Thoughts From the Borgata Fall Poker Open Part III (Conclusion)

OK so props out to Astin and MorningThunder for coming the closest in guess what the two players had in the biggest fold I made on the day at the Borgata a couple of weeks back.

For those who did not yet read my last post, here is the recap on the hand in question, pasted from my prior post:

For starters, the guy to my immediate right (a different guy from the hand above) had just lost an allin pot from his big blind to a guy across the table who had only about 400 chips fewer than he had, leaving the guy next to me with just that many chips at a time when the blinds were I think 400-800 with a 75 ante. Being that he was also the small blind in the hand in question, this guy was thus allin blind with his last chips in the middle to start the hand. Which meant that his $100 elimination bounty was totally up for grabs. Which meant that everyone around the table would be playing like complete and utter maniacs to try to get his bounty, as always seems to happen whenever a cash bounty is on the line in one of these bounty tournaments. And that's the setup for the biggest pot I saw on the day. Oh, and did I mention that, as this hand began, we had the two largest chip stacks left in the tournament both at my table? One, the actual chip leader at the time, was on my immediate left (I spent pretty much the entire last 8 hours of this tournament with the chip leader on my immediate left, through two different tables in fact), and was sitting on approximately 125,000 in chips, at a time when my paltry stack (as it was most of the day) was around 14,000 (which was really fun for me, in case you're wondering). And another guy across the way had about 120,000 in chips in his stack, good for #2 at the time in the tournament, also seated at our table even though we had about 60 runners left in the event.

So, with the setup out of the way, the small blind was allin with the last of his chips, and his bounty chip in the middle in front of him, and I was the big blind in the hand. The UTG player and tournament chipleader with 125,000 chips started off the action by min-raising, in a weakass, half-hearted attempt to take the guy head-on for his bounty, but the weak minraise to just 1600 chips did nothing of the sort and instead led the UTG+1 player to call, then the guy next to him folded, and then the next 4 players also called the 1600-chip raise. I looked down in the big blind to find 97s, a hand which I would have open-raised with myself and which I would have probably called most small raises with even in a heads-up pot (certainly against the chipleader), so I of course called the raise as well for another 800 chips out of my stack with 97s, and we saw a 7-way flop -- with the small blind and his bounty already allin and up for grabs -- by far the most players to any hand I saw in my entire 13-hour run on the day.

And the flop came down...949 rainbow. My heart jumped to my throat. I mean, of course a nut straight or a flush would be even better flops for me, but in general I had nailed this flop -- far and away the best flop hit over made in the entire day, mind you -- and I was in the big blind to boot, in a hand with two ginormously-stacked players who had been very aggressively pushing people around already to get those huge stacks.

I checked, as I had checked almost every flop I had seen throughout the day and I just didn't see the point of betraying any strength in my hand and possibly chasing anyone out with all these chips available on the table. My thought was that someone would surely bet this flop out of the 7 players in the hand (6 with chips behind), and then I would most likely reraise allin almost any bet from any player and take my chances. The chipleader opened the betting to my immediate left, but with a shocking bet of 20,000 chips. This was about a fifth of his entire monster stack, and more than that, it was enough right out of the gate to basically cover the entire stack or nearly the entire stack of every single other player in the hand at the time, except for the #2 stack across the table. That did not please me to have to call an allin instead of having some fold equity into what was a pot with under 10k in chips in it at the time, but at the same time, this guy was an aggro monster and the size of the bet made him seem more weak than strong to me, so my plan was still to call his allin when the action got around to me.

There was a fold, then another fold, and another, and my plan was really crystallizing in my head. But then a crazy thing happened. The other ginormous stack in the tournament called the 20k bet. He didn't even raise it, mind you, but he just smooth called the bet for 20k, now putting a silly amount of chips into the pot, and then the action folded around to me. As I stared at the obscene action going on in this hand, my plan to get it allin started to crumble right before my eyes. I mean, one guy pushing in a huge bet as an aggro steal play when he had the chips to lose was one thing, but for both of the big stacks to be committing tournament-altering amounts of chips here -- and in particular with the guy across the way only calling and not reraising allin to even try to get the big stack to lay down -- those alarm bells I often write about started going off in my head. Something just did not feel right here. I thought. I analyzed. I agonized. Suddenly, my trips with the 7 kicker were feeling pretty well outkicked. Again, if either one of these guys had alone made a big move at this pot, I'm probably sliding 'em all in there and taking my chances, especially given that I was below average like I was the entire day long in the tournament, and if my 97 is beat, then it's beat. But once the enormity of the pot I was looking at really sunk in, I just sat in disbelief as the fingers on my right hand slid my cards face-down towards the muck in the center of the table. I was behind, I had to be.

The turn card brought an offsuit King, making the board 949K rainbow, and the big stack to my left insta-pushed allin for a gillion chips. And the guy across the way beat him into the pot calling the bet. For his entire 2nd place stack. Against the one and only player in the entire room who had the power to eliminate him. This of course left me all the more sure that I was in fact behind.

