Rebuy MATH, and Effed Again in the Mook

Welcome back to pokerland, and I hope that everyone had as awesome and relaxing of a holiday and hopefully a vacation as I did with the Hammer Family for the past four days. The BBTwo rolled on last week, with someone named ricky424 I think winning the Riverchasers on Thanksgiving night, and I know that budohorseman won the Mookie on Thanksgiving Eve, so congrats to the two of them for winning the latest seats to the BBTwo Aussie Millions Tournament of Champions coming up in a month or so.

And speaking of the BBTwo, don't forget tonight is the latest event in the challenge, the fabulous $10 rebuy tournament that is tonight's Mondays at the Hoy tournament:



So don't forget to register for tonight's 10pm ET event (password as always is "hammer"). And yes, again it is a $10 rebuy tournament, something which I've wanted to run for some time and I am really looking forward to. I've had a blast changing things up this month with the Hoy as part of the BBT, and I will say that the feedback I've gotten generally on the changes has been overwhelmingly positive, in particular about the early end times with the turbo events, despite a few people who have been vocal about their disapproval of some of the changes. But I think I've taken care of those in the comments to my blog over the past couple of weeks, if you know what I mean. And I hope you do.

So getting back to the Mookie last week, I ended up busting out in 4th place to budo, the eventual winner of the whole thing. Budo has a nice post up about his big win, go check it out if you haven't already. But it is funny how much people think I'm going to rant to them about any play where I bust. I'll get to the hand I busted on in a minute. But I had run all the way to 4th place in the Mookie, my best Mook finish in a good few months, and I thought I should write a little bit about that here.

For starters, I was the chip leader at the end of the first hour, and again at the end of the second hour, which is always nice. I also have to say, after all the bullshit that I post up here about the crap beats I take on an almost hourly basis in my own play (last night knocked out of tournaments when my AA lost to 88 allin after the flop when an 8 hit the river, and lost with KQ on KQx flop allin after the flop when my opponent's 66 made a 6 at the river for a regheyulous set as well), that I laid one of the nastiest setups of all time on my buddy jeciimd within the first 30 minutes or so of the Mookie. I don't remember the exact details, but basically jec and I saw a free heads-up flop out of the two blinds, with me holding 56o. The flop came, amazingly, 347 rainbow. I literally can't remember the last time I flopped the inside nut straight like that, but it happened for me and I don't plan to gloss over it like some people might. I always bitch to no end when this exact thing happens against me, so in fairness I thought I should mention this hand here. I flopped the redigulous nut straight, and on top of it, long story short, jec had flopped a set of 4s. It was atrocious. Long story short, we got it allin I think on the turn, and my straight miraculously held up. It was, as I said above, the worst setup I can ever remember laying on anybody. Flopped inside straight against flopped set in a blind vs. blind confrontation. Rest assured, if that happened to me, you would read about it here for a month.

OK so other than that, I played well, got I think one premium hand and didn't do much with it, but otherwise took advantage of some good flops, and more importantly, a lot of good reads, and ran that early big stack all the way to the final table, which I entered somewhere in the middle. Once again I did not record any suckouts in the entire tournament that I can recall, but that is par for the phucking course for me so I can't complain. At the final table, the players started pushing with garbage as is usual, and I was able to maintain my stack and even to take out stb when he made top pair or something similar against my overpair in another setuppy hand of my own, but one which was also not a suckout just like the jec hand in that I was ahead on all streets. I think stb went out in 5th, leaving me with a brief chip lead down to 4 remaining.

And that's when my Mookie curse kicked in.

I pick up AQo, a veritable monster 4-handed. Long story short, I raised preflop, budo reraised me (minraised, as I recall), and I pushed, hoping for a call no matter what he had as long as it wasn't AA, KK, QQ or AK. Unfortunately, he had KK. Right there it was very obvious to me where I was at -- if an Ace hits the board, I win my first Mookie, hands down. I had the most experience and I believe I was the best late-game player at that point in the tournament (it was me, budo, LJ and Donkette remaining), and I would have had a sizeable chip lead as we were all fairly close in chips at that time. But I was behind, and even though I have lost exactly 664 blonkaments this year when my pocket pair was called allin by AJ to an Ace hitting the board, of course no help for me and I was extremely short stacked with still the 4 players left.

