Shitty Bracelet Race Schedule, and Cash Hand Concluded

OK just a quick post today (by my standards anyways) as I have been sick as a dawg all weekend and am just getting back to my senses a little bit this morning. I did want to rant a bit about the Bracelet Races on full tilt, and then I will get up the results of that cash hand I was posting about on Friday. But first....



Yeah don't forget that the BBT3 rolls on tonight, with the 10th of 55 Tournament of Champions seats available to the winner of tonight's 6-max nlh tournament for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt. As always, the time is 10pm ET and the password is "hammer", so come out and play with all your fake internet friends tonight as we continue the battle to win the WSOP packages being offered up to us all for free by full tilt. See you there!

So, about the Bracelet Races, wtf is up with the schedules for these things? They totally fawked the United States customers off, hard! Check it out:

Race for Bracelets tournaments running at the following times each day through June 22nd:

~ $24 + $2 tournaments running every Monday, Tuesday and Saturday at 18:30 ET (23:30 GMT)
~ $69 + $6 tournaments running every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 18:30 ET (23:30 GMT)
~ $200 + $16 tournaments running every Friday and Sunday at 21:00 ET (02:00 GMT)


What are these jackmonkeys thinking? Only two Bracelet Races a week that are not at 6:30pm ET and 3:30pm PT? That time isn't even great for the Euros, as it is basically an hour or two past prime time in that part of the world as well. So, who exactly is this 6:30pm ET time for 5 of the 7 weekly Bracelet Races good for? The Bermudan full tilt players? The online poker buffs in the Falkland Islands? Why would full tilt do this? The only options that a reasonable American male like myself have are to play the 9pm ET Bracelet Races, which have the shitey $216 buyin and which even still only run two nights a week. So in sum, the West Coast of the U.S. has zero BR's that they can reasonably play in, period. Us East Coasters have to put up more than two hundy to play and even still can only do so two nights a week. WTF full tilt, WTF?!!

OK with that out of the way and with the financial markets in this country continuing to plummet while I sit here writing this, let me return to the cash hand I was profiling on Friday. Basically, I had played KQo for a limp into a 3-way pot from the small blind at a 2-4 6-max nlh table, and the flop came down KK8, giving me top trips with second kicker in a limped pot. Hard to beat that. But then the big blind led out for the size of the pot on this flop, and the other middle position limper then minraised his bet. I opted to smooth call the flop, as did the original bettor in the big blind. Then the turn card brought an offsuit 7, and the big blind proceeded to bet out $56 into a $81 pot, causing the middle position player to fold and bringing the action to me:



I asked how to play this here. Mostly all of you said that I am almost surely ahead, and that if I lose to some kind of a cooler here in an unraised pot preflop then so be it. I sort of agree with that thinking, although I would take me a long time to count all the times I have lost with hands just like this, either to 88, 77 or even just AK or something.

My only difference in how I played the hand from what most of the commenters suggested was that I opted to smooth call the turn again here. I figured this guy could have a pocket pair and think he is ahead, or he could have a low King, and either way if I simply move in right now, a serious Man might actually find the fortitude to fold a hand like K3 or K4 which can easily be behind in this spot given my action if I push the turn. I figured the smooth call made it seem more like maybe I was the one on one of those lesser hands, and therefore made it a bit more likely that I could deplete this guy's stack on the river without losing him to a big turn raise. I don't think either play was bad, and I understand that my way foregoes the chance of getting my opponent to fold here, but frankly as the commenters seemed to think I knew I was emptying my stack in this one by this point so I figured why not take the action that increases my likelihood of stacking the guy. If he is on a lower King or some other playable non-boat hand, I like the smooth call better because it gives that much more of a chance to stackage on the river.

Anyways, so I went with the smooth call on the turn, fully intending of getting it allin on the river, and figuring to have an interesting option of inducing a bet or just emptying out myself as I would lead the river betting. And then the river came down a beautiful Queen of spades, giving me the nut boat. Suddenly I'm hoping that he somehow does have one of those few hands that was actually ahead of me up to this point. At this point I've got the best hand I know, and I figure he is most likely on a weaker King or some pocket pair or something. Given that read of his cards, I did not like the thought of checking here to try to induce a bet, so intead I planned to just bet out myself. How much was easy. There's $193 in the pot, and I have $186 left, holding the nuts. He's acted like he has something strong, and I want to get maximum value. I figure if I bet half the pot or something, he will call. The better question is, how much will he still call if I bet more than half the pot? My answer was, at these dollar amounts, he will probably call with any King, so I opted to take the Sklansky on NLH approach of betting the hand at the river as if my opponent had a truly strong hand, and I just emptied out right there:



He instacalled, and I won the $565 pot with my nut boat:



Anybody wanna guess what this guy was holding there, given the allin turn instacall? I will give you some space to consider the options and then scroll down when you're ready to see it.





































Ok here's the final shot:



Dammmmm. Eff you full tilt. They really tried to hose me by making me actually go from way ahead to way behind for a $565 pot on the turn there, before the river resuck made all right in the world again. Now if I don't hit the Queen on the river, is anybody possibly getting away from this hand at the end?

OK back to watching financial ruin for hundreds of millions of investors worldwide. More good poker stuff as well as my NCAA Tournament thoughts coming later in the week. See you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!

Blogger Bracelet Race, and Cash Game Fonkeyrape

Do not forget about this!



That's right, we are sending a bona fide poker blogger to the World Series of Poker this Sunday night! You can email the address listed on the graphic above, or feel free to hit me up on the girly chat or at the tables and I will get you the password to this mega huge private tournament. But we need something over 50 players in order to get the prize package up to the $1500 pricetag on the smaller WSOP events, so get out there early and sign up for the event among the bloggers. I will be there, defying my and Hammer Wife's weekly plans to watch The Sopranos together on Sundays sans full tilt, and blowing off the my Hammer Girls' bed-putting responsibilities to boot. So if I can take on all that heat on the home front for this tournament, then you dam well can come out and make this blogger bracelet race the huge event that it is going to be. See you there muthafuckas!!


While you're here, check out how I got nailed for a $411 pot in a set-over-set confrontation that I think never should have happened. I can only play a hand so perfectly, but sometimes the poker gods rape my anus for a huge pile anyways, no matter how little regard for his money the donkey at the table shows.

I call a pot-raise preflop with pocket 5s. I flop a set, with an Ace on the board to boot. Set mining baybeee! Ching ching ching!



