Close Call in the Bracelet Race, MATH, NCAA and Heads-Up Peep SNGs

Well, it's another Monday, and that means I'm here again, ready to come at you with tons to talk about. Where to begin? OK well how about with this:



That's right. It's Monday and that means it's MATH time again. $20 buyin, 10pm ET tonight on pokerstars as always. Password, as always, is "hammer". I'll be there, defending my top spot in the Hoy leaderboard so far this year. Hopefuelly current runner-up Fuel55 will join us as well, or risk falling further behind yours truly as well as upstart chart-climber Bayne who has eked his way into third place on the 2007 board so far with a number of Hoy cashes of late. Who will be the big story tonight? Will the moneyboard top spot change for only the third time this year? Will you make your first appearance on the board after Monday night's MATH tournament? Only time will tell. But come on out, even if it's your first time ever in a blogger tournament, and make some noise with the donkeys tonight at Mondays at the Hoy on pokerstars, 10pm ET.

OK what else? Oh yeah.

Georgetown 62
Boston College 55

This was one a bit harder-fought than the first-round matchup for my Hoyas, but in the end the best team won as BC was unable to stick with the combination of Big East Player of the Year Jeff Green and 7-foot-2 center Roy Hibbert. Hibbert in particular really poured it on in the second half, punishing the BC inside men with rebound after rebound on both sides of the court, and BC was simply not able to get enough shots off to counter the inevitable run out of the Beast from the East. So Georgetown advances to the Sweet 16 for the second straight year under coach John Thompson III, taking its Princeton-meets-Shaq style of basketball next to #6 seed Vanderbilt, who upset #3 seed Washington State on Sunday to advance as well to the third round. On paper this should be a good matchup for the Hoyas, who are clearly the better team in any event but who will now face barely-top-25-ranked Vanderbilt with both teams playing their best ball of the season. Vandy has a couple of strong scorers, led by 6-foot-7 swingman Derrick Byars, but their big weakness also happens to be one of Georgetown's biggest strengths. Vandy does not even start a pure center on their team, and the tallest of all their starters comes in at 6-foot-9. Roy Hibbert should have an effing field day with this team, both on the boards and in point totals, and that matchup alone ought to be enough to propel the Hoyas to the Elite 8 for the first time in what must be about 11 years since the early Iverson days. I'm sure I'll write more about this later, but that's where it's at with the Hoyas so far who have done well and let their skill lead them to where they want to be after the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

Speaking of the tournament, you just know those Selection Committee members are flaccid today. I mean, completely and utterly limp. Despite the overseeding of -- count them -- six ACC teams (only North Carolina was truly deserving of the #1 seed they received), all but one of them are gone already after just the first weekend of the Big Dance, most of them losing to allegedly "worse" teams according to the seedings. Let's review. After passing up Syracuse (10-6 in the Big East, 23-10 overall) and West Virginia (9-7 Big East, 24-9 overall) inexplicably in favor of Duke (8-8 in the ACC, 22-11 overall) and Georgia Tech (8-8, 22-12 overall) for at large selections this year in their continued and undying masturbation to the ACC -- which itself had probably its worst year as a conference in literally as long as I can remember -- the Committee was treated to watching 6-seeded Duke give up big leads in both halves on the way to losing to #11 VCU in the first round in what was really more like a matchip of two #11 seeds, and #10 Georgia Tech losing to #7 UNLV in what was realy a matchup of a 7-seed against a team that had no business whatsoever even sniffing the Big Dance this year. Then after most of the other ACC teams tried their hardest to lose but managed to hold on for dear life for victories against teams seeded far below them in round 1, the second round saw laughably overseeded #4 Maryland losing to the "worse" #5 seeded Butler, the equally-laughable 4-seeded Virginia Cavaliers lose to #5 Tennessee in another "upset" per the (over)seedings. Plus, Virginia Tech at #5 lost to the midmajor upstart Salukis of Southern Illinois at #4, and Boston College lost by 7 to the domination known as Georgetown basketball. Carolina, on the other hand, dominated, and I watched their game this weekend. They look good. When you're that strong inside, and then your guards are hitting 3s and driving as well as they were, now that's a team to be reckoned with. The rest of the ACC, however, were jokers this year, and to think that two 8-8 teams got in over two over-500 teams in the Big East with better overall records as well, that is just sad. But I hope those limp-dicks on the Selection Committee got what they wanted, which was to be erect for at least a few days here while some of these ACC dogs were still alive in the Big Dance. Now, for them, it's back to Viagra and Cialis for the next 360 days until they can use their position on the Committee to get their jollies again for a weekend. Talk about fuckin fonkeys.

Not that the Big East fared a whole lot better this weekend in the tournament, but they did fare better, and under far more difficult circumstances. Of the five (!) Big East teams in the tournament this year, Marquette lost in the first round to a tournament-savvy Michigan State team whom Marquette would not have had to play if they had been given a fairer seed than the #8 dished out to them by the Limpdick Committee. Notre Dame I have no excuse for, they completely dropped the ball against Winthrop whom they should have beaten but simply could not get it going against. That was a pathetic performance, but at least in that case ND got a fair seed at #6, after what was a great season at 11-5 in the Big East, 24-8 overall. Otherwise, the top 3 seeds in the Big East -- Georgetown, Pitt and Louisville -- all advanced easily to round 2, and other than Louisville who took the most recockulous last-play shot to win a game that I've ever seen from a coach who is supposed to know what he's doing, Georgetown and Pitt both advanced fairly easily in the end to the Sweet 16 as well. So the Big East has 2 teams in the Sweet 16, and 2 out of the only five teams from the conference that even got invites to the Big Dance this year somehow, so the conference as a whole has performed reasonably well. Still, there is a lot of ball left to be played in this thing of course, but so far so good for my team and the conference in which they play.

Speaking of a lot of ball left to play in the Big Dance, right now I am somewhere south of the middle in each of the pools in which my brackets are entered. Because I have watched these games every year for what seems like a good 20 years or more now, I picked a number of upsets in the early rounds, and as many of you know, this year that has been a surprisingly poor strategy. It was the first year I think in history that no 5-seed or higher lost in the first round, and all of the 1s and 2s have made it through to the Sweet 16 except for #2 Wisconsin in the Midwest. What's more shocking for me is that I can actually say that all 8 of my Elite 8 teams are still alive. I don't remember the last time I could say that after the first two rounds of this thing. Now, granted, in this year with the lack of upsets that isn't anything super special, but believe me it feels good for me as I don't recall the last time this was the case for me at this point in the tournament. So, although I am around the middle but usually somewhere beneath the middle so far in my pools, my total points possible is fairly high in all of them, and if things go as planned this week, I should be up in the top 10 in all my pools one week from today, with all of my Final 4 still alive, and in a spot where if Georgetown does go on to win, not only will I drink myself to death, but my estate should have some nice pool money coming to it as well. Nice to know at least the Hammer Wife and the Hammer Girls will be well provided for, and I'll have a fun way of dying to boot. Bring on the Jaeger baybeeee!

OK how about some poker content today. First off, this weekend saw a huge disappointment for me on Saturday, as a number of bloggers were on the rail to see me ride the $24 bracelet race on Saturday night in Limit Holdem (!!) all the way to the final table, where my dominating play led me to a nice chip lead with just four players to go. Of course, being the $24 variety of these things, only the top spot paid out the 2k WSOP prize package, with no prizes whatsoever to any other finishers, and as Chad has written about on several occasions, that leaves these things rife for bubble disappointment. So anyways, with me up at 78k in chips, 2nd place at around 58k, and third and fourth both in the mid 20k's, I found AK on the button and just knew I was going to knock one of the shorties out on this one. It is raised and re-raised in front of me, which normally might scare a guy with just AK, but #1 it's only Limit, so the raises aren't that scary and make it very easy -- desirable even -- to see a raised and reraised flop with AK, and #2 with only four players left at the table and the blinds very high at 1500-3000, it's perfectly possible that the first raise comes with something like 66, and the second with a hand like A9 or KQ. So long story short, it is capped on the first round, with 3 players capping it including with my AK. The flop comes AQ7. I'm lovin' it. It is bet, raised and re-raised on the flop, and all three of us call for three bets on that flop. At this point I'm not loving the AK, but I'm still hopeful. It could easily be three Ax hands we're dealing with here, or someone could have Kings and be making a move, who knows. I'm hoping for some help but am not too worried at this point. The turn is a rag, an offsuit 2 I believe, and the small stack in the small blind bets out, which the big blind calls, and I raise it. The small blind calls my raise, and the big blind folds. So again I'm a bit worried about what this guy is betting and calling here, but he was on a very small stack at this point (under 10k left in chips after all the betting in the hand so far), so he could easily be doing that with a hand like AT or AJ, assuming he is best. Of course I have to worry a bit about a set or about AQ, but the odds of that are surely low, even lower given the betting from the big blind earlier in the hand, indicative itself of some kind of an Ace holding with a lower kicker than my King. Truth be told, I read the small blind for A7 at this point, thinking he might have outflopped my dominating hand after making a very questionable call of a capped pot preflop, and I figured I probably needed a little bit of help here. But I know my King kicker is by defintion the best, so I'm just hoping for the board to pair on the river so that my Aces-over with King kicker can outboard the small stack and give me an almost insurmountable lead, and I find myself saying out loud as the river is about to be dealt "come on Queen, Queen, Queen!" And out comes the river, a beautiful, sparkling Queen. He bets, and I raise now, thinking I just rivered the guy on the gorgeous resuck, and when he calls of his last few hundred chips to get allin on my raise, I am expecting the best.

Now, I'll tell you up front that I lost the hand. And you're probably thinking it was, in fact, to AQ, having hit a rivered boat against my top two pairs and top kicker. It wasn't. So then you'll think well he must have flopped a set after all, my initial read was right, and I was just cursed with my hand improving on the river to the point that I could beat mostly any hand he would have been playing up to that point. Wrong again. You know what the little fucker turned over?

Q7. Soooooted (of course). This anus called a cap-raise preflop with frigging Queen frigging 7 sooooted. Now, I know he was fairly short-stacked and in last place of the 4 of us at the time. But at around 22k in chips, he was nowhere near the point of desperation where you just have to push and pray. Yet push and pray he did, and he got rewarded by flopping bottom two pairs on the flop, when I happened to flop TPTK with AK. An incredibly lucky flop for the fuckin fonkey extraordinaire who called a cap raise with Q7s. I still can't believe that shit. What's worse, when I rivered top two pair top kicker, which actually was ahead of what this schmuck had been holding up to that point in the hand, that shit also happened to river him a frigging boat. With fucking Q7 soooted, did I mention that already?!! So needless to say, that pot took about half of my big chip stack, making the luckbox the new chip leader and leaving me in 3rd place of 4 remaining. But, thanks to my performance and the big stack I had amassed up to that point, I still had about 42k left in chips, up against a small stack with around 25k, and the leaders now with around 48k and the fonkey with now around 65k. Still easily within reach.

A few hands later, I am dealt AJs. A veritable monster at a 4-handed table. I raise it up 3x, and just the 2nd place guy calls from the button. Flop comes A83 rainbow. Again, I am smelling blood here, and when he just calls my flop bet, I know I'm ahead, and hoping he's got a lower Ace which he had been prone to play throughout the final table like this. The turn is another blank, where I elect to check to try to trap the guy, he obliges with a bet, which I promptly raise. He just calls, and now I really know I'm ahead. This guy was stubborn as hell, and I had taken a number of pots from him because he would stay in one round too long with hands he knew were beat, and this was gonna be another of them. Long story short, river is another blank, I bet, he raises, and at this point I'm thinking "Fuck!" but what am I gonna do, with just around 10k left in chips, I had to call it and see what had happened to me this time. He flips up pocket 8s for the flopped set, and I was basically done from there. It was too bad, really. With the big stack and just 4 players remaining, I took AK to an Ace-high flop and lost to a fonkey who called a cap-raised pot preflop with Q7s and flopped two pairs which turned into a boat when I made top-two-top-kicker on the river. And then I took AJ --- which most of you donkeys treat as a can't-lose hand as we all know -- to an Ace-high flop when I knew I had the best Ace out there on a 4-handed table, and lose to a flopped set. As I commented just afterwards to some people in the girly chat, in the end, as with most limit tournaments in which I've ever been involved, the guys who went on to play heads-up are the guy who got lucky and flopped two shit pairs and then rivered a boat, and the guy who flopped a set, both when down to just a few players left at the final table. That's what it takes typically to win a limit tournament -- a whole mother load of luck. And mine just ran out at the worst possible time on Saturday night. Still, it's been a while since I've made a big run like this in a limit holdem tournament, so that aspect was good. But man does it suck to lose that way, when I had played so well going in to that thing. And in the end it just reinforces all the more my feelings about limit tournaments in general -- while clearly skill can play a big role, and I think surely did in my case as I played some great poker almost start to finish in this thing on Saturday -- in the end, when you can't push the fonkeys out because of the pre-ordained betting structure, and the dickhead with the Q7s is going to stay in even through max-raised preflop betting action, it just leaves way more up to luck than I choose to commit my funds to for the most part.

