Oh. My. God.

Oh. My God. This past Sunday was one of the tiltiest days I've ever experienced. And for me let me tell you, that is really saying something.

It all started with me losing in one of my fantasy football playoff games today to an anushead playing Ike Fuggin Hilliard, Justin Fuggin Fargas and Ronald Fuggin Curry. All on the same team. At the same time. In the playoffs. This is who my genius opponent came up with for a third of his total team in a fucking playoff game in a fantasy football league. If this isn't proof that fantasy football is the stuff luckboxes are made of, then I don't know what is. I mean, Ike Fuggin Hilliard? 9 yards today at home against the powerhouse Falcons defense. This may have something to do with the fact that Ikey boy just celebrated his 86th birthday this year. And what's up with Ronald Fuggin Curry? In a playoff game? 23 yards today, no surprise at all against the top-rated Colts defense. And Justin Fuggin Fargas?!?! Also against the strong Indy defense? No problem, plug 'im in there, right? It's only the fantasy playoffs, why not? 89 yards later, and these three shitheads have put up 24.8 fantasy points and I lose. And the best part of all? This anusass fucking sat a little player named Tom Brady this week, in favor of Brett Favre. He fucking sat Tom Brady. Against the fucking Jets. In a fantasy playoff game!!!! Did I mention that fantasy football is for lucksacks?

Speaking of donkeys getting recockulously lucky, the tilt continued when I logged in to the pc at some point on Sunday afternoon and made the mistake of looking at the final results of Saturday evening's Winner's Choice tournament on full tilt, which I satellited in to a few hours earlier on Saturday night. In that tournament, which I spent $104 to win my $216 buyin for, I got donked out recockulously just 20 minutes in when some phucknut first called my utg raise (I had KK) with what turned out to be T♣8♣. Then I bet the pot on the all-undercard flop with two clubs on it, which phuckboy also called. When the turn fell, which also happened to be a third club, I checked, doing my patented go-and-stop move planning to checkraise, and when the phuckdonk bet out, I instantly moved him allin. He beat me into the pot, of course showing the made flush and IGH that early. So it was a hideous, horrible beat that ended my run at this winner-take-all WC $12,000 prize package tournament way, way earlier than it should have. It sucked, whatever. I've taken worse beats. But what killed me was the guy bragging in the chat afterwards about how he "played the hand perfectly".

Wow. Perfectly, huh? So he calls a utg raise preflop from middle position with T8s. Is that "perfect"? Try "-EV". "Stoopid" maybe. Try "horrible" even. It's a call with several players still to act behind him, of an utg raise, with a middle sooted one-gapper. This is the stuff that donkeys are made of. Then the dinkhead compounds his assity by calling a potbet on the flop with just the naked flush draw. More -EV bullshit. I'm not saying I've never seen this before. I'm not saying I've never even done it myself -- not usually though. But when I do, I don't go around claiming that I played the hand "perfectly". That was a majorly fucked up hand that this guy played, and he got incredibly lucky to have lived to tell about it. I let him know that there was zero chance of him retaining his chip lead in this basically winner-take-all event with 64 players, a fact the truth of which I had absolutey no doubt whatsoever about.

Well, that was before I logged in on Sunday to see where the clown ended up, how early his horrible preflop and flop play cost him his shot at glory in a big WPT or WSOP event. And there he was, right at the fucking top! This guy started off being a fuckfool against me, and it just never stopped. He rode my shit all the way to the 12k prize package. After the fantasy football shit that was already going down, this thing really set me off, let me tell you. I can't stand it enough already as it is when full tilt rewards the donkeys for their horrible play on an individual hand. But to reward a guy all the way through a 4-hour tournament, it was just too much for me to handle in the midst of my ghey fantasy football loss at the hands of the triumvirate of Hilliard, Fargas and Curry. What a joke.

Then let's talk a little bit more about lucksacks. So I sit down to the Big Game on Sunday night, and on Hand #1, Astin takes the pot preflop and shows pocket Kings. On Hand #2, he flops the nut straight against Iak's flopped 2nd-nut straight. On Hand #3, he has pocket Queens, and flops a set to boot. On Hand #9 he wins the pot with a bet on the flop, and flashes pocket Kings again. On Hand #11 he cracks someone's pocket Aces with his flopped nut straight. By 10:39pm ET, less than 40 minutes in to the tournament, Astin has shown his fourth pocket Kings. He did claim in the chat that he had been dealt no pocket Aces at all to that point though, poor guy! Can you imagine? No AA in 39 minutes in a big blonkament? How do some people do it? In all seriousness though, congratulations out to Astin who rode all those pocket pairs to the huge last-minute victory to play his way in to the ToC in addition to $1242 cash money. His heads-up battle with Maudie was one for the ages, with both players seesawing into 3-or 4-to-1 chip leads at one point before Astin powered back into the lead for the last time with K3 vs J3 on a 932 flop or some shit like that. He then made a huge call of Maudie's allin reraise preflop with his QJo, and when Maudie flipped up 44, Astin proceeded to cap off his big night by turning a straight to nab the win. It was super fun to watch and I personally am really fucking happy for the guy who has been the runner-up so many times in the BBTwo and finally gets his chance to be the big kahuna. Just awesome.