OK so even though I called his pot-raise preflop, and an Ace and a Ten fell on the flop (both overcards to his shitty pair), donkey bets out standard $15 into a $20 pot. He has to figure he's beat here and drawing to just two outs, but I guess he feels compelled to throw out the standard size c-bet anyways. It's pronounced FORM - yew - lay - ik. Well, I've learned from some of the hands I've had up on the blog this week, and all the comments I've received -- Lucko has gotten through to me with all his FPS talk, and this time I'm determined to build this pot right here and now. I'm hoping he must have an Ace to have just wasted $15 on that flop bet. Please let it be AK or AQ:



And the donkey calls, wasting another $20 into the pot. So far he has just thrown away 35 perfectly good dollars, stuff he could have bought his young boy porn with just as good as the credit cards he'll have to use for that instead when he gets stacked for all his money probably 10 minutes into his next session of playing like this. Again, this is exactly the kind of formulaic play I've been talking about at the cash tables. A certain kind of player -- and yes make no mistake, this is one of the ultimate fish qualities that we all love to make money from -- simply cannot handle admitting that he just got caught. They make a dumb bet, you raise them, they obviously know they're beat, but they find themselves clicking the "call" button anyways. What was this clown thinking when he called my raise on that flop? "My pocket 7s are good against the guy who called my preflop raise, two overcards Ten or higher fell to make my pair basically worthless against a preflop raise-caller, and then he raised me big on the flop after I formula c-bet anyways?" Christ it is so clear how it's easy to make money at 1-2 against players like this.

OK so a harmess 7 falls on the turn. What's more, Butch now bets out $50 into the $88 pot:



OK now after he called my flop raise, this bet was enough to give me some pause. Now tell me cash gamers, what am I supposed to do with this bet? Sure he could have a set of Aces or a set of Tens, but I really think he would have been more likely to have reraised me on the flop there than just smooth call, so I have to discount those holdings. Possible for sure, but not as likely as some other holdings which fit the action so far even better. Obviously he doesn't have pocket 7s for the turned set, because only an abject fuckface is going to bet out on the flop and then call my $35 flop raise with just pocket 7s on the AT5 board. So I figured I had to put him on either AK, AQ, or maybe even AT for top two pairs. Was that a bad assumption on my part? Would you cash donks have reraised here, smooth called, or folded your hand? Please tell me I played this hand wrong, because I need to learn why that is, if I did.

I reraised with my clear winner in my opinion at the time:



Yes I made the baby jebus cry with the minraise. I just figured that by betting out, he's obviously going to call my minraise and therefore it's the best way to get it all into the middle. He responded my moving allin for another $61 on top, which I knew I had to call at that point, thinking as much as before that he was most likely to have AK or AT.



Wrong! I forgot the cardinal rule: bloggers really will call a flop raise with pocket 7s on an ATx board against a guy who called their preflop raise. Unbelievable call there IMO. Tell me I'm wrong, cash donkeys!!

$411 pot, raped from me and given to the donkey who not only can't keep himself from betting out with a clear loser on the flop, but he couldn't even fold to my nice raise on the flop. That generous man might as well have been writing me a check when he called that flop raise. Donks who just can't get away from their hands, even when they get caught essentialy bluffing with just two outs. Un. fucking. Believable.

To his credit, I see that Butch Howard has a fun writeup on his blog this morning recounting his play from last night, and basically taking credit for playing like abject donkey in that hand against me, referring to his call of my flop raise as a "WTF call". OK. To his determinent, however, it appears that after not fucking being able to get away from shitty pocket 7s on an AT5 flop against me and sucking out an 11-to-1 shot to stack me, he also could not get away from pocket Aces against a set of Queens for a $520 pot when he rivered a third Ace is another stellar 19-to-1 hit. Still later it appears Butch could not get away from KK on a board with two Aces on it. Notcing a pattern?

I can't stand having to wonder all the time when the phuck I'm going to start being happy for all the donkeys sitting at the table with me. In two years of active online play, I would estimate that I've lost maybe 15,000 dollars or $T more to donkey plays than I have won from them. When the phuck is that going to even out?

The Big Game, and Can You Say W-S-O-P? [Take III]?!!!

Wow what a turnout last night for Miami Don's Big Game. 53 players, each ponying up the $75 price tag to play in the biggest-money blogger tournament around. This thing was huge, and it made for some very fatty cash prizes for the top finishers as a result. And guess who finally made the BBT points board for the first time? That's right, you're reading him right now! Don't worry, I still played like ass through the entire event, only getting a couple of nice setups to get enough chips to last into the top half of the field, before my pocket 7s lost a race allin preflop. And yeah I know those of you who were there are expecting another rant today about that play. What can I say. I've been beat now by the bloggers by people calling my allin preflop with AQ. AJ, more times than I can count. Recently AT ("but it was sOOOooooted!") was added to the list. These last couple are downright unconscionable, but it's happened. I've been called allin and lost a race countless times by KQ. Lately even KJ has entered the fray, which is also truly funny. But I'm happy now after last night's Big Game to be able to add still another hand to the list of hands that bloggers have called my allin raises with preflop, and gone on to beat me: QJ. But it was sOOOooooooted, I know I know. Good for you and your QJ. I'm not sure which was better, seeing the guy flop a muggafugging nut straight immediately after calling my allin with the QJ (AKT, you know it baby!), or seething in anger while reading the chat just afterwards, where the move was repeatedly justified based on my fictional hand range, the fact that I was desperate, etc. Cheesus. I just cannot catch a break in these blogger tournaments.

As an aside, can you imagine if I actually played anywhere near the hand range people claim they put me on when they make these recockumoves against me? Seriously. There's no way I could ever have won a single one of my big mtt scores if I played the way people like to claim I do when they call my allin raises with their KJ and QJ and AJ. And this is where I'm supposed to say that I love getting these calls, but anybody who thinks I will take these people's money over time -- regardless of what the math says -- just doesn't pay attention to blogger tournaments. In my experience at least, the overcards seem to get rewarded at least 75% of the time in what should be race situations, and I am losing to these kinds of allin calls -- some even after the flop is already out, mind you -- at an alarming rate so far in the blogger tournaments in 2007. And btw last night confirms what I was saying last week -- I was actually sorta happy when Lucko called my allin on the flop with just AQ and no hit on the flop whatsoever in last week's Mookie tournament, of course nailing an Ace on the river to do me in, because as I said last week, he admitted it was a donkey move. He admitted it before he made the call even. That guy was playing crazy-aggro poker through that entire tournament, he knew it, and he admitted it even before the fact. And I enjoyed that. But like I said last week, it's when people make these redickucalls against me, win the race as the underdog, and then act like their call was a smart move that really kills me. So at least I know that's part of it. But cheesus christopher do you think one of these times some donkey could call me with AJ or something against my pocket 9s, and I could just win the race? How about one fucking time? I haven't doubled up in a blogger tournament in forever, because every time I get it allin, someone calls me on a race or worse, and I never win 'em. It's gross. I mean, seriously. QJ?! Seriously? Did that really just happen?!

