Event #6 FTOPS Recap, and The Rebuy Coming Next

Wow. Another day, another nice run in the FTOPS. And another no-cash. But that's not even the big story of the day for last night's 75k guaranteed O8 tournament for FTOPS Event #6. Here's what is:



That's right, folks. Two bloggers finished in the top 20 in this event, with sng, mtt and cash specialist Lucko ending in 16th place after a very nice run that lasted well into 6-hour territory. And, looking at the top of the board graphic above, you will see new blogger jeciimd who ended in 3rd place in FTOPS Event #6, raking in a whopping $13,365!! Way to go jec!! I know jec had been giving me crap for weeks for "tricking" him into playing poker on valentine's day by convincing him to play an O8 1-table sng qualifier for this event back in late January (as if he needed much convincing), but now at least I hope both he and Mrs. iimd can be grownup enough to thank me for my foresight. $1500 or so should do it. Seriously, this is a huge accomplishment for jec, I know it's his biggest single poker win ever, and more than that, to my knowledge 3rd place in this event now makes jec's finish last night the single best blogger finish in any of these FTOPS events. I know Iakaris came in 4th in the plh tournament in the last FTOPS this past November, for a 12k+ score, but this 3rd place now officially bests that finish, as well as the cash score, so go stop by his blog and congratulate jeciimd for a job very well done. He'll probably be asleep all day, as you can see he played until around 5:20am before finally turning in for the night. Nothing like 8+ hours of donking it up in the biggest donkey poker game of them all with a field that I can personally attest was chock fuckin full of donkey idiot suckerouter fuckfucks.

As for me, so I finished in 113th place out of 594 runners. Another nice run by me, but once again I had an incredibly hard time hitting any flops in this entire event. As I look back on it I don't even know how I lasted as far as I did, but I do know I was down to allin on at least four occasions and managed to come back from all of them, in each case (as well as most of my other wins) because my opponent(s) insisted on playing hands all through the night such as K742 (2 of a suit), AKQ4 (not suited), and other loser O8 hands like QQ97 (2 of a suit) and JJ43 (2 of a suit). If you don't know, all four of the above hands are basically not playable in Omaha 8-or-Better, and yet, the entire time I was in the event, I survived only because basically everyone else insisted on playing hands like this time and time again. It was truly unreal how horrible the skill level was in the field, and I mean all the way through to the time where I got knocked out, and most of the guys left at my table were donkeys even when I did get eliminated.

Now, you may be wondering, why didn't I win? Why knocked out in 113th place? The answer is very simple, and it's actually the exact same story as the 6-max nlh event on Tuesday night: I couldn't hit a flop to save my life. I made it as far as I did because when I would limp in with 23, A3, A4, etc., there were constantly monkeyasses in there with me with A5, 26, etc. for low hands. And I did manage to make a few high hands along the way -- unfortunately only a few -- and between these two factors, I was able to get as high as about 9500 chips on a couple of different occasions. But in general, the flops missed me and missed me hard all through the night. I played for nearly 4 hours in this thing before getting knocked out, so believe me I played a lot of O8 hands last night. And that means I saw my fair share of A2 hands, and my fair share of AA hands, and even my fair share of AA2x hands.

And I barely won with any of them.

12 times (no shit) in last night's tournament I was dealt A2 in my hand, and yet failed to make a winning low. Twelve. Fucking. Times. Four times I found pocket Aces and lost the high end of the pot. That's 16 times dealt the stone nuts for one side of the pot where I could not take down even half the pot. And believe me, even over 4 hours of solid play, there aren't nearly enough times where you're dealt the nuts to support that kind of flop-missery. It was sick.

What's that? You want proof? You got it.

Although I took over 300 screen shots of last night's O8 tournament, I'm only going to show you just the hands that occurred during the last hour I played in the event. This complete flop deadness was my theme of the night without a doubt, but I'm only going to show you hands that occurred during my last 60 minutes of play, which occurred from 12:14 to 1:14am ET yesterday, just so you can get a flavor for the kind of shit I was dealing with just during one hour of the four I played in the big 08 tournament last night:

12:17am:



There's my pocket Aces losing over 5000 chips in a pot with no fucking qualifying low, because he was holding J6 and he flopped a set and then turned a boat. Yummy.

12:41am:



A2, no low hand qualifies despite two low cards flopping. Delicious. This one is gonna become a pattern. A pattern that continued on the very next hand.

12:43am:



Another A2 with no qualifying low. Love it.

12:51am:



Another A2 with no low, plus the three clubs is always good as well. Of course, on all these hands I am raising it up preflop with my dominating low hand, so I'm just bleeding chips from what never was able to grow to a big stack anyways. Very frustrating.

12:59am:



Here's one where I have an A3 (suited), so it's not an A2, but with all the limping going around it is obvious that my A3 will be the nut low if it hits.



It didn't. Again. Absolutely sickening.

1:03am:



There I am once again raising it up preflop with another A2, with a lot of limpers so I know I'm gonna get paid, if just one of these fuckers would make a low for me.



