MATH Recap, More Cash Success and FTOPS VI Is Here

A solid field of 25 runners hit the virtual felt for the weekly Mondays at the Hoy tournament on full tilt on Monday evening. Although we were missing upstart RaisingCayne for unknown reasons, the top three moneywinners on the MATH tour during 2007 were in attendance, making for what I hoped would be a tense push with all three of us threatening to take or retake the yearly money lead. Instead, Columbo spoiled that idea by busting out in 22nd place, I don't know how as I was busy watching the Bills dominate and embarrass the Cowboys only to eventually end in a recockulous choke job reminiscent of the hapless Arizona Cardinals against the Bears on MNF last season. Not to be too much outdone, I ended up out in 17th place myself, leaving Bayne to either maintain or grow his lead as once again he outlasted his closest competitors here heading into the home stretch for the year.

I did not play well in the Hoy this week. I pushed cmitch off of his TPTK (see guys, he folds that because he's a man!) on a flop where I flopped top two after calling a reraise preflop with ATs. Dumb move, got rewarded and I had a nice stack in the earlygoing. I don't remember much else as I was not involved for very long, but I know that the flops were killing me other than that one flop against cmitch. I remember running into Ski's DQB Tens when I had a nice pocket pair of my own. Ski...now there's a guy who has donked me out of many a tournament, and I never seem to understand how it happened after it does. But he got me good and took away a good portion of my chips in the process.

Speaking of guys who have donked me out of my stack more times than I can count, we come to Bayne. Bayne raised preflop from middle position on a shortish stack, and I called with a medium pocket pair, 8s or 9s as I recall. The flop comes K42 rainbow. My pair is almost surely good here. Bayne bets out on the standard c-bet, I put him allin and of course he calls with KJo, top pair Jack kicker, and IGH in 17th place of 25 runners. Again not a good performance for me at all, but the whole thing really was quite typical of how I tend to do against both Ski and Bayne. Ski flopped a set and turned quads on me, and Bayne raised preflop from middle position with KJo and then made top pair on the flop where I had second pair. All very typical as I say. I laugh at that whole situation, I really do.

In the end, FlopLuckbox (wasn't I just saying that yesterday?) busted out in 9th place, again I did not see how as I missed most of the rest of the MATH due to multiple cash game tables I had going, so he would fail to increase his lead on the 2007 MATH moneyboard this week. The final table took a looooong time, much longer than usual I would say, and at one point at 12:38pm ET there were five players left, with 1st place sitting on 15,703 chips and fifth place at 14,415 chips, so things got considerably tight right before the dam burst and people started dropping like flies. Eventually the quads ran out for Ski who busted in 5th place, and emptyman bubbled when his 55 could not hold up against swimmom95's A9o allin preflop. In the end, third place and $120 cash went to MATH first-timer NinaW, and StatikKling returned the favor after I cashed in his first-ever MFC private tournament on full tilt last week by coming up with a 2nd place Hoy finish, winning $180 even in the process. And this week's winner, continuing with NinaW with the theme of girl power that I was just writing about earlier this week, was swimmom95, who captured $300 cold hard cash with I believe her first MATH win of the year.

So here is your updated 2007 MATH moneyboard, updated to include this week's action:

1. Bayne_s $1270
2. Columbo $1168
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. Byron $510
19. Julius Goat $507
20. bartonf $492
20. mtnrider81 $492
22. PokerBrian322 $490
23. Chad $485
24. scots_chris $474
25. Emptyman $461
26. Mike_Maloney $456
27. RecessRampage $434
28. Otis $429
29. Surflexus $402
29. Miami Don $402
31. jeciimd $382
31. Jordan $382
33. Blinders $379
34. lightning36 $371
35. ChapelncHill $353
36. Zeem $330
37. LJ $326
38. OMGitsPokerFool $324
39. oossuuu754 $312
40. leftylu $295
41. Wigginx $288
42. ScottMc $282
43. Fishy McDonk $277
44. Irongirl $252
44. Manik79 $252
46. Wippy1313 $248
47. wwonka69 $216
48. Omega_man_99 $210
49. katiemother $209
50. Pushmonkey72 $208
51. Thepokergrind $198
52. Gary Cox $194
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

As you can see we've got two newcomers on the 2007 board this week in StatikKling and NinaW, and meanwhile swimmom continues her meteroic rise through the ranks by using her $300 won this week to jump into the top 20 on the year, in quite a bit less opportunities than most of the other guys up on the board. Congratulations to all of this week's cashers, and I look forward to next week's MATH tournament for more of the same donkery and good cheer that we all love every Monday night on full tilt.

So as I mentioned earlier, I spent several hours multitabling 2-4 6max nlh again last night, and it was a real continuation to my previous good run from the weekend. It's so hard to put my finger on specifically what it is that has me running so good lately, but I know I am playing better because I'm trying to stay focused on my goal of growing my roll consistently through cash games so that I can fund my ongoing mtt play. I think maybe the coming of FTOPS VI has something to do with that, as technically I have the money to buy in to all the FTOPS events I would like to play, but philosophically like past FTOPS series I do not plan to buy in directly to more than one or two of the events, at most. More likely, and if I'm smarter about it, I won't buy in directly to any of the events. With the FTOPS now officially a quarterly thing, there's just no justifying to me buying in directly to a $200 mtt when I would never otherwise spend $200 cash on an mtt outside of the FTOPS. No way. I would be much more apt to spend $200 trying to qualify for multiple FTOPS events in November than I would be to buy in directly to one $200 or higher buyin.