Btw, I love the guy who made this move on me yesterday. He knows that and I know it. It was just a bad play, so bad that I couldn't even sit around to donkeycall anyone in the chat afterwards. I immediately left the room, ran down to another part of the city and killed about 15 immigrants in savage fashion until I felt better. You may hear about this on the news, but nobody tell please. Anyways, congrats to Drizz for winning the Big Game, and to Drizz, Mike Maloney, crazdgamer and Cosmicclown (who I am not familiar with) for agreeing to a 4-way even chop and $786 apiece for their efforts last night at the end. Also congratulations to me for making my first BBT points of the season, going out I believe in 18th place out of 53 competitors thanks to the above-described move, and to the guy who made that brilliantly played call against me, who was in 3rd place just a few minutes after my elimination, but still somehow managed to bust short of the final table nonetheless. Go figure. Maybe he called someone else's allin with 94 (sOOOoooted of course) and it somehow didn't hold, I don't know. Oh, and congrats to jeciimd who I know has made the BBT points in all 6 of the 6 BBT tournaments so far. Now that's impressive right there.

OK on to other things that don't threaten to send me off into an insane rage. Tonight is the latest Mondays at the Hoy tournament on full tilt, the next event in the BBT tournament series (and a big thanks to our resident photoshopper Mookie, from whose blog I lifted the below image this weekend):



So see you tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt, where I will attempt to avoid the minefield that is blogger tournaments for me lately and make my second straight BBT points finish. Normally I'm striving to win these things, but I am so far away from that right now that I need to set more realistic goals. In general, I will probably take it a bit lighter this week on the blogger tournaments in general, as I am just getting smushed in them and the way it's happening, and the way it makes me feel afterwards, cannot possibly be good for my game overall. In fact, just to make this interesting, knock me out of tonight's MATH tournament by donkeycalling me allin preflop with AJ-A2, KJ-K2 or QJ-Q2 and I will tranfser you $10 on full tilt for your donking pleasure. Just like that, you're bought in to the Mookie on Wednesday. And all it takes is for you to make the exact same fucking play that you were going to make on me anyways you fucking donkeys!!! Bring it on, now there's a bounty if I ever saw one. Hope you earn this one guys, I really do.

OK so back to this past Friday, where I managed to win my second bracelet race of the year on full tilt. That night I had my wife's family over for dinner and some hearts (I came in second, to a donkey of course -- just kidding E!), and I didn't manage to log on to the computer until after 11pm ET sometime, so I missed all of the satellites into that juicy midnight bracelet race event that I've been telling you all about. But given my recent cash win in the 30k, for just the second time ever, on a whim I decided to up and buy in directly with cash to the event. I was feeling good, feeling "on" whatever that means, and I figured I'd give it a shot. As it turned out, I probably played my best poker in a long time, better than in my first bracelet race win and better than the big 30k cash last week as well, as I got sucked out on a couple of times in this thing but did not suck out on anyone else in the entire run through the tournament until the payouts. The overall theme of the event for me was that I played very aggressive poker, and I consistently laid reads on people, acted on those reads, and ended up being right again and again and again. It doesn't always work out like that as you fellow aggro tournament players know, but on this night I could do almost no wrong. And what was especially great about this performance on Friday IMO night was the level of the competition involved. I looked at the lobby just as the tournament started, and out of the 89 players entered (8 would win the 2k WSOP prize packages), the roster included all the big guys I run into more and more in the large-buyin mtts on full tilt. I'm talking about P0KERPR0, da_professional, THAY3R, johnnygstacks, PearlJammed, and all those other guys who you will recognize if you play in the same tournaments that I play in these days, and guys who if you look them up on thepokerdb are all showing huge amounts of cash won in their online poker careers. So it was really a whos-who of the mtt world on full tilt, and I was primed and ready to show my stuff in just my second direct buyin into the midnight bracelet race on Friday.

As a good example of what I mean about how I played this thing right from the getgo on Friday, here is a hand early on in the tournament where I felt quite sure from the early action I'd already seen that my opponent had just called my raise because he was in the big blind already, and then was trying to steal the pot on the flop with an overbet before I could put in my continuation bet:



He folded, and I took down my first decent pot of the night (morning).

A few hands later I got that big boost early on that you desperately want to have in these big-buyin events when I flopped this straight still during the 20-40 blinds level:



That's me betting the pot there, because slow-playing on the flop, especially on a flop with lots of big cards like this, is for donkeys. He smooth called me when I knew I held the nuts, which is always good, and then when a harmless 5♠ hit the turn, I did one of my favorite moves and checked the turn, acting as if I was trying to steal on the flop and now didn't want any more of that action:



He checked behind again, which shocked me because people usually bite on that move about 90% of the time, but again I think it goes to show that the level of competition you face in these larger buyin tournaments is a bit higher than the monkeys you usually run into at the lower levels. I woulda been allin on the turn for sure in most of the non-$200 bracelet races for example, but this time it didn't happen for me on the turn. Nonetheless, I had laid the groundwork to extract something from him at the river if he has anything at all, by acting weak here on the turn.

When the Ace♠ fell on the river, I was ecstatic. You almost could not have picked a better card for me, in that I figured my opponent was likely to be on either a draw or some kind of an Ace to have called on the flop but then checked behind on the turn. So when he led out on the flop for 720 chips, the size of the current pot, I sprung the trap:



I went for the allin move here on the assumption that the Ace might have helped my opponent, he acted like it helped him with his river bet, and that the overbet raise might look like a steal attempt since I had gone out of my way to check the turn. He called my allin, and I emptied his stack with my nut hand. He held this in the end:



Did I mention that that Ace on the river was the perfect card? So this got me off to a nice early stack, enabling me to have some breathing room to continue taking some chances by relying on my reads and playing aggressive poker when I felt I had my opponent on a hand or a range of hands.