In other news, Sunday night was Miami Don's latest Big Game, and I had fun for the 20 minutes or so that I lasted. In the end I had plans early on Sunday night that caused me to miss the first 35 minutes or so from this thing, and then I played too strong when I got back in an attempt to win back the quarter of my stack that had gone missing in my absence, including pushing A9o against Waffles who had amassed a big stack with what I understand was some nice turn and river luck, and and who was trying to play table bully as best as he could, for a guy who is just not used to even being alive in these blogger tournaments after an hour anymore, let alone to being alive and with a big stack at the time to boot. Despite the fact that when I left, Waffles had amassed a massive chip lead over the rest of the field, he then proceeded to blow it all on some allin calls with not much, mostly against the Gnome, and yadda yadda yadda skip ahead an hour and Waffles with gone without a cash, and the Gnome had taken the Big Game down. Waffles, for his part, has a funny take on the tournament on his own blog, and I'm glad to see he is keeping his sense of humor about this. And for all of Waffles' luck on the later hand rounds early on in the Big Game, the Gnome was the real card rack of the night. Check this out from the Gnome's blog review of the event:

"I played 242 hands. I was dealt AA twice, KK twice, QQ five (!) times, JJ twice and AK three times. Seriously, that's a sick run."

I'll say. Fourteen times of the top-5 premium holdem hands in one 12-person tournament. That ain't bad. Ain't bad at all. Although I have to give the guy props for not busting early -- lord knows I would have with five phucking pairs of pocket Queens. I cannot win with those whores to save my life. And I can't beat 'em either, as I've lamented about many times here. Anyways, congratulations out to smizmiatch a.k.a. the Surly Poker Gnome on a job well done, as well as to Smokkee and Wes for their 2nd and 3rd place finishes and respective cashes as well in what is always among the most skilled field of all the blogger tournaments. And thanks again to Don for another fun time and a job well done with the Big Game.

One last thing, speaking of Smokkee -- Smokkee mentioned something in comments a couple of times to other blogs last week, and I have to give the guy props for pointing out another great new tournament that has quickly become my preferred way of winning the $26 Tier 1 tokens on full tilt. For Tier 2 ($75) tokens, I still prefer the nightly 9:45pm ET Token Frenzy tournaments, which pay out one $75 token for roughly even 5.5 entrants at just $14 a pop and have thus far proven very easy to win if you know how to play mtt sats and can avoid any bad luck in the earlygoing. But for the $26 Tier 1 tokens, full tilt in the past week has started these new $13.75 buyin heads-up sng's, where the losers gets zilch and the winner gets a $26 token. It's that simple. Beat a guy in a low-buyin heads up match, and win a token. And, having won 8 out of 11 of these hu matches this weekend, let me say that the quality of play in these things is not good. At all. In fact, even for $13.75, I ran into two or three different guys who were just the push-allin-preflop-almost-every-hand type of guys, who are for the most part laughably easy to beat. Let me put it this way: any situation that has me winning 8 out of 11 hu matchups has got to be easy, because I hate heads-up play and generally am not patient enough to wait out the best situation to get a lot of chips into the pot. In any event, this was a great find by Smokkee, and as I said at least for the time being it is far preferable for me even to those 18-person turbo Anna Nicole Britney Spears sex token sngs that I have played and written so often about. The average time of these things in 11 of them over the weekend I would say was probably 10 minutes or less (as compared to maybe 80 minutes for the 18-person turbo peep sngs), and for less than $5 more in buyin, to me that's the best tradeoff in the world. $5, worse opponent play on average and save me over an hour each time? Easiest decision in the world. Thanks, Smokkee.

