MATH Recap, and Losing My Races

75 runners came out for Mondays at the Hoy, Turbo style on Monday night on full tilt. In the end I don't think the turbo feature of things affected much, and frankly I have to say that for the first time in a while, I did not personally witness any really terrible plays. I mean, of course whenever you're playing turbo for a couple of hours, by the end the blinds are silly high and the Ms are silly low and that of course means push-and-pray territory for everyone, but in the end I have to say I was pleased with the play and the pace of the tournament overall. We made the final table at around 11:45pm ET, and the tournament ended just a hair after 12:15am, just as I had predicted here yesterday. It's really impossible to run more than 2 1/2 hours or so in a turbo tournament, as the players simply get eliminated too fast near the end, but I thought 2 hours and 18 minutes on Monday made for a nice quick tournament that did not keep the east coast donks -- myself included of course -- up any later than needed to crown our latest champion and the winner of the 11th of 27 seats to the BBTwo Aussie Millions Tournament of Champions coming up next month. And that champion is....

Jamyhawk. Although I won't try to say that I saw every play at every table, I did manage to follow most of the action and I think I saw most of the hands played at the final table where the action was fast and furious. Jamy had himself a nice chip lead when down to four of five players remaining, and he did whatever he had to do to win out. This included overcoming multiple suckouts by tournament runner-up Daddy when down to heads-up, one of which gave Daddy a chip lead of nearly 3-to-1 after Jamy had held a similar lead just a few hands earlier. But then I don't know if Jamy went on a rush of cards or what, but he bet and raised like mad, and eventually was able to reclaim the lead from Daddy before getting him allin with the best hand, which held up to crown Jamy this week's MATH champion, and the latest Tournament of Champions qualifier.

Congratulations to all 9 of this week's cashers in Mondays at the Hoy:

1. Jamyhawk $576
2. Daddy $351
3. cardgrrl $252
4. Tripjax $198
5. Julkeus $144
6. LJ $144
7. evy35 $72
8. Mookie $54
9. Kajagugu $45

As always, if anyone is not linked above but actually has a blog, please let me know in the comments and I will be happy to update the post accordingly.

And here is the updated 2007 MATH moneyboard, including the results of this week's tournament:

1. Bayne_s $1400
2. Columbo $1362
3. Hoyazo $1162
4. RaisingCayne $1110
5. cmitch $840
6. Kajagugu $806
7. Astin $793
8. Pirate Wes $792
9. VinNay $775
10. Tripjax $759
11. Iggy $745
12. NewinNov $677
13. Fuel55 $666
14. Lucko21 $665
15. Waffles $650
16. IslandBum1 $642
17. XxMagiciaNxX $630
17. JJ $630
19. Surflexus $608
20. Jamyhawk $576
21. Buddydank $553
22. Numbbono $549
23. swimmom95 $545
24. Gary Cox $518
25. Byron $510
26. Daddy $508
27. Julius Goat $507
28. bartonf $492
28. mtnrider81 $492
30. PokerBrian322 $490
31. riggstad $487
32. Chad $485
33. wormmsu $475
34. scots_chris $474
35. LJ $470
36. Emptyman $461
37. Mike_Maloney $456
38. RecessRampage $434
39. Otis $429
40. twoblackaces $426
41. Miami Don $402
42. Zeem $389
43. Joe Speaker $384
44. jeciimd $382
44. Jordan $382
46. Blinders $379
47. leftylu $374
48. lightning36 $371
49. ChapelncHill $353
50. OMGitsPokerFool $324
51. oossuuu754 $312
52. Wigginx $288
53. ScottMc $282
54. Fishy McDonk $277
55. actyper $276
56. cardgrrl $252
56. Irongirl $252
56. Manik79 $252
59. Wippy1313 $248
60. Easycure $244
61. Garthmeister $216
61. wwonka69 $216
63. Omega_man_99 $210
64. katiemother $209
65. Pushmonkey72 $208
66. Thepokergrind $198
67. Mookie $191
68. StatikKling $180
69. 23Skidoo $176
70. Santa Clauss $170
71. jimdniacc $166
72. Iakaris $162
72. Smokkee $162
74. cemfredmd $156
75. lester000 $147
76. Heffmike $145
77. Julkeus $144
78. brdweb $143
79. DDionysus $137
80. Patchmaster $135
81. InstantTragedy $129
82. NinaW $120
83. UnTiltable $118
85. Fluxer $110
86. -o-LuckTruck-o- $103
87. hoops15mt $95
88. Gracie $94
88. Scurvydog $94
90. Shag0103 $84
91. crazdgamer $82
92. PhinCity $80
93. Presidentdave $79
94. maf212 $78
95. evy35 $72
96. Alceste $71
96. dbirider $71
98. kevin-with-AK $66
99. Rake Feeder $53

Thanks to everyone who participated in this week's Mondays at the Hoy tournament, and look forward to next week where I expect to take the best of the last two weeks' changes and run a turbo 6-max nlh tournament to award the 15th seat to the Aussie Millions ToC.

