Mondays at the Hoy

Monday night was my weekly homegame, and for the first time I decided to open the tournament up to bloggers. Turnout ended up solid, and I was not out of the ordinary in having successfully played three Hammers and executing at least five hoys on my way to the final table. There was lots of trash talk to be had, in particular from Smokkee, who talked a lot of shizz from start to finish, all while playing at least four other tournaments that I personally observed, and we were treated to watching Smokkee win $3700 on the night on pokerstars and full tilt. But more on that later.

As I mentioned turnout was solid for the first blogger-enabled Mondays at the Hoy tournament. The buyin was $20, and with 20 entrants, the top spot would pay $200, followed by $120 for 2nd and $80 for third. So there was some dollarage up for grabs, and here was the starting field:



I say "starting field", but you can see actually someone managed to go out on the very first hand, before I was even able to capture the opening lobby shot. That someone being Aquaverse, my own brother who lives here in Manhattan with me. I did not teach this guy how to play though! Just kidding (although it's true I didn't teach him how to play), but I did watch Aqua dominate in his first-ever online MTT the other day, when he took 2nd place out of 234 players in a pot-limit holdem event, so congrats to you for that, Aqua, and on the donkery to start things off with a bang last night.

Smokkee started off playing his typical reckless play, and smack talking all the way. Here he is calling my allin raise with just a nut flush draw on the flop, which we all know is a 1-in-3 shot:



The odds held up, and I was up and Smokkee was down below 1000 chips in the earlygoing. Around this time, he let us know that he was also playing in the Monday night $1000 buyin WSOP qualifier on full tilt, with 79 entrants and the top 6 finishers winning WSOP Main Event seats. Many of us fired up the ftp (I of course was already on ftp, attempting my fifth cash in five tries this week in the 17k tournament) and railed Smokkee for the next few hours.

The next player eliminated at my table was drraz, when his effing biatches lost to AK on the turn to Hoff:



Drraz is a friend of mine from a long time ago who now lives way the eff out in Idaho somewhere. The funny thing is, even he has two Indian casinos within a 30-minute drive from his place. They are everywhere nowadays. Anyways, drraz is the guy who decided to take on the pary 40k with me last night and played it with me most nights for about 3 weeks until I took it down. He has also played the ftp 17k several times with me. His big claim to fame is winning a partypoker ministep 5 tournament for a $2000 first prize a few months back, something which I was never able to come close to. So thank you drraz for being the first guy to push too hard with the effing Hilton whores in the blogger-enabled Hoy Monday tournament.

Another banner moment for the Mondays at the Hoy tournament came about 40 minutes into the event, when I started off by hoy-bluffing DNasty:



and then showed the Hammer for the fully-executed Hammer Hoy when Dnasty mucked:



This is the kind of play that we expect to be commonplace at the Hoy tournament on Mondays at 10pm ET, and again I was glad to see so many people particpating in the tomfoolery along with me last night. Fortunately, as per usual pokerstars had no shortage of tomfoolery of its own, including a beautiful resuck opportunity here for GCox when his rivered full house bested Miami Don's trip Queens after Don had taken the lead with top pair on the flop (forgive me if that hand is a little wrong, as you can see my screenshot somehow just missed showing Don's hand):



Then pokerstars continued the shenanigans on the very next hand, when Smokkee for the second time already in the first hour found himself allin with a dominated hand:



But never fear:



Pokerstars is here! And Smokkee was alive again, this time at the expense of Hacker59. This was just the beginning of the CJ-like luckboxness for Smokkee on the evening, at least in our Monday Hoy tournament.

Now, after seeing drraz go out early in the tourney with the effing Hilton sluts, and listening to my constant drivel about the terrors of trying to win a hand with QQ on the blog, you might think that nobody can win with those biatches. Not true. Here is GCox showing how it's done, about 10 minutes before the first break in the Hoy tournament last night:



but then three hands later, when Smokkee tried to take those same Queens to town against me, he ran into my AKo:



and the more deserving player won:



This left Smokkee with just 305 chips in the Hoy, although he continued to be going strong in his WSOP 1k qualifier on full tilt, slowly making it past the first 40 players out of the 79 who started and working his way into the top 20% or so of the remaining entrants. Plus, Smokkee still had a few tricks up his sleeve in the Hoy before all was said and done, although nobody knew it just yet.

