Decent Mookie Run, Avatar Races are Back, and Jec is Out

For starters today, congratulations out to Evil Wonka, Jordan and chitwood (whose blog I am not familiar with so if you have one please let me know in the comments and I will link you here) for being the three bloggers who won their $75 tokens in Wednesday night's token frenzy. In the end, a full 10% of this thing was bloggers at the start, including myself who lasted about 40 minutes before running into a higher Ace and heading home in the middle of the pack. So we had 12 runners in the frenzy from our group last night, but I know we can do better than that tonight. Many of you will already be on for the 9pm ET start of the latest Riverchasers tournament (password is "riverchasers"), so how about you all man up and multitable a li'l bit with the 9:45pm ET token frenzy as well? Get in there, take a stab at the top 19% finishers who all receive a $75 token, and then when you win it, I will blog about you in this spot on Friday morning. And more importantly, you can go and register for Sunday night's Big Game right away with your win. You wanna make an instant name for yourself among the blogging crew? Win the monthly Big Game. You'll not only take home hundreds in cash for the win, but the recognition for your greatness will be hard to even put a dollar value on. So get in there and make it happen, starting with tonight's token frenzy at 9:45pm ET on full tilt. $14 gives you basically a 1-in-5 shot of winning $75. Lezdoit.

And speaking of congratulations, let's not forget Numbbono who took it all down last night for his second Mookie win in the past 51 weeks. Now I'm not sure what is wrong with this guy to have only won two Mookie's in his career, but whatever it is he played very well on Wednesday night, got some good cards and played them aggressively in a few key spots, and stole a huge chiplead away from Jestocost shortly into the heads-up session to put himself in a position to win.

This week's Mookie was good times as both Mookie and myself final tabled for I think only the second time in history -- looking at my own personal Mookie history, there can't have been that many opportunities for the dual-final-tables for Mookie and myself, that is for sure. But with us having just finalized our prop bet, this made for some interesting possibilities as we headed into the final table, with me in 7th or 8th place out of 9 and Mookie closer to 3rd or 4th as I recall. But the funny thing is, Mookie and I took very different paths to get to the final table, even though we both ended up at the same place. Me, I played pretty poorly overall on the night. I've said this before when I've run deep in a blonkament from time to time, and this week's Mookie definitely fits the bill, as surely as I have sat here and talked about how great I played on many a night when I got donked out by some uberjackass early. Well, last night I started off running bad even before the Mookie started, and by the time that I ran AK into 66 on a K6x flop with two suits maybe 30 minutes in to the tournament, I was hardly surprised. That hand, which doubled up CK early after I reraised her allin with tptk -- something I almost never try to call an allin with early in any tournament but which my style often has me raising allin with -- dropped me down to below 700 chips and it was just another standard Mookie for me right from the earlygoing. Shortly after this point, I recorded my first of two ghey suckouts on the night when I moved in with KTs on a short stack and got called by loretta's AKo, only to see me turn a flush and then dodge the redraw to loretta's nut flush on the river. What can you do. Not too long after this, I picked up pocket Aces for the first time in two years in the Mookie, and I played these things to perfection. Utg+1, himself on a short stack, had raised the 60-chip blinds up to 180, so I just smooth called that raise from early middle position, hoping my slowplay would enable me to checkraise the flop allin in a heads-up pot. Instead, someone else also smooth called the 180 behind me from MP, and then the flop came King high. The first guy led out strong and quick, and I immediately put him on AK given his lack of thought despite two players who had called his preflop raise behind him. I figured with one pair I wanted the guy behind me outta there, so I put in a standard but not huge raise. The third guy folded and the first play instantly pushed. At this point I knew he had to have AK, so I called, he flipped up the big slick and I had doubled up again to 3520, my first time back over my starting stack of 3000 chips since the first few hands on the night.