OK I have a fun hand to analyze around the whole Any Two Cards concept at the end of tournaments, but I think I'll save that for Tuesday and get this post up now. I also bought a whole new spate of poker books this weekend, which I will be mentioning along the way as I read them since I've just finished re-reading a bunch of oldies but goodies for the tenth time as well as my latest batch of new poker texts. So there's lots of fodder there for future posts I'm sure. For now, you can find me tonight in Mondays at the Hoy at 10pm ET on pokerstars, where you will be too I'm sure, as well as in my usual run of Monday night bracelet race activity on full tilt. There is the regular 9:30pm ET $26 buyin 6-max nlh race on full tilt where I will definitely be, and plus Mondays at midnight also means another $216 buyin bracelet race paying the 2k prize packages to the top 10% of the field, which means I will be in most if not all of the 9:10pm, 9:30pm and 9:40pm ET satellites tonight into the midnight race as well. Will tonight be my night to get into the WSOP? I'm playing great lately so any day could be The Day for me! Check in here tomorrow to find out.

Basketball, Bracelets and the Big Game

Georgetown 80
Belmont 55

The Hoyas started off slow, but they quickly took a big lead and put this game away early. As they should against a team like Belmont. Offense intended. One down, five to go.

In my March Madness pools, I did ok. I'm right around the middle in most of the pools I am participating in, which include Miami Don's, UpForPoker's, Equinox Gym's, and a private pool run by a friend of a friend from my old stomping grounds up in Boston. Unlike many other people, I have entered the exact same pool in each, and only one entry in each. I'm not looking to maximize my chances of winning the cash in these things. Much like why I would never multi-account when I play online poker, I'm playing to win based on my skill but have no interest in bending the rules because money is just not my primary objective. Being the best is. So I've made my picks, and I actually decided to follow a strategy I've honed over the years which is not to pick the same national champion as everyone else because if they do win it, that makes it nearly impossible to win these pools. Instead, I've gone out on a limb and picked my Hoyas to win it all, even though deep down I do not see how they possibly have the horses to get past that monster Greg Oden and Ohio State. But I know if I pick OSU like many other players will pick, I won't really have a shot at winning. So I figure why not go with the Hoyas, who I honestly do expect to get to the Final Four, and then see if I can get lucky. Because if Georgetown does win, not only will I put myself in the hospital with severe alcohol poisoning, but I'll probably win a pretty penny in multiple NCAA pools as well.

Anyways, did I tell you guys that Duke was going to lose yesterday or what? I think I wrote a bit about this yesterday, but just to elaborate somewhat, the NCAA selection committee (I don't capitalize those words because the committee has not done anything to earn my respect) whacks off to the ACC. Every. Single. Year. As a result, you get a team like Duke -- who honest to god barely deserved to even make the tournament -- ending up with a 6 seed. Now, the selection committee can do whatever it wants and give any team whatever seed it wants. They think this makes them powerful in that they can overlook what a truly terrible season Duke had and what a truly mediocre team they really were this year, give them a 6 seed, and act like the actual games this season never happened for Duke. Never mind that they finished 8-9 in the crappy ACC after the conference tournament opener loss. Still, let's just give them a 6 seed and act like they were good this year after all. But you know what happens? Then you have them playing an 11 seed like VCU in the opening round of the Big Dance, only they're not like your normal 6 vs. 11 matchup. Duke, who themselves is really more like a 10 or 11 seed this year, is basically playing a game against a team that's every bit as good as them. They're expected to win handily being a 6 against an 11, but it's a fake 6. It's a selection committee whackoff 6. So was I surprised to see them lose to VCU last night? Not in the least. Duke sucked this year, and even the whackoffs couldn't get them to play like an actual 6 seed. Fuck 'em.

