The New 25k Guaranteed, Molested in the Mookie, Big Cash Win and I'm Playing in the FTOPS!

Well it was a big night of poker in a lot of ways on Wednesday, so let's get this party started.

First and surely foremost, everyone hop over to Iakaris's blog and read a very true, humbling and enlightening post about our man finally final-tabling the nightly 25k guaranteed tournament on full tilt last night very early this morning. A heartfelt and very deserving congratulations goes out to Iak, whose nlh game has gone from nOOb to dominatrix right before our very eyes over these past several months, for getting back to that forbidden territory that is the 25k final table. 6th place was as far as it went for Iak yesterday, but that's about 1200 spots further than I lasted last night in that same tournament, so what else can I say but congratulations, and do yourselves all a favor and read Iak's post and share the love and the excitement, where you can almost feel the profits for yourselves. Great job Iakaris! You're a bastard for stealing my tournament away from me before I ever got to make it my bitch, but if I have to cede domination of this wench to anyone, I can't think of anyone better than you.

And yes everyone, I did say 25k and not the usual 20k, as last night for the first time saw full tilt guarantee $25,000 for the prize pool for their largest weekday nightly guaranteed event. Hopefully that will be a change that stays for the future, as the new players since partypoker became the biggest pussies of all the leading online poker sites have really beefed up the participation in the large full tilt mtts over the past couple of weeks.

So, the first things I played last night were the Mookie and the 20k 25k, both of which ran at 10pm ET last night as always. Things were going fine in both tournaments, as I made it through the first 15 or 20 minutes in each with a nice increase in my chip stack on a few nice hands in both events. Then, with blinds of 20-40, I found KK in the Mookie in the cutoff, where I just flat-called an open-raise from middle position to 140 chips. We saw the flop of J94 rainbow two-handed, and when my opponent, Mean Gene who was playing in his first-ever Mookie tournament, bet out for about half the pot, I just got a vibe that he had a good hand, but not one he was loving. I can't really describe how I came to the conclusion, but all I know is that I was sitting there and a picture just formed in my head of what he was likely holding. I think with an overpair to the Jacks or even maybe AJ, he would have bet less than he did on the flop, and at a different timing than the way he made the bet that he did. I reverse hoyed him, raising enough that he would have just one chip left if he called my bet, because I was very sure that my pocket Kings were best here. As Gene paused for a long while and thought hard about his decision, I became positive he was holding KJ. Again it's hard to say exactly how I realized this, but take my word for it, I did. I knew he would have called quicker with an overpair or AJ, and given my calling of his 4.5x preflop raise, he almost surely would have folded middle pair, or top pair bad kicker, by now. All the thinking led me to just one hand: KJ, for top pair second kicker on this relatively raggy flop. Eventually after a real struggle, Gene reraised me for his one last chip. At this point I was so sure of my read that I even typed in "KJ?" to the chat as I called his 1-chip bet to put Gene allin on the J94 rainbow flop. I show my Kings, and he types "ugh" as he shows....KJo. A perfect read, and a perfect play by me. The turn card is a rag. I love situations like this, and I'm about to nearly double up early again in the Mookie. The motherphucking Jack on the river, however, had something else to say about that, and IGH in around 45th place out of the 59 entrants in the Mookie tournament last night, losing my KK to Gene's set of Jacks.

For those of you who know me or read here regularly, you can imagine what this did to my fragile poker psyche of late. As I've said here many times in the past, to me the absolute very worst kind of bad beats are the ones where I completely and utterly outplay an opponent, they take the bait hook, line and sinker, and then they get bailed out after getting severely outplayed. It's always been one thing to me to have someone basically have to call my allin (say they are blinded allin or something), they randomly have 99 to my JJ, and then they spike a 9 at the end and IGH. And that kind of beat is annoying -- don't get me wrong -- but it's not the same as when I trick the guy into pushing with his 99, then I show my slow-played JJ, and then he is bailed out with the third 9. That kind of beat kills me, and this one was exactly it. I knew to the card exactly what Gene was holding, and I made a bet that he would call that would get me in ahead with Gene just drawing to 2 outs after the flop. Yes, that means I was a more than 12-to-1 favorite to win the hand when I got Gene in for all his chips. Unfugginbelievable.

