FTOPS Comes Through After All

It was a good weekend of poker for me, and it couldn't have come at a better time as I have been getting crushed by the tables at full tilt for a while. The weekend still saw me get hammered with suckout after suckout like usual, but I managed to nail a couple of big ones in key spots to record one of my biggest weekends in a loooooong time on the virtual felt. First on Friday night there was this:



This was for a $2620 seat into FTOPS #22, the two-day tourney, and it was I think the biggest satellite win I have ever recorded on line. I think. Of course I unregistered for the actual event as fast as you can say "I saw Dark Knight this weekend and the first two endings were good but the last four endings really made the thing way too long like every other movie made in the past five years".

Seriously now, if it ended after they got the Joker it would have been prolly top 25 or 30 movies of all time. Instead they ran it another 80 minutes and took it out of the top 50 entirely, without a doubt. They went and turned a 9 into a 6, once again because the ego of the editor would not allow him to cut anything. And it wasn't just me -- everyone I've spoken to says the identical same thing -- that it was just too long -- and you could see it clearly in my theater. First hour and a half, total mesmerization from everyone. Last hour and 20 or so, like 20 people just in my immediate area (myself included) looking at their watches, falling asleep, checking the time on their cell phones, etc.

Heath Ledger though -- dayummm. I had heard he was awesome so many times that I went in there fully expecting to be let down. He was even better than advertised. Could there ever be anyone more destined to win Best Actor than this guy? I mean, as soon as he died, the Academy probably had already pencilled him in, but he did put on an awesome performance, one that shocked me by actually rivalling Jack Nicholson's portrayal a decade and a half ago. Couple the show he put on with his untimely death, and Tom Hanks might as well not even accept that cushy role slated for release later this year. This Oscar has Heath Ledger's name written all over it.

But can someone please tell me, why the F even bring up all that stuff about Two-Face? Why is that guy even in this movie? And all that ghey bullshit about rigging every cell phone in the city for sonar? Come on, why do you have to go and do that, huh? Was it really necessary at all for the plot to this film? I just don't get it.

And who the fuckleberry keeps giving Maggie effing Gyllenhall sex-symbol starring roles? Don't people know she is hideous? I mean it's not just that she pales in comparison to the real hot chicks in Hollywood. She is downright hideous, to the point that I physically don't want to look at her. Look, it is Bruce fucking Wayne. He is hot, single, and the richest guy in the world. Of course he's gonna be tagging the supermodel chick. And yet Maggie G. is his lifelong love? Puh lease.

And what's with the recockulous Batman voice whenever he has the suit on? Guy sounds like a fucking grizzly bear or something. Why can't he just use his regular Bruce Wayne voice even when he's in the costume? Some things I'll just never get.

Anyways, back to the poker. So I won that $2620 on Friday night for a nice padding of ye olde roll, and then on Saturday midday on a whim I decided to sit down to this, another turbo mtt satellite to the same FTOPS #22:



Blooom! And agin, I immediately unregistered for the tournament itself, which I will never, ever have a sufficient roll online to play in. But that was $5240 in $T over basically three hours of play between Friday late night an Saturday early afternoon, you can't beat that. That shit will allow me to donk around for what? At least a week or two, given the shit I am still suffering regularly on full tilt?

These turbo megasats are the shizzle. The first one, $216 to get in (I just buy in for cash), and the top 13 finishers out of 181 win the seats. And it's turbo, so it suits my game great and allows me to make a quick hit one way or the other. 1 hour and 44 minutes later, I net over $2400 despite overcoming a sick dominated suckout against me that had me down to fewer than 10 big blinds about halfway through the tournament when my AKo could not hold up against A9s. And the second mtt sat on Saturday, that one had a $535 buyin with 263 entrants, and the top 50 getting the $2620 seats. 1 hour and 41 minutes later, bloooom! Another $2100 net. Both of these satellites have awesome, awesome odds of winning considering the amount of money at stake, and the shit gets done quizznick. What more can I ask for? Like any turbo mega, it gets a bit hairy and pushfestian at the end there, but in both tournaments I was never close to the bubble line in the last several orbits of either, and I had a relatively easy run in both all things considered.

