MATH, Monday 1K and More Cash Games

Right off the bat, it's Monday again, and that means it BBT time again, and that means that tonight is the latest installment of Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!



Come out and play in the first of the three BBT tournaments on the slate for you this week, as the leaderboard continues to take shape, but where it's easily still early enough in the schedule that anyone winning the MATH tonight will probably climb into the top 10 on the board if you've had any points success at all in the previous events. And there is always knocking me from the top of the list of 2007 MATH money winners, where I have floundered for several weeks despite my last Hoy cash coming late in the Triassic Period. Not to mention the $1200 prize pool all of this month in the Hoy since the move to full tilt and making the tournament buyin a Tier I token or $26 cash. So there are plenty of reasons to come out tonight and donkeysuck me out of the MATH at 10pm ET on full tilt!

Here's another thing for those of you out there who follow the NFL draft. Btw I would never have thought anybody would be interested in the NFL draft who also reads here, but I got a lot of commentary from a lot of people over the past week asking me who I thought my Eagles were going to take, who was going #2, etc. So here's my one lasting thought from the 2007 NFL draft:

Calvin Johnson. Repeat that name out loud once or twice to yourself right now. Now if that ain't the name of a star touchdown-making, showboatin' NFL wide receiver, I don't know what is. Calvin. Johnson. It just sounds like a pro-bowler, doesn't it?

And speaking of the NFL, so as of this weekend we now know one thing for sure about the AFC: The Colts and the Patriots will meet again in the AFC Championship game, and nobody else in the AFC is even worth following. My dumbass New York friends are saying the Jets are for real, I got other guys telling me the Chiefs or the Broncos or San Diego. No. Adding Randy Moss, dickhead though he is, is a disgusting turn of events for the rest of the AFC, for a team whose offense I heard this morning on Mike and Mike was already ranked #7 in the NFL last season. With a few key moves this off-season, the Pats have re-made themselves the Team to Beat in the AFC this year, and no way anyone passes these two teams heading into the 2007-2008 regular season. Pats-Colts baby. Get used to hearing it.

Now on to some poker Let me start for today by saying for the record that I lost it with my post on Saturday. That post was rude and more obnoxious than it ought to be. But man does it phuckin sting losing a full buyin like that, in front of the bloggers no less, when I had been nicely up before that already on the night. But I decided long ago (never to walk in anyone's shawows and) that I was not going to rant with people's specific names and links like that anymore. I mean, I am fine saying I think someone I respect made a bad play in my blog, but to just go and kill somebody in a feature-like piece like my last post, that just makes me a dickhead. There I said it. I debated taking the thing down entirely because it's rude and obnoxious and uncalled-for, but I'm just not in to self-censorship like that. Instead I will just say my peace here today, and hopefully these things will be read in conjunction by people who follow along with what I have to say.

In general this weekend, though, even despite the Friday night stackraping at the hands of Butch Howard, I had my best cash run ever, taking down a total of about 4 to 5 buyins over the weekend in about 10 hours of 1- and 2-tabling 1-2 6max nlh. It was awesome. I got some hands over the span of all those hours, and I pushed them just hard enough to get what I needed to get out of them. My biggest move of the weekend was raising with a lot of draws. I even had situations where 3 limpers checked the flop to me on the button, but rather than take the free card on the cheap round, I still went ahead and put in a smallish raise, getting more money into the pot and representing a strong hand, while also chasing out a few guys who might otherwise have runner runnered me along the way, and also usually buying me a free card on the turn, when things are typically more expensive, rather than on the flop which is typically a cheaper bet to pay for anyways. Of course you don't hit all your primary draws with two cards to come, but I found this weekend then when I did hit my draws after betting them on the flop, that was when a guy with TPTK, two pairs or even the same turned set that killed me on Friday with the bloggers, was likely to pay me off in a big way. Raising with my draws. For whatever reason, I find myself doing this more in cash games than I do in tournaments, I think maybe because my tournament chips are just so much more in short supply since I can't ever replenish, and so far it's been working for more profit when I hit my draws then it's been costing me when I miss 'em.

On the tournament front, things are kinda so-so for me. I think I played 8 FTOPS and other satellites this weekend all told. And in those 8 satellites, I final tabled 7 of them. These have all ranged between 9 and 40 players, and I've been playing very well in all of them, which is good. Throw in the Saturday 1:30pm ET bracelet race that I somehow found myself playing in as well, which I also final tabled out of I think 59 entrants, with just the top place winning the 2k WSOP prize package. So I played great tournament poker this weekend, in a sense. However, of those 8 final tables in two days, I ended up winning the seat or the prize in precisely one of them. I'll get to that one win in a minute, but otherwise, I bubbled out in 5th place in that bracelet race after being in 1st with 8 players remaining when my JJ ran into KK before the flop, and then on the very next hand my A9 could not hold up against 77 and IGH. In my FTOPS satellites, I have even made a small amount of cash in a couple of these final table runs, but othewise I am just the fucking bubble boy this weekend which really killed me. And more than that, all but one of my FTOPS final tables this weekend ended with me losing to an inferior hand when the money got in. That kills me even more. I'm talking about losing an FTOPS ME satellite in 3rd place with the top 2 winning seats when the fonkey in 2nd calls my preflop allin with his A6o against my pocket Kings. Ace on the flop after that recockulous move and I'm done, no seat. No I don't want the $126 cash or whatever it was, thank you very little.

