Back to the Grind

It's always hard for me after a thing like the FTOPS. As I've written about here many times, I look forward to these large-guarantee tournaments more than most since I never get to play in tournaments this big during the late nights, the only times I generally ever play online poker. I am blessed with a gorgeous and fun family who always comes first for me with my free time, but the one negative result of that otherwise fabulous good fortune for me is that I never get to do the big Sunday tournaments on pokerstars or full tilt, never the Saturday afternoon biggies either, etc. So, I'm left with things like the FTOPS to get all juiced up about, to dream of the really big score, and I end up looking forward to these things far more than I probably should. And the end result? When it's over, it can be difficult for me to get back to the daily grind of the ho-hum regular old wimpy 4k, 25k, 30k and 35k guaranteed tournaments that comprise my usual nighttime online poker fare.

That's the situation I am facing now. Last night it was a little tough logging on to full tilt, knowing there would be no 200k guaranteed tournament for me to participate in, no large O8 field replete with several pros and about a million donks just waiting to give me their money, and no $1.5 million prize pool along with a bunch of my favorite bloggers all taking our chance at The Big One. Nope. Just back to my usual routine, some 30k satellites, maybe some Winner's Choice sats, maybe the 4k HORSE or the 25k guaranteed tournament.

That's why I was happy when I logged on around 7pm ET last night and saw a whole bunch of satellites to this "Grant Guarantee" on full tilt. Turns out this was a fun 50k guarantee tournament last night at 9:30pm ET, special for the President's Day holiday in the U.S., and that helped cushion the blow quite a bit of getting back to the daily mtt grind. In fact, as they were running turbo satllites basically every 5-10 minutes or so for this thing, I arrived at a strange decision: I played in five of them. Now, I knew I was going to win my way into the event in at least one of these five. With all the WC sats and the FTOPS sats and weekly HORSE sats and the nightly 30k sats I play in, I've got my multi-seat mtt satellite game honed to a sharp point. So I knew I'd get in to the Grant Guarantee and would not need 5 shots to do it. But, after the FTOPS, it makes some sense for me to get back to bankroll-building mode, and I view these mtt satellites as probably my best shot at cashing out of any strucute of mtt I can play in these days. So, I figured, I'll play the 5 remaining satellites last night, win my $55 buyin through one of them, and just pocket the cash for whatever other seats I can get.

Fast forward about 90 minutes later, and I had won 3 seats to the Grant Guarantee. That was one buyin to the 9:30pm ET 50k tournament, and $110 cash into my bankroll. Seriously, I could play and win these mtt sats in my sleep at this point. And there is just something so great about not having to play all the way down to the final seat. Just make it to the top 10 or 15 finishers, you've got your seat, and then you can just push allin if you so choose. Not only does it make the tournament itself go much faster, but it takes away a lot of the pressure as well that is normally associated with very late-stage mtt play. Only having to play down to 10 or 15 players is probably the best part to me of these multitable, multi-seat satellites, and I think the single biggest factor in making these things so easy to cash in.

So, never mind the fact that I played like donkey for some reason and was out of the actual Grant Guarantee in about 20 minutes after getting not one but two second-best (yet still very good) hands. What's important is that I got to play my mtt satellite game, got some more great practice, and won $110 cash for my roll in the process. Thank you full tilt.

So, out of the Grant Guarantee at around 9:50pm ET, that gave me perfect time to prepare for the weekly Mondays at the Hoy tournament on pokerstars at 10pm ET. Last night saw one of the largest fields we've seen in several weeks for the MATH tournament, with 27 runners each ponying up their $20 buyin for a shot at a $270 first prize, as well as the more valuable opportunity to get on to, or increase one's standing on, the 2007 Hoy moneyboard, where yours truly sat perched atop of the pack heading in to last night's affair.

Things started off well for me in the Hoy last night, as I found pocket Aces and pocket Kings within the first 30 minutes, using the Aces to nearly double up off of Mungo when he could not get away from his pocket Jacks with just one (non-Ace) overcard on the board and getting me up to the top of the leaderboard shortly into the event. I managed to stay there for the better part of the first hour of the event, that is, until LOK called me allin with his KQ against my AQ. Now, you may remember a couple of weeks back when LOK sucked out in consecutive nights to eliminate me both nights from the Mookie and then Al's Riverchasers tournaments on full tilt. Anyways, getting a chance to exact some revenge against LOK with my AQ against his KQ here was something I was pretty in to, and when the flop came KKJ, you can imagine how hard I kicked the dog in my apartment (ok so there's not really a dog in my apartment. I'm talking metaphorically here guys). Disgusting.

