Foxwoods Recap

Well, I'm back, and I didn't win the $41 grand first prize in Event #1 of the Foxwoods Mega Madness, although I might have played the best out of the 360 entrants in the tournament while I was around. In fact, I didn't even cash. Although I am very pleased with the way I played, this one definitely goes down as just another failed attempt in a long string of mostly failed attempts in large, multi-day mtt's. Maybe it's something about my style of play that causes me to take on too many risks or something, I don't know. All I do know is that this is probably what, six or even seven events now that run more than one day, and I have lasted to Day Two exactly one time in my life. It's pathetic, really.

Anyways, enough wallowing (for now). Suffice it to say I am not happy with the outcome on Saturday. But as I mentioned, I am pretty darn pleased with the way I played overall. First and foremost, I followed my fucking rules that I set out last Thursday and Friday here very well:

1. Play tight early. I managed not to lose 20% of my stack early on this time around, which was all goodness. In fact, I won the first pot I put chips into in the first round with just 5 players at my table, and I won the second as well. I do recall briefly dropping back below the massive 25k starting stacks (500 big blinds if you're keeping score) maybe an hour or so into the tournament around noontime, but even that sojourn below 25k was only a brief one, as for the first time in a little while I got off to a positive start instead of tossing chips in chasing haphazard, poorly thought-out risks.

2. Loosen up preflop late Although I didn't get to play too too late that I could really start stealing and restealing almost purely by feel as often happens when the blinds really escalate once you're into the money and really whittling things down, I am proud to say that I attempted two pure resteals with air in this tournament, both when I really needed them, and I was not the least bit cowed to pull the trigger. It was good getting back to some practice over the past couple of weeks, and I think this was one area where the practice directly and clearly benefited me. I maybe could have restolen even more, but too much restealing without the cards to back it up before the flop often leads to a violation of rule #3 from last week below.

3. Protect my chips from needless, thoughtless risks. Again I have to give myself credit here, as I mentioned I did not slough off a bunch of chips early chasing inside straight draws in three-way pots and the like, so I did a good job of preserving my big stack to make sure I still had plenty of chip utility as the blinds quickly doubled and then doubled again over the first two hours of play, cutting that starting stack from 500 big blinds (M of 333 if you're counting) to just 125 big blinds (M of 83) in four 30-minute levels. Ultimately, I was very patient through a run of very little to play with in terms of starting cards. I remember being dealt AKo in the first round of play, I raised it up with just four opponents and they all folded. Otherwise, I never saw pocket Aces, pocket Kings, pocket Queens or pocket Jacks all day, nor did I ever get dealt AQ or AT (I was dealt the sooted JackAce in hearts once, which I won preflop as I recall late in the afternoon / early evening). I got one other AK as well, this one also sooted, and I played that one for an allin reraise in the evening when I was short and needed to push my good hands just to survive. But I just didn't get dealt the good starting cards. So, as any good poker player does, I had to improvise. I played a bunch of connectors in this thing for cheap pots early, with these super-deep stacks I just could not resist, but I didn't let myself call a lot of raises with them. Just limp along behind a previous limper (there are always tons of limpers early in these big events), or open-raise maybe to disguise my hand and give my c-bet a better chance of taking the pot down, but I didn't just throw in four and five big blinds every time just to chase spec cards indiscriminately as I think I was doing over the past week or two. Since I don't tolerate well just sitting around and watching my stack and my M dwindle while I wait for premium starting cards, I figured I'm going to have to really open up my standards early to see cheap flops if I want to maintain a roughly 10-15% flops seen percentage, is as (at least) my usual in my successful poker tournaments. As a result, after several rounds of just folding everything I began open-raising or overlimping every sooted connector I saw above 43s, every sooted one-gapper above 42s, and even pretty much every sooted two-gapper above 63s, in addition to every pocket pair I received (there weren't many, which included me folding the best starting hand I saw all day in TT to a raise and reraise preflop from a tighty who would go on to show pocket Queens). Oh, and when the internet pro kid in the sunglasses and the hoodie two seats to my right reraised preflop and then c-bet, won and showed the hammer on the flop against a guy across the table, I congratulated him and eventually ended up raising, winning and showing two hammers myself as well. I mean, I had to play something like I had a hand I could take to a flop, and sometimes if the poker gods aren't going to give that hand to you, and you have some fold equity left, you just have to act like the poker gods gave it to you anyways. This got me involved in a lot of pots with weak cards hot and cold, but they were tricky and powerful cards at the same time. Once in a while I would hit em a little bit, or I would smell weakness from my opponent, and I was basically able to hold my own and stay a little above the starting stack for a good five or six hours just playing like that. I did not play any big, big pots, and I preserved what I had and didn't allow myself to get a big portion of my stack into a situation without a big hand to back it up. The biggest pots I won between the 11am starting time (25k starting stack) and the 6:50pm dinner break (66k chips) were:

I flopped two pairs with 96s on a K96 board three or four rounds in, against a guy who called a large check-raise by me on the turn when another raggy four fell, and then checked down with me when I got scared of the river Ace (he showed KQo).

Two or three hours in, a guy bet into me on the KQ7 flop, I called with KJ because this clown had bet at every single flop all night long, and then he proceeded to bet into me again on the turn, and again on the river where I was so sure he was feigning strength with the way he threw his chips into the middle -- again I had seen him do this once or twice before already on the day -- that I considered raising him, but didn't want to be the dickhead losing half his stack raising the river with top pair against a guy who'd bet into him on all three streets. He showed QT for middle pair, middle kicker. No way he could stop betting that one, even on the river, right? This pot literally added about 60% to my stack at the time, and was a much-needed boost over 35k for the first time as I kind of struggled all day to stay even with average even though I did manage to slowly grow my chip stack throughout the day.

In the late afternoon, I limped into a three-way pot from the button with T9o (this is the kind of hand I had to expand my range to as I continued not to receive the premium starting cards that everyone knows to play), and the flop came down J86 with two of a suit. The first player checked this flop that isn't going to help most preflop raisers unless they had a big pocket pair, and I checked as well in the hopes of seeing a free card with my open-ender, and then the huge stack across the table from me slid out a way-too-large bet, probably one-and-one-third times the size of the current pot. He was this old guy who'd been at my table for a good few hours at this point, and he had been caught totally bluffing with multiple barrels on at least three different occasions, but he bet so often and so aggressively that he had won a ton of pots doing that same thing as well, and he got paid bigtime on his few big hands because of that Gus Hansen-like style. But the only other time I had seen him bet so many chips relative the size of the pot over several rounds of play, he had done it with the exact same mannerism he had used this time -- really throwing the chips way out in front of him, almost like he was angry at them or something -- and that time, he had been called down and would not even show his cards, he auto-mucked them without even seeing what his opponent had. He had also recently lost a large-ish pot and I think might have been steaming a little as it was, but something about the way he shoved made me not believe him for a second. If anything, it seemed like an angry shove by someone who had missed the flop and had really expected to nail it. His bet was for around 8000 chips into a pot with I think 6900 in it, and at the time I had around 45k in chips in my own stack. I debated pushing allin right there, but frankly, I didn't want to throw em all in there in case he might actually be willing to make it obvious to me that he really is strong here with another raise or lead-out on the turn, and I thought in the end that an allin didn't look as strong or as scary anyways as just a raise. I kicked it up to 21k, carefully selected to leave myself enough still for a very credible bet on the turn if necessary, and I had made sure my stack was perfectly flush and visible to him so that he could figure that fact out on his own as he considered my raise. He hemmed and he hawed, but he eventually folded and I climbed up just over 60k shortly before the dinner break.

I headed to Fifth Street, the newly-redone cafe in the back of the poker room downstairs at Foxwoods, and got a nice down-home sausage and egg sandwich freshly made on a bagel for me at 7pm. That went down well and left a nice feeling in my stomach as I headed back in to try to make a run. We were down to 100 runners left out of the 360 who started at 11am on Saturday morning, and the average stack was 90k, leaving me at about two-thirds of average with 66k and change. Blinds would be starting at 2500-5000 after the break, giving me a little over 13 big blinds and basically precious little room to do anything other than push preflop other than maybe limp from the small blind. Fortunately for me, I quickly picked up pocket 9s in the cutoff, and when the guy to my right with a slightly shorter stack than me open-pushed when the action folded around to him, I called, hoping to win the race but overjoyed to see 66, and when my 9s held, I vaulted up to just over 100k in chips, the first time I had been above the average chip stack since the first few minutes of the tournament some nine hours-plus ago.

I was resolved to hold on to my above-average stack, that I had worked so hard and been so patient to get. This is so how many of my deep runs go -- I sit around, holding on through the early levels, not much to work with -- and then suddenly it all bursts and late in the pre-money stage, suddenly I pick up a hand or two and I go on a run. It's annoying as hell surviving long enough to get there, but when you finally do, you want to cherish it all the more because of all the work you had to do in winning all your pots with T8 and 96 and with reraise-bluffs, etc. Late in the second hour after dinner break, with blinds at 3k-6k and a 600 ante, and my stack still sitting comfortably just above average at around 115k in chips, I called a preflop reraise to 16k with my 98s in spades when I was in the small blind and there were already two others in to see the pot. The flop came down a beautiful T76 rainbow, giving me not only the flopped straight, but one with no flush draw on the flop, and it was even the top part of a flopped inside straight that is going to be extremely hard for anyone to pick up a higher straight than mine on. So I check the action from the cutoff, and the guy across the way with maybe 80k in chips leads out for a normal-sized bet of 22k into what had to be a 60k pot already. The next guy folds, so it's just me and the bettor heads-up. I do my best hollywood, looking up in the air as if I have something to think about, taking a good 45 seconds or more to ponder my next move as if I wasn't sitting on the stone cold nizzuts. I recall even taking the time to cut out the 22k from my stack and look at the rest of it, as if I wanted to see what might happen if I called but then had to fold the hand on the turn. Eventually, not wanting to spoil that hollywood and spook my opponent with a raise, I cut off enough chips for a call and slid them slowly out to the middle.

The turn came another 6, making the board now T766. Not the literal best card I could hope for by a long shot, but all things considered, certainly not a bad card to me. If anything, I can use it to my advantage, as I quickly pushed in the rest of my stack as if I maybe had a 6, all the while hoping that he was the one who maybe held a 6 in his hand and would give me another near-double up to jump me up near the top of the remaining 75 or so players' stacks. The guy absolutely amazes me by calling, and his face quickly turns very red as he flips up...QTo. Now, granted, this was a limped pot, but this guy is calling my allin bet on a T766 board for a lot of chips with QT. As I stood up, I said out loud, "I flopped the straight, but since he called I'm sure he's going to be drawing at me", but then when he flipped up just top pair, I literally had just said in amazement "Or, no, he's actually drawing dead" when the dealer peeled off another six on the river. Immediately I saw my mistake, that my opponent was actually drawing to four outs on the river -- the two other tens and the two other sixes -- and he had just nailed one of them on a miracle 91%-to-9% underdog shot with one card to come. The people at my table nearly fell over, first from sheer amazement when they saw what my opponent called me with, and then from grimacing an groaning as the river was turned and I started stacking my chips next to his to pay this guy off.

I mean, I'm aware that this is ultimately just the standard bad beat story that the Internets are much better off without since April 15 of this year, but come on! You bust ass all night to fight and claw and pick your way down to the final quintile or so of players left, you never see a premium starting hand, you wait all night long to finally flop your first big flop of the entire tournament, you dupe a guy into sheer embarrassment for his entire stack, waiting until after the turn to do so, and a guy hits for a better than ten-to-one longshot on the river to cripple you. I was beside myself. I felt like that fat kid at the WSOP last year, losing that huge pot to get eliminated short of the final table thanks to that huge spike on the river. I had to get up and take a walk for a couple of hands just to keep myself calm enough to finish out the tournament, but this was a blow that I would never recover from. It was around 9:45pm when I lost this huge hand -- closing in on 11 hours in to one of the longest days of poker of my life -- and I still had around 30k in chips left, although with the blinds set to increase momentarily to 4k-8k with an 800 chip ante, 30k in chips ain't much to play with.

Amazingly, I managed to last another hour and a half even with each round of poker costing 20k just to see ten flops (we had recently consolidated again to ten-person tables with 60 players remaining out of the 360 who had started -- slated to pay the top 35 finishers, btw). Here I folded mostly every hand I saw for 90 minutes, with the exception of one nice resteal from another shorty who wanted to stay alive to make the minimum cash of $1188, and two others. One was an allin push from me with A9s from middle position, which got called by the huge stack on the button with 77 and my Ace hit to prolong my agony a bit further, at that time bringing me back up to around 40k in chips. And the other was at around 11:15pm, when I was back down to around 32k in chips, and I look down to finally see AKo, just my second AK of the night (the first since the very first round twelve hours earlier), and believe me when I say it was just what I needed at that point in time. I pushed allin preflop once again from middle position, and once again the button with the ginormous stack gave me the once-over, before announcing out loud, "Eh...I've got the chips, I'll pay you off." He flips up KJo, a joyous sight for my big slick, that is until the Jack-high flop ended my night in a very annoying, and yet extremely a propos fashion.

So that's the story. I got very little to play with, but I made my own action for twelve hours on Saturday at Foxwoods, and in the end some shithead called my flopped straight down with top pair Queen kicker and hit a 9% shot on the river to take most of my chips. I survived another couple of hours as a mini stack, only to run AK into KJ preflop and not be able to fade a Jack on the flop. All that hard work, wasted. All that money so close to in my grasp, gone (first prize in this was 41k, with 9k going to the first elimination from the final table in 9th place). And, maybe it's a function of just having been away from the game for a while, but it is still bothering me greatly here some 36 hours post detonation.

Poker is a brutal game, and tournament poker all the moreso. In case anyone was wondering, I notice that the Department of Justice hasn't done shit to change that aspect of poker at all over the past few months. I'll tell you one thing though -- I am sure glad that was't a $2000 buyin that got monkeysucked by a window-licking momo without a brain in his head out close to the money at the WSOP. I literally would have put my hand through the computer screen entire fucking Amazon room.

In Poker, So Hot and Yet So, So Cold

Ever wonder why I tend to get kind of short when people talk about how "bad they run"? Why I openly chuckle when I read about someone quitting poker because of how bad they got screwed...in the Mookie last night? Or why I don't have the pitying reaction you're looking for when I read your story about your brutal loss in the first hour of that 1500-person mtt you like to run on occasion?

This weekend of online poker for me had all the answers and then some. I should start by saying that I played some of the best poker of my entire life over the past four nights (I was home from work on Friday, so this was like a four-day weekend for me in terms of being able to stay up late and make some deep runs without having to worry about being up at the crack of dawn to get to the office). But while playing a bunch of really awesome tournament poker enabled me to make deep run after deep run over the weekend -- some of it in some pretty damn big tournaments -- something always seemed to just get in the way to prevent me from making the real big money on the weekend. And the stuff that "just got in the way" this weekend was enough to make most of you yak in your shoes, especially when you consider how much actual cash money I left on the table over the past few days.

So here was this weekend in a nutshell for me.

On Thursday night, I didn't do much in a few of the other tournaments I played, but I made an awesome run in the nightly 25k guaranteed sniper (bounty) on UB. After nearly five hours of play, I'm in 6th place out of 17 remaining. I've spent hours building up a solid image and playing absolutely, positively mistake-free tournament poker to get to this point, and I find JJ in mid-late position and open-raise it up preflop. The guy to my immediate left calls, who had played fairly tight over the past couple of hours at the table with me and the flop comes the almost best possible flop I could imagine:



I mean, sure, everyone wants to flop top set, but when you think about it, when you're this close to the final table and are looking to build an insurmountable stack, and your preflop raise without an Ace gets called, you're almost rather looking to flop second set with an Ace on board so you can feel confident you're going to get paid off by someone holding a big Ace of some kind. I had played with this guy for hours and I was quite sure he does not just call my preflop raise with pocket Aces, so needless to say I was thrilled with my situation there on the flop, and I could begin to smell the 6k+ first prize as I prepared my bet on the flop. I bet around half the flop, wanting to seem a little weak and encourage a raise from a guy with an Ace, and was overjoyed when the guy pushed allin on me without even a moment's deliberation:



Of course I can't fall over myself fast enough to call, and my opponent flips up QTd -- not even an Ace -- for a Queen-high flush draw and an inside straight draw to boot. With my set on the flop, plus all the redraws to a boat even if my opponent makes his straight of flush, I am a 66% favorite here, or 2-1 to amass a monstrous stack and be comfortably in second place of the 17 runners remaining. But then check out the turn (and the river!):



He made his 2-to-1 shot on the turn, and then made it again on the river for good measure, and of course no resuck for me. First prize in this tournament was a little over 6k. I bust in 17th place for a paltry $420 instead after playing absolutely perfect poker and flopping a set on pretty much the most favorable flop for me that I could realistically have imagined.

Moving on to Friday, I should mention that I finished in 22nd out of 1227 players in that same nightly 30k guaranteed tournament on pokerstars that I took 2nd place and 1st place in earlier this month:



My exit here wasn't bad, really. After losing a big race with 77 vs AQ, I was in 18th place out of 22 left when I obviously open-pushed allin with A8o from the hijack, and the cutoff woke up with AK. IGH in 22nd place -- netting under $100 cash in the process as opposed to the first prize of around 6k -- but at least it wasn't a suckout or bad beat that did me in.