Two hands later, Iakaris got his Aces cracked. I missed the screenshot, but suffice it to say, it was fugly like only an Ace-cracking can be. The next hand saw Iakaris just move it in preflop with 86s, and when he was called by Gcox's TT preflop, that appeared to be it. But pokerstars wasn't quite ready for that yet:



and so, Iakaris had to wait two more hands until his big move, which actually is a suckout against him as his odds of tying in the hand were greater than 50% as of the cards being flipped:



and Iakaris was no more, but a nice first effort in the Hoy from the good doctor who will soon be moving to Buffalo, New York (boy is he gonna love it there!).

Next we have Smokkee, once again pulling the luckout after getting allin on the flop with just a flush draw for the second time in the tournament, this time spiking a third of his suit on the flop to beat Surflexus's made pair in the hole:



And that my friends is Exhibit 3 in the Smokkee suckout scale for the night, and we were still not quite even to the first break yet! But it was just that kind of night for the big fella, as the powers seemed to be conspiring not to let the man fail. And speaking of the first break, it came a few moments later, with five people per tables and two tables left, and me sitting squarely in the middle of the pack:



At the beginning of Round 2, both Smokkee and Wes went on nice runs with some nice cards to each build up a large stack, and a few hands into the new round, Surflexus was eliminated, taking us to the first blogger-enabled Monday Hoy final table:



which read like a who's who of poker bloggery. There was Hoff, Smokkee, GCox, Shadowtwin, Wes, Jules, new player NewinNov, my college roommate Buckhoya, who is also the guy who is responsible for first introducing me to the whole online poker thing, and myself.

The first one out of the final table was Hoff, when Smokkee dispatched him with once again some questionable cards to call an allin with:



And then a truly unfortunate thing happened. I ended up hoying Smokkee here when I held AKs preflop, and I had put him on a crappy pair or two not-so-great cards and figured I'd get him to fold, or would have a better hand or at worst an even race if Smokkee decided to call my hoy bet:



The thing I neglected yesterday, however, was that Smokkee must have made this call in a similar situation in the Hoy at least five or six times yesterday, more or less never electing to fold in this scenario, and here he called again, and the rest is history:



So IGH in 8th place overall. I played well, got nothing but reraised early on and ended up doing quite well and losing to the resident luckbox for the evening in a race, so whaddyagonnado. Nobody was beating Smokkee when it counted last night, and I was just one in a long chain of beats and luckouts that brought Smokkee down to the wire in the first blogger Hoy tournament.

It was around this time that Jordan, Mookie and Drewspop joined us to rail the finalists on to the eventual victory. This just added to the bloggery goodness of the tournament, and we hope to see all three of them playing with us in next Monday's Mondays at the Hoy tournament, in addition I'm hoping to Mr. Waffles, who apparently was too good to play in our first blogger-enabled Hoy tournament, but yet still more than willing to swap stakes with me in the pokerstars million dollar tournament on Sundays. And it was good that these guys joined the rail when they did, because almost immediately they got to see Smokkee again lower the boom on the next player out, my buddy Buckhoya who could not reasonably be expected to get away from this hand:



and we were down to 6, with the top 3 getting the payouts, and all the box of luck tipping towards Smokkee. And that's when we had the Hoy Hand of the Tournament™. Shadow twin moves in with just an OESD on the flop, and Smokkee quickly calls with a pocket pair, but one that is under not one but two of the high cards that hit the flop. Here's what that fishuation situation looks like on screen:



But then the turn card changes everything and leaves Smokkee as around a 9-to-1 dog heading into the river card:



And what was the river card, might you ask?