I used this big stack to push a lot of players off of hands in the first round on Friday, in particular when scare cards would hit the board and I didn't think my opponent would stand a big bet. So here is me pushing hard on the turn card, even after my opponent had called my pot-sized flop bet, because I had put him on a pair to the board on the flop and I could not see him taking it further after both the oesd and the flush filled on the turn card:



I was so confident in my reads on Friday that I was even making moves like this:



Here, I had led out with a potbet on the Ace-high flop, representing an Ace in this small blind - big blind confrontation, and my opponent had smooth called my flop bet. But from having watched him for around an hour at this point, I had personally seen him raise on the flop with any kind of top pair on multiple occasions, and so I just couldn't put him on an Ace (even though I didn't have squat either). So when the turn brought another high card, I figured I would do that same bet-check-bet move that I had used when I had flopped the straight in the earlygoing, and I checked the action to him. When he led out for 600 chips into the 720-chip pot, I was more sure than ever that he did not hold an Ace, so I went for the big raise here to test him. Again, clearly this is me taking a big chance here, but what can I say I had a read and I ran with it. He folded:



A few hands later came probably my biggest hand of the entire tournament, and strangely this was a hand that I ended up not playing. UTG raised it up 3x to 360 chips, and up to that time I had only seen him raise UTG with AK in the tournament, so I opted to go for a little bit of deception and just smooth call the 360 with pocket Queens. In retrospect I think this was a terrible move, but I am a firm believer in not doing the same thing every time in the same situation, so I just smooth called with the Queens here to show a little respect to that UTG preflop raise which I figured indicated some kind of an Ace. While I'm debating whether or not this was the right move in my head, the small blind reraises both of us to 1200 chips. To top it off, UTG, one of the chip leaders at the time with over 14,000 chips, re-reraises allin himself, easily putting me and my 6000 chips allin if I make this call. So I've got the Queens, I always lose with these effing biatches and I am otherwise off to a nice start here. I was conflicted. But in the end I chalk this one up to my stated goal of not talking myself into making bad moves just based on math if doing do requires me to ignore the betting and raising evidence I'm seeing in front of me. I knew this was the third-best possible starting hand and so I was, mathematically speaking, unlikely to be behind so far. But I also knew with all this redickulous action ahead of me, somebody had to have another big pair, and/or somebody probably had to have AK. I agonized over the decision -- a move which in retrospect I don't even think was worthy of agonizing over -- and I laid down the third-best possible starting hand in holdem. Not only did one of my opponents flip up pocket Aces (not surprising, given the betting), but check out this final board:



So there I was, still alive after being dealt QQ at the same time another player was dealt AA, and another player made quads with TT in his hand as well, and I only ended up losing 360 chips on the hand. I was proud of that one, although as I review it today like I said I don't feel nearly as much pride as I did then, mostly because I think this is an easy, obvious laydown given the reraise and the re-reraise in front of me. It's just not something that has come easy to me over time, as my longtime readers know, when I know how mathematically unlikely it is to be dealt QQ and AA in the same hand, but in the end by focusing specifically on this exact sort of situation, I am getting better about learning to trust what I'm seeing in addition to, if not more reliably than, what I know about the math.

Anyways, I made another huge jump in the second hour here on this hand, which I can't really explain so I'll just show it. Basically UTG limped, I raised around 3x out of the big blind with Aces, and he called. The flop came raggy as hell, I led out with a potbet, and he did this with a huge stack:



Now I know all you tightasses out there and cash gamers are screaming Fold! Fold! here, but as I reviewed things I just didn't think I was up against a set. Not sure why, but I just didn't feel it. I guess I thought the UTG limp was more consistent with a high pair than a low one, I don't know exactly but it was just a feel I had. So continuing my streak of going with my reads, I made the big call, taking time to type into the chat beforehand that if this is a set, that I am done with poker forever. Check it out because I cannot explain why he would do this:



No explanation needed on that I guess. Wtf? Anyways, this one put me in 3rd place out of 42 players, down to less than half the field with the top 8 winning the 2k WSOP prize packages (othewise known as 2k in cash into your full tilt account).

With a big stack and feeling increasingly confident in my reads, I became a fucking beast. I reraised stealers and got folds like here:



I bet out on flops with high cards against late-position limpers who I was sure did not hit the board and could not possibly call me:



and I punished limpers with plays that even I can't really explain or justify, other than that I had watched both of these opponents for quite a while and just "knew" they were not strong enough to call me here (not that this was my greatest move ever, as I look at the screenshots I can't even believe I did this one):



Given my big stack and constant pressure raises like the ones above, I also had enough chips to make some calls against short stacks as we moved into the final few tables in the tournament, such as here where a late position shorty moved allin and I just felt like my middle Ace was likely to be best:



Here's how this one ended:



And don't worry, the guy had the chutzpah to berate me for a good five minutes in the chat for my call there. God I love guys like this. Pushes allin from late position on a short stack with J7o, and then berates me for calling him with A8. You gotta love it. But, this is why I find the middle game, where so many other people seem to have problems, to be the part in mtt's where I tend to excel most. You play deep in enough of these things and you just start to develop a feel for when you are likely ahead, and then you just need the courage to go with your convictions. I still make mistakes all the time in this spot, don't get me wrong here when I say that, but the bottom line is that my approach in most of the larger-buyin mtts I play is usually to try to survive to the 2nd and 3rd hours, and from then I generally feel like I am at a significant advantage over most of my competition once the blinds start to squeeze the shorties. Personally, I think the whole reason I build up a big stack like I had here was so that I can call the late-position shorty over-raising allin in this exact spot. He, apparently, does not understand or agree with that approach. Poor guy. Meanwhile his push here helped me get up over 17,000 chips for the first time, in 6th place of 17 players remaining at the time, again with the top 8 players winning the WSOP packages.

And as I continued to build my stack, I continued to ratchet up the aggression as well. Here I am again in another small blind - big blind confrontation where I was sure my opponent did not have an Ace. Even when I led out with a potbet on the Ace-high flop and he called:



I just got the feeling he was on middle pair, or maybe a middle pocket pair of his own, but I just didn't see him having that Ace. So on the turn, now with a nice pile of chips in the middle, I figured I would keep going with representing that Ace:



And he laid it down as I thought (and hoped) he would, not willing to risk his entire stack with that Ace sitting out there:



This was just another risky aggressive move I made in this tournament, and as I mentioned at the beginning, almost every time I laid a read like this on someone, on that night they almost always proved to be correct. It doesn't usually happen this regularly, but on Friday I was The Man with my reads and I don't think I messed up one of these extremely aggressive plays the entire night long.