Unfortunately, I can't say that about the rest of my weekend's big eliminations.

Also on Friday, I busted from the nightly $75 buyin, 7pm ET 40k guaranteed tournament on full tilt in 26th place, my second-deepest ever run in this tournament, and this one was another of those eliminations that I just cannot deal with very easily. A middle position player who's been highly aggro for hours open-raises it up preflop, and I call from late position holding pocket 7s, feeling pretty confident based on this guy's history that I am ahead here of what is likely a couple of big calls. The flop comes T88, and my opponent insta-pushes allin for the rest of his stack without waiting even half a second after seeing the flop hit the felt, the classic sign that a donkey has missed the flop with two overs, and I think for just a few seconds before calling him down, and I am shown AQ unimproved. I'm in line to have a top-3 stack with fewer than three tables left, but no sooner can I begin to enjoy having outplayed another guy in a huge spot in a big tournament, that the turn comes a Queen:



First prize in this one was around 10k. I bust in 26th place for $220. Who knows how much more Tournament EV I left on the table there, but with a 3rd-place stack and 25 players left, several thousand was entirely likely for me, a heck of a lot better than a measly $220 for my efforts.

Also on Friday night -- a "great" night of poker for me that featured three really deep runs in the same evening -- was UBOC Event #12, the $150 buyin, 75k guaranteed sniper tournament that is right up my alley. I absolutely crushed in this one, taking advantage of two AA's and a KK during the second hour of play to build up a massive stack early, after which I coasted for a good couple of hours before taking advantage of countless Harringbots on my way to another deep run in UB's annual poker tournament championship series. I made so many great plays in this thing, never missing a read and always keeping my aggro in check despite being in the top 10 in chips pretty much from early in the second hour all the way to the 7th hour. I managed to bust 16 people along the way, which I know because you get one of those little bounty windows (and a $15 bounty prize) with every elimination in these sniper events on UB, and I was an absolute terrorist from start to finish through the field of 573 runners who came out to play UBOC #12.

Unfortunately, "finish" for me in this ended up being in 15th place, when I held a 4th place stack and ran KK into the 5th place stack's AA:



KK into AA, with less than two full tables left in one of the annual majors on UB. It is just so sick, especially since I didn't even reraise allin preflop with my Kings, opting instead to wait to see if an Ace fell to give me a way to get off the hand, but the Q22 flop did me no good as it it just about the least scary flop imaginable for a guy holding KK. But alas, this one was in the cards (pun intended) from literally seven hours earlier, and IGH two hands later in 15th place with just $570 to show for my efforts, plus of course the sixteen $15 bounties I picked up along the way. First prize in this tournament was 18k, and I had been in 4th place of 15 left, and was dealt KK to boot. From 18k to $571, with one flip of the cards. In light of all the other stupidity I ran into late in mtt's this weekend, this KK into AA might have been the biggest sickness of them all.

Not to be outdone, on Saturday night I final tabled full tilt's nightly $26, 8pm ET 35k guaranteed tourney for the second time this month, powering my way through more than 1200 runners despite having nothing going on for the first two hours in the event. So we're down to 8 runners left, with me in 6th place of those 8 remaining. The tournament short stack raises the 24k big blind to 72k from early position, and I push my own short stack of 390k allin from the big blind with pocket 7s. I am of course instacalled by AQs. The flop is clean, and the turn is cleaner, and I am just one card away from sitting solidly in 2nd place of 7 remaining in the 35k:



And then, putting a delicious capper on a weekend that was so hot, and yet so, so cold on the virtual felt:



Seven hands later, I'm out in 8th place, for a wonderful consolation prize of $761. Now, 29 buyins is 29 buyins to be sure. But, first prize in this tournament was $8800, and I was one card away from a 2nd-place stack with 7 players remaining. From $8800 to $761, it's hard for me to feel anything but queasy about it even when I re-read this a couple of days later.

I played consistently the best poker I've played over a whole weekend in my entire poker-playing life over the past few days. And while I probably netted around 2k overall over the period, realistically I've got to guess I left what, 15 to 20k in Tournament EV on the table in very real terms over the entire weekend.

So forgive me if I don't necessarily share your opinion that you "run so bad" because of how that $10 90-person sitngo ended for you the other night.

Sad Poker Story

I have literally not even been able to write about this for the past couple of weeks, but a few weeks back I suffered far and away the worst beat of my live poker career, easily outdoing getting suckout-eliminated by then reigning world champion Joe Hachem from my first WSOP tournament back in 2006. I had headed down to the Borgata to play in one of the Borgata Poker Open events, which was a $350 buyin tournament that ended up with around 300 runners and a prize pool of around $90k as I recall. I had the fortune of being seated at Table 1 for the tournament, and I had my favorite seat at the table -- Seat 5, right in front of the dealer, with the shortest distance between my eyes and where the board cards are placed -- so I knew things were starting off good because my table would not be broken for several hours and I loved my seat and my position against the other troubling players at the table.

I really can't say how I managed to stay alive, let alone chip up at all, in this tournament, as this was one of those increasingly frustrating events where I am literally forced to sit and watch every single player around me showing down pocket Aces, pocket Kings, pocket Queens, pocket Aces vs pocket Kings, etc. I saw the same guy win three huge pots with pocket Aces while at this table, and I even saw one player show pocket Aces, pocket Aces, pocket Kings, pocket Kings and pocket Queens all while sitting with me for no more than two hours maximum on the day. And meanwhile, I was dealt JJ on the very first hand of the tournament (I raised, got called preflop and then had to fold to action on an Ace-high flop), I saw AK exactly two times, and otherwise I didn't get dealt shiat for starting cards. For hours and hours. It was so, so sick. I don't think I have folded more patiently in any live tournament I have ever played in -- the BPO event I was playing started with I think 12k stacks and featured 30-minute blind rounds, so there was at least a little more time than in your average 15- or 20-minute live casino blind rounds tournament, and I was determined not to get nailed by a 2-outer or one of these naked-flush-draw-on-the-flop idiots who had ignominiously eliminated me from my last three live events so I wanted to be patient and try to play as deep into hands as possible before committing my chips, and to start with the best possible starting hands wherever possible to help enable me to do that.

Anyways, I sat and watched as literally every single spot around the table showed down pocket Aces at least once, and many of the seats two or three times, while I never even sniffed pocket Aces, pocket Kings or pocket Queens, I received exactly two big slicks, and not even a single AQ to play with, over the time I survived in this tournament, which totalled a little over six hours of play. I can still recall the anguish and annoyance I felt near the later stages as we got near the money payouts as these clowns were just showing Aces over and over and over again, and I simply could not believe the luck was so uneven for me that there had to be literally20 or 30 pocket Aces or Kings hands spread across the 10 seats at this table that day (and that's only counting the ones that were shown!), but that not a single one of them had come my way on the day. I mean, how do you play for six+ hours with only JJ, JJ, AK, AK and AJ to show for your "premium" hands, and never even receive a single truly premium hand on the entire day? How could anyone survive under those circumstances for any meaningful period of time in such a tournament?

And yet somehow, that is just what I did. As I mentioned, I don't even think I can recall at this point how I managed to amass a stack in this thing, but I do remember that every big hand I won, was won with either two totally shit cards on a naked steal or resteal from me, or with a spec hand like T7s that I had opened for a raise preflop and ended up making two pairs with. For example, I won a big pot when I opened for a raise with A4s, the flop came down K94 rainbow, and then the turn came another 4 and gave me unknowable trips, and I played the hand exceedingly well to get paid handsomely by my opponent with KQ (in this case I bet the flop on a c-bet from my preflop raise against my tight heads-up opponent, but then I checked the turn when I hit my miracle 4, such that when I bet strong on the river he felt totally compelled to call). I won another nice pot when I turned a straight with J9s and was able to milk another nice river bet from an opponent who himself had made two pairs on that same turn card. But that's what I was winning with -- the 75s, the 97o, the A4 and A5 sort of hands, while everyone else just kept flipping up pocket Aces in showdowns, or maybe if they were weak, pocket Kings. It was so frustrating, and it made the mental drain on me far, far worse than usual for this kind of a tournament, because no matter what people say about how stressful big mtt's are in general, getting dealt AA or KK every other orbit pretty much plays itself, and there is very little stress involved in relative terms in finding your way through such situations. Not when compared anyways to having to constantly be evaluating whether you are ahead or behind before the flop and on most flops and turns as well, like you obviously have to do every step of the way when you're trying to win pots exclusively playing starting hands like suited semiconnectors, small pairs and the like. Every single pot was a struggle for me without exception, and on two or three different occasions in the first several hours I was allin on what was more or less a total and complete bluff where I surely would have been eliminated from the event if any one time my opponent in the hand had just decided to make a donkey call.