This weekend I also lost in 4th or 5th place in multi-seat awarding satellites with 88 to 66 allin preflop (four-flush, of course), AA to KJs allin preflop (turned straight, you know how it is), and with QQ on a Jack-high flop to a guy who called my allin on the flop with nothing more than unimproved big slick (I don't have to tell you how that one ended up). And oh yeah let's not forget Sunday night's Blogger Bracelet Race, that Al was The Man enough to chip in out of his own pocket to ensure a winner-take-all $1500 buyin prize pool to play in a WSOP event, where I had the misfortune of having a somehow-even-at-8pm ET-tired Gracie at my table, who typed in "I'm tired, I just need to go to bed, gl everyone" or something similar before calling my allin (I had TT and had raised a bunch of limpers allin) preflop with her 33, and promptly nailing a 3 on the flop to do me in. Zoinks. Of course my last crumbs of chips were eliminated on the very next hand when my allin push with QT ran into TFG's Q7, and he promptly flopped a 7 and IGH. Now that right there btw is the best proof I know of that online poker is rigged -- how many times has this happened to you? You get redickulously sucked out on to be totally crippled in a tournament, and then you push allin on the very next hand, you have a big lead preflop but then boom! you're done. I can't count how many times I seem to get redickulously sucked out on to officially finish me in online poker tournaments, immediately following some huge crushing loss that unofficially finishes me first. Rigged I tell you. Anyways, congratulations to blogger brdweb for busting out with the victory and taking down the $1500 winner-take-all first prize (thanks again, Al!), who will be playing in Event #15 in the 2007 WSOP, $1500 nlh on Saturday of the WPBT weekend (I will also be in that event btw). Brdweb also graciously offered to swap out 1% of his action in WSOP Event #15 to all of his other final tablers in last night's event as part of the deal that paid the whole prize pool to first place, so kudos to everyone who scored there and especially to brdweb for taking down the prize and bringing another blogger to the WSOP! And of course kudos to Gracie for ending up in 6th place and getting her 1% of brdweb's WSOP action. Gotta love it -- hopefully that was worth staying up for another couple hours for. It will be when brd takes down 650k for first prize at the WSOP. And I expect at least my Blogger Bracelet Race buyin back from Gracie if that happens.

OK so back to me, the one big satellite win I did come up with this weekend was that I qualified for for the 1k Monday mtt on full tilt for the first time:



Again I played really great in this tournament, and for once of late I was able to hold on after my usual vicious suckout for the victory in what was a 23-player, $100 buyin satellite into the $1000 buyin Monday night event. It was sick because with me in 1st place out of 5 players remaining (top two won 1k seats), I actually got the guy in 2nd place to move allin preflop against me with his QQ against my KK, a move which would have given me a 4 to 1 chip lead over the guy in 2nd place with just 4 players remaining. Naturally with the way things ran for me at final tables this weekend, he turned a Queen and I was knocked back down to 4th place out of 5. Still I perservered, climbing my way back up and eventually winning a big pot to get back into 2nd place of 5 left, behind just the suckerouter, where I held on to take 2nd place and play my way in to the 1k Monday mtt for the first time ever. To be perfectly honest, I have looked at this tournament with jealousy many times over the past several weeks since full tilt starting running it, debating whether I could possibly justify buying in directly for $1060, but of course my answer has always been "Yes! Well.......maybe.......no what am I crazy?" and I've chickened out, I think wisely. But just last week I played my first satellite into this event, which at a 1k buyin I never have seen a sat for less than a $75 buyin for the sat, and this is my first win and something that I am really excited about.

So come rail me tonight at 9pm ET in my first ever Monday 1K on full tilt, where the prize pool usually ends up around 100k with around a hundred players, and where any cash will be a nice addition to my roll on full tilt. And remember, the BBT freeroll Tournament of Champions will award free seats to anyone who has played in at least 20 of the BBT events, so you have every reason to keep coming out and playing in these tournaments, even if you're more dead money than I am in these things. If I can get into the freeroll, I just need to get lucky one time and I can make some nice cash, so that's my plan and it should be yours too. So I'll see you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy!