Donkey Island Poker

After about a year of anticipation after the first dribs and drabs were leaked to the poker blogger press, finally "Donkey Island" poker has been officially announced. The brainchild of none other than Julius Goat, Goat and BuddyDank are teaming up to offer this unique combination of blogger tournament and Survivor -- a show I've never watched -- in what is without a doubt the most original and unique blonkament series that this our group has ever experienced.

I'm not much for restating someone else's rules and someone else's game, so I'm just going to link to Goat's post announcing Donkey Poker here, and encourage every one of you reading this to head over to Goat's site and check it out. Goat has the description of the game -- essentially a 16-person prop bet over a series of tournaments over eight weeks starting in February -- and the basic rules of how things will go. I tend to agree with Goat that there may be several angles no one has really thought of to this beyond just what is addressed on Goat's blog right now, but then I tend to think that is going to be part of the fun with this whole thing.

A couple of other quick points before I sign off, thanks to work utterly kicking my ass these past few days. First, I just wanted to commend Goat and Buddy not only for their originality, but just for taking a step to do something to reinvigorate and reignite interest in our weekly blogger tournaments that has waned so much over the past few years. I have no doubt that we're never going to get back to the mystique and the popularity that existed back in the WWdN days -- for a lot of different reasons -- but the weekly games are always fun and, save for those who routinely let their anger get the best of them, they are always some of the most fun you can have any week when you stop by and check out the action with your favorite fake internet friends. It's a great chance for us old-timers to catch up with our old blogging friends, and an even better opportunity for the newer readers to sit down and play poker with some great players and even better writers who you may feel like you've "known" for years from reading their blogs without ever having had any kind of a one-on-one interaction with them.

I also wanted to mention that I understand from some girly chats with Buddy that he is finally doing the obvious thing -- something I've railed about for more than a year now -- and changing the name of "the Mookie" to the more appropriate "The Dank". For those who don't know, Mookie -- who for the record is and always has been an awesome guy -- has not been setting up or really associated with the weekly Wednesday night Mookie tournament for the better part of what, two years now? Buddy has taken on administration of this tournament for a long time now, and he has set the standard for blonkatainment -- yes that's a new word I just made up right now to combine "blonkament" and "entertainment" -- by broadcasting live on BuddyDank Radio almost every Wednesday night during the Mookie festivities. This thing has been Buddy's tournament as clear as day for literally years now, and I have long since thought and publicly claimed that having Mookie's name associated with it at this point is not the right idea from a marketing perspective, given Mookie's lack of involvement with the group or his blog anymore in any public way. Changing the name of the Mookie to the Dank is long overdue in my book, and associating the tournament with the new Donkey Island poker extravaganza is a great way to help stimulate action and interest in our weekly games, something that has been more or less totally lacking for going on three years or more now at this point.

Lastly, I wanted to mention that it is not lost on me how utterly hopeless it is for me to try to succeed at any poker series that involves needing the votes of others in order to survive. Although I routinely destroy you all in pure poker, I am well aware that I have no possible shot in this particular setup. But that's ok. Anything that (1) Goat spearheads, (2) Buddy is into on the radio, or (3) helps generate interest in our weekly games is a-ok and a good time in my book. And something tells me this one is going to lead to more than a few interesting blog posts along the way as well, another thing a shizz-stirrer like me is obviously well into.

So one again, click on over to Goat's post today to read all about Donkey Island poker. I am already confirmed as one of the players, and although I can't confirm this, I believe that there may still be spots available as I write this post. Follow the directions in Goat's post if you are interested in participating, and I'll see you at the games starting in February, including Goat's newly-hosted tournament on Sunday nights at 9:30pm ET when that time comes. And in the meantime, why not stop by "the Dank" tonight at 10pm ET (password as always is "vegas1") and get your groove on, and start get re-acclimated to the donkeyrific pokerings of your fake internet friends. And for those of you so inclined, perhaps to start laying the groundwork for your many fiendish alliances and backroom deals in advance of Donkey Island's official beginning in a few weeks. I plan to be there tonight -- maybe you can too.

PLH Skillz, and Buddydank Radio

So Tuesday night was a mixed bag on the poker front for me. After winning about a buyin at the $100 nl tables on pokerstars, I went 0-for-3 in the earlier part of the evening in the $55 turbo sngs on full tilt, two of those losses coming on stoopid suckouts (AK losing to shorty's A5 allin preflop, and 88 losing to AQ allin on a JJ5 flop). The third loss came when I literally saw one flop (and no turns or rivers) for the first 28 hands dealt to me -- which is basically death right there in a turbo format sitngo -- and then finally found AJs which I pushed allin with on a short stack, only to get called by AK and IGH in 7th place. I also got recockulously beat out of the 5050 fairly deep into it when some assclown insta-called my top-pair flop bet with just an inside straight draw (no overcards even) for crying out loud, then filled on the turn and stacked my aggro ass because I could not put him on that hand. Silly me. Yes it happens, but all that sucked the big one. Fortunately, I ended the night by running my first $110 turbo sng in a couple of weeks -- thank you, end of year Iron Man bonus! -- and after surviving not one but two recockulous suckouts in that thing as well, I still managed to hold on for the victory. I've mentioned this before, but it is pretty sweet winning one of these $110 turbos, as it pays $495 for the win and even $297 for second place which is also pretty great. So my cash wins along with that $495 more than made up for the rest of the day's losses and left me solidly up overall on the night, which is always a good result whenever I take my usual 10-15 suckouts like I certainly did throughout all my Tuesday evening play. I swear it is a serious curse getting in ahead all the time, it really is.

Moving on to the latest Skill Series tournament, I really enjoyed myself as 42 buttclowns got together for some pot-limit holdem on full tilt at 9:30pm ET. I played fairly well, but somebody hit me for a large loss early on to get me short stacked, where I basically would stay for the next 90 minutes of the tournament. I don't remember the hand that got me, but I do remember thinking it was pretty funny so that probably means it was a setup, a suckout or just a bad play by someone. Who knows. And it doesn't really matter anyways, I play these tournaments to have fun and that's what I did. I do know that I played the short stack pretty masterfully, sitting within the bottom few spots remaining almost all throughout the first hour and a half of the event, until finally someone got me. Again I don't remember the hand or who it was who mercifully ended my annoyingass short-stacked run, but again I do remember thinking it was pretty funny. Who knows why, like I said it doesn't really matter. But I think these Skill Series games have been a great time for everyone, and as long as we can continue to keep the chatbox clean then I think they are some of the most fun our group has every single week. And congratulations out to this week's Skill Series winner, everyone's favorite disc jockey Buddy Dank himself! Buddy wins his first of the Skill Series events and shows that he is more than just a bubbly on-air personality and a tangy piece of eye candy, but he can also play this game and play it well. PLH is generally thought of as a higher-skill game than limit or in many cases even than no-limit since you can't generally just push allin before the flop, and to win this really says something about someone's skills as a holdem tournament player in general, so congratulations to Mr. Dank for the big win.