About four hours in, with me sitting at my tournament high of around 50k in chips from the 12k starting stacks, the loudmouth guy across the table -- a euro (judging by the accent) for those of you interested in such things, who not only dressed like Sammy Farha but even kept an unlit cigarette in his mouth for the last hour or two he played in this tournament -- reraised me allin preflop when I held the second of my two AK hands on the day, and I instantly called him allin pre given the complete and utter shit I had seen his euro ass been chasing all through the tournament, and he flipped up pocket Jacks for what was fixing to be probably the largest pot of the tournament at my table. A King came on the flop, and the euro guy proceeded to trash me to no end for several minutes for instacalling with AK preflop and for "playing AK like it's actually a hand preflop" as he gathered up his things and left, bitching the whole time until he was out of earshot, but the upshot of all this was that I was suddenly up over 100k in chips, and a top-10 stack in the event as we wore down towards the 27 people who would receive payouts in the tournament.

From there, I continued to play very patiently, as I wanted to start to muscle people around with my stack, but the cards and the situations I continued to be faced with simply did not support my making almost any moves at all. A couple of times I raised with J4o and 92o when the action folded around to me in mid-late position, and of course I had to fold when one of the few people behind me actually woke up with a playable hand, and that got old fast with blinds and antes of 1000-2000-300 and an average stack of around 50-60k in the event. So for the most part, I continued folding. The people around me (who by this point in time, with over 80% of the starting field eliminated, were every single one of them not the same people with whom I had started at this table some four or five hours earlier) still continued to be dealt premium pocket pairs at an alarmingly annoying rate given the cards I had to deal with, but still my big stack remained intact as we progressed down to the final 75 and then the final 50 players remaining in the tournament.

At one point, with 44 runners remaining and with 27 set to receive payouts, I was still sitting on a top-5 stack in the tournament at around 110k in chips, and I open-raised a little over 3x from middle position with pocket 5s, sadly among the best starting hands I had been dealt on the day. I got only one call, from a tight old man on the button who I figured to have some sort of a hand even to just call from the button when he had not voluntarily put chips into the pot in the hand to begin with. Incidentially, this was also a guy whose picture had been scrolling through the images being shown on the walls of the Borgata's poker tourament room, and he had earlier explained that yes, he had won the $500 buyin event earlier in the BPO already but he wished he didn't have to keep admitting it publicly with his picture being shown all over the place.

So anyways, this guy calls my preflop raise with 55 from the button, and the flop comes down a stone cold miracle, TT5. I have flopped a boat, and done so with a hidden set in my hand, a far, far superior hand to "flopping a boat" with 55 if the flop comes down, say, JJJ or some similar trips. Even though 9 times out of 10 I will check in this spot, not wanting to lose my opponent when I am holding such an unbeatable monster this early in the hand, in this case I had been c-betting almost without abandon at all all through the tournament since I had been playing so few hands in the first place due to the shitcards I was dealt, and when I've been c-betting like it's going out of style, it is crucial to also c-bet with my strong hands to help balance out the average value of the cards I am holding when I do fire out a bet on the flop after already being the aggressor preflop. So I went ahead and fired out for about 2/3 the flop, the same size bet I would make if I was holding pocket Aces here or an unimproved hand like AK or AQs. My opponent -- a tight old man player, again, mind you -- hesitated briefly before moving in his entire stack, which was about twice the size of my bet.

I don't think I hesitated for more than a second or two on this decision, but is anyone realistically folding here? Again, I've got 55 on a TT5 flop, and the tight guy I am playing heads-up just called my preflop raise and is now pushing allin on this flop with a good-sized stack that is itself also a top-ten stack like my own with just 44 runners remaining in the tournament. I mean, the only way I possibly lose this hand are if he just happens to have TT in his hand for the sickly flopped quads, and of course no sane person can put him on exactly that hand given the action here. Given how tight he is, and the fact that he called my preflop raise, I'm figuring he is on one of two different kinds of hands here: ATs, possibly JTs, or a big pocket pair like Queens or Jacks (I am assuming he would have reraised preflop with Aces or Kings). And the simple fact is, I am crushing every single one of those hands. TT is just not an option that is worth considering folding here to. This guy with himself a big stack has just pushed his entire pile of chips into the middle in a spot where I just flopped a boat by making a set with my two hole cards. I am obviously calling here.

I announce I call within one or two seconds of the old man's push, and right away he gets this sick look on his face as he flips up? Pocket 9s. So it was a much looser push than I would ever expect from this old man-looking guy who has not pushed a bad hand yet even one time that I have seen, but I guess I had been forced to fold to enough preflop and flop raises of my bullshit bets with totally worthless hole cards that he figures this is his time to make a stand. I flip up my pocket 5s for the boat, and the color drains right from the guy's face. As I'm giving him the apologetic "I just made a huge flop" explanation, the dealer burns and turns and a mother fucking nine rolls right out to the board, staring me in the face for a good two or three seconds before it finally sunk in what had just happened. The river was a harmless King (how awesome would the resuck have been in that spot??), and then there I am, counting off 87k in chips to match his stack, leaving me suddenly with less than a third of the average stack and under 10 big blinds in a spot where I was so close to garnering such a huge stack that, given my experience and the way I play, it is almost inconceivable that I would not have final tabled.

First prize in this tournament was something like 24 grand btw, did I mention that?

As I said, this was a beat the degree of which I cannot say I have ever experienced before in live play, and let me tell you I hope I never have to again. Making that walk out of the big convention room two hands later when my 8 big blinds with 85s failed to hold up against AQ was an absolutely horrible feeling, and as I drove myself home up the lovely Garden State Parkway, I must have talked to myself out loud with the radio all the way down for at least the next 90 minutes straight. I mean, I just could not get out of my head what had just happened to me.

Tournament poker really is something that only crazy people would ever really focus on. You bust your ass for seven hours -- or for four days, for that matter -- amassing this nice huge stack, folding after folding after folding (I would guess my VPIP at the Borgata could not have been higher than 6 or 7% given how horrible my hands were all day long), playing good, patient poker, and not making a single mistake or getting in behind even a little bit even one time, and then all of a sudden, POOF! it all vanishes like a fart in the wind. Through a total setup suckout hand in a huge spot the likes of which are almost unfathomable by most people out there reading this. I could not and would not have played that hand any differently, and my god if you gave me the choice I would specifically opt to be in that exact same position 10,000 times in a row, but there you go, even a 19-to-1 shot sometimes is not enough of a lead I guess. Hopefully this at least means that I have another 16 or 17 of these similar situations in the future coming to me where I can hold up and go on to make a big splash in some other mtt with some real money at stake. But for now, it's taken me the better part of a few weeks to even be able to write this all down and type it out on my pc. Even reading the story now makes me angry and sad and frustrated all over again, and the thought of plunking down a few hundys anytime soon again to play with these monkeys who just cannot get in ahead of me no matter how hard they try is really unnerving.

Tournament poker is for the birds, I tell you.

Bad Luck, Bad Result in the ToC

Well the BBT5 Tournament of Champions has come and gone, with three of our brethren winning themselves $10,000 prize packages and another two more nabbing $2,000 prize packages along the way. Unfortunately, my name is not among them.

What happened, you may wonder, given my solid confidence yesterday heading in to the big game?

It's pretty simple, really. I started off the ToC playing like a total spewmonkey, and the cards were just not with me. I lost a big pot within minutes when I correctly put xkm on a lower pair to my QQ on a 478 board, but I opted not to raise, thinking I could extract some more chips from what I figured would likely be another lead bet on the turn if an Ace or King did not fall. When the turn brought a 9 which also put a flush draw on the board, I opted to just call xkm's bet once again, again correctly reasoning that I was ahead but not wanting to go nuts with the possible straight having filled a couple of times now, and given the deep stacks we had in this event thanks to Al and Full Tilt. When the river brought an ugly, despicable Ten, runner-runnering to a 4-card straight, I felt compelled to make the crying call of xkm's fairly small bet of around 40% of the pot, although of course I was less than thrilled to do so. What's that? Why didn't I raise this hand on the flop or the turn? Well, the stacks are so deep, and I was afraid xkm might have a decent pair lower than mine which I was afraid he might just push in with. And do I want to get it all in this early in a super stack, slow structure tournament with just an overpair of Queens? The reason I don't is, well, I would have busted on this hand if I had. xkm flipped up JJ on the river for the sick runner runner straight, and I was down below 4000 from the 5k starting stacks within just minutes of beginning. I did not play that hand optimally I don't think, but I am pretty sure xkm is not going away with the overpair, which means again that I literally would have gotten allin on the flop, been a 9-to-1 favorite with two cards to come, and then busted on just about the worst runner-runner rivering ever if I had. So instead I chose to keep the pot small but still ended up taking it on the chin at the river.

From here though I slowly regained my composure, made a number of huge plays, some of them with the goods and some of them as bluffy as I get, and by the end of the first hour, I was just over 5300 chips, back above the starting stack and ready to get my aggro on in Hour 2. Which is exactly what I did, slowly chipping my way up as I stole more and more pots, my c-bets finally getting some respect, and before I knew it, I was in second place in the tournament (with jj ahead of me, of course).

And then I ran KK into AA. As I've often said here, I have never yet run into the situation where I would fold KK preflop, but in this case there was so much dead money already in the pot thanks to a half-stack reraise preflop from xkm after I had raised it up with pocket Kings in early position, that I just felt like a total tool if I did not play this hand for stacks after a third player raised it up as well, trying to make a move on what certainly looked like a stealy raise from xkm. Well KK into AA it was, allin preflop -- in a spot where I would not possibly have gotten away even on the flop as my Kings were an overpair -- and instead of being the massive chip leader in the tournament with 16 left, I was suddenly a pretty short stack with under 2900 chips remaining.

Fast forward maybe 15 minutes, however, and I had managed to claw my way back to over 6000 chips, having won a nice pot with Aces vs someone else's top pair, and after some failed steals gone bad, we came to the last hand of Hour 2, which saw Goat raise it up 3x from middle position. I have JJ in the small blind, so I do my best impression of a final-minutes-of-the-round resteal and raise it up but not even all in. Goat pauses and ten pushes, I figure must have been beat but I have to call for very few chips remaining into a now large pot, and I am overjoyed to see that I am allin preflop with pocket Jacks up against Goat's pocket 9s. I barely had time to relish a sweet double at the end of the hour when the flop comes 9TQ, giving Goat the flopped set but me an unlikely straight draw. My straight miraculously filled with the 8 on the turn, but the rivered Ten sealed my fate, and I was done in the mid teens.

So how did I go out so fast in the BBT5 Tournament of Champions after being so confident going in yesterday? Runner-runnered for 20% of my stack five minutes in against a guy who bet me repeatedly while he was hopelessly behind in the hand. Amass large stack, but then run KK into AA in a 3-way pot. Then rebuild again to near average and then lose JJ to 99 allin preflop. Anybody out there know how to still be alive after all that in a no-limit tournament? Me neither.

Good times, this poker thingie.

Huge, huge congratulations go out to JJ today for winning the 10k prize for the second straight year in the BBT ToC. JJ is like the Cris Carter of the BBT -- all he does is win tournaments. Seriously, that is an incredible feat to win this grand prize two years running, and it could not happen to a better guy, or to a more deserving guy. For reals -- JJ was the prohibitive chip leader in this tournament after about 30 minutes in, and he held the prohibitive chip lead basically all the way to and into the final table. He quickly got himself into position at the top of the leaderboard, and he simply did not look back, period. He played the best and he took down the grand prize, along with NYRambler who also nabbed a 10k seat, in addition to Adam 27x. The 2k "consolation prizes" were won by KeepFloppin and adamsapple19, although I have to admit I did not stay up to watch the end of the final table. I think I made it until near 1am but eventually had to hang em up for the night, although I did let JJ know in the girly chat that I was going to sleep knowing in full confidence that he would win, and I can't say it was the least bit of a surprise when I confirmed that confidence this morning. What a run out of JJ in the last couple of BBTs, especially given his limited appearances in the actual tournaments comprising either BBT series.

Will JJ play the WSOP Main Event this year? Will he blog about his experiences there? My two cents for JJ: Take the hint, man! No-God, fate, kismet, the Island, Jacob -- whoever it is, someone is trying to tell you something. Obviously, you are fated to play the WSOP Main Event. The Rio isn't finished with you yet! So I say you give in to fate and get your ass to Vegas next month for the granddaddy of them all, get that mug on tv, and rocket past Iggy's incredible finish in the ME a few years back to show everyone what you can do after learning to thoroughly dominate the poker bloggers like no one else has ever done.

The BBT5 was a great ride for everyone involved, and although of course I cannot say that I was pleased with my luck in the series-ending ToC, I am certainly thankful both to Al and to full tilt for their generosity and their hard work in setting up and handling the logistics of a series like this. And although I would have loved to have been included in the ToC winners' list this time around, like I said it could not have happened to a more deserving bunch of people than this year's winners. Best of luck to everyone, and hopefully those who won prizes will find their way out to Las Vegas this summer and to write about their experiences so that people like me and many, many others who read can live vicariously through them, and so that full tilt hopefully continues to see the value in putting on huge promotions like this for us lowly bunch of poker wonks in the future.

FTOPS Main Event

So earlier this week I had written about losing around $2000 of cash on three separate 2- or 3-outers on the river, all occuring when the money got in after the flop. It's something I've been focusing on for a good couple of years now, a strategy which I see most the great professional mtt players follow fairly religiously in the tournaments they play in -- almost to a man, these guys hate to get it allin without the mortal, uncatchable nuts. So I've been trying to do less and less of the get-it-allin-well-ahead before the flop stuff, even though I used to do that all the time. I've written about it here countless times over the past couple of years, but after getting it in ahead and taking the number of suckouts that I take,I have really been focusing on turning those 80% favorite hands before the flop into 90%+ favorites after the flop by waiting an extra round or two before getting all the money into the middle.

So there I was earlier this week, running in "the" 40k, "the" 32k, and those juicy turbo satellites into the FTOPS Main Event, getting knocked out of all three on either 2-outers or 3-outers despite waiting until after the flop to get all the money in to the middle. What does this mean, exactly? I'm talking about having pocket Tens in the small blind, and the cutoff bumps it up on a typical steal-raise, and rather than push my last 20 big blinds into the middle right there preflop when I'm fairly sure I'm ahead, I figure I will wait until the flop, and just give myself a chance to get away where the donkey with the A4o would have spiked his Ace on the flop and taken me out. So I just call, the flop comes all rags, and then by checking I induce my opponent to push allin on me. I flip up my Tens and he shows pocket 9s. 9 on the river, and IGH. When you've played 3 or 4 hours into tournaments over the previous few days and that has been the way it's ended for you just short of where the money really gets big three separate times, it can be very hard to swallow.

Then, one day after writing about this was when I made that fantastic run deep into the 50-50 on full tilt which I wrote about on Thursday and Friday of last week. This is the one where I picked up my first premium pair of the entire night in pocket Kings with exactly 10 players remaining out of the 1195 who started, the guppy chip leader calls my preflop pot-sized reraise with 75o, pushes all-in to me on a 7-high flop and then manages to suck out the river 7 to eliminate me in tenth place despite playing the hand about as poorly as it could have been played on every single street. That was conservatively another $4000 or so of Tournament EV added to my already $2000 from earlier in the week, all raped away from me by river suckouts after I managed to get myself in well ahead in key spots in big tournaments.

Well, Sunday night this weekend was the FTOPS Main Event, which I did play in, and played in very well might I add. I managed to chip up on several hands, mostly bluffs of course, in the first hour or two, and my first really big hand did not occur until just about two full hours in to the event. It's worthy of some screenshots, because hand histories just don't do these things justice all the time.

So I'm around 33% above the starting stack, right around average just short of two hours in to the Main Event. I pick up pocket 3s on the button, and since I've done my usual thing and been a stealy mofo throughout the tournament so far, of course I have to raise here so I go for my standard 3x raise to 480 chips. The small blind, a guy who had tried at least one time previously to move me off of a hand he thought I was stealing with by using a minraise, which he quickly folded to my pot-reraise, reraises me here with a below-average stack:



Now, even though I obviously don't have the odds to properly set mine, the bottom line was that this guy had gotten out of line a couple of times already, I figured there was a very good chance I was already ahead and that he would push any raggy flop allin on me from first position. So I went for the call:



The flop comes down T73 rainbow -- my only flopped set of the day -- and my opponent bets a big portion of his stack but not all of it:



OK so now I can whittle down his range of hands to literally just a few, all of which I am crushing. To not push allin here, he either hit top pair top kicker with AT, or better yet, he has AA-QQ and desperately thinks he's going to double up here, with a small chance that he might have flopped a higher set with 77 or TT given his please-call-me bet here on that short stack of his. Either way, I am content to play this one slow, just in case, so I just callin the hopes of seeing the turn card before committing the rest of his stack to the pot. In keeping with the tournament strategy I mentioned above and have written about incessantly here for the past couple of years, waiting until after the turn will just give me that much more information, and maybe if an Ace, King or Queen falls, and he does something that really indicates a higher set, I can at least consider getting away from the hand, unlikely though that may be:



So the turn comes and it is basically another rag, after which my opponent quickly pushes all in:



So here I am, I've waited until after the turn card here, and there is just nothing on this board that can possibly get me to fold here. My opponent's actions are consistent with a high pocket pair, and I nailed his ass by flopping the set on the flop in a spot where he rightfully assumes I have been stealing with air all along. I've seen all the cards but the last card with my deceptively strong hand, and my opponent has forced me to a decision for the rest of his stack. I've lessened the risk of my getting drawn out on significantly by not only waiting until after the flop but also until after the turn. What more can I do, I can't fold here obviously. So I call, with much confidence:



Booooom. Well played with the one pair for a just under the average stack in a $535 buyin tournament.

River card:



2-outer on the river, after waiting for not just the flop but even the turn before getting the last half of my opponent's stack into the middle. Sound fucking familiar?

Now granted, it was early enough in this thing still, with some 2500 runners remaining and only nearly 800 making the cash, that it is very difficult to ascribe an actual cash value to that disgusting, despicable suckout. Maybe just a couple hundred bucks, being fair to the math. But who knows what this could have turned in to. And like I've been saying all fucking week, it hurts especially much when I am going out of my damn way to decrease my risk by waiting to see as many cards as possible on the board before getting the majority of the money into the middle, even when I'm fairly sure I'm ahead on an earlier street. I mean, higher pocket pair losing to lower pocket pair allin preflop is bad enough. That is an 82% favorite or so in most cases, and anytime you lose a big stack on that kind of a dominated hand, it just feels wrong. But when I've got the Tens over the Nines after the flop and the money goes in, that is what, a 91% favorite? So this week alone, I lost two 91% hands and one three-outer on the flop as well for an 88% hand, all in key spots in big tournaments with real cash on the line. Then I closed that week out by getting beat after the fucking turn card with a 2-outer for a 95% favorite, up in flames, in the biggest tournament of them all.

I mean, what do you do when even 19-to-1 isn't good enough to double up in a huge spot in a $2.5 million guaranteed tournament?

It isn't often that I wake up the next morning still feeling physically ill about a bad beat. In fact, it's been years now since I almost ever care about a bad beat even an hour or so later. But this one, coming on the heels of a week of close calls, deep runs and horrible anal rapages, is really clinging with me. Someone think of something to say to put this into perspective please.

Superbowl Surprise, Online Overlays and Drunk Suckouts

WOW. A lot to get to today. But first things first...



The Hoy is back in its regularly-scheduled time slot and place tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt. Mondays at the Hoy is the name, 6-max no-limit holdem is the game. $26 buyin, same as always. The crowds have been well into the 30s for the past few weeks, and people seem to be digging the faster pace (and shorter overall tournament length) of 6-max, so come on out and see what everyone is having so much fun with as we start the week in blogger tournaments off right.

And congratulations to KOD not only for final tabling that donkeyfest known as the 28k again last week, but then for chopping the pokerstars 25k over the weekend for a little over $5100 cash money. Chad is the undisputed king of navigating the big donkey fields. I will never understand now he does it.

Now on to the real story of the day....the Superbowl.

Ever since we were children, most of us were raised with this one basic precept regarding those who don't follow the rules: Cheaters never win, and winners never cheat. Well, the New England Cheatriots have proven that old saying wrong time and again over the past several years, winning three superbowls and getting their names into the record books for a number of reasons this year in recording the first ever 16-0 season in the NFL on their march to yesterday's superbowl matchup with the hated New York Giants. It turns out that the Cheatriots have spent the better part of the past five or six seasons (at least) cheating in a way that is obviously very significant to the outcome of their games, and they've been steamrolling the entire NFL the whole time while they've been doing it. Not only were the Cheatriots busted for videotaping the New York Jets' defensive signal-calling during a game early in this, their record-setting, undefeated season, but it even came out this very past week that Coach Bill Belicheat has been taking advantage of illegal videotaping of opposing teams for many years, even in the biggest of games, including the superbowl against the St. Louis Rams five years ago. So here you've got a guy who has been cheating very deliberately, and in clear violation -- flauntingly, in many cases, after receiving repeated warnings -- and has done nothing but win win win as a result.

Well, this weekend, finally, mercifully, came Vindication. And don't go dismissing my ranting today as that of a crazed Giants fan just because I live in New York. I'm not just not a fan of the Giants -- I hate the Giants. I abhor them. With a serious passion. As you know if you've read here for some time, I am from Philadelphia and I have grown up with a deep-seated hatred for every single New York team, the Giants in particular as they have always played in the Eagles' division and have now won not one, not two but three superbowls while the Eagles still have yet to win one. So I hate this year's superbowl champions more than probably any single person I know. But, just like my Phillies's incredible comeback to knock the New York Mets out of the playoffs in 2007, the Giants' last-minute victory over the New England Cheatriots will always be remembered by me, as will the team that went 18-0 and then couldn't win the big game. It ruins the Cheatiot's entire "perfect" 2007-2008 season, in a way that I could never have dreamed of. Now, they are nothing. Nothing!! You can go undefeated all you want -- now all the Cheatriots are are the only team in the history of the NFL to go 18-1 and not win the superbowl. And even though it's the lowly, despicable, New York Giants who beat them, I can only keep thinking one thing about it all.

Fuck 'em.

Cheaters never win, and winners never cheat. Fuck you, New England. Fuck you straight to hell, you despicable lowlife asshole losers. And when I say losers, I mean L-O-S-E-R-S.

Now go buy some nice t-shirts here that I bet will be getting a ton of good business today from like-minded fans such as myself.

With the superbowl on tv and with most of the northeastern U.S. preoccupied with it at least, I noticed two main effects in the world of online poker. First, there were more and bigger overlays in the major guaranteed tournaments than I have ever seen before, and this was something I tried to take advantage of as best as I could as I have done in the past on days like this. The 50-50 at 9:30pm ET, which needs basically 1000 runners to make the 50k guarantee, had something like 760 people playing. That is by far the biggest overlay I've ever seen in this thing. By far. Even the pokerstars equivalent of the 50-50 had to rely on some last-minute late-registration stragglers to surpass its own guarantee by a couple hundred dollars, something which to my knowledge has never happened even one time before. At 10:30pm ET on full tilt there was a mega-satellite into the $322 buyin FTOPS #9 nlh tournament, a $50 buyin sat with 10 seats guaranteed. In the end there were I think 52 runners or something like that -- at least four of us bloggers -- which again represented a nice overlay that made me want to play it even more than I otherwise already always try to play these multi-seat megasatellite tournaments, even though I have already qualified for FTOPS #9 as it is so I was really just playiing for cash in the end.

Unfortunately, along with those huge overlays all over the major online poker sites due to the superbowl in the U.S., there were also I am sure tons of drunks and idiots on their computers playing this game with cards, button-mashing at its finest no doubt, the result of which was more suckouts and horrible poker plays even than usual, even for a Sunday online. So it was a mixed bag overall, which of course for me led to even more than my usual 6 or 7 suckout-eliminations a night in the online poker world. If you clowns took as many bad beats as I do on a regular basis, there wouldn't be a poker blogger community because none of you would play poker anymore. If it's not a suckout then it's a setup, but it's all the same stuff in the end -- 90% of my eliminations from poker tournaments are plays I would make again and again and again and most often situations where by all rights I should have survived to see another hand and play another orbit at least. This past Sunday was without a doubt the worst button mashing I have ever seen across the board in the world of online poker, and I'm sure the superbowl going on had a lot to do with that.

Let me give you just one example from the 50-50, which I think was my favorite hand of the entire night that I saw, and is one that actually did not end in a suckout for me. This was probably about 90 minutes in to the 5050, with the blinds at 80-160 I think. Check this out and I defy you to tell me my opponent was sober here:

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to hoyazo [As Ks]
BIMMERGAL808 has 15 seconds left to act
BIMMERGAL808 raises to 480
Dixit folds
highplaya folds
tokenjay has 15 seconds left to act
tokenjay folds
mellowyellow74 folds
hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act
hoyazo raises to 1,380 Although I like to change things up just enough to keep my opponent honest, I will usually raise or reraise one raiser preflop with most AK hands in big spots in tournaments.
jimmyvjackson folds
honkytonk99 folds
Poker_Cuervo folds
BIMMERGAL808 has 15 seconds left to act
BIMMERGAL808 calls 900
*** FLOP *** [5d 5c 2c]
BIMMERGAL808 checks
hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act
hoyazo bets 1,600 Standard c-bet. If I get reraised here, I know I am beat although at that point I probably have to call anyways with just 420 chips left.
BIMMERGAL808 has 15 seconds left to act
BIMMERGAL808 has requested TIME
BIMMERGAL808 calls 1,600
*** TURN *** [5d 5c 2c] [9c]
BIMMERGAL808 checks
hoyazo bets 420, and is all in No reason not to put in the rest at this point, even though I must be beat, right? Right?
BIMMERGAL808 calls 420
hoyazo shows [As Ks]
BIMMERGAL808 shows [Jh Kc] Muhahahahahahahahahaha!