Same story this year for Maryland as well as Virginia -- #4 seeds for those two shitteams? Are you kidding me? But what can you do, when these selection committee members go home and eff their wives, they're not thinking of their wives while they're doing the nasty. They're not thinking of Christie Brinkley, or Carmen Electra or Tera Patrick or whoever floats your boat. They're thinking about making sweet, sweet love to the ACC. To the conference itself. Right in the puss. It's despicable and it's so transparent, year in and year out. But just like ever year, they can't do shit to actually make these ACC teams worthy of their seeds. So Maryland finally managed to pull away against #13 seed Davidson yesterday, but for a long while there they tried to lose that game too. And same story today with Virginia when they play Albany. Virginia will probably win the game because Albany barely even squeaked in to the tournament despite not being the best regular-season team in the America East conference this year. But if you're one of those sillies picking these alleged #4 seeds like Maryland or Virginia to get past the Sweet 16, you in trouble sista. They suck, and they're both more like 8 seeds than 4 seeds. So when they play those 5 seeds in the round of 32, they're up against teams that are in reality better than them for the most part. And then when they play the 1 seeds in the Sweet 16, they're not like a 4 against a 1. In reality, this is more like the top seeds' second round games, an 8 or a 9 against a 1 seed. And as you know, those teams usually get crushed and crushed hard.

Meanwhile, quality teams like Marquette who was in the top 25 all season long and had a great record in the Big East, the best conference in college basketball, they get a 9 seed that should have gone to Duke, and then they end up losing to a Michigan State team with a great coach who was very close to their skill level come tournament time. Give Marquette the 6 seed they deserved, and they'd have beaten a team like VCU. But instead they're out because they were underseeded, as the selection fuckers do every year to the Big East teams. Syracuse, who (it pains me to say) probably deserved a 10 seed in this tournament, they're not even given the chance to prove that they belong here after their 10-win season in-conference and 22 wins overall. What a filthy effing joke. But as long as nobody forces the selection committee to stop the silliness and the corruption, they will continue overseeding ACC teams every year, and underseeding the Big East teams. But unless the committee finds a way to pay off the referees and maybe even the players, those overseeded ACC teams will continue to go belly up in the early and middle rounds of the Dance because they're consistently up against teams who aren't seeded as high as them but who are as good or better than them in reality. And I'll continue to love every fucking minute of it, especially seeing those Duke anuses lose to a team with the word "Commonwealth" in their name. It's always a good day when Duke loses, especially in the NCAA tournament to end their season. What a bunch of jokers. Josh McRoberts? McSucks. Coach K? Coach F. Off.

OK how about some poker content here? Let me begin by saying this. I think I'm done playing low-buyin HORSE tournaments. Last night I played in the nightly bracelet race on full tilt, which on every other Thursday I believe is HORSE, at 9:30pm ET. I ran well in it, despite my apparently terrible O8 play (why do I love making that joke so much?), but eventually I took back-to-back redickubeats and I could not recover. I think I've just accepted that I am too tilty to play low-buyin HORSE tournaments anymore. Cash games I can still handle HORSE just fine and tend to do quite well in. I play all the games well (except the one, of course ;)) and when I can always go back to my pocket or back to the cashier for more money, I can almost always excel in limit HORSE on a cash table. But in tournaments, where one or two bad donkeysucks can effectively eliminate you and leave you scratching your head in anger, I just don't have the mentality for that anymore. You may notice I haven't talked about the nightly $26 buyin HORSE tournament at 10:15pm ET on full tilt in several weeks. That's because I gave up playing it about two months ago. I final tabled that biatch probably 6 or 7 times in the maybe 4 month run that I gave the thing, finishing as high as 3rd I think several weeks ago, but for the most part I decided sometime in late January/early February that for all the monkeys you need to get through to hit the larger payouts in that thing, the payouts weren't nearly worth the pain and suffering.

See, the problem with limit HORSE in tournaments is the stud games (razz, stud high and stud hilo). These games by their very nature are fucking replete with suckouts. There is a reason why nobody plays razz, stud or stud hilo in a no-limit format. It's because it is so common for the hand that's ahead to end up losing. Same reason nobody who's serious about poker plays no-limit Omaha. In omaha and stud games, there is very rarely a huge favorite early in the hand, and the possibilities for late-hand suckoutage are just everywhere, all the time. Even the AA double suited hands in omaha are rarely more than a 2-to-1 favorite over whatever random holding an opponent has before the flop. Even the buried pair of Aces in stud high is not much of a favorite over someone who is playing 3 suited cards or 3 connected cards early on in a stud hand. In hilo this discrepancy is even worse, since half the pot can go to the low hand in any event. So nobody plays these games no-limit, since it would make no sense to try to get all your money in early in a stud or omaha hand when, virtually no matter what you hold, you aren't possibly a really significant favorite. Contrast this with a game like holdem, which is quite often played no-limit, and make no mistake there is a clear reason why holdem is the only poker game that is commonly spread no-limit. That's because if you have Aces or another high pair, or if you are dominating your opponent, you can be as much as a 4-to-1 or higher favorite right from the flop. See, now it makes sense for the best players in the world to get all their money in early in the hand. You can be 90% or more to win on the flop in holdem, something which almost cannot possibly happen in omaha or stud after 4th street. This is why those games are spread at limit (or occasionally pot-limit) only, while holdem is regularly spread as a no-limit game.

