MATH Recap, and BBTwo Is Here

27 runners came out for the latest Mondays at the Hoy tournament on full tilt, which turns out to be the last MATH tournament before BBTwo rolls into town. More on that later, but for now suffice it to say that the MATH this week came down to a clash of the titans, as current #1 and #2 on the 2007 Hoy moneyboard, Bayne and Columbo both made the money, lasting to the final three spots to each try to cement the moneyboard lead with just 2 1/2 months left in the year. Personally, I busted very early on a bad play when I pushed allin on a preflop reraise against known blogger tournament donkey Lucko when I held just AT, putting him on a resteal. He called the huge allin with pocket 9s, certainly not a move I would make 10 minutes into an mtt, but it is a move that I more or less knew Lucko would make and yet I went ahead and pushed allin anyways. Bad move by me, I did not win the race and IGH early on the night, I think 3rd out overall. I thought I was coming to play on Monday, but with a move like I made there, I obviously did not.

In the end, it was Bayne finishing the night in 3rd place for $129.60 to add to his current moneyboard lead, and Columbo ending in 2nd place despite holding a large chip lead through most of the final table, but still winning $194.40 for his efforts. And coming out of nowhere to take down this week's MATH tournament was none other than resident blogger tighty Gary Cox, who played with much skill along with some nice cards to take down the $324 first prize in addition to the all-important bragging rights for the next week. If I had seen more of the action I would love to write about it, but alas I was too busy at the cash tables so I can't comment other than to congratulate the cashers for their performances this week.

And here is your updated 2007 MATH moneyboard, including this week's results and the clash of the titans at the top:

1. Bayne_s $1400
2. Columbo $1362
3. Hoyazo $1162
4. RaisingCayne $1110
5. Pirate Wes $792
6. VinNay $775
7. cmitch $774
8. Iggy $745
9. NewinNov $677
10. Lucko21 $665
11. Waffles $650
12. IslandBum1 $642
13. Astin $616
14. Fuel55 $568
15. Tripjax $561
16. Buddydank $553
17. swimmom95 $545
18. Gary Cox $518
19. Byron $510
20. Julius Goat $507
21. bartonf $492
21. mtnrider81 $492
23. PokerBrian322 $490
24. Chad $485
25. scots_chris $474
26. Emptyman $461
27. Mike_Maloney $456
28. RecessRampage $434
29. Otis $429
30. Surflexus $402
30. Miami Don $402
32. jeciimd $382
32. Jordan $382
34. Blinders $379
35. lightning36 $371
36. ChapelncHill $353
37. Zeem $330
38. LJ $326
39. OMGitsPokerFool $324
40. oossuuu754 $312
41. leftylu $295
42. Wigginx $288
43. ScottMc $282
44. Fishy McDonk $277
45. Irongirl $252
45. Manik79 $252
47. Wippy1313 $248
48. wwonka69 $216
49. Omega_man_99 $210
50. katiemother $209
51. Pushmonkey72 $208
52. Thepokergrind $198
53. StatikKling $180
54. 23Skidoo $176
55. Santa Clauss $170
56. jimdniacc $166
57. Iakaris $162
57. Smokkee $162
59. cemfredmd $156
59. NumbBono $156
61. lester000 $147
62. Heffmike $145
63. Kajagugu $143
63. brdweb $143
65. Mookie $137
65. DDionysus $137
67. Patchmaster $135
68. InstantTragedy $129
69. NinaW $120
70. Ganton516 $114
71. Fluxer $110
72. hoops15mt $95
73. Gracie $94
73. Scurvydog $94
75. wormmsu $91
76. Shag0103 $84
77. crazdgamer $82
78. PhinCity $80
79. maf212 $78
80. Alceste $71
80. dbirider $71
82. Easycure $67
83. Rake Feeder $53

So kudos out to Gary Cox for his win and his second appearance on the 2007 Hoy moneyboard, as well as to our top two moneywinners who each managed to increase their lead over everyone else on the list, with Bayne now just 38 measly dollars out in front. And this may prove to have been a very important week for the moneyboard, as things are expected to change quite a bit when the MATH returns next Monday night on full tilt, and all that is thanks to the BBTwo.

So by now I assume most of you have read on Al's blog, but we are bringing the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments back for the BBTwo starting this coming weekend with Miami Don's Big Game on Sunday night at 9:30pm ET, and lasting for 8 weeks as we will once again attempt to determine who is the best poker playing blogger over a series of the most popular private tournaments held weekly on full tilt. Now, for starters, as I have written here several times since the BBT started this past spring, let me say for the record that I am not happy with the timing of BBTwo. This is something that, left to my own devices, I would not have wanted to see again until sometime next year, probably late winter / early spring, both to keep the whole thing fresh as well as to prevent us all from having to really "watch how we play" in what were I know originally created as chances for our group to get together regularly, have a good time and generally just donk it up if that's how we want to roll. It has been some time since the original BBT ended, so that is good, but starting things up again before October is even out was not my idea of when I ideally wanted to see things starting up again.