Go ahead, explain that one to me please. Calls the preflop reraise with KJo? Then calls my c-bet on a raggy flop with just the KJo unimproved? What, he put me on QJo I guess? Somebody please try to tell me that guy was sober. Bullshit. I say he was probably some anussy Boston fan who had already drunk himself into oblivion as the superbowl had probably just ended, and just wanted to tilt off the rest of his chips so he could drown himself in his bottle of Sam Adams Winter Lager. But these guys making plays just like this were simply all over the place on full tilt and pokerstars last night. Normally for most people that would be a good thing of course, but when you are a raging suckout magnet such as myself, it's all bad.

In the end, I got sucked out recockulously from the 5050 by a guy who called my pot-sized bet on the flop with just an pocket underpair of 9s, and then of course managed to suck out his set on the river. In fact as I mentioned I think I got sucked out on maybe 11 or 12 times in just 5 or 6 hours of poker on the day, including a little bit of cash, several sngs and a few satellites and other multi-table tournaments on the night. I did record a small cash in a pokerstars O8 tournament, and I ended up winning the $322 cash prize in the FTOPS #9 megasatellite after sitting around on a short stack for a long while before finally winning a big hand with pocket Kings after 90 minutes of no cards to speak of. And, I ran pretty deep in the stars version of the 50-50 as well, which is actually a $55 buyin event that usually has a few hundred more players than the full tilt equivalent. I wanted to profile the hand I busted out on before I sign off today, and find out from you guys what, if anything, you think I did wrong here. I think there are several places where I might have made a suboptimal decision, but to be honest I'm really not so sure about that and I would love your thoughts.

So we are down to around 90 players left in the stars 50-50, we are well into the money already which began I think at 153 players remaining. I have a nice stack, just a little above average but good for around 30th place out of 90 players remaining, I'm in the big blind with 97s. Early middle position raises the 1600-chip big blind up 2.5x to 4000, and then the button calls the 4000 raise as well. So it's 2400 chips to me to go to see a 3-way flop with the 97s on a nice healthy stack:



Do you guys play this here? Obviously, I did play it, and I think in large part because I have confidence in my postflop play that I won't lose a lot with this hand if I don't connect solidly, either with a huge made hand or a huge draw. But what do you guys think of this call? It is 2400 chips into an 11,750-chip pot, giving me basically 4-to-1 odds, and in the end I just decided, especially given my healthy stack, I had to call here. I've got two nice-sized stacks in the hand with me, so I know that if I hit this flop hard I can really get into prime position. I certainly don't feel bad about having called here at all, and I know it wasn't a huge mistake either way, but I would be very interested in hearing others' thoughts on this question.

So here was the flop:



Obviously this is a large flop for me. I flopped a flush draw, an inside straight draw and even the inside straight flush draw. I have to figure I have at least 12 outs, and that's assuming that my 9s and 7s are not themselves outs against another high-card hand, which could bring my hand to a total of 18 outs, assuming I'm not already ahead of whatever these guys have with my 9-high. Does anyone like to bet out here?

I opted not to, for a couple of reasons. First, I feel like I have a huge draw, but obviously no made hand, and these guys both have big enough stacks to cripple me if I make this pot needlessly big without applying the ultimate pressure in the hand. And secondly, with my huge draw and on a flop that is unlikely to have hit either the preflop smallish raiser's hand or the smooth caller on my right, I saw this as an awesome check-raise allin opportunity. So I checked it, and the original preflop raiser bet out, somewhat smallish at a little under 2/3 the size of the pot:



The preflop smooth caller on my right folded, leaving me heads-up against this player whose every action so far in the hand seemed consistent with just a two-high-card hand, maybe a small pocket pair or some kind of Ace-rag. He raised smallish preflop, and bet smallish on the flop as well. And most importantly, with the huge draw I had flopped, this guy's 9000 chip bet on the flop still left him with 26k in chips behind, giving him ample ability to fold anything but a real strong hand to my allin checkraise. All the factors were present for my checkraise, and I had flopped a large draw that was close to a favorite if not the favorite against most hands I would expect him to have in this spot, so I decided to go for it, fully expecting him to lay it down:



Again, I would love to hear your thoughts on this play. It is aggressive for sure, there's no doubt about that, but even as I look it over here after my elimination I still can't help but feel I would play the same hand this exact same way again. But what do you guys think? Sure anyone can say just lay it down, but I am curious in particular to hear from some of the guys (and gals) with some actual poker tournament success here as to what you think of this aggressive move by me in this particular spot.

So the guy called off his entire stack with just A3 here, but unfortunately for me, it was an A3 also soooted in diamonds like my 97s was:



Thus, 9 of my outs disappeared in a flash, leaving me with just 3 of the 4 Eights to make a non-flush straight, the 8 of diamonds to make a straight flush, and 3 Sevens and 3 Nines to make a pair. So I still had ten outs left even against his nut flush draw, but that was some bad luck there to run into the nut flush draw like that given the way this hand had played out. I still think he lays down to my allin checkraise there a good 80% of the time or so given his preflop hand range, but not in this case. I'm also trying to figure if even this was really a good call by him, even holding the nut flush. I'm too lazy to do the math, but I suppose if he wants to count the three other Aces as outs for him -- a very questionable move given my allin checkraise on the flop -- then with 12 outs there was surely more than enough dead money in the pot already to make the call a +EV one. But more reasonably, if he thinks he has just the 9 flush outs, I wonder if it is still the right call to make here. Probably, in a close decision. But I like to think I would've laid his hand down in this spot, with the 26k in chips, still plenty of ammo to get right back into this tournament, given the pair on the board, and with just the 35% chance of hitting by the river. I don't know. Again to me it all feels like I played this hand the way I wanted too -- admittedly quite aggressively -- and I just lucked out, which I probably should have known given all the miserable troubles I have had in my poker career in being up against higher flushes with lower flushes, or full houses with nut flushes, etc.

Anyways, two bricks later, none of my 10 outs comes through and IGH in I think 90th or 89th place for a small cash of a little over a hundred bucks for my efforts. It was a good time and one of several nice runs in well-structured tournaments for me over the weekend, but as is often the case, I am left wondering even the next morning still, did I play this hand right? What do you think was the optimal way to play in this spot?

See you guys tonight for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!

Effed Early and Late in Monday MTTs, and MATH Recap

Despite winning another buyin at the 6max cash tables overall on the night, it was a sick, sick night of poker for me overall that saw me make exactly zero suckouts against anyone over 4 hours of multitabling, while 2 vicious suckouts against me combined with one mega setup hand to really phuck me and phuck me hard out of my mtt action on the night. And given the stakes involved, it was one of those very rare (for me) nights where when I woke up in the morning, I was still just about as sick as I had been the night before. I hate when that happens, when the very first thing that pops into my head when I first wake up is "Did that suckout really happen to me? Did it have to be in that spot?" That's me here on Tuesday morning, and I don't exactly know when the gross feeling is going to go away.

After a nice couple of sessions at the cash tables, where I finally have my pokertracker working again after a quick email to support (thanks Gnome for the suggestion), I began the latest Mondays at the Hoy tournament with high hopes, as I've been playing well in mtts again lately after a month of poor results in that arena. I couldn't have played more than five or ten minutes before I limped from the blinds to see a 4-way flop with K♣5♣. The flop comes all clubs. Soy delicious.

Because I'm a man, I manage to get thepokergrind to call my allin reraise on this flop, which you would think would thrill me. But no, I've written here many times before about how I am somehow well into the negative over time with made two-card flushes in holdem, and how I am quite sure it is not because I overplay these things. Well, I figure he's obviously got the Ace♣, and/or a set and is going to boat up on me, I know it's going to happen. So it was almost a relief when he flips up....Ax sooted in clubs! Flopflush King-high into flopflush Ace-high. That is rich you muggafuggas, really rich. Well I'll just add that one to the everlovingly huge tab that the giant flush up in the sky owes to me and will have to begin paying back to me someday. Flopping a flush is supposed to be a fucking pot of gold, but somehow for me it's a spitoon full of coal. So phuck you flushes. I hope you get AIDS and die. Please.

In the end, all-around good guy Bayne squeaked into 4th place and the money in the MATH by showing tremendous patience as the short stack on the bubble, adding $95.04 to his current lead atop the 2007 MATH moneyboard. Coming in 3rd place on the week was Kajagugu, who won $142.56 in his first cash of the year after losing a 20k+ stack pretty quick after Bayne busted in 4th place. Thepokergrind managed to make good use of the chips he was gifted from me in the earlygoing, busting out with a 2nd place finish and $198 won for his best MATH performance of the year in what I know from his blog has been a focus for his play of late. And winning this week's Mondays at the Hoy title, along with $356.40 of cold hard cash contributed to by the 33 donkeys runners, was everyone's favorite poker shock jock, BuddyDank himself! I could not listen to the radio show last night with Hammer Wife asleep right next to me, but I'm sure Buddy was on fire and loving life as he powered his way through a tough and larger-than-normal field for the victory.

