FTOPS Wrap, and a Hand to Analyze

Lots of pokery action this weekend, I have got to say. Even for me. But first, let's start with a familiar refrain:



Mondays at the Hoy. Tonight at 10pm ET on pokerstars. Hopefully many of you are like me and have the day off today as we celebrate some of the most glorious leaders in our country's history. Strangely, I'm noticing that these guys who have holidays in their honor in the U.S., whose faces are carved into mountains here, etc., never tried to prevent our citizens from wagering on games of chance skill. My how things change. Anyways, so take your time today with your families, with your friends, sleep in, whatever you do on your days off. Then come home and log on to pokerstars tonight and join your friends in the run to climb onto the 2007 Hoy money leaderboard, or increase your leaderboard standing, in what is always a fun time for everyone in our weekly Hoy tournament.

So, this weekend concluded the FTOPS, and I actually played a lot more than I expected this weekend in connection with the big series on full tilt. Basically, Friday night was FTOPS Event #8, pot-limit holdem, and much like my earlier FTOPS performances this week, I couldn't hit a flop to save my life. Also much like the rest of the FTOPS for me, I still managed to last pretty long into the event, ending in 205th place out of 970-some players, based just on my wiles and my thievery, ending up losing when my AK did not improve against 88 and I busted some 70 spots out of the money. Although once again I lasted far, once again in this year' FTOPS I managed to end slightly out of the money in very frustrating fashion, playing and losing with one of the best hands I saw all night after barely hitting a flop over three or four hours.

Then a strange thing happened. Early on Saturday morning, Hammer Wife, sensing my frustration, out of the blue tells me I should play the HA event on Saturday night at 6pm ET. Yes, despite it being a weekend and all. I was floored. I'm pretty sure at least part of it was related to her wanting to cancel our dinner plans that night with a bunch of people we don't really know (long story there), but hey I'll take it. It took me about 2 hours (and exactly $101) to satellite in to that event early on Saturday afternoon, and I was in. Unfortunately, my FTOPS run continued that night much as it had started in the rest of the FTOPS, as early on I lost almost my entire stack after getting some guy allin from my big blind special where I had AK but played it slow all the way through. By the time the turn card had fallen on a board of A963, my heads-up opponent had sunk almost his entire stack into the hand with what I was sure was a just a lower Ace than mine, and when he moved the rest in on the turn I happily called him, showing my AK and he showed me A5. Horrible, horrible, smelly play by him. The 5 on the river, though, made him feel like a genius I'm sure, and I was basically done in the first hour. Gross.

In the meantime, I also managed to satellite in once again to Saturday night's 30k last night, as well as satelliting in to Saturday night's Winner's Choice tournament on full tilt. In both of these events I played very well, busting from the 30k in 106th place out of 330 runners when my AK could not improve against TT, and more painfully, busting from the WC in 27th place out of 101 runners when my AK could not hold up against Ace-fucking Queen. That one really stung because it was one of my deepest runs yet into the Winner's Choice tournament that is sort of an informal goal of mine to win sometime this year, and it's always hard when you manage to trick the big stack into giving you a quarter of his huge pile of chips just by slow-playing and stalling before making your bets or raises. Dammit that one still hurts today to tell the truth.

So, after having a lot of success once again in the satellites over the weekend, but running out of luck in the actual events, Sunday night saw the FTOPS Main Event. I don't plan to spend a ton of time rehashing all that here, but suffice it to say that our boy Iakaris ran deep, ending I think in 137th place for a cool $1449 in his second solid FTOPS run of career, and a fun guy to rail on the girly chat since I personally owned 0.83% of his total take (i.e., 13 big ones with a little generous rounding from Iak). And the big winner among the bloggers was brdweb, who is on a huge run of late after winning the Daily Double B on full tilt last week, and then finishing last night in 38th place in the main event for over 3 grand and change. I only stayed up to rail him until maybe 1am ET or so so I don't know how it ended, but I can say having played in this field of 3271 players that it is quite a feat to last as deep as brd did (or Iak for that matter), so go stop by both of these guys' corners of the blogosphere and give your congrats to both for a job well done.

Me, I ended up out of the event around 2300th out of 3271, as I never saw a hand better than AT or TT the entire night. This in stark contrast to Iak, or especially to luckbox I mean Rav who must have seen pocket Aces, pocket Kings, pocket Queens, AK or AQ at least 15 times during the 2 hours or so I railed him. Must have been nice in a big tournament like that, I gotta say. Well for me, no good starting cards was an obvious problem, and then there was the one flop I finally hit for the first time in almost the entire FTOPS run, and that's a hand I would like to get everyone's thoughts on today.

Here's the setup. I'm in middle position, with a stack of around 4800 chips (started at 5000 in this super-stacks event) and I look down to find ATs, the best Ace I saw in over 100 minutes of play in the Main Event. UTG+1 raises the 15-30 blinds up to 90, and I call his raise, knowing I'm going to need either a monster flop or a flush draw in order to continue, but also knowing this was the best hand I'd seen all day and I had to try to make something happen here. The big blind also puts in another 80 chips to call, and we see a flop 3-handed:

AT5.

Boom! Just the monster flop I needed. As I said, it is legitimately the first flop I've hit hard in basically the entire FTOPS, and I'm juiced to finally win some fucking chips for a change. UTG+1 is first to act and bets out 240, a little over two-thirds the size of the pot. I go for the minraise to 480, hoping to get some more chips into the pot and at least get rid of the big blind from the hand. Before I can congratulate myself on the nice move, the big blind minreraises it to 960 chips. Hmmmm. UTG+1 insta-folds, and action is back to me.

What would you do here? Is this a push situation? No way I was folding, but do I reraise, or just call and wait to see another card? Let me know your thoughts

In the end, I went ahead and smooth called his bet. I had minraised, so I figured that actually gave me a bit of deception here that perhaps my hand wasn't actually so great, and I had already managed to build up a nice pot with a top two pairs including an Ace, so I had to feel great about where I was at in the hand right now.

The turn card is a King, for a board now ot AT5K. I pause, continuing with the feigned weakness, and then bet out half the pot, which I believe was 1230 chips (almsot exactly a third of my remaining stack) into the 2460 chip pot. My opponent responds by also pausing for a short while, and then moving the rest of his chips into the middle, enough to cover me.

Now what? What would you do here? What do you put this guy on, and what is the proper response? Again I would love to hear your thoughts, as this was legitimately the only big hand I've played in almost the entire FTOPS series this time around, and I found it very interesting the way it all played out.

As always I'll tell you all what happened after I've had a chance to read some of your comments.

I guess that's all for now. Hope everyone had/has a nice holiday weekend, and see you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy!!