I had asked for guesses as to what the two players involved were holding, and the actual answer is that the chipleader to my immediate left flopped the underboat with pocket 4s, and the #2 stack in the tournament across the table from us was sitting on Q9o. MorningThunder technically was closest with his guesses of 44 and K9, but Astin with 44 and A9 was basically right there, too. Although I think both of those guesses highlight my key point with this hand -- I obviously folded 97 because I just did not see how trips with a 7 kicker could be ahead given the two huge bets made and called ahead of me by the two prohibitive chip-leading stacks in the tournament with still some 60 runners remaining. And I did not see much in the comments to my last post to suggest much support for me continuing to play on with the hand that I had given that action, which I think makes sense since (obviously) I folded it, although it was the most painful fold I had made all day for sure.

The point I alluded to above, though, is that I think the big stack across the table made a big mistake in getting all his chips in in this spot, even sitting on Q9 on a 949 flop. I mean, once the chipleader -- and once again, the literal only player left in the tournament that could eliminate him from the event at that point, through more than 75% of the field at the time but still about 45 players away from the money positions -- slid out the 20k bet on the 949 flop, I would have given serious consideration to folding if I were the other big stack. Now, to be honest, that is not to say that I would have been confident that my Q9 was behind -- given the minraise from early position from the chipleader and his incredibly aggressive play since he had become the chipleader -- but rather, as a reflection of the fact that (1) I could be behind, (2) the huge bet requires me to commit a significant portion of the large stack I've built up thus far, and leaves me in terrible position facing potentially larger bets on later streets, and (3) even though I may likely be ahead, my stack is so large at this point that be folding here I can basically maintain my huge chiplead over almost every other player remaining and ensure that I live to fight another day, instead of taking what may even have amounted to only a 20% chance of being behind.

In any event, even if I had chosen to smooth call the chipleader's 20k bet on the 949 flop with my Q9 and the second-largest stack in the tournament at the time, I would almost certainly have folded the Q9 to the insta allin bet from the chipleader on the turn. I mean, what does the #2 stack put the chipleader on, to be making that kind of an allin push against this other huge stack that had the ability to cripple his chipleading stack if he is wrong? Why would the chipleader be pushing that hard, without some huge hand? Basically, in my view, by the #2 stack instacalling the instapush on the turn, the #2 stack is basically saying that he thinks the chipleader is an idiot. There's just no other way of saying it. I mean, to instacall that allin with a Q9 on the 949K board means that he thinks there is little to no chance that the chipleader has 44, KK, A9 or K9, the four possible hands that beat the #2 stack's Q9. But when you really look at the action, the chipleader -- unless he is, in fact, a poker idiot, which I can assure you he was not playing like on this day in any way, shape or form -- almost has to have exactly one of those four hands by the time he pushed allin on the turn. He is already the chipleader in the tournament, with around 150 big blinds in his stack even before this hand begins. Why on earth would be put that entire huge stack at risk against the #2 stack in the tournament, with a hand like AA, or J9 ot T9? I can only assume that the #2 guy put the chipleader on a hand like AA, but even that makes just no sense to me given the way he played the hand. The preflop early position minraise could definitely be AA, but when you see a 7-handed flop with a middling pair like 9s on the board, isn't almost all but certain that at least one other player in there flopped trips? Again, unless the chipleader is an idiot, he's not risking his entire massive stack with just a pocket pair against a mass of 7 players on a paired flop. No way. And is he really going to insta-push there on the turn with just trips and a middling kicker like J9 or T9? Come on, second stack. That was a terrible play, and while again I can accept the possibility of him calling the 20k on the flop and seeing what happened on the turn, the instapush on the turn that required the #2 stack to put in the rest of his chips with trips and a Queen kicker, should have been a very loud and clear signal that he was beat.

OK well there you have it. I had some more to say about my run at the Borgata, but as is usually the case with my deep runs, give it a week or two to sit around and it all just seems less important and less relevant than it did when it first happened. Will I get down to play some more poker again before this year is out, and maybe create some new live tournament stories to regale my readers with here at the blog? It's possible. I just found out today that I still have three vacation days left that I carried over from 2010 and which will expire per my employer's policy if I do not use them by the end of this year. And, while normally I would just throw those three days in in that week between Christmas and New Years and spend some more quality time with the Hammer Family, my group at work has a policy that any time off during that heavy-vacation-volume week must be pre-approved by the powers that be, and suffice it to say that all the lazybones already got in their requests months ago, leaving it impossible for me to get any time off myself during that week at this point in time.

So, will I use one of these three vacation days that I have to take in December to head back down to AC or up to Foxwoods for some more like poker action? Only time will tell.