Nope. Fuckers. Huge loss there, as my nut straight draw and my top and bottom pairs on the river also failed to hold up. Sweeeeet.

1:06am:

Here is just an example of the kind of donkery that allowed me to stay in this event for as long as I did, when I wasn't hitting any of my big hands all night long:



Check out that BrassTax dude up top there. AK98 with the King suited. In O8. Can you believe it? So that there was my third allin double up already in the event, as I continued to skim along the bottom but was just unable to ever get a big stack going. Although BrassTax clearly doesn't have a clue what a good O8 starting hand is, in the end there just weren't enough people with that magnitude of donkery to keep me afloat when I kept getting raising hands dealt to me preflop, and then kept failing to win the half of the pot that I had the nuts dealt to me for before the flop.

1:10am:



Still another A2 that failed to make a low. It was just fucking unbelievable what I endured last night in this fucking thing. And that hand in particular was me winning when I paired my Queen, but my point is, I could not make a low with A2 to save my frigging life, and at the same time I couldn't win a high with AA either, no matter what I did. Sick sick sick.

And then, the piece de resistance, the perfect ending to my night of O8 with the uberdonks.

1:14am:



So here I'm dealt a veritable monster. AA24 double-suited. It's almost hard not to win with a hand like this, at least half the pot. Right? So I'm doing the right thing here and raising preflop. Only one (donkey)caller.



So here I am betting out on a very favorable flop, which gives me the nearly ncounterfeitable nut low, plus still my overpair Aces for the high.



The assmonkey on my right calls my flop bet. Now, down to just 304 chips left, I have to call the rest on the turn when an offsuit Jack falls, and check it out:



So here this monkey called my flop bet with nothing but top pair Tens, and not even an Ace kicker. It's scary. He's got no part of the possible diamond flush draw on the flop, and he's got no draw to a straight either. In fact I can't even explain what this dickledonk was doing just giving me his money on that flop. And that's not even mentioning the low draw on the board that he also has no part of. At this point he picks up a wrap draw on the turn, but I'm still a significant favorite to win at least half the pot here.



Booooom! So down goes my double-suited pair of Aces with A24 for the low, losing both sides of the pot on a runner-runner turn and river card to send me home in 113th place. And keep in mind, all these screenshots I showed were just what happened during my last hour of play in this tournament. There are just too many more to show from the first 3 hours, but trust me, it's all more of the same. So the donkery, and the non-flop-hittage was just too much for me to overcome in the end, and that was it for me. Again like with the 6max event, I am very proud of my finish given the complete lack of help I got from any cards on the board, but that pride and about fifteen bucks will buy me a tall chai mocha latte at my neighborhood Starbucks. So that's now three FTOPS events down, and nothing to show for it in terms of any significant cashes. And let me tell you, it doesn't feel good.

So briefly I want to talk about tonight's FTOPS Event #7, the $216 buyin rebuy nlh tournament. As I've mentioned previously, I satellited my way into this event a week or two ago in a rebuy satellite that cost me $31 for 3 rebuys. I also won my way into the FTOPS Main Event via a $14 rebuy satellite that also cost me 3 rebuys before settling in to win the seat. So tonight, I've decided after much soul-searching that it just doesn't make sense for me to play my original stack in tonight's event without any possibility of rebuying. Originally that had been my plan, but realistically speaking, with how fonkeyish the first hour of all these rebuy tournaments is, it makes no sense at all for me to expect my initial chip stack to last through Monkey Hour in this thing. So, I'm looking for your opinions on how you would recommend I strategize my rebuy plan for tonight's event. I made a deposit via ePassporte this morning (my first, which worked perfectly btw), so I've got more than enough fundage in there to support a few rebuys and then some if need be. But at $200 a pop, there is no way I'm going to spend more than a few rebuys total on this tournament, so what should I do? As I mentioned, it took me three rebuys to win each of my two FTOPS rebuy satellites, so I'm thinking maybe I will budget for a maximum of 3 rebuys total, including the addon if that makes sense at the end of Monkey Hour. Does that sound about right to you rebuy guys out there (yes I mean you Lucko). Would you recommend that I do the auto-rebuy at the beginning of the event, like I usually do in my rebuy tournaments? And then what, maybe one more rebuy during Monkey Hour if needed, and that's it? And then I can consider the addon if and when I get to that point. Does that sound right to you guys? Please let me know your thoughts today if you read this because I'm really still trying to think through my general rebuy strategy for tonight's tournament. I'd love to get a nice cash in the books for the FTOPS, but a $200 rebuy event makes it very difficult for a guy with my roll on full tilt right now to play this the way I'd really like to. Basically I'm going to have to hope to get lucky early, or, more accurate, not to get horribly unlucky early with a gross suckout, big blind special running Kings into Aces, or something like that. I suspect tonight is going to be really tough to play on a limited bankroll, so any suggestions you guys have strategy-wise will be greatly appreciated, and definitely thoughtfully considered.

OK that's all for now. Congratulations again out to Lucko for his 16th place finish and about 4 times his buyin back, and especially to jeciimd for his huge 13k+ score and final table finish. Unbelievable. See you tonight for FTOPS #7!