Playing Drunk, Chasing Rivers and Great New Old Bloggers

Man did I phuck up in the Riverchasers last night. I think. In addition to already being under the weather and taking some antihistamine medication for it, I opted to join my brother for many beers before heading home for my usual late start to the latest BBTwo tournament, hosted by Al. I was hammered, and I honestly don't remember almost anything specific from my "performance", other than to say that I know I again called an allin with some soooted crap and sucked out a victory with a pair of 5s or something to get back near 3000 after donking away most of my stack bluffing against a minbettor who ended up reraising me allin or some shit like that. Who says you're allowed to do that in this game?! Anyways I know that just as soon as I got back to 3000 or so I immediately donked away half my stack again, surely on another bluff of some ghey kind.

Eventually, with about half my starting stack maybe 40 minutes in to the tournament, I had pocket 7s on the button and saw a standard raise from EP, followed by two or three callers of the raise, all ahead of my action. There was about 800 chips in the pot, I had maybe 1400 chips in my stack and I looked down to find pocket 7s. I was short and not in a good position to make a move where I was, so I went ahead and reraised the 200-chip bet allin to 1400 straight. I assumed I was likely ahead here and assumed I would likely take the pot down without a fight. Instead, I was insta-called by the second player to my left, who still had two players left to act behind him who had already called a preflop raise themselves with their hands. Those other two guys folded, and what does the insta-caller flip up? AQo. Ace Queen fucking o. Instcalling an allin reraise and still with two raise-callers to act behind him. The flop came down with nothing of consequence, at which point I am basically a 75% favorite in the hand. But do I have to tell you how the hand ended up? I've said it before and I'll say it again: the full tilt rng for whatever reason seems to be more likely to reward donkery, the more donkorific a particular play is. I think calling the allin reraise with AQo with two raise-callers still to act behind you has got to be among the worst moves I have ever seen made at the poker table. But hey, I called an allin reraise in the Mookie this week with the hammer preflop, and then in Riverchasers I called another allin with whatever shit hand that was -- 97s or some such garbage. Of course those are live cards that I'm calling with, as opposed to the AQo hand, but what does fear of a little something called domination really have to do with poker anyways, right?

And you know the worst part of all about this play that knocked me out of Riverchasers on Thursday night? It wasn't even made by a riverchaser. It was a regular blogger. That's the kind of shit that makes me say what I say about the level of play of the bloggers as a whole. Now the guy who made this play is not someone I know well, but he's always been a nice guy whenever I've interacted with him or seen him with others, so no rant needed. But calling an allin reraise with two raise-callers still to act behind you with AQo? Dayyyyyyummmmmm.

Ok in a related note, congratulations out to Lucko for taking down the Riverchasers this week and winning the 4th of 27 seats to the Aussie Millions Tournament of Champions at the end of the BBTwo. I probably don't have to remind most of you who read here regularly that Lucko was in my first "Pick 5" of potential winners when I made my predictions for the Riverchasers here yesterday. Yay for me. I told you the guy was playing well -- including again two final tables in the nightly 24k on full tilt over the past week, plus lots of big stacks late in blogger tournaments of late -- and I went with my gut on that pick and it paid off. I wish I'd taken Chad up on his offer in the comments to lay me 10-to-1 odds on my Pick 5 picks not winning the event, but what can I do. Now we'll see if I can come up with some more magic in next Monday's post ahead of the next MATH tournament, as I will try to make another winning set of five blonkeys from among whom the next blogger tournament champion will emerge.

One last thing -- I went to read Joe Speaker's writeup of his run to I think 2nd place earlier this week in the Big Game, and it took me maybe 5 seconds of reading to remember just how awesome of a writer this guy really is. I totally missed reading blogs like Joe's, Change100's, Maudie's and the other great bloggers/writers who had moved over to Pokerworks as part of that site's experiment with centralizing a number of blogs onto their site. As I've mentioned here several times in the past, all of pokerworks is blocked by Websense at my dorkwork, and since I do basically all of my blog reading during down time at the office, I basically had stopped reading these guys entirely for the past year they've been writing for pokerworks. Well I didn't even really see this myself since I can't access those blogs, but about a month ago Joe, Maudie and Change moved back to their own, "old" blog addresses and will now get to experience what people like myself, Iggy and many others have gotten to enjoy -- the wonders of moving back home, of only having to keep one blog up at a time, and of the freedoms that we all have when we're writing in our own space, with no one to answer to and no one signing the checks (so to speak) but ourselves. Yes I can say from personal experience it is a flattering and in many ways exciting and rare experience to get paid to blog about poker, but in the end it really feels great to go home and to break free from whatever constraints existed on one's "other" blog. Anyways, I am here today to say that I have gone and re-updated my blogroll at left to include the proper current blog addresses for these wonderful writers, and I really can't wait to get back into reading their daily musings on the world of poker and otherwise. I am truly sorry that the pokerworks thing didn't work out for these guys, but I think in the end they will come to appreciate as I did just how great the freedom to write what you want, how you want and when you want really is. Everyone should go click on those links on the left if you want to read some wonderful pieces written by people who are in a lot of ways the opposite of me -- I'm just some poker playing clown who writes from time to time about the stuff buzzing around in my head. People like Joe and Change, however, now those are writers who just happen to write about poker from time to time. Go read their blogs and you'll appreciate the difference I'm sure.

Have a great weekend everyone, recharge and get ready for the second week of the BBTwo and three more Tournament of Champions seats to be won during the upcoming week on full tilt. And as usual, come stop by Kat's donkament on Friday at 9pm ET on full tilt if you're around, which is always a good time if you like getting your nuts squashed into oblivion by a slowly-moving vice. I am the defending champion nut-squasher this week for the donkament so I will try to show up as usual if I am back for the evening by 9pm.