Hot Hand #11 (Result), Running Bad (Part II), and Lost

What a fucking night of poker. On the good front, I would say I played very, very well for the first time in days. I played reserved, and I didn't make any of the stupid over-pushes that I've been prone to over the past few days with less than great hands. I took advantage with my strong hands, finally getting back to my usual ways of using deception and distraction to send the messages I wanted about what I was actually holding. So on the good side, last night saw the bad play that has plagued me for much of the past week seemingly gone, hopefully for fucking good.

And on the bad side, people sucked out beats on me anyways like Keeley Hazell's latest instructional video. Hole E. Shit I cannot believe some of the stuff I saw tonight. I know I've written over the past few days about some of the horrendously fidiotic plays and raises and calls I've made at the tables of late. Well last night was the other half of the perfect storm I've been writing about other than my bad play: bad luck. Following is a snapshot into my Wednesday night at the virtual poker tables. And oh yeah, let me just warn you now, this is going to be one big whiny fucking pussy post. If you can't take it, get the fuck out now while you still can, because I am less than uninterested in your opinion of me making big whiny fucking pussy posts like this. There, consider yourself warned.

Actually, first let me finish up with Hot Hand #11. You want to know what this guy had last weekend against my second-nuts set of Kings on the small blind-big blind slow played hand? Ask and you shall receive:











FUCK YOU POKERSTARS! Is this unfuckinreal or what?! Man that King on the turn is looking just so juicy now isn't it? How nice. I come back to this fucksite for the first non-WWdN tournament in weeks, and this is what I get. That is a great example of the kind of shit I've been running into again and again and again since I won that $5000 in the 30k guaranteed tournament on full tilt one week ago now. Un fucking believable. Now everyone please be sure to tell me how I should have known this from his allin move on the turn, how I brought it on myself by checking before the flop, etc. God how I love when people say stuff like that. I really do. So please keep those comments coming. Un. Fucking. Believable. You honestly could not make up some of the refuckulous stuff I've seen on pokerstars this year. I mean, you could make it up, but you wouldn't. If you were watching Tilt or whatever that horrendous ESPN poker show was called, and this hand happened, you would turn it off. Too stupid, too obviously staged. Well, nope. It's all real and it's been happening to me nonstop this past week.

Oh and hey, before I forget and speaking of ESPN, be sure to go by and congratulate one of our own, Dr. Pauly, for nabbing a ridiculous gig with ESPN to write feature articles for ESPN Poker during the WSOP this summer. Can you believe that?! That has got be just about the coolest fucking this I've ever heard for one of our crew. You know, no offense but most of us poker bloggers are basically just hacks, writing stream of consciousness or diary-style about our daily poker exploits. But Pauly is different. He's a real writer. And the fact that ESPN has recognized this is simply incredible. Writing poker for fucking ESPN. Unreal. Congratulations Pauly!

Anyways, about the bad luck I've been running into of late, last night there was lots, lots more.

It's about 10:10pm ET. We're in the Mookie, and I look down to find pocket Kings UTG+1. Lucko, UTG, pops it 3.5x, and I just smooth call, hoping to catch a reraiser preflop so I can re-pop it from there:



The flop comes 887. Lucko, who has been running bad this week himself, leads out for 300 chips into the 360 pot.

I quickly push allin with what I have to be fairly sure is the best hand here:



Lucko think and thinks, and eventually types "donk call" into the chat before calling my allin raise with this beauty:



AQ. And not even soooted! So I'm an 88% favorite on the flop. The offsuit 4 on the turn makes me a 94% favorite with one card to come. 15.7-to-1 odds? No problem!



Fuck off, Hoy! So I'm out of the Mookie in 10 minutes. Sweet. But the fun was just beginning for me last night.

Btw, two quick points about the Mookie. #1 I have no rant for Lucko. He admitted it was a donk call before he even made the play. I respect that. It's the guys who either don't understand good poker, or who do understand it but are too much of babies to admit when they've exhibited donkery, that really get me riled up. Lucko knows exactly what he did last night. He had already tried to give away his stack early on in the Mook with just QJ, but that attempt was thwarted much to everyone's dismay. Then this hand. And never fear, he was out of the Mook himself, even with my big stack, maybe 15 minutes later. Sounds like he wanted to be playing well in that thing about as much as I did last night. Running bad can be a funny thing like that. So anyways, to Lucko I say well done, calling with any possible outs against me lately is a +EV move, and my chips could not have gone to a better guy. In the battle of two guys both running bad this week, I think we saw whose luck is really worse right now than the other. Nice job.