Along the same lines, here I am again adding nicely to my stack with a big flop push against a late-position caller who I just didn't think had the goods:



And again he folded, lifting me up to over 25,000 chips for the first time. It's great as you get near the bubble in these mtt satellites awarding multiple seats to the top finishers -- and I find that the larger the prize, naturally the larger this inclination is -- but people with big stacks in good position to make a run at the prizes simply do not want to call off their stacks with anything short of the nuts or near-nuts. You can even get people off most top pairs in a situation like this, with less than a table of people remaining before everyone left wins their seats. It really pays to ratchet up the aggression at times like this, just like all the big pros write about, and Friday night was no exception for me. I was punishing everybody with moves like this, any one of which could have been called and I would have been behind and probably eliminated. But it just all worked for me on that night.

In 8th place out of 13 players remaining (remember, 8 get the seats), I laid this one down:



reasoning that I was either behind (most likely), or racing, either one of which I wanted or needed no part of given my stack at the time and how few players were left.

And here I am in 5th place of 11 players left, keeping everyone on their toes like only our crew knows how:



About 10 hands later I managed to eliminate the 11th place guy, again making a call of his allin with a middling Ace in my hand, relying on my large chip stack and his short-stackedness and late-position push to get it done:



A few preflop and flop steals later, and there I was in 3rd place out of 10, with 8 of us set to win the 2k WSOP prize packages. I could taste it!

Here was a good one. So we're at 10 people left, 2 more eliminations until we all win our WSOP seats, and the 10th place guy is allin preflop. And here is this anus to my right, who himself is on a nice-sized stack, betting into me on the river:



Do people at this level really not understand late-stage bubble play, and the whole concept of implicit collaboration? Apparently not. Can this guy really not see how much wiser it is to just check this down with as many players in the pot as possible once the shorty is all in, to maximize everyone's chances of taking him out? Apparently not. Well, you might think, maybe he has the nuts to be making a bet at this point in the tournament. Nope -- in fact I'm the one who had the nuts here thanks to a beautiful river card. So, I let him know what I thought about him in the chat here, and then I pushed it allin. I figured maybe he would call, but either way I hoped he would learn something from this. He folded after a few seconds, but man what a donkey. I don't care if you somehow had flopped seven Aces, in this spot it's just smarter to check it down and get us that much closer to the bubble. Thankfully I was able to eliminate #10 here, sending us to the final table, with 8 of the 9 players getting the seats. My stack was so big, and I'm not an idiot, so it was all but assured that I would win my second bracelet race of the year, but with a whole bunch of bloggers and non-bloggers railbirding, this is when things got really loopy.

First there was this recockuhand against the short stack who was all but blinded in:





Against four players no less, which managed to nearly quintuple up the short stack after a fuggin flopped set. Sick.

Then after another suckout by a blinded-in short stack that for some reason I did not screenshot (probably because I was busy putting my first through my tv screen), we had to sit through a 5-minute break with the big blind all ready to get blinded in himself on the first hand of Round 4. On that first hand, the guy managed to quadruple up again when he spiked two pairs on the river with 94o to beat out again four other players who had called and checked it down to get him out (again I was too busy killing some animals to capture that screenshot).

Then five hands later, here is the fourth blinded-in suckout at the bubble, once again winning over four other players who checked it down to see the river:





Thankfully, this was all just funny to me, as I was in such a good chip position that I knew I would win the seat. But for the guys who were right near the bottom and constantly in danger of blinding out, this must have been one of the worst nights of their lives.

Eventually, I managed to knock out #9 just like I knocked out #11 and #10, when he got blinded in and I held the top kicker on a 2-pair board to win my second WSOP buyin:



Here was the leaderboard when we got down to the 8 winners:



In messing around to play out the final 8 meaningless spots (eff the TLB), just like in my first bracelet race win last month I managed to find pocket Aces in a big spot to win a huge one:



DQB baybeeeee!!!!!!

And then here was the final hand, literally my only suckout of the entire 4 1/2 hours of play, and not a huge suckout at that:







In all, it was a really fun experience, and hopefully this writeup captures just how much I got by without running into a single monster and without muffing up a single read all through the event. If only all of my big mtts could go like this (I would even settle for once every month or two), things would be so different. I wish I could capture and know exactly what I did, if anything, to make this particular tournament go so smoothly, but alas I don't think it was anything. One wrong read, one slowplay that I didn't pick up on, in this thing and I woulda been toast in any number of the hands I showed above. Playing hyper-aggro like this can be fun and when it works you look and feel like a genius, but pushing allin with as much regularity and betting with nothing as often as I did in this thing does not work nearly this well generally speaking.

Now my big question is what to do with the two bracelet race wins. I'll be posting about this later this week, as I look to finalize my Vegas plans for the second weekend of June within a week or so, but now with two bracelet races won so far, this really expands my options as far as I'm concerned with respect to what events and how many to play, when exactly I need to be there, etc. It all still seems kinda surreal, but I will definitely be out in Vegas in less than two months, hopefully to meet as many of you as possible, and playing in at least one and probably two events in the World Series of Poker!

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

Can You Say W-S-O-P? [Take III]?!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooom!!!



God I hate being on a cold streak!
Full post later this weekend. Right now, 4:44am ET. Time for some slizzneep!

Can You Say W-S-O-P? [Take II]

WARNING....WARNING....Too...much...to...write, too...much...too..write.

Seriously. I never thought I'd say this, but this weekend was so crazy and so awesome for me, I really have no clue where to begin or how to possibly capture all the great things that went down. In fact, in deference to the great ones that have come before me, there really is only one proper way to attack a post like this, and that is to get liquored up to get it all out. Not having any Guinness on hand to get that done right, I'll have to turn to the next best thing, which for me tonight is Magic Hat #9, a great libation I discovered in my days living up in Boston during law school and at the start of my legal career. So here goes. How do I start this hugely fun-packed weekend recap post? For starters, yes I was at the historically awesome Georgetown-UNC game at the Meadowlands, and yes I think I soiled myself at least 18 times during my time there. But in the interest of keeping at least some of my readers, I think I'm going to save most of my Hoya talk for Tuesday's post, as today I want to finish up my bracelet race recap from this weekend. But don't worry, I've got plenty to say about my boys from DC and their incredible performance to make their first Final 4 in 22 years.

