MATH Recap, FTOPS #4 Sat, and Poker Ace HUD

Another 47 runners and over-$1000 prize pool for Mondays at the Hoy last night, and the action as usual did not disappoint. Some of the big BBT guys including Blinders, Alan and Waffles got busted early for the first time in a long time, and some others like Bayne, Iggy, jeciimd and Buddydank added more points to their already top-10 runs. And after Iggy failed to cash despite running to the final table, I'm sensing that everyone's favorite dwarf will be overtaken by a new BBT king for the week. But for that you'll have to tune in to Al's BBT leaderboard to view the most updated standings after this week's MATH tournament.

Briefly (because that's what it was), I donked out of the Hoy and I can honestly say also for the first time in a long time that it was completely, 100% my own fault. I mean, let me qualify that. I raised preflop and was called by ChapelncHill. The flop came QJx. I made a big move at that flop because the blinds were getting big (we were down to 29 players remaining out of 47 entrants, about 85 minutes in to the tournament) even though the flop had completely missed me, and Chapel insta-called, flipping up QJo. You make your own judgments about that play, but basically I ended up trying to run a bluff into a guy who had flopped an unlikely top two pair. I wouldn't lay that down and obviously he wasn't gonna either. So be it. It feels good to know I caused my own demise last night for a change. And I can't kill myself over it because I really got hosed running into top two pairs after having my raise called by Chapel preflop. So another BBT tournament, another no-points for me. It's official now -- I have not doubled up in a single blogger tournament in 4 weeks. And I play mostly all of them. I haven't gotten to double the starting stack in any blonkament in four weeks. That is sick.

As usual, although I played like donkey again, many of you did not. After the customary three hours or so of tournament play, here are the six cashers in this week's Mondays at the Hoy tournament:

6th place: $67.68 ChapelncHill in his second straight Hoy cash in a very impressive performance for Trip's brother. Once again the guy who eliminates me from the Hoy ends up at the final table. I'm a springboard. A stepping stone. A starter wife. That's me.

5th place: $90.24 Wes the Big Pirate, making his second MATH cash since the BBT began six weeks ago after several weeks of solid play in his renewed focus on blogger tourmanents during 2007.

4th place: $124.08 BuddyDank, a fairly new blogger (new to this year as far as I know, anyways) who was in 10th place on the BBT standings before this week's MATH tournament and turned in another impressive performance.

3rd: $169.20 Bayne_s, who was already in 2nd in the BBT standings before another impressive 3rd place finish last night to add to his BBT totals. Although Bayne also wins the award of the douchebaggiest railbird friend of the evening with some anushole from the San Jose area, a very nice job for Bayne on the night.

2nd: $248.16 is Wippy1313, who outlasted a very tough field down to heads-up play for his first MATH cash of the year.

And this week's winner of the MATH title, also making his second MATH cash since the BBT began last month and winning $428.64 along the way as well, is Canadian blogger Astin. Although I joke about Astin getting good cards from time to time, he is a very solid player who played very solid, aggressive poker throughout Mondays at the Hoy this week and truly earned himself the victory in what was as usual a donkorific and suckout-filled tournament. Congratulations to all our cashers this week, and way to go Astin on the big win!

And now here are the updated 2007 MATH moneyboard standings as of this week's tournament:

1. Iggy $641
2. Astin $616
3. Columbo $606
4. Hoyazo $580
5. Bayne_s $579
6. Julius Goat $507
7. mtnrider81 $492
8. scots_chris $474
9. Fuel55 $458
10. Chad $379
11. Pirate Wes $372
12. IslandBum1 $357
13. ChapelncHill $353
14. Zeem $330
15. Miami Don $312
15. cmitch $312
15 oossuuu754 $312
18. VinNay $310
19. Waffles $294
20. Wigginx $288
21. ScottMc $282
22. Blinders $275
23. Manik79 $252
24. Wippy1313 $248
25. Byron $234
26. Omega_man_99 $210
27. NewinNov $190
28. bartonfa $180
29. 23Skidoo $176
29. Tripjax $176
31. Santa Clauss $170
32. Iakaris $162
32. Smokkee $162
34. lester000 $147
35. DDionysus $137
35. lightning36 $137
37. Pushmonkey72 $129
37. InstantTragedy $129
39. Buddydank $124
40. Ganton516 $114
41. RecessRampage $100
42. Gracie $94
42. Scurvydog $94
44. Shag0103 $84
45. PhinCity $80
45. jeciimd $80
47. Mike_Maloney $78
48. Alceste $71
48. dbirider $71
50. Easycure $67

So, with now an even 50 players to have cashed somewhere in the MATH so far this year, the angry dwarf retains his temporary spot atop the 2007 MATH moneyboard for one more week, but we do have a new #2 and a new #5 on the list, as Astin's big win on Monday combines with an earlier big cash to skyrocket him up to just under Iggy at the top of the board. Meanwhile, Bayne's continued solid play has him cracking into the top 5 this week as well, just one measly dollar underneath yours truly. Yes, somehow I'm still in 4th place in this thing, despite no cashes since the Treaty of Ghent, but I'm falling fast. What a fun run while it lasted though, huh?

