The Mookie, BBT and a Preflop Decision

Before I forget, as I found this out after making yesterday's post but I wanted to get this up right away, it turns out that yours truly is not the only poker blogger who has cashed so far in this year's World Series of Poker. That's right -- relatively new (to our group, anyways) blogger LJ -- adding to the already very impressive list of excellent poker-playing lawyers in our little group -- stormed through the Ladies Event in WSOP Event #17 last week, ending up in 97th place out of 1286 players for a nice cash of nearly 2k and a story for the ages considering this is just her first WSOP event. Very impressive job, now go stop by LJ's blog and hound her to get up some hands or at least a summary of how she ran through that kind of a field in her first appearance on poker's biggest stage. All I know is that last year in my first WSOP, I had trouble winning a single hand, and spent most of my time there in awe of all the big name players around me instead of focusing on playing good poker, and the results were not pretty. So I am super impressed with this performance and look forward to hearing more about the details.

So I made 5th place in the Mookie last night. Normally this is barely even worth mentioning, but there are two things that make it noteworthy in my mind today. First is that this is by far my best Mookie performance of the year. Now we all know that clearly it has been ordained that I may never win the Mookie. Doesn't matter that I've won basically every other kind of blogger tournament ever created, most of them multiple times. The Mookie has always and will always elude me. But this was my first cash of the year in this event, which I would have laid you serious odds on not occurring until mid June if you had tried to bet me on it back in January, so I have to be happy about that. All that said, I truly didn't deserve to be there as far as I got last night, and I'm man enough to admit it. I mean, so what if I got sucked out on 24 times in the Mookie last night. I also laid two sick suckouts on other players in key spots where I would have been eliminated before the final table, so I can't exactly say I played so great. And to be honest, I was in last place with 35 players remaining -- dead last -- and again with 15 players remaining, so it's not like I was going like gangbusters in this thing or anything. No, instead I just kinda hung around, watched everybody and their mother donk their chips to the dwarf like it was goin' out of style since he was at my table from start to finish last night, took advantage of some people when I got short-stacked, and otherwise got lucky in a few key spots. Before I knew it I was at the final table, and eventually in the middle of that table for my first Mookie cash of the year. I think I made like 4 cents or something, so the cash itself wasn't important, but my best showing of the year in this tournament that I am simply forbidden to win meant a little something to me.

And btw, how awesome is the radio broadcast that Buddydank has been running from his blog during the BBT events? It looks like so far the broadcast will only include music for the non-Mookie blogger tournaments until the end of the BBT, but since I finally downloaded winamp and got the shit working last night for the first time, let me just say kudos to Buddy, that shit seriously kicks ass. One of the great things I've always loved about our little group of bloggers is how every now and then someone always thinks of something new that becomes part of our group. Be it a new name for a hand, a new type of tournament, or a new technological thing like this live radio stream, there always seems to be an endless supply of new ideas out there as our group grows and matures, and again I have got to say, the radio broadcast is the absolute shizzy. Now, last night I had to turn it off after about 90 minutes when my wife went to sleep, but from what I heard, I was rolling in the aisles and I look forward to becoming more involved with this in the future. Guest DJing from various bloggers would be a fabulous occurrence if that can actually work, so let's see if that comes to fruition in the coming weeks. But a great, great job by Buddydank who is not only doing great in the BBT but also has come up with what I say is the single best idea in the poker blogiverse over the past long while.

Anyways, the other reason my performance in the Mookie mattered last night is the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments. Now I don't have any official numbers to back this up, but I have got to have the most BBT points out of anyone over the past month of the Challenge. After starting off making the points in just one of my first 14 BBT events or so, since then I have been on a raging tear, coming in 1st and 2nd in the last two Riverchasers tournaments, the next one of which is Thursday night at 9pm ET on full tilt (password is riverchasers), 2nd place in the last MATH tournament, and now 5th in the Mookie this week. I have been leaving all of you hozers in the dust over the past month in the BBT, and I find it very hard to believe that even your glorious BBT points leader Mr. Bayne, whom I had the distinct pleasure of meeting this past weekend in Las Vegas, can equal my BBT points total since early May. In fact, I happen to be privy to some interesting information on total individual profitability across all the included tournaments since the BBT started, and let's just say that that list looks very different than the current BBT leaderboard, and leave it at that. But in any event, I don't know how high I have climbed now on the BBT leaderboard after last night's Mookie -- hopefully Al will update at some point later today -- but let's just say that if you guys up top aren't careful, and in particular if I turn Riverchasers into my own personal ATM again tonight, then you're going to be facing some pressure-filled situations in the final two weeks of this thing as we really head into the home stretch.

Now before I go, I wanted to present you with a real-life situation that happened last night in the Mookie which was the subject of much discussion in the girly chat with me and to solicit your opinions on how you would've played this hand before the flop. I will try to get the details right but, as usual, someone is going to claim that I got the hand wrong -- usually they are wrong and I am right, btw, make no mistake -- but I will present it to you as I believe it happened.

So we're about 2 hours into the Mookie or so. We are down to basically two tables left, maybe 17 or 18 players total, and you have a middle stack, probably in roughly 11th place of 18 players remaining or something very close to that. Let's say you are sitting on around 2700 chips. You're in middle position and you look down to find pocket 9s. While you contemplate what to do with this hand when the action gets to you, the shortest stack left in the tournament, sitting on around 1300 chips, raises the 120-chip big blind from UTG by the standard 3x to 360 chips. Action folds around to you sitting on your pocket 9s. Let's assume btw that the short stack is a very smart, very shrewd type of player with much success in poker tournaments, stunning good looks and a dam hot wife to boot.

What do you do here? Do you call, raise or fold this hand? Why? Is this an allin opportunity, assuming you are ahead and can get the clever shorty to lay down? Or do you just call, and hope to see a flop where your 9s figure to be best? Or, do you prefer to fold here, preserving your middling stack and wait for a better opportunity where the smart player has not already raised it up from under the gun? What's the winning move here?