And this makes for a perfect segue into what I wanted to talk about today: Buddydank Radio. Now I know I have written here on the blog about this incredible web-broadcast radio program that Buddy has been putting together for the better part of the past year now, but today I wanted to take some time to really talk about some aspects of the show. Every Wednesday night, the Mookie runs, which as most of you know is the largest gathering of bloggers every week to play in a private tournament,and which is also the Tournament That I Simply Cannot Win. Every Wednesday night, therefore, I get absolutely sloppy sloshed on Captain & Coke or a number of beers, preparing for the inevitable running an overpair into quads on the flop, the flonkey calling my preflop allin with T9o and winning or some other shit like that which I have to get good n liquored up just to be able to handle. And for the past several months, Buddydank has been saving his best stuff of the week on Wednesday as well, broadcasting live over the intertubes all during the Mookie, and bringing on some awesome guests on occasion to help liven things up a bit. Last week as you may recall, I joined Buddy and co-host Miami Don, and guest hosts ScottMC and KOD in a marathon 4 1/2-hour broadcast session where we shared online poker stories, told some jokes, did some serious degenerate gambling and even spent some time evaluating the poker luck of some of our fellow blogger brethren. And I have big news for you all regarding this week's show:

We're all coming back on again tonight.

That's right. The "Asshat Frat Crew" as we have been dubbed of Don, Scott, Chad and myself will be joining Buddy back on Buddydank Radio again this week for a repeat performance in what I believe is Don's last week of "controlling" the show thanks to the Jaguars beating down on Buddy's Pittsburgh Steelers in the first round of the playoffs a few weeks back. For those of you who listened last week, hopefully you had a good enough time to want to tune back in tonight for the festivities, where I can promise you we have lots more good stuff planned for your listening and laughing pleasure. And for those of you who did not tune in last week:

Why the hell not? I'm serious here now guys. I'm sure there are a few people with valid reasons, as I myself have had some issues in the past with sleeping kids and sleeping wives "and whatnot" to make it a little difficult to tune in to Buddydank Radio, but at least in the early part of the evening, I can almost always dial in for some ghey good tunes, good entertainment and great laughs. Now here's the thing: I know that Buddy's all-time record for concurrent listeners has been in the 50s. This is a number that has been reached on two occasions -- first, the live-from-Vegas broadcast from Chad's basement during the week of the live blogger gathering this past December. The second time we had 50 people tuned it at once was last week with the AFC in da house along with Buddy to guide things along. Now don't get me wrong, I love that 50 different people are tuning in to Buddydank Radio at one time, I think that is great, it helps foster our community and just in general I am really pleased to have a bunch of people logging in all at once to hear the guys do their show. But here's what I don't get -- if the Mookie has, say, 80 to 90 runners, then why are only 50 people listening to Buddydank Radio? Shouldn't that number be at least 80 or 90, or at least somewhere close to it? That's what I'm thinking anyways.

So I've spent some time this week since getting on air with the AFC last week in trying to figure why even more people haven't been listening. Yes I know we were up at a near-record last week, which is great, but I can't help but think, there are hundreds and hundreds of people who read these blogs, and therefore hundreds and hundreds of people who would love the shit out of listening to Buddydank Radio if given the chance, which we all have. The major thing I can think of is that people either don't know how to get it all set up on their pc's, or just don't want to take the time to do what people assume will be a big effort. In reality, it could not be easier to listen to Buddydank Radio on any regular old computer. You don't need any special plugins or special external software to listen. Today Budday updated his blog with instructions on the best ways to listen, which I am going to just copy right here directly from Buddy's blog:

I recently had some requests for information on the best way to listen to BuddyDank Radio. I'd written this up awhile ago but it needs updating, so here we go.



First off! BuddyDank Radio is here!



You have several options for listening to the broadcast. On the main page you will see a couple links.
1. IceCast Test(low latency) - This is the best way to listen to BDR. It has the shortest delay so you can hear everything as close to when it happens as possible. This link will work with Windows Media Player, Winamp, iTunes, and many other media programs. When you listen to this stream it is usually only about 5-10 seconds behind the action.



2. WinAMP/iTunes - This link easily works with the two players listed. BUT! When you listen to this version of the stream you will be hearing everything 30 - 90 seconds behind. If you have a slower internet connection or a problematic one then this may work better for you. We are slowly trying to eliminate this stream and go completely to the IceCast in the next few weeks to why not use that one now?



3. Media Player - This link was designed to work specifically with Window Media Player. This stream is also 30-90 seconds behind the live action. This link is normally a last ditch effort for those having trouble listening to the stream at all. If the other 2 don't work for you and you have Windows, Try this one.



And that's about it, simple eh? Having problems? Got questions? Contact BuddyDank at buddy@buddydank.com or you can find me on Yahoo messenger. Screen name is Cracksmokingrobot.



Tune in tonight for the last special broadcast of MiamiDon/Instant Tragedy radio! The same crew that brought you last weeks show will be back! MiamiDon, Cracknaces, ScottMc and Hoyazo will be your hosts, so tune in damn it.
We are doing our best to attempt to break the maximum number of listeners at one time for BDR. The record is 54 and last week we had 52 so this should be doable.

So it really is that simple, folks. At most you might need to download a free media player from someone on the intertubes, but even that is unlikely. I used to listen on Winamp as recommended above by Buddy, but one day for whatever reason I had some trouble with the audio on the feed, so I went and downloaded the free Yahoo! Music application, something Buddy does not even mention as an option in his writeup above, and since then I have had absolutely no trouble whatsoever tuning in every week I can to listen to Buddy and his boys kick it old school on the airwaves. I just open up Winamp or Yahoo! Music, click on "open up URL", and type "http://www.buddydank.com:9000/listen.pls" for the URL address to open, and after about five seconds or so, voila! Buddydank Radio live, coming right out of the speakers on my pc. It could not be easier, and anybody with a computer that accesses the full tilt application to be playing in the Mookie should obviously be able to listen to Buddydank Radio as well. Except for you donks who actually play online poker from your work, I don't know if you can listen to Buddydank Radio from there or not.

But the rest of you, what is your excuse at this point? I know a ton of people read this blog, far more people than have ever tuned in to Buddydank Radio at one time for one of the weekly broadcasts during the Mookie. So let's make tonight the night and everyone get on there and listen in and see what you think about making this part of your weekly Wednesday routine. Ever wondered what my voice sounds like live? Ever wanted to know if I'm as much of a whiny pompous-ass bitch as I seem on the blog? Tonight is your chance to find out, as I plan to be on hopefully from the beginning to the end just like last week.

Last thing -- just like last week we have some fun stuff planned for tonight's broadcast, so we're really hoping that people will tune in to follow along with the progress in the Mookie and whatever else comes up along the way, in addition to hearing whatever else the AFC has on our minds during the evening's festivities. I will update right here later if we have any more details as to just what else is going to be on the show for the night, but otherwise, I'll see you tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt for the Mookie (password as always is "vegas1"), and I'll see you tonight starting sometime before 10pm ET on Buddydank Radio!!

