Mondays at the Hoy and the 20k Guaranteed

Another great night of poker in the Hammer household last night, as the Hammer Girls gave me time to play nearly unfettered for the first time in several days. There was just one wakeup to deal with, which occurred right around 10pm ET and the beginning of my usual two-tabling of the Mondays at the Hoy tournament along with the full tilt 20k guaranteed tourney. Strangely, Hammer Wife and I were surprised to hear the older Hammer girl, not the younger, doing the crying, while Hammer baby remained asleep. Now, whereas the Hammer baby waking up would result almost surely in the need for a good 30 minutes of rocking, bottles to be made, songs to be sung, and a sure sitout to start both tournaments, I knew right away that a waking of our 2 1/2-year-old with a sleeping baby also in the room at the same time required a different kind of finesse.

I tiptoed into the room, where my older daughter M immediately starting whining asking us to take the baby out of the room. Try as I might, I could not talk her down as she continued to escalate, getting dangerously close to outright crying which would all but surely wake the baby. That would severely cramp my style heading into one of my favorite two-tables of the week, the Hoy and the 20k on full tilt. So, trying to channel our favorite freak nasty daddy of triplet girls, I asked myself what would JJ do in this situation? Then it hit me. I whispered to M that she could have ice cream tomorrow if she went back to sleep quietly right away. Suddenly, she got as quiet as a mouse, looked up at me quizzically, and asked, "An ice cream cone, Daddy?" I said yes, and like magic the girl's eyes were shut before her head even hit the pillow. Crisis averted, my first of many successful allin moves on the night, and just like that I knew it was going to be a good night at the virtual tables.

That thought was confirmed, first when I doubled up early on against a donkey in the 20k, and then a short while later in the Hoy when I ended up calling a preflop allin with AKo against what turned out to be KK:



And then check out the witty banter from me in the chat when I hit a flucking flop:



So this got me back to even after a bit of a slow start, and then came the hand that got me staked with a nice stack early, as I set out still in search of my first cash in Mondays at the Hoy since I invited the bloggers and blog readers to come get your asses kicked. I had KK in middle position, raised it up 3x preflop and got one caller from the SB. On a raggy flop, I led out for less than half the pot:



And thret took the bait with my weak lead:



I did my usual short pause combined with my patented slow-raise, figuring him for a lower overpair or maybe A7 or K7s:



which again worked like a charm:



Although at this point I was a bit worried about flopped trips with a pair of 8s or 7s, I had to make this call and hope my slow-raising on this hand had tricked thret into thinking I was weaker than I was. I was right:



and I had my first elimination of the night, and a nice stack in the earlygoing of the MATH tournament. My next big move also used my slow-raise approach that I so prefer to checking when I am tempted to slow play. This time the victim was PhinCity, as I checked after he checked to me on a JT9 rainbow flop, when I had flopped the stone nuts:



Then on a raggy turn card, I made my slow-raise move on his half-pot bet:



Phin quickly min-reraised me (see how well this slow-raise works?!):



so then I slow-raised the poor guy again, again still holding the stone nuts at this point in the hand:



I was like Obi-Wan Kenobi at the droid garage in the original Star Wars on this hand. I kept "telling" Phin to keep raising with my weak raises, and he just kept complying and complying:



At this point there wasn't any slower I could raise it, so I just moved allin:



and, in one of my favorite plays of the night, Phin caved:



Hey, at least he had the sense to recognize that he was beaten, and not just throw the rest of his chips away. With 1300 or so left, he was still in shape to make a move, despite having donked off around two-thirds of his stack with a not very good hand.

This hand got me into 2nd place of the 13 or so remaining players, and was more than enough for me to make it to the final table of the Hoy tournament a short while later:



The table included some MATH newbies like Wil, Joe Speaker and greenie523, as well as a couple of longtime players like myself, slb, Phin, and a10419, and who could forget my blogger tournament nemesis cc, who seems to knock me out of one of these things nearly every week with two crappy overcards.

