Hammer Player's Poker Blog

NFL Pick 5 -- Week 13

2009-12-04T19:48:00.003+07:00

One thing is clear over the past few weeks with my NFL picks: I am not doing well when I "force" myself to pick a single game, in this case the weekly Thursday matchups that started a three weeks back. Since that time, I have picked four Thursday matchups (two on Thanksgiving Thursday), and I believe I am 1-3 in those four picks. Even though each week I have felt like I really liked the Thursday night game winner, the bottom line is that the early returns of 1-3 are not good when compared to my season record in all games of 35-20, where I get to pick my own five favorite lines each week to make a play on. So you may or may not see me continue to pick the Thursday night games here, but I plan to continue to pick five games a week throughout the regular season because, well, I'm having an awesome year with the games, and frankly I've made a lot of money in my own personal Bodog account as a result. So, once again starting at an 0-1 deficit heading into the weekend, here are the rest of my Week 13 picks, as usual in no particular order other than their order on the odds sheet I reviewed for the week's schedule:

1. Buffalo Bills +3 vs. New York Jets. Loss. Jets by 6. One of those you're-right-but-you're-still-wrong games, as I knew the Jets would be ineffective as they always are this year. But I can't complain, I've had my share of you're-wrong-but-you're-right games as well this season. It's just the nature of picking the NFL.

2. San Francisco 49ers (pickem) at Seattle Seahawks. My football friends know I am not a big fan of this year's Seahawks, and even their vaunted home field advantage has not worked nearly as well this year as in years past where the team has lost to the Bears and the Cardinals in Seattle already this season. The 49ers have been equally inconsistent to be sure, and most concerningly they have lost five straight road games after opening the season with a win at divisional rival Arizona in Week 1. All this helps explain why we're looking at a pickem game here, one which many might see as two mediocre teams battling it out for nothing. I think, however, that the 49ers and their head coach Mike Singletary still believe they can make a run at the NFC West with a little comeback here over the next couple of weeks. With Arizona (7-4) playing the Vikings this weekend and then at the 49ers next weekend, the Niners know if they can beat Seattle on Sunday to move to 6-6, they can face the Cardinals next week in their home stadium with a chance to move right back into a 7-6 tie for the NFC West, which at that point would really be like being a full game up on Arizona since the Niners would have swept them on the season series. So Singletary should have his boys coming to play, while the Seahawks really do have nothing to play for, no stars on their team to try to showcase themselves, nothing. And looking at the Hawks' schedule this season, who the hell who's any good has this team beat? Seattle has 4 wins on the season, coming against the Rams, the Rams, the Lions and the Jaguars. Yeah the Jags are vying for a wildcard spot in the AFC, but don't kid yourself: Seattle stinks, and they already lost by two touchdowns once to this 49ers squad. I take the 49ers to win straight up.

3. Dallas Cowboys -2 at the New York Giants. Well, picking against New York already worked so well once for me this week, I'm going for it again on Sunday as the Giants continue to reel uncontrollably despite their 5-0 season start. I know allllll about Dallas's historical road swoons in December, and I haven't' made any bones about what I think about Wade Phillips as a head coach in this league. The Cowboys aren't going anywhere good this season in the end, of that I have no doubt. But try as I might, I just cannot get away from how unmitigatingly bad the New York Giants defense has been, because I know the Cowboys can run the ball as well as throw it when they are on. Taking out Washington, Tampa Bay, Kansas City and Oakland -- the four worst shitpiler teams the Giants have played this year -- listen to these numbers the Giants have allowed in their seven other games this season, in order: Dallas scored 31 in Week 2, New Orleans scored 48 in Week 6, Arizona scored 24 in Week 7 (in a loss in NY), Philly scored 40 in Week 8, Chargers scored 21 in Week 9 (in a loss in NY), Atlanta scored 31 in Week 11, and Denver scored 26 in Week 12. So that's 31, 48, 24, 40, 21, 31, 26 in seven games against not-horrible teams this entire season -- a 31.5 ppg average -- including 31 by these same Cowboys earlier this year. Dallas is gonna put up a big number on this team again on Sunday afternoon, I have to believe. And after averaging 30.2 points per game themselves over their first five games of 2009, the Giants' offense has faltered along with Eli Manning's foot, hobbling its way to just 18.5 points per game over its last five outings. New York has lost two of its last three at home, and if you look at the likely playoff teams right now on their schedule this entire year, they are 1-5, with only that 2-point win at Dallas wayyy back on September 20 to show for it. I like the 'Boys laying a couple of points.

4. Minnesota Vikings -3 at Arizona Cardinals. Something just tells me we're going to be seeing a Cardinals at 49ers matchup next week for the NFC West lead, and to get there the Cardinals are going to have to lose to the Vikings this weekend. Which really should happen anyway in my view. I know the Cardinals are at home, but paradoxically this team is 5-1 on the road this year but only 2-3 in Arizona, including home losses to the 49ers, the Colts and the Panthers, so I just don't see much of a home field advantage here. And plus, let's be honest. The Vikes are a much better team than the Cardinals, especially with Arizona qb Kurt Warner still troubled by the effects of a concussion suffered two weeks ago at the Rams. It does sound like Warner will start, but it stands to reason that he will probably be off his best game with lingering headaches still a factor and with having only taken half the reps this week and even less last week. And nothing has changed with the Vikes' league-best runningback and soon-to-be NFL MVP at quarterback in Brett Favre, who remember has a decent 12 touchdowns and zero interceptions over his last four games. The Vikings have won four of their five road games this year by 12 points or more (admittedly three of which were against the Browns, Lions and Rams), but for once we aren't looking at a 13.5 point line here for the Vikes. I see this is a chance to get in on one of the hottest teams in the NFL, with several of the best players in the league between Favre, AP and Jerod Allen on defense, for just a 3 point spread against a team whose quarterback is iffy and who hasn't played well at home anyways this season.

5. Washington Redskins +10 vs. New Orleans Saints. Obviously the Saints are awesome, and obviously the Skins stizzink out loud. But, this game just has letdown written all over it to me. The Saints got all hopped up to play the New England Cheatriots on national tv last weekend, where they crushed in front of the whole nation to see, and they know the travel to divisional rival Atlanta next weekend who always seems to play the Saints tough. Buried in the middle here is a quick pitstop in Washington to play the 3-8 Redskins on the road, where a little known fact is that the Skins have somehow compiled an over-.500 record so far in 2009 at 3-2 in their home games. Granted, two of the Skins' three home wins came early in the year against the Rams and the Buccaneers, but just a short while ago in Week 10 the Redskins surprised basically everyone and beat the then 6-2 Denver Broncos at home as well. In fact, in all five home games this season the Skins have won three, lost by 8 to Kansas City and lost by 10 to the Eagles, so clearly the Skins have it in them to put up a good effort in front of their home town fans. I'm not necessarily saying the Redskins are going to up and beat the Saints outright this weekend, but I see definite value in this pick amidst a likely let-down for the Saints and getting a touchdown plus a field goal to boot.

Six Years

2009-12-03T22:39:00.003+07:00

Six years ago today, my life changed forever.

I'll never forget the day we took my first child home from the hospital. I don't think anybody ever forgets that moment -- the fear, the uncertainty. Or the guilt, of knowing that you should absolutely not be legally permitted to leave the hospital as the only people officially in charge of any other person's life, let alone a tiny, defenseless, utterly helpless and dependent baby, caring for whom you know absolutely nothing about whatsoever. I don't scare easily, but believe me when I say, you don't know petrified until that's you leaving the hospital with your first newborn kid.

It's impossible to quantify all the ways your life changes the moment you change from an unencumbered individual -- even if you're married -- to a parent. Going out to dinner every night? Gone. Seeing movies in an actual theater? No more. Jaunting off to Vegas several times a year, just for kicks? Fat chance. Live poker in Atlantic City? Ha ha. Things like life insurance, driving carefully and even just eating healthy suddenly take on an entirely new meaning.

But even though it's sometimes those things that people like me tend to focus on publicly, having kids is not all just new responsibilities and less ability to enjoy the fun things in life. In fact, having kids makes you understand just how great the "fun things in life" can really be. Sure, I don't get to take lavish vacations to exotic locations like Hammer Wife and I used to do whenever we wanted to. But, it turns out, I had no idea just how much fun a vacation could really be until I started bringing my kids along with me, being there the first time they saw the clear blue water of the Caribbean, for their first encounter with a real life iguana, or even the first time they saw the stars from 2000 miles south of their home and about a million miles from the lights of the big city. And yeah, having to watch all of my favorite tv shows on the DVR nowadays cramps my style just a little bit. But you can't compare that to the feeling of being there when the little light bulb finally clicks over your daughter's head as you spend that time with her and her favorite book instead and she finally, for the first time, really starts to figure out how to read.

Six years ago today, my life changed forever. And now I cannot even fathom thinking that my life before my children actually fulfilled me back in those days.

Happy Birthday, M. You seriously light up my life.

On an unrelated note, I like the Buffalo Bills +3 against the New York Jets tonight in Toronto. Seems like everybody and their mother is picking the Jets to win their second straight game tonight against the 4-7 Bills, but I am just not seeing it with the Jets. If not for Jake Delhomme's JaMarcus Russell-worthy performance last Sunday, the Jets don't even beat the Carolina Panthers at home in a down year for Carolina last week, and the Bills have been playing some of their best football of the season since Dick Jauron got fired and was replaced as interim head coach by Perry Fewell three weeks ago. TO is back in the house with his three best performances of the season in those last three games, and as I mentioned the Jets continue not to play well as they look to claw their way back to .500 on the season. I would lean towards the Bills straight-up in this game which is most definitely a road game for the Jets, if not exactly a home game for the Bills, but with the three points I just can't stay away from the value on the Bills in this one.

NFL Winners and Losers -- Week 12

2009-12-01T08:57:00.004+07:00

Despite a rocky beginning, my picks finished Week 12 above .500 once again thanks to yet another solid Sunday of games where I went 2-1 to close out the week at a 3-2 clip once again. This raises my picks' record so far through 11 weeks to 35-20 on the season against the spread. 63.6% against the sharps in Vegas. Wow. And I know that a good deal of the reason for that success relates to the analysis I am doing here a couple of times a week on the blog, including reviewing each week's action in my Winners and Losers report, where I always try to spot trends and other interesting tidbits that are not necessarily readily available. So without further delay let's get to this week's report:

Winners:

1. Brett Favre. Wow. I mean, wow. What more can you say? 24 tds and just 3 interceptions on the season. Over the Vikings' last four games, Favre's sickness is even more apparent, as he has amassed 12 tds and a big fat zero picks over those games, all easy wins for his team. Wow. And Favre's lowest quarterback rating over that 4-game span? 112.1, in this past week's 36-10 smushing of the division rival Bears at home. Favre has got the best runningback in the league, and his team is scoring first and scoring often such that he is basically always playing from out in front -- usually way out in front -- and this makes teams focus all the more on the running game, leaving Favre with time to find his receivers and make the great throws he wants to. I know Peyton is putting up extraordinary numbers once again in Indy, and I know Drew Brees is also captaining an 11-0 team down in New Orleans, and I know Chris Johnson is sparking an amazing turnaround in Tennessee, but I've said it before and I'll say it again: I just don't see how you don't give the MVP of the league to Favre this year unless things change dramatically in the final five games of the 2009 regular season.

2. Vince Young, Chris Johnson and the Tennessee Titans. If not for the incredible season Brett Favre is putting together, there is no doubt that Vince Young would be the story of the 2009 NFL season. After VY led his team on a 99-yard drive in the final minutes to score yet another game-winning come-from-behind touchdown on Sunday to best the Cardinals with just one second remaining on the clock, Young has now led his team to an incredible 5-game winning streak after starting off the season an NFL-worst 0-6. It is clear at this point that the unthinkable 59-0 shellacking that the Titans took in Week 6 at the hands of the New England Cheatriots was the dramatic inflection point of the Titans' 2009 season, as coach Jeff Fisher made the switch to Vince Young at qb and the team has yet to lose since. And once again, Young is doing it in very dramatic and yet efficient fashion, with his lowest qb rating in his five starts being a still respectable 84.7 in the Week 11 win at Houston, and with Young still having thrown just one interception in his five starts this season, especially impressive for a young guy like VY is. And, along with Vince Young's emergence at quarterback, star runningback Chris Johnson has emerged as well as a bona fide MVP candidate, busting out with five huge triple-digit yardage performances in a row after only reaching the 100-yard plateau in two of the team's first six games. After rushing totals of 228 yards, 135 yards, 132 yards, 151 yards and now 154 yards this past weekend against the Cardinals, Johnson is almost as much a catalyst for his team's resurgence as Vince Young has been, and together the two of them can bring their team from the absolute cellar of the NFL to the thick of the playoff hunt with a win next week at Indianapolis.

3. The San Diego Chargers. After a 2-3 start, the San Diego Chargers have now rattled off six straight wins, looking almost more dominant by the week as the team now sits at 8-3 and a game up on division rival Denver, having crushed the Broncos head to head already last week as well. And after some early defensive struggles, the Chargers' D finally seems to be coming together in conjunction with its offense really clicking on all cylinders. In their last six games, the Chargers have scored an average of more than 31 points per game, with quarterback Phillip Rivers leading the way with another solid season consisting so far of 19 touchdowns and six interceptions with a completion percentage of over 64%. And over those same past six games, the Chargers out of nowhere have allowed just under 14 points per game, for an average margin of victory of more than 17 points over the past half dozen games for Norv Turner's team. With games against Cleveland and Washington still on the schedule for the Chargers, the odds are improving almost daily that San Diego will have a chance to eliminate the Colts from the postseason for the third consecutive year before the 2009 NFL season is completed.

4. The Green Bay Packers and the Philadelphia Eagles. Both of these two teams seemed dead a few weeks back, the Packers after losing at then 0-8 Tampa Bay in Week 9 to drop to 4-4, and the Eagles after that inexplicable loss at the Raiders in Week 6 to fall to 3-2 while star runningback Brian Westbrook sat out with multiple concussions. But now, after three straights wins over the Cowboys, 49ers and Lions for the Pack, and with the Eagles winning four out of their last six games including big wins vs the Giants at home as well as at the Bears and now the Redskins this past weekend, both teams now sit at 7-4 and own the two wildcard spots in the NFC were the season to end today. Both teams will have their work cut out for them if they expect to hold off the competition in the wildcard race, however, as the Pack still has the Ravens at home, at the Steelers and at Arizona on their schedule, while the Eagles prepare for games at Atlanta, the Giants and Dallas, plus home games vs. the 49ers and the Broncos, making the end of the Eagles' schedule about as bad as anyone's schedule could possibly be heading into the most key matchups of the NFL season.

Losers:

1. The New York Giants and quarterback Eli Manning. I can't believe I am saying this after Eli won the superbowl for New York a couple of years back, but this year is the first time we are starting to see that Phillip Rivers might have been a better choice at quarterback after all than Eli Manning back in the day. Clearly Ben Roethlisberger and his two superbowls in five years is the cream of the 2004 NFL draft quarterback pool, but Eli Manning is once again really starting to look less than spectacular without that big-game wide receiver to make huge plays game in and game out for him. Although Eli has piled up some decent stats against the shitpile teams in the NFL this season, against the five teams with solid defenses on the Giants' schedule so far (Washington, New Orleans, Arizona, Philadelphia and Denver), Manning's total numbers include four touchdowns and eight interceptions, for an average qb rating over those five games of under 65. After getting absolutely embarrassed on Thanksgiving night by the Broncos -- themselves mired at the time in a four-game losing streak -- the Giants have now dropped to 6-5 and sit on the outside looking in for the NFC playoff race, needing to pass either the Eagles or the Packers if they expect to be around for the 2009 postseason.

2. Jake Delhomme. Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme managed to throw not one, not two, not three but four picks against the lowly Jets on Sunday, throws which clearly cost his team a shot at another win and the team's last chance to stay alive in the NFC playoff race. But the most annoying aspect with Delhomme in my view isn't even the badness of most of his throws on Sunday, and throughout much of this season; it's his attitude, the country bumpkin look on his face every time he throws another one. It's like Mark Sanchez meets Hillbilly Jim, for those of you who were into the old WWF, back when it was still the WWF and not the gheyass WWE. All I know is that, 11 starts into the 2009 season, Delhomme has recorded only two games with qb ratings over 82, and has tossed just 8 touchdowns as compared with 18 interceptions on the season, which simply just does not cut it in this league today.

3. The Pittsburgh Steelers. After letting yet another game slip away on Sunday, this one thanks to a final-minutes drive led by 2nd-year Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco, the defending superbowl champion Steelers suddenly find themselves in a very precarious position. Despite playing pretty well more or less every time I've seen them on television this season, the Steelers now sit at 6-5 following the loss to the Ravens, having dropped to 0-3 in the division against the Bengals and Ravens combined so far, with one more game against the Ravens a couple days after Christmas in Week 16 of the 2009 season. Now tied with the Ravens and the Jaguars at 6-5 for the final wildcard spot in the AFC, the Steelers are 1-3 in the conference and have lost to the Ravens already, so they are going to need to come up with some fancy footwork pretty quickly here if they expect to have a chance to defend their superbowl title come February.

TO Watch: Whoa. Two receiving touchdowns in two games for Terrell Owens? What gives? I guess something went down during the Week 9 bye week for the Bills, because since then TO has registered his three biggest games of the season in succession, spanning two different quarterbacks and not just being limited to his total yards receiving either. After making three catches for 85 yards in Week 10 in a loss to the resurgent Titans, TO not only caught for 195 yards at Jacksonville but also managed to haul in 9 balls in so doing, nearly doubling his biggest output of the season prior to that in terms of receptions, and then he followed that up this past weekend with 5 more catches for 96 yards and another touchdown, all season-highs for him other than the previous game at JAX. Putting side this past weekend's win against the Dolphins, however, TO's three previous biggest games of the season all came in losses for his team, so he still has a lot of work to go if he plans to show that he can still contribute to a winning team like he has on occasion during his career in the past.

The JaMarcus Russell award: This week once again we can't go to The Namesake since Russell was once again benched in favor of Raiders backup qb Bruce Gradkowski. A few guys put up a decent run at the title this week, but I think I just can't avoid giving this one to Jake Delhomme of the Panthers this week. In his team's 17-6 loss at the Jets on Sunday, Delhomme finished the day 14 for 34 (just over 41% completions) for 130 total yards passing, with zero touchdowns and four picks on the day. Delhomme's final qb rating for this game: 12.7. And if 12.7 ain't what the JaMarcus Russell award is all about, then I don't know what is.

NFL's best team: I had it all planned here, and I had even half-written this piece where I was ready to officially give the nod to the Minnesota Vikings here, but then I watched the Saints utterly and completely dismantle the Cheatriots on Monday night and I don't see how anyone can take the mantle away from New Orleans at this point in the season. The Colts keep on winning but they haven't looked particularly sharp in weeks, culminating with this past weekend's 35-27 victory over the Texans despite dropping to a 17-0 deficit in the first half of that game. And the Vikings meanwhile have been looking just awesome, with Brett Favre leading his team to a 10-1 record including wins by 12 points, 17 points, 36 and 36 in their last four games. But after watching what the Saints did to the Pats this week -- offensively, of course, but even on defense as the Saints swarmed around whichever Pats player was unfortunate enough to be holding the ball at the time, I'm not gonna stand here and call anybody other than them the team to beat in the NFL this season.

NFL's worst team: The Rams. Currently sitting at 1-10 on the season, the Rams lead the league in point differential with a whopping -167 over just 11 games. St. Louis has managed to score just 130 points over those 11 games, while giving up the 6th most points in the league as well at 279. For now we'll give this one to the Rams, with the understanding that the Browns are nipping at their heels for the honor of the worst the NFL has to offer here in 2009.

On MTT Grinding

2009-12-01T01:04:00.003+07:00

I got an interesting comment to my last post last week where I did a pretty complete and robust recap post of my 2nd place in the nightly $30 rebuy tournament on full tilt a few days back. If you haven't read that post, #1 go back and read it now, and #2, in a nutshell, I ended up winning over $5100 for 2nd place in the $30 rebuy with a 25k guarantee on full tilt, getting sucked out on three times in a row in succession to eventually lose in heads-up play, but only even being alive for heads-up play after a series of lucky events in my favor along the way throughout the 6+ hours I played in this tournament. The comment, from OES as I recall, was essentially to say that it's just so demoralizing to many readers to see all the luck that had to happen just for me to end up in second place in this thing, with the implication being that this is what it takes to succeed in mtt play.

I have a few responses to this. First and foremost, it should be noted that this is only the way that some of my big tournament scores have gone down. I've had plenty of deep mtt runs where I got lucky -- either early, to build a big stack, or late, to survive and chip up at the final table -- all of which I have detailed here. I recall winning countless blonkaments after getting lucky at some point from behind with all my chips in the middle. Christ, my one and only WWdN win in fact saw me double up from dominated position allin preflop with 14 runners left, go on a massive tear, and an hour later I was the victor. So it happens. Sometimes it just takes massive luck to get you to a final table that you would not otherwise have been at.

And so what of that? I mean, how many times have I been sucked out on on the tournament bubble, with 50 runners left, at the final table bubble or even early at the final table when I am just short of the really big payouts? For all those times, shouldn't there be a tournament every once in a while where I hit a couple of lucky hands along the way and end up at a final table that I maybe should not otherwise have been at? Big deal. It happens all the time. But not always.

Looking back over all the tournaments where I've won, say, more than $2000 or so in my day, it should be noted that it's really a distinct minority where I got luckier than average to get where I ended up. So it really shouldn't be demoralizing to see how much luck it took me to get to 2nd place in this thing last week. This time it happened to take a lot of luck, as detailed in my post. But not always. I've had many, many deep runs where I did not get abnormally lucky at all -- the vast majority of my 2k+ scores in fact. Just think about my Venetian score last summer. In that thing as I recall I played 27 hours of no-limit tournament poker over two days, and I didn't get it in bad even once. Now maybe that's the other extreme, but my point is that, there are all different kinds of ways to find yourself at a big mtt final table.

It should also be noted that it's not like I just sat there in the $30 rebuy last week, bought in and rebought, and donkeypushed 18 times with every 74o I saw as if this were the now defunct Friday Night Donkament. Sure, I cracked a couple of AA with flopped sets. Sure, I made a straight on the turn against a guy who flopped a set. Sure at the final table I doubled up with K6 vs A6, JT vs AK and 43 vs AK. But thinking of it only in that way denies the very real fact that I played some pretty great poker in that $30 rebuy tournament along the way. Even in some of those 'lucky" situations that I mentioned above, there was some serious skill on my part to have gotten into that situation in the first place, such that perhaps many of you out there reading this would nebver even have been involved in those spots to begin with. For example, take that hand where I turned the straight against the guy who it turned out had flopped a set against me. In that case, as I recall, the guy had bet something ridiculous like a quarter of the pot with his flopped set. I had 8 outs, and I knew that the guy had just given me express odds (let alone the implied odds that were obviously there) to draw a card at my oesd. I imagine that many people in my spot might have folded to that bet with no made hand at the time. But it was only due to my knowledge of pot odds that I quickly made the calculation in my head and knew how obvious of a call this was. In fact, in that sense I totally outplayed my opponent there, who made a truly hideous play with that tiny bet with the flopped set, essentially forcing anyone who understands math to stay in and try to take one off and beat his set with a draw of some kind. Similarly, I don't even mention the other 50 times I could have raised on the flop -- either with top pair mediocre kicker, some kind of a draw, or even with air for that matter -- but chose not to because the math, my instincts, whatever told me not to. All of those were more examples of good play by me. Shit, even when I open-pushed JTs under the gun down to the final two tables and got called by UTG+1 with AK, I have no doubt whatsoever that I made the right play, a play that someone worse at poker than I might not have made, therefore not doubling up, and probably would not have won as much money as I did in this tournament. But if you aren't open-pushing with JTs and 11 players left in an mtt, when you are now down to 11th out of 11 remaining stacks, then I'm not sure you really understand how to play mtt's to win.

My point in all this is not to say that I actually didn't get lucky at all in last week's run in the $30 rebuy. You can see my post, and I've never been one to deny that I got lucky in those few times I was able to turn some run-goodery into cold hard cash at the mtt tables. I managed to prevail in a number of spots where I was not a favorite to survive at some point in the hand. But my point is that, regardless of the way I portrayed it in my recap post, there was a ton of skill that went into that win in addition to the few lucky hands I benefitted from. There always is. Even being allin there with the JTs to be in a position to double up and end up taking second for 5 grand can be thought of as skill-based, in that a lesser skilled mtt player might not have gotten in in that spot, and thus would not have doubled up and probably not been around at the end when we moved to heads-up. And notice, I was in there with JT and 43 in those times when I held up in key spots to stay alive at the final table. I wasn't in there with A4 or K7, the kinds of hands that are likely to be dominated against a preflop raiser or a caller of a preflop raise from me, and that was also based on skill. In each of those three spots, I got in as an underdog, but only a roughly 40% underdog (in some cases even better than that). If I call allin reraises preflop with A4 and A6, I'm going to find myself a 20% underdog a whole lot more frequently, and it's going to be hard to survive very many of those 4-to-1 against shots until the last couple players of these tournaments.

So no, it does not by a long shot take massive amounts of luck to win an mtt. As I mentioned, the vast majority of my big mtt scores have come in situations where I played pretty much great on the night, had minimal suckouts and minimal situations where I needed a particular card to hit in order for me to stay alive. Those of you who took from my post last week that I played like a fonkey but kept getting lucky again and again after making bad play after bad play, are sorely mistaken. To be clear, I played pretty much great poker that night -- most of it in ways that are not illustrable via screen shot like I like to do -- and in the end that great play combined with some mathematical luck in some very key spots to keep me alive, build me a stack and eventually carry me well into four figures for my tournament payout. But it shouldn't be disheartening to anyone who might think that the only way to make a deep run like this is to get extremely lucky, multiple times. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Moreover -- and this is the other point I've been struggling to put into coherent words over the past week or so -- is that luck plays a huge factor in almost any mtt anyone ever plays in. If you don't realize that, then you probably don't play a ton of mtts, or at least you don't run deep in a bunch of them. But it's true -- you have to get lucky to win the big money any mtt, period. "Lucky" in some form in the poker context, anyways. You don't need to be dealt AA and KK 85 times, you don't need to flop a ton of sets (though that doesn't hurt) and you don't need to suck out on someone at the river three times at the final table either. But you do need to avoid picking up KK vs AA, pretty much all the way from the first hand of the tournament to head-up play at the final table, and you do need to avoid losing a key 80% dominated favorite all-in at the final table. You do need to avoid reraising a late-position stealer into his pocket Aces, and you do need to avoid picking up TPTK against an overpair late in the event when the blinds are getting big enough to make it hard to lay down in such a situation. There are simply wayyyyyy too many ways to lose a big tournament like this, and you have to avoid essentially all of them in order to be the guy still alive at the very end when the big money is in play. It's impossible to do this without luck, a good deal of it, at least the situational kind of luck I am describing above. Again, this is something which any true mtt grinder knowns right down to his soul. It doesn't mean you didn't play well, and it doesn't mean you don't deserve to be where you ended up getting in the tournament, but luck is just an ever-present obstacle that completely permeates through the results and play of all mtt grinders. It's always there, waiting to pounce if you make just one misstep, and personally that's what always seems to make it feel so special in those times that I do persevere through and last all the way to the end of a large mtt.

After countless tournaments -- live and online -- over the past, say, five years, and after limitless hours sitting at the computer and playing this game we all know and love, one thing above all else has become clear to me regarding the nature of griding mtt's, one of the many ideas addressed superbly by Arnold Snyder in his tournament poker books: When it comes right down to it, all you can do with tournament poker skill is increase your advantage over the rest of the field. That's it. So in an mtt with 1000 runners in it, for example, if everyone was of equal skill and there was no luck involved, each player would have a 1-in-1000 chance of winning the first prize. But of course, everyone has different skill levels, such that the best player in that tournament might be able to lower his odds of winning from 1-in-1000 to, say, 1-in-500. And that's only for a really good tournament player. But luck plays such a huge factor in any large field mtt that there's just no way that anybody, in my view, can really get more than that 200% advantage over the rest of the field in a big tournament. There's just no way. Phil Ivey might be the best player in the world, and with 6300 entrants in the WSOP Main Event, he might have a better than the 1-in-700 chance on average of making the final 9 spots for the November Nine. But it's not like Ivey's chance is 1 in 20, or even 1 in 100 or anything close to that to make the final table. Nobody is that good at mtt's that they can overcome poker luck in all its various forms, from the starting cards you get, to the starting cards your opponents' get, to the cards you and your opponents get in the same hands, to the seat assignments, to the suckouts, to the races you win, etc.

Being able to increase your raw odds of winning a tournament at the expense of a bunch of other lesser players in an mtt is the best you can hope for, and even for the best players in the world, they can only realistically expect to have 200% or so as good of odds of winning than everyone else. And if you accept that as fact like I do, then it stands to reason that luck is still going to play a massive part in any deep mtt run, because even the best players in the world are only going to be roughly twice as likely as "average" to win. The best players will just be the ones who take best advantage of that luck when it does happen, and those who most consistently put themselves into positions where if they do get lucky, they can really make some noise with it.

As a rule, the very best large-field mtt players in the world make consistently better poker decisions in the moment than the rest of us. That's what gives them that 200% advantage in lasting through these large fields to the big money payouts at the end of poker tournaments. But the fact that their advantage is still only maybe twice as great as the rest of us leads to the one other thing you will note about any professional who is widely regarded as being a tournament specialist -- they run a lot of mtts. They have to. That's the only way to really get that 200% advantage over the field to work for you. In the end, the trick with these things is to consistently get yourself into positions in these tournaments where you can make some real noise if you get a little bit of luck. And then, play that way as many times as you possibly can. If you consistently get yourself into situations in large-field mtts where you can make a deep run if you get a little lucky, then the frequency with with you can get yourself into such a situation will have a direct correlation with your mtt results over the long haul.

Big Score in the Full Tilt $30 Rebuy

2009-11-25T11:15:00.003+07:00

**Note: if you have been following along with my NFL picks this season, I made my Pick 5 earlier on Wednesday, which you can view here.

On Tuesday night I had what for me is a big score (unlike some people) in full tilt's nightly $30 rebuy tournament. This thing runs at 8:30pm ET every night, and typically finishes sometime after 4am, and honestly these days I think it is one of the best tournaments for the money out there. It's $30, and it's a rebuy, so you do need some real kind of a roll to sit in this thing with any regularity. But to be honest, I've maybe played the $30 rebuy twenty, twenty-five times in my life, and it's not like I'm ever pouring $30 after $30 after $30 into this thing. No, typically I buy in, and as soon as one or two other people at my table have significantly more than the starting stacks -- including if anyone auto-rebuys right at the beginning -- then I will rebuy as well to get a double starting stack. And then that's pretty much it in most cases, either I go busto on some bullshit and I just don't rebuy, or I manage to stay alive. Because I'm a man, I always take the add-on of course for another $30, but rarely am I in to this thing for more than $90, that's just not the way I treat it. And on a night like Tuesday, I took some tough-ass beats early and late, but all throughout until the very end I also got a whole lot of that kind of "poker luck" that I wrote so much about after my big hit at the Venetian in Vegas last summer.

So, on to the tournament and some nice run-goodery from me. I sat down about 10 minutes late to the $30 rebuy (extended late registration in everything FTW!) on Tuesday night, and you can see I opted for the auto-rebuy to start because I quickly saw that fully five of the other eight players were on double stacks already at my table:

Within a few hands I checked top pair solid kicker in a limped pot on the turn, inducing a river bluff which I raised and took down sans showdown, and just like that I was in the top 20 out of 298 players remaining. That's one of the many reasons why this tournament is such a good thing to play if you're sufficiently rolled: with just a quick rebuy early, you can basically buy your way into a starting stack in the top quarter of the field. After this I had to fold to a couple of flop raises on scary boards, I tried a hammer bluff but had to laydown to a reraise before the flop, and I was back down to around 2000 chips when I called a preflop reraise with pocket 7s and flopped top set. Knowing my opponent had to be strong, I set the trap:

He took it:

but I really wanted some stackage here so I just called again, leaving myself just under 1100 behind and a pot with almost 2300 already in it. A perfectly raggy turn card came -- by my read the best possible card for me against a guy who is hopefully holding a big pocket pair, and I pretended to ponder before just checking it again, knowing I could push the river if he checks behind on the turn and almost certainly get called given my small remaining stack relative to what's already in the pot. He insta-pushed:

Guess what I cracked....

Suck it, Ace Boy! 112 of 265 at break time.

Early after the break, I cracked Aces for the second time on the night, once again with a flopped set. I was in the big blind with pocket Nines, and the action folded all the way around to the small blind in front of me, a gold jersey FTOPS winner for what it's worth, who raised 3x the big blind. I repopped him 3x his bet to 720 chips, he called and we saw a flop of QT9 with two diamonds. He checked to me after I had been the last preflop raiser, expecting the c-bet, and so I did not want to fail to deliver after flopping a set:

to which he instantly pushed:

and boom!

Hoy 2, Aces 0. And with 11,200 and change, I went into the second break in 38th of 207 players remaining, out of 375 who had started for at least $30 apiece. Two to three times as many total rebuys and add-ons as original entrants, just as any true rebuy mtt should be.

Around midway through the third hour, I managed to only lose a grand on this flop:

Gotta love that though, huh? This guy on my left had a massive stack all throughout this tournament, and for the two hours-plus I sat next to him the guy was a serious thorn in my side. But I was just as much of a thorn in the side of the FTOPS jersey guy to my right, and since it had getting on an hour since the last big card I spiked to beat someone out of their stack, I called his preflop open-raise from his small blind with my 98o from the big blind. I knew this guy was aggressive so I was planning on some kind of a steal if I did not connect with the 98, the type of hand I love to play in no limit holdem. The flop came down J57, giving me the very well-disguised double belly-buster, so I called when my opponent led out for 480 into the 720 pot. On came the turn card:

and if you look closely there you can see me using a little bit of a time tell by letting this shit run almost all the way down before I ended up just calling, really wanting to get him to bet me his stack on the river but afraid of losing him with a raise here if he were in fact on a bluff.

Ace on the river, boom he's all in:

I paused for a moment, considered that KQ would be a reasonable hand for him to play this way but decided that if I lose like that it 's just going to have to be, and I made the call:

Bloom. I flop two sets and crack aces twice in the first two hours, and now I'm cracking another guy's flopped set by calling with good odds on flop and then hitting my draw on the turn. Hawesome. Now I was 28th of 215 remaining with over 13k in chips, and suddenly I had enough of a chip lead on most of my opponents that I could really start to bet and raise them right out of pots, which is exactly what I did. I c-bet more aggressively, I raised a few limpers multiple times and got them all to lay down, that sort of thing that you need to do in the middle stages to maintain and to continue to accumulate in any large mtt. I was aggressive when could take control of the hands, but I wasn't reckless with my calling. I laid down in situations like this:

because the risk-reward is just not there given the big stack I've already accumulated and the chance I am just racing for a quarter of that precious big stack that has enabled me to be able to push the table around. So aggressive, yes, but not a calling station by any means.

I got my first jab in at this big stack to my left late in the third hour, when I open-raised in late position with K9s and he called behind me in the cutoff to see a heads-up Queen-high flop, but with two of my suit. I checked it and he led out ridiculously small (less than a quarter of the pot, which I could only assume meant he had made a solid top pair or better and wanted to make sure he got paid a little). With the King-high flush draw, I obviously called:

When I hit my flush on the turn, I checked it again, feeling like my flop call plus a lead-out on the turn would be too obvious, and my opponent made the incredibly weak move of min-betting for less than one-tenth of the chips in the pot at the time:

I mean what do you even say to that bet? To me I was now utterly positive he had top pair and just wanted to try to get some cheap information from me since he had been fearing the check-raise if I made a flush. Well, I figured, if he was so sure I would check-raise him with a flush that he was willing to bet 9% of the pot to find out, then I'm not gonna give him the information he wants. So I just called, making it seem like maybe I had some other kind of a hand, maybe second pair, maybe now a flush draw or something:

The river brought a second five, which I figured gave this guy a stronger hand with two pairs now that I had not let him think I had a flush on the turn. So, I think he liked his hand early, and I think he tried to find out if it was still good on the turn and I told him it was. So if he thinks his hand was best on the turn, and it just improved, then let's make him call a big bet here:

He called. And bloom, almost 9k in chips to me:

Good read, good play by me from start to finish. Horrible play by him btw, utterly and completely horrible on every single street. A few minutes later came the third break, where I sat in 24th of 147 remaining with nearly 18k in chips.

Very early in Hour 4 I made another big hand, flopping my third set of the night after calling a preflop raise with pocket deuces. I checked my flopset to the raiser, who had been unusually tight at the table and I figured probably had some kind of a solid hand, and when he led out for 900 into the 1640 chips in the pot on the pretty much raggy flop, I once again opted to slow play and just call given the absence of draws I was concerned about on the flop:

When the top card paired on the turn, I checked, figuring if he had just made trips then he would surely bet here, and that I did not want to lose him by making him think that I had just made trips either. This time he checked behind, and suddenly the whole thing started to smell a whole lot like AK. He raised preflop and I called. He led out with the proper c-bet on the raggy flop, and I called. Then he checked behind on the turn, which further validates the notion of his bet on the flop just being an Ace-high c-bet especially since he really should be betting there again on the turn if he thinks he is ahead. So now I've got him on AK in there, so when this card hits the river, I wanted to make sure I put him all the way to the test in a spot where I doubted he'd be able to find a fold after just a couple of calls from me:

He couldn't fold, and I busted him for another 12k in chips or so to start really getting up there in chip stack:

Up to 12th place out of 142 remaining. I stayed around this level for a while, blinding down a bit but also continuing to aggressively bet and raise where it made sense enough to maintain my stack. Eventually, I raised and called a reraise preflop with pocket Queens against a much shorter stack than mine, and when the flop came down a super-raggy 862 rainbow, I min-raised his flop c-bet to put him to the test.:

He pushed, I called, and here I was ready to chip up again into the top five in this tournament:

When boom:

Oh the gheyness. Such utter, utter shit. You guys know how much I hate duping someone hard in a hand and then still getting effed. Instead of 4th out of 127 remaining, I was 33rd thanks to a postflop suckout. Time to start rebuilding. And I was able to get a bunch of chips back on what I think was a poorly played hand by my opponent here even though I don't know what he had. A guy with a near-average stack who had been very active raising before the flop raised again, and a big stack in front of me had just called the raise. I had KQo, which figures to have at least a solid chance against most holding these guys could have, so I did the raise-the-limpers move that I love so much because people never want to believe you actually have anything:

When the flop came King-high, I figured I had gotten exactly what I wanted here so let's see if I can take this down right here and now without giving my opponent a chance to catch up:

He folded, and I never had to show what I had raised those limpers with, which clearly really weighed on the big stack in front of me after I had been betting and raising so aggressively for the past couple of hours already. So much so that, on the very next hand when I raised his limp again -- this time conveniently with AK -- he went nuts in response:

It's gotta be a pair, right? Anybody folding here? I had a nice stack but here was a chance to get a really tremendous one put right on a silver platter for me. I pondered it but figured I had to call since I did not think he would have auto-pushed for such a ridiculous overbet if he was actually holding Kings or Aces. Check it out:

Tilt push, anyone? Seriously, what a poor, poor play by him, but at least a good illustration of what consistently aggressive play can do for you at the poker tables. Oh, and thanks to this guy's big stack, I was suddenly in 1st place with just 103 runners left in the $30 rebuy mtt with a 25k guarantee:

Shortly before the fourth break, some guy with a just-below-average stack repopped me allin preflop, and I called him with my AKo and some chips to burn in case I lost to a pocket pair, for a shot at grabbing another 26k in chips to add to the numbers next to my name on the leaderboard:

But alas, this again was not meant to be:

So that was suckouts against me for a 22k pot and then a 26k pot within the span of about 40 minutes, in a tournament where at the time the first-place stack remaining was only just over 60k in chips. And yet somehow I was still only down to 6th place! Yet another example of a principle I have mentioned time and time again in my various other tournament recap posts here: the suckouts and bad beats are inevitable, as are the lost races and the setups, but one of the key aspects of any deep mtt run is accumulating enough chips to survive those suckouts, since you simply cannot avoid them. Lucky for me I was in just such a situation here, although I cannot describe how pissed off I was knowing I literally should have had twice the second place's stack at this point in the event but instead was way down in 6th while two other donkeys were still alive and braying around with my chips in their stacks. I resolved to find a way to get them all back.

In Hour 5, I won almost 30k in chips in this peculiar hand. I open-raised from the cutoff with A8s, and only the big blind called to defend his blind. The flop came AQ4, and being against the big blind I assumed I was likely ahead, so I led out for 2600 into 4500 and he just called. The call was a little concerning but I figured I would wait and see what the turn brought and re-evaluate, and down came an offsuit King. KQ certainly was a worry but then he checked instead of leading out on the turn, so I checked behind just to be safe with a beatable hand, having already been called on the Ace-high flop. But I knew in the back of my mind these guys have seen me steal-raise 8500 times already for the past few hours, so he might well not put me on an Ace here, who knows. Anyways, the river came an annoying Ten, putting four to a straight out there, and my opponent immediately insta-shoved for the full amount of the pot:

He did it all too fast, I felt, and too forcefully in a way that seemed to me designed to intimidate me with the scare card on the river. The more I reviewed the hand, I just didn't think it likely that he had smooth called the flop with a Ten in his hand, except maybe for AT which frankly I didn't think he would have just called with preflop. So I made the large call with not much of a hand myself, and saw this:

Sweet. Please keep float-calling me, people, please. I beg of you.

A few minutes later as we got down near 60 players remaining, I called this guy's allin reraise of me, based mostly on pot odds with a sooted King but also knowing that my range was sufficiently wider in these guys' eyes so he could be pushing a bit light:

And then finally a friendly river netted me another 17k in chips:

Curious about my hand stats at all through 200 hands in this thing? Enjoy:

Yep, nearly 21% of total hands at my table won by me, all night long, all while we've been basically at full nine-person tables throughout. That is big-stack aggression and table bullyage at its finest.

A short while later I lost a race when a short stack with AK called my preflop reraise and flopped a pair to beat my 33, relieving me of around 15k chips in the process, and then by the time I lost 88 to KK on a TT4 flop I was down to just 30k in chips and suddenly all the way down to 22nd of 35 remaining:

But again I perservered, clawing back to the middle of the pack with a number of preflop raises and even with pushing it allin on some overbets on the flop when I sensed that my opponent was too weak to call. By the fifth break, I was in 17th of 28 players remaining with 47,430 in chips to work with. Fortunately, I also had the vesitages of an extremely loose image to help me, and when I raised with QQ under the gun a short while into the sixth hour of play, the cutoff decided to make a move by pushing allin for his 18k stack, which I of course called:

My Queens held (I repeat: my pocket Queens actually held!), jumping me back over 50k in chips, and shortly afterwards I won another 35k when I called this short stack's preflop push just ahead of me:

all of which got me right back up to 10th place with 23 remaining in the tournament and in a much better position to make a run at the final table where the only payouts I care about reside. About ten minutes later, I ended up making a questionable call with pocket 6s, knowing I would be racing, and I somehow survived yet again against A7 for a huge chip infusion and a jump up to 2nd place on the leaderboard. Right where I wanted to be:

Unfortunately, what followed was a period of absolutely no cards to speak of, which then led me to make some ill-advised moves without the cards to back it up, and my chip stack really dwindled while we whittled our way down to the final two tables. The biggest blow came after I called an UTG raiser's preflop raise and then flop bet with top pair here, but then his bet after the Ace on the turn caused me to freeze up and fold despite having sunk more than a third of my stack into the pot when I was sure I was ahead prior to the turn card falling:

Suddenly finding myself in 13th of 15 left and my chances at a real payout fading away, I open-pushed JTs from second position:

and I got called by AK behind me.

Oh, and boooooom:

At this point the railbirds went nuts, even though this really is only what, a 40-60 chance of winning. It's a big win where I was behind, but I was not in terrible shape at all, and it's a move I would make with TJs ten out of ten times given my small chipstack and my unyielding desire to win the whole tournament not just roach my way to the final table. This one got me halfway back, to 7th place of the 13 remaining players, and I finally had some breathing room for a short while, ending the sixth hour of play in 8th place of 12 left:

Early in the 7th hour, I thought long and hard about this decision:

I ended up folding, reasoning that I wanted to survive to the final table where all the money I cared about was, and why risk calling off my stack with zero fold equity and a significant likelihood of being dominated or at least racing? I figured I could wait for a better spot, which was a good thing as the guy behind me called and in the end I would have been eliminated with this board:

Fast forward a few orbits, though, including one failed steal attempt, and I was once
again feeling the pressure, down to 10th of 11 players left in this thing, and once again starting to feel like I wanted to actively court a double-up or just get out now:

A couple of hands later when the action folded all the way around to me in my small blind, I paused for a moment like I was thinking, but I pushed allin without any regard for the shit I was holding in my hand:

This time I got called by AJ, and the board came down like this:

And I had done it again, surviving another 40-60 shot to get right back into good position in this tournament. Again the railbirds chorused loudly in the chatbox about what a massive donkey I was, and admittedly the 43o looks a lot worse than it really is, but once again I was pushing there with any two cards and I would do it all over again in spades. I wasn't afraid of getting busted from the tournament as long as I was being aggressive in a good spot with a god chance of chipping up substantially. But I got railed on hard in the chat for quite a while after the JT push and then this 43o, both of which ended up winning and preserving my tournament life, even though I guarantee you almost none of those guys squawking about the play had any idea that each had been a roughly 40% shot at winning. But I guess it's a good sign when your railbirds are as bad as the rest of the players around you there, and in this case it was especially good as I spent the better part of the next hour abusing these assidiots like they've never been chat-abused before, and had a damn good time while I did it too. And this 43o hand bumped me once again back into the middle of the pack, in 5th of 10 left, still just one person away from the final table.

The final table bubble lasted forever, and I never saw a single good hand throughout the entire period. So I had to continue pushing with air in the right spots, but nonetheless my stack continued to dwindle without any good cards to resteal with or make a play for a quick double. Down to 9th of 10 remaining, I once again pushed allin preflop with JTs, this time against one of the big stacks who looked like he was stealing, and again I found myself down 40-60 for my tournament life:

And once again, the same result:

You can imagine what the chat was like at this point, especially with the final table just one elimination away all this while. Finally, after another 10 minutes or so of play, a flopped set beat an overpair on the other table and we had reached the final table, my first real mtt final table since the Venetian, with me starting with a roachy stack in 7th place of the 9 final table runners:

As seems to be the case with most of the big online mtt final tables I have ever been at, there had to be more suckouts than favorites winning through the entire final table run. This did not impact my hands directly early on, but it did impact my ability to survive and climb up the payout ladder because the few people behind me kept getting it allin hopelessly dominated but then sucking out to stay alive, eventually leaving me in last place at the table where I decided to make a stand on a resteal with pocket 7s:

But whoops!

Or not!

Yet another instance by me at the final two tables when I had all my chips in the middle and needed to catch to win, this time a true suckout as I won with a dominated, 20% hand to stay alive and amass that all-important final table stack. And I wasn't about to let that luck all be in vain as I had now vaulted all the way up to the 2nd-biggest stack at the final table.

And then this peculiar hand came up. I raised UTG+1 with AKs, and the big blind wayyy overpushed for his entire stack, a move which I could not explain regardless of his holding, and more importantly, just as I had correctly reasoned much earlier in thi tournament, I just didn't see him doing that with pocket Aces or Kings:

I mulled it for a bit, but eventually I made the call and saw this:

ZOMGWTF does this guy realize he's at a final table or what? I just cannot explain it, other than tilt or stupidity, or more probably a combination of both. Anyways, I doubled up there, sent the first member of the final table packing, and I suddenly had more than twice as much as second place with 8 left. I took out the 8th place guy as well when my pocket Kings held against his AQ somehow, allin preflop of course:

#7 busted a short while later, then #6 also chalked up to me on this allin preflop race:

This again left me well out in front, still more than twice even the second place stack left in the event, and at this point with 5 left I started eying the payouts in those top three spots which were the only ones I would be even mildly satisfied with.

By the time #5 and #4 were eliminated by the same guy at the table, the final three stacks had equalized quite a bit:

and I held my own at or right near the top of the leaderboard for the next several orbits while the three of us remaining switched the lead back and forth, back and forth, jockeying for position as any elimination would cost two to three thousand dollars of cold hard (electronic) cash right out of our pockets. After a good 20-25 minutes of three-handed play, the player across the table from me -- a guy who it turns out had already won this exact tournament twice this month previously and has a lifetime 490k profit at full tilt -- really started to pull away from the other two of us thanks to his relentless aggression, combined with my total lack of cards and the fact that the third player was always shorter than me and I did not want to do anything to cost myself 2 grand by letting him outlive me because I was too aggressive when I did not need to be somewhere:

Then, out of nowhere and for no real apparent reason, the other two guys got allin before the flop with these hands:

and the Kings held up, in fitting with the rest of what happened throughout that final table, leaving me heads up and at a significant chip disadvantage to the 490k profit online poker shark:

After a long time of back-and-forth play, where I was admittedly probably too tight, I eventually decided to push back and make a stand with K6s, and naturally got called by A6:

But then check out that glorious turn card!

Now I had gone from nearly a 2-to-1 chip deficit to a nearly 4-to-1 chip leader, and I was determined not to make a dumb play here to jeopardize my shot at the $8100 first prize. That meant I folded a lot again for a while to tuna's relentless onslaught of allin bets and raises, just praying I could pick up a big hand one of these times that he pushed the rest of his stack into me. Eventually, I got that chance:

I knew I was probably racing, and lord knows I don't love calling allin in a big spot with pocket 7s, but when you combine the fact that he is pushing probably any Ace here (including A2-A6), and pocket pair (including 22-66) and maybe some other sooted Kings and other high-card combos as well, I opted to go for the call here and take what might be my best chance to nab the 8k first prize money against a guy who has flat-out a much better history in online poker than I. I made the call and was overjoyed to see this:

After all surviving those two brutal early suckouts in massive pots, lasting through the 40-60 winners, the suckouts in my favor, and a very slow and tough final table, I had done it. 80% chance to win the 8k first prize!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOF! What can you say about that, right? I mean, I certainly can't really complain, not given the amount of times I had won allin from behind to even be alive in this spot. But how shitty is that, huh? And just like that I had gone from $8100 richer to a 6-to-1 chip underdog to win. Shit!

I fought hard, too, to come back, as I didn't feel the least bit tilty after all the good luck I had run across in this thing. Here I called his preflop allin push and was again 80% to double up and get back to more than respectability:

but I was, again, thwarted, this time by a miracle river push:

And then three hands later, once again I called his allin with a superior hand and yet another shot to double up and get a little bit back into this thing:

But not just one but two pairs once again did me in:

and I was done, out in second place and forced to settle for $5100 and change:

Final stats over 618 hands in the tournament:

And the final leaderboard screenshot, for posterity's sake:

So it took a string of an 80% favorite losing, an 80% favorite pushing, and then a 60% favorite losing in order for me to get busted from this thing in heads-up play, but like I said I can't be anything but thrilled with this result given how many times I had to come from behind along the way in this thing. Of course you never feel satisfied taking second place in one of these things -- least of all when you held a better than 3-to-1 chip lead just a few minutes earlier -- but again I don't see how I can complain too much about the three bad beats at the very end since it took me delivering a number of bad beats late in this thing heading into the final table in the first place to even be here. And that doesn't even get into the twice I cracked Aces with flopped sets early, or the time I cracked the flopped set with a turned straight. I had one of those runs last night were a lot went right for me early and late, and I performed like I always tell myself I should if things would just run well for me for a little while. And coming on the heels of the streak of suckouts I've been dealt over the past two weeks of poker play, this could not have come at a better time.

If nothing else, my really first deep mtt run since my trip to Vegas last summer reminded me for the first time in a long time of just how much fun poker tournaments can be. In chatting with another guy who runs deep in mtts a lot more frequently than I do during last night's big run, we agreed that there is simply nothing in the poker world like a deep run in a large-field multi-table tournament. The suspense, the excitement, the fun, the fear. You cash game donks will just never understand it.

NFL Pick 5 -- Week 12

2009-11-25T08:15:00.001+07:00

With three games on the NFL slate for Thanksgiving, and with the holiday weekend upon us such that I may not post again until Monday, I wanted to get my five NFL picks in for Week 12 in advance of the Thursday games. Recall that I went 4-1 in Week 11, including a 4-0 performance in the Sunday games, bringing my total season record to 32-18 against the spread, so I'll be looking to add to that impressive total this week as there are a few games on the schedule which I think represent good value in one direction or the other. So, as usual, in no particular order, here are the Week 12 picks:

1. Oakland Raiders +14 at Dallas Cowboys. This is not so much a play on the greatness of the Raiders -- although with the switch to Bruce Gradkowski at starting quarterback has the team 1-0 so far with last weeks victory over the Cincinnati Bengals -- as it is on the Cowboys who seem set to engage in their typical December slump. After scoring just 7 points in each of their past two weeks -- against not great defenses at that -- now the 'Boys are giving two full touchdowns after a short week to prepare for Thanksgiving Thursday? Gotta go with the value here.

2. Denver +7 vs. New York Giants. When this game moved to 7 points on Bodog around mid-week, I was thrilled as I already thought this was another game with some great value on the underdog among the Thanksgiving games. In this case I think we're looking at an overreaction to what has admittedly been an extremely poor stretch for the Broncos, who have totally crashed back to Earth after a 6-0 start. But come on now -- giving 7 points at home to a team that can't stop anyone from scoring at will on them over the past 5 weeks? Play the overreaction, and play the fact that the sportsbooks are always looking to inflate the lines on the major market teams since donkey bettors will keep betting on them regardless.

3. Indianapolis Colts -3.5 at Houston Texans. Interestingly, this was a game I picked earlier in the season in favor of the Texans, when they were a double digit dog to the Colts in Indy. But now I think the 3.5 points is a bit too thin for this weekend's game in Houston. Indy is playing well as always, but it's really Houston that has me thinking they won't keep this one within a field goal. After last week's loss to the Tennessee Titans, Houston is for all intents and purposes eliminates from the playoff race after thinking a month ago that they had a real shot when they were 5-3. Now the Texans basically know they aren't going to the postseason in 2009, and I expect them to come out a little flat as a result. Moreover, Houston comes off a short week after playing last Monday night, so that always adds just a little extra that in this case I think should keep this game a little more than a field goal spread for the 10-0 Colts.

4. Carolina Panthers +3 at the New York Jets. I just cannot believe that the Jets keep being favored, week after week, despite losing to every team they've played for nearly two months other than the lowly Raiders. Yes they're at home, but that didn't help the Jets when they lost to Buffalo, Jacksonville or Miami -- none of whom are great teams btw -- all at home thanks to a team defense that can't stop anybody when it counts. I would be tempted to take Carolina in a pickem game at the Jets given New York's recent performances, but when I'm getting a free field goal to boot, I just can't stay away.

5. Minnesota Vikings -10.5 vs. Chicago Bears. I'm going to the well one more time with both the Vikings and the Bears, as Jay Cutler and Chicago have continued to play bad football -- especially on the road and double especially against the good teams -- while the Vikings have continued to roll as the season wears on. Brett Favre is having his best season in ages, and Adrian Peterson should be a major threat to score at any time against the porous Bears defense. The Bears have allowed at least three touchdowns to every solid offensive team the've played this year, which should translate to at least upper 20's for the Vikes in my view on Sunday, while the Bears have managed to put up fewer than two touchdowns in half of their last six efforts. While the Bears may put up a better fight when the two teams meet in Week 16 in Chicago, I think this spells for a bad matchup for the Bears in the dome this weekend, and 10.5 points should not be out of reach for this juggernaut Vikings squad.

NFL Winners and Losers -- Week 11

2009-11-24T11:03:00.003+07:00

NFL Week 11 will probably go down as the week that killed the Survivor pools, as a surging Bengals squad lost to the lowly Raiders in a shocker that saw the Raiders score 10 points in the final 1:22 of the game, while the defending champion Steelers also lost a close one to the 3-6 Chiefs thanks to a field goal from Chiefs kicker Ryan Succop in overtime. Lucky for me I managed to avoid taking either of those favorites with my weekly picks, with the result being another 4-1 week to raise my season record against the spread to a lofty 32-18 overall, for 14 games over .500 in 10 weeks of making picks. As usual, there were a lot of good stories and a number of bad ones as well, so without further delay here is this week's Winners and Losers report.

Winners:

1. Brett Favre. All I can say is "wow" to what is without a doubt the greatest story in the NFL this year. After Week 11, we're now looking at 21 touchdowns against just 3 interceptions through 10 games for Favre, a decidedly un-Favre like season as compared to his recent years' problems with throwing accuracy. After going 22 for 25 on Sunday against the Seahawks, Favre now sickly owns the top two completion percentage starts in Minnesota Viking history (minimum 20 attempts). After just ten total starts. Favre is now the NFL's highest-rated quarterback in 2009 with a rating of 112.1, and when I take everything into consideration I am definitely seeing Favre as the MVP of the NFL at this point in the season.

2. Matt Stafford and the Detroit Lions. What a game for Lions' rookie quarterback Matthew Stafford, who got the win in what was easily the best game of the NFL schedule after all was said and done on Sunday, despite being roundly laughed at heading into the Week 11 slate as the worst NFL game in years. Not only did Stafford throw for 422 yards on the way to a last-second (literally!) victory, but he set the all time qb record for the youngest man ever with five touchdown passes, and to boot the guy just generally came out looking like a badass after he seemingly had his non-throwing shoulder separated on the second to last play of the game but then insisted on coming back in for the final play to chuck the game-winning touchdown with the bum shoulder and give his team the one-point victory.

3. Brady Quinn and the Cleveland Browns. In a lot of ways it's a damn shame that the Browns had to lose their game against the Lions on Sunday afternoon, because buried in the loss is the fact that the Browns basically busted out with an entire season's worth of offense in just one game on the day. One week after making headlines for becoming the first team since 1933 to score just five offensive touchdowns over a 15-game span, the Browns exploded under new old quarterback Brady Quinn, who chucked four touchdown passes and threw for over 304 yards without throwing a single pick in the loss, easily outdoing his previous season best performance, and in fact more than doubling his lifetime career TD total of 3 with his 4 touchdown tosses in Sunday afternoon's game.

4. Vince Young and the Tennessee Titans. I thoroughly enjoyed watching young Titans quarterback Vince Young take over the ball at the 2-minute warning in a 17-17 game on Monday night against the favored Houston Texans, and do what he had to do yet again, leading the team right down the field in a highly efficient march right into field goal range for kicker Rob Bironas to boot the game-winning field goal with still 47 seconds to spare. Vince Young is everything for the Titans that Ryan Sanchez has not been so far this year for the Jets -- a guy who manages the game well despite not innately having all the top weapons, someone who doesn't turn the ball over, and someone who can lead his offense down the field and who can inspire confidence in the players around him. After starting off 0-6, this Titans squad has now rattled off four straight wins and has become the team that nobody wants to see on their schedule heading down the home stretch into the 2009 NFL playoffs.

5. The San Diego Chargers. The Chargers rode the confidence stemming from a 4-game winning streak into AFC West co-leader Denver on Sunday afternoon, and they proceeded to administer one of the worst thrashings of the 2009 season against Josh McDaniel's formerly high-flying Denver squad. After McDaniel started Chris Simms at quarterback due to a Kyle Orton injury, the coach then pulled Simms after just two offensive series and put back in aching Kyle Orton, but nothing could get even the remotest thing going points-wise for the Broncs, who finished the day with just 22 minutes of possession vs. nearly 38 minutes for the Chargers. Even on the defensive side of the ball -- which had been Denver's strength earlier in this season -- the Broncos gave it up, allowing the Chargers to dominate the ball with more than 200 yards on the ground on 43 rushing attempts as compared to just 17 for the Broncos. In all, the Chargers have absolutely rocked the AFC West over the past month, surging from 3 1/2 games behind the Broncos just five weeks ago to now a full game ahead, and leaving the Broncos seriously in search of some answers.

Losers:

1. Ryan Sanchez and the New York Jets' defense. Forget the fact that the Jets lost another game and slipped ever further out of the playoff race with a blowout loss to the Cheatriots in Week 11. Forget about that stuff because it's official -- the Jets are no longer in the playoff conversation. But once again it was Ryan Sanchise stepping down in the clutch, and the Jets' defense getting rolled, that led to the team's downfall, and I continue to wonder when supposed defensive wunderkind Rex Ryan is going to get called on the carpet for his defense's lack of performance week after week after week. Sanchez had probably his second worst game of the season, throwing multiple foolish interceptions under the Cheatriots' relentless pressure, and the team allowed the Pats to make 278 first downs and gain 410 yards of total offense while holding the ball for an astounding 40 minutes of game time. It should be noted that, since nose tackle Kris Jenkins went down for the season with a leg injury in Week 6, the Jets are 1-3, with a win only against the hapless Raiders, and the team has given up an average of over 28 points per game in their last three outings, all losses for a reeling Gang Green. With games against Carolina, Buffalo and Tampa Bay in the next three weeks, we are likely looking at Sanchise's and the defense's last good chances of turning things around and ending what is otherwise going to be viewed as a fairly negative season on some kind of a positive note.

2. The Dallas Cowboys offense. Three weeks ago, Tony Romo was coming off his third 300-yard performance in four games and had just won a huge intra-divisional matchup on the road at the Philadelphia Eagles. Miles Austin had suddenly emerged as the downfield threat that this team had been missing since the departure of Terrell Owens in the offseason, and the Cowboys were looking like the clear team to beat in the NFC East. Since then, however, it's like a completely different team on offense. Although the 'Boys managed to eke out a 1-point victory over the Redskins this week on a late touchdown pass from Romo, the team is 1-1 in its last two games, and, more concerningly, the offense has scored just 7 points in each of its last two. This, after running up 26, 37, 38 and 20 points in their previous four games before those, all victories. Now the Cowboys will have to re-find that offense at home against the Bruce Gradkowski-led Raiders next week, because after that it's tough games at the Giants, vs. the Chargers and then at the Saints to kick off what has historically been this squad's December swoon.

3. Joe Flacco. I don't want to kill the guy and I am actually a fan of his ability to manage these games and even throw the ball well on occasion, but Flacco did what I call "pulling a Romo in December" this weekend by throwing a pick on the Colts' 13 yard line with his team down just two points with under three minutes to go against one of the last two undefeated teams in the NFL this year. With his team well in kicker Billy Cundiff's field goal range, Flacco forced the action and ended up giving up the ball -- and his team's chances for a huge, key win -- by making a poor decision that he has generally not been known for doing in his two years at the helm in Baltimore. For the game Flacco finished 3 for 7 for just 27 yards in the red zone -- a quarterback rating of 14.1 in an area where it is most easy to throw touchdown passes -- and will need to work on his finishing skills if the Ravens are to have any chance at all of climbing back into the AFC race with games coming up against Pittsburgh and Green Bay in the next two weeks.

4. The Seattle Seahawks. I haven't made much mention of the 'Hawks this year -- mostly because I've thought they sucked all season -- but at this point it is beyond official. This team is worthless. Former fantasy stud Matt Hasselbeck continued his mediocre-at-best 2009 on Sunday in a 35-9 crushing by the Vikings, as Hass fell to 3-5 in his starts this season, with the only wins coming at home against the eminently beatable Rams, Jags and Lions. Seattle has also shown themselves to be utterly worthless on the road, dropping this weekend to 0-5 away from home, where they really haven't even been close except for in Week 3 at the Bears when Hasselbeck didn't even play due to some broken ribs. And the Seahawks' defense has been doing their best New York Jets impression this year, allowing 30+ points this week for the 4th time in 10 games, and raising their average margin of defeat over their last five losses to 19.8 points per game. Ugh.

TO Watch: Out of nowhere, Terrell Owens busted out with far and away his biggest game of the season, a 9-catch, 197-yard outburst that included a 98-yard touchdown reception on a bomb deep down the right sideline from Buffalo quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick that represents the longest receiving touchdown in Bills franchise history. TO's huge Week 11 dramatically improves his season numbers, now sitting at 35 catches for 563 yards and two receiving touchdowns in 10 games so far in 2009. Oh, and TO's big performance still came in a loss, an 18-15 beating at the hands of the upstart 6-4 Jacksonville Jaguars.

The JaMarcus Russell award: With the Raiders going with Bruce Gradkowski at qb in nabbing a rare win against the Bengals this week, I had to look elsewhere other than The Namesake for this week's award to celebrate the week's most worthless quarterback. Fortunately I did not have to look far, as Jets rookie Mark Sanchez put up numbers bad enough to make head coach Rex Ryan consider giving Vinny Testaverde a call to see if he happens still to be in football shape. Sanchise's final line in his team's 31-14 loss to the New England Cheatriots: 8 for 21 for 136 yards, one touchdown, four interceptions and one lost fumble. Sanchise's qb rating for the game: 37.1. It's enough to make JaMarcus proud.

NFL's best team: This one doesn't change this week as the Saints pounded out a blowout 29-point victory at the Buccaneers, cementing their spot at the top of the list in the NFC, while Indy also protected its undefeated season record by holding off a tough Baltimore Ravens team on the road. The bigger news on this front is probably the Vikings, as Minnesota's nearly 30-point beatdown of the Seahawks is a clear statement that they belong in that list of the three elite teams in football this year. It's hard to take anything away from any of the Colts, Saints or Vikings as we head into the stretch run of the 2009 NFL season.

NFL's worst team: This one is a lot tougher all of a sudden, as the Browns put up the huge performance in the crazy last-down loss at Detroit, the Chiefs beat the Steelers in overtime and even the Raiders beat a playoff team in the Cincinnati Bengals. After much deliberation, I don't think I have any choice but to look back to the Rams, a previous winner of this weekly award. At 1-9, the Rams are tied with the Bucs and the Browns for the worst record in football, but after last week's offensive outburst by the Browns, St. Louis now joins 3-7 Oakland at the bottom of the points scored list in the league this year, with the Rams tallying just 113 total points over 10 games, for a measly 11+ points per game. And although Detroit, Tampa Bay and Tennessee have given up more points than the Rams have allowed so far in 2009, the overall point differential of -157 in St. Louis is far and away the worst in the NFL. Yeech.

A Little Sister's Scorn

2009-11-23T22:53:00.005+07:00

Funny thing happened today as Hammer Wife drove the girls to school this morning. As they drove down the main drag to my older daughter M's school, the girls see out the window M's friend J, but J has actually made M upset the last couple of times they hung out together by not paying sufficient attention to her. It's been the subject of some discussion at our house and we have spent a lot of time trying to explain to M that sometimes you can't be as good of friends as you want with everyone you ever want.

Anyways, so they saw J with her mother walking on their way to school this morning, and the following ensues:

Hammer Wife: M, do you want to say hi to your friend J? I'll roll down the window for you.

M: Yeah!

[Hammer Wife rolls down window]

M: "Hi J!" at the top of her lungs

And then...

M's younger sister K, sitting next to M on the ride to school, also at the top of her lungs: J, M hates you! You weren't nice to her at your party or ever! And she hates you now and i hate you too for being mean to my sister!"

Hammer Wife tried to roll the window up as quick as she could. But I think J got the point.

You go, K!

NFL Pick 5 -- Week 11

2009-11-20T21:50:00.004+07:00

Week 11 is the hardest week of games to pick thus far in the NFL season. Period. I may have said that one or two other times that I recall here this season, but that's because it was true. At the time, some of those weeks were the hardest of the season to that point. Well this week sets a new bar. Week 11 is chock full of games between one decent team and one bad team, in one or the other's stadium, mostly carrying large spreads, making for a ton of games that are just really, really hard to pick. I did my part by starting off Week 10 on the wrong foot by taking Carolina and laying a few points at home against the Dolphins on Thursday night, a night which saw the Fins pound the ball on the ground and never give Jake Delhomme and the Panthers a chance to recover from some early mistakes and failures to score in the game. Sadly, that Thursday night game was the game I liked the most almost of the entire weekend, and I lost it. So there ya go. With that bout of confidence, here come my picks for Week 11, in no particular order:

1. Carolina Panthers -3 vs Miami Dolphins. Loss.

2. Indianapolis Colts -1 at Baltimore Ravens. I kinda like this Baltimore team, and I respect what they can do under the right circumstances, in particular on defense, having picked them to win a few big games earlier in the season already. But in this case I think this line is just plain silly to be this small, with Peyton Manning and the undefeated Colts coming in to a far older, slower version of the Ravens defense than what most people still think of for some reason when they think about Baltimore's NFL franchise. Peyton Manning has beaten down on this team the last two teams the two have met up, with Peyton throwing for more than 600 yards and 7 touchdowns with zero interceptions over those last two meetings. I'm not saying I'm calling for a Colts blowout here, but in essentially a pickem game I have got to go with the Colts here to win a good game on the road against a flat out inferior Ravens squad. Nobody passes against the blitz and the pressure defenses like Peyton Manning.

3. Minnesota Vikings -11 vs. the Seattle Seahawks. The Vikes have been great this year, and resurgent quarterback Brett Favre is on his way to one of his best seasons in years. At 8-1, the Vikings have scored at least 27 points in all 8 of their victories, including over 29 points per game at home in four tries so far in 2009. On the other side of the ledger are the Seahawks, who have been totally inconsistent this year either with or without Matt Hasselbeck at the helm, and whose only three wins this year have come against the Rams, the Jaguars, and the Lions. When the 2009 Seahawks play good teams, they get beat, especially on the road this year where they are 0-4 with a 13-point loss at San Francisco, a 17-point loss at Indy, a 21-point loss at Dallas, and most recently an 11-point defeat at Arizona. Do I like the Hawks to lose another double digit road game this year at Minnesota? Hells yeah.

4. New England Patriots -10.5 vs. the New York Jets. I am going against my better judgment here, as I am confident the Pats will emerge victorious this weekend but I cannot stand having to give more than a touchdown and a field goal in a game where the Jets held the Pats to just 9 points earlier in the season in a 16-9 defeat of the Pats in New ~~Jersey~~ York. But that said, I expect the Pats to beat down hard on the Jets this weekend for a number of reasons. First and foremost, they are better than the Jets. Clearly. In Week 2 when these two teams first matched up, this was the entire season for the Jets. It was their superbowl, and they were on their way to a 3-0 start and first place in the AFC East, new head coach Rex Ryan left a personal phone message for every single Jets season ticket holder about how much the team needed their support to beat the Pats at home for the first time since 2000. But now, it's all different. The Jets have imploded, Ryan Sanchez can't get anything done and Rex Ryan's vaunted defense has rolled over and caved repeatedly in five losses out of their last six games. Meanwhile, the Patriots return home this Sunday after that crushing loss to the Colts on Sunday night, where the team will likely not only be motivated by revenge after their Week 2 loss to the Jets but also by anger after all the harangue surrounding Bellicheat's 4th-and-2 coaching decision to lose that Colts game. And the Pats come home hot, averaging nearly 39 points per game over their last four against a team who has had trouble stopping the opposition as the game wears on. And let's not forget that the Pats haven't lost two games back to back in several seasons as I recall. I expect the Pats to put on a real show in front of the home town fans and to do their best to come out angry, aggressive, and exact their revenge. 10.5 seems a bit high for this game, but I will still take the Pats and lay the points here, expecting at least a two-touchdown victory in New England on Sunday.

5. New Orleans Saints -11 at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Don't ask me why I'm taking the Saints to win big against another bad team this week, after they have failed to show up early in each of their last few games, all against subpar competition. But something just tells me that the NFC's best team is going to open a can of whoopass on the Bucs, whom I just don't think have the receivers to move the ball downfield, the running game to control the clock and keep the juggernaut Saints' offense off the field, nor the defense to hold the Saints under at least the mid-30s on the day. I'll take the Saints and lay the points, and just plan to hold my nose through the first half on Sunday.

Thursday Night Football Pick

2009-11-19T09:35:00.000+07:00

It's Thursday, and that means the NFL is back at us with the second of their recently new Thursday Night Football matchups that much of the country does not get to see due to not having the NFL Network. This Thursday's matchup sends the Miami Dolphins to the Carolina Panthers, and the Panthers are favored by 3 points as they have slowly crept up all week. 3 is an annoying number to have to get them at when I've been looking at this line all week, but in the end I'm still going to take the Carolina Panthers +3 vs. the Miami Dolphins for Thursday night in Carolina. Carolina is one of those teams that have quietly really improved since a very slow start, and now just sit a win or two out of the NFC playoff picture as I wrote earlier this week. Carolina has stepped it up in basically all positions since their 0-3 start, as Jake Delhomme has now not thrown an interception in three consecutive starts, DeAngelo Williams has run for 150 yards three times in his last five games (and just under 100 in the other two), and the team defense has basically held its last three opponents -- all solid offenses across the board in Atlanta, New Orleans and Arizona -- in check in going 2-1 over that span. Meanwhile, the Dolphins, a team that I like overall, have gone 1-3 on the road this season so far, with all three losses by double digits, and they have only scored more than 17 points once in four road attempts this season. Although the team has had a bit of a resurgence in its last four games under new quarterback Chad Henne, just this week the team announced that Ronnie Brown is on the IR and out for the season due to injury, and Brown is more than just the team's top runningback -- he is also the guy at the helm of the team's most common wildcat formation plays. That should really upset things a bit on the Miami offense, and this one seems like a touchdown win at least for the Panthers the way I see it.

NFL Winners and Losers -- Week 10

2009-11-17T11:18:00.000+07:00

Another week, another 3-2 for my picks, and really that's more like 3-1-1 as my Lions +16.5 was actually Lions +17 which all of those who bet it know, making that my first push of the NFL season in actual practice for anyone who is actually betting these games. This week in my picks started off solid with the 49ers winning by just enough against the Bears on Thursday night, then saw me lose two of two in the early games on Sunday with the Lions (really the push) and the Broncos who somehow managed to lose to the Redskins. But then the late games brought me back over .500 for the week as my Packers call was right on, as was the Kansas City pick at the Raiders, and that brings my posted season record to 28-17, back to a season-high 11 over .500. Even though I normally find these games easier to pick as the season wears on, this year it seems to be the opposite as many of these weeks are a real chore to pore through the games and find the five I like the most.

With that, here is the Week 10 Winners and Losers report.

Winners:

1. The Cincinnati Bengals. That's right, these are not your father's Bungles anymore, at least not this year. This weekend the Bengals completed a season sweep of division rival and defending superbowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers by clamping down the defense and refusing to give Steelers qb Ben Roethlisberger any breathing room at all. And this comes one week after the Bengals completed a season sweep against also tough division rival Baltimore, leaving the Bengals now 5-0 in the AFC North for the first time in franchise history. As much as the offense is finding ways to score enough to win these games, it's the defense that's leading the way as I've been saying here for weeks, and Week 10 was no different as the Bengals held the Steelers to just four field goals on the day while the Bengals chipped in with four fg's of their own in addition to a kickoff return in the first quarter that was the difference. With their next three games lined up to include the Raiders, the Browns and the Lions, there is a good chance we could be looking at a 10-2 Bengals team heading into the key Week 14 matchup at the Minnesota Vikings.

2. Vince Young and the Tennessee Titans. Say what you want about the lack of oomph in Vince Young's numbers, but his team is now 3-0 since VY took the helm after starting off 0-6 under last year's quarterback Kerry Collins. Not that all of this is directly attributable just to Vince Young, who himself has thrown for just two touchdowns with one pick in three starts this season, but the bottom line is that Young has clearly improved in all three games, and his efficiency at the position has helped lead the team down the field both through the air as well as on the ground. Since Young took over at qb, the Titans are not only 3-0 but they are averaging 35 points per game after managing to exceed 17 points only one time in six games prior to Young becoming the starter. Chris Johnson, the explosive runningback in Tennessee, has had three out of three huge 100+ yardage performances on the ground with Young running the show, after just two triple-digit games in six tries to start the season with Kerry Collins at qb, and even the defense has responded in a big way to the switch, ceding just 19 points per game in three wins under Vince Young after allowing 33 points per game over their first six games of 2009, all losses. For whatever reason, the change from Kerry Collins to the highly efficient, nearly 100-qb-rating Young has clearly energized this team, and there is no doubt that nobody really wants to play them on their schedule late in the year in a game that might really count for something.