The Curse Rolls On, and Live on Wednesday Night

Wow. What a night. Three of my favorite things happened in conjunction with each other on Wednesday night during my regular poker travels. First and of the least significance, I won another $75 token in the 9:45pm ET token frenzy on full tilt. This was by far the longest token frenzy I have ever played in (and I've played in many, believe you me), with the token bubble not bursting at the 23-players threshold until nearly 11:30pm ET. Usually these things are over maybe 15, maybe 20 minutes tops into Hour #2, but for whatever reason last night things conspired to make this thing just roll on and on and on. I don't think it was short stacks sucking out or anything, and in fact at least from my own personal table experience it seemed to be a preponderance of mega-stalling and table collaboration more than anything else that was the culprit. But whatever the reason, by the time the smoke had finally cleared just a shade before 11:30pm on the East Coast, myself, chitwood and Smokkee had all prevailed and won ourselves a $75 token to get donked out of a larger-buyin tournament with one day soon.

Speaking of which, why does full tilt insist on playing these multi-seat satellites out once all of the tokens or seats or whatever have been awarded? In other words, I know from my return to pokerstars this week that when they run a multi-seat sattelite such as the regular ones into their nightly 50-50 copycat tournament that also runs at 9:30pm ET just like full tilt's, once the bubble breaks, the tournament automatically ends, and everyone left is declared the 1st place winner. And yet, on full tilt, they make you sit there and have everyone push every hand until there is one lucksack left standing at the end, and only then do they award the tokens to all the winners. Why do this? Why take the time from everyone else, when they could instead be moving on a few minutes sooner to the cash tables, another sng or an mtt and paying that valuable rake to full tilt that much quicker? And why take up the additional bandwith from full tilt's perspective, which although is not much in the greater scheme of things, surely has some marginal cost associated with it from an infrastructure and variable cost perspective? And then of course there are guys like me who, when presented with the opportunity, cannot help but piss everyone else off by folding for several hands once the bubble bursts, simply because I can and it is fun to have everyone go monkey-crazy in the chat. But why even allow me to do this? It's meaningless to anyone, has no discernible benefits, and has some marginal cost increases and revenue delays or losses to full tilt as a result. Why, full tilt, why?

Anyways, back to last night. The second super fun thing that happened to me on Wednesday night was running KK into flopped quads in the Mookie. Yes, the Mookie curse rolled on and how on the evening, as I received my only hand even close to a premium at the very last hand of the first hour, pocket Kings, and knowing that this will be my one premium hand of the next month in this thing, I opted to just smooth call Rake Feeder's middle position raise rather than reraise it myself, figuring I will ensure that I win a bigger pot as well as being able to fold when the inevitable Ace hits the flop as soon as my chips are in the middle. Nice Wonka also called the raise behind me, and three of us saw a flop of 886 with two hearts. Other than flopping a set of course, this was just about the perfect flop for my Kings. A paired board, so only two cards instead of the normal three that could have hit either of my opponents. And since I was a bit short and we were already an hour in to the tournament, what I really needed was a double-up, which meant that I was actually happy to have the possible straight and possible flush draws on the board too, figuring this would increase my chances of being called. So Rake Feeder led out on the continuation bet on this raggy flop, which I immediately pushed allin on with my last chips that were probably about twice the size of the current pot. Wonka folded what turned out to be pocket 7s, and Rake Feeder wasted no time in calling and flipping up pocket 8s for the quadsflop. Gotta love it. I take KK up against 88, get close to the perfect flop for me and get it allin, and BOOOooooooooom! Quad eights. Wonderful. That is at least the second time in the past few months that I have gotten KK allin against a lower pocket pair in the Mookie and then ran into flopped quads. It's like full tilt is sticking it to me. I mean, isn't it enough to just dish out the set to the guy? Do you have to quad his ass up just to make me look and feel that small? Come on now. So from there I was crippled, and although I did manage to more than quarduple from there using my mad skillz, I eventually ran 99 into QQ and since I haven't beaten an opponent's QQ since early in the first Bush administration, we knew that one was done. I was sure I would flop quad 9s, but somehow that was just not meant to be and IGH in the middle of the Mookie pack once again. So that was the second thing that I loved about my Wednesday night poker action at the virtual tables.

But the best part of all about Wednesday night for me was definitely Buddydank radio. As those of you who listened know, I made my virgin appearance on the show this week and I have to say, I had a fucking blast. I really don't know how good of a job I did or how interesting I was, although I did get some positive feeback from people over the girly but you know how it is a lot of people are afraid I will rant about them or something if they don't say nice things like that about me. It sure felt like we were doing a fun show, though I do regret somewhat that we kinda got a little bit away from the Mookie at the very end of the tournament, which btw was one by poser New England fan Byron after a run to the final table and then a strong performance when down to the last few players to take it down. I watch these guys and it's so obvious why I will never win a Mookie -- these guys suck out like champions! And don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to cheapen bdidde's or anyone else's performance last night. But it took Byron a mega river suckout to even make it to the final table, and I believe I saw one more setuppy kind of hand (QQ and JJ 5-handed or something like that) along the way at the final table to get him a huge stack. I just don't ever have that happen to me deep in the Mookie. Ever. If anything I am the exact opposite -- always the victim of the cooler beat, the setup hand, whatever it takes to prevent me from ever winning this fucking thing. I'm the guy who gets AQ against KK when 4-handed. I'm the guy who gets AQ against 99 and can't win a race 4-handed. I'm the guy who suffers the 13% resuck at the river when allin heads-up with the chip lead. And the guy (or gal) who wins the Mookie every week is pretty much always the opposite. It's the person who called the pot-sized bet with just the open-end straight draw on the turn and then hits it. It's the sucker-outer. And none of those things are ever me, not in the Mookie anyways. I've been that guy in every other blonkament from time to time, including my most recent Riverchasers win when I hit a ton of draws all through the night on my way to victory, but simply never in the Mookie. And I never will.

Anyways, so being on Buddydank radio was a really fun highlight of my poker blogging career, and I only hope it was as much fun to listen to as it was for me to be a part of this week. I absolutely loved the group of Don, Chad, Scott and Buddy, and I think in the end we all share the same sense of humor and sensibility about poker and about blogging in general. I also think it helps that we are all pretty good poker players in our own right as well, which adds to the analysis and some of the poker decisions we can discuss on line. But I got to be interviewed by Buddy and answer some questions for the first time about the genesis of my blog that I always thought I would be answering in a Mookie champion's profile that at this point will obviously never come. I spoke a little bit about my outlook on poker and about my love for and dedication to blogging regularly about the game. I talked a little bit about the kind of games that I am focusing on these days in my poker play. And we all had a great time playing "Lucky or Not?" about some of our favorite poker bloggers and their penchant for hitting big cards at big times at the tables. Like I said, one thing I found out yesterday is that when you are on Buddydank radio, you don't get to listen to Buddydank radio, so I really have no clue how it all went over to the audience, but from my perspective I had an absolute blast.

In the end, I understand that the number of listeners for the radio show last night was right up there with the highest it has ever been, so that I guess can be taken as a good sign that people were interested in the team that was on last night and that is a good thing. And I recall at some points during the broadcast receiving updates from Buddy about the numbers of listeners, which almost all through the night were even higher than the number of people still remaining in the Mookie, including at the very end of the night when Pokerfool lucksacked his way to not one but two consecutive allin-pushfest wins against 16 and 12 fellow bloggers, respectively, to the tune of $308.02 won in two consecutive 50 FPP supersatellites to the 750k. Last I recall there were still 20-something people online even after 1am as the Mookie came to a close, so again I will say I had a blast on air, it was much harder than I thought it would be to keep up with everything, and just a big thank you to Buddy and to Don for having me on their show for the entire night's run. Good times.