I guess I'll just start today with this:



Tonight will be the last MATH tournament of the first quarter, and I am definitely looking to hold on to my top spot in the 2007 money leaderboard for one more week and ice the first-quarter money title for the first year that I've been keeping track of the profits from each player out of this thing. So come on out tonight and try to take me down. In fact, just to make it interesting, $10 to your pokerstars account for whoever eliminates me from the MATH tonight, just because I'm in a freakin great mood after this weekend's action across the board. In fact, you know what? Make it $11, because that's the kind of guy I am today.

Why is that, you ask (other than Georgetown shutting out UNC in overtime on its way to Atlanta for the Final 4)? I'm getting there. But first I want to regress a bit to the summer of 2006.

It was June 15 of last year, not two weeks before the beginning of the 2006 World Series of Poker, when I first made the post here on the blog with the title above. I still remember the day like it was yesterday -- after playing in every low-buyin Bracelet Race I could starting when full tilt first began running these things in April of '06, I had just been on a little mini-tear, cashing in a few of the bracelet races and making two final tables over the previous few days. I was disappointed not to have made my goal of winning my way into the WSOP, but I was feeling so encouraged after making my second bracelet race final table of the week earlier that night, that on a whim I decided to pay cashish to enter that night at midnight's $216 buyin race, and the rest was history as I dominated, easily making the final table and holding on for one of the top few payout positions, winning my $2000 WSOP package and really putting the highlight on my first 6 months of being a successful and profitable mtt player and of running this blog to detail my daily poker comings and goings.

Fast forward about 8 1/2 months to March 1 of this year, when full tilt first started running the bracelet races to award these same 2k WSOP prize packages into the 2007 World Series of Poker. I made no secret here on the blog of my goal to win at least one of these things to fund a visit to the WSOP this summer, hopefully with the bloggers and the WPBT for an early June gathering and my first chance to see the big group in person since my WSOP visit last summer. In furtherance of this goal, as you no doubt are aware if you read here with any regularity at all, my online poker play has primarily focused on the bracelet races through this month, and it would likely stay there unless and until I won my WSOP buyin for this year. This focus has seen me play in almost every nightly 9:30pm ET bracelet race except for maybe 7 or 8 nights that I've been away or otherwise disposed at this hour during the month, but as I've written about here many times, most of these 9:30pm races carry a $26 buyin, meaning that they typically pay out the WSOP package to just one spot out of somewhere between 70 and 120 players. Very cripey odds, and not something which I have succeeded in winning through a great many tries both in 2006 and again so far in March of this year.

A few of these 9:30pm ET events, specifically on Wednesdays and Sundays, have a $75 buyin, meaning a payout of typically 3 seats out of that same roughly 70-120 person field. Much better odds than just one package being awarded, but also still very difficult to achieve for even an experienced and skilled mtt player. As a resut of all this, I have been focusing most of all on the midnight bracelet races on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the same tournament that got me into the WSOP last year, which are a $216 buyin but which pay the 2k WSOP prize packages to a full 10% of the field who enters. So, with usually around 70 or 80 players, full tilt has been awarding 7 or 8 WSOP seat winners every Monday, Wednesday and Friday night since March began (or more accurately, the actual awarding is happening more like every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning, to be technical). Now, while my online roll has sufficient funds to buy in directly to a number of these events, from purely a bankroll management perspective I have elected not to buy in directly, since at $216 a pop, you better make sure you win 1 out of your first 10 of them, or else it would have just been cheaper to buy in directly to the $2000 WSOP event of your choice. So I've been trying to satellite in to these midnight races as often as I possibly can during the month so far.

Overlooked in all of these events is the Friday night bracelet race on full tilt, which is different from all other nights in that the 9:30pm ET bracelet race tournament is a rebuy event, at $30 a pop. I did play in this one once earlier this month, but the somewhat larger buyin makes it not too attractive to play in considering the likelihood of having to rebuy or add-on after the first hour, and with typically only 40 or 50 players, this thing still ends up only paying two players the 2k WSOP prize packages, so in all this thing hasn't ended up being particularly easy to win IMO. Nonetheless, while I was playing in my usual 9-10pm ET satellites into the midnight bracelet race this past Friday, I figured why not give that rebuy event a try and see if I might maybe be able to win my way into the WSOP directly instead of satelliting into the midnight bracelet race and then having to win that one too. Thanks to a last-minute flurry of entries, the rebuy tournament ended up with 65 entrants -- the largest I've seen this month for the Friday night rebuy event -- with just the two guaranteed WSOP packages likely to be awarded, assuming a normal amount of rebuys and addons along the way.

This tournament started off like most other rebuy events, with the other players playing looser than usual, and a bit more willing to make allin calls early, so I did my usual and generally tried to play the opposite, only wanting to get allin early with a truly premium hand. This led me to lay down AQ and even pocket 9s to allin reraises preflop within the first 10 minutes or so of the tournament, bringing my starting stack down from 1500 to around 1100 chips before I finally found AKs. Given the opportunity, I went ahead and called one preflop allin with this hand, finding then a third assclown up top of the screen to call the two allins as well with my personal favorite hand:



And, typically, the JackAce got rewarded with a recockulous runnerrunnerrunnerrunner bullshit board:



And I had to rebuy early. Luckily, I doubled up fairly early on this second rebuy when my KK held up against a huge donkey's pocket 4s, and then closing in on the end of the round, with nearly 3000 chips still in my stack, I took a cheap flop with JTs. Flopping top pair against a few players who showed no strength preflop, I bet out the size of the pot:



and surprisingly got smooth called by two of the four players who saw this flop. In laying reads on these two players, I considered the fact that neither had raised it up preflop so I wasn't particularly worried about AJ or KJ or something, which led me to put them on some lower pair than my top pair Jack kicker, some kind of draw or something, so I wanted to bet the pot again on the turn, which came a harmless-looking offsuit 2. But, when I noticed that betting the full pot of 1920 chips would only leave me with 1000 or so chips left, I figured what the hey, I was pretty sure I was ahead, so I just moved allin. Shockingly, one player and then the other called me as well. Obviously, I knew I must be way, way behind. Or was I?