3. The Carolina Panthers. The Panthers are another team with a not-so-great record overall at 4-5 but who nobody really wants to play right now if they can help it. After starting off the season with three losses, losing by an average of around 17 points per game in their first three, the Panthers have now run off four wins in six games with this past weekend's 28-19 victory at home over divisional rival Atlanta. What's more, the Panthers have been playing well against and beating some tough competition these past few weeks, taking down Arizona by nearly two touchdowns on the road in Week 8, losing a close game to the Saints after holding a 17-point lead in the second half in Week 9, and now handily beating the Falcons this past weekend who also have playoff hopes. Along with that pounding running game that has seen DeAngelo Williams go for 150 yards on the ground in three of his last five games, Jake Delhomme has now gone three straight without an interception as he bids to keep his job running John Fox's offense, and now the team gears up for games at home against the Dolphins, at the Jets, and the Buccaneers at home in a winnable stretch of games that could bring the Panthers back into the NFC playoff picture in a hurry.

4. The San Diego Chargers. After starting off an inconsistent 2-3, with particular weakness on the defensive side of the ball, the Chargers have been looking good as they rattled off their fourth consecutive win this past Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles. After tiny sparkplug type of back Darren Sproles seemed to be stealing the lead runningback job away from incumbent LaDainian Tomlinson earlier in the season, LT has reasserted himself over the past few weeks, all wins for the Chargers, as his scoring abilities combined with a really strong and fun-to-watch passing game centered on Vincent Jackson and Antonio Gates make the Chargers a hard team to outscore, and an even harder team to play catch-up against. And as has been the case with Vince Young in Tennessee, even the defense seems to be keyed on to LT's re-emergence in the Chargers backfield: after allowing over 27 points per game over the first five games of the 2009 season (team went 2-3), the last four games have seen former defensive mvp Shawne Merriman recapture some of his former glory as his defense has allowed just over 16 points per game, all victories for SD. With the total collapse of Denver as an AFC power over the past month, this sets up next week's matchup in Denver as one of the best games of the year as the two 6-3 powers will meet to decide first place in the suddenly hotly-contested AFC West.

5. The Arizona Cardinals. You gotta give the Cardinals credit, as they have really overcome the last-decade history of superbowl losers having a real problem even returning to the playoffs in the following season. After just a few games in 2009 I was sure my prediction for the Cardinals to be the latest victim of the superbowl slump was coming true, as the team opened the season losing at home to division rival San Francisco and started off the year 1-2 overall with several tough-looking road games coming up on their schedule. But since Week 4, it's like a different team has been playing -- much more like last year's team -- and what has ensued has been five wins in six games to leave the Cards now with a full two-game lead over the 49ers to take down their second consecutive NFC West title. Although the running game remains the weak link of the offense, Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner is the constant, always slinging the ball with a high efficiency and keeping his team moving down the field with the help of all-pro wideouts Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin, and it's been this team's road performance that has really been the most impressive aspect of their success so far in 2009. The team is 4-0 on the road this year so far, including big wins at 5-4 Jacksonville and the 5-4 New York Giants as well as beating the Seahawks in the division and the Bears as well on the road this year. And that road record is likely to improve before all is said and done for Arizona, as still on the schedule are games at the Rams, at the Titans, at the 49ers and at the Lions to close out the team's away schedule for the season. Until the playoffs, anyways, where it is increasingly obvious the Cardinals will be come season's end, despite the streak that has plagued so many superbowl-losing teams before them.

Losers:

1. Jay Cutler and the Chicago Bears. What can you say about a guy who throws five interceptions in a 10-6 loss? I mean, any one of those picks could possibly have won the game for the Bears, and in Cutler's case this is especially true as two of his picks came in the red zone, one of them on the 49ers' 1-yard line. Cutler moved the ball ok as usual, ending up with 307 passing yards on the day, but after throwing his league-leading 6th and 7th red zone interceptions in the game, his team was simply not able to overcome their quarterback's penchant for big mistakes so far in the 2009 campaign. With a running game that still has generated just one 100-yard day for fantasy bust Matt Forte now in nine games, and a defense that has allowed more than 40 points in two of their last four, the Bears are indeed on the precipice at 4-5 after last weekend, and they're looking at games at home against an angry Eagles squad next Sunday night followed by a trip to Minnesota the week after, so it is clearly time for Cutler to put up or shut up for the season here heading into Week 11.

2. The Denver Broncos. After a 6-0 start, the Broncos have come crashing down to earth in a big way, culminating in an extremely shocking 10-point loss to the utterly hapless Washington Redskins on Sunday afternoon at FedEx field that can probably best be described as embarrassing more than anything else. This once-proud team a month ago has now given up more than 28 points per game over their last three games, all losses, after allowing just 11 points per game over their first six outings, all wins. In the end, let's not forget that this team was simply not supposed to be a good team at all before this season began, and that might be what we're seeing here as Kyle Orton seems to be getting exposed, the running game is slipping away to almost invisibility, and the defense has nearly tripled what it has been allowing other teams to score over the past few weeks. And the schedule doesn't get any easier for the Broncos either, as they are looking at a key divisional matchup with the 6-3 Chargers next Sunday, followed by a super-short week and then a Thanksgiving night game at home against a hungry New York Giants squad who are likely to be desperately in need of a win.

3. The New York Jets. Let's forget for a minute that Ryan Sanchez threw a couple of bad picks in the second half at home against the 4-4 Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday, and instead focus on the real problem with Gang Green here in 2009: the defense. You can quote me all you want about the Jets' scoring average against, yardage, whatever numbers you want to use to make the team look better than it is. But the bottom line remains that, basically through each of the team's now five losses in 2009, the opposition has essentially moved the ball at will when it counts the most against this team. After yet another go-ahead touchdown to take a 1-point lead with just five minutes to go in the fourth-quarter against the Jags, for what seems like the umpteenth time this year to disgusted Jet fans, the Jets defense proceeded to come out and lay down for their opponents, allowing the Jags to drive down the field about 85 yards over the span of just two and a half minutes or so. In the end Maurice Jones-Drew "pulled a Westbrook" and laid down on purpose at the 1-yard line with open field to the end zone, selflessly giving up his personal stats for the sake of ensuring that the Jets did not get the ball back with more than a minute to go and a chance to do something crazy. The bottom line is that, with a rookie quarterback and rookie head coach at the helm for this team, the defense simply cannot let itself get walked all over while relying on the reputation the team built up in the preseason and the first few games that they are some kind of defensive mavens. This is no Baltimore Ravens defense, and importantly these aren't offensive juggernaut teams they are facing -- it's the Dolphins, Bills and now the Jaguars who are cutting through the Jets' D like a hot knife through butter late in the 4th quarter to snatch victories away from the Jets late in these games. The state of football in New ~~Jersey~~ York is severely in doubt these days, Yankees or no Yankees.

4. NFL head coaches.

4a. Bill Bellicheat of course makes the headline in this category after his very questionable decision with two minutes to go and a 6-point lead against the Colts on Sunday night football. On his own 30 yard line, Bellicheat did the unthinkable and actually opted to go for it -- yes, with a 6 point lead and yes on his own 28 yard line -- on 4th down and 2, in a situation where he could have easily punted the ball away like everyone in NFL history has figured out is the proper move in this spot, and forced the Colts to drive some 70 yards or so in a spot where they had to score a touchdown to mean anything, and do so in under two minutes. While it's true that Manning had already led two sub-two-minute td drives in the fourth quarter of this game, and I have no doubt that Peyton Manning and the potent Colts offense would have put up a tremendous onslaught in the no-huddle offense to try to get that touchdown, the bottom line is that, across the NFL this year, fewer than 30% of drives that begin on the opponents' 30 yard line or earlier result in touchdowns. Yes, that number is probably higher where Peyton Manning in concerned, but it's not like the guy scores touchdowns in 75% of his drives where he has two minutes and 75 yards to go and has to score a touchdown. And the Pats had already created two interceptions off of Manning in the game, and the Colts only managed to score on five of their 14 positions overall in the game, so it's not like the Patriots hadn't done at least a serviceable job against the Pats on the game overall. Bellicheat's downfall with this decision was that he opted to pick a play that had probably a 60% chance of winning him the game outright by making a first down, but he failed miserably in completing the expected value calculation by working out the effect of the 30-40% chance of his team losing the game outright if they missed, plus the long-term effects of screaming out to the world that he, Bill Bellicheat, has absolutely zero confidence in his own defense. It's no wonder that it took Peyton Manning all of two plays to get to the 1-yard line before punching in the winning touchdown on the night -- once Bellicheat told his defense that he didn't think they could prevent the Colts from scoring a touchdown within two minutes when starting from their 30 yard line, obviously they knew he knew they couldn't stop the Colts from scoring when starting from the Pats' 30. This might be the worst decision ever made by the biggest cheater among the NFL head coaches in the league today.

4b. Jaguars coach Jack Del Rio had Maurice Jones-Drew take a knee on the 1-yard line with about a minute to go in a 22-21 game against the Jets, a game in which the Jags were losing at the time. Then the Jags hiked the ball for two separate plays, with quarterback David Garrard just taking a knee twice in a row to set up for a last-second chip-in field goal attempt for the win. Let me repeat: the Jaguars were losing the game at the time. Of course Jags' inconsistent kicker Josh Scobee made the kick and his team won, but to think that they would not even attempt to run that ball into the end zone from the 3-inch line in three separate attempts in the final minute, when they were going ahead and hiking the ball anyways already as it was, is so indefensible that you can only laugh. It's just too bad that they didn't muff the snap on that field goal and then watch hopelessly while the clock expired and they took the 1-point loss on the game. I mean, I'm all for unselfish play, but this wasn't unselfish; it was stupid.

5. The Dallas Cowboys. Dallas once again showed their inconsistency this week, coming out after four straight wins and laying a complete egg against the Packers this past weekend at Lambeau field. In the end, the thing that bothers me the most about this loss is that the team simply didn't seem like they gave a crap about it all during the game. And head coach Wade Phillips is to blame, I solemnly guarantee you that. After winning four straight games, including key wins over NFC hopefuls with Atlanta and at Philly last weekend to give the 'Boys sole possession of first place in the NFC East, you can be confident that this team didn't do shit in practice for a week heading up to the Packers game. In the end, this game clearly went to the team that wanted it more, and in this case that was the Packers by a factor of about a thousand. The Cowboys are not likely to break their streak of no playoff wins in 13 years while Wade Phillips remains at the head coaching helm. Shanahan or Cowher, that's the big question that will remain on Cowboy fans' minds for the next several months as we get to watch "America's Team" implode yet again down the stretch.

6. The Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons are slumping. Big time. Second-year quarterback Matt Ryan is mired in a real-life sophomore slump, leading his team to three losses in their last four games after starting off the 2009 season winning four of their first five games. Not only are the Falcons now 1-4 on the road this season, something that's just not going to work if they have any real postseason aspirations at all, but Matt Ryan has now thrown 7 interceptions in his last 3 games, a problem he has not generally had in his year and a half as a professional starting quarterback in this league. With games over the next four weeks at the Giants, and later at home against the Eagles and the Saints, we're going to find out in a hurry if the Falcons plan to make a run at the playoffs this year or whether Matt Ryan's sudden penchant for poor decision-making is going to cost his team a spot in the 2009 NFL post-season.

TO watch: TO actually had his first big play of the 2009 season this weekend in Week 10, catching a 40-something yard pass in stride down the right sideline from qb Trent Edwards but stepping out of bounds at the 3 instead of finding a way to pound it in like the old TO would have. In fact, TO's 85 yards on Sunday in a blowout by the Titans represent the best single game for any Bills wideout so far in 2009. But still, TO's overall numbers outside of that one reception were not inspiring, as he ended the game with just three catches for the 85 total yards, another big drop, and of course, no touchdowns. On the season, in nine full games so far this year, TO's totals include just 26 catches for 366 yards, and one touchdown catch. That's fewer than three catches and 41 yards per game. Pathetic.

The JaMarcus Russell award: Glad to see this one back where it belongs this week, with the person who graciously gave this award its name. Before being benched early in the 4th quarter at home against the 2-6 Chiefs on Sunday afternoon, Russell managed to put up some startling numbers: 8 of 23 for 64 total yards. And no touchdowns, of course. But hey, at least he didn't throw any interceptions, right? And at least his quarterback rating of 43.6 for the game isn't his lowest for the season! Sadly, it's not even his second-lowest rating of the season, as in nine games overall in 2009, Russell has gone 96 for 205, for 1064 yards, two touchdowns and nine interceptions. That under 47% completion percentage helps Russell secure a season 47.7 qb rating so far as a starter in all nine games his team has played, and is nearly 30 percentage points below the Peyton Mannings, the Kurt Warners and the Brett Favres of the NFL, with Russell's only consistency being his total lack of consistency in any aspect of quarterback play.

Best team in the NFL? I think this one still comes down to the two unbeatens -- the 9-0 Colts and the 9-0 Saints. In my heart of hearts I still think the Saints might be the best in the NFL, although for three straight games they aren't playing like it. Once the Saints get a nice, fat loss under their belts though -- and believe me, a loss is definitely coming for this team -- then they will probably get a lot tougher, and I still have a hard time picturing any other team in the NFC coming to the dome in New Orleans in January and beating this Saints squad.

Worst team in the NFL? Let's keep this title where it's been for the past couple of weeks: in Cleveland. After Monday night's dismal performance, it is clear that nothing is happening whatsoever with the Browns franchise, from the ownership who hired Eric Mangini within seconds of his firing from the Jets, to the GM who allowed offensive players like Kellen Winslow and Braylon Edwards to leave the team for very little in return over the past year or two, and on down to the coach in Eric Mangini who is now under investigation by the NFL Players' association for the length of his practices being too tough for NFL standards. What a joke of a franchise. And how about picking a quarterback and sticking with him, or just going out and getting someone from outside the team that you can trust to start a few games in a row? So far this year, last night's starter Brady Quinn has gone 0-4 in four games for under 500 yards, one touchdown and five picks for a qb rating of 51 flat. Ugh. And the backup? Derek Anderson went 1-5 in his six starts, which have included going 66 for 154 overall -- a completion percentage that even JaMarcus Russell must sit around laughing at -- for 681 total yards, two touchdowns and nine INTs. You just can't win with either of these clowns and that offensive system, which probably explains why the Browns have become the first team since 1933 to score just five offensive touchdowns over a 15-game span. P.U.!

Sooted Connectors Hand -- Conclusion

2009-11-16T09:38:00.001+07:00

Last Thursday I had posted some screen shots and asked some questions about how readers like to play a standard sooted connectors hand very early in a large MTT. It was the nightly pokerstars 25k guaranteed with a $27.50 buyin at 8pm ET, just the first couple of orbits. UTG limped, a few folds, and then I limped behind with 87s in clubs. We saw a five-way flop of 962 with one club, giving me an oesd, and when the action checked around to me, I bet 90 chips into the 110-chip pot. Just one player in late position called my bet, and we saw a heads-up turn card:

So, I just made my nut straight on the turn. And I picked up a flush draw. And an open-ended straight flush draw. There's 290 chips in the pot, and both myself and my opponent each have around 10x that still behind. I've now switched from win-a-small-pot mode to full chip extraction mode, and the question I posed is how would you play the hand now to give yourself the best chance to win and win big?

In a nutshell, you bet! That was the answer that mostly every commenter suggested, and I have to agree with that approach. There's two main reasons why I think a bet is almost mandatory here. First and foremost, I do not want to lose this pot at this point. Not giving this pot away after the hand I have amassed on the turn card is more important even that extracting my opponent's stack. And giving the entire pot away could very easily happen if I give this guy a free card to draw to another club that could give him a higher flush with the lone Jack, Queen, King or Ace of clubs in his hand. So I need to bet here, and the most important point is that my bet size be enough to clearly price him out of making a call with a lone high club in his hand. That' a little more than 4 to 1 against hitting on the river, so I need to bet more than a quarter of the pot to ensure that if he calls with just the one-card flush draw, that call is by definition profitable for me over the long term.

The other reason I think to bet here is one that was alluded to by a few of the commenters, and it has to do with extracting the most chips from my opponent. If I want to have a chance to get his whole stack, an all-in bet at this point would be for ten times the current pot, would look totally ridiculous, and is not going to be called by my opponent. Even a bet of twice the pot can't possibly be called really, unless the guy is holding the Ace♣ and is a total jackmonkey. But, I'm going to have that exact same problem on the river if I check here and my opponent checks behind. There's basically no way I can make a credible, callable bet on the river for most or all of my opponent's stack, unless I bet first on the turn here and get called, which will make the odds much more in favor of a sizable river bet if that's what seems like the most profitable move for me after the river card falls.

So I've got to bet this here to both maximize my chance of winning big and to minimize my chance of losing the whole pot on the river:

210 into 290. If he's got the Ace♣ and wants to call that bet, I sincerely hope he does. Because he is paying me free chips over the long haul by making this call, and because I know I can and will lay this down to almost any real action on the river if a fourth club hits. Unless it makes me a straight flush of course, in which case I probably move it all in and hope he's got the nut flush in there.

Cue the pokerstarsy river card:

Not a good card for me. There were two diamonds on the flop, and the guy called (not raised) two (not one) roughly 2/3-the-pot bets from me on the flop and the turn. Definitely the kind of play someone would make with a flush draw on the flop that did not fill on the turn, huh? And of course there's also the fact that the turn and river now made a higher runner-runner straight than the one I have, not that I am particular concerned about that longshot play but it's pokerstars, you never know. Would you lead out here, small maybe and try the blocking bet route? Or just check and hope to see a free showdown?

For me, he just played his hand so transparently like a flush draw that I dont' want to bet here. I check, and of course my opponent bets out:

Ugh. 200 chips into 910 in the pot. If that's not a suck bet, then I don't know what is. But then, it's only another 200 chips. Who's calling here, and who's folding?

Once you've decided what you would do, you can click here to see what I did.
[Edit: Link has been fixed]

NFL Pick 5 -- Week 10

2009-11-13T22:12:00.001+07:00

Disclaimer: For those of you here to see the follow-up from yesterday's Actual Poker Post(TM), sorry but you will have to wait until Monday. That was not my intent but it's just the way things have to be for me today. On Monday I promise I will recap the action from Thursday's post and will get to the conclusion of the hand. As always thanks for everyone's thoughts and comments.

So, Week 10 of the NFL is already upon us, with the Thursday night games starting last night with one of the worst football games in recent memory, pitting the four-losses-in-a-row 49ers against the 1-3-in-their-last-four Chicago Bears in a game that did not disappoint those looking to see two inept teams banging heads until one was declared the winner. In the end, San Francisco, who was flat out unable to do anything on offense at home against the lackluster Bears defense, took advantage of one of Jay Cutler five interceptions (at least two of them in the red zone, including one on the 49ers' 1-yard line) to score the only touchdown of the day on their way to an overpowering 10-6 win in front of the home town fans. Fortunately, my read on the Bears' ineptitude on offense away from their home field was just enough to get a cover for the 49ers -3 points and bring us to 1-0 to start the Week 10 season. This is a nice start after last week's 2-3 performance, which brings my overall record so far this season to 26-15 counting last night's win with the Niners. Here's to some more winners this week, where a couple of games really stand out to me as having lines that are just off enough to create some good value for bettors. Here's the Week 10 picks, once again in no particular order:

1. San Francisco 49ers -3 vs. the Chicago Bears. Winner!

2. Detroit Lions +16.5 at Minnesota Vikings. Obviously, the Vikings are a far better team than the shitful Lions, about that there is no debate and no doubt. But are they two touchdowns and a field goal better? I just don't see it. This is the biggest line I've seen on an NFL game so far this season, at a time when most of the huge lines have been coming down a few points over the past few weeks of games when even the best of teams have been unable to cover the spread over the past few weekends. And the thing is, as good as Minnesota has been on both offense and defense this year, they just aren't going out and winning their games by 17 points. Yes, Detroit is horrible, but so are Cleveland and St. Louis, and so was Detroit the first time these teams met back in Week 2, and in only one of those games did the Vikes win by more than 16 points (38-10 over the Rams in Week 5). What's more, the Vikings have actually played better outside of the dome this year than inside, with their three home games so far coming in as wins of 3, 7 and 2 points, albeit against mostly better teams than the Lions. And lastly, the Lions seem to play the Vikings and Brett Favre fairly well over recent history, including causing Favre to have his worst performance of the year in Week 2 with just 155 yards in the air. In 2008 when these two teams met in Minnesota, the Vikings won by just two points, and the teams split their matchups in 2007 as well. And the word is that Favre is injured, so much so that he might not play the whole game, and if he does that he will be affected by the injury to some extent. All of this leads me to think that there is significant value on the Lions + 16.5 points this Sunday afternoon in Minnesota.

3. Kansas City Chiefs +2 at the Oakland Raiders. Wait, the Raiders are actually favored in a game this year? What an insult to Kansas City and first-year coach Todd Haley, especially given that the Raiders are averaging a smart 5.5 points per game over their last six outings. JaMarcus Russell is so far beyond being an NFL quarterback that awards are given in honor of his badness. Six of their eight opponents have scored at least 23 points against the Raiders this season, including their most recent home game which was a 38-0 shellacking by the New York Jets. Oakland actually won at KC earlier this year -- a 3-point victory, 13-10 -- but both of the Raiders' wins this year came when they themselves scored just 13 points, a strong offensive output for them given their performance this season. The Chiefs have at least shown they can score a little bit, breaking 20 points three times this season including twice on the road, and in their only other game against the NFL's shitpile teams (other than the game against the Raiders in Week 2), the Chiefs nabbed their first win of the season against the Redskins in Week 6. All this is a long way of saying that I think the Chiefs are likely to win this game outright and avoid being swept on the season by the lowly Raiders, and getting 2 points to boot against an awful Oakland team is just too much to pass up here.

4. Green Bay Packers +3 vs. the Dallas Cowboys. Here's another game where I can't believe the underdog is getting the points it is getting to cover. Green Bay, an absolutely desperate team at 4-4 at this point in the season, coming off their worst loss of the year so far last week at winless Tampa Bay, returns home on Sunday afternoon to face the hot Dallas Cowboys who are fresh off their huge win at division rival Philadelphia last Sunday night. So it's a bit of a short week for Dallas, they are likely facing a letdown game in between matchups against their two biggest division rivals in Philly and Washington, and we all know the troubles the Cowboys have had in general winning big road games in the second half of the season, which we are now officially in to. And let's not forget how horrible the coaching staff is in Dallas as well. Four wins in a row is more than enough for this Cowboys squad, and I think Green Bay has a good chance of winning this game outright at home in a matchup that they absolutely, positively have to win. Oh, and the Pack is actually getting three points as well? Definite value on the Packers here.

5. Denver Broncos -3.5 at Washington Redskins. I wrote earlier this week about how Denver has been exposed a bit over the past two games, at least as not being nearly as good as their 6-0 record indicated a few weeks back. That said, even though I've been at the top of the "not as good as their record" bandwagon with the Broncos all season, this line just seems wrong to me. The Redskins have played the worst schedule in NFL history so far in 2009, including games against the Rams, the Lions, the Buccaneers, the Panthers and the Chiefs, and yet still the team is only 2-6 in its first eight games, beating the Rams by two and the Bucs by three. Although the Redskins' defense has played reasonably well this year, their last two games have seen them give up 27 points in a loss to the Eagles, followed by 31 in another loss at Atlanta last weekend. In fact, the Redskins have held four of the shitpiler teams they've played to under 20 points, but their three reasonable opponents this season have scored 23 (NYG), 27 and 31 points, and there is no reason to expect Denver not to follow suit, albeit probably to a lesser degree. Denver's defense is basically the best in the NFL, however, and they're facing a totally hapless Skins offense that has averaged just over 14 points per game this year and has failed to break 17 points even one time in eight games this year, mostly against the worst competition the NFL has to offer. Denver should bounce back and beat a truly terrible Washington team this weekend, and although I wish the line were under 3, I'll still give the 3.5 and expect to win a close one here on Sunday afternoon.

Playing Those Sooted Connectors, Plus an NFL Pick

2009-11-12T08:48:00.000+07:00

Wow. I write a little bit about poker one day and I must have had 15 people tell me to do it more yesterday. You wanted another poker post? Well here comes another poker post.

But first, I will get on the record right now and pick the San Francisco 49ers -3 vs. the Chicago Bears on Thursday night on the NFL Network. I will pick my other four of my Pick 5 NFL picks on Friday as usual, but with Thursday Night Football starting up this week I will try to get in a pick on the Thursday night game wherever it makes sense for me, and that means it will have to go up a day earlier than the other picks. Thursday night's matchup is a battle of the losers in a sense, with the 49ers having lost four in a row heading into Week 10 while the Bears have chipped in losing three of their last four as well. Both teams started the season off hot but have since really cooled, although their problems are kind of opposite of each other. The Bears can't stop anyone right now -- they've allowed 45 to the Bungles and 41 to the Falcons in their last two games against NFL-worthy opponents. Meanwhile, in San Francisco the problem is that, after scoring an average of nearly 26 points per game over their first four outings of 2009, the team has now managed to scrape together just 18 points per game over their last four, and they've lost three games in a row by a touchdown or less as a result. I don't love how the 49ers are playing right now, but the bottom line is that, especially at home, I have more confidence in Mike Singletary and the 49ers finding their footing tonight than I do in Jay Cutler and the Bears. At Candlestick Park this season, the 49ers have scored in the 20's three times, and that's roughly where I expect them to end up tonight against the porous Bears' defense. But on the road, Jay Cutler has led his team to four separate subpar offensive outputs, including games with 15, 14, 10 and 21 points. If the Niners can run it up to the mid-20s like I think they will, that ought to be enough to cover against the reeling Bears who will then have to face the Eagles next Sunday night in Chicago to try to right their own ship.