OK that's all I got for ya today. Don't forget tonight's Riverchasers event at 9pm ET on full tilt (password as always is "riverchasers"). And tonight is gonna be a fun one -- Razz.

Ugh. I just threw up in my mouth as I typed that word. See you tonight anyways though at 9pm !

Mookie Curse '08, Dookie Victory and 2007 Blogiverse Highlights

Different year, same fucking result on a Wednesday night. Played the Mookie on Wednesday, did not play particularly well, and got donked out on two silly hands within the first 40 minutes or so. Here's the way it went down. First, I'm in the big blind with 99. The action folds around before the flop to the small blind, who is a megashort stack with only 600-some chips and pushes allin on my 100-chip blind. Obviously I call -- as insta as any instacall by me is ever gonna get -- and he flips up the jackace. I've already typed in the "nh" before his two pairs fall on the flop. Nice setup.

And btw, while I'm on the topic, why do some people refuse to acknowledge the existence of a "setup" hand? I mean I've seen it discussed, and that just makes me wonder about people's poker knowledge in general. Call it what you want I don't care, but when the cards fall such that you were going to get it in and lose no matter what, that doesn't automatically make it "your fault" or somehow a fair loss that could have been avoided if played correctly. Not if the term "setup" is being used correctly it's not. When you're in the BB and the shorty in the SB pushes in and you call with pocket 2s, that's not a setup at all. You should probably have folded, and if you wanted to call then be my guest but you can't cry setup when that hand is done because you knew of course you were at best a 52% favorite when you called the allin. No setup there. But a true setup is by definition not your fault, and when the term is used correctly, that's exactly what happens: you get set up to lose. As in, it folds to you the SB short stack who pushes allin, and you instacall with KK. He shows AA. Bad beat? No, you were behind all the way. But is it just a bad play by you? Of course not, don't be ridiculous. You had to call, you had to be behind, and you were going to lose. It had been preordained since the moment that the evil full tilt server scripted the cards for your tournament that on that hand, you absolutely, positively had to lose and double the shorty there. Clearly a different animal from a bad beat since you were actually behind the whole way, but it strains all credibility to suggest that any "setup" is really just a way of not blaming oneself for a play that is one's own fault. Not with a real setup it isn't.

Anyways, so that hand took over a quarter of my stack and left me near the bottom in chips with just over 1700 chips remaining about a half hour in to the Mookie this week. Then, maybe 10 minutes later, I flopped top pair on a two-club board into a raised pot, and overbet allin on the flop with my shortish stack. The big stack on the other side, playing in his first Mookie ever, typed in some clever comment about doing this "just for the bloggers" or for the rant or something, and called my allin with just the naked flush draw. Full tilt let me off easy by bringing the third club this time on the turn instead of making me wait till the river and think I was actually going to double up. So IGH on a setup and a suckout. Setup and a suckout, setup and a suckout. Doesn't this shit ever get old? Can someone please take my Mookie stack one of these days by getting in ahead once in a while, preferably by more than 52-48%? Believe me when I say it would feel awesome just once in a long, long while to actually get outplayed in the Mookie instead of having to watch Evil Wonka win his 44th Mookie title while I wonder about what should have been. Congrats though to EW for winning another Mookie. EW is quickly becoming one of my more fun reads and guys to chat with. I really do like a guy who can take it in as well as he can dish it out. I think that is of the utmost importance if you're going to talk some smack among the blogging crew -- although EW once accused me of being a hypocrite, in reality hypocrisy is not something I have anything to do with and, along with cheapness, it's one of the ugliest qualities I personally see in other people.

Also in a continuation of last year's performance, I won the first Dookie of the year, this week in Stud Hilo, the poker game I have been playing the longest and actually enjoy playing for the most part:



To be clear, Chad and I both actually won the Dookie this week, as he was cool enough to agree to just chop the top two money prizes and push allin on every street once we got down to heads up. At the time it was about 1:55am my time but only 10:55pm Chad's time, and I did have an 18k to 8k chip lead after busting heffmike in third place. So I was in good position but there was no way I felt like taking on the undisputed King of all Donks in two-handed Hilo, just about the donkiest thing any two people can play together, especially starting at 2am local time when I know M and K will be jumping on my ass in bed at 6am sharp just like every day. So I appreciated his willingness to just chop it up, and my chip lead enabled me to withstand an early blind-allin loss and end up on top for the official screenshot.

Why the F I can win so many Dookie's but not one single Mookie is beyond me. Despite them all counting as blonkament wins, it actually frustrates me more than I can win the Dookie seemingly once every month or two but can never wade through the minefields in the Mookie. And I think full tilt knows this, which is why it is having a field day with me on a weekly basis, every Wednesday night. Bastages.

OK so moving on as I continue my week-long lookback on 2007 in the world of poker and poker blogging, today I wanted to mention a short list of my own personal favorite highlights in the poker blogiverse during the past year. Some of these involved me personally, and most of them do not but were things that meant a lot to me and that I think really kicked ass. These are the things that really stick out in my mind as the best or coolest things that affected me in 2007 in the world of poker and poker blogging. So here they are, in no particular order:

1. The Battle of the Blogger Tournaments. This thing kinda came out of nowhere in 2007, really stemming from a drunken conversation between myself and Al at an obscure bar in the Borgata in Atlantic City. I was out there in March to play in the WSOP Circuit Event at Caesar's, and I came by the Borgata bar to meet up with Mr. Soco after my bustout abot 7 1/2 hours into the tournament, at the time my longest-ever live tournament performance. Creating and tracking a short series of blogger tournaments was actually something I had been thinking of starting up back when I was writing for cardsquad, but then that gig ended and I had never really pursued the idea once that venue was gone for me to write it up. But I was thrilled when Al mentioned a similar idea to me in AC back in March, and of course with Al involved the whole idea of lots of free swag was opened up, something which frankly I would never have even conceived of on my own. Fast forward a month or so, and several convos between myself, Al and Mookie, and voila, the BBT was in the house. Now a lot has been written about some of the negative effects of the BBT -- this is really fodder for a separate post entirely its own that I've been writing in my head for a good couple of months now -- but as long as it is done over a relatively short period of time, and in my opinion with long gaps in between where people can just play the blonkaments for fun without having their stats "mean" something extraneous as with the BBT -- then I am all for the series and I don't think anybody can effectively argue that the results have been anything but immensely, hugely positive for individual bloggers, their bankrolls, their blog traffic, blogging in general and for poker blogging in general. The BBT really changed the way I and I know many others out there look at and approach playing the blonkaments in general, and it brought into our world a whole new slew of poker bloggers to keep the torch burning even as many of the old-schoolers find themselves burning out after writing about poker nonstop for so many years.

