Back to BBT3

So for those of you living under a rock, in a cave or somewhere, the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments is upon us once again. Starting this Sunday night with the monthly Big Game, and comprising 55 total events over three months, the bloggers will battle it out four nights a week plus a few Big Games to see who can come out on top in a series-ending Tournament of Champions. For those of you who do not know or may have never played with the bloggers before, I will take a few minutes and discuss how to participate.

First of all, anyone can join in and play in any or all of these BBT3 tournaments. Yes we call them blogger tournaments, but that refers to the fact that each of the BBT3 events is hosted by a particular blogger, but each of them has always been and will always be open to anyone and everyone, whether you have a poker blog, some other type of blog, no blog at all or even if you are totally illiterate in every way. The events involved in the BBT3 challenge are:

Sundays, once a month starting this weekend on Sunday night, March 2: The Big Game. Hosted by Miami Don, the Big Game will run once during each month of the challenge, and it is the highest-buyin event of any of the tournaments that comprise the BBT3. At $69 + $6, the price is a steepish $75 or tier II token on full tilt, and the tournament runs at 9:30pm ET. The password for all Big Games is the same -- "donkey". So you just need to log in to full tilt, click on the "tournament" tab and then on "private", and locate the Big Game on March 2 at 21:30pm. Click on "register", type in "donkey" for the password, deduct $75 from your balance and you're there.

Monday nights, starting Monday, March 3: Mondays at the Hoy. This is my own private tournament, which I started running around two years ago now on pokerstars, and around this time last year I moved over to full tilt for the relatively cheaper buyin of $24 + $2, or a tier I token. The start time for the MATH is always at 10pm ET, and the password is always "hammer". I also keep a weekly-updated moneyboard on my blog where I keep track of just the total money won from the Hoy by the various players on the list throughout the year. Again, all are welcome to join in the fun, and if you have $26 in your full tilt account, then we would love to have you in any of our weekly Monday night MATH events, most of all those that occur during the BBT3 starting this coming week.

Tuesday nights, starting Tuesday, March 4: the Skills Series. This is a new tournament series this year, and is the brainchild of perennial chat-ban victim and King of Donks Chad. These weekly Tuesday night events all begin at 9:30pm ET, and they feature a different variation of poker every week, with the key idea being that none of them are no-limit holdem. So you will see pot-limit Omaha, limit O8, Stud, Stud Hi-Lo, pot-limit holdem and maybe a few other similar variations, and are thus a true test of a well-rounded poker player. These events all sport a $12 + $1 buyin to minimize the rake per buyin (thanks Chad!) and they are all knockout tournaments, with $10 of every buyin going towards the prize pool and $2 going to the player who knocks you out in each.

Wednesday nights, starting Wednesday, March 5: the Mookie. The Mookie, hosted by none other than six-time father Mookie himself, has long been the feature blogger event each week, and with the BBT3 in the house that is only sure to get bigger. For a $10 + $1 buyin every Wednesday night at 10pm ET, you can take your shot at blogger immortality and an illustrious Winner's Profile on Mookie's blog by taking down the granddaddy of all blogger tournaments in glorious fashion. The Mookie joins in with the Riverchasers events as the lowest buyins of all the BBT tournaments, so the field is likely to be the largest here than in any of the other weekly events, but I have to say it is also the most prestigious title to win, at least in my own view. Basically everybody who's anybody in the blogging world comes out to play the Mookie on Wednesday nights, so come on out and join the fun -- use the password, which is always "vegas1" for all of Mookie's events.

Thursday nights, starting Thursday, March 6: Riverchasers. Led by Riggstad and brought to the bloggers by Al himself, Riverchasers in enjoying its second year of bloggerness on full tilt and has quickly become the place to be on Thursday nights on full tilt. Like the Mookie on Wednesday nights, the RC events all feature a $10 + $1 buyin, as cheap as it gets for you to win your way into the BBThree Tournament of Champions, and they also have one other nice feature which is a 9pm ET start time, the earliest of all the blogger tournaments that comprise the BBT. I believe the plan is to stick with the Riverchasers' 2008 format which includes alternating every week between a standard no-limit holdem tournament and a non-holdem tournament which itself rotates every other week among the different non-nlh poker variations. With the wide audience of the leaders of the tournament and the low buyin, Riverchasers is likely to give the Mookie a run for its money as the largest-field events of the BBT3, so be sure to register early for this one and don't forget the earlier start time.

So those are your tournament options as far as participating in the BBT3. And I can't stress enough how much new faces are allowed and really welcomed by everyone involved with this tremendous tournament challenge, from each of the above tournaments' hosts all the way up the line to full tilt themselves, who are putting up an unbelievable pile of prizes for the winners and the most successful players in the BBT3.

So you may be wondering, why should I play in the BBT3? I read somewhere that the total buyin costs for all 55 events that comprise the challenge amounts to just over $1000, so why spend all that money making runs at large fields of players comprised at least somewhat of people who ostensibly know something about poker since they keep blogs about the game? Well, the answer to that one is simple: the prizes.