In the end, one opponent called with just 56 in his hand, and the other called with just 35 in his hand. Can you believe it? Two large allin calls with just oesd's, and both on the turn with just one card left to come! I was beyond shocked, and the harmelss 7 on the river gave me the pot and staked me to over 10,000 chips and first place among the 55 or so remaining players at this point in the tournament. Wow. I still can't believe either let alone both of those calls. But that's Monkey Hour during an online rebuy event for ya -- people will definitely be willing to take more chances than in a regular freezeout tournament, in particular in large pots, so when I am in one of those and believe I am ahead, I tend to try to push it for all it's worth and see if some monkey will pay me off. In any event, nothing more significant happened for me through the last few minutes of the first hour of play, and I went into the first break in 2nd place out of 48 left. Looking good so far. I don't even recall if I opted to do the add-on or not, as I had chipped up so nicely that I recall thinking I wouldn't need it.

The second hour ended up being theft hour for me, as I had only five decent starting hands (and no premiums) -- KQo, ATo, JTs, 88 and 99 -- all of which I ended up winning with thanks to sizeable flop bets, most of which were with nothing as the flops were just not connecting with me. Nonetheless, thanks to the couple of flops I did hit and a number of blind steals, which by the end of the second hour are significant enough to be worth stealing for sure, I ended a largely uneventful hour 2 still in 4th place, now with just 23 players remaining, with just the top 2 finishers winning the 2k WSOP prize packages.

I had my first big hand in over an hour near the beginning of hour 3, when a player named Vampyr (dork!) called my UTG preflop raise -- this time with me holding my favorite hand (but sooooted) -- and then I raised him allin when he led out with top pair middle kicker on the flop:



I think he made a terrible, redonkulous call here, with an easily dominatable hand against a guy (me) who had raised it up UTG as it is. If he wants to put me on a pocket pair below Aces, then so be it. But calling my allin reraise on the flop here was just plain fonkey:



And this big pot put me in 1st place out of 17 players left with 39,540 chips, with the average chip stack at the time right around 16,700. So, at more than twice the tournament average and less than two full tables remaining, I was starting to get that feeling again, one that I haven't had in a couple of months, that I might be on to something big here. I wasn't too excited yet, as I had already been in 1st place with just 4 players remaining in last Saturday's limit holdem bracelet race, and two consecutive cooler hands showed me just how fragile these leads can be even very late in the game, but I was playing well and making solid reads for the most part, and I had gotten just enough cards to get where I needed to be so far in this thing.

Speaking of laying great reads on players, about halfway through the third hour of the bracelet race on Friday I made a huge preflop call against two other allins with just a pocket pair of 9s. I can't quite say this was fonkey of me (almost, but not quite), but at the time I know I was thinking that when I am facing more than one allin and I hold a decently good pocket pair, it means there is already more than one Ace out and that is typically good news for the pocket pair. Now, to be honest I would much rather hold JJ or (gasp!) QQ to make a play like this, and pocket 9s is probably the very lowest pair I would normally call off my stack with against two allins in this situation, but what can I say, I did it:



Phuck! Big trouble for me. Bad call on my part, I knew it right away (and several railbirds let me know it as well, never fear). The flop and turn brought me no help, and I was literally chanting "9999999999999" as the river card was setting to fall:



BOOOoooooomm! In retrospect, although there was tons more poker to be played and I played it very well, this hand really set me up to make my run at getting into the 2007 World Series of Poker. This put me back in 1st place out of 13 left, with over 66,000 chips as compared to 2nd place's 36,500. A massive chip lead that I now had to make sure to protect, as remember only the top two finishers in this thing would win the 2k WSOP prize packages.

Anyways, I did nothing but steal on occasion, playing the bully with that hefty ill-gotten stack for the rest of the round, and near the end of the third hour came the final table, with me in 1st out of 9:



After quickly eliminating the short stack on the very first hand of final table play, about 15 minutes in, I tried this resteal:



which went horribly wrong for me in what turned out to be a button special. After the button open-raised the 2000-chip big blind to 5800 chips, and I reraised him to 20k with my big bullystack, he re-reraised me allin for just 7k more and at that point I clearly had to call, knowing I was behind but hopefully not dominated:



Another ill-advised play by me, and suddenly im in 4th of 7, and my WSOP dream is slipping away once again, mostly due to my own over-aggressiveness. Phuck! But at least I had built up that bigass stack to play with, meaning that I still had chips left after this bad turn of events and hopefully enough to do something to climb back into contention for the top two spots.

And climb back in is exactly what I did. I got a lot of those lost chips back just three hands later with AKs by smooth calling a button stealer's 3x raise, and then pushing in for my last 16k on the T-high flop, and he folded. Back up to 39,500 chips and 3rd place of 7, but at that point the top two stacks were 73k and 58k respectively, so I still had a lot of work to do to get back where I needed to be. Three or four hands later, the big stack at the table eliminated the shorty with the big stack's AKs against the shorty's JJ allin preflop, and we were down to 6 with me in 4th place.

And here is where all of these 6-max turbo satellites and the 30k experience I have really kicked in, because I am very, very comfortable with the 6-max game at this point. I know 6-max nlh tournaments about as good as anyone can, and all my turbo experience with those nightly sats was huge as binds were already 1k-2k with a 250-chip ante as we started 6-handed play, with top 2 getting seats. I literally felt a sense of comfort come over me as I realized we were down to 6-handed play, and I was ready to kick it into even higher gear as only I know how and get myself back up the leaderboard. With this new confidence, after taking down a pot open-raising A9o UTG, and then stealing the blinds and antes by open-raising with K6 and K7 in consecutive hands from the button and the small blind, I crossed back up into 3rd place again with 43k in chips, but with the two big stacks still sitting at 77k and 70k.

I then made this steal attempt with A3s from the cutoff position, another fairly standard move for me in fast-paced, high-blinds 6-max nlh:



But when the short stack reraised me allin for another 17k chips, representing half of my remaining stack, I made a downright bad call, at least my second of the night, but I had managed to convince myself that he could have anything since he had been so short at the time. Of course, if I could take it all back I would never make this call with that 3 in my hand, but at the time I thought to myself, this guy has KJ or something and I am slightly ahead, and I have a good chance to really chip up here against a guy who is definitely pushing with lower than optimal standards. Oops:



Of course I lost to the fucking biatchwhore Queens, leaving me with just 16k and in dead last among the 6 remaining players. Truly bad, bad call by me, not much else I can say about that.

Immediately regaining my composure, I stole the blinds and antes on the next two hands with allin preflop moves, and then, still on the short stack, I pushed allin from the cutoff with ATo (obviously), and got insta-called by the small blind (uh oh) who was holding the small blind special hand of KK (phuck me!). But then luck intervened again, serving up this board for my roughly 30% dog hand:



Woohooo! So I was back up to 37k, at the time just barely in 4th place of the 5 remaining players, with just the top two winning the 2k WSOP prize packages. So I still had a looooong way to go and lots of stealing and chipping up to do if I expected to fully recover from blowing that big stack I had been on just a short while earlier.

