Keeping It Real With the BBT3

What I'm going to write about today may sound funny to some of you. Some of you may have the baseball cap shocked right off your head. Others may fall over in their chairs. If you've been out there reading some the poker blogs like I do, then you may find what I have to say today to be very "out there" or at least "contrarian". But Ima gonna say it anyways. So here goes:

Since the BBT3 began, I am generally happy with the level of dirty chatting in our private tournaments, and I think the players as a rule are playing better in all the games.

There. I said it.

Let's take those two statements in reverse order, because I think the second point is a much quicker discussion. I haven't seen or read this anywhere over the past month or so, but since the BBT3 kicked in and with both the Skill Series and the Riverchasers playing weekly or at least bi-weekly versions of non-holdem poker tournaments, the play in those events has gotten better. I was one of the loudest voices on the intertubes a couple of months back about how god awful most of the play in, say, the Omaha events in Riverchasers and early in the Skill Series were. I remember entire posts -- tens of them at least from all around the poker blogiverse -- detailing the truly laughable starting cards and the uncommonly terrible hands being played all through these events. It was a minefield the likes of which haven't been seen since the last time Trip ran one of his Blogger Luck Games.

But with the past couple RC and Skills Omaha events, I have still seen the usual donkery, but not that uncommon donkery that was so omnipresent early on. So, don't get me wrong, we are all still bloggers playing these games and that means the donkery is copious and eternal. But it is noticeably not as much donkery as there was a little while ago. And that my friends is Good Thing #1 to come out of the BBT3. People are certainly taking the nlh tournaments more seriously and we are seeing -- in general (leaving out donkeycalling my allin on the flop with just AJo unimproved and then sucking the 6-outer at the river to bust me from RC last night) -- slightly better poker being played early and late in those events as well. But in the non-holdem games, the RC and the Skills Series have really contributed to what is to me a noticeable -- albeit not huge -- increase in the overall skill level in these other games. And all "don't tap the glass" people aside, I think that is a great and really cool thing that our little online poker tournament series can create in a group of people like this.

But now on to the more-talked-about topic today -- the alleged dirty chatting going on in many of these events. I'm not going to link to all the bloggers who have been writing about this stuff lately. They're the old schoolers, the Guys You Already Read Every Day Anyways. I don't need to link to it, you know if you read a lot of blogs that it seems like right now everybody is complaining about people being assholes in the chatboxes of several of the more recent BBT events. I've been following along with this story with some interest, mostly because deep down, and if you've read here for a while then you already know this, but deep down I really can't stand the dirty chatting either. I mean, what's the point? I've written about it many times, but while I can forgive almost anyone almost any transgression in a particularly tilty moment at a public table with people you don't know at all and likely will never see or hear from agaain, I simply cannot get how people would join in our community's games and then be raging assholes in the chat. It's lame, I've said it before, I've said it so many times that there's nothing more for me to even say about it. You all know my position. I argue that I tilt harder than any of you clowns and yet when was the last time any of you saw me type anything derogatory to anyone in the chatbox of one of our private games? Exactly. I don't. And I won't. So all of this is just a long way of saying, I am no fan of the dirty chatting. I really can't stand when people write things in our private tournament chats that are rude, crude and designed to hurt or embarrass other people, things that are above and beyond the normal table ribbing present at many tables comprised of guys who largely know each other.

But that's just the thing: I'm not seeing much of that here. I keep reading blog post after blog post after blog post about what assholes the guys were in chat the night before at the latest MATH or whatever. But I was there, and I somehow didn't see anything that rubbed me the wrong way? How can that be, I've been wondering. But in the past few days as I have been seeking some clarity on the subject, it has suddenly become more clear as a few of the people making these claims have let me in on the actual language that was offensive to them. And you know what? Most of it just isn't that bad. I mean, I think all the Booooooooooms! are stupid too, we all do. I wasn't the one who started that gheyness, and I'm not the one continuing it now. But do I really care? No. Why would I? That is now an example of chatting that is so out of bounds that it gets talked about on blogs for its rudeness? Rudeness? Come on guys. I bet my sets on the flop because I am a Man. Are you Women? Let me get this straight. You are a poker blogger and here you are letting a random blogger get that much under your skin because of a few Booooooooooooooms! in the chatbox? When did we as a group lose our collective testes? People suckout-eliminate someone and then call it out in the chat with an lol about their play afterwards, and guys have their panties all in a twist about it?

