Oh What a Night

Oh what a night is right! By far the biggest prize ever won by a poker blogger in a poker blogger tournament was awarded last night to the winner of the series-ending BBTwo Aussie Millions Tournament of Champions, and that prize went to none other than BBT killer jeciimd. Although I was not privy to his hole cards other than what he told me a few times on the IM, from watching it was clear that jec won the incredible 18k prize package for two to the Aussie Millions in January by playing the exact same way he has played all of the BBT tournaments that occurred in both tournament series that we ran this year: by being patient, and by getting paid when he made his moves.

It sounds so simple, doesn't it? I mean, I saw jec get a lot of good cards in the BBTwo, which of course makes this strategy work so well and makes it something that renders it impossible for a guy like me to just patiently wait for the good cards. That said, jec's good fortune did not even approach that of some of the other well-known bloggers who played in the BBTwo, and that doesn't even get in to the first BBT where I would not say jec got good cards at all. The guy ended BBT1 in 3rd place overall on the leaderboard, where I kind of screwed him although I bet most people don't know this. As you may recall I ended up winning or getting to the final two in three tournaments in the last couple of weeks of the first BBT, rocketing myself in the last week to a fourth-place finish, one behind jec, such that jec won something like $340 in cash while I won the Nintendo Wii that I've written so much about for fourth place. Being a good 15 years beyond my video gamer days (there was a time when I could take Jeremy Roenick and kick any of your asses in Sega Hockey 1993), jec had already expressed an interest in the Wii and I basically agreed then and there to just sell it to him once I received it. Long story short, I got the thing in the mail, and I just wanted to hook it up once, you know, just to see what all the hubbub was about. Fast forward about two days later of nonstop playing, and I had to give jec the bad news that I was keeping the Wii. It's something I have felt bad about ever since that day, but not that bad as I continually beat the tar out of Sarah and that fucker Elisa every night in Wii Tennis. Anyways, now I officially don't feel bad about it anymore.

So jec also ran his way through the field in the BBTwo, crushing everyone in his path, and making over $2700 in the process of systemaically demolishing every last one of us by all standards. I mean, to be honest I don't put a lot of stock in the leaderboard to the first BBT, and that's even including my own 4th place finish. That leaderboard scoring system was so bad that I think I actually turned ghey for a little while, awarding points every time someone finished in the top half of the field. I'm dreaming about Brad Pitt here just thinking about that. Jec took advantage of that scoring system better than anyone, ending in 3rd place despite losing a nice chunk o' cash in the series, and like I said that just does not mean much of anything to me in genuine poker skills terms. But the BBTwo was the Real Deal without a doubt. With a scoring system that clearly rewarded actual tournament success play and awarded points based not on people playing like tightydonks but rather on people lasting far, making final tables, and winning the dam things, jec totally shined. He crushed us all, and as Goat and I were discussing this morning on the girly chat, the guy has clearly figured out the System for beating the blonkaments. He is without a doubt one of the most patient players on the blogger circuit, and it clearly pays off for him.

And you know what I love most of all about jec winning this whole shebang here? Jec works his ass off at his poker game, moreso than just about anyone. The guy reads almost as many poker books as me, and you can literally always count on him currently being in the middle of some poker text or another. In my opinion jec's no-limit holdem game basically blew anus when I first got to know him, which was I guess around a year ago or so online (we've never met in person) through an introduction from a mutual friend over a girly chat room. I literally remember jec not knowing how to steal the blinds -- when, who or how -- and spending a lot of time chatting with him about that (little did he know he had come to the Master on that particular topic). His game was soft, passive, and just generally nowhere near sufficient to succeed in this game. Even during the first BBT I think jec improved dramatically through the competition and the repetition with the same players and playing the same game again and again in a setting where we all had a real incentive to improve and suceed. Although, the real improvement in jec's nlh game I think has come since the BBT1 ended, where jec had a real Man's reaction to his BBT1 performance. Instead of yukking it up about finishing in 3rd place on the TLB, instead jec was well aware that something was wrong with his game to have lost as much money and not final tabled hardly at all. Since then I know jec has read at least 5 or 10 poker books (maybe more) because we chat about them just about every night, and dam if the guy is not out there practicing what he's reading and what he's learning almost every single night on the virtual or live felt. As I said, he is one of those guys who really takes the game, and his game, totally seriously, and I for one have to say that it is a fucking pleasure to see someone like that winning a prize like this. I don't plan to write any more about jec's incredible performance last night here today -- hopefully a certain someone who won 18 thousand samolians last night will actually make a blog post about it hint hint -- but again, congratulations out to jec who waited patiently all through the aggro and the pushing and the bluffing and everything that everyone who sat and watched the whole tournament saw, and when he made his moves near the end it was when he had cards and was ahead for the most part. Just. Incredible.