In other news, although I did not think I was planning to do this at the time, I found myself jumping in to a few of those idiotic "super turbo" satellites to the 1k buyin FTOPS #8 nlh tournament that run for the 30 minutes preceding the start of the event. Fast forward about 15 minutes and a "few" hundy dollars later, and I had qualified for the event. But make no mistake, these super turbo satellites are really just super ghey more than anything else, with 100 starting chips and blinds of 15-30, there is no move for any player at the table at any time other than to just move allin whenever you are going to play any hand at all. These things are probably 90% luck and 10% skill, don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. Anyways the super turbo sat that I qualified in was actually I think a $235 buyin sat that pays seats to the top two finishers, and thank god for that because I got sucked out on recockulously, at the river of course, when down to 5 players left and I was about to amass a 2nd-place stack of the remaining players until the donk across the table from me managed to hit his 3-outer kicker to best my dominated hand. This was actually a fantastic example of just how awful the play can be even in a $200+ buyin satellite tournament like this.

So there I was, down to just 60 chips remaining out of 4 players left, with the top 2 winning seats. The stacks were approximately 400, 320, 120 and me at 60. With the blinds escalating every 3 minutes, I was a goner, dead in the water with basically no chance to recover against those two monster stacks each some 6 or 7 times my own stack and needing to get into one of the top 2 spots to play my way in to FTOPS #8. On the very next hand I was able to double up against the 3rd place guy, who was eliminated on the hand following that, leaving me at 120 chips vs. the 360 and 400 of my two opponents who were obviously going to get the seats. I was pissed because the silly suckout has cost me the chance to be the 320-chip stack at this point, but what could I do. First to act, I looked down to find 82o, debated pushing and hoping for a call and a suckout, but instead I figured I had to fold and just take my chances to auto-push from the big blind on the next hand. But I would never get the chance, because the jackmoron in the small blind had the brilliant idea to push allin for 360 chips into the big blind with 400 chips, even though I was sitting with just 120 chips and would be forced allin on the very next hand and even though two of the three of us would win the FTOPS #8 seats. So the sb pushed allin with what turned out to be A3o, and the big blind called pretty quickly with TT. No Ace for the sb, and I had won my seat. All because the small blind did not have enough sense to auto-fold and move on to the next hand. I mean, A3o is beatable in so many ways, it's hard to imagine him playing the hand with any possible holdings, although sure with pocket Aces or maybe AK the play is marginally justifiable.

Anyways, that donkery -- truly one of the worst plays I've ever seen in satellite play -- got me in to FTOPS #8 with about 2 minutes to spare. Long story short, the play in this event, even with a 1k buyin, was pretty horrible overall. I won about 2000 chips in the first 15 minutes when some guy called me down on every street with pocket 4s on a board of A9T56. That's right. With sixth pair. Unfortunately, I would not see any AK or any pocket pairs above 9s all through my run in FTOPS #8, and as a result I only managed to win one other major pot all night when I flopped a set with pocket 8s against an opponent's AK on an A8x flop. That's always nice. But otherwise, I got no cards and I could not win any big hands seeing very few flops. After flopping the set I was up over 10k in chips (starting stacks were 5k in this super-stack tournament), and that was basically where I sat for the next two hours, ranging up a bit and down a bit but otherwise basically right in the neighborhood of 10k or 11k for the next two hours or so. The problem was that, by the middle of hour 3, with the 1500-some entrants now down to 380 or so (211 would get paid), my 11k stack was only about half of average, and I was down near the bottom of the leaderboard and looking to make a move if I was going to survive to the cash and beyond. So, when I found pocket 9s in late position and faced an allin reraise from the small blind who had observed me stealing only about 900 times over the past few hours, I decided I had to call, knowing that I was likely a 52% favorite in a race, but hoping I might be an 80% favorite against a smaller pair, or at the very least not a 20% dog against a higher pair. My opponent, equally short stacked as I, flipped up AK, and the Ace on the flop did me in, sending me home in 300 something place. I was not happy with the result of course, but it was another FTOPS tournament in this series where I managed to play well without much cardage to work with, last well beyond the halfway point in a large field event, but in the end not have quite enough ammo to make it to the cash. I could not win a race to save my life on Monday night. I busted from the MATH on a race in I think 41st place out of 75 runners, after losing 2 out of 2 races along the way to get there. I lost three races in the FTOPS 1k buyin tournament, and I won that one big pot when I flopped the set. Not much you're going to be able to do in big poker tournaments when you can't beat AK and you can't win with AK, what can you do about that.

In some good news, I did absolutely crush the big mtt satellite to Tuesday night's FTOPS #9 PLO8 tournament, so you can look for me there starting at 9pm ET on Tuesday on full tilt.

Sorry this is so late. Life tilt, work tilt, yaddayaddayadda you know the routine.