So on Monday night I did in fact play in the super satellite at 6:30pm ET into Monday night's FTOPS Event #4. And I doubled up very early when a guy played pocket Aces as badly as could possibly be imagined, only betting small on the flop and again on the turn, explicitly pricing me in to draw to my pair, straight draw and flush draw. On the river when the straight and flush card fell, the guy insisted on moving in with his rockets, and I doubled. What a goon. But after treading water for the next 45 minutes to an hour, I got horrifically sucked out on with AQ < AJ and then JJ < 88 on consecutive hands, and I was done about 2/3 of the way through the field, but still about 100 spots from winning a seat. That sucked. But I didn't see any bloggers among the cashers for FTOPS Event #4, although I did note that the $1000 buyin event attracted over 900 players for a prize pool of close to a million dollars. Sweet. Too bad I couldn't be a part of it.

I did however play some more $400 6-max nl cash last night, and once again managed to win more than half a buyin. My stats at 2-4 6-max so far are legendary, as I have yet to post a significant losing session. And more than that, I truly feel completely comfortable at these tables, actually moreso than I ever did at 1-2 or lower limits. The play is just slightly better than at 1-2 IMO, in that I still find it pretty dam easy to read other players and know what their cards are, and yet the slight improvement in play seems to be mostly in being willing and understanding enough to lay down when my bets clearly indicate that I am ahead (even if I'm not actually). But I know I am comfortable at 2-4 because I've been taking down lots of small pots with small or nothing hands, while my big pots have almost all been with big hands. It's been a blast and I'm more excited to play cash these days than I am about any mtt's out there. Never would have thought I'd be saying that, but it's definitely true. Building a roll online is only about 1,884 times easier playing cash games than playing tournaments. And take out a few vicious suckouts I've suffered at the 2-4 tables over the past week, and my stats would be even better.

I also finally got Poker Tracker to work last night. I datamined at a bunch of 1-2 and 2-4 tables and filled up my entire 1000 hand database as part of my PT trial that I'm on. I will probably go and register the product tonight so I can keep up with the data mining, which does seem to be the wise move if I really plan to play serious cash nlh for the time being. Which I do. I just like money too much not to play, what can I say.

So thank you to yesterday's commenters -- someone hit it dead on that my Windows Vista O/S was not permitting full tilt to write directly to the FullTiltPoker directory without my express permission, and it started working immediately after I created a new folder for my hand histories in a new directory right on my desktop -- and now my PokerTracker appears to be working perfectly. However, I've still got a problem with PokerAce HUD. I'm running it, it is pointing towards that newly-created hand history file that full tilt and PT are saving my hand histories to, and my HUD recognizes me at whatever table I'm playing at. But still, the numbers it puts up next to each player are all "N/A", and I don't know why. Yes my filter is set to just 5 hands in order to start keeping stats, so that's not the problem, and yes I probably played a good 150 or 200 hands after finally getting PT to work, so I am kind of at a loss here. Again, my HUD shows me at the table I'm playing at, and it does now point to the correct new directory for my hand histories. Anyone have any suggestions for a guy just trying to even the playing field with all you stat-hounds out there playing online cash nlh games?

Tonight is FTOPS #5, the HOSE event. As I mentioned previously, I am very much not in to deleting razz from the HORSE rotations, as I think that is a hugely poooosay move, but at the same time razz is clearly the most frustrating poker game out there in my book so I guess there are worse things in life. This is a tournament I satellited in to early last week as I recall, so I'm looking forward to another very well-attended FTOPS tournament this evening, and hopefully my third lifetime FTOPS cash out of I think 40,000 attempts. So gross how I tend to play in these FTOPS tournaments. In the satellites I'm a champion. In the actual events, I'm a dawg. Sick. Also don't forget the Wheatie tonight on pokerstars, where I will be tonight at 8:30pm ET (password is "monkey" as always) if I am able to log on by then, although I still wonder why I continue to subject myself to that kind of poker abuse, but hey it's always good to get together with some bloggers and Wil really wants to bust me with AJ one of these days, so I figure why not tonight. And whether I can get PA HUD working this evening or not -- I'm really hoping I can now that I have 1000 hands stored up in my PokerTracker database -- I will probably be hitting up the 2-4 6-max cash tables as well to let the poker gods score some vengeance against me for writing about my success so far at their lovely $400 nl tables. See you tonight!