Survivor Poker

OK, so I think I'm putting together my strategy for the first half of Donkey Island Poker. I've talked to like 85 people about possible alliances (still haven't figured out exactly what that means), but in the end, for these first several weeks, here's the best strategy I can offer to my teammates for not voting me out: Not only am I kind and generous to all and one of the most wonderful people you have ever met as you doubtless already know, but I also give you the best chance to win immunity from elimivotes every single time we have one of these tournaments. Every time. I'm not saying I'm going to win every single tournament over the next couple of months. Obviously. But in any individual tournament, I think I offer the best odds in this field of winning. And, for this first month or so at least, if I last the longest in these tournaments out of anyone in the Donkey Island field, then all seven of my other teammates don't face being voted out of the game for that round.

On Sunday I won the first tournament of Donkey Island Poker, which was Goat's $1 rebuy. I was somewhere near the bottom of the pack as we ended monkey hour -- it would not be possible for anyone to run worse than I do during $1 rebuy hour against a bunch of poo-flinging bloggers -- but I got a few double-ups early enough to make a race of it as we neared the final table. By the time we made it to the final 9, my stack was up to 2nd or 3rd place, so I was able to take it a little bit easy and let the others do the busting for a while.

At some point along the way I remembered that all that should really matter to me was outlasting whoever was the last player standing on the other team. I checked out the Donkey Island Poker website, and it was quickly clear to me once we were down to 5 or even 6 left, that NumbBono was the only guy left from the other team. Unfortunately, he had a monstrous stack of around 50k with 5 players left, and I had something like 8k at my lowest. But I played really patient, and I figured even though it was going on 1am my time, I owed it to my teammates to do what I could to just try to hold on and hope to find a way to outlast Numb. Not too long after that, I don't even remember the hand that it happened on but Numb made a mistake and lost about half of his stack, dropping to around 24k, at a time when I had climbed my own stack to around 16 or 17k, and suddenly it seemed like I could really possibly catch him.

At some point I won a big pot off of the big stack across the table whose name I did not recognize (mattychise, maybe? Leave me a comment with your right name and your blog if you read this and I will update), getting him to fold on the turn after making fairly large bets on the flop and earlier on the turn before my raise, and Numb lost another hand, and all of a sudden we had totally switched; I had over 50k in chips and Numb was stuck below 15k and a distant fourth out of four remaining players. There were a few suckouts against me here four-handed, but in the end I was able to hold on to my big chipstack -- making a few disciplined folds with hands like KQo and 77 to heavy action in front of me -- and eventually I raised up front with A8o, a standard move obviously in 4-handed play, and Numb pushed allin preflop behind me from the big blind. My raise had been to around 4000 chips, and Numb's push was for around 14k, leaving me to call around 10k to win 19k or so -- I really made those numbers up wholesale -- but I figured he has to be pushing here with any Ace, as well as any pocket pair below 8s, so there are plenty of hands in that range that I am ahead of, and I'm getting 2 to 1 on my money anyways, meaning that only higher Aces had me in really bad shape at all. I called, Numb flipped up 44, and I flopped an 8 to win the race and eliminate the last player from the Bad Guy Team in Survivor Poker.

At this point, I pushed allin preflop with every single hand until the last two players -- Joanada and this mattychise fellow -- eventually succumbed to my button mashing. I think I might have sucked out on one of them in a medium-sized pot. I had a giant stack at that point 3-handed after taking out Numb, so I knew I could afford some losses, and who am I kidding anyways I didn't give a snatch about where I finished on the leaderboard after having outlasted everyone else from the Bad Guys Team. So I just kept pushing and praying when we got to 3-handed and the ITM positions, and fast forward about six or seven minutes and I was the winner.

So anyways, back to my Donkey Island strategy: All I do is crush blonkaments. I mean, for crying out loud, my name is actually "Blogger Crusher" on another well-known online poker client as most of you know. So, Team Fish, this is why not to vote me out whenever our team is up for elimination -- because you always know that in just a few days, the next Donkey Island tournament is coming up, and I'm your best chance to avoiding an elimination vote entirely if you just let me stick around and do what I do best in these tournaments. While team play remains in effect for the next month on Donkey Island, I may ultimately be the most valuable commodity you can have on your side.

By the way, for the record let me register my shock that Numb was the first player voted off by his team after the first tournament of Survivor Poker. Numb has shown repeatedly that he can win the blogger fonkfests like these, and he's a BDR regular. How does that guy capture 5 out of 7 elimination votes on his team (assuming he did not vote for himself)? Somebody please help me to understand. Is this what people mean by making "alliances"? Is it possible (likely?) that the order of 6 of the 8 vote-offs has already been decided for my team? Eek!

The next Donkey Island Poker tournament is this coming Wednesday, The Dank at 10pm ET. Until then, my teammate and I be immune.

Same Tournament, Even Better Result (Big Tournament Win!)

Just four days after taking second out of 1325 runners in the nightly 30k guaranteed on pokerstars earlier in the week, Saturday night brought an even nicer New Years Day present for me, in the very same tournament:



After begging out of doing an old-style tournament recap for that $4000+ win because I was pissed to have come in second place after nabbing a 2-to-1 chip lead in heads-up play but then running into TT and JJ on consecutive hands to give it up, I figured I owe the world one for this one. So here we go, I'm going to kick this one old-school.