OK, so with that out of the way, you wanted some poker. As I've gotten back into playing a little bit these past couple of weeks, I've started dipping my toe back into the mtt pool, something I really haven't done almost any of since my big score out at the Venetian last summer in Vegas. I was kinda burned out on tournament poker for a while after that magical weekend in the desert, and then the baby came, and before I knew it it'd been basically three or four months of very little mtt play for me. But as I've started playing again I've really been enjoy anew the process of building a stack from scratch in the earlygoing in these things. Especially online, where even the "slow" tournament structures are still actually super duper fast in reality, where the whole time you have to "build a stack" amounts to maybe a couple of hours, as opposed to a couple of days of poker in most live events. After some time away, I'm finding myself amazed at how easy it is to just slide right back into it and play the same aggressive way I've always played ever since I first learned the game. I've always been someone who tries to stir up action -- rather than avoid it -- early in most of the mtt's I play, again especially when it's online. I like to see a lot of cheap flops when the blinds are small relative to the stacks, try to flop a big hand and then figure out the best way to extract the most chips from the most players when I do. I don't want to sit around the starting stack for 90 minutes and then hope to pick up AA or to win a race with AJ vs 88. I want to force the action with lots of spec hands for cheap early anid try to turn one of them into a big big pot for me and get myself up to full chip utility as early as possible whenever I can.

Recently I was playing in the nightly 25k guaranteed tournament on pokerstars at 8pm ET. It has a $27.50 buyin and typically attracts between 1100-1500 runners or so, with four-digit payouts usually going to the top 5 or 6 spots, and a top prize somewhere in the 5k range. It's about as small of a payout tournament as I will generally play in the no-limit context at 25k guaranteed, as I generally prefer larger prizes for the final table to even make it worth bothering trying to wade through the level of donkery one must always survive to make a run like this. I think nothing would piss me off more than to outlast 1500 other shitheads in a $1 buyin tournament, just to end up in third place when my AK goes down to JJ and get paid a total of $500. For me that's just not worth the effort, and the luck, really, that it takes to last through a huge field of players like that, so I typically try to play 30k guaranteed or larger events only whenever I can. This way I can at least be assured that if tonight's going to be another magical run for me, I know I can win more than 5k or at least in the few thousand range for a top-few-spots finish.

So anyways, it's very early (first round) in the pokerstars 25k, and the UTG player limps for 20 chips. The next guy at our full 9-person table folds, and then the action is to me. I am holding 87s.

What do you do here?

I actually love to raise with sooted connectors in early position. In fact, as I've written here many times, when you raise preflop as aggressively as I do, it's basically a requirement to raise with these hands as well, just for balance if nothing else. From what I've seen and read, it seems like mostly all of the big tournament pros raise sooted connectors from early position as well, again in particular when the stacks are deep early in a tournament. However, in this particular spot, with one limper already in the pot, and him seated under the gun at that, I opt to check. To clarify my earlier statement, I like to open-raise with sooted connectors from early position. When the pot's already been opened for a limp from early position, now with a hand like 87s I am looking at a good possibility of a multiway pot if I just limp behind, which actually is my best pure math strategy for this kind of a hand. So where someone else has made the decision for me by open-limping ahead of me, and there is a decent chance of a multiway pot developing if I just limp as well, I will usually limp with connectors in this situation:

Two other players in late position limp in as well, as does the big blind, so we end up seeing a 5-way flop which is exactly perfect for what I'm holding. The flop comes down 962, with one of my suit, giving me the open-ended straight draw. The big blind checks, as does the UTG player, and the action is to me:

What do you do?

My answer is this: try to either take down the 110 chips in the pot now, or, if I end up building a little bit of a pot here, that's ok as well as long as I control the size of that pot such that I can profitably see at least one more card. Nobody has shown any strength yet before the flop here, and the flop is raggy enough that even most limpers should not really have connected with it in some huge way. More than that, the way I play I like to take a lot of little stabs at flops when the pots are still small, and this is a perfect opportunity to start creating that image of an active flop bettor so that the next time I am holding TPTK and of course decide to bet the flop, I will actually have created more action for myself by betting at flops like these as well. And, at this point in the hand, the pot is still super small relative to our stacks, so unlike at some point later in the tournament possibly, right now I have plenty of chips to make a move and still fold to a huge reraise or even to a turn bet or raise from my opponent. So I decided to make the exact same type and size of bet as I would make if I were holding top pair, or an overpair, on most flops:

90 chips into the 110-chip pot. In a pot with four other players, all of whom limped in and thus could be holding the middling-sort of cards that could have connected in some way with this flop, and with the flush draw on the board, I want to make sure I am forcing my opponents to make a poor call odds-wise at whatever they're drawing at. Remember, my game here is to play this flop exactly like I would if I were holding TPTK or something, because I know I'm going to be getting out there and betting at a lot of flops just exactly like that over the next hour or so here.

The late position player called my 90-chip bet here, while the big blind and UTG both folded their hands. So we saw a turn heads-up, and I was first to act:

Boom! I just made my nut straight on the turn. And I picked up a flush draw. And an open-ended straight flush draw. There's 290 chips in the pot, and both myself and my opponent each have around 10x that still behind. I'm thinking this is my chance to hopefully extract some serious chippage from this guy early on in an mtt and get some much-needed chip utility early, as the big blind will move from 20 to 50 over the next 20 minutes or so and I will soon be well below that magical utility level of 100 big blinds.

How do you play this hand now? If you bet, how much? If you check, why?

Back tomorrow with the conclusion.

Super Turbo Heads Up SNGs

2009-11-11T23:26:00.004+07:00

That's right, folks. As I've gradually started getting back in to online poker as my son has started sleeping a good portion of the night, I noticed something brand new last night that I had not noticed before on full tilt -- the presence of heads-up sitngos in a super turbo format. Now, for those of you who don't konw, the super turbos are the satellites that start each player with just 300 chips, and 15-30 blinds, and the blinds escalate every three minutes. Basically, the structure in super turbo formats more or less forces you to play allin preflop poker almost every single time a flop is seen, certainly in the early part of the tournament. If you think you can bump the 30-chip big blind to 90 chips with a preflop raise, but then fold when reraised from late position, you're nuts because with 90 chips already invested, you have already committed around 30% of your stack in a tournament with very quick blind escalation. So it's either allin-or-fold right from the getgo in these things, and it's been well documented among several bloggers over the past year or so since the super turbo format first appeared in limited instances on full tilt that playing in the large super turbo's is basically just a crapshoot, at any level of buyin.

So it would stand to reason, then, that the heads-up flavor of these things would also be a total and complete crapshoot, right?

Not so fast. As I have written about here myself, and as I recall some others have chipped in as well, there actually is some strategy that can be used in the super turbo structure. Ultimately, there is little you can do to prevent yourself from taking your AQs up against someone else's 77 in the third hand of the tournament for all of your respective stacks, but there is a general way of approaching these hyper-quick tournament structures that can give you an advantage over others at your table who don't get it. And what I found last night is that, in the heads-up context, if you can get up against someone who doesn't have the same feel for the super-turbo game as you do, you can actually make some decent, albeit extremely high-variance, profits.

I was lucky last night. I ran into a guy sitting at one of these $160 + $4 super turbo heads-up sitngos who really had no clue how to play them. And more than that, either he was some sick points whore or he had wayyyyyyy too much money for his own good, because whether he won or lost, the guy immediately accepted a rematch offer within seconds of the last sng ending. Although I stopped counting maybe around 20, we must have played at least 25 of these super-turbo heads-up sngs, and in the end I think I won maybe five more than I lost by the time this guy had finally had enough. And more than that, net of any suckouts I foisted on my opponent during the session, he won three or four of our battles on hardcore dominated suckouts, situations where we got allin preflop with my AJ vs. his QJ, or my K9 vs his 97, etc. Plus he won another two or so on what I would call mild suckouts, like allin preflop my AK vs his T9 and hands like that where my preflop odds were probably not more than 60% but where I still had a nice lead when all the money went into the middle.

How did I play this such that I ended up +5 in sngs won, plus another 5 or so where my opponent sucked out but where really I was the odds-on favorite to win maybe 2/3 of the super-turbo contests we played? Given the speed, there are really just a few tricks I employed:

1. Push! Whenever I get relatively short and I am first to act preflop. With any two cards. So when he won the first couple of pots and the chip stacks were 390 for him to 210 for me, I would push in preflop automatically with my 30-chip big blind and his 15 already in the pot, even if I'm holding 34o, a hand I pushed with many a time through our 30- or 40-sng session last night. Almost every time he folded, and the couple of times he does call, I am generally only a 55-60% dog or so, which means I am winning more than 4 times out of 10 in any event even when he does call.

2. Read! My opponent. Yes it is hard to read too much into my opponent's actions when we are playing super-turbo which by definition forces the action quite a bit as it is. But there are still variations in the players who get mixed up in these things, and generally speaking you only have a few short minutes to figure out which kind of guy you are up against. Is he, like me, a push-n-pray guy every time he gets a little short, so that when he is short and moves in before the flop I do not necessarily have to fear being up against a monster. Or, is he one of these guys who only auto-pushes with any Ace or with any two face cards? Will he move in with that 34o if he is first to act and has already put big blind money into the pot, or will he try to wait for a better spot? Does a pause before he bets generally indicate that he has a big hand and wants to bait me into calling, or that he has a horrible hand and needs to psyche himself up into raising with it? These are the things I attune myself to right away in the super turbo structure tournaments, and in heads-up play it becomes significantly more important given that you're up against the same guy every single hand for all the marbles.

3. Know! My preflop pushing odds. This is the last key I used last night in abusing this guy in the super-turbo heads up sngs, and it really goes hand in hand with item #2 above. Once I can put some reasonable limitation on his hand range when he moves in in a given spot at a given speed, I need to know whether it makes sense for me to call given my own hole cards. So, for example, once I determined in our first 10 matches or so that this guy was pushing in with any two cards on the first hand of every tournament, then suddenly that K7o I was dealt becomes a calling hand and not a folding hand. And when I know for sure that this guy autopushes with any Ace or any King at all, that A6 or A7 I am holding once again becomes a caller instead of a possible folder. The key is understanding the math behind the allin preflop decisions, at least on a categorical level, for any reasonable two-card hands he and I might be holding.

Still, in the end as I mentioned above, the variance on these super-turbo badboys is more than anyone should have to deal with in trying to amass some quality results. As I pointed out, although I did end the 40-sng-or-so session 4 or 5 wins ahead of my opponent, these results did include a good 5 or 6 net suckouts on my opponent's part that severely hampered my ability to really lay a smackdown on him, but the fact remains that I got in good position to win his $160 buyin in a good two-thirds of the sngs we played simply by following the three keys above and executing my game plan without making rash calls or bad plays. I'm not sure I want to make a habit of playing heads-up super-turbo poker, but when a profitable situation presents itself I feel good knowing I am prepared with a plan that should work against most lesser-experienced opponents.

NFL Winners and Losers -- Week 9

2009-11-10T15:07:00.000+07:00

Week 9 was an extraordinary week in the NFL, one that saw all but three underdogs cover while nearly every favorite was unable to win at all or to win by the required number of points to cover the spread coming out of Vegas. In a year when the sportsbooks are taking an absolute bath with all the favorites consistently winning regardless of how large the oddsmakers can set the spreads, Week 9 will go down as the week when the books finally made some of that hard-earned dough back. I was lucky enough to be in on two of those dogs with my picks for the week -- Miami +10.5 at the Cheatriots (the Dolphins covered, ever so barely) and Houston +9 (they covered easily in a game they probably should have won against the Colts), although my other three picks all failed in my first sub-.500 week since Week 2 of the NFL season at 2-3. But hey, am I beating myself up because the Buccaneers came out of nowhere and beat the weakass Green Bay Packers? Because the Titans came out of nowhere and beat an allegedly hungry 49ers team? Because the Saints once again gave up a 17-point lead before they decided to start playing in the second half at home against Carolina? Nope. With all the 3-2 and better weeks I've had in a row so far this season, some 2-3's thrown in here and there for good measure has to be expected, especially when picking against the spread.

Here is Week 9's Winners and Losers report.

Winners:

1. The Dallas Cowboys. Another week, another receiving touchdown for Miles Austin. Austin didn't play huge at Philadelphia on Sunday night as the Eagles really seemed to cue on him throughout the game defensively, but he did just enough to make the go-ahead touchdown he scored in the 4th count in a 20-16 victory over a key divisional rival. Coming in to Philadelphia and beating the Eagles is a huge move for the Cowboys, a team that has had trouble during the current regime winning big games on the road, and Dallas now moves to 6-2, a full game up on the Eagles in the division and in the driver's seat to take down their first NFC East since going 13-3 in 2007.

2. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Bucs are off the schneid! The Bucs are off the schneid! I had to get them in here this week because the Buccaneers went out and beat down on the Green Bay Packers this Sunday afternoon in Tampa. And they did so in the first career start for rookie and Kansas State alumni Josh Freeman at quarterback. Freeman did the job on the day, tossing three td passes while throwing for over 200 yards and taking care of the ball with just one interception on the day of his first pro start, while Green Bay simply could not score enough thanks in no small part to three picks from their quarterback Aaron Rodgers (more on that later).

3. The Cincinnati Bungles. OK, this time I mean it for real -- one more win next weekend against the Steelers, and I will officially stop calling this team the Bungles. At least for the remainder of the 2009 NFL season. Because at 6-2, having beaten the Steelers, the Browns and now having swept the tough Ravens on the year, the Bungles are most assuredly for real. A rejuvenated Cedric Benson is blowing up at runningback, now with 837 yards and 6 touchdowns in 8 games for the Bungles, and Carson Palmer and another rejuvenated skill guy in Chad Ochocinco are leading the way in the passing game, but it continues to be the Cincy defense that impresses me the most. In eight games so far in 2009, only two teams have scored more than 20 points against the Bungles, both strong offensive teams in Green Bay and Houston, and Cincinnati has held Baltimore, Chicago, and Baltimore again to 14, 10 and 7 points in three of their last four weeks, all wins for the surprising AFC North leaders at the halfway point.

4. Michael Turner. The Atlanta Falcons' starting runningback has really been rebounding these past few weeks after a tough start to the 2009 campaign. In the Falcons' first six games this season, Michael Turner recorded just one 100-yard game, a 105-yard effort in Week 2 at home against Carolina. Now, however, Turner has to be considered among the hottest backs in the NFL, putting up 151 and 166 yards over 38 carries for three rushing touchdowns in his last two starts, while his team went 1-1 during that time including a close loss to the NFC's best New Orleans Saints. With 166 yards and two touchdowns on just 18 carries on Sunday against the allegedly solid defense of the Washington Redskins, Turner has now served notice to the rest of the NFL that he is back and better than ever as his team readies for another strong second half after ending their first eight games at a 5-3 clip.

5. The Tennessee Titans and Vince Young. Tennessee quarterback Vince Young's passing numbers don't look all that intimidating on paper, but behind the scenes VY has been fairly instrumental in managing the game and in scoring when it counted in his two starts this season, both wins for the Titans after an 0-6 start with veteran Kerry Collins at the helm. The Titans moved to 2-6 this weekend after Young led the team on a go-ahead drive in the 4th quarter, capped off by Chris Johnson's second rushing td of the day, sealing Young's second straight start without an interception as compared to 49ers qb Alex Smith's three picks on the day, two in the final seven minutes of play. The Titans won't be going to the postseason after Week 17 is finished this year, but they might just have found their quarterback of the future right at the back of their own bench, with Young's qb rating over his two starts this season now sitting at over 100.

6. Troy Polamalu. Simply put, Polamalu is the best football player in the game today IMO. It's always hard to compare a defensive guy to a player of Peyton Manning's or Purple Jesus's caliber, but when I watch Troy Polamalu pull a guy down 20 yards downfield after a full sprint for 40 yards from the opposite sideline, when I see him break in behind the line out of nowhere and drop a back untouched for a 5-yard loss, and when I see him read the quarterback's eyes and pick off a pass with an incredibly athletic vertical leap and some of the best hands in the NFL, it just feels like I am watching pure greatness in action. With Polamalu on the prowl in the backfield, the Steelers can automatically handle facing any team in the league and still be extremely dangerous even when they don't have the ball.

Losers:

1. The New York Giants. The Giants are, in a word, a mess, and they are easily the biggest losers of the NFL Week 9. With the Week 9 last-minute loss to the San Diego Chargers, the Giants have become the first team in 20 years to start off an NFL season 5-0, only to lose its next four games. Quarterback Eli Manning's foot is still hurting him, and the running game is more or less nonexistent, despite the presence of Ahmad Bradshaw and Brandon Jacobs, the same 6 foot 4 stallion that loved to bust into opposing linebackers all last season to the tune of nearly 1100 yards and 15 rushing touchdowns in 2008. But it's the Giants' defense that has really up and disappeared like a fart in the wind, as Warden Norton is so fond of saying. The G-Men's defense was highly touted earlier this season, in particular following a three-game stretch against the Buccaneers, Chiefs and Raiders that saw the team give up a total of 23 points over those three games, but when this team has faced actual good players on the opposing offense, the defense has been total trash this year. In five games against teams with formidable offenses, the Giants have allowed 31 points to Dallas in Week 2, 48 points to New Orleans in Week 6, 24 points to Arizona in Week 7, 40 points to the Eagles in Week 8, and now 21 to the Chargers this past weekend. And 33 points per game allowed is just not going to be enough in this league to get you into the playoffs. The Giants will now have to find a way to bounce back after a bye week in Week 10, and they will focus on the Falcons coming in to town on Sunday the 22nd as their chance to start righting the ship.

2. The Green Bay Packers and qb Aaron Rodgers. I mentioned above that Tampa Bay managed to nab their first victory of the season in a 38-28 shocker over the Packers in Florida. Most people heard about this at some point over the weekend as it is always big news at this point in the season when a team finally gets off the schneid for the first time. But what you may not have heard is that Aaron Rodgers took six sacks in the game, meaning that he has now been sacked an NFL-worst 37 times in eight games, and if you watch Green Bay play, it is clear that much of the blame for these sacks falls on Rodgers' own shoulders as he simply sits back there and looks, and looks, and looks, and looks, and holds the ball, and looks some more, and on and on until someone finally gets to him. Rodgers, who has a great arm when given the time to find his open receivers, needs to learn to move a little bit in the backfield, try to avoid the pressure and focus on throwing on the run a little bit to keep the defenders off balance. Anything to prevent him from another 6-sack, 3-interception performance that basically made it impossible for his team to beat a winless opponent this past weekend on the road. And let's also not forget that the Pack allowed the Bucs to score 21 points in the final 12 minutes of the game on Sunday, which equals the maximum number of points that the Buccaneers have managed to string together against any other team in the NFL in an entire game at any point in the 2009 NFL season prior to this weekend. That kind of defensive incompetence is nothing short of impressive, and it easily earns the Packers -- now at 4-4 and three full games behind the North-leading Vikings -- a prominent spot on the Week 9 Losers list.

3. Sticking with the NFC North for a minute, let's not forget to mention the Chicago Bears, who outdid Week 7's 45-10 drubbing by the Bungles with an equally inept 41-21 loss to the West-leading Arizona Cardinals on Sunday afternoon. Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner finished 22 for 32 for just 266 yards against the Bears defense, but those 22 completions included five passing touchdowns for Warner. Yes, five, a career best for Kurt Warner. In addition to a formerly good defense that has given up more than 40 points now twice in three weeks, the Bears continue to have no running game whatsoever to speak of, as fantasy bust Matt Forte finished the Arizona game with just 5 rushes for 33 yards. At 4-4, the Bears are now also mired three games out of first in the NFC North, and, more disturbing to their chances of making it back to the playoffs after a two year absence, they are behind three other teams battling it out for two wildcard spots in the NFC playoffs.

4. The New Orleans Saints. It's a little bit tongue-in-cheek to include the 8-0 Saints on the Losers' side of the ledger this week of course, but there is some thought to what I'm doing here. For the second time in three weeks, the Saints -- easily the NFC's best team if not the NFL's best -- basically didn't give a rats' ass about their game until they were hopelessly behind and needed a true offensive outburst to get back into it. Of course, with Drew Brees at the helm, and with the receiving corps and the runningbacks this team has, they were in fact able to overcome the 17-point deficit they had allowed themselves to fall into early in the second quarter on Sunday afternoon against division rival Carolina, and the Saints eventually held on for a "mere" 10-point victory. But let's be honest here: the Saints have not looked like an undefeated team for much of their past three games against Carolina, Atlanta and Miami, and truly good teams would definitely not have allowed the Saints to come back and win in either the Miami or Carolina games. This team is starting to remind me of Jordan's old Bulls teams both before and after his retirement in the mid 1990s -- at some point they just got so good, and so sure that they would win, that they basically stopped trying very hard in their games until they either found that they could win anyways, or until they got down enough to make it interesting enough for them to try to come back. Just to see if they could do it from far down against an inferior team that thought it might actually be able to escape the United Center with a win. The Saints better be careful though, because unlike those Bulls teams of the 90s, this Saints squad hasn't proven shiat yet, and they do not want to start falling into bad, repeated habits of rolling over early as the season progresses and the playoffs start to loom.

5. The Denver Broncos. After a 6-0 start, the Broncos haven't just lost two games -- they've gotten pretty much demolished in both of them and have really allowed a blueprint to be created on how to beat the AFC West leaders. First Baltimore and now Pittsburgh have essentially stacked the box and brought the pressure against Denver qb Kyle Orton, forcing him to throw for just 7 yards per completion last week, and then to again throw for under 10 yards per completion this past Monday night in addition to Orton chucking three picks, two of which were returned for scores by the Steelers. The Broncos' opponents have also completely shut down Denver's running attack in the past two weeks, culminating last night with Correll Buckhalter leading the Broncos with just 29 yards on the ground against Pittsburgh. With home games against divisional rival San Diego as well as the hungry Giants over the next few weeks, the Broncos will have little time to figure out how to adjust before they are thrust back out onto the field and forced to defend their turf against opponents who now think of them as one of the last undefeated teams of the 2009 NFL season.

TO Watch: TO recorded zero catches for zero yards and no touchdowns this weekend for the Bills. What's that? No, this wasn't just a regular game for the Bills -- they were on a bye. But the fact that it could have been shows just how far TO has fallen over the past season or two.

There will be no JaMarcus Russell award awarded this week as again my go-to guy for this award -- JaMarcus Russell himself -- did not play this week as his Raiders were also mercifully on a bye week. And while there were some less than stellar performances out of other NFL quarterbacks on the day, none of them seem quite worthy to me of bespoiling with the name of the league's far and away worst starting qb.

Closing the Book on MLB 2009

2009-11-09T09:26:00.004+07:00

As the last of the confetti was cleaned up this weekend after the Yankees parade in lower Manhattan, I had some good time to close the book in my own head on the 2009 baseball season. With a few days to reflect, most of my impressions from last week of course remain the same, but there are some additional thoughts that gradually crept into my head a day or two after Game 6 and which have only gotten stronger since then.

For starters, although most predictions about the greatness of this series coming in (my own included) proved to be inaccurate and exaggerated by the time the teams got on the field to actually play the games, one thing was clearly correct: the ratings for this series were strongly up from past years. The average share for the six 2009 World Series games was just under a 19, meaning approximately 18.8 million viewers in U.S. households tuned in each night to watch the Phillies and Yankees battle it out for the world championship. The most-watched game was Game 4 -- the game I attended in Philadelphia -- with nearly 23 million viewers, while Games 3 and 5 both garnered between 15 and 16 million watchers on the low end. Game 1 of the 2009 Series was viewed by over 19 million in the U.S., while in contrast, Game 1 of the 2008 World Series between the Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays brought in just over 10 million viewers, and Game 1 in 2007 between Colorado and the Red Sox came in at around 13 million. Overall viewership was up just over 40% above the series last year, and the 2009 Fall Classic was the most watched World Series since the Red Sox broke their 50,000 year slump by riding steroided-up horse-pill-takers to the World Series championship back in 2004.

But the main feeling I am left with now that the 2009 major league baseball season has come to a close is that it really is sick what the Yankees have done, using the absurd structure of the sport and their deepest of pockets to their extreme advantage. And yet, like most non-Yankee fans I keep running in to in real life, on the internet, national sports talk shows, etc., I do not say this with a whole lot of admiration, so much as rather with a solid helping of disdain. Here's the thing: the Yankees missed the playoffs in 2008 one time. One year. The Bombers were not in the playoff hunt in 2008, after participating in the postseason previously in every year since 1996. And their reaction to missing the playoffs one time -- keep in mind they had made the playoffs twelve straight years before that, equalling the number of times the Phillies have made the postseason in their entire nearly 130-year history -- but after just one year of missing the playoffs, they had had enough. Oh sure, Yanks' GM Brian Cashman had thought he had had enough before already -- several times in fact -- but what everyone involved in the Yankees organization found out quickly during the 2008-2009 offseason was that they hadn't seen anything yet.

Before anyone could say "competitive imbalance" five times fast, the Yankees went out in the offseason before this year and signed the not one, not two, but the three biggest free agents out there in CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Mark Teixeira. And it's not like they had to scrimp or anything in paying these guys in order to manage to afford all three of them in one offseason on top of what was already for years the highest payroll in all of baseball. Nope -- they committed to $161 million for 7 years with Sabathia, $82 million for 5 years with Burnett, and $180 million over 8 years on Teixeira. All three of these deals were announced within a few days of December 18, 2008, and it was obvious that the Yankees were negotiating with all three players simultaneously and, clearly, without real regard to the money it was costing them. That's over $420 million committed by the Yankees over the next 8 years on just these three players, again on top of what was already the highest payroll in baseball by about $20 million more than the second-place Red Sox even before last season came to a close.

In 2009, the Yankees spent a total of a whopping $208.1 million on their payroll. Second place on that list is now the New York Mets, but coming in way "down" at 145.3 million. In third are the Cubs, coming in at $134.8 million, with Yankees rival the Boston Red Sox rounding out the top four at 122.4 million. So the Yankees are spending more than 70% more money on their team than their closest rival in the AL, and the team that still has the fourth-highest payroll overall in the majors, and the Yanks are spending 43% more than anybody else in baseball. 43% more than the 2nd highest payroll in the league right now. And lookie there, they went out and won the 2009 title. Shocker.