But I digress. This is all a long-winded way of saying that these limit stud games are killing me. In 90% of the razz, stud and stud hilo hands I go deep into in these HORSE tournaments, I'm only going deep into the hand because I'm ahead. I've got a high pair or two pairs in stud, I've got a low draw and a flush draw in hilo, I've got a 4-card 7 in razz. I wouldn't be in there if I didn't have a good hand and am highly likely ahead. But in limit, very much unlike no-limit, there is nothing I can do to keep these donkeys from just paying a little bit more money to draw to their idiotic inside straight, or to draw to the runner-runner flush with 3 cards to come because they can't get away from the fact that they started with 3 suited cards in stud high or hilo. Believe me, I try it. You just can't get the donkeys to go away from those fuckdraws in a limit HORSE tournament. Again, on a cash table I want them to chase those draws, because they'll only hit them, say, 1 time in 4 or whatever, so I can take a lot of their money while they act like morons at the table. But in a tournament context, that 1 time in 4 when they do hit the draw, they snarf a huge pot away from me because I have correctly made them pay bigtime to chase, and suddenly my stack is decimated.

Last night in the bracelet race, I was in the top 5 with 40 or so players to go. I had played my typical solid game up to that point, winning a couple of big pots when truly terrible players could not get away from two pairs despite my door card pairing in stud high, or when the guy with the 76 low in razz could not fold despite my showing A246 on the board. I don't know why players like this get the urge to play HORSE, but one thing I've definitely noticed is that when it's a bracelet race, that really tends to bring out the huge donks. As it is, players online barely even know how to play most of the non-holdem HORSE games. Tell them it's a bracelet race, and every holdem-only donk in the universe who is on full tilt at the time wants a shot. It can be very lucrative, and makes it fairly easy for a well-rounded player like me (except in O8, of course) to climb the leaderboard like last night, but to actually win one of these things, you have to avoid about a million donkeys making about a million donkeychasing plays, and in the end it is very clear to me that it takes far, far more luck than skill. Much moreso than in a no-limit poker tournament where at least I know I have the ability to make a lot of the monkeychasers lay down their foolish draws, and where they might not even bother chasing the 4-outers, the inside straights, etc.

So, in 3rd place with 39 players remaining last night, I first had a monkey hit a river flush in stud high when I had been pushing a split pair of Aces from 3rd street on, which turned into Aces over Tens for me on fifth street when his board showed nada. That was about half my stack as I had been attempting to convince this assidiot to lay down from 3rd street on when it was apparent all along that I was way, way ahead. Then, on the very next hand, a guy raises it on 3rd street with a 9 showing, and I have a split pair of Jacks. I reraise, and he calls with his pair of 9s even though anybody but a monkey's anus would correctly fold in this spot. I go on to make two pairs, again on 5th street, and I'm betting out the whole way, and this guy just can't get away from that pair of 9s. Because, you know, split 9s is just about the best possible hand in stud high of course. Long story short, the monkey's anus ends up spiking a nine on the end, face down of course so even I couldn't know enough to get away from it, and suddenly in the span of two hands I've gone from 3rd out of 39, to 38th out of 39 players remaining. I tilted my ass outta there just as fast as I could for my last 400 chips on the next hand, and growled my way to bed. How annoying.