So, with my stack suddenly knocked down to a much more ordinary level, I was forced to keep myself off uber LOK tilt and try to keep playing my game. I declared to anyone who would listen in the girly chat that I no longer cared about winning the Hoy last night, and that I had only one objective -- to take LOK out of the thing, at any cost. No less than 10 people reminded me how bad of poker that is, to target an individual at the table for a personal vendetta instead of just playing your game -- and I informed each one of them of my acknowledgement of that fact. I wanted to play bad poker. I wanted to blow off my chance of winning. I was determined to just play any pot LOK was in if I could get in for any reasonable price, and try to hit something big to take him out. Happily, I didn't even have to make any stupid plays to get there, as within the next 30 minutes or so, nearing the final table bubble of the Hoy and with LOK sitting as the short stack, he open-pushed from the cutoff position, and I looked down from the big blind at A9o. I knew it was not a great play, but going with my stated intentions from the girly chat, I had to make the call, and LOK flipped up....

A8o. I was shocked to be ahead here, and relieved. And, I was even more relieved when my dominating hand actually held up against him!! I still can't believe it. So I reached my goal and eliminated LOK from the Hoy, securing my ability to survive past the two remaining short stacks and eventually reach the final table in the process (I believe my 856th consecutive Hoy final table, I'll have to check on that to verify).

Unfortuantely, my run to the pot o gold in the Hoy was ended shortly thereafter, as Smokkee, who has recently returned to pokerstars and forsaken full tilt due to a nasty string of beats at the latter, had amassed a pretty big stack by the beginning of final table play. And, for those of you who have played a lot with Smokkee before, as much of a risk-taker he can be at the beginning of a tournament, you have to multiply that by...oh....about 10,000 to see what he can be like with a big stack late in a tournament. So early on in the final table, somebody raised the 200 blinds to 600 from UTG+1 preflop, and Smokkee smooth called that raise from MP. In the small blind, I pushed in with my shortest-stack-at-the-table and with me holding pocket 9s. The first raiser folded, and Smokkee instantaneously called me with two crappy overs, I forget which two (youdonk). Let's just say that to even have called the preflop raise with his hand was a dubious play (and that's being kind), let alone calling the allin from me after the preflop raiser and caller already in the pot. But that's where Smokkee's mindset was at the time, and naturally he hit one of his laughable overcards and I was out in 9th place from the Hoy.

And once again I'm back to that word again -- mindset. Much as I wrote about with a certain someone and the massive stack she had amassed early on the WWdN a couple of weeks back, at which point she started calling anything and everything, sucking out on a bunch of people but eventually succumbing to the only possible outcome with that "call everything" mindset she had found halfway through the tournament, I will say it again now -- mindset is everything in an mtt. And this is all the more true in a tournament like the Hoy, where the skill level is generally much higher than what you'll find at your usual online mtt donkfest or even a larger, broader-based blogger tournament like the WWdN. So, with Smokkee's mindset where it was to be calling not only the EP preflop raise with the two embarrassing overcards, but then to also call my preflop push in that situation, I knew he couldn't win the thing. Even when it got down to just the final two players, with Smokkee having I believe a 450,000-to-1 chip lead over Bayne, I just knew Smokkee didn't have the right mindset to win it. And although the two battled it out for several minutes in heads-up play, with Smokkee fairly quickly losing his huge chiplead to Bayne, but then sucking it all back out when he nailed a flush on the turn for all his chips against Bayne's top pair, I still could not shake the feeling that Smokkee was playing with Lucko's aggression level, but without quite Lucko's hand selection to go along with it, which is a dangerous combination. Eventually Bayne took the lead back again with some solid play and hitting some flops with middle pairs, weak top pairs, etc., and then his AT prevailed over Smokkee's A9 in the final hand to ice Bayne's first-ever Hoy win, and maybe even his first Hoy cash as I think about it:



In the end it was a fun time had by all as always, in again what was the largest MATH field in several weeks which is always a good thing. So congratulations to our cashers, with Omega_man_99, a new player with whom I am not familiar, ending in 3rd place and taking home $108 for his efforts, and Smokkee ending in 2nd place for $162. And Bayne took it all down, winning his first weekly Hoy title along with the $270 first prize in the largest Hoy prize pool thus far of 2007, enabling Bayne to power his way solidly onto the 2007 Hoy moneyboard in the process (updated to include this week's results):

1. Hoyazo $400
2. Fuel55 $350
3. VinNay $310
4. Bayne_s $270
5. Manik79 $252
6. Smokkee $162
7. Chad $120
7. Zeem $120
9. Ganton516 $114
10. Omega_man_99 $108
10. Wigginx $108
12. NewinNov $90
13. Columbo $80
13. PhinCity $80
13. jeciimd $80
16. l.e.s.ter000 $72
17. Julius Goat $60

And who is that up on top of the list still? Can anyone dethrone me? Just please promise you'll all keep calling me with two crapovers at the final table, and I think I'll stay right where I am thank you very little.

OK a few other quick things. As part of my return to the normal routine last night, I decided to play the nightly HORSE mtt at 10:15pm ET for the first time in several weeks, and I ended up having a great run. A run that included nailing quad 9s in stud high once I was allin on 3rd street nearing the ITM positions, and just generally hitting a lot of big cards right when I needed them. That HORSE tournament really turns in to quite the luckfest once you're ITM, as the blinds get so big that you're basically totally at the mercy of the cards, what you start with and in particular what the board brings you. After getting into the money positions which began at 24th place like usual (163 runners started off in this event, fairly usual for these days in this tournament), the O8 hands began, and just to harken back to a post from last week, with high blinds I managed to get A2 dealt to me in about 4 out of 5 hands. As with last week, I went ahead and raised almost every one of these up (I followed Garth's advice and did not raise when I was in EP on one or two occasions, much to my profit, thank you Garth), but unlike my terrible final hour to the FTOPS O8 event last week, this time I actually managed to make a low in most of these hands. At the risk of causing some of you to stop reading poker blogs in general, let's just say that I had a nice run in these hands, one which took me all the way to my elimination hand which saw me take a flop with just one other player with my hand of A♠2♠3♠K♣. The flop came 3♥4♠K♠. So, I was looking at the nearly-uncounterfeitable nut low draw with any 5, 6, 7 or 8 falling on the turn or river, plus on the high side I had the nut flush draw with any spade on the turn or river, a straight draw with any 5 falling on the turn or river, and I had top and bottom pairs on the flop already to boot. Long story short, with all this stuff working for me on the flop, I ended up getting my shortish stack allin with one opponent after I checkraised him on the flop and then checkraised him again on the turn when another offsuit Ace fell. He flipped up nothing but a bunch of high cards, but the offsuit 2 on the river meant that I did not fill my flush, did not fill my straight, and did not make a boat for the high side, and even worse I also failed to fill my low thanks to the double-counterfeit on the turn and river. And, what's worse, my opponent made a set of Kings and scooped the entire massive pot from me. Frustrating to the say the least. Still, a very nice run for me overall:



Of course, Chad outdid me here and ended up finishing in 7th place overall in this thing, but I'm still very pleased with my performance overall. And Chad, in a weird deja vu from a few months ago, let me personally congratulate you for a job well done for a guy who was quitting online poker for good as of the end of the FTOPS on Sunday. You truly are amazing when you're not playing online poker anymore buddy. I'm glad to see you always not following through with these silly threats, but at the same time I think I liked playing tournaments against you better when you were posting middle finger pictures and running bad instead of proclaiming the end of your online poker career. Congrats man, great run.

Secondly, go stop by jeciimd's blog if you have the chance for an interesting question about how to play certain big starting hands to a lot of action preflop. I for one am looking forward to jec's comments on that, in addition to maybe, someday, finally getting up a post about his incredible run to 13k+ in the FTOPS O8 event from last Wednesday.

Lastly, about the hand I posted about yesterday from the FTOPS Main Event, if you'll recall I called a preflop raise with ATo and found one more caller from the blinds as well, going on to see a three-handed flop of AT5. This was near the end of the second hour of the event, with my stack sitting at just under the 5000-chip starting level. So, after UTG+1 bet out the size of the pot (240 chips) on the AT5 flop that I nailed, I minraised to 480 chips with my top 2 pairs, and then the big blind min-reraised me to 960 chips. UTG+1 folded, and I smooth called, partially as a slow-play and partially for protection just in case this guy had flopped a miracle set of Tens or 5s. When the turn came a King, I bet out for 1200 chips for half the pot, and was quickly reraised allin by the big blind. This was where I asked for your advice on what he likely had, and how you would play it from here.