Unfortunately, that was really the highlight of my night though. As I said I really didn't play very well, it took a suckout to even be alive at that point to receive the pocket Aces, and I don't believe I was dealt one other big hand all through the night. I did suck out on someone one more time when we were down to 3 tables left, and, being the Mookie, I of course got sucked out on 3 times on the night for various sized pots, including one double up somewhere around the middle thanks to a river 3-outer that would have put me in second place with around 25 players remaining. So overall I played pretty bad poker and could never get a dam thing going, despite lasting all the way to the final table. Despite my good finishiing position, let me tell you it was basically all stealing and restealing for me. I stole about 25 pots preflop (when I was finally eliminated in 5th place I had won a full 10% of the hands I had seen all night before the flop -- think about that stat!), and I had a few nice resteals to boot, one with 82o from DubSpoke (don't know him) and once at the final table with AQ against Mookie who had been a major card rack and I really figured probably had another big pair. So as I mentioned, in the end I busted in 5th place after sitting on a short stack all through the final two hours including the entire final table, and I stayed up for a bit to see if Mookie could end our prop bet early with a big win. In the end the other two stacks kept growing, and Mookie's earlier run of good cards came to an abrupt halt, with him busting in 3rd place by running the Mookie -- T8o -- into jestocost's pocket Kings. What can ya do. So it was a valiant effort by both Mookie and myself, but once again this week it was just not meant to be. I mean, obviously winning the Riverchasers and the donkament this week will take the sting out of this for me, but you really have to wonder if I ever am going to win the Mookie, for real. But hey at least I got back on to the Mookie 2008 stat board early on this year just like I did in the MATH earlier this week, and I'll take a 5th place finish in the Mook any day of the week given my usual performance and especially given my TPTK vs flopset in the first half hour last night.

Btw, did anyone else think CK did an awesome job on buddydank radio last night? I don't know about you guys, but I am having a great time finding out which of you donkeys make good radio personalities, and which of you don't. Personally, I could listen to Don, Chad and CK all night on that thing as far the guest hosts go. And meanwhile some others of our group that I was sure would be great radio personalities have ended up either being too shy to really talk, or just plain sucking in general. Weird. But hopefully CK makes another appearance soon as to me she was a real highlight in her first ever BDR appearance.

Before I go today, Chad turned me on to the startup again of the Avatar Races on full tilt, which begin with the Limit Avatar race tonight at 9pm ET. This is a $216 buyin tournament that pays out prize packages worth $1505 apiece comprised of buyins to all the limit events on the FTOPS VII schedule -- FTOPS #3 ($535 HORSE), FTOPS #5 ($216 LHE), FTOPS #11 ($216 Limit O8), FTOPS #14 ($322 razz) and FTOPS #16 ($216 stud). And the best part about this Limit Avatar Race? It is HORSE, which makes perfect sense considering it awards seats to HORSE, limit holdem, O8, razz and stud tournaments. That is awesome. It's been a few FTOPS series now that full tilt has been running these avatar races to award several FTOPS seats in one fell swoop, but this marks the first time for a limit avatar race dealing with just the limit events, begging the question of whether or not full tilt plans to run a no-limit avatar race as well this time around. Guess we'll have to wait and see on that one, but in the meantime I would love to win myself one of these limit avatar races. No I won't consider buying in to one for $216 cash, but of course knowing me there are three cool satellites already scheduled to play our way into tonight's $216 limit avatar race at 9pm ET. The first is a regular HORSE tournament with a $26 buyin at 5:35pm ET. No way I am online anywhere near that time, and in fact only dudes who play poker at work or those of you lucky enough not to have day jobs would ever be able to play that badboy. Next there is a turbo HORSE sat at 6:55pm ET, also with a $26 buyin. Still too early for me. My only shot at satelliting in, and it's still a pretty long shot time at that, is the final sat of the night, a $40 turbo HORSE sat at 7:20pm ET. I might possibly be able to get into this thing once in a long while, but as it is probably not tonight as I am once again getting crushed at work, mostly due to the fact that my two fuckbaggy coworkers more or less come and go as they please and rarely even come into the office anymore, while I do all their work and my jackboss just sits around in his self-imposed obliviion and lets it all happen under the guise of trying to be "accomodating". And while I suppose bending over and smearing his anus with vaseline before spreading his cheeks can be considered "accomodating", I guess I just have a different view than he does of what a manager's role is really supposed to be. But I digress.

OK that's all for today. I'm sure most of you heard this already on BDR last night, but BBTwo champion jeciimd was in fact eliminated on Wednesday evening ET from the Aussie Millions when his AA lost to 53s after a guy called a preflop raise, called a 2/3 pot sized bet on the flop with just the naked flush draw, and then hit on the turn. What can ya do. A great job and a great run by jec, who received more pocket Aces now in just about 11 hours of live casino play than I have received in my entire lifetime of playing holdem in any casino, but still that is a tough way to go. Hard to put a guy on a flush draw after he calls your preflop raise and calls a decent sized bet on the flop, with the flush draw filling once a good portion of your stack is already in the pot. Congratulations again to jec for a job well done and for representing well by making it through the first day of play in his first ever live casino tournament. For those of you who have played a big-buyin tournament live in a casino, you know that is quite an accomplishment for a first-timer.

Now go read Don's post from Wednesday. This is gonna be good, I can tell already.

See you tonight at the Riverchasers at 9pm ET, and at the token frenzy at 9:45!