Anyways this is all why I don't plan to play the $26 buyin HORSE tournaments anymore (let alone those $5 jobs, which I played once upon a time and which are even worse -- somehow -- than the $26 buyin HORSE tournaments). I will still play in the Sunday night $216 buyin weekly HORSE guarantee whenever it entices me -- I have had very little trouble satelliting in to this tournament within a couple of tries in probably 80% of the weeks I decided to try to play, and this despite the fact that in one of the five HORSE games, I have no skills to speak of, mind you. Incidentally the best way I've found to get into that tournament if you're interested is to play the satellites that start late afternoon / early evening on Sunday night a few hours before the actual event kicks off every Sunday at 9:30pm ET. I used to stay up with jeciimd into the wee hours of the morning on Thursdays and Fridays and try to play my way in in the 12:30am ET $69 weekly HORSE satellites, and on occasion I'll still play that with him. The nice thing about that tournament is that it usually only has a very small handful of players so you only have to outlast typically 2 or 3 other competitors to win the seat. The downside, however, is that only one seat is awarded, and if you get a little bit of bad luck it can be very difficult to recover. In the Sunday night satellites, however, the total opposite is typically true. The two best sats I've found to play into the Sunday night HORSE 20k guaranteed tournament are the very last two that run, which I believe are a $26 satellite at 7:30pm ET -- typically with 30-40 runners and awarding seats to the top 4 or 5 finishers -- and then at 7:45pm ET the $75 buyin satellite, which usually has more like 15-20 players, but with the top 5-7 finishers winning their way in. Either one of these presents a nice opportunity to play your way in fairly easily to the $216 buyin HORSE event, and if I can win pretty regularly without even knowing how to play O8, just imagine what you can do with your totally well-rounded HORSE skills in these things. And although there is still plenty of monkeyage to go around in the big HORSE tournament, you just can't underestimate the value of eliminating that lowest level of donkey from a limit event like this. Trust me on that one.

OK what else real quick for this weekend. So Friday night is always a fun night for me on full tilt these days since they not only run the $26 nlh bracelet race at 9:30pm ET, but they also have the midnight ET nlh bracelet race that has the $216 buyin, meaning that 1 in 10 players in that thing win the 2k WSOP prize package. My nlh game has been on on on over the past few days, so I'm feeling good about my chances in one of these $75 or $216 buyin bracelet races coming up over the next week or so. Hopefully I'll get where I want to be. I won't buy in for the full $216 into these midnight races, because when the prize you're playing for is only worth $2000, you just can't buy in to too many tries at $216 a pop or it becomes not worth your while right quick. But, full tilt as usual comes through big time for its players with not one, not two, but three juicy satellites, all turbos, into this event every night it runs. First, at 9:10pm ET every night of a midnight $216 bracelet race, there is a regular $14 turbo sat into that event, awarding a seat to basically 1 out of every 14 entrants or so. At 9:30 every one of these nights, there is a $14 rebuy satellite as well, which typically has 30-40 players and which will typically end up paying out 7 or 8 seats depending on the exact number of entrants and the number of rebuys and addons. And then at 9:40pm ET these nights, full tilt also runs a $26 buyin turbo satellite into the midnight bracelet race, which has the best odds of all due to the buyin, and awards roughly 1 seat for every 8 entrants. In all, it's not too hard to satellite your way in for cheap into one of these $216 races, which as I said are really great because all you have to do is end up in the top 10% and you win your WSOP seat and the 2k total prize package. I myself have satellited my way in to 3 of these midnight races so far, and although I have yet to win my seat in one of them, I came fairly close just this past Wednesday as I wrote about recently, and like I said I'm feeling it lately so any day now you may be reading about my big win right here.

Last thing -- don't forget about the latest Big Game, hosted by Miami Don, which is scheduled for this Sunday at 9:30pm ET on full tilt. Remember, the buyin for this badboy is a $75 token, and this tends to make the prize pool in the $1500-$2000 range or more every time this game runs. And as I've mentioned here several times in the past, this is to me always one of the most fun times I can have with the bloggers. It tends to bring out the best of the best among our crew, and the payouts are big and the trash talk can be even bigger. And now with the advent of these "token frenzy" mtt's on full tilt (god I love that name), including the $75 token frenzy every night at 9:45pm ET, it is easier than ever to win yourself the token you need to get in to this thing if you have any modicum of mtt satellite skillz. So I will definitely be in there on Sunday night, and I hope many of you will get it together enough to make an appearance as well. If you want to pad your bankrolls on full tilt and play against a really good group of bloggers, there is no better outlet for that than the Big Game, happening this Sunday at 9:30pm ET. See you donkeys there! Hee hawwwwww!

Btw I like Notre Dame -4 over Winthrop, and Texas -8 over New Mexico State today, for entertainment purposes only of course.