More on the Upcoming ToCs

Congrats to the new person, jasper-something, for taking down his first career Mookie title in I think the first time I've ever seen that name in any blogger event. Now that's fair. I toil away for phuckin three years every single Wednesday night, get sucked out on, no-carded, caught stealing, quadflopped and ass effed my way out of the tournament every single time for years, and then someone jumps in to "this thing called the Mookie" one night and wins it. Pure silliness. I did notice at least that without the pressure of the BBT3 on his back, Mookie reappeared in his own tournament, riding all the way to the final table and giving me a little scare for the first time in a few months as far as our ongoing prop bet goes. Remember, for the rest of 2008, if one of us wins the Mookie, the loser pays the winner three months' worth of Mookie tournament buyins. While the BBT was running, I did well in the Mookie's, outlasting the much tighter and more low-variance-style Mookie every week for the past several, but last night it was me busting out in the middle of the pack after a brutal river 3-outer ran my pair of Aces into trip Queens, while Mookie as I mentioned lasted all the way to the middle of the final table. So congrats to Mook for returning to form in his own tournament, and I look forward to a fun rest of the year as we both race for Mookie futility.

So, back to yesterday's discussion of the respective BBT3 Tournament of Champions and Bodog Tournament of whateveritis. Recall the four players who show up on both sites' TOC list: JD Schellnutt, Scottmc, Columbo and Smokkee. So these are guys who finished in the top 18 in the Bodog series and who also won a BBT3 tournament along the way over the past three months. Pretty impressive.

I also thought it makes sense to add to this list those people who won more than one BBT3 event, as also indicating an ability to step up and win big in the face of high pressure and deep competition. So for this list we have:

Lucko (3 events)
JD Schellnutt (2)
Evil wonka (2)
corron10 (2)
OMGItsPokerFool (2)
Tuscaloosa Johnny (2)
surflexus (2)
Chippy McStacks (2)
wormmsu (2)

So there are 9 more players who won multiple BBT3 tournaments. And I think we also have to throw Newinnov in there since he won I guess several of the Bodonkey events. I'm sure a few of the people up top won more than one of those, but I am only entering Newin on this list because I think he completely crushed the tournament from what I understand.

So, the complete list of big blogger tournament series worldbeaters from the past few months is:

JD Schellnutt
Scottmc
Columbo
Smokkee
Lucko
Evil wonka
corron10
OMGItsPokerFool
Tuscaloosa Johnny
surflexus
Newinnov
Chippy McStacks
wormmsu


I put JD Schellnutt on the top of the list there because, interestingly, he is the only person to win multiple BBT3 tournaments and place in the top 18 of the Bodonkey series. Then, only Smokkee from that lis placed in the top 10 of the Bodonk as well as winning a BBT3 event. In terms of total events won during the two challenges, only Newin managed to win four events in all I think, as far as I can tell.

And yet, I am not picking any of those three players to win a seat in either Tournament of Champions occuring over the next five days. JD has been good but really he seems to have gone on a short heater and otherwise has not performed so great with any real consistency. Smokkee has not won many no-limit holdem tournaments in recent memory when there was not a 27x buyin bounty on his head to make people play like dickadonks against him, so I can't pyt my money on him. And Newin's performance in the Bodonk seems to have been truly extraordinary, but with the entire field hopped up and gunning for him over this slow structure, I do not love Newin's chances to outlast the field in a Bodonkey ToC that, unlike the BBT, only pays out to the eventual winner in the field.

So, focusing on the BBT3 for now since that is the Tournament of Champions coming up first -- this coming Saturday afternoon, June 7 at 5pm ET -- who do I like to win the WSOP packages being awarded to the top four finishers in the ToC? As a refresher, here is the total list again of participants in this weekend's BBT3 ToC:

Scott Fischman
columbo
corron10
twoblackaces
TuscaloosaJohn
lucko21
Smokkee
swimmom95
dwal78
Chippy McStacks
pureprophet
ScottMc
tilt away
hellory
GottaWinSum
misogynist
Breeze81
Martyr99
wwonka69
katiemother
PokahDave
Loretta8
SirFWALGMan
RecessRampage
iam23skidoo
hoyazo
MEMPHIS00
ShipFaced12
wormmsu
DonkeyPuncher74
PirateLawyer
RNallin
cmitch
surflexus
oossuuu754
bdidde
JD Schellnutt
heffmike
OMGitsPokerFool
Shabazz Jenkins
Julkeus
lilkimmer77
Astin
Bone_Daddy84
scottc25
maneki_neko

My selection criteria for this endeavor are actually quite simple: I'm going to be looking directly for the guys who have demonstrated the most consistent ability to win blogger tournaments of this size. Once again we are looking for the top four finishers out of 46 runners in the BBT3 ToC, and all four names have to come from the above list. I would encourage everyone to really look at each and every name on that list, and tell me which of those names you have the highest confidence will be alive, say, when down to two tables left in the ToC, the final 18 out of 46 players. Or at the final table, representing the last 9 players standing, out of which 4 will win WSOP packages. I recognize that I made a small splash with my comments several weeks ago that the BBT3 ToC was shaping up to include quite a few "fishcakes" among its rolls. Well, since that time, a number of solid players joined the list, making the overall attendance sheet for the BBT3 ToC much more formidable today than it was back then. But the simple fact is, there are still a number of names on the list where I simply cannot be highly confident about their ability to survive until the end of the tournament.

I invite everyone to review that entire list before tomorrow so you come prepared to view my BBT3 ToC predictions on Friday.