When a team is spending 43% more than the 2nd place team in a professional sport, and between 70% and 500% more than any other team in their league, that sport is walking a really fine line. Basically, it's fine when that team is not winning the world series title every single year and when, generally speaking, at least a decent handful of other teams are entering every season with a reasonable shot at winning it all. But when someone is spending more than 43% more than the next closest payroll, and more than 70% more than anybody else in their league, and they go out, win more games than anybody else by a mile, and basically show game in and game out why nobody else in the major leagues can even touch them, well, that really causes some problems. Obviously it is bad for the sport as a whole -- take a look at the teams at the bottom of the payroll list in Florida, Pittsburgh and Washington, for example, who cannot compete so have just given up trying, not to mention the teams like Minnesota, Cleveland, etc. who seem to come up every few years in talks of bankruptcy, significant losses and even contraction. But the Yankees just keep chugging along, even in the worst economy of any of our lifetimes. Think about it -- this was December 2008, right smack in the midst of all that shit last winter with the financial meltdown, the markets were in the tank, just about everything seemed to have come to a standstill. Everything, that is, except the Yankees, who in the span of three or four days committed to spend over $420 million on three players for the next 5-8 years in what was without a doubt the most sweeping, literally not believable free agency extravaganza by any team at any time in baseball history.

All I know is that I, like just about every other non-Yankee baseball fan in America it seems these days, am left with a very bitter taste in my mouth about this Yankees team and what exactly they did to basically secure their 27th world series title before the 2009 season has even begun. Sure this team has always spent the most money in the league for most of their history, but what they did prior to the 2009 season was corpulent and gluttony even by Yankees standards, and it bought them exactly what they wanted. I guess if you spend enough money on players, enough more than everybody else in the league is willing to spend regardless of the situation, the economy, the state of the game, etc., you really can buy a championship. And that's exactly what we saw in the 2009 baseball season: the purchase of a World Series. Price tag? $208.1 million. Not even a fraction of a bailout.

And one of the least satisfying aspects of this entire thing is what it means for the future. Look at the state of baseball right now, and ask yourself who you honestly think is going to win the world series in 2010. Think about that lineup we just watched the Yankees trot out there every night against the Phillies, and think about that starting rotation that held the Yankees back for years but which was completely and totally transformed by the addition of Burnett and Sabathia at the top of the list, and think about Mariano Rivera coming in from the pen in the 9th. Face it -- the Yankees are already your 2010 World Series champions. Might as well book it now. The only question is: do the Yankees win 120 games next year? I have very little doubt that this team -- without the issues around A-Rod's getting caught for steroid use, the injury and the poor start without him in April and part of May -- will give the 1998 Yankees and their 114-42 regular season record a serious run for their money. There is some age on the Yankees roster, but outside of Rivera who is still, far and away, the best relief pitcher in baseball today, there isn't much that the addition of last year's three huge free agents can't overcome for at least the next couple of years. The Yankees are here to stay, the $200 million+ behemoth in a league of $30-120 million competitors, unless and until baseball does something to change their system that they have shown no indication of changing whatsoever thus far.

I mentioned A-Rod's preseason revelation about having used steroids from 2001-2003 in baseball. Personally, I find the Yankees' reliance over the past several years on steroided-up players to be one of the most disgusting aspects of this whole nasty team that has been permitted by league rules to completely trump all others in terms of skill and experience amassed on its roster. Think about this for a minute -- although Hideki Matsui won the 2009 World Series MVP award (and deservedly so), who would you name as the Yankees' overall postseason MVPs in 2009? I'll tell you who -- Alex Rodriguez, for starters. Despite an only "good" World Series in which A-Rod won Game 4 in the top of the 9th and contributed solidly on offense to one other win as well, the man ended the 2009 postseason going 19-for-52 for a .365 batting average, with 6 home runs, 2 doubles, 18 RBIs and two stolen bases. A-Rod was an offensive machine for the Yankees and would simply have to be thought of as the MVP of this team's postseason run in 2009. And who would be next on that list for the 2009 Yankees? Andy Pettitte, who pitched and won the series-clinching game in each of the three playoff series in 2009 against the Twins, the Angels and then the Phillies in the World Series. Pettitte really lived up to his career reputation as a stopper for the Yankees, taking the ball in the biggest and most crucial of spots time and again in the postseason, and coming through in a big way. Alex Rodriguez and Andy Pettitte literally led their team 1-2 in postseason contributions in 2009, including both winning games during the World Series itself.

And both are admitted juicers. And guys, might I add, who only admitted their steroid usage after getting outed publicly, A-Rod by the biography of him released earlier this year, and Pettitte in connection with the ongoing investigation into the steroid activities of Roger Clemens, another guy who contributed greatly to the World Series runs of the Yankees several years ago.

Both A-Rod and Pettitte have had their bodies forever altered in immeasurable ways by the illegal and banned substances they knowingly ingested over the past several years in their attempts to ~~cheat~~ skirt the rules. Both found muscles that most people never even know they have, as a result of illegal steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, muscles which are still more developed in their bodies today as a result of that usage, regardless of how long it's been since they received more PEDs. Both used illegal steroids to rehab from injuries, injuries which we'll never even know if they could have recovered from the same without cheating the rules of the game. And both of those guys are now on the roster of the team with the astronomically high payroll, and the two led the New York Yankees to the first world title in 10 years in 2009. It's disgusting, it's despicable, and most of all, it's just not fair.

A last impression I have after the 2009 baseball season relates to home field advantage and the All-Star Game. It is truly and totally ridiculous that home-field advantage in the World Series is decided by who wins the freaking All-Star game in mid-summer every year. Yes, I mean, everyone has said this and there's no doubt that it's an accurate statement, but I mean it for a slightly different reason, getting right back at the competitive imbalance in the sport these days. For years the Yankees and the Red Sox have led the league in terms of team payroll, and even though this year the Red Sox have fallen to 4th place, the fact remains that the highest-payroll teams are still concentrated in the American League, and the lower-paying teams are still concentrated in the National League. Just the presence of the Yankees alone, stockpiling and overpaying for talent in wallet-busting fashion, basically helps ensure that the American League teams will have homefield advantage in the World Series under the current system because they help tilt the talent scale in favor of the AL over the NL. Four of the top six payrolls in baseball were in the AL in 2009 (Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers and Angels), while the bottom four payroll teams in baseball -- including the bottom three which are each at least 25% below the lowly Washington Nationals' 2009 payroll -- are all in the National League. The result? There is more talent in the American League because there is more money being spent there, year in and year out -- at least partially due to the outdated DH rule in the American League, by the way -- and as a result, the National League is stupidly disadvantaged in the World Series by never getting to have home field advantage.

Prior to 2003, home field in the World Series simply alternated every year between the AL team and the NL team. That's also dumb, in that in a year like 2009, it could have given the Phillies home field advantage despite the Yankees having the best record in baseball by far. Instead, home field in the Fall Classic should simply be based on which team had the better regular season record (just like the other sports have figured out years ago by now). In the seven years that the All-Star game has been used to determine home field advantage in the World Series ever since Bud Selig butchered the 2002 All-Star game after 11 innings, the AL has won the All-Star game with their clearly superior talent every single year -- again buttressed tremendously by the Yankees' and Red Sox's penchant for extravagant spending and bidding wars, as the AL has held at least four of the top 6 payroll spots in each year in the league since 2003 -- and as a result of the Yankees' and Red Sox's largesse, the AL team has had four home games on the World Series schedule every year. In a year like this year, that dictates the correct result, but allowing the league with all the overspending to get this kind of a home-baked advantage in the location of the World Series games is just the final stick in the eye of all true baseball fans in this country who are sick and tired of the Yankees taking extreme (and growing) advantage of this sport being the only one of the major professional sports in this country not to enforce some form of a salary cap to help ensure that all teams have a chance to win it all.

Here is where I normally would make some kind of an optimistic statement about the powers that be in the sport hopefully recognizing the problem in their league and doing something to fix it right away. But that's not going to happen here. So given that, get yourselves ready everyone for another year (or more) of the Yankees on top.

NFL Pick 5 -- Week 9

2009-11-06T09:03:00.005+07:00

As I think I mentioned earlier this week, I had another over-.500 performance in Week 8, going 3-2 on the weekend to raise my overall season record so far in 2009 to 23-12 in 7 weeks of picking five games a week. Given how tough the last few weeks in particular have been to find winnable games, I'm very pleased to have escaped the past three weeks with a total record of 10-5 to raise me to a season high of 11 games over .500. This week there seem to be some more pickable choices among the lines I am seeing, although I suppose only time will tell if that means I can really gain some more ground over break-even in Week 9 or if it will be my first sub-.500 setback since Week 2 of the NFL season, which you know is coming sooner or later. Here are this week's picks, once again in no particular order:

1. Green Bay Packers -10 at Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I absolutely love this game, even though I would like 9 points a heck of a lot more than the 10 this game is currentiy sitting at. The Packers have played three of "The Stinkers" -- my new nickname for the surprisingly large cadre of teams clearly at the bottom of the NFL talent pool this year -- and has trounced them by an average of 25 points apiece. Two of those wins -- the Rams in Week 3 by 21 points and the Browns by 28 points in Week 7 -- came on the road, so I don't have concern that the Pack can't step it up on or score the ball against the bad teams on the road, and let's be honest: Tampa Bay might be worse than both Cleveland and St. Louis as it is. The Bucs are averaging just 11 points per game over their last 5 efforts, and with the Pack averaging over 28 points per game over their last five, 10 points should be beatable for sure this weekend in sunny Florida.

2. Miami Dolphins +10.5 at New England Cheatriots. I'm not trying to say that the Dolphins are on par with the caliber of team that the Cheatriots have returned to this year, but getting more than a touchdown and a field goal in what I think will be a reasonably good matchup is just too much value for me to pass up. The Dolphins have historically played decent defense against the Cheaters on the road -- holding the Cheats to 20 points in New England in 2006, 28 in 2007 and just 13 points in a huge road win for Miami early in the 2008 season in the midst of what was otherwise a nice run for Matt Kassell as the Cheats' backup quarterback. What's more, since Chad Henne took over the Dolphins' starting qb position, the team has now quietly scored 38, 31, 34 and 30 points in its last five games (admittedly some of those points on returns). And those four 30+ point outbursts were more than just the first four times the team broke the 30 mark this season -- they came against what I consider to be four fairly tough team defenses in the Bills, the Jets, the Saints and then again the Jets. So Miami has been finding a way to score some points after Chad Pennington went down in Week 3, and along with always playing the Cheats tough, I just can't pass up the 10.5 points this week. I like the Dolphins as a dog for the third time already this year.

3. Houston Texans +9 at Indianapolis Colts. Here's another road underdog I just can't bring myself to stay away from this week, even though they are facing a clearly superior team overall. Houston has been playing well lately, winning three in a row on their way to their best first half ever in the NFL at 5-3 through 8 games so far in 2009. The last three matchups between these two teams have been close games, shootouts for the most part, with the teams playing to winning margins of 4, 6 and 6 for the Colts over the last three meetings in what has become a regular tough battle every time these teams come together. But what really moves me to pick the Texans here is their road performance so far in 2009, which has been pretty awesome all things considered. The Texans are 3-1 on the road this fall, including outright wins at Tennessee, at Cincinnati and at Buffalo and just a 7-point loss at defending NFC champion Arizona. And over their four road games, the team has scored an average of nearly 23 points per game, with the three road victories garnering 28, 31 and 34 points, including 28 at Cincy and 31 at Buffalo, both teams considered to have fairly good defenses this year. So Houston, whose quarterback remember leads the league in passing yardage and passing touchdowns, should be able to score the ball on the Colts this weekend if nothing else, and that should make it very difficult for the Colts to cover the 9 point spread.

4. New Orleans Saints -13 vs Carolina Panthers. At home or on the road this year, the New Orleans Saints have come to play, and they have scored like madmen. In the dome in Louisiana, the Saints have scored 45, 24, 48 and 35 points, with the only aberration in the 24 points coming against the New York Jets back when they were playing a very solid team defense. And despite their past history, Carolina has not been a strong defensive team this season, giving up an average of over 23 points per game in four road games this season, including allowing Tampa Bay even to score three touchdowns against them in Week 6 in Florida. Jake Delhomme has been beyond atrocious this year, and despite running up tons of yardage on the ground against the Cardinals last week, the Panthers have had a heck of a time trying to establish the running game with their qb situation as bad as it is, having a 100-yard rusher only twice so far in eight games this season. I'm expecting to see the Saints score at least 35 points in this one, which would be the fewest points they've scored in five games against not-great team defenses this season, and I would be surprised if the Panthers broke 20 points themselves given all their problems moving the ball this season. I always always always hate having to give this many points, but I really think the Saints should be able to cover here.

5. San Francisco 49ers -4.5 vs. the Tennessee Titans. Here's another line that just seems a bit too low to me. Everyone knows by now that the Titans are among the worst teams in football this year, just a year removed from starting off the season 10-0, but just because they won their first game of the season last week, that doesn't suddenly erase this team's many problems on both sides of the ball. Sure the Titans have a great running game behind Chris Johnson, but with absolutely no passing game to speak of (and don't forget, Vince Young recorded just 125 yards in the air last week in his first start of the season against the Jags), the Titans' offense has been abysmal on the road so far. In four road games this season, Tennessee has scored 10, 17, 17 and most recently 0 points, and the 49ers are sure to be raring to go on defense after three straight losses including a tough last-minute defeat last week at the undefeated Colts. The way I see it, this game is the 49ers' chance to get back on track with a clear win, and against a very young quarterback making his second start, whose team has had loads of trouble scoring on the road even with a veteran taking the snaps, I expect a very long day for Vince Young and the Titans on Sunday afternoon. The Niners should score somewhere at least in the 20s, and I don't see the Titans keeping it all that close this weekend in San Francisco.

Reflection

2009-11-05T14:32:00.000+07:00

What a fun day to be a Yankees fan, and a terrible one to be among the Phillies faithful. It was terrible for the Phils because you just knew right from the getgo that the team had no chance to win Game 6 of the World Series on Wednesday night. As soon as the first inning, when Pedro was throwing fastballs that were registering a bare 84 miles per hour on the gun, you had to know. Most major league hitters are going to pound on any clown throwing 84-mph cheese up there, but when you're facing a lineup like the Yankees', the whole notion is an absolute joke. They were all over P-Mart from his first pitch to his merciful last in just the 4th inning, and thanks to Charlie Manuel's continued insistence on leaving his pitchers in for too long and for too many bad pitches, the Phils were out of it by the time they finally got Pedro out of the game in the 4th. But as soon as Pedro came out in the first with guns ablazing with 84 mph fastballs, this game was as good as done.

There are so many reasons the Phillies lost this series. Ultimately, they simply could not compete with the Yankees, who overmatched them about as badly as the Phillies themselves outmatched everyone else in the National League in this postseason. As much as I hate to admit it, this was not a close series in my book. It was about as bad of a blowout as the Yankees did to the Angels a couple of weeks back. Sure, like with the Angels, the Yanks lost Game 5 on the road to extend the series to six and come back home to New York, but as with the ALCS, once things got back to Yankee Stadium, the best team in America quickly retook control of the series, on the back of Andy Pettitte, who got the incredible sixth series-clinching victory of his illustrious career, mostly with the Yankees.

Just like I said here how the Phillies had an advantage both in starting pitching and on offense against every team in the National League and both of its postseason opponents in the NLDS and NLCS, the same proved to be true for the Yankees over the Phillies in this series. On the offensive side of the ball, I think the two lineups are fairly comparable, with the Yankees probably retaining a slight edge as far as their five or six "big boppers" at the top of the lineup. The biggest difference in the lineups to me is that the Yankees, as an American League team with a designated hitter, have that one extra big hitter -- I'm talking a 30 HR, 100 RBI type -- who in this case happens to be Hideki Matsui. I'm not just mentioning him because he utterly destroyed the Phillies in the World Series in nabbing his first ever World Series MVP award. I'm saying if you compare the lineups, both teams have a couple of poor hitters at the bottom of their rotation who are mostly in there for their defensive prowess on a team that simply does not need any more offensive firepower, but otherwise the biggest real difference is that the Yankees go one more man deep among the big hitters they can put at the top of their lineup. Sure the Phillies get the benefit of the same DH rule when they play World Series games in their American League opponent's park, but how can you even compare when the Yankees throw Godzilla's bat into that already stacked lineup, while the Phils are adding in Ben Francisco's, or Matt Stairs'? You can't, because there is just no comparison, and ironically that DH position ends up being one of the big items to tip the scale in the Yankees' favor in this series. The fact that the Yanks so thoroughly handled the Phillies throughout this series, even with A-Rod, Teixeira, Cano and Posada basically hitting like shit is really a testament to just how strong their lineup as a whole is when compared to the competition.

Then, moving on to the pitching, once again the Yanks just had a clear advantage in this World Series. Even though CC Sabathia failed to record a win in his two starts against the Phils, he pitched well enough both times, the second time for his team to secure the late victory off of Phillies idiot Brad Lidge in the 9th inning of Game 4 in Philadelphia. Even though AJ Burnett was hideous on three days rest the in Game 5 loss to the Phillies, he pitched extremely well in Game 2, outlasting a valiant attempt from Pedro Martinez to get his Yankees back into the series after the Phils' surprising Game 1 win. And even though Andy Pettitte pitched on three days rest for the first time in over three years in Game 6, the man was able to put together enough good innings to leave his team in a position to win when they needed to to put this series away. And meanwhile, on the Phillies' side of the ball, the story was pretty much totally reversed. Heading into the postseason I had viewed the Phils' likely rotation of Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Pedro Martinez and J. Happ as among the best baseball has to offer this season on one team. However, in practice, once the Yankees posed some actual competition to the skill level on the Phillies' team, Hamels sucked balls every time he went out there, Happ didn't even start a game in the entire postseason for some reason I will never ever ever understand, and when he did pitch in the Series it was constantly Charlie Manuel inserting him into games with guys on 2nd and 3rd, nobody out in the middle of a key inning, a situation which Happ was totally and completely unfamiliar with prior to this postseason. And Pedro, well, it looks like the oil well finally ran dry for the old man here during the World Series. After looking great in a dominating start in LA against the Dodgers in the NLCS, Pedro could not find that form in Game 2 of the World Series facing the Yankees' huge bats, and by the time Game 6 rolled around, even on five days rest, Pedro was worthless. As anyone who watched this series knows, in the end the Phillies simply had nobody on their entire team -- other than Cliff Lee of course -- who could stop the Yankees. Ever. In any inning. Period. Whether it was Hamels, Pedro, Blanton, Happ, Chan Ho Park, Scott Eyre, Ryan Madsen, Brad Lidge or anyone else, in the end the Phils simply could not keep those huge Yankee hitters off the basepaths, and when you combine that with the Yankee pitchers success against most of the Phils' lineup not named Chase Utley or Jayson Werth in this series, it's not hard to see why the Phils weren't even close in this matchup.

This morning on Mike and Mike, Buster Olney was on the air and he was talking all about what an amazing postseason this was for major league baseball. "Amazing"? Really? Try again, Robert. This was about as bad and as boring of a postseason as there has been in baseball in a long time, and ultimately the World Series did little to change that conclusion. Think about it -- the four LDS matchups saw three 3-game sweeps, and one 4-game win for the Phillies over the Rockies. I don't even remember the last time I saw that happen, but from there it just got worse. In the NLCS, the Phillies lambasted the Dodgers in five games, never trailing in the series and never even giving the impression that it was going to become close at any point. The Yankees had a very similar experience in the ALCS against the Angels, although as I mentioned they allowed their series to go six games, but again, it was not a series that ever saw the Yanks trailing or that anyone who understands the game actually ever thought the Angels were close to winning. The path of these two teams to the World Series here in 2009 was about as bad and as boring as possible. And then, sadly, even the World Series ended up not coming close to living up to the hype that a bunch of morons like me spread about it heading into the Fall Classic. This was supposed to be that amazing, historic series -- on paper -- and it was destined to go seven games, right? Wrong. Sure, again the Phils made it to six games in this Series and to that extent it might be tempting to consider this a close matchup, but it really wasn't that close if you actually watched the games, and from the moment that Game 1 ended, the Yankees took complete control of the series and just never looked back, like any championship team should.

As the Yankees bombed their way past the Phillies to win the 2009 World Series on Wednesday night, I did the obvious and took some time to reflect on what this Phillies team has accomplished over the past year or so. It really is amazing if you think about it. The Phillies are a team that in their 130-year history as a franchise, had only been to the World Series five times before last year, and only won it once, in 1980 when I was a mere babe. Staying up and watching that 1980 championship -- watching the late Tug McGraw strike out Willie Wilson to eliminate the Royals in Game 6 -- became my first real clear sports memory, the first time I can specifically remember a sporting event having a big effect on me and those around me. In Philadelphia, just making it to the finals in any sport has always been enough during my lifetime to make you a statue in front of the art museum and to be remembered forever in the lore and stories of old men on their porches in Northeast Philly, the local mailmen on Cottman Avenue, and the lifelong blue-collar workers down in Manyunk.

But this Phillies team really changed all that, didn't it? Those in Philadelphia know exactly what I'm talking about. These Phillies went all the way through the postseason last year and never even came close to losing any series. They won it all and did so in fairly dominatory fashion, putting an end to a 25-year drought of misery and failure that no other city with teams in all four major professional sports in this country has ever had to endure before. By the time the 2008 Phillies arrived at the World Series, they were there to win and they just clamped their collective foot down on the Rays' necks and never let up until the series was over.

And then they went back. It's never been done before in Philly -- two straight World Series appearances -- and in the eyes of the fans it really legitimizes what happened last year as not being some kind of a "fluke" or an accident. And that's not to say that the team wouldn't always have been remembered for being good, but I mean even that 1993 World Series Phillies team never made it back to another postseason, let alone another Fall Classic. Philadelphia has never before been a city of dynasties, but the 2008-2009 Phillies actually got people talking in the city about the "D" word for the first time in decades. In the end, I have never made any bones here at the blog about the fact that the Yankees were the best team in baseball this year. It became clear to me somewhere in the middle of the summertime, and nothing that happened anywhere in the season or during the postseason gave me any reason to doubt that the Yanks's superior talent would eventually prevail and they would win the 2009 World Series.

In a way, knowing how great this Yankees team was really helps ease the acceptance process for the Phillies fans out there. Despite all the bravado and braggadocio and pride from the Phillies Phaithful this postseason, despite all the bad calls, all the questionable coaching decisions, in the end in this World Series, the best team won. I can admit that -- I have no doubt about it at all, for that matter -- and so should everyone else out there. For now, it's time to put the memories of another incredible Phillies season on the back burner, and time to really focus on NFL football.

Thank you, Phillies, for another fabulous season. Here's to more to come in 2010!

World Series Game 6 Preview

2009-11-04T23:18:00.006+07:00

Well, I figure I've been basically wrong about every other game of this World Series so far, so why not go ahead and make another prediction that only a jackass would follow with regard to Game 6 coming up Wednesday night in the Bronx. Game 6 pits Yankee ace and winningest postseason pitcher of all time in Andy Pettitte against another all-time pitching great in Pedro Martinez for the Phillies. The Series returns home for the Yankees, who already hold a 3 games to 2 edge in this best of 7 championship series, and as I mentioned they've got their all-time stopper on the mound in Andy Pettitte who has personally pitched the team to clinching five separate postseason series in his time on the mound for the Bombers. The Phils have had a couple of good games so far in the Series, but they've never quite been able to get everyone hitting at once in the series, and the pitching has not quite been able to hold the Yankees' power lineup at bay, at least not quite enough to hold on to any kind of a run advantage over the Yanks. So this one should be a clear clincher for the Yankees tonight then, right?

Wrong. I'm just not feeling it. It's hard to explain, but I just can't get over the fact that the Phillies are going to hit Andy Pettitte hard on Wednesday evening in the Bronx. As I've mentioned here many times over the past few weeks, this Phillies team -- World Champions that they are -- have shown a ton of heart, throughout this season and especially in the postseason. Although so far the series has been devoid of that special moment where the Phillies really rise up and make their greatness known, I can't shake this feeling that tonight we are going to see that moment.

Let's look a little deeper at that pitching matchup for a minute. Andy Pettitte has actually faced the Phillies now twice this season, once at each stadium. The Phils squared off against Pettitte at Yankee Stadium back on May 25, where Pettitte threw 114 pitches in giving up 4 earned runs in 7 innings, including two home runs to Raul Ibanez and the first-ever game for first baseman Jermaine Mayberry. Pettite fell behind 4-1 in the 5th inning and stayed behind 4-2 when he left the game in the 7th, and although he did not pitch terribly, the two homers and 5.2 ERA for the game were enough for him to leave the game knowing he got outpitched by rookie J. Happ of the Phils.

Pettitte also faced the Phillies on Halloween night just last week in Game 3 of the World Series, this time in Philadelphia. There, he threw 104 pitches in 6 innings, again giving up 4 earned runs and 2 homers, this time both monstrous shots to Jayson Werth, for a game ERA of 6.00, although this time he did leave the game with a 2-run lead thanks to his offense stepping up for him in the middle innings against embattled Phillies starter Cole Hamels.

And on Wednesday, Pettitte will face the Phillies a third time, this time back in New York with a chance to clinch the franchise's 27th world championship in front of the home town fans. But Pettitte will have to do so on three days' rest, something with which he is not nearly as comfortable as his colleague CC Sabathia in the Yankees' rotation. This will be the first time that the 37-year-old veteran pitches with just three days rest between outings since late September, 2006, when that arm was a much younger 34 years old. In 18 appearances on short rest in his illustrious career, Pettitte's numbers drop off dramatically: 5-7 with a 4.18 ERA, as compared to much better numbers over the rest of his career. What's more, Pettitte, now an old man by baseball standards, as well as an admitted steroid user who took "the cream" and "the clear" to help heal more quickly from injury but who no (presumably) longer has access to such miracle healing cures, has worked on an extra days' rest in his last eight starts, dating back to early September, and there's a reason for that: he needs it. At 37, his arm is old and used, just the kind of arm that the Phillies ought to be able to take advantage of on Wednesday in New York.