But then a strange thing happened. Full tilt threw over $20,000 in free prizes at us. With the incredible Al at the helm, I suppose one can never truly be surprised at the lengths he will go to get us bloggers valuable free stuff just in exchange for us playing some poker, but somehow he got full tilt to agree to literally more than 20 grand in free prizes, all on the condition that we run an Aussie Millions BBTwo challenge now, ending in time for the Aussie Millions tournament which runs in early January. So even though the timing is certainly not ideal from my perspective, I think Al, Mookie and I would have to be insane to turn down all this free swag, and here we are. In the end there is simply no way that the three of us are going to decline an opportunity to get lots of money and prizes for the bloggers, including sending one lucky donkey blogger and a guest down undah for a 10k buyin poker tournament and lots of other fun extras as part of the Aussie Millions packages that full tilt is doling out on a weekly basis through the Aussie Millions challenge on their site. Hopefully you guys out there agree that what we have to offer in the way of prizes for BBTwo is easily worth whatever inconvenience, annoyance, hassle or otherwise that you personally may feel as a result of the BBTwo starting up this coming weekend, if any at all.

Al has the best recap of the prizes to be available to participants in the BBTwo over at his blog, but as a quick summary, full tilt will be offering up an 18k-value Aussie Millions package for one winner and a friend, which we plan to award to the overall winner of the BBTwo Tournament of Champions, which will be scheduled after the end of BBTwo and will include only those players who have won at least one BBTwo event during the schedule. As if that's not enough, full tilt is also giving us a seat to the $535 buyin Main Event to the FTOPS VI that will run in mid-November, which we will award around the midpoint of the BBTwo to some deserving blonkey. What's more, full tilt is also giving us a weekly entry each weekend into that Sunday's large guaranteed tournament (750k or $1m guaranteed), also gratis, which we will be giving away to the Player of the Week in each week's BBTwo blogger tournaments. Al also managed to secure in iPod Touch as an additional booby prize for one luck winner from the group.

Just like the first time around, the weekly Mondays at the Hoy and Mookie tournaments will all qualify as BBTwo events, in addition to the return of the Big Game monthly on Sundays which will bookend the beginning and end of the BBTwo tournament schedule. Plus, Al will be hosting weekly Thursday night Riverchasers events as well for the duration of the BBTwo, bringing the total number of tournaments on the BBTwo calendar to 27 over two months (8 MATH, 8 Mookies, 8 Riverchasers and we will do a total of three Big Games), so that means 27 opportunities to get into the BBTwo Tournament of Champions and win your way to the 18k Aussie Millions prize package of your (and your guest's) dreams.

Other than the Aussie Millions grand prize, the other prizes mentioned above are going to be awarded using BBT points as we did for the first BBT, but I am really pleased to say that this time around we will be using the top 25% instead of the top 50% as the cutoff threshold where the points will start being awarded. As I've written about extensively here, our decision to originally award points to 50% of the field actually caused a noticeable change in the way that many people played the BBT tournaments, right from the time the cards first hit the air and all the way until the halfway point was reached. Now yes, obviously that kind of play was very easy to exploit, and it's something that I took advantage of just about every single tournament I played in, once I had fairly early on identified who the "fold to the points" tightydonks were (and there were a great many of you). Obviously from my performance in the first BBT I did not have an issue figuring out a plan and then executing that plan to take advantage of this tendency, so this has absolutely nothing to do with sour grapes, but to me it has everything to do with a scoring system not influencing the way people play right from the getgo. Clearly, a scoring system that tracks overall tournament performance should have zero effect on how people play. I contend that if the scoring system itself affects in any measurable way how people approach the game, then that scoring system is flawed and it should be changed, even if the flawed system creates opportunities for the solid poker players among our group to take advantage. Well, I am happy to say, with only the top 25% of the field receiving BBTwo points for these tournaments, there is no way anybody could reasonably believe that folding to the points will get them anywhere. Plus, with the grand prize being awarded to the winner of the BBTwo TOC this time around, thus you will have to win one of the BBTwo events in order to be eligible to win the Aussie Millions prize package, so this should be all the more reason why folding to the points should be entirely eliminated as a strategy for the BBTwo. And that my friends is all goodness for everyone as far as I'm concerned.

Before I sign off for the day I just wanted to point out once again how cool full tilt is being in providing all this free swag for the bloggers to distribute. Nobody is making full tilt give anybody anything, least of all our bunch of degenerate gamblers. And yet here they are, offering us up more than 20 large in prizes all just for playing in the same poker tournaments that we were probably going to be playing in anyways. It's pretty incredible if you think about it. But more than that, I think it is also indicative of just how much value full tilt puts in us bloggers, in what we do and in what we all have to say collectively about full tilt. To think that the premiere online poker site in the United States views 20 grand as essentially a marketing expense that is worth making just to make a bunch of bloggers happy and to get us writing about full tilt and all the nice things they do for us, to me that is just really empowering. I remember a few days after the first BBT ended that I wrote in response to some things I had read around the blogiverse that, based on some private emails and conversations I had been privy to with full tilt, I knew that in reality full tilt had been totally jazzed about how the BBT worked out for them and how eager they were to get on board with the blogging community once again. But even I had no idea whatsoever of just how eager that was, and I think I am on the mark in saying that full tilt would not be giving us 20k+ worth of free prizes if they didn't think they were getting at least 20k in value out of the deal. And if that doesn't show how much weight we as a community really are worth, then I don't know what does.

Don't forget StatikKling's MFC tournament on full tilt tonight at midnight ET. Password is "gotdonk", if you happen to be up that late (being a New Yorker, I do not plan to be). Otherwise, you can look for me tonight in the 9:45pm ET token frenzy, and hopefully I'll see a lot of you in there as well in preparation for Sunday night's Big Game to kick off the BBTwo.