2. The Donkament. Now I don't remember exactly when this thing started up, but it seems to me it's been the better part of a year now that we have all had this tremendous opportunity to receive our weekly dose of Friday night poker therapy, courtesy of full tilt poker and of course of Kat, the hostess with the mostess. I have no idea where Kat got the brilliant idea of a weekly $1 rebuy tournament, and I remember discussing with Kat early on in the girly how I did not know if the idea would last beyond a week or two, but boy how wrong I was. It turns out, everyone else out there can really use the therapeutic pushfest known as the donkament as much as I can whenever I am around at 9pm ET on Friday night. Now I know for some of you that timing is not good, but to those of you I say "Have some kids!" That will take care of your Friday nights once and for all, and then you too can realize the amazing wonders of pushing allin every single hand for an hour, with the auto-double-rebuy feature activated, just waiting for your 94o to suck out on someone's pocket Jacks and get you a nice stack. Having played in this thing probably a good 20 times or so this year, I can say without hesitation that my weekends are always noticeably more fun thanks to this little brainchild of Kat's. Why someone didn't think of this sooner, I will never know, but in some ways innovation among the bloggers is what makes our group keep going, just like with the BBT I mentioned above.

3. Speaking of innovation, how about Buddy Dank Radio? The single coolest new and original idea to hit the poker blogiverse in 2007 has new poker bloggers Buddydank (always) and Instant Tragedy (usually), along with various special guest hosts broadcasting live from their homes via Skype (whateverthefuck that is) during most of the regular weekly blogger tournaments, and if you haven't listened, then #1 you are a schmuck and #2 you are missing out on some seriously awesome shit. For starters, if you've been living under a rock for the past year, Buddydank is a seriously awesome DJ with a great voice and perfect radio personality. IT plays the perfect complement to Buddy's frenetic style, and when there is public drunkeness going on during the broadcast, let me tell you the airwaves are just bursting with the kind of quality programming even HBO or Sirius would love to have working for them. Throw in some hardnosed skill poker guys with attitude as the guest hosts, and you have the absolutely perfect combination for a fun evening along with the blonkaments we already look forward to playing regularly. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Buddydank Radio is the single greatest innovation to hit the poker blogiverse this year, and if you aren't listening regularly, then you are missing out, plain and simple.

4. This post by Miami Don. For my money, without a doubt the best blog post of the year, I still get fucking chills just from reading that shit. Go read it if you have not already. Or even if you did read it like me ten months ago several times, go read it again. Well written, interesting, and inspirational to the max. Congratulations Don for your courage over the past couple of years, and a heartfelt thanks from a great many of us for the feelings that this post in particular is able to stir up, and for making all of us stop and think about our own lives if only just for a little while. Just Wow.

5. Astin's starting cards. Now I'm not going to sit here and say that Astin had unbelievable starting cards all throughout the entirety of 2007 (not saying it isn't true, but that's just not what I'm going to say here). But there was a stretch of 3 or 4 consecutive tournaments near the end of the first BBT where this guy was absolutely on fire. "On fire" doesn't even begin to capture the shit he had dealt to him and fall his way with the cards in this string. It was so crazy that I remember it now, more than half a year later, like it was yesterday (or maybe it also happened yesterday, but again I'm not going there now). Just go click on this link to see three of the posts about the nights I am talking about. I can honestly say without exaggeration that I have never, ever even one time ever received pocket Aces more than three times in one blonkament, and surely not AA and KK combined more than four or five times, tops. But try to imagine this: in the first post on that link above, Astin plays 348 hands in the 5050, and receives AA, KK or QQ twelve times, and AK another nine times on top. A full 18% of all hands dealt through 348 hands that night were pocket pairs, Ace-face or paint-paint hands. Think about that. In the second post on that link, probably my own personal favorite shmorgasbord of silliness, Astin details the AK (won preflop), AQ (won Q65 flop), KQ (won with a straight), 77 (won on turn), 44 (won preflop), AA (won on flop), AK (won on flop), KK (won on flop) -- these last three in consecutive hands -- 88 (won on river suckout against TPTK on flop) and then J8 (won against 77 on 388 flop), all in the first 30 minutes of the tournament! Again in that post, 18% out of his 306 hands were pocket pairs, Ace-face or double-paint. How do you not love that? Then in the third post there is more of the same, showing among other things Astin's AA, KK, KK, KK, QQ, AK, AK, 66 and 66 all before the first break! Me so horny just reading that stuff. Astin had an incredible run of cards there and it's something that really sticks with me as I look back on the year in blonkaments in 2007.

6. My WSOP cash. This one of course is more personal to me than something that happened in the blogiverse in general, but it really was the highlight of my year and something which had been a serious unstated goal of mine for the past many years. I am sure I will never forget my run to the cash in what ended up being the fastest-ever WSOP tournament right up to the money bubble at 127 players remaining out of 1527 who started, followed by the longest bubble in WSOP history that saw me take the brunt of that thanks to one J.C Tran. Nearing the money bubble, my table broke up and I was moved to Tran's table at a time when he was the prohibitive chip leader in the tournament, and shortly thereafter we hit the bubble and Mr. Tran went to work. Raising in the dark on every single hand at a time when nobody but nobody wanted to even consider playing back at him, Tran manhandled every single player at our table with the full knowledge that he would call anyone's allin with ATC given his ginormous stack at the time and the relatively little damage that any one of us could do to his chip position. In the end I outlasted some redonkulous hijinks that extended the bubble far longer than it probably should have, and recorded a $2500 cash in just my second ever WSOP event. I know to some of the true big dog poker players in our group, a piddily little cash in a preliminary WSOP event is nothing much to be happy about, but accomplishing one of my long-term poker goals, and something that literally seemed like just a dream in previous years to the point of me not even speaking about it out loud before leaving for Vegas last summer, is a feeling that I simply cannot and could not put into words. Not that that stopped me from trying, as I wrote what I personally consider to be my best ever non-rant post detailing my WSOP run thanks to the copious notes I took on a pad I kept in my pocket throughout the day's poker activity. It's nowhere near inspiring like Miami Don's post above, but hopefully does a decent job of conveying the excitement, the stress and really the awe I felt on that day from start to finish as I played basically from noon to midnight in my longest ever live poker session and by far my most tense and most significant.

7. Rebuys and knockout tournaments at full tilt. This was another big development during the year for us online players, in particular me and many other bloggers whose online play focused mainly on full tilt. Somewhere around the middle of the year, full tilt finally introduced its first rebuy tournament, long overdue given that the other major poker sites had been running these events for some time. Now while full tilt still has some kinks to work out no doubt with their whole rebuy thing, the addition of rebuy events to full tilt's tournament slate has been a significant positive for us mtt guys, and in particular for the more aggro mtt guys who have won and know how to play well in rebuy tournaments in their poker careers. Not only did I win cash in straight-up rebuy tournaments in 2007, but I also satellited into multiple larger-buyin mtts -- FTOPS rebuy tournaments and the FTOPS Main Event on more than one occasion come immediately to mind -- in low-buyin rebuy sats that use the usually 3-4 times as many rebuys and addons as players to fund additional seats for the top finishers. Similarly, around the end of 2007 full tilt added to its slate by bringing knockout tournaments into the field, another nice development that has made for some interesting blogger tournaments, mtts, FTOPS events and sitngos. Usually paying out roughly 15% or so of the tournament buyin as a knockout bounty for every player you eliminate from the tournament, these events feature slightly smaller prize pools for the winners but also add the element that one can easily be freerolling in the event if you can last a couple of hours in and bust some donkeys along the way. So these are two nice developments at my preferred online poker site during 2007 that are definitely positive ones for anyone who enjoys playing a variety of mtts. Now we just need them to bring on some shootouts, and especially some frigging heads-up tournaments with all those full tilt pros out there, and ftp will finally be a "full service" mtt shop in my view.

