MATH Recap, Sickness Recovering, and WSOP ME Satellite

As Monday evening rolled around at the Hammer House, I was still feeling kinda sick after a weekend of the flu. I had gone to work in the morning on Monday but ended up heading back home for the afternoon where I was on back-to-back calls in what proved to be a crazy day across the financial markets in the U.S. Come sundown I was feeling up to making a run in the MATH, and I figured I would find something else interesting to run while the Hoy was going on. I ended up settling on this $215 buyin satellite on pokerstars to the $1050 buyin WSOP ME qualifier on Friday night. With better than one in five entrants winning the big seat, that is the kind of satellite ratio I am always looking for, so I decided to give it a go to try to win a 12k Main Event prize package for the first time in my life ever even playing a satellite to one of these things. In the past I could never play these things because my life is not set up to allow me to play the Main Event, but nowadays with these events awarding only cash to my account, I figured now is as good a time as any to try to make some runs for the cash.

I relied on some reads and got lucky to run into some stoopidly aggressive players early on in the $215 supersat on pokerstars, getting me off to a 1st place start with 13 players remaining out of the original 17 who started. When we made it down to the final table with 9 players remaining, I was in third place but that was ok because the top 3 runners would each win the $1050 seat to the Friday WSOP tournament. From close to the top of the leaderboard, I then followed a strategy that I almost never adopt in these multi-seat satellites with a good chip stack, in that I decided to go right at the one prohibitive largest stack at the final table, hoping to use my sizeable stack to make him lay down rather than risk what probably seemed like an almost guaranteed fold-to-the-points victory for him. Generally this is not an advisable strategy when I myself was still already in the winning top 3 slots, but I was only barely ahead of 4th place and I knew I needed to make a few moves to solidify my position. And I was only semi-lucid, which always helps.

So first I made this ludicrous two-bullet bluff (raised the flop and then pushed here as well):



Luckily, he folded:



And I was solidly in 2nd place of 7 remaining, again with 3 winning ths $1050 seats. A few hands later I just pushed allin again when I held Jacks and the flop came Queen-high with two rags, in a heads-up pot with just myself and that same big stack, after he had called my preflop raise. I was playing highly aggro poker, but it worked for me and before I knew it I was basically tied with the other guy for the two large stacks at around 8k apiece, among 5 smaller stacks largely at 2k or below, with the top 3 finishers winning seats. From there it was fairly smooth sailing, using my big stack to steal enough pots to maintain my stack size while letting the smaller stacks clash or waiting for myself or the other big stack to pick up monster hands. By the time I picked up pocket Aces, we were already down to 5 players, and I made it 4 as the table shorty pushed into me before the flop. A few hands later saw the other big stack call allin with Ace-rag against the new table shorty's King-rag, the favorite held, and I was in:



So that will be me at 8:30pm ET on Friday on pokerstars, playing in the $1050 WSOP ME qualifier to win the 12k prize packages for the World Series of Poker. Woo hoo.

So most of my other poker attention on the night where I still wasn't feeling up to snuff consisted of Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt. 79 runners came out for the MATH, with the top 10 spots paying out a lofty $1896 prize pool, including over $597 awarded to first place. As with last week, our first elimination came on the very first hand, this week with OMGItsPokerFool scoring the gigli honors, and I have to be glad he did since I busted just a few minutes later as the third player out. Basically, I was dealt pocket Jacks, I reraised preflop and the original preflop raiser just called my reraise. The flop came all rags, I bet a pot-committing amount, and thus when my opponent raised me I felt obligated to call despite knowing pretty well that I was beat. He flipped Aces (natch) and IGH just like that. A bad play by me no doubt, and my earlier than usual blonkament eliminatio nis probably at least somewhat caused by my state of mind and ill disposition on the night, but in the end a bad play is a bad play, and nobody made me push just overpair Jacks very early on in an mtt against a guy who had raised preflop and again on the flop. Bad play.

Here were the ten cashers in this week's Hoy:

1. $597.24 dwal78
2. $388.68 Loretta8
3. $265.44 TripJax
4. $199.08 Chippy McStacks
5. $142.20 BuddyDank
6. $94.80 BamBamCan
7. $56.88 Breeze81
8. $56.88 kevin_with_AK
9. $47.40 AltronIV
10. $47.40 DaBag

And here is the updated 2008 MATH moneyboard, including this week's results:

1. columbo $928
2. astin $664
3. lucko21 $650
4. dwal78 $597
5. Pirate Wes $581
6. Tripjax $553
7. fuel55 $512
8. surflexus $488
9. pureprophet $484
10. zeroluck001 $476
10. Jordan $476
12. TuscaloosaJohn $423
13. twoblackaces $409
14. Loretta8 $389
15. ChiipyMcStacks $316
16. Breeze81 $310
17. bayne_s $291
18. tilt away $289
19. jmathewson_III $274
20. Miami Don $224
21. Roberto55 $217
22. Donkey Shortz $215
23. VinNay $203
24. DaBag $202
24. Byron $202
26. buckhoya $150
26. Mike Maloney $150
28. BuddyDank $142
29. chitwood $127
30. cubanlinks $120
31. LJ $119
32. kevin_with_AK $106
33. BamBamCan $95
33. thepokergrind $95
35. ANIguy $89
35. bartonf $89
37. HotPants29 $74
38. katiemother $67
38. Hoyazo $67
40. CheckinMyAA $62
41. PirateLawyer $60
42. DonkeyPuncher74 $56
42. RaisingCayne $56
44. jeciimd $52
44. zeroluck001 $52
46. AltronIV $47

So lots of repeat winners on this week's list of 10 players to make the cash. And congratulations out to dwal for taking down this week's title as well as the latest BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat to play for the WSOP packages that I'm going to be busy winning Friday night from pokerstars. Dwal calls himself an "up and coming blogger" in his own blog, so go check him out if you are looking for a new cynical view on this whole blogging thing.

And don't forget tonight with the latest BBT3 tournament on full tilt with the Skills Series. Yes Chad has pretty much dropped off the face of the earth, but his Skills games are still going strong, with this week's flavor being HOSE, or alternating rounds of limit holdem, O8, Stud Hi and Stud 8. Basically "HORSE", minus the razz to save a few heart attacks and get a few fewer pets kicked. HOSE goes off at 9:30pm ET on full tilt, with a password of "skillz". And of course you also have the Tuesday night Blowdonkey by Smokkee at 9pm ET.