In other news, lucko took down the BBTwo TLB freeroll, which was a $1000 freeroll put up by full tilt for the top 50 players on the BBTwo leaderboard. So the competition was tough in that one, and it was roughly twice the size of the ToC, and lucko took it down. I'm sure he played his typical strong game to get 'er done, though I have to admit to not watching the TLB freeroll at all during the night due to the ToC, and of course to the regular Riverchasers tournament running at the same time. In that Riverchasers event, in light of events this week I decided I was going to play like an abject moron, which is exactly what I did. And amazingly, it worked out for me again and again and again, leading me eventually to a 4th place finish out of 30 runners and another cash in the RC as a result. It's incredible to me that I lasted this far, given the way I played the game and the number of apologies I probably owe people who actually came out to try on this night.

In case you're wondering exactly what I mean or think I'm in some way exaggerating when I say this, allow me to show you the fifth hand of the entire tournament. This could not have been more than 2 minutes after the thing started. Utg limps for the 40-chip big blind, with everyone's stack still right around the starting level of 3000, so we're talking about 75 big blinds as the effective stack here. So utg limps for 40, and utg+1 limps as well for 40 chips. Two players fold, and then Riverchasers Rich raises it up, I think to 80 chips for the minraise. I took this as an aggressive move, minraising two limpers with still four players left to act before the flop, probably indicative of KK, AA, or AK, and probably nothing other than that. I look down on the button to find T8s. A soooooted one-gap connector. How could I not play this against such a tight range, right? I can bust this guy right here and now if I nail this flop. But of course I'm not just going to call this guy with the strong hand, no way, I'm going to reraise. And what's the dumbest thing I can think of?

A small reraise. Why the phuck not, right? So I put in the reraise to a still small 340 chips with my T8s. Everyone else folds back to Rich, who pauses momentarily and then minrereraises again, this time to a 600 chips (these numbers may be a little bit off for you hand history whores, but as always the point is still crystal clear right there). At this point, yet another minraise from Rich could only mean one thing and one thing alone -- pocket Astins. And yet I was not deterred. Determined to play this thing out the way I was, I minrerereraised his ass right back, for the dreaded fourth raise in the hand up to 860 chips. Rich responds by min rererereraising again, putting in the fifth raise of the hand and bringing it up to 1120 chips to play as seen here:



At this point you could bet your life that he has pocket Astins, and he must be putting me on pocket Kings or even another pair of Astins. Absolutely hell bent on playing as donkishly as possible with so many big blinds in our stacks and me so obviously behind his clear as day pocket Astins, there was only one move for me at this point:



Yup. Another minraise, this one a rerererereraise to 1380 chips. Sure I knew I was behind his Astins, but with so many BBs in play I knew I could stack him completely if I hit my hand, and it was a soooooted one-gapper after all. Well, I was saddened at this point when Rich put in the seventh and final raise of the hand, just bumping it up to allin. I was bummed we couldn't go back and forth minraising our entire 75-BB stacks into the pot, but of course I insta-called the allin. And wouldn't ya know it, you know what they say about the 7th raise in a hand, right?



So this is how I started off my Riverchasers run last night:



Again, to Rich, I am truly sorry. And those of you who read here often will note that you will not hear me saying that very often. But I played just like this, pushing allin against obvious made hands for huge stacks with just naked flush draws and hitting (sorry Dabag!), and just generally pushing allin every time I raised preflop throughout the entire middle portion of the tournament, whether it was utg with A9o, in middle position with 98s, you name it and I pushed allin with it. It was actually incredibly fun, seeing how the other half lives for the first time in my entire life, although I have to say that I could never, ever play like that regularly. It took ten times more effort to keep playing uberdonkishly, and it was about 100 times more stressful as far as trying to preserve any chips that I had left, had I actually given a shizznot about that. Anyways, I played like this basically all the way through, cashing in the tournament in 4th place overall and ruining a lot of people's nights who actually came to play in the Riverchasers in the process, and I guess it felt good. If nothing else, as I said above just getting to see how the other half runs in these things for one night was a really fun and I think useful experience for me as far as putting things into perspective and being able to get into other people's heads. And I mean hey, how many times go you get to put in the sixth raise in a hand with T8s preflop, right? Heh heh heh.

OK I guess that's all for today. I look forward to putting some actual fucking poker hands back up on this site next week, but today it really should be all about jeciimd, his incredible performance not just in winning the Aussie Millions Tournament of Champions but really all throughout the BBTwo, and now in his chance to represent himself and represent all of us in the land down undah in January in what will easily be the largest buyin tournament he has ever played in, by, oh, about 12,000 USD. Good times. For those of you who have played live in the big buyin events before, I think that anything we can do to give jec advice on playing in his first big one like this will be a good thing, something which I plan to focus on at some point before jec leaves for Oz next month. For now, to jec, I say live it, love it, revel in it and let it burn an indelible mark into your brain what you have done to the competition all throughout this year. Coming from where you started just a short time ago, and knowing the work that you put into your game and into playing well and always improving, I literally could not be any happier for you, and for us as a group to have such a serious player representing us in the Aussie Millions.