The comments I received were interesting to me. A number of you felt that I was clearly ahead here, and that the guy was likely some donk probably holding something like AJ or AQ, and that I was about to double up nicely. Personally I think this would not be smart poker by me. The guy min-reraised, which as Smokkee wisely points out in the comments, is a very obvious and very overtly suspicious move for anyone to ever make at a poker table. To me, like Smokkee, this move screamed out "big hand!" on the flop. Now, I had flopped top 2 pairs, so unless he was on a set I was still ok, but I think suggesting that he would min-reraise the flop with just top pair decent kicker, although possible, is just not nearly as likely as him having had either a set or AK, which to me were easily his most likely holdings in this hand.

A few others of you took the opposite approach, saying I must be beat here and that he could even have a hand like QJ, something which even a few of the bloggers in the girly chat said at the time. I think I commented about this yesterday in the comments, but I don't see how you can possibly reasonably put this guy on QJ in this spot. Again I go back to the highly dubious min-reraise on the flop. Is this guy possibly min-reraising two other players giving a lot of action in front of him on a flop of AT5 with just QJ? I mean, he would know he is behind there, and drawing just to a 4-outer inside straight. Is he going to min-reraise there? No way. This guy did not have QJ, it just cannot be. Even a donk might just smooth call my minraise on that flop with QJ (a total donk, mind you), but not even the major donks are reraising with that shit hand, let alone the min reraise.

I was also intrigued by Lucko's comment where he said there was "NO way" he is folding in that spot, with half his stack already in that pot by the turn card. While I can certainly understand the sentiment of wanting to play out the only big hand I've been dealt in 2 hours of play in the biggest online poker tournament I've ever participated in, especially with half of my stack now in the pot on the turn, I have to ask you then, what hand do you think I can beat? What does this guy realistically have that I can beat? Before the King on the turn, I could easily see this guy having AK -- in fact, that's exactly what I had put him on as of the min-reraise. Although a set was very much a possibility, if I had to guess I think the set raises more than just the min-reraise there, given that there's already been such action on the flop he can probably assume TPTK or top two pairs, etc. will call a bigger reraise than that. I think the min-reraise fits perfectly well with AK. So, when the King fell on the turn card, making the board AT5K rainbow, and he moved me allin with his raise on the turn, I looked at the possible holdings that would fit his preflop call of a raiser and a caller from the big blind, his min-reraise on the AT5 flop and now the push on the turn. What hands could he have here that I can beat? This is a huge tournament, and he had a nice-sized stack going in, so I am not putting him on a stone bluff here (again, especially not with that curious min-reraise on the flop). So, if he's not stone bluffing, is he really possibly doing all this with AJ or AQ? No way I say. Once that King fell, if he had an Ace weaker than AK, then he would have to fear me having the AK as much as I feared him having it. So, when he moved me in on the turn there, I could not escape the conclusion that he either had flopped a set, or that he had AK and had just hit a miracle turn card.

So I laid it down. And I never did find out what the guy had. Although for me, I am completely positive that I was behind. I think this was a mature, smart laydown for me, one that I don't think I would have made a year ago. But reviewing everything that happened in the hand, I just can't see him having had anything other than 55, TT, AA or AK, all of which have me crushered with just one card to come. I might have believed he had A5s or something and flopped a lower 2 pairs than mine, but again once he pushed when the King hit the turn, I can't see him doing that to his big stack when I acted like I could have had AK all along and be well ahead of him with just the one card left to his the board. He had to have a set or AK, I am sure as sugar about it. Does anyone feel differently about that? I'd love to hear your reasoning on that one.

OK, WWdN tonight at 8:30pm ET (password is "monkey" as always). I should be there. And, come be a man and join me in the 8:15pm / 8:45pm ET turbo 6-max nlh satellites for the nightly 30k guaranteed on full tilt as well, where I definitely plan to be making my nightly attempt to qualify for the $109 buyin event for a super cheap and very fast-paced 6-max nlh run. Hopefully I will see some of you then, or in the WWdN for some old-school bloggerdonkery.