Here is what is at stake with BBT3, and why I think every last one of you out there should make a real effort to play as many of the BBT3 events as you possibly can. I have lifted the following directly from Al's blog since nobody says it better than the man himself:

- We are going to be tracking the leaderboard throughout the entire challenge and will be paying out money plus FTP swag to the top players at the end. Below is how we will payout the final standings at the end of the challenge ($2,600 in prize money):

1st - $750
2nd - $600
3rd - $500
4th - $400
5th - $350
6th - 20th on the leaderboard will receive an FTP Jersey
Below is the formula we are using for the point system, top 25% of each tournament field will receive leaderboard points:

Points = 10 * [sqrt(n)/sqrt(k)] * [1+log(b+0.25)]

Where:
n is the number of entrants
k is the place of finish (k=1 for the first-place finisher, and so on)
b is the buy-in amount in dollars.
The leaderboard will be updated daily then loaded on BBTChallenge.com and on FTP's promotion page.

- In addition to tracking the overall leaderboard, we will also have a Player of the Month for March, April and May. The player who earns the most points during the events of that month will win one of the $2,000 WSoP Bracelet packages.

- The rest of the seats will be awarded at the end of the challenge in a Tournament of Champions. For the ToC We will be awarding the two Main Event seats and the remaining two $2,000 WSoP Bracelet packages. All you need to do in order to qualify for the Tournament of Champions is win one of the scheduled events during the next three months.

So there it is guys. A total of two WSOP Main Event seats will be awarded out of the Tournament of Champions, plus two more $2000 preliminary event seats as well to the top 4 finishers in that event, which will have at most 55 entrants and quite likely something more like 50 entrants by the time all is said and done. Plus, the points leaderboard winner for each of March, April and May will also win themselves a $2000 preliminary WSOP seat. Count 'em up, that is 7 total seats to the 2008 World Series of Poker coming at us for free courtesy of the marketing geniuses at full tilt. That right there is sick. Tack on to that another $2600 in prize money to be awarded to the top overall leaderboard finishers at the end of the challenge, plus 15 FTP jerseys which let's be honest would cost most of us about $5000 in poker losses just to amass enough FTP points at full tilt to get for ourselves, plus of course another exciting write-in challenge which will award another $2000 prize package to the winner for travel and entertainment expenses while writing about the main event for full tilt during the WSOP Main Event, and what you have in the end is a wiy bigger kick in the ass suite of prizes than anyone even in their wildest dreams would have ever thought a bunch of drunk, degenerate penisheads with keyboards could ever get just for playing the very games that most of us were going to play anyways. If you think about the nearly $40,000 worth of free prizes, plus all the fun and excitement building up to the events and ultimately the Tournament of Champions at the end of May / beginning of June, I will once again point out that, beyond any shadow of a doubt, right now this very minute is the golden age of poker bloggers, and the golden age of blogger tournaments. There is just no doubt.

So all this is to say that I am really hoping all of the old standbys will participate this time around -- I pretty much all you guys will already -- but also that this incredible prize package for BBT3 will bring out a bunch of new players, be it people who read our blogs regularly or others who hear about the challenge via word of mouth, from the full tilt website or otherwise. After all this whole thing we do is ultimately about community more than anything else, and adding to that community I say therefore is by definition a good thing. Come out and play, try to enjoy yourselves, and really work on your games to maximize your chances at one of the big fucking prizes at the end of it all. Sending actual poker bloggers to the actual World Series of Poker should one of the ultimate goals of our group as far as I'm concerned, and getting to do so basically for free makes it all the more special.

And lastly, what would a BBT3 preview post be without a little predictioning as far as some of the players who are going to be seated at the tables in the Tournament of Champions some three months from now, right? In the past I and some others have put up odds for a whole list of people to make the ToC, and I've tried to pick before a small group of players who would win a given event. Today, staring in the face of so many BBT3 events coming up starting this weekend, I think I am just going to put forth a list of players whom I believe will win their way in to the Tournament of Champions by winning at least one event during the BBT3. I'm not saying how, I'm not saying when and I'm not even saying which event or which poker format their victories will come. But with 55 events, that means 55 seats up for grabs in the Tournament of Champions, and 55 potential winners. So here is a non-exhaustive list of players that I bet will largely be comprised of people who will ultimately be in the ToC come the series' end (in no particular order):

Hoyazo
donkette
Astin
Cracknaces
pvanharibo
drizztdj
jeciimd
nightranger
cmitch
fuel55
wwonka69
lucko21
summer_babe
otisdart
surflexus
change100
kajagugu
MiamiDon
bayne_s
scottmc
bone-daddy
tripjax
loretta8
irongirl01
Heffmike
VinNay
riggstad
bdidde
emptyman
jjok
23skidoo
mookie99
mikemaloney
garycox
twoblackaces
buddydank
Pirate Wes (a10419)
katiemother
thepokergrind
ok, sirFWALGman

So there are 40 names for you right there. If your name is not there, don't despair, I probably just forgot you. Or you have never really won a blonkament before, which I have generally stayed away from here for obvious reasons, although there is no time like the present for your first blogger tournament victory. But the people on the list above I am betting can all take down a seat in the ToC by winning a blonkament during the next three months of the challenge, and hopefully all be playing for one of four WSOP seats, including the two coveted Main Event packages, come late May / early June.

I will go and post this very late entry now, and hopefully I will see many of you in the token frenzy tournaments tonight and tomorrow night at 9:45pm ET where you can pick up your ticket to Sunday night's BBT3-opening Big Game.