Sunday Bloody Sunday, But Another FTOPS Sat Win

Ahhhhhh. Is there anything better than heading on to public transportation on a Monday morning? In glorious New York, the subway riders are even more polite and cheery than usual on Mondays, and I have to tell you, what a pleasure to be around, all of them. Today's special was the clown who would not get out of the way to let some other people off the subway at the business stop in midtown, I guess just because he thought he should be allowed to block the entire doorway since he didn't feel like going to work. Or something. It's always something new with these guys. But don't worry, I elbowed him good in the ribs as I went by. Asshole.

Anyways, that last paragraph pretty much sums up how I feel after a long night of poker on Sunday night on both full tilt and pokerstars. Actually I only played one sitngo on stars, but on full tilt I ran of bunch of 6-max and full ring $55 turbo sngs, plus an mtt or two and a few satellites as well. And unsurprisingly, it was a little bit of good, a larger amount of bad, and a whole lotta ugly. Let me show you what I mean.

But first...



Don't forget, tonight is 6-max nlh blonkament time again at Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt. The time is 10pm ET, the password as always is "hammer", and we are located under the "Private" tab under "Tournaments" on the full tilt lobby interface. Come on by, and as a reminder, anyone is allowed and in fact encouraged to play the MATH every week, so don't be shy! Even if you've never played with the bloggers before but have always wanted to try, let tonight be your time to shine. We often have first-timers at the Hoy, and I have to tell you, they have had an ordinately good performance as a rule when losing their MATH virginity, so let that be you tonight and come out with your $26 in tow. Just don't expect solid play, that's really the only requirement. We are all blonkeys after all. But you can expect to have a good time, play some aggressive poker, and have a chance to get yourself known or at least recognized by a group of guys who all love to play and write about poker in their various blogs. And of course I will list n link you here tomorrow if you cash in the tournament tonight. So come out tonight at 10pm ET and join the fun at Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt! Winner gets to take home Giselle up there for one night as well, although only if Tom Brady is too hobbled to catch you. Best of luck with that.

OK so back to this weekend. I played the donkament on Friday, ran my KQ into eventual winner SoxLover's QJ on a two-Jack board and IGH somewhere short of the final table as a result. Ran a few other sngs, did reasonably well, and called it a night somewhat early as I recall. On Saturday I managed to squeeze in a couple of 4-tabling sng sessions in the afternoon, but then slept right through the evening without logging back in, having already secured my 200 FPP points and thus Gold Iron Man status for the month of January, while also working tantalizingly close to earning out my entire end-of-year Iron Man bonus of $750 or so. And then came Sunday.

Sunday saw me run a bunch more of these $55 turbo sngs, something which I am having a lot of success at and which I am very pleased to say I seem to have discovered a winning formula to. I could probably 10-table these things if my laptop monitor was big enough to fit more than 4 at a time at the smallest size I prefer to play at, without suffering hardly any degradation in my quality of play, because it really is pretty close to formulaic at this point until you get down to the bubble times when the shizz gets really interesting and I really find myself playing as much by "feel" as anything else. I will definitely be running my series of turbo sng strategy posts one day soon, but as is often the case with me I find myself having too much pokery stuff to say every day and just don't end up getting to them. But they're all about 75% written and they will definitely be going up one day soon, I promise.

Anyways, as is typical for a Sunday, I took an inordinately large (even for me) number of recockulous suckout-eliminations from tournaments on the day, as well as some truly primo setup hands. I will show you without a doubt my favorite of the many of these hands I saw on Sunday, and in keeping with my stated attempts to "get it right" I'm just going to post the actual hand history here:

Full Tilt Poker Game #5022098357: $55 + $5 Sit & Go (Turbo) (38130698), Table 1 - 25/50 - No Limit Hold'em - 20:46:01 ET - 2008/01/27
Seat 1: toribum (1,345)
Seat 3: hoyazo (2,450) So notice, I'm already in great chip position early in this thing, just trying to play tight and not make any big mistakes or lose any big pots.
Seat 4: zoey11 (2,845)
Seat 5: edmiami (420)
Seat 6: NVN76 (1,940)
hoyazo posts the small blind of 25
zoey11 posts the big blind of 50
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to hoyazo [8d 8h]
edmiami folds
NVN76 folds
toribum calls 50
hoyazo calls 25 Again, playing it conservatively, much more so than usual for me in fact, which is fairly typical for me with a nice stack early on in a turbo sng.
zoey11 checks
*** FLOP *** [4s 8c 4d] Ding ding ding!
hoyazo checks This is how much of a man I am. Even I am not going to bet out with the flopped overboat on a checked flop. Why bother?
zoey11 checks
toribum checks
*** TURN *** [4s 8c 4d] [Qh]
hoyazo checks Did I mention I am a mega man?
zoey11 checks
toribum bets 150
hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act
hoyazo calls 150 Serious manliness once again.
zoey11 folds
*** RIVER *** [4s 8c 4d Qh] [6s]
hoyazo bets 250 That's right biatch. Now you're gonna have to call it too!
toribum has 15 seconds left to act
msandler1403 (12:15:13 AM): toribum has 15 seconds left to act
toribum raises to 600 Hahahahahah I love being the dominant male.
hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act
hoyazo raises to 1,144 Reverse hoy, special just for this guy.
toribum raises to 1,145, and is all in
hoyazo calls 1
*** SHOW DOWN ***
toribum shows [4h 4c] four of a kind, Fours Total, complete stunned silence.
hoyazo mucks
toribum wins the pot (2,740) with four of a kind, Fours
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2,740 | Rake 0
Board: [4s 8c 4d Qh 6s]
Seat 1: toribum (button) showed [4h 4c] and won (2,740) with four of a kind, Fours
Seat 3: hoyazo (small blind) mucked [8d 8h] - a full house, Eights full of Fours Crickets chirping.
Seat 4: zoey11 (big blind) folded on the Turn
Seat 5: edmiami didn't bet (folded)
Seat 6: NVN76 didn't bet (folded)

