Calling All Donkeys!!!

This post is an open invitation to all you donkeys out there. I was going to link the words of that sentence to all our favorite poker blogging heehawers, but there are just too many of you to mention so why bother trying to narrow it down. Tonight as you know is Mondays at the Hoy time:



and tonight I am laying a special bounty on my own head in the Hoy tournament. I know you all know from reading here how whiny and badbeaty my last several posts here have been. That's because that's just what's been happening to me at the virtual tables these days. Almost every tournament I enter, I either win it, or I get bad beat out of it. So, as a special sacrifice to the poker gods as we head into FTOPS week on Full Tilt, I am offering up $10 transferred to your pokerstars account for anyone who busts me from the Hoy tonight on a bad beat. For purposes of this bounty, an elimination will qualify as a bad beat if I am at least a 2-to-1 favorite when my last chips go into the middle. So since I will definitely be playing tonight, and since I get bad beat out of almost every tournament I enter nowadays, you out there have a real chance of winning the extra ten-spot just by showing up to play tonight. And my hope is that, by offering up this bounty, this sacirifce to the poker gods if you will who have SO turned their backs on me of late, I might have some chance of reversing the horrific tournament luck I've been experiencing, one day before my run in the FTOPS will begin.

Let me back up for a minute here. This weekend, cracknaces, Iakaris and myself played the $26 buyin satellite to the 6-max nlh FTOPS tournament this past Saturday evening at 11pm ET. If you read here last week, you know that I was really looking to avenge my horrific donkitude and tilt-exit from the 6-max satellite last week where I was way in 1st place with 10 players remaining and the top 5 finishers getting seats, and yet somehow managed to take a horrendous beat and then tilt off the remainder of my chips in quick fashion to end up busting in 7th place overall, and nothing to show for it. When I saw cracknaces and Iak in there, I certainly knew the field wouldn't be easy. But 6-max is an aggro game, and aggro suits me just fine if that's how it's gonna be. I've never played stoopid, but 6-max is a game that allows me basically to do most of the things which I have slowly cut out of my normal tournament game over the past several months as I seek to refine and cut down the variance in my overall mtt strategy. So, in 6-max, I can open-raise from up front with A9o. I can push a bit on the flop with second pair top kicker. Things like that. So I really enjoy 6-max play, and I've played a total of 4 $26 buyin satellites to this event, with the hopes that this would be the big one.

Long story short, I won a few big pots early, made a flush on the turn on the same card that an opponent made his straight, sucked out 2 pairs at the river to take most of someone else's stack, and before I knew it I was in the middle of the pack, halfway through the field, and with the top 6 players winning seats. This hand here got me into good position, in a situation where I'm sure we can all recall being:



You gotta love when two players both flop trips in an unraised pot preflop. Especially when you're the guy with the better kicker! So this got me a pile of chips to work with, and things started looking more and more like the satellite last week where I basically ran over the field until the tiltage occurred at the final table.

A short while later, I checked the leaderboard (with me then in 4th place out of 13 remaining) to find that both Chad and Iak had busted, which I was bummed to see. Something tells me they'll both be in this event come Tuesday evening, and they both well deserve to be there, but I had really been hoping for a near-sweep for the bloggers of the tournament seats in this satellite. At the same time, though, removing undoubtedly two of the toughest players from the remaining field in this satellite was all good for me, and I expected to take full advantage, and not let what happened to me the last time I had played this satellite occur again on Saturday. In fact, with ten players remaining, I was once again comfortably in first place, just as I had been last week:



A few minutes later, I eliminated the 9th place player on this allin preflop hand:



and we were down to 8, again with the top 6 (out of 62 original entrants) winning 6-max FTOPS seats. This was as close as I had gotten in the previous week -- two spots away from my 6-max seat -- so already I was feeling like I was in uncharted waters to some extent. 9 hands later, here we are on the bubble to win the seats:



Just one elimination left, and I'm well ahead of the low stacks here. So this time, there was no way I was playing anything unless I really, really had to, at least not for a while. Luckily, this time I did not have to wait long, as someone busted not three hands later on the other table, and I had made the final table, and with it the top 6 spots for my 6-max FTOPS seat:



Not giving two shits about no TLB points or whateverthefuck that is, I went and pushed here while the TLB dorks had their little dungeons & dragons battle for supreme leader, ending up in 3rd place overall after the pushfest:



But notice that I hit the top 6 spots with the chip lead, so I played very, very well throughout this event and I was thrilled to have won my seat in the 6-max FTOPS event this coming Tuesday evening:



So as of now, I am registered for the 6-max on Tuesday, pot-limit holdem on Thursday and razz on Friday among the FTOPS events. I will almost certainly buy in directly to the HORSE event as well on Wednesday evening, as I like my HORSE game quite a bit these days but simply do not play online poker at the times when the HORSE FTOPS satellites are running on fulltilt, which is usually at 7pm ET nightly for the $26 buyins (my preference), and then I think at 9pm ET for the $8 buyin satellites, which are much more luck-based and hard to win seats through. So, expect to see me in the FTOPS events each night from Tuesday through Friday of this week. Now if I can just convince the Hammer Girls of the importance of these events, I may have a fighting chance at doing some real damage in these mofos.

