Superbowl Surprise, Online Overlays and Drunk Suckouts

WOW. A lot to get to today. But first things first...



The Hoy is back in its regularly-scheduled time slot and place tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt. Mondays at the Hoy is the name, 6-max no-limit holdem is the game. $26 buyin, same as always. The crowds have been well into the 30s for the past few weeks, and people seem to be digging the faster pace (and shorter overall tournament length) of 6-max, so come on out and see what everyone is having so much fun with as we start the week in blogger tournaments off right.

And congratulations to KOD not only for final tabling that donkeyfest known as the 28k again last week, but then for chopping the pokerstars 25k over the weekend for a little over $5100 cash money. Chad is the undisputed king of navigating the big donkey fields. I will never understand now he does it.

Now on to the real story of the day....the Superbowl.

Ever since we were children, most of us were raised with this one basic precept regarding those who don't follow the rules: Cheaters never win, and winners never cheat. Well, the New England Cheatriots have proven that old saying wrong time and again over the past several years, winning three superbowls and getting their names into the record books for a number of reasons this year in recording the first ever 16-0 season in the NFL on their march to yesterday's superbowl matchup with the hated New York Giants. It turns out that the Cheatriots have spent the better part of the past five or six seasons (at least) cheating in a way that is obviously very significant to the outcome of their games, and they've been steamrolling the entire NFL the whole time while they've been doing it. Not only were the Cheatriots busted for videotaping the New York Jets' defensive signal-calling during a game early in this, their record-setting, undefeated season, but it even came out this very past week that Coach Bill Belicheat has been taking advantage of illegal videotaping of opposing teams for many years, even in the biggest of games, including the superbowl against the St. Louis Rams five years ago. So here you've got a guy who has been cheating very deliberately, and in clear violation -- flauntingly, in many cases, after receiving repeated warnings -- and has done nothing but win win win as a result.

Well, this weekend, finally, mercifully, came Vindication. And don't go dismissing my ranting today as that of a crazed Giants fan just because I live in New York. I'm not just not a fan of the Giants -- I hate the Giants. I abhor them. With a serious passion. As you know if you've read here for some time, I am from Philadelphia and I have grown up with a deep-seated hatred for every single New York team, the Giants in particular as they have always played in the Eagles' division and have now won not one, not two but three superbowls while the Eagles still have yet to win one. So I hate this year's superbowl champions more than probably any single person I know. But, just like my Phillies's incredible comeback to knock the New York Mets out of the playoffs in 2007, the Giants' last-minute victory over the New England Cheatriots will always be remembered by me, as will the team that went 18-0 and then couldn't win the big game. It ruins the Cheatiot's entire "perfect" 2007-2008 season, in a way that I could never have dreamed of. Now, they are nothing. Nothing!! You can go undefeated all you want -- now all the Cheatriots are are the only team in the history of the NFL to go 18-1 and not win the superbowl. And even though it's the lowly, despicable, New York Giants who beat them, I can only keep thinking one thing about it all.

Fuck 'em.

Cheaters never win, and winners never cheat. Fuck you, New England. Fuck you straight to hell, you despicable lowlife asshole losers. And when I say losers, I mean L-O-S-E-R-S.

Now go buy some nice t-shirts here that I bet will be getting a ton of good business today from like-minded fans such as myself.

With the superbowl on tv and with most of the northeastern U.S. preoccupied with it at least, I noticed two main effects in the world of online poker. First, there were more and bigger overlays in the major guaranteed tournaments than I have ever seen before, and this was something I tried to take advantage of as best as I could as I have done in the past on days like this. The 50-50 at 9:30pm ET, which needs basically 1000 runners to make the 50k guarantee, had something like 760 people playing. That is by far the biggest overlay I've ever seen in this thing. By far. Even the pokerstars equivalent of the 50-50 had to rely on some last-minute late-registration stragglers to surpass its own guarantee by a couple hundred dollars, something which to my knowledge has never happened even one time before. At 10:30pm ET on full tilt there was a mega-satellite into the $322 buyin FTOPS #9 nlh tournament, a $50 buyin sat with 10 seats guaranteed. In the end there were I think 52 runners or something like that -- at least four of us bloggers -- which again represented a nice overlay that made me want to play it even more than I otherwise already always try to play these multi-seat megasatellite tournaments, even though I have already qualified for FTOPS #9 as it is so I was really just playiing for cash in the end.