This beat was so jarring to me that it sent me immediately on megatilt. The very next hand that was dealt to me in the 25k after I got hammered like that in the Mookie, I pushed a medium-sized stack allin with garbage, knowing I would get called and lose, and get called and lose I did. I was completely tilted, I admit it now, and I knew it then, but at the time I just didn't care. Stuff like that Mookie hand has been happening so much to me lately in the blogger tournaments that I can't even believe it anymore. I can't even post the screenshots this morning because I just don't want to look at that shit anymore. All I know is, it feels like I can't remember the last time I got knocked out of a blogger tournament when I was behind when the chips went into the middle. Goddam it that is phucking sick. But what can I do.

Lucky for me, auto-donking out of the 25k immediately after that recockulous Mookie beat somehow managed to calm my tilt and get me back to my usual mild-mannered self. Then my rational side told me to jump over to some 8-16 cash razz after I won nearly $200 in my first time at those limits last week. I found a game with 6 players at an 8-person table on full tilt, and I got to work with $200. 40 minutes later, I cashed out to put the Hammer Baby down to bed, having won 9 out of 25 hands played, not having lost a single large pot in the entire short session, and leaving with a shade over $500 for my hard work. So, if I'm going to get reDICKulous beaten out of the Mookie, so badly in fact that it causes me to immediatilt myself out of the 25k as well, at least there's no better way to bounce back from that by winning over $300 in under an hour playing a cash game that I never would have been playing if I was still rightfully in the Mookie and the 25k where I belonged.

You hear that, poker gods? I effed you good last night you powerless pussilanimous pussies! Come and do something about that why don't you, assholes? What are you gonna do, bad beat me out of every blogger tournament I play in? Didn't think so. Too late on that one already, buckos!

/end poker gods rant.

The Hammer Baby went down pretty easy around 11pm ET last night, and as a result I was able to jump in to Mookie's second chance tournament, something which I affectionately call the "Mookie 2", and long story short, I was able to channel my calmness after my $300+ cash razz win to win me a tier I token, which I will most likely use tonight in either the 25k or another of the FTOPS satellites like I first mentioned yesterday:



This same calmness was almost threatened when I lost this in the $20 nlh mtt on pokerstars, less than half an hour into the event:



Phucking pocket Kings, running into phucking pocket Aces. Again. I got KK cracked to lose early in the Mookie already last night, and then the same monster hand of mine gets beat again in this larger mtt as well. It is just plain sick. But for whatever reason (I imagine the $300 profit in 40 minutes of razz had a lot to do with it), I acted like I was gellin', and refused to let yet another nlh tournament recockubeat get me off my game as it did with the 20k earlier in the night. I quickly turned my attention to the 11:45pm ET FTOPS Razz satellite, where for a $26 token buyin, one of every 10 entrants will win a seat to FTOPS Razz Event #7. I had played the 6-max holdem flavor of this satellite, as well as the PLO flavor, already earlier in the week, making one final table but without any FTOPS seats to show for it thus far after one day of trying the satellite tournaments. This time would be different, I could just feel it. And remember yesterday when I posted the straight flush that I won with in razz from Monday night? Well last night I even managed to take down a razz pot in this satellite with another very strong hand in its own right:



DQAB!!! And I bluffed and won with this hand on the river too, and then showed it for good measure. A straight flush and quad Aces on consecutive days, but both of them occurring in razz where these extremely rare hands are nowhere near as valuable as they are in a high poker game.