So, looking at all the stats, I think we can paint a reasonable prediction for what Pettitte will pitch like tonight. He was good for 7 innings against the Phils back in May in New York, and 6 innings against the Phillies' lineup in Game 3, and I see no reason to expect Pettitte to last any longer than 6 innings (at the outside) in Game 6 on short rest. What's more, he has given up two home runs and four total earned runs in each of his last two starts against the Phils -- again both on full or even extra rest -- and again tonight I can't see the Phils not at least equalling that feat and probably besting it slightly given the short time between Pettitte's starts. So for Game 6, a reasonable expectation based purely on the facts would have the Phillies scoring, say, 5 earned runs off of Pettitte in, say, six innings of work. Five runs.

The question is, what will the Yankees' run total be at the end of 6 when the Phils have had five men cross the plate? Will it be 5-0? Probably not. The 38-year-old Pedro Martinez was able to hold the Yankees to 3 earned runs in 6 innings in Game 2 of this World Series, and he has had not just the full four days of rest, but five days off since that Game 2 appearance. I still would expect the Yankees to hit him about as well as they did in Game 2, and possibly a little better, although Pedro on extra rest has pitched extremely well for the Phillies this season, and remember he is generally well-rested unlike a guy like Andy Pettitte because P-Mart didn't even play baseball until the middle of the summer this year. So Pedro should have the fresher arm, and Pettitte is likely going to be hit a little harder tonight in my view than the Phillies' starter is likely to be.

5-3 at the end of six tonight? 5-4? Or 5-5? It's going to be one of those, the way I see it. And then the Phillies' job, if they really want to extend this series one more game, is to get to the Yankees' middle relief -- which has performed atrociously all through this series -- without letting the Yankees get to theirs (which has also been pretty bad, but not quite as bad).

It's extremely hard to predict something like this with any precision of course, and as I mentioned above I have basically gotten every guess wrong in terms of individual games so far in the Series, so what do I know. But something tells me that you'll be reading here tomorrow about the anticipation and hype surrounding a Game 7 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium on Thursday night in New York City.

NFL Winners and Losers -- Week 8

2009-11-03T08:43:00.001+07:00

Damn do those Saints look unbeatable or what? On Mike and Mike in the morning this morning on ESPN radio, they went through the balance of the Saints' 2009 schedule, and it's not exactly what you'd call tough. It's Carolina still twice, the Buccaneers still twice, the Rams and the Redskins for probably a damn near guaranteed six more wins right off the bat, bringing the Saints' win total to at least 13 right there. The other three games are all tough, but winnable: the Cheatriots in New Orleans on Monday night in Week 12, at the Falcons in Week 14, and home against the Cowboys in Week 15 when Dallas has not exactly shined over its recent history. 16-0 is not at all out of the question for this team after they've already beaten the Eagles, the Jets, the Giants, the Dolphins and the Falcons in just their first seven games. It's basically the halfway point of the season, and in my view the NFC is shaping up to be a two-horse race, whereas things are much more wide open in the AFC as far as there being anywhere between three and five teams seemingly capable of going to the superbowl.

And with that, let's get to this week's winners and losers in the NFL.

Winners:

1. The Dallas Cowboys and Tony Romo. America's Team won its third straight game on Sunday at Dallas Stadium, besting the Seattle Seahawks 38-17 on the strength of three touchdown passes from Tony Romo and another solid performance from the runningback lineup. What's more, upstart Dallas wide receiver Miles Austin caught a touchdown pass for the third straight week, certifying him in my view as the real deal, and solidifying the fact that the Cowboys now have that legitimate downfield threat they've been missing since running TO out of town in the offseason. Even though this team has still yet to beat any great teams in its 2009 campaign, the last two wins against the Falcons and now the Seahawks at home both go a long way towards demonstrating the staying power that will be necessary to make it through the NFC East come December, which has always been Tony Romo's absolute least favorte month to be throwing the ball.

2. The Minnesota Vikings. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Brett Favre is and continues to be the most exciting -- if not overplayed -- story in the NFL this season. Favre's Vikings headed into Lambeau Field this weekend for a matchup that meant more than just Favre's uber-selfish personal quest to defeat his old team in front of his old hometown fans, as a win would also have left the Packers tied in the loss column with the Vikings for the first time since Week 2 of the NFL season. Even though the game ended with just an 8-point victory for the Vikes, it was never that close as Favre's team jumped out to a 24-3 lead before coasting to victory in the second half, cementing their position as the clear #2 team in the NFC. Unless things change drastically in the coming weeks, it seems all but assured that we'll be seeing a battle of the Vikes and the Saints come the NFC Conference Championship in January, most likely down in the dome in New Orleans.

3. The Houston Texans and Matt Schaub. Since getting crushed by the Jets on opening weekend of the 2009 season, the Texans have not made an appearance yet on the Winners board, but this will be their first as the team has finished the first half of the season at 5-3 for the first time in the franchise's short history in Texas. After leading his team to another big win on Sunday at Buffalo, Texans quarterback Matt Schaub currently leads the NFL in passing yardage with 2342 yards through 8 games, and he is also tied (with Brett Favre and Drew Brees) for the league lead in passing touchdowns with 16, to go along with just 7 picks for the Houston qb. With their Week 8 win the Texans are poised to make a solid run over the second half of the 2009 NFL season at the franchise's first ever playoff appearance.

4. DeSean Jackson. Eagles' rookie wide receiver DeSean Jackson scored on a 54-yard pass from Donovan McNabb late in the first half on Sunday in Philadelphia, lifting the Eagles to a 23-7 lead from which the G-Men could never recover. This would be DJ's sixth touchdown play of more than 50 yards already in just eight games this season, tying a Philadelphia team record that is nearly 50 years old, and it goes a long way towards filling the big-play void left by a certain wide receiver that goes by the initials "T" and "O" some years ago. With Jackson leading the way with the big plays on offense and on kick returns, the Eagles moved to 5-2 on the season, and setting up for a huge game next Sunday night at the Linc against Tony Romo and the Dallas Cowboys.

Losers:

1. New York football took a huge hit this weekend, no matter which half of the city's teams you root for. The Giants received an absolute butt-whipping at the hands of the division rival Eagles, 40-17, while the Jets chipped in with an arguably even more disappointing 30-25 loss at home to the Miami Dolphins that saw the Fins sweep the season series against Gang Green after yet another incredibly frustrating loss. For the Giants, the question now becomes just how good this team really is, after starting off 5-0 beating up on a bunch of awful teams but now dropping three straight games -- never even particularly close in any of them -- to conference rivals New Orleans, Arizona and now Philadelphia. Eli Manning completed just over 50% of his passes for 222 yards and one score, but two costly picks kept Eli's quarterback rating for the game around 50 and really did in his team's chances on the day, with the Eagles all too happy to cash in on Manning's miscues.

But it's the Jets who are the ones whose fans will be pulling the hair out of their heads for weeks after another brutal loss, as the team outgained Miami 378 yards to 104, had 23 first downs to the Dolphins' 10 and held the ball for ten minutes longer than Bill Parcells' team from south Florida, and yet still the Jets managed to give up 27 points to Miami in just the second half of their game and make it impossible for the Jets and rookie quarterback Ryan Sanchez to catch up. And unlike the Giants, who still have at least some air of a solid, playoff-caliber team in the NFC, the vultures are once again circling for the Jets' season after their loss dropped the team to 4-4, sinking them two games in the loss column behind the division-leading Cheatriots and, more importantly, into 9th place overall in the AFC in a league where only the top six teams are going to make it to postseason play.

2. The Arizona Cardinals. Fresh off of drubbing the Giants in New ~~Jersey~~ York on national tv last Sunday night, the Cardinals had a chance to move two full games ahead of the 49ers for a big lead in first place in the NFC West, and go a great deal of the way towards putting to bed the curse of the superbowl-losing teams failing to make the playoffs the following season since the turn of the millennium in the NFL. Instead, the Cardinals somehow found a way to lose 34-21 this weekend to a 2-win Carolina Panthers squad that had only scored more than 20 points one other time in eight games so far in 2009. Giving up 270 yards rushing to the Panthers I'm sure does not help Arizona's cause, nor does their quarterback Kurt Warner's five picks and a fumble on the day, which is enough to keep any team in the league from winning a game against pretty much any other professional football team. The Cardinals will now travel to Chicago to meet the Bears next week in Arizona's quest to become the first NFC team to repeat as conference champions since Brett Favre and the Packers went to two straight superbowls in the 1996-1997 NFL seasons.

3. Special teams coverage. Kickoff and punt return coverage has got to be one of the biggest losers in the NFL this season. How many games have been decided by punt and kickoff returns already in just the first half of the year so far? I personally have watched the Dolphins win two games on the strength of their return game alone, plus one for the Jets and another two games where kick returns played a huge role for the Minnesota Vikings. And I don't actually get to watch that many football games, so this is really saying something. If anyone out there reading this happens to be a stat-crunching type for the NFL, I would be interested to see the official numbers on the frequency of kickoff and punt returns this season -- in particular game-changing ones -- as compared to previous NFL seasons. For whatever reason it just feels like I'm watching way more instances of kickoff and punt returns, followed by a kick return for the other team on the very kickoff from the first team's return touchdown, etc. Something has gotta be the reason for this trend, and it is highly relevant because week after week, actual NFL games are being swung the other way by returns and special teams instead of the actual offensive and defensive action.

The JaMarcus Russell award: Normally I like to save this for the man whose name is forever enshrined on this weekly award. After all, Russell did put up a valiant run at the trophy this week, finishing 14 for 22 for 109 yards, no touchdowns and one INT in a 24-16 loss at home to the Chargers, with a final qb rating of 56.8 on the day. But sorry, JaMark....this week somebody just wanted it more. A now two-time winner of the JR award of the week, for Week 8 the hardware has to return to the mantle of Cleveland qb Derek Anderson. Anderson's line on the day in his team's 30-6 smushing by the Chicago Bears? 6 for 17 for 76 yards, no touchdowns, and two INTs to boot. Final passer rating on the day for DA? 10.8. So sweet.

The Worst Team in the NFL award again changes hands this week, after the previously winless St. Louis Rams came up big with a win on the road at 1-win Detroit to shuffle off this ignominious award for at least one more week. I was tempted at first to return the top spot to its most recent holder, the Washington Redskins, but then I realized that the Skins did not lose this week either, primarily due to the fact that this was a bye week for the anti-Native American team from our nation's capital. So I'm moving to the top spot the latest example of a team that just seems to get utterly blown out every single week, embarrassing themselves and their entire city almost every time they step foot on the gridiron: the Cleveland Browns. I may not have given this "team" enough due during the first half of the 2009 NFL season, but just take a look at what the hapless Browns have managed to accomplish already just by Week 8: a 3-point overtime loss to the state-rival Bungles in Week 4, that thrilling 6-3 victory over the Bills in Week 5, two-touchdown beatdowns by the Vikings and the Steelers, and of course the four other 20+ point drubbings by the Broncos, the Ravens, the Packers and now the Bears as well. Amazingly, the Browns have now managed to score 6 or fewer points in five of their last seven games, while allowing at least 23 points to all but one opponent throughout this season so far. Oh, and head coach Eric Mangini managed to trade away the team's best player in Braylon Edwards a couple of weeks back as well to boot, and now they have fired their GM mid-season (I'm sure that'll solve the whole problem). The Browns as a franchise, from the players all the way up to the owner, are easily worthy of being this week's Worst Team winner.

TO Watch: 5 catches for 39 yards and no touchdowns on Sunday at home against the Texans, although TO did manage to get into the end zone on his one running play of the day, a 29-year touchdown scamper on an end-around early in the first quarter. Still, TO's receiving stats for the season now move to 23 receptions for 281 yards and one touchdown. Ugh. Still sounds more like one big game of his than the eight games he has taken to reach this point so far in 2009. 281 yards receiving through half the season for TO? FAIL!

Phillies - Yankees Live

2009-11-02T20:00:00.008+07:00

It all started with an innocent, if not fairly common, telephone call from my older brother around 10am on Sunday this weekend. I was on my way back from the weekly run to the grocery, and when I picked up my cell, the one sentence I heard would change the path of my day and my weekend:

"The team needs us, man. Joe Blanton needs us."

I couldn't even begin to argue with my brother's sentiment. After Philies manager Charlie Manuel exhibited his mental retardation when it comes to pitchers better than I ever could have dreamt up on my own, opting to pitch Joe Blanton in World Series Game 4 -- a crucial game for the Phils, down 2-1 in the series -- against Yankees' ace CC Sabathia instead of going with Phils' ace Cliff Lee, I knew my brother was right. The Phils simply had to win Game 4, and to do that under the circumstances Charlie Manuel had put the team in was going to take every ounce of support from the real Phillies fans in Citizens Bank Park on the night.

The logic was inescapable. I had to be at that game.

The internet is really a modern day miracle. Within half an hour or so, my brother had not only found us a pair of incredible seats to Sunday night's World Series Game 4 at The Bank via StubHub but sitting in my email box was a printable pdf which included my actual ticket. Unbelievable. I went from spending the afternoon with some friends who were bringing their new baby over to hang with our kids, to heading down Route 95 to Philadelphia to make the trek from Yankees land to Chilladelphia and see my team through to a 2-2 World Series tie.

After the tickets had been procured, the next question was when to get there. In a rare two-game city sports matchup, the Eagles were already playing the Giants at Lincoln Financial Field, just caddy-corner from the Bank, in a 1pm game which would probably end close to 4:30pm. The traffic from that badboy was sure to last until at least 5:30 or 6 in and around the stadium, and I did not necessarily feel like getting involved in that whole morass if I could avoid it. But then with the World Series scheduled to start shortly after 8pm in basically that same space, it stood to reason that the traffic for that game would likely start picking up somewhere around 6pm as well. So, I reasoned, my best bet was probably to make it into parking lot of The Bank sometime around 6pm and try to sneak in during that small window where the football traffic should be winding down while the baseball traffic should just be starting to pick up.

Amazingly, the 124.3 mile trip from my place to my parking lot at The Bank took me under 2 1/2 hours despite having to drive clear through two major cities, and I managed to time things just about perfectly. What's more, my brother arrived just minutes after I did, and we quickly headed upstairs to one of the sit-down restaurants at The Bank for a couple hours of preparations for the big game. This would actually be the third World Series game I would be attending with my brother, having been at both the 15-14 Mitch Williams debacle and the 2-0 Curt Schilling dominatory shutout in the 1993 Phillies-Blue Jays series, so we pretty much have the routine down pat and we executed it to perfection on Sunday night, such that by game time we were nice and toasty in our seats and ready to see the Phils take back control of this series.

Oh, did I mention our seats were incredible?

This is the view of the Fox Sports set on the field just prior to the first pitch. It's also the view from sitting in my seat for the game. We were in the second row of the stadium, not three feet from the dirt in foul ground about ten feet behind first base, where you often see people leaning way over the gate to try to pick up a foul ground ball. We were right on the aisle, second row, right there. It was so sick. Like I said, if you have the money to spend, you can get some pretty effing amazing things from the internet pretty much on demand. While I've been to several World Series games before in my life, I can definitely say that I've never gone in style quite like this. But that's one of the great things about my older brother, which I know I've written about here before in the context of my Vegas trips with him over the past few years -- the man certainly knows how to live right.

The Bank was electric as Joe Blanton threw the first pitch to Carlos Ruiz to start the top of the 1st inning, but right from the first couple of foul balls and even one lineout, it was obvious that the Yanks were keyed on him early. Within minutes, Blanton had quickly given up two runs and somehow had managed to quiet the stadium's 45,145 fans even before the Phillies had come to bat. But a run in the bottom of the first brought the home town crowd back into it, and the Phils spent the next several innings doing what they've been forced to do all through this World Series -- playing catchup. Blanton calmed down a bit and put the Yanks down without further runs over the next few innings, and in the meantime in the 4th, as Sabathia's pitch count ran into the 60s, the Phils eked out another run to finally get back to even. It seemed that Blanton's early mistake had been forgiven and now the team was being given new life to win this game that they knew they had to win. But no sooner had that occurred than Blanton came out and gave up two more runs to the Yanks in the top of the 5th to bring the score to 4-2 and leave the Phils in yet another 2-run hole, and the home crowd once again gasping for its collective breath just minutes after feeling like the team had finally gotten the second chance at this game that it dsperately needed.

The fans in the stadium were amazing. After Blanton was pinch-hit for in the bottom of the 5th, the stadium erupted in support of Chan Ho Park and Ryan Madson as they came in to try to hold the Yanks down while the Phils could chip away at another 2-run lead, and chip away they did. While Park and Madson weaved their way through a couple of mistakes and continued to hold the Yankees at 4 total runs, first Chase Utley smashed a home run deep into the right field seats in the 7th to bring the Phillies to within 4-3, which really got the crowd rocking and rolling. Then, out of nowhere with the bottom of the Phillies' order up in the 8th, Phillies' third baseman Pedro Feliz drove a liner deep to left-center, clearing the wall and sending the hometown fans into a serious frenzy as he tied the game up once again at 4 with just one inning left to go. Carlos Ruiz soon grounded out to end the Phillies' 8th, but one thing was clear to every single person in the stadium -- the fans, the players on both teams on the field, even retard Charlie Manuel as the 8th inning ended -- hold the Yankees scoreless in the top of the 9th, and the Phils were going to win this game with the top of the order coming up in the bottom of the 9th. You just knew, with the way the game had gone, the Phils' unlikely tying of the game in the 8th, and with how desperately the team needed the game. Three more outs from Madson, and the Phils were going to nab a run off whoever Joe Girardi ran out there to pitch to the home team in the bottom of the 9th and tie this series up at 2.

But unfortunately this is not a fairy tale, and when management repeatedly fails to address the team's blatant, glaring weaknesses in the bullpen, stuff tends to happen. Charlie Manuel unabashedly brought Brad Lidge out to hold the Yanks scoreless in the 9th inning, and the whole stadium collectively groaned. Even when Lidge got the first two batters out in short order, and got up 1-2 on third batter Johnny Damon, nobody exhaled. Because on some level we all knew. We all knew this was Brad Lidge, the literal worst player in the entire major leagues this year as I've been screaming here for months. We knew this was a huge, huge spot for the team and for the franchise, and we know how hideous Lidge has performed in this situation over the months and months that have comprised the 2009 season. Despite the refonkulous claims of manager Charlie Manuel that Lidge was "back", that the postseason was a "clean slate" and that Lidge was ready, willing and able to lead this team back to another world championship, I'm not the only one who knows who truly untrustably bad Lidge is and always will be. We all knew, all 45,000+ fans on their feet all through that 9th inning, so when Lidge ended up giving up a hit to Damon after running the count to 3-2, then plunking Mark Teixeira to let two guys on base, and then serving up a delicious swedish meatball to Alex Rodriguez to lose the tie before throwing another soft-tosser in there to Jorge Posada for another two runs and to complete the blowout, nobody was surprised. Stunned, yes. Definitely. But not in a surprised kind of way. More in an I-told-you-so kind of way.

Despite sometimes feeling like I'm completely alone here in this space screaming for months about how horrible Brad Lidge is and how the Phillies had absolutely, positively zero chance of repeating as World Champions when Brad Lidge was our closer, on Sunday night I had the oppotunity to learn how 45,145 of my fellow Phillies fans felt about Lidge, and what I learned is that everyone -- every body in the city -- feels just like I do. Nobody wanted Lidge out there to pitch to this lineup, in this stadium. Nobody thought the inning was over at 2 outs, nobody on, and 1-2 to Johnny Damon. And nobody thought there was any chance whatsoever that Lidge would be able to stop the bleeding at just one run by getting Posada out, down 5-4. Everybody knew. And somehow, for some reason, I actually take a little comfort in knowing that. We were all in the same boat at The Bank yesterday, and walking out with the hordes as that game came to a close on Sunday night, I recognized all too well the dazed looks I saw everywhere I turned my head. I was sporting the same look myself, as I eased into the front seat of my car and started the long trek that would eventually get me back into my own bed shortly after 2am.

Let me be clear about one thing: I still expect this series to get back to New York, which is all I ever felt sure about coming in to the series as far as length. Although I can personally attest that the loss on Sunday night was emotionally draining for the team and for the city, these players have been through this before. Several times. Like, 15 times just this season with Lidge, plus another 6 or 7 with Madson and others. Blowing a game in the 9th in a spot like this is always one of the hardest things to get over, and I can't say I would be completely shocked if the team couldn't muster up enough chutzpah to grab one win in Philly tonight after what has happened in Philadelphia over the past few days. But this Phillies team has been resilient all through the season, and they've come back with tough, hard-fought wins time and again in the face of adversity, even the day after Lidge blows a big game like happened on May 25 to end that Phillies - Yankees intraleague series back in the spring. I like the matchup of Cliff Lee vs AJ Burnett, and I think there is a good chance that the defending World Champions will not let the Yanks off that easy tonight at The Bank. After Game 5 the Phils will have a major uphill battle to wage, but at this point, you know the routine.

One Game at a Time.

NFL Pick 6 -- Week 8

2009-10-30T22:06:00.004+07:00

As I mentioned earlier in the week, my NFL picks went 4-1 against the spread in Week 7, bringing my 2009 season total to 20-10 for a solid 9-bet profit so far through 30 games even factoring in the casino's vig. That said, the games seem to be getting harder and harder to pick as the season rolls on, in particular as Vegas keeps adjusting its lines in the blowout-type of games higher and higher, culminating this week in the Chargers being favored over the Raiders by two touchdowns and a field goal as Vegas continues not to be able to make the lines high enough to approach the inequity in many of each week's games. This week is no exception as I find it nearly impossible to come up with five solid picks against the spread, but I'm going to stay at it and force myself to pick winners in five of this week's 13 NFL contests. Here are my picks, in no particular order as always:

1. Baltimore Ravens -3 vs Denver Broncos. Denver puts its 6-0 undefeated record to the test this weekend at Baltimore, and like with my pick in the Vikings-Steelers game last weekend, I think this is the week that Denver's luck finally runs out. Not only is Denver not quite as good as their 6-0 record would indicate, but Baltimore has the kind of defense that I think presents a very tough matchup for this Denver team. With the only two solid defensive squads the Broncos have faced this year -- the Bengals in Week 1 and the Cheatriots in Week 5 -- Denver needed a miracle last-second deflection to score more than 7 against the Bungles, and they needed overtime where the Cheatriots never got to touch the ball to win that game as well, so tough defenses can definitely get to this Broncos team. And after three straight losses to tough teams, coach John Harbaugh is gonna have his team whipped into a frenzy to get back on the winning path. I can't stand having to give 3 points to a 6-0 team, but in this case I expect the Ravens to cover the spread in a fairly close game to knock the Broncos from the ranks of the unbeaten.

2. Green Bay Packers -3 vs. Minnesota Vikings. This is another game where I like the favorite but do not necessarily like having to give the points to a very good opposing squad. But the bottom line is, as I discussed last week when correctly picking Minnesota to lose their first game of the season, Minnesota is not as good as your typical 6-1 team given the nature of a couple of their wins (Baltimore, San Francisco). What's more, we saw last week that the Vikes' running game is not impervious to defenders stacking the box to stop it, and when that happens and Brett Favre is forced to throw more than the team would otherwise prefer, bad things can happen. As soon as I watched that 4th quarter meltdown from Favre in Pittsburgh last week, I immediately had the feeling that he would find himself trying too hard this week to beat his old team in front of the Green Bay fans. I like the Pack to withstand the Vikes' offensive onslaught in what will probably be a high-scoring game, thus hopefully helping the Pack to build up more than the field goal spread in nabbing its 5th victory of the season on Sunday afternoon.

3. San Diego Chargers -16.5 vs Oakland Raiders. This line is pretty much crazy, and I have to be crazy to still be picking the Chargers to win a game by this amount since they obviously couldn't care less what their margin of victory is over the Raiders as long as they win the game. But, with how hard it is to find quality picks against the spread this week, I keep coming back to this one even as the oddsmakers continue to ratchet up the lines against the NFL's worst teams to try to even out the losses Vegas has been experiencing with all the recent NFL blowouts this year. But here's what I'm seeing that has me willing to take a flyer on this ridiculous line: the Chargers have scored 24, 26, 23, 28, 23 and 37 in their six games this year, and of those games, 24 came against Oakland and 37 against Kansas City in San Diego's only two games so far against the bottom tier of NFL teams. So I would expect the team to score in the neighborhood of 30 points against the shoddy Raiders' defense at home this Sunday in California. Moreover, Oakland has scored in its seven games this year 20, 13, 3, 6, 7, 13 and 0 points, including an average of under 6 points per game over its last five outings. Given this pattern I think the Chargers minus the huge 16.5 is still probably a winning play in Week 8.

4. San Francisco 49ers +13 at Indianapolis Colts. This is one that did not jump out at me on my first pass through the games this week, but I definitely see some value here in the underdog based primarily I think on how badly the Colts have beaten their recent opponents. But when I looked a little deeper at the numbers, I found that the 49ers have played three road games this year, all of them against teams with strong passing games (Cardinals, Vikings and Texans). Even though the 9ers are 1-2 in those three games, all the games were quite close (20-16 win at Arizona, 27-24 loss in Minnesota, and a 24-21 loss last week in Houston). So it's not that I believe the 9ers are going to win this game outright necessarily, but that with 13 points to play with, the 49ers are a good value that their coach Mike Singletary will inspire enough play in this one after two tough losses to keep the game reasonably close. Here I think the line has just gotten too big as again the oddsmakers look wherever they can for opportunities to get some extra points in games involving one of the NFL's premiere teams like the Colts certainly are.