And I also want to take a moment to congratulate Schaubs on taking down the $15 bounty I laid on the head of blogger killer Miami Don last night in the Mookie. Schaubs got his hands on that bounty early on, when he took pocket Kings up against Don's pocket Jacks, saw a Ten-high flop, and a couple of raises later both players were allin. So congrats to Schaubs for keeping Don from winning his 18th straight Mookie tournament, as well as to TFG for taking the entire tournament down and giving us our first new champion in like a month in the biggest of the weekly blogger tournaments. Still no points cashes for me in the BBT, and frankly it's hard for me to imagine when that is ever going to change with the way things have been running for me against the bloggers lately. They call my preflop raises with 54s and flop a flush against my pair, flush draw and oesd. They call my preflop raises with JTs against my ATs, and flop two pairs vs. my one pair. They call with AQo on a raggy flop against my KK, and hit a 16-to-1 Ace on the river. That my friends is just not a recipe that leads to BBT points right there. Ugh just thinking about all that makes me sick.

OK, so on to some other fun happenings from my poker night last night.

So I played the 9:40pm ET satellite to the midnight bracelet race that I've been playing every Monday and Friday (and some Wednesdays) since I won my first bracelet race of the year a couple of weeks back. Before that I was playing basically all of the 3 or 4 race satellites between 9 and 10pm ET every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but now that I've won the one 2k WSOP prize package, I've only been focusing on the larger buyin $26 sat at 9:40pm ET on most of these days.

OK so it's about 45 minutes in to the bracelet race satellite. I find pocket Kings (again) in middle position, and I bump the 160-chip big blind up to 480. The cutoff, sitting on a larger stack than mine, repops it preflop to 1280 chips. Of course I move allin in response:



He calls almost instantly. Now, take a moment and think what does this guy probably have to have reraised me preflop, and then to instantly call my allin re-reraise? What hands would act like this? Pocket Aces, maybe pocket Queens, or AK, right? Being that I had 2 of those three hands (and any other hand he could reasonably have) dominated, I got it allin and hoped for the best. So what's he show me when we flip up the cards before the flop?














That's right. Not even the Jackace! It's the powerhouse known as the fucking Tenace! It doesn't even have a name because almost nobody is that fucking bad to be reraising and then calling allin re-reraises preflop with big stacks with fucking Ace-Ten. WTF did this anushole think I possibly had here to raise and then allin re-reraise him here? A9? A6? 77? Geezus this one was hard to even believe. And I play with bloggers most nights, so that is really saying something let me tell you. Anyways, we can stop the foreplay and jump right to the money shot:



Fuckoff! Love it.

What's that? You want more? OK. More it is.

So last night I also played in the token frenzy that I've been writing about. In fact, I was thrilled to see how many bloggers were in this thing last night, which in the end I believe I counted was 17 guys from our crew out of the 104 total entrants in the frenzy at 9:45pm ET on Wednesday. Awesome. I love seeing so many people in there trying to win their token to this Sunday night's Big Game, the next event on the BBT slate and the biggest-buyin of all the weekly blogger tournaments at $75 (or a Tier II token) a pop.

Anyways, we're maybe an hour in to the frenzy, and I've gotten a bit short on chips. I find ATs on the button, and someone in middle position with a big stack raises preflop, so I just call. The flop comes fucking AQT rainbow. Top and bottom pairs for me. With a short stack, of course I only have one option here which is to get it allin, and with the preflop raise coming from middle position, I'm figuring hes on some kind of Ace or else a pocket pair, either way I am almost surely dominating him. Right?



Wrong! Blammo! Did I say "Fuckoff!" yet for this one? Wow is all I can say.

And congratulations to Byron and Mike Maloney for being the two bloggers I recognized who won their Tier II tokens in the token frenzy last night, joining Al and Wippy from the night before as four bloggers in two days who have won their way in to Sunday night's Big Game. I will definitely be back in that token frenzy again on Thursday night, at 9:45pm ET, and tonight there is no BBT event so as far as I'm concerned there is no reason for any of us not to be taking our shot for a measly $14 to play our way into the top 18% of finishers and win a Tier II token. I'll be there, and I'd love to see as many of you as possible as well as we continue our weekly assault on the single best and easiest way to win a $75 token for use in the Big Game.

