A Tale of Two Mookies

I have got to say it -- Mookie really knows his way around setting up a holdem tournament. You can just tell this guy runs live tournaments fairly regularly, because Mookie has really got it going on when it comes to his weekly Mookie tournament on Wednesday nights, now on full tilt. Since the move to full tilt a few weeks ago, Mookie has now started running a second-chance tournament as well, starting 90 minutes after the first, at 11:30pm ET, and the players are loving it. It's especially good for people like Veneno out on the left coast who can now play in the weekly event but would not be able to make the 7pm pacific start time in most cases most weeks. And once again showing his mettle at running these sorts of tournaments, Mookie is smart enough as well to make the second tournament a turbo event due to its later start time for us east coasters, with the end result being that the two events tend to final table and end right around the same time most weeks. And last night's 53 players in the Mookie tournament were the most ever since the move to full tilt, again a great indication of how much Mookie has it right when it comes to his weekly tournament.

Last night was a great time as always, and with the nice-sized crowds we've seen in these blogger tournaments this week due largely to the pending online gaming ban (which isn't really that at all) in the U.S., it was great to catch up with people we haven't seen much of in a while, plus to play with all the regulars in the weekly events who we see several times a week. For me, I also four-tabled these two Mookie tournaments with the 20k guaranteed on full tilt as well as the 40k guaranteed on party, my other two regular nightly mtt's whenever I have the time and the energy. I'm going to try to take you through my night last night with these four tournaments (the only four things I played all night) in chronological order of what happened to me and when, it what was overall a profitable night, but a frustrating one at the same time.

My first big hand of the night came in the 20k guaranteed tournament, maybe 20 minutes in to the event. MP open-raised the 20-40 blinds to 140, and I called from LP with pocket 4s. The blinds folded and we saw a heads-up flop of JJ6 offsuit, and my MP opponent immediately moved allin for his last 795 chips (he was somewhat short-stacked for early in the event). I had observed him make this play already once with AK earlier in the tournament, and I was getting a clear AK vibe here as well, so I went ahead and called his raise, putting him on AK, a call I would normally not make if the flop had not come paired like it did:



As you can see, my read was true and I was sitting pretty with my opponent drawing to just 6 outs with 2 cards to come. Here was the final board:



And I was never able to recover from this recockulous beat that stole away more than 2/3 of my existing stack. Funny enough, this is very similar to what happened to me in WSOP Event #13 this past summer, when I made a great read with a low board pair (6's, in that case) and called Joe Hachem's allin on the flop with just pocket 4's, only to lose to a runner-runner flush on the turn and river and IGH angry and early), and sadly, the result was basically exactly the same as well. So things did not start off well for me with my mtt's last night.

Luckily, I made a big hand early in the Mookie tournament when my JJ held up against Chris's AKo allin preflop, and I was up to 3300 chips early on in that event, which helped erase that taste of barf in my mouth from the early 20k debacle. Then, my stack swelled even further about an hour in to the Mookie on a hand with Skidoo that I still don't really understand:



This was me eventually winning the hand in a showdown with just top pair 10 kicker, in a situation where I bet the pot on the flop, and Ski called. Then I bet the pot again on the turn, and Ski flat called again. At that point I had to figure I was beat, so I just checked it out when Ski checked it first. Ski assured me he had an Ace in this hand, but I am going to have to call bullshit on that one. A guy with Ski's playing style does not call off 2/3 of his stack earlyish in a blogger tournament with top pair and worse than a Ten kicker. No way. But I still don't know what to make of the hand. Maybe Ski can provide some information there, but in any event I was surprised and happy to see this big pile of chips sliding my way, and I was up to 2nd place with fewer than 20 players remaining of the Mookie's original 53 players. Shortly later, I managed to move into first place on the leaderboard with 3 tables left when I flopped the nut straight, and was lucky enough to slow-raise just enough to let Surf catch trip Tens on the turn, eventually sending 3600 more chips my way. Surf would go on to run his good hands into better hands for me all night long, which I have to say did not bother me much given Surf's incredibly consistent success in blogger tournaments generally, and in the Mookie particularly.