5. Miami Dolphins +3.5 at the New York Jets. I do feel like the Jets may pull out a win by the end of this game, but I'm not confident enough in them winning to be willing to give more than a field goal to the visiting Dolphins on the day. These two teams played a couple of weeks back in Miami, which saw new Miami quarterback Chad Henne make several impressive throws on his way to a 31-27 victory over the Jets and their young qb Ryan Sanchez. In general, the heart of the Jets' offense of late has been the run game (Sanchise has not thrown for more than 172 yards in any game since Week 1), and with Leon Washington knocked out for the season in last week's game against the Raiders, I think the Jets' ability to move the ball and score points will be noticeably hampered. What's more, the Dolphins have suddenly scored 38, 31 and 34 points in their last three games since Henne took the helm, so there is reason to believe that the Fins can run up some points on the Jets again this weekend in New ~~Jersey~~ York. I would probably take either team plus more than a field goal here, but I especially think the Jets will have a hard time covering the spread in this one.

The Ice Man Cometh

2009-10-29T19:22:00.006+07:00

Seriously, everyone. I don't mean to crack out the hyperbole this early in the morning, but I can say with total honesty that I never remember seeing a pitcher dominate with the stoic attitude that Phillies' ace Cliff Lee had right from the first pitch of the 2009 World Series on Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium, lasting all the way through his post-game press conference. In between was one of the most brilliant gems in World Series history, as Lee absolutely mowed down the $208 million Yankees lineup for a complete game earned run shutout in front of the home town fans in the Bronx and a 6-1 victory in Game 1 for Your World Champion Philadelphia Phillies.

It wasn't just that Cliff Lee outdueled Yankees ace CC Sabathia, and it wasn't just that he won a crucial game in the Phillies' quest to become just the fourth team in the long history of major league baseball to repeat as world champions out of the National League. It was the way Lee dominated that has baseball fans still semi-breathless even now, hours after Lee's final and slowest pitch of the night, a 76 mph curve that Jorge Posada swung about a foot over to mercifully send the fans home, all with the first twinges of worry beginning to gnaw at their self-tortured psyches. Even as he faced the best lineup in baseball in his first ever World Series appearance, from the look on Lee's face and the way he performed on the night, you would have thought he was facing a tune-up in single-A ball, because that's just what he made the Yankees look like in Game 1.

The first really striking thing about Lee's performance in Game 1 was his impeccable control. Lee threw 122 pitches in dominating the Bombers, 83 of them for strikes, or more than two-thirds of his pitches. And it's not like he's just serving meatballs up there and getting smacked around. The Yanks recorded six total hits on the night -- three of them from Derek Jeter -- but five were singles with only one double, and none of them came in the same inning until the 9th when the Yanks managed to push their one meaningless unearned run across thanks to a Jimmy Rollins throwing error. So Lee throws a ton of strikes when he's out on the mound, but the players simply cannot him them. Cliff Lee paints the corners and locates the ball as well as anyone in the major leagues when he is on his game, and he certainly is on right now. Take a look at his final line from Game 1 and you will notice that he finished the night with 10 strikeouts and zero walks. 122 pitches, 83 of them strikes, 10 Ks, 0 BBs and 0 earned runs. This is just the fourth time in major league history that a player has struck out double-digits while not walking a single batter, and it's the first time in 107 years of World Series history that a pitcher has done so while also giving up 0 runs. If that ain't the model of a money performance then I just don't know what is.

The other thing that really stood out about Lee if you watched Game 1 of the World Series on Wednesday was how cool his actual demeanor, even his physical presence, was throughout and even after the game. In the bottom of the 6th inning when Johnny Damon hit a weak popup back towards the mound instead of moving out of the way like pitchers usually do in yielding to another infielder as to avoid the pitcher injuring himself on the mound, Lee didn't move his feet at all, instead just starting right up at the ball with his hands at his sides, and waiting until almost the last possible second before sticking his glove out, basket-style, and making the catch:

This was about as blase of a play as could possibly be made out in the field, and yet I'm telling you, Cliff Lee wasn't even remotely trying to showboat. He was just that cool on the day. "You know, it was pretty cool," Lee would later explain in the post-game press conference, "It was 15 feet in the air. Pretty simple catch. It came right to me." Then again in the 8th, Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano led off with a smash right back up the middle. Up the middle, that is, until Cliff Lee calmly stabbed his glove out fully behind his back and half upside-down and snagged the ball clean. He turned, flipped a slow strike to first base, and that was that. And then with a shrug, a la Michael Jordan after that sixth three-pointer in the first half in Portland, Lee was back to completing his pitching masterpiece.

Even after the game, Lee's incredible sense of calm and confidence still exuded all over the reporters that filled the press room to try to get a sense of his magic. I don't think I ever recall seeing someone so confident, so calm in such a big spot, especially the first time he's ever been on this kind of a stage. Lee explained how hard he works and has worked over his career, and that game time for him is just time to go out and let those skills he has worked so hard to develop take over. He explained that he is a very confident guy, but makes sure not to go over the edge from confident into cocky, and it was believable. He wasn't brazen up there in saying any of this stuff, no matter how it sounds when you read it. He was just being candid. And accurate. And he knows it.

A big shout-out should also be made to 2008 World Series clinching Game 5 defensive MVP Chase Utley, who quieted all the doubters about his allegedly debilitating hip injury by smashing two 95-mph fastballs from CC Sabathia over the right-center field wall in the 3rd and 6th innings to give the Phils all the offense they would need behind their ace on the mound. Despite all the talk about there being too many lefthanders in the Phillies' lineup that could be neutralized by the Yanks' lefty pitchers, Chase Utley became just the second lefty ever to hit two home runs in a World Series game against a lefty pitcher, the first of course being Babe Ruth way back in 1928. Utley also set a new major league record by reaching base safely in his 26th straight postseason game, a truly great record that any Phillies fan would not be surprised with if you've watched these games. In general, you knew things were shaping up well as soon as the Phillies saw their first two batters go down on five pitches, but then managed to drag another 19 pitches more out of Sabathia before he could close out the top half of the first inning. That is another big advantage the Phillies have in this series that I failed to mention in my post yesterday -- the Phils take pitches and work the count better than any team in baseball, and not only does that help Philadelphia's batters be selective in the pitches they choose to hit, but more than anything else it enables the team to get through their opposing starting pitcher and into the bullpen faster, which is key especially when facing other team's top starters like what the Phils faced in Game 1 in CC Sabathia. When Sabathia needs 24 pitches to get out of the first, and another 20-something in the third, you just knew the Phils were in good shape to eventually wear down the pitching as they have done better than anybody throughout the past two seasons.

In the end, only time will tell how crucial this Game 1 loss was for the Yankees. If AJ Burnett comes back and nabs a win in Game 2, going back to Philly with a split is not a bad outcome for the Yankees and really was the most likely outcome after two games all along. But several factors about the loss should weigh heavily on Yankee fans. This was the first time the Yankees have lost at home in this postseason, after taking 2 of 2 in New York against the Twins and then 3 of 3 at home against the Angels to win in six. Moreover, now in four games this season between the two teams -- all of them at Yankee Stadium -- the Phillies have won three of them, with the Yankees' only win coming on May 23 when Brad Lidge blew a 2-run lead in the 9th that saw the Phillies once again bash the ball all over the place and lead throughout the entire game until the end.

The Phillies have gotten to the Yankees' ace Sabathia now on three straight occasions in big spots going back a couple of years, and the Phils have already roughed up AJ Burnett and Andy Pettite as well this season going back to that series in the Bronx in May. This is a team that has beaten already this year basically the entire New York Yankees' staff they will be facing this postseason, and now they have wrestled home-field advantage away from the Yankees before things even really got started in the Bronx.

And there were some disturbing trends in the Yankees' lineup as well. As I mentioned above, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter went 3 for 4 on the day against Lee with two singles and a double. But the rest of the Yankee team went 3 for 28, which is not going to cut in against the defending Champs in the World Series. What's more, the Yankees' power hitters at the core of their lineup -- Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez -- finished the game 0 for 8 between them. This extends a fairly weak postseason so far for Tex, who was easily the Yankees' most productive hitter along with A-Rod on the season, but even more alarming is that it stops what has been a totally dominating postseason at bat so far for A-Rod. Rodriguez had been hitting .438 so far in 10 games this postseason, with 5 home runs and 12 RBIs, so to go 0-4 to start the Series, striking out three out of those four times at that, has got to worry the Yankee fan as much as anything else they saw out there in Game 1, especially given A-Rod's history of megachoking in big spots.

Game 2 is Thursday night at 8pm ET in New York. Yankee fans: your chances of winning the World Series rest heavily right now on the shoulders of AJ Burnett finding a way to quiet down the Phillies lineup. How does that make you feel?

Yankees vs. Phillies

2009-10-28T09:58:00.001+07:00

As previously stated, my #1 prediction for the 2009 World Series is that it should be a great one. After pretty much not a single good series in the entire 2009 playoffs so far on either side -- I know the Angels made it to six games with the Yanks, but in truth that series was never in doubt -- this World Series more than anything else will hopefully deliver. It doesn't have to be extra-innings-in-Game-7 amazing, but damn doesn't a 7-game World Series sound great right now? And despite some really intriguing pitching matchups, we are likely to see some serious power on display over the next week on both sides of this matchup, as this is the first time in World Series history that the #1 teams in home runs and runs scored from each league are meeting in the Fall Classic. I do believe both teams have the talent, the depth and the heart to extend this series to at least six games. Here's how I get to that point:

Game 1 pits CC Sabathia against Cliff Lee in what is probably the only matchup of starters in this series with the potential to create some pitcher's duels. Both pitchers have been absolutely brilliant in the postseason, and they will probably pitch fairly well against these respective lineups although I expect more runs than the roughly 1 per 9 innings each pitcher has ceded so far in the postseason. Looking at the intangibles, I am definitely convinced that Sabathia will come to play, but the Phils have roughed his ass up good in recent years, in particular last year in the NLDS against the Brewers when the Phillies beat Sabathia with the longball to advance to the NLCS against the Dodgers, so that will work to neutralize Sabathia's greatness to some extent. The Yankees went a league-best 57-24 at home in 2009, although the Phillies were a league-best 48-33 on the road, so those two also kind of balance each other out. Game 1 seems to hard to pick in my mind that I find myself thinking how this game is the first World Series game in New York in what feels like a long time, the Yankees and their fans are gonna be hungry as hell. Now I know that over recent history, home field advantage has meant very little in the World Series (see the Phils' championship win last year in five game against the homefielded Tampa Bay Rays), but it's really more the "last licks" thing that matters most about having home field advantage IMO. This is made all the more valuable when the Yankees are at home and playing a team with a shaky closer situation like the Phillies certainly have. In what is really otherwise a complete tossup for me, I'm picking the home team to find a way to eke out a win in the bottom of an inning in Game 1.

Game 2, however, is a different story, as we now know that Phillies coach Charlie Manuel has decided to pitch old man Pedro Martinez in Game 2 against the Yankees' AJ Burnett. And this matchup I think definitely favors the Phillies, for two key reasons. First, P-Mart has simply been awesome since his return to baseball in the middle of the summer, something which I find funny that even most of the big-name commentators in the media, as well as the Yankees fans out there, do not seem to have picked up on yet. There's just no other way to describe how great and gutty Pedro has been this season. His fastball has consistently been over 90 mph and he's been very effective in placing his pitches and mixing up speeds. Pedro has also shown some depth, even throwing 130 pitches a couple of months back in his first complete game in years, and going 7 strong in a 2-hit shutout against the Dodgers last week in the NLCS. Pedro has been really rested over the past 6 weeks or so, and he has had a knack with Philly for showing up for all of his big games. Getting to appear and start in the World Series should really get Pedro's juices flowing, and I expect him to pitch fairly well against the Yankees in Game 2 -- let's say 3 runs or less in 6 innings. And on the other side of the coin, I've watched AJ Burnett pitch a couple of times so far this postseason, and he is just exactly the kind of inconsistent, mentally suspect guy that this Phillies lineup feasts on. I feel confident that the Phils can get to Burnett early, as we saw in the ALCS, and Philadelphia can wear him down in the middle innings as well like they did throughout the Colorado and LA series this postseason. With the heart that this Phillies team has, going down 1-0 in the World Series will mean bupkis to them, and I expect the team to ride on Pedro's back to a Game 2 victory and even up this series heading back to Philadelphia for three key games. And I know this team can get to Burnett even here in the new Yankee Stadium -- let's not forget that these two teams played a 3-game series in NY earlier this season, and the Phils crushed Burnett in Game 1, including Jimmy Rollins hitting Burnett's first pitch out of the park and Jayson Werth becoming the first player to reach the second deck in left field on their way to smashing four homers and easily taking the series opener.

Game 3 will feature Cole Hamels against Andy Pettite. To be honest, I have absolutely no faith in Cole Hamels, which is why I believe Charlie is making the right decision in starting Pedro in Game 2, in front of a hostile New York crowd that Pedro will eat up. Giving Cole his start in Game 3 in front of the home town fans is the best chance the Phillies have of getting a productive performance out of him. Unfortunately, I don't see how anyone can expect Hamels to bounce back here, and he'll probably put up the 4- or 5-run, 4- or 5-inning performance that has become his usual this postseason. The question will be, can the Phillies get 5 or more runs off of Andy Pettite? The Phils did score 4 runs in 7 innings off of Pettite on May 23 in the Bronx, so there is some recent history on this to work from, and we know the possibility is there. I think this will be a very close one, as Pettite is a great ~~steroid user~~pitcher and an incredible stopper for the Yankees over the years, but it's not like the Phillies won't be able to hit him. In the end this has a chance of coming down to the teams' bullpens, and once again I will have to go with the Yankees to win a close one based on favorable pitching matchups.

Game 4 looks like it is shaping up to be a probable matchup of Chad Gaudin against ~~J. Happ~~ Joe Blanton. Down 2 games to 1 in the series, at the Bank, Blanton should be tough and keep the Yankees at bay enough for the Phillies' bats to do the job against Gaudin. I think if the Yanks are not up 2-1 at that point, Girardi may opt to push it and go with Sabathia again on three days rest, but if they are up 2-1 in the series like I am expecting, I think it's going to be a good day for the Phillies against Gaudin to even up the series at two games apiece.

Game 5 then should feature Lee vs. Sabathia once again. And this time, I'm going to go with the last licks thing again, but that means this time the Phillies get the win and take a 3-2 series lead heading back to the Bronx in what should be another very intriguing matchup between baseball's two best teams.

This all is why I find it very hard to believe that this series does not end up for at least a Game 6 back in New York. I do not see the Phillies winning more than one of the first two games in New York, nor do I see them losing more than one of the three games in Philadelphia, and as long as both of those statements are true then this series has to last at least 6 games. The big question I think is whether the series score is 3-2 Phillies or 3-2 Yankees going into that Game 6. What the Phillies can do in one or two must-win games at Yankee Stadium at the end of this series is going to determine the 2009 World Championship. And with the way this Phillies team has played on the road, and especially with Burnett up again in Game 6, the Phillies will know that one is very winnable for the visitors, which could hopefully set the stage for a rockin' Game 7 for all the marbles in the Bronx. And even though Cliff Lee won't be available to start, the Phils could go with any combination of Hamels or soon-to-be rookie of the year winner J. Happ on full rest, Joe Blanton on 3 days rest, and Cliff Lee could always be available for a crucial inning or two late in a World Series Game 7 even on two days rest if it looks like the difference between winning and losing the championship. So Game 7 in New York could go any which way, although to be honest I don't know how you end up picking anyone but the home team Yankees, who once again will get to bat that incredible all-star lineup in the bottom half of the innings against the Phillies' totally untrustable bullpen. But we can cross that bridge of Game 7 when we come to it.

One thing I've seen a lot of analysts doing is comparing these two teams position by position. So, for example, at catcher the Yankees get the nod, as Jorge Posada is better than Carlos Ruiz overall, even though Ruiz is better at playing the position than his Yankee opponent. At first base, it's a clash of the titans in Ryan Howard vs. Mark Teixeira, which is senseless in a way to even have to pick one over the other. Teixeira is really good in the field in a way that even Howard is not, but when I look at Howard's body of work this season and the performance of the two players so far in the postseason, Ryan Howard gets the slight nod on that one. At 2nd base, Chase Utley is a better baseball player than Robinson Cano. Period. At short, you've got Jimmy Rollins and Derek Jeter in a battle of leadoff men who many would argue have been the heart and soul of their teams over the years. This is another one that really feels too close to call, but if pushed I would give the slight nod to Jeter given his career and the better regular season he had than J-Roll in 2009. At third base it's not even close of course, A-Rod takes it down over Pedro Feliz. And then there's the outfield, where I contend that the Phillies win in every single position. In left field, it's Johnny Damon vs. Jayson Werth. Who would you rather have on your team? Exactly. In center it's Melky Cabrera vs. gold-glover Shane Victorino. Exactly. And in right it's Nick Swisher vs. Raul Ibanez. Again, exactly. So, looking at the series this way, the Phils are better in three outfield positions, at first base and at second base for 5 of the 8 total fielding positions, while the Yankees have the big advantage at 3rd base as well as superiority at catcher and shortstop. So does this mean the Phillies will win this series?

Looking at the upcoming 2009 World Series in still a different way, I think there are a couple of distinct advantages for each team over the other. For the Yankees, the biggest and most dramatic advantage over the Phillies as a team has got to be the bullpen. This statement has to be tempered somewhat after the Angels series which saw both Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain look pretty much worthless and scared in that late-relief slot the Yanks have relied so heavily on to bridge them to Mariano Rivera in the 9th, but the presence of Rivera there means the Yankees usually only have to go 8 innings with the lead, and sometimes less as Mariano has been known to put in the 4- or 5-out save as needed as well. Not only do the Phillies not have any go-to guy for that spot, but they seem to think that 162 games worth of suckjobiness out of Brad Lidge has now all been erased in the postseason, which seems absurd to me. So the bullpen is a huge advantage for the Yankees over the Phillies, one which take it from me every single Phillies fan fears down to his or her soul for this World Series. I've said this before and I'll say it again now: the thought of Brad Lidge facing this Yankees lineup, in either stadium in this matchup, is enough to keep me up at night. I just don't see that matchup ending up in Philadelphia's favor in this series. The Phils will need to hope they don't need to use Lidge much, as happened in the Dodgers series, if they really want a chance to win the way I see it. Brad Lidge = Big Losses for the Phightins.

It should be mentioned that the existence of a designated hitter in potentially four of the games in this series is also an advantage for the Yankees in my view. They can play a great hitter like Hideki Matsui in that spot, whereas for the Phillies, who obviously do not make any effort to spend money to get a big stick like that who can't play ~~baseball~~ the field, they are likely to be left with a Matt Stairs or Greg Dobbs type to hit in the DH spot in the games in the Bronx. And the Yankees' pitchers include guys like Sabathia and Burnett who have played some part of their careers in the NL, and a guy like Pettite who has appeared in 58 world series, and have thus spent time batting in NL parks as opposed to being those AL pitchers who make themselves look like clowns every October because it's the first time they've picked up a bat in the past ten years.

Another slight advantage I believe the Yankees have going in to the 2009 World Series is in the overall strength of the lineup. This is the first time I've said that about the Phillies in this postseason, and frankly the Yankees are the only team in baseball I would ever say that about, but the Yankees have so many high-priced all-stars on their roster that it's hard to argue they aren't better than what any other team can throw out there, even the Phillies. In Philly, it's Jimmy Rollins (.250, 21 homers, 77 RBIs), Shane Victorino (.292, 10, 62), Chase Utley (.282, 31, 93), Ryan Howard (.279, 45, 141), Jayson Werth (.268, 36, 99), Raul Ibanez (.272, 34, 93), Carlos Ruiz (.255, 9, 43) and Pedro Feliz (.266, 12, 82). For the Yankees it's some combination of Derek Jeter (.334, 18 homers, 66 RBIs), Johnny Damon (.282, 24, 82), Mark Teixeira (.292, 39, 122), A-Rod (.286, 30, 100), Jorge Posada (.285, 22, 81), Hideki Matsui (.274, 28, 90), Robinson Cano (.320, 25, 85), Nick Swisher (.249, 29, 82) and Melky Cabrera (.274, 13, 68). When I look at those numbers, as much as the Phillies' lineup was superior to everyone else it faced in the National League, that Yankees lineup is simply even better.

The last thing I would mention is something that many people -- especially in the Philadelphia area -- would disagree with me on, but I think Joe Girardi is a slightly better manager than the Phillies' Charlie Manuel, and I trust Girardi more not to make key mistakes based on what I've seen out of Manuel in 2009. And don't get me wrong -- with the heart that this Phillies team plays with, their incredible focus on fundamentals, all the wins, Manuel has obviously proven himself to be a far better major league manager than he may come off as. He deserves a ton of credit for what this team has done over the past two seasons, and I won't take anything away from him on that. But unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that Manuel has made a very annoying and costly habit of sticking with "his guys" for too long. He leaves his starting pitchers in the games for an inning or two longer than he should, pretty much every single game when things aren't going great, like clockwork. Hamels comes out and goes down 2-0 against the first four batters he faces in the Dodgers series, and Manuel doesn't even get anyone up in the bullpen until the 5th inning when Hamels has already given up four or five runs. All this while J. Happ -- one of the best starting pitchers in the NL this season -- just sits on the Phils' bench and rots away his arm that could easily come into any game in the 3rd inning and pitch all the way through the 9th, not even needing to give that shitbag Lidge a chance to ruin another one for the team. But Manuel has demonstrated to me a significant lack of understanding about how to use his pitching staff in this season, from about the middle of the year on in fact when it started to become obvious that Lidge was worthless, and this trend has disturbingly continued all the way through the postseason so far. Despite some idiot Yankee fans questioning his every move of course, Girardi really has done a very good job through this whole season and right into the postseason, and I definitely see another advantage there for the Yankees in terms of the decisions being made by the guys at the helm of the respective teams.

On the Phillies side of the ledger, they also have a few key advantages IMO, the biggest one of which is something that I'm not hearing anyone else talking about: pressure. Or more specifically, in the Phillies case, the total lack thereof. Now I know this team wants to defend its title and win the World Series again this year, of that I think there is absolutely no doubt. But the Phillies don't have to win it. They are already the current World Champions, and unlike the Yankees they don't play in a city that demands at least one sports title every single year. The city of Philadelphia and the Phillies franchise and fans will be just fine if they lose to the Yankees this week. Especially after plowing their way back to a consecutive World Series appearance here, this Phillies team has already proven everything it could possibly have to prove, almost regardless of what happens over the next week along Route 95 in the northeast.

The Yankees, on the other hand, have an immense amount of pressure to win this series. The team spent more than $400 million in the offseason to acquire talent that put it leaps and bounds above any other team in the sport, both in terms of payroll and in terms of raw talent, and their opponent in the 2009 World Series is not even in the top 5 payrolls in the major leagues as far spending money on their players. With all the money spent by this team over the past few years, and with how great that talent has performed here in 2009, for the Yankees not to win this series would be a big blow to the organization and to the fans. They expect to win, they know they have the best talent money can buy on both sides of the ball, and they have home field advantage to boot. Especially given my prediction that this series has to go at least 6 games, those last couple of games in the Bronx are going to be absolute pressure cookers for the Yankees, while the Phils will still kinda be playing with the house's money. This can only bode well for the Phillies, especially given the choke history of some of the Yankees' players like A-Rod, and even Sabathia last year against the Phillies in the playoffs.

One other advantage the Phillies should definitely have in this series is on the basepaths. Yankees catcher Jorge Posada -- who we should see more of this series than in the ALDS or ALCS due to the DH being available on only half the games -- has a great bat but behind the plate has only thrown out 28% of the runners who have attempted to steal a base off of him in 2009. He can definitely be run on. And the Phils have those spark-plug type of players -- the Rollins, Victorino, Utley and Werth types -- who will grind out at bats, get on base, and will definitely run. And the Phils have the big bats behind those players to drive them in once they run themselves into scoring position. Carlos Ruiz is a much better fielding catcher than Jorge and can throw the ball better as well so should have better luck keeping the Yankees runners from wheeling around the bases at will, but this is one area I expect the Phillies to have to take advantage of if they are to have any chance of winning this series.

The last advantage I would mention is the Phillies' incredible road performance this year. Yes the Yankees won 57 games at home in 2009, which is truly sick no matter how you slice it, but my point here is that the Phillies are simply going to feel more comfortable and more confident going into Yankee Stadium -- where they already won 2.9 out of 3 games in May this spring -- than the Yankees are coming into the Bank in Philly. While the Yankees lost two of three games at Anaheim in the ALCS, for example, the Phillies split two games in LA and went 2-0 in two games in Colorado in the NLDS. It's just another game to this Phillies team regardless of the location of the stadium, the unfamiliarity of the surroundings, or the noise of the fans. Just another game.

In all, I keep coming back to the fact that the 2009 World Series is going to end up back in New York for Game 6 (sorry Jimmy Rollins, I don't buy your prediction of Phillies in 5 -- that worked for the Dodgers, but they sucked balls compared to the Yankees and you should know that), and I think the Phillies will have a decent shot of getting to Burnett in Game 6 and turning that game into a Phillies W. If the Phils can get back to New York up 3-2 in the series, then Game 6 is probably the team's best chance to capture back-to-back World Series for only the fourth time in National League history. If the Series extends to Game 7, however, I think the Yankees' chances of being victorious increase dramatically as the starting pitching matchups tend to even out and the bullpen is likely to take more focus as the game wears on, a position where the Yankees have their biggest advantage in the entire matchip between baseball's two greatest teams.