SLAM! That's just the kind of night Smokkee had at the Hoy last night. It was so bad at that point, with Smokkee holding a nearly 4-to-1 lead over everyone else at the table, that Smokkee started dropping out of our game for minutes at a time, to focus on winning his WSOP Main Event seat on full tilt, by which point he was already down to the final 12 players remaining, having outlasted three ftp professional poker players on the way, and only 6 spots away from winning his WSOP ME seat. As the remaining three players at the Hoy final table were battling it out for the right to face Smokkee at some point later, more and more of us fired up the full tilt software, some of us even downloading it for the first time, to cheer our boy on to his WSOP ME seat. It was tense as players continued dropping out of that WSOP event, and before long Smokkee had made the final ten players left with 6 of them getting WSOP ME seats.

With five players left in the Hoy, and Smokkee on one of his short-lived "in" hands in the tourney, he called an allin from Wes that Wes was really hoping wasn't going to be called:



but the world wasn't ready for the final four quite yet, and who are we kidding, Wes does not bubble in these things:



But then just two hands later, Smokkee made another questionable allin call, this one to NewinNov's pocket Fives, but of course the Racemaster pulled through once again to continue to pile up chips. Wes nabbed a good portion of those chips seven hands later when Smokkee once again couldn't resist calling allin with a less than premium hand, and for once Smokkee could not survive the domination:



Now who taught these guys how to bet?





Unfortunately, even repeated hoying from GCox was unable to save him when this allin confrontation finally went down:



and Gary was once again America's favorite bubble boy, but not without putting up quite a fight and demonstrating once again how little tweaks to your game can really work it for you in big spots in tournaments. Well done, Gary.

Down to 3 remaining, Jules survived this allin when Wes failed to improve against her hand that was amazingly ahead the whole way:



and she survived another race situation with chip leader Smokkee here a few hands later:



Wes got a bit of revenge however when he hoyed:



and then Hammered for a nice pot a few hands later:



and then Wes made the first serious run at Smokkee's stack since the final table began, when he DQB's Smokkee's very questionable allin call with JTs:



Despite this beat, Smokkee managed to hang on long enough in his 1k WSOP qualifier to make the final table, with 6 players winning WSOP ME seats:



In fact here you can see Smoke in 3rd place of the 9 remaining players, and looking like a very good shot to finally win his seat:



As all eyes remained focused on Smokkee's WSOP ME bid, Jules found herself allin in our Hoy tournament against a slight favorite of Wes, and she did not improve and was eliminated in 3rd place, collecting a nice $80 for her troubles, and a cash in the first blogger-enabled Mondays at the Hoy tournament:



Congrats to Jules whom we hope to see again next Monday to continue her cashing ways at the Hoy. Meanwhile, two players had been eliminated in Smokkee's final table, leaving 7 players left for 6 WSOP seats. Long story short, the unthinkable happened to Smokkee, who rightfully moved all in preflop from the cutoff with AQo in a pot that had not yet been entered, but then he ran into this effing bullshit and was eliminated on the bubble for the WSOP ME seat:



Now before you all get that sappy feeling for Smokkee, it is important again to note that the cash payout for 6th place in this tournament was a hefty $3500. So the guy was pissed, but pissed to only have won $3500. Would we not all love to be in that situation. Smokkee, you'll still get your seat, but the $3500 is an incredible payday, and congratulations were wished by all for a truly remarkable run from the big man.

The night ended on an even more positive note for Smokkee, as a few hands after his elimination from the 1k WSOP event, he and Wes moved in in yet another classic race scenario:



with the luckbox once again holding on to win the $200 first prize and the glory of being the first blogger-enabled Mondays at the Hoy winner. Congrats again to Smokkee for his $3700 worth of wins last night, in addition to Wes and Jules for cashing, and thanks to everyone for coming out and playing. I look forward to seeing you all next week for the next installment of Mondays at the Hoy.

In a shocker, I will not be able to make the WWdN tonight due to other plans, but I should be on later to try to win something from somebody. See you then.