Anyways all this is to say that I certainly do feel a renewed sense of urgency to protect and build my roll at full tilt to help fuel any satelliting and direct buyins I plan to need for the upcoming FTOPS VI. And I think for whatever reason that this sense of urgency is the thing that is fueling my recent cash successes. I'm playing a bit less aggressively in the right spots -- not raising with too many draws on the flop, and not calling preflop reraises without truly premium showdown-type of hands. This means I'm folding a lot more than I think I usually do at 6max cash play -- folding hands like 88 and 99 to a raise and a reraise ahead of me before the flop, and folding that A9 in a blind vs. blind confrontation on an 862 rainbow board. With the aggression level I usually play with -- in particular at the shorthanded tables -- a little more folding is proving to be very beneficial to my roll, and it really has me thinking if maybe I've been playing a little too aggressively all along in terms of really maximizing my profits. It really should not be the case that with a little renewed urgency I am playing noticeably better, because that means I've been playing sub-optimally for who knows how long. I've still won money in online cash games over the past, say, couple of months, but it has been much less than when I first started off playing cash and found my way eventually to the 2-4 6max tables on full tilt thanks to this guy's fateful suggestion. Maybe the coming of the FTOPS can be the spark to get me back to my earlier big profits in 6max? Only time will tell.

So before I go today I wanted just to preview FTOPS VI as I mentioned yesterday. For starters, congrats to Surflexus who took the advice he read right here yesterday and played the nightly $10 rebuy 6max satellite at 9:50pm ET that I had mentioned right here in Monday's post. He qualified for FTOPS #1 in his first try in this satellite, taking 2nd place out of 30-some entrants in this, my favorite of all of full tilt's mtt satellite structures.

So here is the complete FTOPS VI schedule. The TBA in each event is who the FTP Host is going to be, nothing that I care about unless they wise up and finally ask me to host one of these things:

Event #1
Wednesday, Nov 7th
21:00 ET T.B.A $200 + $16
NLH 6-Max $750,000

Event #2
Thursday, Nov 8th
21:00 ET T.B.A $300 + $22
Razz $100,000

Event #3
Friday, Nov 9th
21:00 ET T.B.A $200 + $16
PLH $300,000

Event #4
Saturday, Nov 10th
15:00 ET T.B.A $500 + $35
PLO 6-max $300,000

Event #5
Saturday, Nov 10th
16:30 ET T.B.A $100 + $9
NLH
Rebuy $400,000

Event #6
Sunday, Nov 11th
14:00 ET T.B.A $100 + $9
Stud Hi/Lo $25,000

Event #7
Sunday, Nov 11th
18:00 ET T.B.A $300 + $22
NL Hold 'em $1,000,000

Event #8
Monday, Nov 12th
21:00 ET T.B.A $1,000 + $60
NL Hold 'em $1,000,000

Event #9
Tuesday, Nov 13th
21:00 ET T.B.A $200 + $16
PLO Hi/Lo $150,000

Event #10
Wednesday, Nov 14th
21:00 ET T.B.A $300 + $22
NL Hold 'em
6-max Rebuy $750,000

Event #11
Thursday, Nov 15th
21:00 ET T.B.A $500 + $35
HORSE $250,000

Event #12
Friday, Nov 16th
21:00 ET T.B.A $200 + $16
LH 6-Max $200,000

Event #13
Saturday, Nov 17th
15:00 ET T.B.A $2,500 + $120
NLH 2-Day $1,500,000

Event #14
Saturday, Nov 17th
16:30 ET T.B.A $100 + $9
PLO Rebuy $300,000

Main Event
Sunday, Nov 18th
18:00 ET T.B.A $500 + $35
NL Hold 'em
Main Event $2,000,000

So there you have it. Unlike FTOPS V, FTOPS VI has a return to some of the non-nlh games which is always nice, with a Razz event back in the rotation as Event #2 this time around after not being part of the last couple of FTOPS series, and a stud hilo event in the middle as well, albeit with a paltry $25,000 guarantee (can that be right?). I also like that the $1000 buyin nlh tournament is back as Event #8, which was one of my favorite tournaments to focus on when they started that particular structure during FTOPS V this past August. I also love the $500 6-max PLO tournament scheduled for FTOPS #4, which is a bad ass tournament even though the odds of me convincing Hammer Wife to let me play in that on a Saturday at 3pm ET, as well as potentially in the Main Event the following weekend, are near nil. In fact, in general along with focusing on some of the other non-NLH games, the other big change I see in the FTOPS VI schedule is a trend towards shorthanded tables, which is a nice plus as far as I'm concerned. You've got 6max nlh for FTOPS #1, and 6max PLO for FTOPS #4. Then you've also got 6max nlh with rebuys for Event #10, and again an interesting Limit Holdem tournament in 6max format for Event #12 as well. Combined with the stud hilo, razz and HORSE tournaments on the schedule for FTOPS VI, and you're looking at 7 out of 15 events taking place at shorthanded tables. And I looooove me some shorthanded poker.

I'll be back later in the week with a more comprehensive review of what I consider to be the best ways to satellite in to the various FTOPS events, for you nighttime players in the U.S. anyways. Until then, best of luck at the tables, may the Buffalo Bills plane crash on its way back from Dallas those stupid shits, and if you're up at midnight ET on Tuesday night go check out StatikKling's newest weekly private tournament on full tilt -- the MFC on Tuesday nights at midnight ET (9pm PT for you West Coast donks). Password is "gotdonk" and the buyin is the usual $10 + $1.