For starters, I was up a bit late with the kids on Saturday night as we near the end of what has been the longest time I have been out of the office in a long, long time, probably since I got married 850 years ago. We had another great day, we still have plenty of snow to play with, and we were watching the end of one of K and M's favorite movies, which ran a bit late and as a result I didn't even touch my computer all day long until shortly after 8pm ET. After checking email and a few other standard internet update things, I surveyed the online poker scene and quickly decided I would run that $27.50 buyin, 30k guaranteed nightly tournament on pokerstars that I had just posted about the other day. As I mentioned previously, this isn't a tournament that I have spent a ton of time playing in my day, as the 8pm nightlies in general have not been kind to me as a rule -- I think I've only final tabled that 35k on full tilt one time in my lifetime of maybe 250 attempts playing it -- but in general the fields of the mid buyin mtts on stars are very soft, and given the timing and the fact that nowadays I'm too old and tired to run the 9pm and 10pm mtt's like I once used to with regularity, the 30k looked as good as any. I registered late around 8:20pm, and away we went.

The balance of my first hour in the tournament on Saturday was largely uneventful. I actually was dealt pocket Aces once, and in the big blind no less, but sadly the action folded around to me and I got the oh-so-awesome pocket Aces walk. By the end of Hour 1, I was down a bit from my 3000-chip starting stack, and in 720th place out of 997 players remaining:



I got below 2000 chips not too far into Hour 2, and things were looking like just your standard never-got-anything-going effort that would shortly end with me pushing too hard with a less than premium hand in an attempt to either get back to a relevant stack or bust out and move on to something better. But then about 90 minutes in, I got my first big hand of the night when a guy with pocket Jacks tried to get fancy and check an all-connected flop of 567 when I had raised preflop with T9s and he had just called. Fancy Play Syndrome came back to get him bigtime though, when a miracle 8 fell on the turn, I led out and he quickly pushed:



As you can see a third guy also came along for the ride, and all of a sudden we had ourselves a game as I got right back into the thick of things with a nice workable stack:



6570 chips, good for 224th place out of the 817 remaining runners of the 1425 who had begun the event just about an hour and a half earlier. Nothing to write home about, but at least a situation where I could make some moves instead of slowly dwindle away to nothing.

I got up over 8k shortly before the second break when I raised allin preflop against five limpers for 500 chips apiece, holding 97s. With a really big stack of course I would not likely want to risk losing my position on a move like this, but in this case, still at the time sitting just right at average in chips with under 6000, I like the move and frankly I would not have minded getting a call with a hand like 97s with which I have had a fair amount of success over time. Even AK calling me there gives me the right odds to make a run at a large stack and significant chip utility, but in this case all folded and that bumped me up a nice bit, clearly the best outcome given my cards.

My next big hand was a stone cold bluff, a pure instinct play like I have talked about against a guy whom I had observed stealing pots left and right with far from optimal hands. I called this guy's preflop raise with 86s, another of these hands I love to see cheap flops with against large stacks where I can really do some damage if I hit, and when the flop came down Q53, my opponent failed to c-bet which I had seen him do repeatedly in the past with any kind of hit on the board. Immediately the bell went off in my head that this guy was weak, so I led out for about 60% of the pot, and he insta-called. Especially given the immediacy of his call, I had him on some kind of speculative hand, maybe a draw, or perhaps a low pair on the flop, and when the Ten on the turn did not help me either, but also did not help any draw and could only make a low pocket pair even less pleased, I figured I had to bet out again and I bet small to make it look like I actually wanted a call with a strong hand:



Surprisingly, my opponent called again, which was unfortunate since I had just about the worst nothing hand imaginable in this spot and had now sunk close to half of my stack in this pot. Still, though, he insta-called me again, and unless it's me doing it, insta-calls hardly ever tend to be very strong hands. Medium pair, maybe 8s or 9s stuck in my head as most likely, but of course who could be sure. When the river brought a harmless 4, that completed no flush, only the most unlikely inside straight draw, and didn't help a middle pair hand, I figured I had gone this far, and I could only win the pot at this point by bluffing, so I pushed 'em in and hoped this guy wasn't willing to go to the mat with what I figured were two overcards on the board:



Thankfully, my read was right and he folded, giving me a huge chip-up, and just seconds later came the second break, with me in great shape compared to where I had been just an hour ago:



Here in 68th of 400-some remaining players, I was for the first time on the night in a position to start ramping up the aggression and pushing people out of pots with preflop raises and reraises. I won a couple of pots with A7 and A6, with KJo and T9o. I also had to fold a couple such hands to reraises that did not give me odds to see flops, and the long and short of it was that I sat around the 13,000 chip mark for most of Hour 3. Just before the break I won about 5k when I turned a straight with AQ and made a guy fold on the river what I think might've been low trips (there were two Kings on board), and at the third break I was back around average again, with a lot of work ahead of me if I was going to make a real run here:



The money bubble broke at 215 players remaining just minutes into Hour 4, with me still right around average in chips but having recorded my second cash in four nights in this particular tournament where I had previously had so little luck over time. My stack jumped to over 30k in chips not too far into Hour 4 when I flopped A75 with A7 from my big blind against the big-stack small blind's A4, the small blind bet into me, I pushed and he strangely called with his top pair crap kicker:



Not that I haven't been on the losing end of blind vs. blind confrontations a million times in my life, but this was not a good call by him. I always try to remind myself these days that, even when you're both in the blinds, sometimes people do get hands in these positions and once you're facing significant action -- in particular after seeing a flop -- if I'm weak (like top pair shit kicker) I am likely going to find myself behind even though it seems unlikely to happen when it's just the blinds battling it out. But it does happen.

Not too long later in Hour 4, I picked up my second premium hand of the night, pocket Aces again, this time in under the gun which I also love. I especially love to limp in this spot, in particular when the stacks are getting short and the Harringbots are generally waiting to try to make a play with middling stacks. I did it here and got just what I wanted from the big blind:



He had A5s -- also not a great play against an under the gun raiser, but then I generally work hard to establish a loose image preflop in these things by betting and raising quite a bit before seeing any of the community cards, so I suppose with a shortish stack I can see his thinking, at least a little bit. It's not a move that I would make with that stack though -- calling I almost certainly could with the flush and straight possibilities of A5s against a big stack, but pushing vs. the utg raiser, that's not really my style with these cards. Still, I'll take it, and after winning the hand I was in my best position so far in the tournament:



21st place out 139 remaining, well into the money positions. Still a long ways to go, but considering I was down below 2000 chips about an hour and a half into this thing, it was a great turn of events for me overall.

And then a guy made a huge mistake here, one that I'm still trying to understand although I will mention again that the pokerstars large mtt fields are notoriously soft:



Obviously I called this, especially given the massive stack of the preflop reraiser here and the chance for me to basically nearly triple up and jump to the very top of the leaderboard. What range do you put the big stack on the left on here, to be putting all of that huge stack at risk in a spot like this? Think it over, and then scroll below for the reveal:












22. I mean, what do you say? I am all for being aggressive, but pushing all of that huge stack in there with such a beatable hand like 22 -- when in fact he knows already that he's no better than 50-50 literally no matter what the original raiser has -- that is a horribad poker play in any tournament. If he had a much smaller stack and needed to make a move and try to get in there to race for a much-needed double-up, that could make a lot of sense. But from his position, it's just horrible, but it was to my advantage, as suddenly I had completed my transition from the bottom quarter of the field 90 minutes in all the way to the tippy top of the leaderboard:



I got up to just over 125k late in Hour 4 when my JJ held up against a shortish stack's KQo allin preflop, which at that point was good for 3rd place out of 96 runners remaining. Early in Hour 5, I encountered another strange hand that saw me really go out on a limb based more or less just on my instinct about my opponent for the second time on the night. I was down to around 10th place of 80 or so remaining with around 110k in chips and I called a preflop raise from another top-ten stack with my JTs on the button. I then called my opponent's c-bet on the favorable J44 flop of around half the pot, based partly on having seen my opponent fold to flop raises on c-bets before at this table when he had insta-bet his continuation bet and having seen him bet out very quickly here as well. When the turn gave me two pairs -- albeit vulnerable, if my opponent had a higher pocket pair since there was also a pair of 4s on the board, he checked and I bet out, and suddenly I faced this check-raise which threatened to deplete my stack as it came from the only guy at the table who could stack me:



It's hard to say exactly why I stayed in the pot at this point. I knew that if he had QQ, KK or AA, I was dead, and he had raised preflop and called my bet on the flop, and then raised me on the turn. And yet, I just could not reconcile such a big hand with his instant c-bet on the flop. Think about it: when you have AA, do you instantly c-bet on a non-scary flop like J44? Or do you pause briefly, so as not to betray the strength of your holding to your opponent? All I knew was that in this case, he did not seem like he was on a big premium pair, and otherwise that turn card left me in very good shape against a guy who had raised it up preflop if he was not holding QQ-AA. So I called. When the river brought a harmless offsuit 5, my opponent against insta-pushed for all his remaining chips, and at that point I could not have been more sure that he was weak. I knew I was taking a chance, but if he was so good as to insta-push here after insta-raising on the turn with a big pocket pair, then so be it, I was willing to go home. I called for my stack, and saw this:



A busted draw. A big one, mind you, but still a busted draw. A preflop raise with Q9s, a standard c-bet bluff which I was spot-on in pegging as a bluff due to how instantaneously he bet the chips, and then another player on a huge stack who failed to protect and instead just got a little too aggressive with a large draw on a turn card that also happened to give me top two pairs. And with this hand, I vaulted well into the chip lead, a lead I would hold for a long time coming:



I pushed it up to 280k over the next little while when my 99 outran a shorty's ATo, and then I flopped trips with KTs against a guy who couldn't lay down QQ and I was up over 325k, good for the chip lead with 54 players remaining. Later in Hour 5 my rush continued as I flopped my second set of the night and won a bunch more chips against a guy who couldn't let go of top pair top kicker:



And I really had a huge chiplead:



And as you can imagine if you know how I play, at this point I got downright nasty with the betting and raising, in particular preflop. I folded a couple of times to reraises in bad spots for me, but otherwise I quickly raised more or less every time the action folded around to me preflop, and I really terrorized the table. I was atop the leaderboard with 50 left, and remained there with 40 left, as well as with 30 remaining, and still with 20 runners left, all the while maintaining my stack in the 400k-500k range by my relentless stealing of pots both pre- and post-flop. Here is the board with 20 players remaining, with me having just crossed the 500k mark for the first time:



And here I am at the sixth break, down to 16 players left, two tables of eight players each:



I finally lost the chip lead for the first time since nearly 70 players left when we got down to 13, and someone jumped up over 750k on the other table, but I was still in good shape. I got as low as 5th place on a few occasions, but again I never allowed myself to get short nor did I allow myself to make a dumb call and risk my shot at making right my bad beats from the other day in this same tournament. Finally, after the standard set of ridiculous bubble suckouts to keep things going much longer than they should have, eventually the short stack ran his 77 into KK, and we were back to the final table:



I was starting in 4th place of 9 remaining, but again was in good shape and had been sure to spend the previous hour or so actively watching both of the remaining tables to pick up trends on how everyone played the game. Maybe 10 minutes in to the final table, I took advantage of a guy I had picked on before with large bets and raises, when he clearly had a big pocket pair, I called him preflop with 98s, and promptly flopped trip 9s. Although just as he had previously, he ended up folding to my large raise on the turn, I got a bunch of his chips and climbed into 2nd place at the final table as my stack jumped over 700k for the first time.

Unfortunately, I lost my biggest pot of the tournament when I correctly read my opponent across the table for not having an Ace when the flop came Ace high, got him to give me over a third of his stack on the flop and turn, but then he sickly rivered a boat out of nowhere and I paid him off being totally unable to read him for what had just happened here:



Still, luckily I had buit up and maintained such a nice stack over the previous couple of hours that I was able to withstand this sick river loss without it seriously hampering my chances to stay viable in the tournament. A few hands later we lost our first final table player, a short stack whose KTs ran into KQ and could not catch, and we were down to 8. Having observed the guy at the other table over the past hour or two stealing repeatedly from the button before the flop, I was able to take repeated advantage of this knowledge at the final table to start climbing back up the leaderboard by restealing multiple times with preflop reraises whenever the player drawn to sit to my left at the final table tried to steal a pot away from me before the flop, which got me back up over 600k pretty quickly as I tried to take the momentum back after my hideous rivering. Meanwhile, the new shorty finally busted after having sucked out about five times during the final two tables when his K9 was called by AK pre, and then there were 7, with me at the time in 5th place with 506k in chips, but still within 20% or so of 3rd place and 30% of 2nd place, and I sat just a bit lower than this as we came to the sixth break in the tournament:



Just minutes into Hour Seven, the tournament short stack reraised me allin preflop when I held AKo, which is just about the most obvious call in the world, and I was pissed to see him flop a set and take away most of my hard-earned stack that I had fought hard and played great poker to amass over the past several hours:




This hand now left me a distant 6th out of 7 players remaining, and once again my prospects for righting my wrong in this tournament from earlier in the week were dimming considerably. I knew I needed to try to find a spot to win back a chunk of chips to get myself a stack that I could push people out of pots with, instead of one that the big stacks could call down even at the risk of taking a loss and still being in good shape. On the very next hand, the opportunity presented itself here, when a very active stealer who had been busted stealing several times over the past two or three hours I had played with him put in his standard button steal before the flop, and then the tournament big stack went for the resteal, a move he had done with increasing frequency over the past hour or so as his stack had grown and grown at the expense of the rest of us, making me think that neither one of them was particularly strong here:



I knew I would be racing, but I figured the first raiser would fold to the second raiser's action and huge stack, and I would have a chance to race to get right back into the thick of things in a spot where the big stack could not really consider folding to my allin re-reraise. So I pushed allin, willing to go busto in 6th place and take the loss after my AK could not hold against the short stack's 99 in the hand previous, and I saw that my reads could not have been more off, and I was actually in serious trouble:



Scarcely had I had time to scream out "22222!" in my head when the world's most glorious flop hit the board:



And whaddya know, all of a sudden my fortunes had shifted from an 85% dog to finish out of the tournament in 6th place, to sitting on my biggest stack of the night and solidly in 2nd place with 5 runners left in the 30k. I couldn't believe it, but then this is pokerstars so you can't really disbelieve anything when it comes down to it. The two things I knew for sure though were (1) my reasoning had been sound on the hand -- admittedly I knew I would be called by the big stack and was thus willingly choosing to race, but there was a method to my madness and I was fully willing to race for my shot to either bust in 6th or climb right back into it, and (2) even more importantly, I was absolutely determined not to let this huge final table suckout to my benefit go to waste. The table was pissed at me, they all thought I was a huge donkey, and I was going to take this ridiculous gift to the bank come hell or high water. And that is exactly what I did, as the action got fast and furious pretty quickly after we lost our 6th man standing at the final table.