The trick with the turbo megasats is actually fairly simple. You have to be highly aggro, which is to say that if you get AK for example, you are basically getting it allin and hoping to get called. If youget a pocket pair Tens or higher, you're basically getting it allin and hoping to get called and take your chances. Otherwise, you just need to work hard to extract maximum value from every big hand yuo make after the flop, and you really can't afford to let an opportunity to do so pass you up. So you need to get a big stack as early as you can, and then keep your eyes on the stack sizes to make sure you are in position to win at all times, or as close to that as you can. So, for example, if you know there are 200 runners with 1500 starting chips and the top 20 finishers win the seats, then you can easily do some quick math and figure there re 1500 x 200 = 300,000 starting chips in total, and with the final 20 winning the seats, that means that the final average chipstack will be 300,000 / 20 or 15,000 chips. So, if 15,000 will be the average final stack of the 20 winners, then I want to try to build my stack until it is at least 10,000 or 15,000 chips, and then I want to try to preserve that stack size. That's all it takes. Get up to enough chips to win the seat, and then do whatever I have to do to to maintain.

And maintaining in these turbo megasats -- or really in any turbo satellite for that matter -- most definitely does not mean check and fold. It means steal enough to maintain that stack, but don't take any crazy chances when you don't have to. It means call with your monsters, but otherwise you're folding everything unless you are the first one in and have a reasonable shot of stealing the blinds and antes. And one of the keys is definitely to push before getting on the literal bubble when youre within 10 people or so of winning the seats. If you let yourself fold down to the point where you suddenly find yourself on the outside of the ITM positions looking in, you've already fucked up by waiting too long. Once I get myself into the top 20 spots when 20 spots will eventually win seats in the tournament, it is my job to steal when I can, and to resteal when it makes sense, to ensure that I do not allow myself to drop out of those ITM spots without a fight or without getting unlucky.

Also this weekend, I ran down to 24th again in the 50-50 on full tilt. I absolutely pwn that structure. In this tournament, I was actually dealt four separate premium hands, which is about 200% more than usual for me. Sounds good, right? Well, unfortunately, my AA lost to KK allin preflop about 3/4 of the way through the field, a disturbing trend that has seen me lose I think 9 of the last 11 times I have picked up AA vs KK, and otherwise I was dealt QQ three times and went 0 for 3 with them. It was not a good night for cards. And yet somehow I stole and restole my way to the final three tables, but eventually ran KTo into A2s and could not stop n go my way to victory thanks to my opponent flopping a flush draw and one overcard. What can you do, it was still another great run for me in the 5050 tournament on top of what was otherwise already a large weekend for me at the tables.

Unfortunately my weekend success most definitely did not extend to the FTOPS Main Event on Sunday night. The play in this thing was definitely horrible overall (what else is new), and that worked to my benefit by helping me to nearly 18k in chips from the 5k starting stack about three hours in. But eventually the exact same stuff full tilt has been pulling on me for weeks caught up with me, as I raised UTG of all places with the hammer and then went on to flop 72J. I got the guy in for a pot-sized bet on the flop, and another nearly-pot-sized bet on the offsuit King on the turn. Then on the rivered 9 I reverse hoyed the guy for his last 3500 chips or so, and of course he called and showed? Pocket 9s. You gotta love that. I make the hammer play of a lifetime, get big bets in on both streets, the guy can't lay down 99 with the Jack or the King on the board despite my UTG raise, and then the two outer on the river basically depleted me, taking about 90% of my stack. Yes I managed to aggro my way back from 2500 chips to over 13k, but the damage had already been done. I was finished as soon as I nailed two pairs with the hammer after an UTG raise but then lost to the 2 outer on the river. Eventually, once again getting short, I raised with K7s in the cutoff and got called by A6s of the exact same suit. No doubt how that one ended up, and IGH around 1000th out of over 4800 entrants. It was a good run, but a very poor ending despite outlasting more than 3000 anusheads.

Not that I can complain after the weekend I had online. Overall I netted more than 5k in pure profits, and more importantly I had a fuckin fun time doing it. I still need to find a way to avoid getting sucked out on when I'm way way ahead in key spots though if I expect to last real deep in anything big. Not sure what I'll be focusing on this week now that the FTOPS has come and gone once again, but I'm hoping to try to enjoy myself a little bit in a few weeks I have off in between jobs. That, and hopefully not watch my former company implode before my very eyes under the weight of an increasingly horrid financial crisis in this country and around the world.