Come on everyone. I'm thinking back to when I was writing about the dirty chatting problem last around the end of the BBT2. At that point there had been a couple of raging flame wars in the chatbox during our tournaments, ones where people were calling each other stoopid names, launching personal insult after personal insult, and doing so in a very public forum for a bunch of players and observers who know you watching and listening. And laughing most of all, at everyone who engages in such silliness in this kind of a forum. People were getting genuinely embarrassed, and hurt, and then they'd be on their blogs the next morning in a bitchy mood because of what got said about them last night in the chatbox once things started to escalate and no one had a penis large enough to just stop it.

Now I'm looking at the chatboxes today, with bloggers complaining left and right once again about the chatbox shenanigans, and I'm just seeing a bunch of BOOOooooooooooms!, a few little barbs that are no different from what is said all the time at any poker table in the world, certainly one where the players largely know each other, and of course a couple of comments I would consider inappropriate spiced in here or there. But please guys. Try your hardest to look at what you are claiming was inappropriate chat from an outside observer. If your friends would call you a raging pussy for complaining about what you are complaining about, maybe it's time to turn the lens inward for a minute and try to reset things. It's ok to suck out on someone and then type in "haha" at them. I'm not saying you have to love that, but is that really the type of chat that anyone needs to spend their time thinking about? It's just a game, an $11 game most of the time at that, one largely between friends or at least many common acquaintances, and none of you should be getting anywhere close to this worked up about that kind of comment.

And don't get me wrong, again -- I really can't stand the dirty chatting in these events, and I know it has happened even in the BBT3 from time to time, and I do not support that stuff in any way as my readers know. But for the most part? I'm almost proud of the bloggers as a group for how well we have handled ourselves in the BBT3. I have surely not stuck around to watch every final table, but I've seen more of them than you probably think and I am just lost as to why all the complaining from people about what is being said in the chat being rude, mean or just plain inappropriate.

And I'm not the only one who thinks this, not by a longshot. Several bloggers have had similar conversations with me over the past few weeks as these kinds of posts about the chatbox have been popping up all over the place. Just within the past couple of days I have been having a very interesting conversation with a fellow blogger over girly and email about this very phenomenon where everyone is complaining about the BBT3 chat and yet not many people seem to think there is actually a big chat problem this time around. We've both been struggling trying to figure out why some people seem to be so over-sensitive about it just now. And in the course of exchanging our thoughts on the matter, this person hit it to me pretty much right on the nose as far as the reasons behind this seeming over-sensitivity. Here is what this blogger had to say as to the likely reasons for this, which I reproduce here pretty much verbatim (with permission of course):



"I suspect it is twofold:

1) There actually are some bastards out there, who deserve to be ignored. I don't doubt it, and you've seen that happen too. I've seen it myself. But I haven't seen it at the tables I've been sitting at for weeks and weeks.

2) I think now we've swung too far in reaction to it, and now it's become an overly-sensitized situation. To call somebody out for the chat below [saying "I knew the suckout card was coming" right after sucking out on someone for a big pot] is strange. If Daddy or somebody had said it, it would be hilarious, right? Or at least just fine. When I type "all skill" after getting my money in as an 8% dog and then suck out, I clearly don't think I played skillfully. It's just playful.

I'm certainly not pro abusive chat. That stuff sucks. And I'm also not anti "A lister", which I guess is the new facetious term for "old timer", which I guess is what we mean when we talk about "2003". The ones I've had contact with are just fine to awesome. I think there's some people who have just seen a scene that used to be nice and cozy blow up, which makes it no longer nice and cozy, and they want it to be like it was. But ain't nothing that is like it was. Even what was wasn't the way it was, if you know what I mean. Rose colored glasses are common.

There were asshats back then too I am sure. They're not around now. Why? They were asshats. No staying power with those types. The ones that came in with the later "generation" will be gone soon enough.

The next wave of bloggers will bring their own, and they'll bother me a lot I bet. Maybe I'll be writing posts about how blogging is going to hell in a handbasket in 2011.