Unfortunately, along with those huge overlays all over the major online poker sites due to the superbowl in the U.S., there were also I am sure tons of drunks and idiots on their computers playing this game with cards, button-mashing at its finest no doubt, the result of which was more suckouts and horrible poker plays even than usual, even for a Sunday online. So it was a mixed bag overall, which of course for me led to even more than my usual 6 or 7 suckout-eliminations a night in the online poker world. If you clowns took as many bad beats as I do on a regular basis, there wouldn't be a poker blogger community because none of you would play poker anymore. If it's not a suckout then it's a setup, but it's all the same stuff in the end -- 90% of my eliminations from poker tournaments are plays I would make again and again and again and most often situations where by all rights I should have survived to see another hand and play another orbit at least. This past Sunday was without a doubt the worst button mashing I have ever seen across the board in the world of online poker, and I'm sure the superbowl going on had a lot to do with that.

Let me give you just one example from the 50-50, which I think was my favorite hand of the entire night that I saw, and is one that actually did not end in a suckout for me. This was probably about 90 minutes in to the 5050, with the blinds at 80-160 I think. Check this out and I defy you to tell me my opponent was sober here:

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to hoyazo [As Ks]
BIMMERGAL808 has 15 seconds left to act
BIMMERGAL808 raises to 480
Dixit folds
highplaya folds
tokenjay has 15 seconds left to act
tokenjay folds
mellowyellow74 folds
hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act
hoyazo raises to 1,380 Although I like to change things up just enough to keep my opponent honest, I will usually raise or reraise one raiser preflop with most AK hands in big spots in tournaments.
jimmyvjackson folds
honkytonk99 folds
Poker_Cuervo folds
BIMMERGAL808 has 15 seconds left to act
BIMMERGAL808 calls 900
*** FLOP *** [5d 5c 2c]
BIMMERGAL808 checks
hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act
hoyazo bets 1,600 Standard c-bet. If I get reraised here, I know I am beat although at that point I probably have to call anyways with just 420 chips left.
BIMMERGAL808 has 15 seconds left to act
BIMMERGAL808 has requested TIME
BIMMERGAL808 calls 1,600
*** TURN *** [5d 5c 2c] [9c]
BIMMERGAL808 checks
hoyazo bets 420, and is all in No reason not to put in the rest at this point, even though I must be beat, right? Right?
BIMMERGAL808 calls 420
hoyazo shows [As Ks]
BIMMERGAL808 shows [Jh Kc] Muhahahahahahahahahaha!

Go ahead, explain that one to me please. Calls the preflop reraise with KJo? Then calls my c-bet on a raggy flop with just the KJo unimproved? What, he put me on QJo I guess? Somebody please try to tell me that guy was sober. Bullshit. I say he was probably some anussy Boston fan who had already drunk himself into oblivion as the superbowl had probably just ended, and just wanted to tilt off the rest of his chips so he could drown himself in his bottle of Sam Adams Winter Lager. But these guys making plays just like this were simply all over the place on full tilt and pokerstars last night. Normally for most people that would be a good thing of course, but when you are a raging suckout magnet such as myself, it's all bad.

In the end, I got sucked out recockulously from the 5050 by a guy who called my pot-sized bet on the flop with just an pocket underpair of 9s, and then of course managed to suck out his set on the river. In fact as I mentioned I think I got sucked out on maybe 11 or 12 times in just 5 or 6 hours of poker on the day, including a little bit of cash, several sngs and a few satellites and other multi-table tournaments on the night. I did record a small cash in a pokerstars O8 tournament, and I ended up winning the $322 cash prize in the FTOPS #9 megasatellite after sitting around on a short stack for a long while before finally winning a big hand with pocket Kings after 90 minutes of no cards to speak of. And, I ran pretty deep in the stars version of the 50-50 as well, which is actually a $55 buyin event that usually has a few hundred more players than the full tilt equivalent. I wanted to profile the hand I busted out on before I sign off today, and find out from you guys what, if anything, you think I did wrong here. I think there are several places where I might have made a suboptimal decision, but to be honest I'm really not so sure about that and I would love your thoughts.