8. New bloggers. As with previous years, 2007 definitely saw another spike in the number of people blogging about the world of poker, which is always a great thing. I've already mentioned guys like IT and Buddydank above in discussing the illustrious Buddydank Radio, but there were several other newcomers on the scene who made some noise with their posts and with their general outlook on things. As I've written about several times here on the blog, my own personal favorite among the new-in-2007 poker blogging crew has to be Julius Goat, whose awesome writing style helped him end the year by writing his way in to the BBTwo Aussie Millions Tournament of Champions with his excellent story The Ghosts of Poker that I and many others think easily surpassed all other comers in full tilt's write-in challenge for the ToC. But more than that, the Goat entertained us all with his wit all throughout the year, be it regaling us with his regular blonkament bustout and donkeyplay tales, his incredibly witty player profile series earlier in the year (I have to agree with Goat, Rig A. Myroll is probably the funniest of them all, but they're all great reading), or his poetic side when it came to his series of poker- and pokerblogger-themed limericks and haikus from this past autumn. Goat is a great example of the kind of creativity and wit that I always hope there is more of, and why it's so great seeing the new crop of bloggers enter the fold every year among our ghey little group.

9. The WPBT summer gathering. I wrote quite a bit about my experience at my second WPBT gathering in June of 2007, including this giant post right here on the blog, but even that post doesn't really do justice to the kind of kickass time had by myself and really by all going out for meetings like this. Of course I got to renew a number of friendships with people I had met in my first WPBT live meeting in the summer of 2006, but I also got to meet a ton more people in 2007 for the first time that I had previously known only as a girly chat name and/or a bunch of words on a computer screen. There really are no words to describe what one of these weekends is like, something which I imagine is made all the more precious for a guy like me who due to other obligations in life considers myself lucky to even get out to Las Vegas once a year for any reason. I was and will remain bummed that some of the biggest old-schoolers apparently feel that the summer gathering is just not worth their attendance anymore, and I will never understand the desire of poker bloggers to avoid Las Vegas at the very time when the WSOP is going on and some of the best writers we know are out there doing their thing professionally already, but so be it. All I can say is that the live blogger gatherings have twice now proven to be two of the most fun weekends of my life without exaggeration or hesitation, and I have made some lasting friendships and relationships from these things that I hope will persist for years to come. Anybody who is part of our group, keeps a public poker journal of some kind, plays in our weekly tournaments and yet who has not been out to meet the group in person yet, you are missing out on truly one of the great experiences of your life, bar none.

10. Lastly, the big blogger tournament scores. I've detailed a few of my biggest cashes in poker tournaments in 2007 in an earlier post, but some other bloggers really nailed some of the big tournaments this year and that to me is always the most exciting stuff there is. The "other" Jordan busted out with easily the biggest score of the year in the Pokernews Cup in the land down under with his 6th place, $47,000 and change finish. Close behind this one was Fuel55 for his 12th place finish in the BC Poker Championships Main Event, both of these live tournament scores that top basically anything I could ever hope to achieve personally given the status of my own poker play. HoP Jordan also won his largest-ever tournament win back in June when staying home from work "sick" for the day in a nice story for all us hookey-players out there. SoxLover also recorded his first major online tournament win during 2007, back in July in the domain of KOD himself by taking down the nightly 28k guaranteed biatch on full tilt. And let us not forget how Chad first obtained the nickname of "KOD", standing for King of Donks, after he fucking final tabled that 28k minefield five times over a roughly one-month timespan, including two first place finishes and total winnings of over $23,000 just from that event alone during 2007. At least Fuel, Lucko and KOD won $10k seats to the World Series of Poker Main Event this year. Various other bloggers also recorded their largest-ever tournament scores to my knowledge, including (though I'm sure I am forgetting some) Miami Don and LJ both live at the Venetian in Vegas as well as online in the in full tilt's 55k guaranteed, 750k guaranteed and others, and of course who can forget jeciimd who took down the $18,000 prize package for two to the Aussie Millions with his huge BBTwo ToC freeroll win courtesy of full tilt, in addition to winning over 13k for his 3rd place finish in an FTOPS O8 event earlier in the year (thanks Chad for that reminder).

In all, 2007 was a huge year for many individual bloggers and for the poker blogging scene in general. I can't wait to see who breaks out early and often in 2008 with the big scores that we'll all be talking about during the year and writing about come this time a year from now. And one of the best parts of what we do as bloggers IMO is that it is a completely open market, with basically no barriers to entry, so you never know what new writers will capture our eyeballs and our hearts with posts like some of the ones I have highlighted above. 2007 was a year to remember for our group and for the online poker scene in general, and I look with extreme optimism to 2008 for more of the same from who knows where among our ghey little group.

Back tomorrow with my goals for 2008. Until then, don't forget the Riverchasers tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt. Password as usual is "riverchasers". I'm already in, and I've cashed in the last two of these biatches playing like an utter donkey on purpose, so look for me to take you down allin on a draw within the first few hands if you're not careful.

BBT -- Final Thoughts

Well, I didn't three-peat final tabling the 50-50 last night on full tilt. I busted a little over halfway through the field on Thursday night when I ran something into something. I honestly don't remember what it was, but I always remember the hideous beats and setups and usually the good plays by me as well, so my guess is that I pushed a good hand into a better hand and that was all she wrote. I played decently well, but after two days of nothing for the first two hours and then some Astins to get me chipped up nicely and move on from there, last night never saw the great cards come even after the first two hours of nothingness. No Astinning, no Bayneing, not even any chip spewage in my direction a la Iggy.

Despite the end of my 50-50 streak and an early-ish flameout from the latest Riverchasers tournament, however, the day was still not a total loss, as I played this 8pm 24k guaranteed tournament for the first time ever on full tilt after hearing a number of bloggers about how it is basically the same thing as the nightly 26k used to be, only starting two hours earlier in the evening. So I took my first stab at the $26 buyin 24k guaranteed tournament with 1100 of my close internet friends, and I did make a nice deep run in this badboy as well:



Overall this was good for just a $100 profit, as it becomes very difficult to make the big money in the $26 buyin mtts since you have to run real deep (like, midway through the final table deep) if you want to get up into the 4 digits in payouts. I loved my performance in this thing, in which I basically ran just the same as I had run in the previous two nights in the 50-50 tournament, essentially chipping up slowly early, making some big hands in hour 3 or so to get well entrenched in the top 50 remaining players, and then coasting it out as far as my bluffing and stealing could take me given a dearth of big hands late. So the $100 itself isn't so great, but if you look at it in terms of buyins, that is 4 buyins won compared to the buyin for the 24k tournament at $26, combined with the 16 buyins I won in the second of my 50-50 final tables on Wednesday night, and the 48 buyins won the night before with the 5th place finish at the 50-50. Anytime you can win more than 4 or 5 buyins from a particular tournament, I view that as a nice payoff, so it's nice to see my mtt game still going strong.