Then I had my biggest hand of the night. I found my raging nemesis pocket Queens in the small blind in an sb special of my own (finally), and the button went for the 3x open-raise steal, so I just pushed and prayed for a call:



My prayers were answered when he called, and then doubly answered when he flipped up pocket 9s:



My 82% hand held up. With Queens. With fucking Queens guys! Can you believe it? From worst to first at the final table over the span of maybe 5 or 6 minutes. My 84k was now back in 1st place over my opponents' stacks of 83k, 63k, 35k and 19k. Woohooooo, did I mention that?

I lost some chips a couple of hands later when the table shorty pushed allin and I felt I had to call with my pocket 8s. My favorite hand, AJo, hit the flop as it always does against a lower pocket pair in online play, and I assholically dropped about 12k more in chips making what I think had to be the right play against the short stack. I followed this hand up, however, with easily my biggest bluff of the night, against a guy I suspected was stealing from the small blind:



Although the small blind did call my reraise in this spot, when the flop came totally raggy, I read him for stealing so I figured I had to make my move and take advantage of my stack to scare this guy into folding in a spot where he really did not want to give up his chance at making the WSOP without a truly premium hand in a spot where I just didn't think he had one:



This was risky, but it worked, and IMO this is just what you have to do at the final table of these mtt satellites. You simply have to abuse the small stacks afraid to lose their shot, and push when you think you can win these hands with low Ms and bigass blinds. Although as you can see above it did not work for me on a few big occasions this night, believe me when I say this kind of play did work for me probably ten times more often than it did not. Again the key is just to make good reads overall, and build up a big enough stack with this aggressive kind of play so that you can withstand the inevitable big blind special type of hands that all of us will face eventually if we play aggressive enough over a long enough period of time.

So here I am a few steals and bully moves later, with nice bigass chip lead over the rest of the field with just five players remaining. Three more eliminations to go, and the 2007 WSOP would be mine:



A couple of hands later, TT eliminated the short stack's A8o to bring us down to just four players remaining, with half of us slated for the WSOP prize packages. This is the part of the mtt satellites that I really hate, as it can take forever to finally burst the bubble for the main prize winners, and with the blinds so high, you just never know what can happen if you steal at the wrong time or run into a particularly aggressive restealer from after you in the action. Amazingly, three hands later, QTo eliminated the new short stack's A6s to get us down to 3 handed, mercifully fast, and now it was just one elimination left before I would be going to the 2007 WSOP. Unfortunately though, this is what I was looking at since the low stack had eliminated the last 2 players, allowing him to chip up significantly and basically drawing even with myself and the other previously larger stack:



Amazingly and happily, though, just two hands into 3-handed play, this went down between the other two players at the table:



HOSSSE went allin with A9 on Q89 board, and Vampyr up top had to call with top pair Jack kicker plus an inside straight draw to boot, a veritable monster in 3-handed play. He coulda laid it down, don't get me wrong, but the worse play I think was the unnecessary allin from the 2nd pair guy, when he had been basically even with the other two of us and all three vying for just two WSOP seats. And here is the lesson for the kids and the poker noobs out there: this is why you dont pushmonkey in a tournament like this. HOSSSE flat-out cost himself a WSOP seat because he pushmonkeyed about 75,000 chips into the pot on the flop with just second pair. Why not bet a much smaller amount and see if you can take the pot down with that bet? If your opponent has nothing, at this point in the tournament he is highly likely to fold and preserve his chances of still finishing in the top two spots. And, like what would have happened in this case, if your opponent then reraises you allin, maybe HOSSSE could have chosen to fold and save the majority of his stack for another hand. But instead he pushmonkeyed allin for a huge stack on the flop with just second pair top kicker on a board with an overcard and a possible straight out there, and he paid the price. Dearly.

So, on the very next hand, HOSSSE had to go allin with just around 9k total left, and myself and Vampyr checked it down, neither one of us with anything good:



but somehow my hand held up, and that was it! WSOP here I come!!

Just for good measure, here was the meaningless last hand of the tournament, when it was just down to Vampyr and myself, both already having won our WSOP packages:



Yep. The pocket aces that had eluded me all through the tournament, finally there on the last (meaningless) hand for me to take it all down.



Now, I would be remiss if I didn't mention here, as I have so many times in connection with my big online poker wins, the Hammer Wife's role in all this. First, as always she is totally down with me playing on the computer almost every night. Not saying she loves it, but that she accepts it, and in a way that makes it all the better what my wife does because deep down I know she's still really not in to the whole gambling thing. But she has always let me do my thing, and for that I am extremely grateful and I know how lucky I am. Plus, on Saturday morning right after I won my seat, of course M, the older Hammer Girl, decided to pick that very day to get up at 4:40am to use the bathroom, and then decided she was not tired anymore after that. Having stayed up until just an hour or two before that to win my WSOP seat and finish cashing in the midnight bracelet race as well for that matter, there was just no way I could stay up at 4am after just getting to sleep after 3am, so once again there was the Hammer Wife stepping up and taking care of business and letting me get the recharge that I so desperately needed. To top it off, when Georgetown beat Vanderbilt on Friday night, the Hammer Wife once again was the first one to say I had to take the opportunity that some friends had offered me to go to the game on Sunday against UNC, and this was even after she had gotten up very early in the morning with the kids on both Saturday and Sunday morning to let me sleep off what had been a couple of consecutive late nights doing my thing. It's just amazing how incredibly lucky I have gotten in my life to have three such wonderful girls in my family, and absolutely none of any of this would have been possible without my wife. I know it sounds cheesey to read (it's cheesey just writing it, trust me), but it really is amazing how much great, awesome stuff has happened over just the past few years with the direct or at least indirect assistance of the Hammer Wife. Just look at how awesome this whole weekend turned out, between my WSOP seat and the Georgetown game on Sunday, etc. What a fucking poker win, what a fucking game, and what a fucking weekend in Hammer Land!!!

Now I just have to figure out which WSOP event I'm going to play in. Is everyone planning on heading out there the weekend of June 7-10 or what? Thursday the 7th at noon is 6-handd $1500 nlh. Sat the 9th is 1500 regular nlh. What's a hammerplayer to do?

See you tonight at Mondays at the Hoy, and let me know what you think!