Speaking of the Big Game, I also watched a blogger call an allin rerereraise preflop with AQo maybe 7 minutes in. Of course this blogger is up against the only donkey in history who rerereraises preflop with A2, and of course it's a Queen on the flop and the blogger doubles early. I'm sure I'll read all about the "read" on that hand. Actually, I won't because I won't be reading anything about that performance. Suffice it to say, it is just about the most shining example of bad, lucksacky tournament poker that I could come up with without seeing it myself. Eight fucking minutes in to a tournament that everybody who hasn't yet won a ToC seat wants to win, and you're calling an allin rerereraise with AQo. Good stuff. And then of course there were the donkorific "nice hand" comments in the chat. Nice hand? Nice hand? The last thing this person needs is a yes-man saying nice hand after a play like that. To people who don't show a lot of introspection about their game, yes-men are the worst possible thing. And coupled with everything else I had going on already on Sunday, this business was seriously more than my fragile psyche could take.

Meanwhile, I also played in Chad's Blogger Skill Game. Sadly this turned out to be anything but. I can't stand the way that in any limit of HORSE I've ever played, people will just stay in and draw with anything all the way to the river. I often joke how you would need to raise the limits up to $50,000 - $100,000 to get people to play the game like they should, and I think I'm right. For a lousy $30 buyin, someone chased a flush early, calling bets on three streets against me before hitting on 7th to take a fifth of my stack after I played perfectly and the other guy played assily. Then a few minutes later I made two low pairs on 4th street in stud hi, so I had to bet out every street. Someone called the whole way with just one high pair, and hit a second pair on the river. By the time I made the nut flush on sixth street in stud hi -- all three of these gheyass hands occurring within the first 25 minutes of the tournament, mind you -- and lost to another player's full house, I was completely over the edge and lost all control.

What does that mean, that I "lost all control", you ask? Well, it's simple. In the Big Game, I called an allin on the flop against a big stack when I held nothing at all, knowng I was heading to the rail. I had the window shut long before even seeing the flop, and I felt better instantly. In the "skill game", I autobet and autoraised just about every hand I could possibly get away with in every game, taking all of 13 minutes to purposefully donk from 3600 chips to out to bust as gigli in the first ever game of this type. I'm sure there will be more of these HORSE events, and frankly I think it's a great idea, but as I write this I have to say it feels like I will not be playing blogger HORSE again anytime soon. Not for this buyin anyways. When you're ready to start up a 100k buyin HORSE blonkament, someone please let me know. Edit: at least somebody with some actual skills ended up winning this event, as Chad busted out with the victory in his inaugural HORSE tournament, so congratualtions to him as he somehow overcame what had to be a 10-to-1 chip deficit when heads-up play began and I decided to hit the sack.

So anyways, how many of you out there can honestly say that you've 100% purposefully donked off a $75 buyin and a $30 buyin over the span of 15 minutes just because you knew, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that you would be happier not to be playing? My guess is not many. Some, maybe, but not many. And you know what? I was right! I mean, within seconds of closing out those two games, my tilt began to recede and my mood started to improve. I had just gotten myself all out of whack due to a bunch of different things I had the misfortune of seeing, and my lack of ability to compartmentalize these things instead of letting them overtake my emotions. And turning off the pc was the smartest, most +EV thing (mentally and financially) I could have done when I did on Sunday -- trust me on that one.

I actually need to get better at sometimes just turning off the poker and moving on to something else that makes me happy. That much is obvious. Last night my "happy place" was watching the finale of "Dexter" with Hammer Wife -- easily the best show this year that no one has ever heard of. The finale wasn't quite as good as the last few episodes IMO, but that is more a commentary on how awesome this show got near the end than on the badness of the finale, which was really very well done and enjoyable and tied up all the good loose ends as the second season came to a close. So after poker to cool down I watched "Dexter", and I played a bunch with my new toy -- the Sprint HTC Touch phone. This is something I picked up on Friday, and the thing just blows me away. Not only will it help me to blog from right under my dorkwork's collective noses, but the shit has everything -- music, email, high-speed internet, touch screen, finger-scrolling, TV, and oh yeah, it's actually a phone too! I'm sure I'll write more about this one day soon, but for now suffice it to say that it was Dexter Morgan and my HTC that helped me to get over my funk on Sunday night, and to get me ready to face the online poker world again on Monday for the first non-BBTwo tournament I've held in quite some time:



Tonight's MATH will be BBT-free, a nice change for me and I know several of my blogger friends who grow tired of the constant scoring and so much riding on the performances in each. And tonight again we will be playing 6-max no-limit holdem, $26 buyin, password as always is "hammer". 10pm ET on full tilt. See you then as I try to start a new week at the virtual tables the way I've ended the past few, on a nice winning streak, and tilt-free at that. Whatever you all can do to help me on that front will be much appreciated. Including calling allin rerereraises preflop just 8 minutes in with AQo. Please give me summa that if at all possible.

See you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!!