It's really awesome when you're running well like this in mtts, and having done this for a long, long time now, it's frustrating at the same time because I know enough to know that the good streak will soon come to an end, and I never feel like there is any way to stop that from happening. Whenever I'm on a big mtt streak, I almost feel the urge to write as much as possible about it, because I want to have something to look at and turn back to in those times when lady luck has really been kicking you in the ass. Which always happens, as all the big mtt guys know in our crowd, this shit ebbs and flows no matter who you are and no matter how many tournaments you play or how often you play them. But every time I try to sit down and write about playing mtts on a hot streak, it always ends up reading more like someone who's just on a good streak right now, and less like something that would actually be helpful to me or someone else when I'm running like complete and utter shit in tournaments, which will sadly probably be sometime like next week or surely next month. That said, one thing I have been working more on in my tournament game -- really since going through a bad streak in my cash game play a few weeks back -- is controlling the size of the pot a little better than I had been. Basically a few weeks back I found myself basically betting or raising with every draw, making pots bigger than they otherwise had to be in situations where I basically knew on the flop that I was not the favorite. It's amazing how dumb that strategy sounds now when I think about it and say it out loud to myself, but nonetheless that was an accurate description of what I was doing pretty much across the board for some time in my holdem play. Well, in reaction to that, in my three deep mtt runs this week, I have definitely been making a concerted effort to try to keep pots smaller when I don't have anything yet and yet am not ready to give up the hand.

Interestingly, the other, and somewhat contradictory, strategy I've been following this week is something I've actually picked up from guys like Lucko and Chad, and it involves using the power of my entire chip stack to my advantage is these large mtts advance to the later stages. I simply cannot count in my three big mtt runs over the past three days how many times I have open-pushed allin from late position, maybe the button or even the cutoff on occasion, with utter shit cards. I mean, 3 people fold around to me on the button, the blinds are huge at this point down to maybe 15 or 20 players left in the tournament, and I have 83o and J4o or some shit like that. But I haven't won a pot in a while, haven't even played for a raise preflop in a few orbits, and I feel like my stack really needs the addition right now of the blinds and antes which, by this late stage of these big online mtts, would probably increase my total stack size by 15% or more. So I have been exploring the joys of pushing with any two cards (ATC) a lot more lately in key spots with hefty blinds and antes available for theft, and so far that strategy has been working out amazingly well for me.

Congratulations btw to Blinders for winning his first Riverchasers title on Thursday night, as well as to tournament host Al for taking down 2nd place. As I mentioned I donked out somewhere around the middle of the field -- actually lasting a lot longer than I figured I would, given my blonkey play of late in these things -- but the action was fun to watch, and along with Buddydank Radio which was going strong as usual. I have to admit that I probably single-handedly requested 90% of the songs that played during the last couple hours of the broadcast during the Riverchasers, having figured out how to make requests from Buddy's playlist for the first time last night, so if you enjoyed the music during the last couple of hours, then you have me to thank. And if you didn't enjoy it, well then it was Buddy's fault. But nice job to Blinders and Al for strong performances on Thursday night.

Real quick before I get this post up there, Al has run the numbers and come up with this link to what the final BBT leaderboard would have looked like if the points were awarded only to the top 20% of finishers instead of the top 50%. Very interesting. Now let me say up front that this is not at all entirely fair to do. If we had been operating at a top 20% points threshold instead of top 50% for the BBT, then all these tightydonks would have quickly realized how worthless and futile it is to attempt to fold or play ubertight, because you simply cannot make it to the top 20% of a typical blonkament field without playing some aggressive poker. So people would not have been following the same pussy strategy in most cases, and therefore all of these numbers would have been different. But still, the big effect of the switch from 50% to 20% can be seen pretty dramatically -- the guys who made the points often but cashed infrequently dropped down the list, in some cases significantly. And as much as I like most of those guys and even respect their game (somewhat), that is I think right where we want to be, and IMO it more fairly represents who really did the best job in this year's BBT challenge overall.

Speaking of the BBT challenge as a whole, I have to say the obvious and give credit where credit is due: to Bayne. Bayne finished first in total BBT points whether using the 50% or the 20% system, in either case by a huge, huge margin. He came in 5th overall in total profitability through the BBT tournaments, making $811 and change over all 39 BBT events. And even though Bayne did participate in all 39 tournaments, he still blew away the field in average BBT points per event, with nearly 49 ppe, while 2nd place was still below 42. That right there is an abject domination of the field. I made a lot of comments here and elsewhere about some luck
and perhaps some callstationy tendencies that Bayne had exhibited throughout the BBT tournaments, but in the end when you crush everyone else in the field so badly as this, there is no commentary needed and no excuses to be made. This was an old fashioned behind the shed beating by Bayne, no questions asked and qualifications to be made. The guy made 12 final tables in 39 events (next closest was Iggy with 9), and won 4 events outright (next closest was 2, shared by myself, Don and Zeem). Just wow.

Also coming up with very impressive performances in this year's BBT were Astin and Don. Astin used some solid starting cards in several of the later BBT events to sustain a late push into the front part of the top ten, and ended the entire challenge with a loft 41.9 BBT points per event, good for 2nd place overall, with MiamiDon close behind in 3rd place with 41.2 ppe. Another guy who was just an absolute machine when it came to the BBT was everyone's favorite DJ Buddydank. Buddy really is a machine -- and you saw it even in this week's Riverchasers tournament -- but tune in near the end of a great many of our blonkaments, and Buddy always seems to be around. He has a great way of hanging tough, playing tight and reserved while the rest of the field thins, and then using the Blinders-type of strategy of waiting for a big hand at the right time to double up and get in position for a final table run. It worked very effectively in the BBT events, and Buddy rounds out the list of players who averaged at least 40 points per BBT tournament on the season.

One of my personal favorite stats to use to determine how well I think everyone played in the BBT is the cash per event played list, which Blinders also has listed on his post here. The issue here of course is that players who won the Big Game, with its typically huge prize pools compared to all the other BBT tournaments, really skewed the results in this particular event. The first two players on this particular list, Trip and Mike Maloney, each won a Big Game, with Mike chopping for a four-way split in the first Big Game of the BBT, and Trip winning the last event on the schedule just a couple of weeks ago. But other than those two players and myself, cmitch and Bayne round out the list of players who averaged more than $40 cash per event played, and of those five players, only cmitch and Bayne did so without recording any Big Game cashes which is especially impressive in my view. Otherwise, Blinders' other per-event statistics don't do a whole lot for me -- in final table % and in ITM %, again I think those numbers have some applicability but in general since people are not aiming for those things specifically I don't tend to put much focus on those. One list I could not care less about is Blinders' final chart -- final "in the points" percentage. Who cares. Folding to the points is for donks who don't like to make money at poker. Period.

In conclusion, I want to give a huge thanks to Al who thought this whole thing up, just like he thought up the WPBT some time ago. And thank you to each of Al, Mookie and Don who ran such great tournaments week in and week out to keep this thing going, along with the constant pimpage. I may have barched and moaned about some aspects of the BBT that frustrated me, but I cannot say enough about how psyched (and surprised) I was about the turnout in the BBT tournaments. Al was right and I was wrong about how many people would come out and play, I'm way more than enough man to admit that.