So here is your updated 2007 MATH moneyboard, including this week's action:

1. Bayne_s $1270
2. Columbo $1168
3. Hoyazo $1162
4. RaisingCayne $1110
5. Pirate Wes $792
6. VinNay $775
7. cmitch $774
8. Iggy $745
9. NewinNov $677
10. Lucko21 $665
11. Waffles $650
12. IslandBum1 $642
13. Astin $616
14. Fuel55 $568
15. Tripjax $561
16. Buddydank $553
17. Byron $510
18. Julius Goat $507
19. bartonf $492
19. mtnrider81 $492
21. PokerBrian322 $490
22. Chad $485
23. scots_chris $474
24. Emptyman $461
25. Mike_Maloney $456
26. RecessRampage $434
27. Otis $429
28. Surflexus $402
28. Miami Don $402
30. jeciimd $382
30. Jordan $382
32. Blinders $379
33. lightning36 $371
34. ChapelncHill $353
35. Zeem $330
36. LJ $326
37. OMGitsPokerFool $324
38. oossuuu754 $312
39. leftylu $295
40. Wigginx $288
41. ScottMc $282
42. Fishy McDonk $277
43. Irongirl $252
43. Manik79 $252
45. Wippy1313 $248
46. swimmom95 $245
47. wwonka69 $216
48. Omega_man_99 $210
49. katiemother $209
50. Pushmonkey72 $208
51. Thepokergrind $198
52. Gary Cox 194
53. 23Skidoo $176
54. Santa Clauss $170
55. jimdniacc $166
56. Iakaris $162
56. Smokkee $162
58. cemfredmd $156
58. NumbBono $156
60. lester000 $147
61. Heffmike $145
62. Kajagugu $143
62. brdweb $143
64. Mookie $137
64. DDionysus $137
66. Patchmaster $135
67. InstantTragedy $129
68. Ganton516 $114
69. Fluxer $110
70. hoops15mt $95
71. Gracie $94
71. Scurvydog $94
73. wormmsu $91
74. Shag0103 $84
75. crazdgamer $82
76. PhinCity $80
77. maf212 $78
78. Alceste $71
78. dbirider $71
80. Easycure $67
81. Rake Feeder $53

So Bayne adds to his lead and becomes the first member of the $1200 club in the MATH this year, while Buddydank soars up into the top 20 with his $356 and change won this week, while Kaja and thepokergrind both break into the moneyboard for the first time as the fourth and final quarter of the year begins.

And now we can move on to the real reason I am still feeling sick this morning: the Monday 1k. I mentioned here in Monday's post that I had satellited in to the Monday 1k buyin mtt with a 150k guarantee over the weekend with one of those tier II tokens that I love to win in the nightly 9:45pm ET token frenzy on full tilt. 259 runners showed up, contributing a lofty 259k prize pool to be paid out to the top 27 finishers. I got no cards at first (what else is new) but ran some huge bluffs in what I thought were good spots to get off to about a 50% bump from the 3000 chip starting stacks around the end of the first hour. Just before the break I played a very interesting hand , which I'm going to profile in a moment because the pussy vagina who was involved with me ending up stalking me for several hours in the chat and being abusive about the way I played, and I'd like to get your thoughts. Basically, I had an up and down 2nd and 3rd hours, where my stack vacillated from around 10k at most to around 3k at the least, but I never gave up and I never made one of those oh-so-tempting awfuckit calls, but I did manage to win one big race near the end of the third hour when I called an allin with AKo preflop and nailed a King on the flop to stay alive. I also endured one uberlame suckout where I had my opponent dominated allin preflop for all his chips, but he four-flushed me. Another flucking fush, what can ya do. Unfortunately my night ended early into hour 4, just 6 spots from the payout positions, when I reraised my opponent allin preflop when I held JJ, and he called quickly with AKo, the same thing I had benefitted from doing earlier in the evening. In the end, he won the race as a roughly 48% underdog going in, but that doesn't begin to describe the scene. Once he and I were allin preflop, the flop came down J42 rainbow, giving me the literal nuts with top set on a board with no discernible draws, and I was stylin'. I was going to be top 10 in chips with 33 players remaining and 27 spots paying out a minimum of $1500. Yeah baybeeeee.

Turn Queen.

River Ten.

IGH 33rd place of 259 runners with 27 spots in the money.

Now if that ain't some sick shiat, I don't know what is. In the end I can't get too crazy about it because I was just a 52% favorite preflop when the money went in, but to have it happen in that order and give me the nut flop with no draws whatsoever, that one fucking stings me, even the next morning I have to say. Basically, my opponent needed to make one of four outs on the turn and one of four outs on the river to beat me at that point, as there was no way other than the runner runner straight for my opponent to catch up to my nut flop. Even running Aces, Kings or AK at that point wasn't going to win it for him. But that's the way it happens I guess. So I go 3 1/2 hours into this thing and play great with not much to work with and then get donked by a runner runner 0.6% chance on the flop to lose just short of the money. Ouch.

OK and now the hand I wanted to profile from earlier in the tournament. As I said I received one of my worst and longest-lasting beratings ever after this hand by the pussass I played the hand with, and I would like to get your thoughts on the way the hand played out.

Blinds are 30-60, and I'm in the hijack where it's folded around to me. I have QJs. I like to raise here and try to take down the blinds, and I know if someone calls I have a good hand to do some damage with regardless of what my opponent has. I kick it up to 180 chips. Vegan213, the bfp of the tournament (Biggest Fucking Pussy), reraised me to 540 chips from the cutoff. Vegan had been a stealy guy at this table for a while, and to be honest I put him on a steal and figured with big soooted connectors I had a good hand to see a flop with and hope to hit something big. This is admittedly not a strong move on my part and it's not something I do very often, but as I've discussed here previously I find myself calling preflop raises in situations like this more and more as I get more and more comfortable with my postflop play and in knowing that I can lay this hand down unless I flop strong to it, which means something better than TPTK or at least a draw to something strong.

The flop comes AT4 with two hearts, giving me the flush draw and the inside straight draw, and I figured with pussyshit's preflop reraise he very likely had an Ace in his hand, one that based on his play he would want to push strongly. With at least 12 outs to an almost surely winning hand, I figured this guy will surely bet out nearly the size of the pot on the flop with what I figure is a big Ace, and then I can raise him allin and make him lay this down if he is anything but a TPTK monkey. I checked to him, and he bet out 825 chips like a good little puppy dog:



Following my plan all along, and knowing I had at least 12 outs to the almost surely winning hand, I reraised allin on this flop, almost indifferent between him calling and folding. With 12 outs more or less assured, I figured I'm looking at more than 40% equity in this pot, and maybe more depending on what exactly my opponent has, but either way I'm figuring this guy for having a solid top pair hand. I guess it's better that he folds since I'm not quite 50% equity with my two-way draw, but in the end I figured if he's not a donk he has to lay down any non-two-pair hand to my allin reraise for his and my entire stack here.

Vagina Man instacalls my allin bet, and flips up his AKo. Bingo! Top pair top kicker donkey to the rescue! I love these guys. TPTK donkeys have probably made me more money over my poker lifetime than any other type of player out there. I mean, it's one thing to be the guy making a big raise and creating pressure by putting your opponent to a decision for all their chips, but to call off your entire stack on a huge overraise allin for about 3 times the current pot, with just TPTK, is...well...you guys tell me what it is.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the hand, because the turn card brought me the sweet victory:



and this assclown Vegan213 proceeded started laying in to me on the chat. These are the guys that I really make my money on, both at tournament and cash tables -- the guys who not only are TPTK donkeys, but who live in denial and refuse to open their minds to the possibility of ever getting better. When you're instacalling a huge overbet for your entire stack with just TPTK, I say you need to check yo'self before you wreck yo'self. But maybe it's just me. Am I way off base here? I read this guy like a book, I got him to bet out and commit himself on the flop and then I moved in the rest of my chips in a spot where he has to fold. Instead he called, and lost, and berated me horrendously, for several hours. Literally. At like 1am ET, when I finally got donkeyfucked by the roughly 140-to-1 runner-runner straight against my JJ on the J42 flop, suddenly there was Vegan213 to type in "hahahahahah". I love it.

So this guy literally stayed awake for four fucking hours after I busted his ass after what I view as a donkey instacall by him. He stays up until after 1am, watching every single hand I play, just hoping, waiting, praying for me to bust out somehow. Then I get donked by a less than 1-outer, and he is suddenly right there, four hours after my hand with him, laughing at me in the chat. Wow. Which leads me to one opinion about Vegan213 that I just can't escape no matter how hard I try:

Vegan213 has a small penis.

I just don't know what else leads to the kind of feelings of inadequacy that poker obviously stirs up in this individual. Did I really play this hand so poorly? Did he really play it so well?