On the very next hand after my reflonkulous suckout, I was dealt 99 in the small blind, and when the cutoff -- another active stealer who has won a number of large-field tournaments in his day -- raised it up, I chose to just call, figuring that the aggro guy I mentioned earlier to my left was highly likely to push with any strong holding given his short stack at the time. And that's exactly what happened:



I could not get in there fast enough with my 99 and a big stack once again, and I managed to outrun his ATo to knock it down to five players remaining and take over the slight chip lead for the first time in the better part of an hour:



And then came my favorite hand of the tournament. The super-aggro big stack to my immediate right raised it up preflop as he had almost every single time the action folded around to him at the final table, and I just called with 76s, the kind of hand I just love to take up against other big stacks because it's a stacking kind of hand when it comes to my opponent's stack if I hit it hard, but I have high confidence that I can get away from it before it stacks me if I don't. We, the two prohibitively large stacks of the 5 players left at the final table, saw a heads-up flop of Q57 with two of my suit, giving me a bunch of outs as well as middle pair which could easily already be ahead on this flop. Still, I didn't want to get too crazy before hitting something better with the hand, but short of the rare straight or flush flop, this flop was close to as good as it gets with this kind of starting cards. When the big stack guy bet out just under half the pot, I briefly considered raising a semi-bluff to conceal the nature of my hand, but again opted for some pot control and just called, not wanting to get blown out of this pot before I had a chance to hit something big:



My flush completed on the turn with the beautiful Ace of diamonds, and when my opponent checked to me I basically knew there was no way he could have a higher flush (how could you ever fail to bet again there if you were on the come and filled on the turn, if you're any kind of a thinking player at all?), but since it was an Ace and I figured that was the most likely card in the deck to have hit my opponent's hand, I wanted to bet out here on the turn, mostly to help build the pot so that a river bet could get really huge and potentially win me this tournament right here and now. I bet out 188k into the 250k pot, judging that would be sufficient to justify all the chips going into the middle on the river, and my opponent called again. When the Queen of spades fell on the river, I nearly creamed in my pants. Now, if he was on an Ace he had gotten help, and if he was on a Queen for top pair that had him calling twice here, I knew there was no way he was folding. Figuring that anything other than an Ace or a Queen would surely fold to any size bet, and either of those cards was likely to call no matter how much I bet, I tried to appear as weak as possible by instantly pushing allin for the rest of my stack on the river:



And my opponent couldn't fall over himself fast enough to call:



After his last 20k in chips were eliminated on the very next hand when I had to fold 55 to a reraise from across the table, we were down to 4 players left, with me holding a ridiculously large chip lead of 2.5 to 1, 3 to 1 and 5 to 1 over the three remaining players, holding approximately 50% of the chips in play:



I raised and reraised these guys like pigs from here on out, having little chance of seriously hurting myself with any preflop action as long as I didn't allow it to get too big, and my stack climbed slowly but surely as a result. Not too long after, the short stack's 66 held up allin preflop against another player's AJo, and suddenly I had basically a 3-to-1 chip lead over each of the other three players remaining. Which did little to faze me, as I just continued raising preflop with basically any two cards, almost every single hand, just daring somebody to push back at me at which point I could make a decision of whether or not to allow the pot to grow to a threatening size in terms of my stack. I was raising so much, and very obviously so, that I also had the luxury of knowing that these guys were going to be pushing back on me fairly light, since they knew my raising range was essentially ATC here. So, when I faced this situation and a chance to knock it down to three players in a situation when I was most likely racing, I clearly had the stack to take the chance in a spot where I was likely a slight favorite:



I held:



and then there were three, with my chip lead still roughly 3 to 1 over the 2nd place guy, and more like 7 to 1 over the shorty who all through the tournament was just a little too tight for his own good. And so I just resumed raising ATC preflop, winning pots with A5o:



with T9s:



with K4o:



with 86o:



with Q7o:



and finally, when I faced a very similar situation with the short stack as when I had eliminated #4 about 5 minutes earlier, I knew I easily had the stack once again to take a chance where I was likely a slight favorite to take this thing down to heads up:



Once again I held up against A9o, and we were back to heads up:



Only this time, instead of starting out as a more than 2 to 1 dog in chips, I would be starting with a massive chip lead of more than 4 to 1, against a guy I knew I was better than, and who I especially knew I was better than in terms of final table, heads-up type of experience:



I raised pretty actively preflop, absolutely determined not to double this guy up and let him get a chunk of that chip deficit back, but equally determined not to let up and make him push allin on me whenever he wanted to see any kind of a flop. I won 7 out of 11 hands heads up, seeing just two flops along the way, and I folded crap hands twice to preflop reraises from him where I was sure I was not getting the odds to just call with ATC, despite my big stack relative to his. This is somewhere that I see people F themselves up all the time late in tournaments, as many players seem to think that having "enough chips to afford it" equates with calling with ATC just to take a chance at eliminating someone and getting closer to their goal. I have to laugh whenever I see people do that -- and again I see it all the time -- because in reality you are playing directly into your opponent's hand if you play that way with a big stack late in a tournament. Believe me, there is nothing that the guy at a 4 to 1 chip deficit wants more than for you to call his allins light. He needs you to call his allins light! The way you make sure you give yourself the best chance to beat a guy in this position is just the opposite -- you can punish him relentlessly with comparatively small pots before the flop, but you simply do not allow him to get into a big pot with you unless you believe you have the best of it, ever. That's the secret to play late with a big stack, and although it may seem obvious to some, I would estimate that 75% of players I run into in your average large-field mtt on the major sites seem to play the opposite and get very itchy trigger fingers with a big stack late in these events.

In any event, by raising this guy relentlessly I managed to increase my chip lead to more than 5 to 1 after 22 hands of heads-up play here:



and then finally, on hand 31 of our heads-up matchup, I raised again preflop, telling my opponent absolutely nothing about my hand given how ridiculously aggro I had been over the previous several minutes of play, and then I faced this decision for all the marbles:



Having a 9 kicker to go along with my Ace, meaning that I was ahead of more than half of the possible Aces, and any non-paired holdings not including an Ace, plus racing against any pocket pair 8s or lower -- all of which it was obvious were well within my opponent's allin range here given my activity up to this point and the chip stacks involved, I just didn't see how I could fold here. I was indeed a roughly 58% favorite, needing to hold just one more time to take this bad boy down:



The flop was clean -- all rags -- and the turn as well, and I knew I was looking at fading six outs once to win it all, and boom!



I had won the tournament!



This once again is among the most satisfying victories I have had in a long time in online poker, partially because I had just failed to close the deal four days earlier in this very same tourament, and partially just because it's on pokerstars in general where I had such little success in tournaments in 2010. I survived a couple of brutal riverings along the way in this thing, and consistent with my 2011 poker goals, I was sure not to let them get in the way of playing with a clear head, and playing my best game to win. In fact, lateish in this tournament, I took two brutal beats back to back on Ultimate Bet to go from 3rd of 26 runners left in their nightly 8pm ET tournament to busto in 22nd place (cash at 18th place), and still I did not let it affect my play in this tournament. This is what I need to do more often in 2011 without a doubt, and last week's run in this tourney combined especially with this weekend's show just how much I can be successful if applied correctly. Although I botched a couple of reads over a 7-hour period, I made good, sound decisions literally from start to finish in this thing, and I held up just enough -- and got super lucky when I needed to one time at the final table -- to take it down and get exactly where I wanted to be over 7 1/2 hours of play. I couldn't be happier with how 2010 ended and how 2011 has begun for me on the virtual felt, and I look forward to taking my newfound focus in mtt's back to the tables on a nightly basis heading into the new year.

I Can't Believe It!

It's not exactly a huge score, but after the 8 1/2 hours I went through to get there, I'll take it. And believe me, given the performance I have put up in limited tournaments on pokerstars this year, I still can't believe I actually won anything of significance on this site at any point during 2010. There may be a post coming on this score, but frankly the fact that I did not win really weighs against me profiling this one like I used to in the olden days. Suffice it to say that I quickly turned a 2:1 chip deficit into a 2:1 chip lead in heads-up play in this event, but then my opponent got TT vs my A9, and then his JJ on the very next hand vs. my J9 on a Jack-high flop to close me out. I guess after he was dealt pocket Aces three times at the final table and at least five times in the final three hours of this thing, TT and JJ in back to back hands when heads-up should not surprise me. But I'm not really complaining, believe me after a year that for me has been pretty scant in the online tournament score department -- again, in particular on pokerstars -- I'll take whatever I can get, and in my heads-up opponent's defense, I don't think I saw him get in behind in a bad spot even one time over maybe four hours of playing together, which -- again especially for pokerstars -- is something I can't believe I'm able to say.

This was probably the single best I have played an online mtt in a long time, and I did not get it in bad at any point during the 8 1/2 hours of play to get there. I played cool, calm and collected all through the home stretch rush to the final table through 1324 of the 1325 players to nab a nice score of roughly 150 buyins on this badboy, far and away the best performance I've ever had in maybe 40 or 50 times running this nightly $27.50 buyin, 30k guaranteed tournament at 8pm ET on pokerstars. As I said, I may have some more to say about this tournament later in the week, but for now I will just chalk this one up to a nice late holiday present for me from the site that has otherwise pretty much been the bane of my online poker existence in 2010.

Go Eagles tonight at home vs. the Vikings!