What else? Well, speaking of the FTOPS, congratulations are in order to Drizz (59th place) and cracknaces (68th place) for their finishes in FTOPS Event #1, Omaha Eight or Better, as well as to Joe Speaker (102nd) and our very own Smokee (341st) for their ITM finishes in FTOPS Event #2, deep stacks nlh with a 500k guarantee, on Sunday. Tonight is limit holdem, which I have no interest in playing in (because I'm not a pussy -- yes that comment is for you, Eric), but then tomorrow starts the four-day run of 6-max nlh, HORSE, plh and then razz on Friday, which I plan to participate in all of. Again, I just need to hope that my sacrifice to the poker gods tonight to whichever of you luckasses sucks out on me in the Hoy tonight is enough to buy me back into their good graces heading into these FTOPS events, and I should be all good. Anyways, please go stop by Drizz, Chad, Speaker and Smokkee's blogs and check out their FTOPS ITM stories and pass on your congratulations, if you're so inclined. IMO, cashing in any of these things is quite an accomplishment, period.

Another thing -- last night was the first ever 35k guaranteed nightly 10pm tournament on full tilt, as they just keep upping the guarantee on this badboy as more and more players are managing to find it and recognize it for the great tournament that it is. Sundays have long been the most popular day of the week for this event, so the 35k guarantee attached to the tournament last night simply reflects the reality of the nearly 1700 players who participated. Long story short, I got beat as a 2-to-1 favorite or better in this tournament a full five fucking times over the 2 1/2 hours I played, managing to cash for the first time in a couple of weeks in this tournament despite the horrendous badbeatage that befell me every time I was able to put a nice run together. First, near the end of the first hour there was this beaut, which would have put me into the top 25 players left in the tournament at this time, as this hand on the flop for all the marbles:



brought this lovely river card:



As my third 2-outer suckout at the river in the tournament already, I was absolutely fuming here. Imagine my tilt-rage when, shortly after making the money positions (starting at spot 261 in the event), I open pushed as a short stack with QJs from the button and got this caller:



but then this flop made me from a 50-50 shot to a 91% favorite with two cards to come:



and I'm stylin', right? Wrong!



Another beautiful river card, and IGH around 230th place out of 1676 entrants.

This has been my story over the past several weeks in nlh tournaments. It's sick and it's wrong, but it's me. And tonight you can profit by sucking out on me at the Hoy. $10 cashish right into your account, just for acting out the will of the poker gods online tonight at Mondays at the Hoy.

The WPBT 7-stud hilo tournament was also this past Sunday night, and I was ready for bear as hilo has long been one of my best games. Unfortunately, I got the worst bout of "almost" cards and suckouts that I have ever seen in any form of stud tournament, and could not do anything at all with them. I started off with pocket or split Queens or Kings three times in the first 8 hands last night, but on all three occasions it turns out that an opponent was dealt pocket or split Aces through third street on the same hands! What are the possible odds of that happening!? Eventually my early demise was decided by these two beautiful hands:

First, here I am, ahead on the high and the low on 5th street:



and then runner-runner 6th and 7th street for my opponent phucks me out of half the pot:



And my last hand in the WPBT hilo event, here I get allin with 6s showing against my opponent's 4s showing, and I know I've got pocket Kings underneath as well:



and then SLAM, he's got a boat by 6th street, and it turns out he had pocket Aces again underneath all along to best my pocket Kings:



Absolutely unreal. Never seen anything like the horrendous luck I've been having in my tournament game recently. But congratulations again out to Lucko, who took down another WPBT event despite starting off very slowly. Lucko has now taken the lead in total WPBT POY points, with just one more online event to come, HORSE in two weeks on full tilt. I remain in 3rd in total POY points, but drop to 5th in average points per WPBT event, which I deserve after this week's abomination.

OK that's all for now, I'm going to go post this before I write some more. So look for me tonight at Mondays at the Hoy on pokerstars, and come claim your $10 bounty by sucking out on me to eliminate me from the tournament. Please please please help me appease the poker gods with something before my run at the FTOPS begins tomorrow.