hands later, Guin went out in 7th place after losing a race with the questionable hand of QJo, but he was on a short stack and in the end was only a hair below 50% to win preflop:



Iak then continued this run by busting Hacker59, fresh off his dominating 15th place finish in the World Bloggers Championship of Online Poker, on this hand, where you can see from that chat, Hacker was nearly positive he was ahead, only to lose to the only kicker that could have beaten him:



CC continued his virgin run in the Hoy when he busted Kat in 5th place when his pair held up in a race situation:



Things stayed this way for some time, until about 20 hands later, I got it allin on this flop against a questionable allin call by cc with QJs:



only to see this happen on the turn and the river card:



to send me most unceremoniously to the rail at long odds, out in 4th place for the second time in the last three Monday at the Hoy tournaments. Hey Gary, maybe I am the new bubble boy! In this event I seem to be at least.

Once in the money, the action moved fast as has been the case in the previous MATH tournaments. Two hands in to the three-handed action, cc busted drraz when drraz moved in with what turned out to be a dominated hand, albeit a very strong hand in 3-way play:



Kudos to drraz for his second consecutive cash in the Hoy tournament, joining Jules as the only other two-time casher in the short-lived event. And kudos to cc, who had a nearly 9-to-1 chip lead after knocking out drraz, and who quickly went on to take care of Iak and win the entire tournament is his first time playing with the group:



So the payouts went $88 to drraz, $132 to Iakaris in his first Hoy cash, and 220 big ones to cc. Congrats to you all, and once again thanks to everyone who came out to play and helped make the tournament the fun time it was for all.

In other news, Smokkee did not treat us this week to a deep run in the weekly $1000 buyin WSOP Main Event satellite that runs simultaneous to the MATH tournament on Monday evenings. For whatever reason (failure to win a satellite, maybe?) Smokkee instead entered the 63-person satellite to Tuesday night's Winner's Choice tournament at 9pm ET on full tilt. The winner of the weekly Winner's Choice event gets his or her choice of a buyin and 2k in spending money to any WSOP or WPBT event (other than the 50k buyin HORSE event at the WSOP of course), for a total package of $12,000. And you know who else it turns out was playing in that same satellite tournament to the Winner's Choice event on Tuesday? Someone else who loves full tilt, loves the interface and especially loves the various tournaments and sng structures available on the site? Give up? ME! So Smokkee and I both played in the $63 event, buyin of a mere $26 peep sex token, with the top 7 players each winning a seat into Tuesday's WC event.

Long story short, Smokkee was kicking ass as usual. I remember he was in first place with about 35 players remaining, a spot where he did not stray far from throughout the rest of the event. Me, I really had to work at it as per usual. I did manage to double up twice with Aces, but then went on a bad streak of cards, and suffered a really crappy beat when I got allin on this flop only to lose when my opponent rivered an Ace to steal the pot from under my nose. As a result, with 27 remaining out of the 63 players who started, I was in 20th place, and not looking good to make the winning seats awarded to the top 7 spots.

Shortly after this point, I did manage to win a hand with the effing whores (can you believe it?!), with me betting aggressively because lord knows I am gonna get sucked out on holding the Hilton biatches:



and then here is me about 15 minutes later, surviving a race to chip up solidly again against Caser, the guy who had sucked out the idiotic fishcall for two pairs on the river against me earlier:



and suddenly I was in position to maybe hang on to make the top 7 and win my WC seat, along with Smokkee who all along was never really in doubt sitting at or near the top of the leaderboard. A position that was all but solidified when, 22 hands later, I called an allin from a larger stack with my JJ -- a gamble, but my opponent had more or less exactly what I figured him to have based on having sat with him for several hands prior to this one:



Here is both Smokkee and I when we made the final table of the WC satellite last night, with us needing to eliminate just 2 of the final 9 players for everyone remaining to win their WC tournament seats:



After 9th place went out fairly quickly, of course things tightened up considerably with just one spot left to be eliminated before the rest of us all won the prize. After what seemed like an eternity, incluiding the small stack bouncing between three or four different players at the table (thankfully never Smokkee or I), I thought I had the thing won when I astutely called this allin from the short stack from the button:



But just look at what happened to give this zobo another lease on life:



Infuriating. And so the action continued with 8 players left vying for 7 spots. Finally, shorty moved in with A8s, got called by AQo, and that was all she wrote:





And here is the tournament in which Smokkee and I will be playing on Tuesday night, 9pm ET, as a result of winning this satellite while the Hoy tournament was just finishing up as well:



So come by tonight during the WWdN (password is monkey, as always) and railbird me as I beat down the field, and then knock Smokkee out heads-up with AA against his KK, to win the 12 grand. Dam that is gonna look fiiiiiine sitting in my bankroll, I have got to say.