Fast forward through a lot of frustration, anger and ridiculous suckouts and counterfeiting pairs on 7th street, etc., and I had made my second final table out of the 3 FTOPS satellites I have tried so far, this time with a massive chip stack as I was truly the best razz player out of the 21 who entered this tournament last night:



With only the top two finishers in this event winning a seat to FTOPS Event #7 Razz with a $75,000 guarantee, I wanted to be sure to maintain my big chip lead without doing anything too crazy to jeopardize my position. I won a big hand with just 5 players left and holding a Ten-low at the final table to re-cement my large chip advantage over the rest of the table, against a bozo who simply had to stay in despite his pocket Jacks in the hole to begin the hand:



And then came my Hand of the Tournament. I absolutely love this hand, because it showcases one of the great ways to make huge calls or even raises in razz, when you have reason to believe someone might be acting strong with a low card that has just hit their board, but where you think it might be possible that they actually paired this low card with another of their low holecards. There were four players left, and as you can see I capped the raising on 3rd street with me holding a starting 4-low, a board lock for the best hand so far since my opponent had a 5 showing:



When 4th street brought me a not-good 10, but my opponent a nice, low 2, I could have been worried. I certainly knew that was not a good turn of events for me in this hand. But, at the same time, he capped the betting with me preflop with a 5 showing. That tells me he more or less must have had 2 other low cards in the hole to go with his 5 that was showing, and since he had a 5 showing already, and I knew I had an Ace, a 3 and a 4 in my hand, I knew his most likely cards underneath were 2s and 6s. So when the 2 came on 4th street for him, I accurately predicted that there was a 20% or more chance that this 2 had actually counterfeited him with a 2 in the hole already. So I was willing to take 4th street up to three raises as well before I finally called his $1200 bet rather than cap it on 4th street as well:



Now, on 5th street I open-paired my 10s, which was horrible, while my opponent found a 6, another low card. Here I made a questionable call of his bet, on the assumption that the odds were decent that either the 2 or the 6 paired up one of his holecards. Again, the fact that he capped it on 3rd street meant to me that this guy had 2 other low cards in the pocket, so getting a 2 and a 6 on 4th and 5th streets still left me believing this guy had paired at least something so far, so I made the questionable call here, more based on pot odds than anything else, and hoping for him to catch bad on 6th to get a better sense from his betting pattern where he was really at in the hand up to that point:



6th street was better, bringing me a 3 while my opponent caught a 2, open-pairing him. Now at this point I'm still proceeding on the assumption that he had one pair already, such that this second pair on the board now gives him no more bricks he can hit. Which is good, since, unbeknownst to my opponent, that 3 I just caught also paired my hand (this is why razz can be so frustrating). So, the hope that he had made trips or two pairs through 6th street was my impetus for calling his 800-chip bet on 6th street, with me still hoping that he would miss again on 7th and possibly fold at the end to another strong bet from me:



By 7th street, I caught a Queen for a Queen-low, not a good hand at all for this situation, but I felt compelled to call his bet again on 7th street in the hopes that he was severely counterfeited and just hoping to get me to fold:



and SLAM!!



Exactly! This guy had boated up on 6th street, and then had made a "crying bet" on 6th and again on 7th with a hand he had to know was unlikely to win anything. Again I can't explain exactly what happened to clue me in to this guy having counterfeiting problems -- I know the amount of time he paused before betting on 4th and again on 6th streets definitely contributed to this feeling I had, but I can't really quantify what else it was. All I know is, this hand gave me about a 6-to-1 chip lead over second place of the 4 players remaining, and I knew I ought to be able to basically fold into the final 2 and my first-ever FTOPS seat.

After a very long bubble period, eventually #3 pushed a draw to just a 9-low allin against what turned out to be an already made 8-low:



which ended up with third place's 9-low losing to his opponent's made 7-low:



and that was it!





And just like that, I will be playing in the FTOPS Razz tournament on Friday night, November 17 at 9pm ET:



Wooohoooo! Now that you're all excited, make sure you go back to Iak's blog and congratulate him on a job well done, and a lot more cashish won that little old me did last night. And start qualifying for those FTOPS seats now, with two weeks to go there is plenty of time to play your way in for as little as $2 or as high as you're willing to pay to get in to the FTOPS tourney(s) of your choice.