Meanwhile, on the very last hand before the first break of the partypoker 40k guaranteed tournament, I finally made my first hand of the night when my pocket 4's made trips on the 843 flop. Throw in some preflop-limped pocket Aces for my opponent, and all the money quickly got in on the flop, vaulting me to around 3.5 times the average stack heading into Round 2 in that tournament and giving me some hope in my large mtt performance for the night:



And while this all was going on, the Mookie 2nd Chance tournament started, and early on I got to semi-luckbox my way into eliminating the Love Elf and doubling up on Kat at the same time:



But my happiness over amassing a nice stack early in the Mookie 2 was quickly overtaken when I ran my AK into TT preflop in the party 40k, and this board happened:



And five hands later I was out of the 40k, making it fairly far into 432nd place out of over 2400 players, but missing the money payouts by about 130 spots. No mtt love for me last night.

Here was the final table for the Mookie 2nd chance tournament, which due to its Turbo nature and the only 20 players in the tournament, actually occurred about 15 minutes before the final table in the original Mookie tournament:



Only 3 spots paid in this 2nd chance tournament, and I was starting in 5th place of the final 9 players, so the final table was still a long way from the money in this one, and I knew I would need some cards and some luck to make it where I wanted to be. And speaking of getting where I needed to be, in the real Mookie, I managed to lay a brutal allin preflop suckout on our esteemed host himself just before the final table in his big tournament when this:



turned into this after all was said and done:



This was one that I really do feel semi-bad about. Unlike Surf who basically wins this event about once a month and funds the rest of his blogger tournaments almost exclusively just from his lifetime Mookie winnings, Mookie himself has not been killing it in his own tournament to my rememberance of late, and as such there was a slight twinge of guilt on this suckout. Very slight. And it went away fast. But I acknowledge the suckout here, and give my props to a great tournament host who really knows his shizz when it comes to setting this stuff up. Great job as always, Mook! And at least this big hand win took me immediately to the final table in much better shape than I otherwise would have been, but still in 7th of 9 players but with some tough competition to face at the table:



And so it was that Surf and I were the only two players to final table both of the Mookie tournaments last night. And in the end, despite some serious card death at both of the final tables, I managed to last until just 4 were left in the Mookie, until I moved my very short stack allin on the flop on this hand:



only to run into this:



and, as much as I love it when my middle pair moves in on the flop against the flopped nuts, in this case I was not able to suck or spike anything, and I went out in 4th place overall from the main 53-player Mookie, for a nice $70-something payout for my efforts, and my best Mookie finish in several weeks.

This was mirrored only about 5 minutes later with the Mookie 2 dropping down to 3 players remaining, with me in first place, when I used a slowplay of my A9o preflop and a single Ace on the flop to elicit an allin bet from my short opponent which a dominatingly worse kicker than I:



but when this card came a second later on the turn:



I have to admit, I checked to make sure I was not accidentally playing on pokerstars. That redickubeat left me hopelessly short stacked, and a few hands later I bowed out unceremoniously in 3rd place out of the 20 entrants in that tournament, winning me another $20 there and capping off a solid night for me at the blogger tables. And I will give my props to Prophesy for being very, very gracious about the bad beat. You all know I am not someone who will ever apologize at the table for bad beating someone -- mostly because I get bad beat about 20 times more often than I get to lay bad beats on other players -- but Prophesy was very apologetic and genuinely felt bad, which was nice, albeit unnecessary.

So in the end, it was 4th place for me in this week's Mookie:



and 3rd place for me in the Mookie 2:



Total profit on the night, including the sick runner-runner flush beat in the 20k and my running into quads in the 40k, was about $40 overall, and I had a blast with the Mookie as always. See you tonight in the 20k on full tilt as well as the WWdN Not! if I'm able to pull that off.