What is next for the BBT? Only the poker gods know. Mookie recently suggested a series of poker tournaments in different poker variations, akin to full tilt's FTOPS series of events. That would be fine with me, as I am always a fan of playing big challenges like this with all the different forms of poker, much like the big pros like to play the highest limits in mixed poker games. Left to my own devices, I really hope that, if there is a next time around, we are able to secure some cool poker-related prizes, like big tournament buyins, or maybe if we're really cool, somehow work in awarding a WSOP Main Event seat to the winner of a new challenge should we go that route. I'm convinced by the participation alone that the BBT or something else like it would be extremely fun and very well-received by the blonkeys, and that at the end of the day has always been my #1 goal with respect to the BBT -- bringing out the masses for a genuine, valid comparison and competition of everyone's skills and abilities at this game we all love and enjoy.

Have a great weekend everyone. I am back to the beach for the weekend, and then I will return on Sunday with the entire Hammer family in tow, back to home after nearly two weeks away in the fun n sun n sand. So I don't expect to play much poker, though I may be in Kat's $1 rebuy donkament on Friday night at 9pm ET on full tilt (password is "donkarama"). If you haven't checked this tournament out you definitely should, you will probably not find a more fun event, and certainly not a more therapeutic one, than this all week long. So see you tonight on full tilt!

The Mookie, BBT and a Preflop Decision

Before I forget, as I found this out after making yesterday's post but I wanted to get this up right away, it turns out that yours truly is not the only poker blogger who has cashed so far in this year's World Series of Poker. That's right -- relatively new (to our group, anyways) blogger LJ -- adding to the already very impressive list of excellent poker-playing lawyers in our little group -- stormed through the Ladies Event in WSOP Event #17 last week, ending up in 97th place out of 1286 players for a nice cash of nearly 2k and a story for the ages considering this is just her first WSOP event. Very impressive job, now go stop by LJ's blog and hound her to get up some hands or at least a summary of how she ran through that kind of a field in her first appearance on poker's biggest stage. All I know is that last year in my first WSOP, I had trouble winning a single hand, and spent most of my time there in awe of all the big name players around me instead of focusing on playing good poker, and the results were not pretty. So I am super impressed with this performance and look forward to hearing more about the details.

So I made 5th place in the Mookie last night. Normally this is barely even worth mentioning, but there are two things that make it noteworthy in my mind today. First is that this is by far my best Mookie performance of the year. Now we all know that clearly it has been ordained that I may never win the Mookie. Doesn't matter that I've won basically every other kind of blogger tournament ever created, most of them multiple times. The Mookie has always and will always elude me. But this was my first cash of the year in this event, which I would have laid you serious odds on not occurring until mid June if you had tried to bet me on it back in January, so I have to be happy about that. All that said, I truly didn't deserve to be there as far as I got last night, and I'm man enough to admit it. I mean, so what if I got sucked out on 24 times in the Mookie last night. I also laid two sick suckouts on other players in key spots where I would have been eliminated before the final table, so I can't exactly say I played so great. And to be honest, I was in last place with 35 players remaining -- dead last -- and again with 15 players remaining, so it's not like I was going like gangbusters in this thing or anything. No, instead I just kinda hung around, watched everybody and their mother donk their chips to the dwarf like it was goin' out of style since he was at my table from start to finish last night, took advantage of some people when I got short-stacked, and otherwise got lucky in a few key spots. Before I knew it I was at the final table, and eventually in the middle of that table for my first Mookie cash of the year. I think I made like 4 cents or something, so the cash itself wasn't important, but my best showing of the year in this tournament that I am simply forbidden to win meant a little something to me.

And btw, how awesome is the radio broadcast that Buddydank has been running from his blog during the BBT events? It looks like so far the broadcast will only include music for the non-Mookie blogger tournaments until the end of the BBT, but since I finally downloaded winamp and got the shit working last night for the first time, let me just say kudos to Buddy, that shit seriously kicks ass. One of the great things I've always loved about our little group of bloggers is how every now and then someone always thinks of something new that becomes part of our group. Be it a new name for a hand, a new type of tournament, or a new technological thing like this live radio stream, there always seems to be an endless supply of new ideas out there as our group grows and matures, and again I have got to say, the radio broadcast is the absolute shizzy. Now, last night I had to turn it off after about 90 minutes when my wife went to sleep, but from what I heard, I was rolling in the aisles and I look forward to becoming more involved with this in the future. Guest DJing from various bloggers would be a fabulous occurrence if that can actually work, so let's see if that comes to fruition in the coming weeks. But a great, great job by Buddydank who is not only doing great in the BBT but also has come up with what I say is the single best idea in the poker blogiverse over the past long while.

Anyways, the other reason my performance in the Mookie mattered last night is the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments. Now I don't have any official numbers to back this up, but I have got to have the most BBT points out of anyone over the past month of the Challenge. After starting off making the points in just one of my first 14 BBT events or so, since then I have been on a raging tear, coming in 1st and 2nd in the last two Riverchasers tournaments, the next one of which is Thursday night at 9pm ET on full tilt (password is riverchasers), 2nd place in the last MATH tournament, and now 5th in the Mookie this week. I have been leaving all of you hozers in the dust over the past month in the BBT, and I find it very hard to believe that even your glorious BBT points leader Mr. Bayne, whom I had the distinct pleasure of meeting this past weekend in Las Vegas, can equal my BBT points total since early May. In fact, I happen to be privy to some interesting information on total individual profitability across all the included tournaments since the BBT started, and let's just say that that list looks very different than the current BBT leaderboard, and leave it at that. But in any event, I don't know how high I have climbed now on the BBT leaderboard after last night's Mookie -- hopefully Al will update at some point later today -- but let's just say that if you guys up top aren't careful, and in particular if I turn Riverchasers into my own personal ATM again tonight, then you're going to be facing some pressure-filled situations in the final two weeks of this thing as we really head into the home stretch.

Now before I go, I wanted to present you with a real-life situation that happened last night in the Mookie which was the subject of much discussion in the girly chat with me and to solicit your opinions on how you would've played this hand before the flop. I will try to get the details right but, as usual, someone is going to claim that I got the hand wrong -- usually they are wrong and I am right, btw, make no mistake -- but I will present it to you as I believe it happened.

So we're about 2 hours into the Mookie or so. We are down to basically two tables left, maybe 17 or 18 players total, and you have a middle stack, probably in roughly 11th place of 18 players remaining or something very close to that. Let's say you are sitting on around 2700 chips. You're in middle position and you look down to find pocket 9s. While you contemplate what to do with this hand when the action gets to you, the shortest stack left in the tournament, sitting on around 1300 chips, raises the 120-chip big blind from UTG by the standard 3x to 360 chips. Action folds around to you sitting on your pocket 9s. Let's assume btw that the short stack is a very smart, very shrewd type of player with much success in poker tournaments, stunning good looks and a dam hot wife to boot.

What do you do here? Do you call, raise or fold this hand? Why? Is this an allin opportunity, assuming you are ahead and can get the clever shorty to lay down? Or do you just call, and hope to see a flop where your 9s figure to be best? Or, do you prefer to fold here, preserving your middling stack and wait for a better opportunity where the smart player has not already raised it up from under the gun? What's the winning move here?