Ok so maybe you're wondering, Hoy's luck was obviously atrocious in tournaments last night. Well, what about cash games? Actually, I have some of that for you as well. I've alluded to it here, but I've been 1- or 2-tabling at $.50-1 6-max nlh cash for the past week or two. I will make no comment at all here about my success or lack thereof in such endeavors, but early on Wednesday night saw me lay this great read on an opponent to get my hands on their entire stack. Well, almost, anyways.

So three players limp in, including me, to see a flop of 88J (two hearts). I'm first to act in the small blind, and I have K8o in my hand, so I've just flopped a monstrosity. I bet the pot, because Real Men Bet Their Trips as I've said over and over and over again on the blog:



Just the button calls. The turn comes a raggy 3 of diamonds. So, no flush possible yet, and no straight draws filled yet either. I lead out again:



This time my opponent minraises me:



I figure this means one of three things. He clearly has some kind of a hand, to have called my potbet on the flop and then be conspicuously minraising me here on the turn. He must have either (1) a solid Jack, which definitely is possible and the minraise here could be his attempt to try to determine if I am on an 8 or not, or (2) a pocket pair, medium or high, and again he needs to figure out if he is actually ahead or not, or (3) another 8 in his hand. I discounted possibility #2 pretty quickly because he did not raise it up preflop, and even #1 seemed a bit unlikely to me here because the minraise in this spot is not really designed to get him information. It's small enough that I could easily call even if I had just AJ or KK or something like that. No, this guy had played solidly enough that I had to put him on another 8 here. And if that's the case, I knew I was in a great spot because I had the King kicker to go along with it. So I reasoned he probably has another 8, and in that case he is likely to call whatever chips I bet at him. With me just making two relatively small (relative to our respective stack sizes) lead bets so far, he has no way of knowing I am on another 8 as well, so he's most likely going to call with his trips no matter what I bet. So I do what I have to do:



I believe Fuel calls this the "overbet for value". He calls, and I could not be more right in my read:



$140 cash, come to poppa:



Booooom! Another 9-outer on the river, an 82-18 shot, and I'm right back where I started from after that great play. Add to this that I got eliminated by Kajagugu from the Dookie (HORSE Turbo) last night when I got him in for the rest of my chips on the turn with just a redonkulous 19% draw and then he hit that, and my night at the poker tables was really fucking fidious by barely even midnight at the time. And hopefully you can see what I mean when I say that on Wednesday, unlike most of my play over the past week or so, I really did make great moves and consistently get in with the best of it, in most cases with the way, way way best of it. That 81-19 favorite I lost with on the river in the Dook was I think the worst odds I had of any of my tournament eliminations last night before midnight. Think about that. Gross.

Anyways, I do have to end this post with a couple of bright spots. First, I ended up staying up until 3am because I made another run to the cash in the nightly 30k guaranteed on full tilt, which I did manage to satellite into via the 8:30pm ET $8 rebuy sat as usual, busting out in 35th place for a profit of over $150 overall in the event, covering all of my tournament buyins on the day and then some. Plus, having clearly determined what readable fonkeys a couple of the guys at that cash table were, I stuck it out there for another hour so and ended up leaving with over $250 in my stack for one of my biggest cash wins in several weeks. So in the end last night ended up being a solidly profitable one for me, thanks to my hanging in there until late night and finally running into a streak of nice luck. But getting to that point was among the most frustrating experiences I have had at the virtual tables in quite some time, and I still can't believe the consistency with which I got fucked off across the board in almost every tournament I touched.

And before I go, was that not one of the best Lost episodes ever? I really feel like they gave us a lot of shit last night, did they not? But can somebody please tell me one thing. Please. How the fike could anyone on that island possibly trust Juliette at this point? I mean, once she pulled that key out for the handcuffs when she was with Kate, any possible inclination someone might have had to trust her had to just completely disappear. Don't get me wrong, I think Jack is correct that all she really wants to do more than anything else is get off that island. But that doesn't mean she wouldn't do Ben's bidding, since Ben seems to have no problem promising anything to anyone if it gets him what he wants. I just don't believe that for even one second. Just like I don't believe Juliette's sister is really alive. He showed her a fucking video? That shit can be doctored so easily, I bet some of our photoshoppy blogger brethren could probably make that video with some good equipment and maybe a week's time. And who the fug is "Jacob"? And what about this "Richard" character Ben was speaking to when he rolled the video footage of Rachel. WTF is going on on that show?!