After beginning the final table by crippling Wil's JJ with my AK preflop, my first final table elimination did not come until there were 7 players left, and I faced an allin bet from a short stack when I held an oesd on the flop:



My quick read of Lok1 was that he had not hit this raggy flop, so I figured I was looking at any 2, 4, 5 or 6 to win, for a total of 14 outs against what I envisionsed to be just two overcards from my short-stacked opponent. 14 outs twice equals a roughly 50-50 shot, so I went ahead with my big stack and called the bet with just a drawing hand. Turns out I was spot-on with my read, as well as with the odds when my oesd filled on the river:



And that was how I eliminated #7 from the Mondays at the Hoy tournament last night. I then set my sights on knocking out #6 as well. And I didn't have to wait long, when a10419 moved allin preflop ahead of me when I happened to be holding AQs, and I made the call:



and I continued my Jamie Gold ways, eliminating both #7 and then #6 from the tournament in rapid succession, and building my chip lead to the point that I held nearly 50% of the chips left in the event, with five players remaining, and me within shouting distance of my first-ever Hoy cash. Not two hands later, I also put the finishing touches on Wil when he moved allin with his pocket pair against my higher pocket pair:



Now I really was turning into Jamie Gold, having knocked out 7th place, 6th place and 5th place in this tournament in fairly quick succession. Someone else was going to have to start eliminating people, or I was going to run roughshod over this tournament.

At break #2, I had more than twice the second place player's chips in the Hoy tournament:



and then just a couple of hands into Round #3, slb made the mistake of pushing his poor hand into my monster preflop, and we were down to 3:



My first Mondays at the Hoy cash was here!

Two hands later, I was going to make really short work of this event when I got Mr. Speaker allin with his QQ against my KK. But, in typical fashion for those phucking whores, of course this time the Queens pull out a miraculous flop to beat me:



Determined to keep my cool after that highly annoying suckout, I managed to persevere and then finally eliminate cc from a blogger tournament, as his Q8s failed to hold up against my A9o (much to my extreme surprise, given cc's luck against me in these situations in the past):



So I went heads-up with Mr. Speaker for the $220 first prize, in what was again my first cash ever out of probably close to 15 or 20 of these weekly MATH tournaments. Surprisingly, I began heads-up play with only a slight chip lead over Joe, even though I had literally Jamie Golded my way through the final table, eliminating 7th place, 6th place, 5th place, 4th place and 3rd place on my way to heads-up. Joe and I battled it out for a good 15 or 20 minutes, all the while with me moving deeper and deeper into the cash positions in the 20k guaranteed tournament as well, and I actually think Joe and I had fairly similar heads-up styles. Except for a few hands when Joe grabbed a small lead, I was ahead for most of our heads-up battle, and as such I was not wanting to get too involved in a pot unless I had something good, or at least had a strong read that Speaker was weak.

Eventually, I started checking preflop even with my strong hands, and this worked to a tee about 30 hands into our heads-up matchup, when I found a flop of AKT rainbow with me holding A3o in my hand:



I knew Joe did not think I had an Ace since I hadn't raised it up preflop (when I had been raising preflop with all my Aces when our heads-up battle first began), so I went for the hoy there, and Joe mulled and mulled. Finally, he called, and then we checked it down through the river:



Left to just one solitary chip, the damage had been done and I was going to win my first Hoy tournament. Two suckouts later, here was the final hand for me to capture the weekly title:



and the final leaderboard:



Congratulations again to cc for his third place finish and $88 win, and to Joe Speaker in his first Mondays at the Hoy tournament for taking down second place and $132 in the process. And to me for my triumphant domination in my own tournament, as I literally knocked out every single player at the final table from #7 down to #2 on my way to my first victory.

All the while while this was going on, I also managed to make a deep run in the 20k on full tilt. Down to the top 50 out of over 1000 entrants, I reraised an obvious late position stealer with my powerhouse 83o:



and got my over-stealy opponent to lay down what was surely a better hand. By acting quickly and not showing my cards after he folded to my preflop reraise, I had set this guy up to believe I might have just been restealing with nothing, a fact which I was determined to use against bulldogs2424 as soon as I could, since he loved to steal from good position so much. Well, I got my chance about five minutes later, when another 3x raise from the cutoff from this guy was met by a large reraise from me, this time with me holding a very solid hand of AQo:



This time, Mr. Stealdonkey couldn't bring himself to fold even an easily-dominated hand like K9o when he should have known how easily he could be behind:



But never fear, full tilt likes to reward donkeyplay more often than it should, and this board ended my night and my latest run at the mighty 20k:



In the end, I was out in 46th out of 1026 players:



bringing my nightly winnings very close to $300. In all, a great night at the tables for me, and I even got to sleep almost through the morning hours thanks to the Hammer Girls finally deciding to just sleep it off with each other in the room together. Hopefully there will be more of the same tonight, when I set out to win my 2nd WWdN tournament after taking down my first Hoy last night in triumphant, Jamie Gold-esque fashion.