Now, about that hand for a minute. AQ is clearly a monster 4-handed, there is no arguing that. And the minraise was a bit interesting to me from budo, I won't deny that either. In retrospect, as I reviewed the hand history for a good two hours after being eliminated from the Mookie, I eventually concluded that I should have given more respek to the fact that budo minraised me, put him on a possible monster, and it probably would have been the best move to just call the minraise, and then I could look into folding what turned out to be a raggy flop and lived to another day. That's probably what I could / should have done. But in the end, I can't escape that KK against AQ is just a tremendous setup hand 4-handed in a tournament with huge blinds and very low Ms for everyone involved (no one had an M higher than 10, at any point at the final table as far as I can recall). Even given the minraise, I really think pushing with the AQ is not necessarily a terrible move. Of course I wish I had played this more conservatively in retrospect, but as I've said here many times, I was just continuing with the same exact strategy and attitude that had gotten me to that point in the first place, which I assure you did not involve calling small reraises preflop just to fold to most flops with an almost-surely-ahead AQ preflop down to 4 players remaining. I mean, even if budo has something like TT or JJ to be minraising there, I still kinda like my AQ push. And I've got one of the Aces and one of the Queens already, and we're just 4-handed, so AA, QQ or AK were even less likely holding for him in my mind. In the end, I chalk this one up to some tremendous luck and the absolute perfect time for budo, and again for me, just the worst possible luck at the worst possible time for me. Again, par for the course for me and the Mookie, what can I say.

I did manage to survive a good while longer by pushing with abandon and not getting called. One time I might have gotten called by someone who was behind and my favorite actually held up, but otherwise I was dealt all garbage and had nothing to show for it. Eventually I found A7 and pushed from I think utg, still 4-handed, and budo waited a while before calling me with A8, which held up when he flopped an 8 to outlast my rivered 7 and IGH in 4th place. Now, reading budo's blog post on his big Mookie win, it is clear that budo is expecting some huge rant from me on that hand. Sorry to disappoint, but while I think the call with A8o was a bit on the reckless side, I don't know how I can complain there. I was pushing with A7o, and more than that, I had been pushing with utter stinky garbage quite a bit, and I can't say the A8o call is that horrible. It's not a play I would have made in budo's spot, but with me short stacked and probably pushing with a pretty wide range, his call of my A7o allin preflop with his A8o is defensible, plain and simple. Of course no suckout for me, but that hand wasn't so crazy to me and I commend budo on making the right call.

What is the story as far as I'm concerned of last week's Mookie, however, was budo's incredible luck at the final table. I mean, stone cold incredible. First he picks up KK when down to 4-handed, which alone is huge and which I don't know the last time I can recall getting a premium hand like that that late in an mtt. What's more, his KK when down to 4-handed was up against AQ. That my friends is about as lucky as it gets in this spot. Then he manages to call allin with A8 against my A7 and that works out for him and holds up, which as we discussed was not to me a huge issue if not a little reckless for a guy with a lot of chips in that spot. But then when down to heads-up against LJ, budo again picked up KK -- think about the last time you can recall someone picking up KK when 4-handed and again when 2-handed. And what's more, the flop of 644 on that KK hand against LJ gave LJ top pair top kicker with her A6. So, to recap, budo got KK against AQ 4-handed, and then got KK again against TPTK when 2-handed. Now that shiat, my friends, is some sick ass luck. And to budo's credit, he states as much in his blog, that he got "mega lucky". He did, and I respek the man for stating as much. One thing I can't fucking stand is these posers who luckshit their way to a big victory and then go on their blog and talk about all the skill they used to get there without mentioning the sickshit luckstuff they came up with to pull it off. Budo got lucky, and he played his lucky hands very well on his way to a Mookie victory and a BBTwo ToC seat. Congrats to budo, and I only hope I can muster up some similar luck one of these days in the Mookie myself. I've already won these other blonkey tournaments before, but the Mookie just continues to elude me. Adding AQ into KK 4-handed fits very nicely right in to the rest of my list of Mookie fuckoff stories.

Par for the course I tell you.

See you tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt for the fabulous $10 rebuy at Mondays at the Hoy!!