MATH Recap, MTT Bender, the Main Event, and Cheating NBA

17 runners came out for Mondays at the Hoy this week, creating a $408 prize pool for our second-ever MATH Shootout. 17 entrants got us three starting tables of 6, 6 and 5 players each, a nice round starting setup with almost all full shorthanded tables to begin with. Unfortunately the full tilt shootout payout continued to pay only the top two finishers, even though we had three starting tables and therefore three starting table winners to come to the final table. I played one of my best MATH's in quite a while, but got sucked out on four times, lost a race and eventually lost when my full stack was called allin by A4o preflop to corron10 who eventually eliminated jeciimd to win my starting table. The three table winners on the night were corron10, scottc25 and ElSnarfGrande with scottc25 winning$265.20 for first, and corron10 finishing second for $142.80. Once again the shootout format seemed to work out very well, and a good time was had by all. Thanks to everyone who came out, in addition to at least one first-timer and potentially yet another blogger playing on a second account on full tilt. Good times.

So, I thought I would take stock here of my mtt bender last week in retrospect. First things first -- profits. In the end, I made about $4500 over the six days of my bachelority, an awesome week by any standards I have set here over the past few years, and of course at the end of the day, my longtime readers know that following the cashish is the only real way to keep score in this game. Although I won a number of small sngs, finished second in a 90-person knockout sng, and cashed multiple times in multiple tournaments during the week, the bulk of the $4500 net over the week of course comes from my 4th place finish in the 5050 last Sunday night, followed by my 5th place finish in "the" 32k on Tuesday night, both on full tilt. Both of these scores are in my top 10 cashes for the year so far in tournament poker, and in that sense busting out with two of those in three nights of poker was definitely a great time. I really do wish I could isolate what it is about my poker play when I am home alone as compared to when I'm home with the rest of my family asleep nearby. It's not like I had any loud outside stimulus going last week that I don't usually have, and it's not like I got more hammered than usual or anything -- it would not be possible for me to more hammered than I usually am, at least for the big blonkaments every week -- and there's really nothing else tangible I can think of. But obviously something must be different, as now over two 5-day periods during the week after July 4 in two consecutive years, I have won around 5k in tournaments in two separate scores in both of those weeks. Now I'm no mathematician, but that has got to be statistically significant.

Changing topics a bit, at some point on Monday I finally looked into the WSOP Main Event. Sadly, I am not familiar in the least with anyone who made the final table. It's sad, but I guess it is not really at all surprising, given that we're looking at what, 6800-some-odd donks who entered this thing? The odds of anyone in the final 9 out of 6000-some will be anyone I know -- especially given how few poker players I really know in my life -- have got to be quite astronomically low, and yet perhaps I've been spoiled by guys like Alan Cunningham last year, Dan Harrington a few years back and a few others. But it sucks, I won't give two craps about who actually wins the Main Event, and I don't care how long they delay playing out that final table. I just don't know these guys and I won't be buying in to any of the hype that will doubtless just be building day after day, week after week over the next four months. To think that it will be cold and quite possibly snowing outside here in New York City when they finally get together to decide on the 2008 WSOP ME winner, it is just so surreal to me.

And wow, Tiffany Michelle! Final two tables. That is sweet. I don't know her, I've never met her and have no real interest in her, but I have watched her doing the interviews for pokernews in the past and thought she did a fine job. More than that, she seemed like a good person from the very brief exposure I had to her from those videos. So great for her. Tiffany goes down as the last person in the field of 6800+ that I actually "knew", in that I recognized her and am familiar with her as a personality. Woulda been an awesome story if a fairly hot chick like her could last all the way to the final table and be part of the recockulous money-driven cycle of greed that will be the next four months while the Main Event final table is delayed. God how I am not looking forward to that.

Oh right, before I go here is one story I absolutely loved from the sports world. The Tim Donaghy story just won't go away, will it? For some reason that I will never understand, the NBA continues to roll on with seemingly no real hit to its popularity following what to me is the megascandal in the world of sports of my generation, that there was actually an actual NBA ref who was actually fixing games vs. the point spreads over a year or so of NBA action. How sick. Well today's story essentially is that it turns out Donaghy called one particular NBA referee over the 2006-2007 season more than 100 times according to phone records, a span during which he only called his bookie more times, and during which he called no other referee more than a handful of times. Wonder what ole' Timmy Boy and this other ref were talking about, huh? Just unreal. But don't worry, the NBA has repeatedly stated, and reiterated this position again this week after the Donaghy phone records were made public, that Donaghy acted alone in fixing these games. Uh huh. Wtg NBA. These guys cheat worse than I do at the blonkaments!

And yet somehow people continue to go to the games and participate in the whole NBA marketing machine. Some of the very same people bitching endlessly about how anyone could ever play or keep any money at Ultimate Bet or Absolute Poker with all the cheating scandals going on there, will then turn around and continue to place bets on NBA games, which is just about the silliest hypocrisy you will find out there. My approach is that I won't be paying any real attention to the NBA again for a long, long time. How can I? Might as well be watching the WWF on a Saturday morning. Or is it called the WWE nowadays?

OK that's all for today. Skillz is tonight at 9:30pm ET on full tilt, password as always is "skillz". And the game tonight for the Skillz Series is...limit razz. Grrrrroooooooaaaaaannnnnn.