So we are down to around 90 players left in the stars 50-50, we are well into the money already which began I think at 153 players remaining. I have a nice stack, just a little above average but good for around 30th place out of 90 players remaining, I'm in the big blind with 97s. Early middle position raises the 1600-chip big blind up 2.5x to 4000, and then the button calls the 4000 raise as well. So it's 2400 chips to me to go to see a 3-way flop with the 97s on a nice healthy stack:



Do you guys play this here? Obviously, I did play it, and I think in large part because I have confidence in my postflop play that I won't lose a lot with this hand if I don't connect solidly, either with a huge made hand or a huge draw. But what do you guys think of this call? It is 2400 chips into an 11,750-chip pot, giving me basically 4-to-1 odds, and in the end I just decided, especially given my healthy stack, I had to call here. I've got two nice-sized stacks in the hand with me, so I know that if I hit this flop hard I can really get into prime position. I certainly don't feel bad about having called here at all, and I know it wasn't a huge mistake either way, but I would be very interested in hearing others' thoughts on this question.

So here was the flop:



Obviously this is a large flop for me. I flopped a flush draw, an inside straight draw and even the inside straight flush draw. I have to figure I have at least 12 outs, and that's assuming that my 9s and 7s are not themselves outs against another high-card hand, which could bring my hand to a total of 18 outs, assuming I'm not already ahead of whatever these guys have with my 9-high. Does anyone like to bet out here?

I opted not to, for a couple of reasons. First, I feel like I have a huge draw, but obviously no made hand, and these guys both have big enough stacks to cripple me if I make this pot needlessly big without applying the ultimate pressure in the hand. And secondly, with my huge draw and on a flop that is unlikely to have hit either the preflop smallish raiser's hand or the smooth caller on my right, I saw this as an awesome check-raise allin opportunity. So I checked it, and the original preflop raiser bet out, somewhat smallish at a little under 2/3 the size of the pot:



The preflop smooth caller on my right folded, leaving me heads-up against this player whose every action so far in the hand seemed consistent with just a two-high-card hand, maybe a small pocket pair or some kind of Ace-rag. He raised smallish preflop, and bet smallish on the flop as well. And most importantly, with the huge draw I had flopped, this guy's 9000 chip bet on the flop still left him with 26k in chips behind, giving him ample ability to fold anything but a real strong hand to my allin checkraise. All the factors were present for my checkraise, and I had flopped a large draw that was close to a favorite if not the favorite against most hands I would expect him to have in this spot, so I decided to go for it, fully expecting him to lay it down:



Again, I would love to hear your thoughts on this play. It is aggressive for sure, there's no doubt about that, but even as I look it over here after my elimination I still can't help but feel I would play the same hand this exact same way again. But what do you guys think? Sure anyone can say just lay it down, but I am curious in particular to hear from some of the guys (and gals) with some actual poker tournament success here as to what you think of this aggressive move by me in this particular spot.

So the guy called off his entire stack with just A3 here, but unfortunately for me, it was an A3 also soooted in diamonds like my 97s was:



Thus, 9 of my outs disappeared in a flash, leaving me with just 3 of the 4 Eights to make a non-flush straight, the 8 of diamonds to make a straight flush, and 3 Sevens and 3 Nines to make a pair. So I still had ten outs left even against his nut flush draw, but that was some bad luck there to run into the nut flush draw like that given the way this hand had played out. I still think he lays down to my allin checkraise there a good 80% of the time or so given his preflop hand range, but not in this case. I'm also trying to figure if even this was really a good call by him, even holding the nut flush. I'm too lazy to do the math, but I suppose if he wants to count the three other Aces as outs for him -- a very questionable move given my allin checkraise on the flop -- then with 12 outs there was surely more than enough dead money in the pot already to make the call a +EV one. But more reasonably, if he thinks he has just the 9 flush outs, I wonder if it is still the right call to make here. Probably, in a close decision. But I like to think I would've laid his hand down in this spot, with the 26k in chips, still plenty of ammo to get right back into this tournament, given the pair on the board, and with just the 35% chance of hitting by the river. I don't know. Again to me it all feels like I played this hand the way I wanted too -- admittedly quite aggressively -- and I just lucked out, which I probably should have known given all the miserable troubles I have had in my poker career in being up against higher flushes with lower flushes, or full houses with nut flushes, etc.

Anyways, two bricks later, none of my 10 outs comes through and IGH in I think 90th or 89th place for a small cash of a little over a hundred bucks for my efforts. It was a good time and one of several nice runs in well-structured tournaments for me over the weekend, but as is often the case, I am left wondering even the next morning still, did I play this hand right? What do you think was the optimal way to play in this spot?

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