Another Mookie Wasted, and Another Pick 5

Congratulations to Loretta somebody for winning this week's Mookie tournament. It's a little bit of a shame to me to see a bunch of guys winning the BBTwo Aussie Millions Tournament of Champions seats who are not part of our regular group of bloggers/players, but I'm confident that we are getting enough horses like jec and lucko in there that one of us will take the ToC thing down in the end. But I'll tell you one guy that is just a million effing miles away from ever getting in to the Tournament of Champions: me.

Despite my greatest attempts to the contrary, I continue not to play tight early on in these blonkaments, and with the big fields especially due to the BBTwo, this proves to be a lethal strategy. Every single time. And yet when the next BBTwo tournament rolls around, I spend all day blogging about how tonight I have to play tight, but then when the actual tournament comes around, it's always another story about why this time I pushed harder than I should have and got eliminated.

At least last night in the Mookie, it wasn't a suckout or a luckout that did me in. But it was another ill-advised instacall from an opponent who should have been considering folding, or at least considering the situation, before immediately calling off half his stack about 40 minutes in to the Mookie with just an overpair on the flop. But it's seeming more and more like the secret to eliminating me from a blonkament is just to insta-call me with something. Anything, really. Behind in a race, ahead in a race, 9 outs twice, top pair medium kicker, it really doesn't matter what you call off your stack with. It only matters that you insta-call, and then if you're ahead, your hand always holds up, or if you're behind, you always spike the card you need.

This week in the Mook, an early-middle position player limped preflop for 60 chips, and then jec raised it up from middle position to 240 chips I believe. Anyone who's played as much with jec knows that for him to make this move before the flop during the first hour of a tournament, that right there just screams out high pocket pair, or maybe AK. That's about it. Even with 88 or 99 I see jec just calling the limp there, with multiple players still to act behind him and with one limper already in there with likely overcards to his 9s. So I've got AKs on the button, and I do my usual thing and reraise it up to I think 720 chips. Here I figure it is much more likely that jec has JJ or QQ and not AA, KK or AK since I have one Ace and one King already in my hand, so I want to make sure to get this hand heads-up and then see if I can flop a big hand and win a nice-sized pot against a tight player with an already large stack. When jec smooth called my reraise, again there I felt pretty great about my read or pocket Queens, or possibly JJ.

The flop comes Ten-high with two hearts, which was the suit of my big slick as well. Given my read of JJ or QQ on jec's part, this left me with 9 flush outs and 6 overcard outs in my mind. 15 outs twice makes me roughly a 55% favorite in the hand, so I figure this is a great spot to put the guy with the overpair allin with a large raise, and either win the pot right there (preferably) on a fold, or get called and be a favorite to win what is essentially a racing situation. Not bad, right?

Wrong, Hoy, wrong!!! Why do I keep thinking like this in the blonkaments? Wtf is wrong with me? Isn't this the same exact phucking conversation I've had with myself, and then the next morning with you guys, right here on the blog at least twice over the past week and a half? There was no way jec was laying down his pocket pair to my large allin flop reraise, which was perfectly executed by me if I do say so myself, especially given that jec like most players out there puts me on a very wide range of hands to be making this move, including a total bluff. Never mind that my range here isn't that wide at all, which should be clear to the truly observant guys out there, but the only thing that matters in this context is the perception of me by the other players at the table, and in this case jec of all people lays a very wide range on me there. So it was like he beat me into the pot calling off half his stack on my flop check-raise allin. It turned out that jec held pocket Kings, taking away 3 of my outs and leaving me with just 12 outs twice, or roughly I guess a 46% chance of winning the hand. So it was still a race, and I was still the guy raising allin with that racing hand instead of calling allin with the racing hand, but what can I do. None of my 12 outs hit, and I once again go home early.

One of these days I'm going to figure out to stop pushing so hard with essentially drawing / racing hands early on against the bloggers. Like I said, there's no way I win out against these kinds of large fields by constantly relying on people to fold (ha ha) or else repeatedly be facing roughly 50-50 chances for all my chips. That in fact is a stone cold lock recipe for repeated early eliminations, which is exactly what I've experienced so far in the BBTwo, except for the one tournament -- last week's Riverchasers in fact -- where I actually managed to play actually tight for an actual hour or two in the tournament.

So don't forget tonight's Riverchasers tournament at 9pm ET tonight (password is "riverchasers") where the 7th of 27 Tournament of Champions seats will be awarded to the eventual winner of what is sure to be another large field, and thus another pure poker skillfest over at full tilt. I'm thinking of making a few changes to the Mondays at the Hoy tournament over the next few weeks, to try to spice things up a bit for the BBTwo, so I may have some more news about that on Friday as well, but in any event I will go forward here picking a Pick 5 for tonight's Riverchasers tournament.

1. Normally, since this is Riverchasers, I would have to pick myself as part of the Pick 5, but with the way I've been playing, I just can't do that here. So let's go with another abject donkey instead: Waffles. Despite another poor performance in the Mook this week, I still say Waffles has been playing ok and seems to be able to double and triple up with pretty high consistency in the blonkaments of late. With the Riverchasers topping out the level of donkitude among the regular BBTwo tournaments, if any one of these tourneys is winnable for Waffles, this has got to be the one.

2. I'm going to go with another new pick here, of another guy whose aggressive game seems to have gotten steadily better as he's played with us over the past several months: jamyhawk. I like jamy's game for a blonkament, and like most of the other players you will see me pick here, I like going with someone who has been amassing big stacks in the recent blonkaments we've played as a group. Look for jamyhawk to make some noise in one of these things sooner or later in the BBTwo.

3. I really can't believe I'm doing this, but for #3 this week, almost more as an homage to past greatness than anything else, I'm going to go with Bayne. Although Bayne doesn't seem to be able to get out of his own way in the BBTwo tournaments thus far, the guy's performance in BBT1 speaks for itself and I do think it is somewhat likely that he will win his ToC seat at some point over the next 6 weeks or so. Bayne has not played well yet in any of the BBTwo tournaments, but maybe tonight is his night. He just needs to flop a boat or quads four or five times in the first hour like usual, and he'll be stylin'.

4. I have been remiss in picking this guy so far in a few Pick 5 selections I've done as part of the BBTwo, but everyone's favorite radio show host BuddyDank is a must-pick for anyone trying to nab a group of players from whom tonight's blonkament winner will come. Buddy has consistently killed the bloggers as a group in these organized BBT events, and his tight-early-and-aggressive-late game is IMO perfectly tailored to winning one of these events. As hard as it is to pick the winner on any given night with any kind of certainty, Buddy is almost always a good bet to stick around and run pretty deep, and with any kind of luck he will happily final table an event like tonight's Riverchasers tournament.

5. OK who am I kidding, I pick Me for the 5th spot this week. I own Riverchasers like it's my job, and unless I can pick "the 12-year-old" then I think I will put my own name on the list one more time, if for no other reason than to motivate myself not to embarrass myself with my Pick 5 like I have already one other time during the BBTwo. Obviously I know going in I won't get any good starting cards and I won't be hitting many or any flops, and I've accepted that already a long time ago but have still managed to win several blonkaments without any possible good hands more or less all the way throughout. I just need maybe 10% of the luck that most other players in the tournament get, and I should be all set to run to the final table.

See you tonight at 9pm ET for Riverchasers!