Now, I am happy to say that in the end I won that particular sng outright anyways, so no hard feelings. But for a minute there it was like I was playing back on pokerstars all over again. Nothing quite like slow-playing the flopped overboat right into flopped quads, is there? Unbelievable. And that was pretty much par for the course on the night. That fit in quite nicely with the couple of dominated-hand suckouts I suffered at the final tables of events I really wanted to win on Sunday, including my $75 token attempt to satellite in to last night's NL Avatar Race where I ran AQ into the mighty Q4 on the bubble and lost to a 4 on the flop. Q4o, that is a hard hand to beat right there.

On the good side, I did somehow manage to outlast the Sunday donkery for this:



So I am in to FTOPS #1, which is coming up a week from this Wednesday, on February 6, at 9pm ET. This is a straight-up $216 buyin nlh tournament, the same tournament that full tilt has started the FTOPS with for at least four or five series in a row now, and I again managed to satellite in for around my usual 30% or so of the true buyin price. This $10 rebuy satellite has proven to be a gold mine for me as far as the FTOPS is concerned, as this time around I won my way in on just my second attempt at this rebuy sat. The first time was $11 down the drain on a final table suckout, and this time was $31 thanks to an early double-rebuy from me, for a total of $42 spent to win the $216 buyin. I'll take it.

Other good news from Sunday night is that in the middle of one of my turbo sngs, I got the window popping up informing me that I had cleared my entire end-of-year Iron Man bonus of $750. In the end, it wasn't even that hard. And I did it almost exclusively by playing tournaments -- sngs, mostly, with some mtt's and a little omaha cash thrown in, but not much of either of those. Basically the $55 and $110 turbo sngs rode me to the bonus, with 4 days to spare. Thank you full tilt, and thank you for the sucking fuckouts all night on Sunday night, easily costing me the entire value of the $750 bonus and then some. You are so fucking clever you guys. So clever.

Before I go, here is another example of a point I have made here several times on the blog about not calling allins in key spots with little pocket pairs, most recently just a couple of weeks ago when 22 called my allin in the Mookie and busted me in the first half hour or so. So I am in a $20 rebuy satellite to the FTOPS ME last night -- the first time I have attempted to satellite in to the ME this time around -- and I have amassed a nice chip lead with 4 players remaining, with me at around 12k to 8k to 6k to 5k for the 4 players left. Then, the guy with 6k sucks out on the guy in 2nd place, eventually taking the rest of his miniscule stack on the very next hand on a tilt-push. Now that guy has more than my stack, and of course not 3 hands later, he sucks out again on the remaining player, leaving me and my beautiful prior chip lead now at a 20k to 10k chip deficit heading into heads-up play, against a monkey who didn't have a clue how to get himself into good situations late in the game in mtt satellites. I hate when that happens, and it underscores the importance of being the guy to eliminate the final player or two before heads-up play, or else you often find yourself at a chip deficit even if you had been leading with just a few players remaining.

Anyways, so it's just me and this other guy, in essentially a winner-take-all heads-up battle for one FTOPS ME seat, and I look down to find 55 in the small blind against his button. Although I have closed the gap some from the starting 2-to-1 chip deficit in hu play, I am still down in chips and I am looking to win the blinds and antes so that I can get into the chip lead, always crucial in heads-up play so that I can win the entire tournament with one big hand. So I push allin as I had been with most pocket pairs during the hu session:



The guy pauses for less than 2 seconds, and types in the chat, "I have to call."

Another 2 seconds and he also types in "gg and good luck in the tourney."

Then he calls with? Check it out:



Yep. Pocket 6s. Now of course I turned out to have pocket 5s and of course he won the hand and the satellite and the ME seat, while I had to settle for a sweetass $5 cash prize for second place. Gross. But here's the thing: Why would he call this bet here? Why on earth? He has the chip lead in heads-up play for crying out loud. If he folds, we are still even in chips with both over 14,500, and he lives to fight another day with 100% certainty. But instead, he says he "has to call". Has to call? Allin with the chip lead heads-up with pocket 6s and you have to call? Come on donkey. Unless there was a man in a ski mask with a gun to your head at your pc, then you most assuredly did not "have" to call, and in fact, calling there is a putrid poker play. I just raised you allin before the flop, so the odds of me having two cards higher than 6s are probably what, 90%? And the chance of me having a pocket pair higher than 6s are what, maybe 15-20%? Pick your numbers, but the point I am making here again today just as I have said it before is, you should not call allins preflop with low pocket pairs for significant chips in key situations. It makes no sense. When you have the chip lead and are down to heads-up, such a move becomes even more laughable than usual. You are either taking a chance to race for all your chips in a spot where you already have the lead in chips, or you are going to be dominated a significant percentage of the time since the other guy already raised allin before the flop. Why do it? Don't do it. It works against me like an absolute charm of course, but against your average player, calling allins for significant chips when the chip leader in heads-up play is moronic. Learn this, and you will be ahead of the game in late-stage tournament play already right off the bat, and this applies very well to both mtts and sngs.

OK that's all for today. I'll see you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt! And don't forget, Lost is back for the first of eight powerful episodes this season, coming this Thursday night at 9pm ET on ABC. Can't wait!