So it goes."

Well said, Mr(s). Anonymous Blogger. Think about it.

Have a good weekend everyone. Don't forget the Donkament in its regularly scheduled time tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt. It's not a part of the BBT3 tournament series, but it is a $1 rebuy redonkufest the likes of which have not been seen since -- well -- the last Donkament, and it's always a good time. As usual I never really know if I will be online on a Friday at 9pm ET like that (password as always is "donkarama"), but those of you who play know that I usually tend to show up for my weekly penance therapy. Maybe I will see you all then.

Tilt Continues

For whatever reason, this has been one of the toughest two-week periods ever in my three years of playing poker online. For starters, my 8 to 10 suckouts and setups a night has escalated out of the blue to more like 15 to 20 a night, and when you consider that these numbers are absosmurfly real and not the least bit exaggerated, maybe a few of you at least can begin to consider what this really must feel like to go through on a nightly, hourly, almost minute-ly basis. It ain't fun. In the past two weeks, I have been recockudonked out of big tournaments after deep runs at least five or six times at multiple poker sites. I'm talking about hands like flopping the overboat in the final 100 in that pokerstars 50-50 tournament, getting my overpair donkey opponent allin and then losing to a higher boat on the turn. I have been bounced early from small tournaments, like earlier this week when I lost early in the token frenzy with a turned straight -- again allin on the flop --- to a riverflush. And I've taken horrible beats in blonkaments, like flopping a set in the MATH this week, pushing hard and getting someone to make a hopeless call but then losing to a higher set on the turn, or even in the Mookie this week when I find my only "premium" hand of the night in pocket Queens, only to run it into KK and AK and finish the hand in a distant third for another middle-of-the-pack elimination. And, although this fact is unconfirmed, it is even possible that I might have made a few straight-out bad plays mixed in there as well, which of course also seem magnified whenever you're in a run like this.

What's worse is that once again it is FTOPS time on full tilt, and once again I enter the series in a shitty poker mindset. Just maybe three weeks ago, I was playing great poker and I was feeling great about my game, and about the game in general. I won four satellites into these FTOPS events over the span of just a few days, I was playing great, actually winning 50% or more of my races, actually winning 80% of my dominating hands when allin, etc., and all of that tends to help quite a bit in making the right decisions at the poker tables. It's when you start losing 75% of your races, and losing 40-50% of your 80% favored hands that you start second-guessing yourself, not pushing hard enough on the flop and letting people stick around to suck out on you, etc., and that's when it gets really bad. Anyways, what kills me is that here we are back in FTOPS land again, and just like every single other FTOPS I have played in -- five of them now, as I recall -- except for one of the big tournament series, I enter it in a horrible poker mindset and just generally on a bad streak.

Last night I had several railbirds watching me in the HORSE megasat when some anus wanker sucked out a miracle straight on the river to eliminate me when I had flopped TPTK with my AQ against his AJ and bet out my entire stack against him along the way in limit holdem. I even tried one of those super turbo satellites half an hour before the HORSE event to try to play into there, but I couldn't pick up a good hand and as you know if you've ever played these things, it's impossible to win them without picking up at least one good hand along the way. It was a desperate move, and believe me when I say that in retrospect I'm glad I didn't play in FTOPS #3. But I did play in FTOPS #2, the $240 PLO knockout tournament I mentioned yesterday, and it was highly frustrating for me as well. I survived about an hour and 40 minutes in this thing, and even with four starting cards in every hand, I never once received AAxx, KKxx, a single double-paired hand or even a single double-suited hand. Now I'm nowhere near interested enough to try to calculate the odds of that happening, but my guess is that it has got to be way way low. So with absolutely not a single good starting hand over 100 minutes to play with, I was at an extreme disadvantage throughout the PLO tournament, growing increasingly frustrated given my poker plight of late, and eventually after those 100 minutes I ended up betting big with just TPTK on the flop against a big stack as my own stack dwindled down to less than half of average. Well, I got called by a guy who had 789x on a board with T63, so he had 9 outs to a straight. 9 outs twice, not counting some silly runner-runner draws that either one of us could hit to win. Well, two cards later he had runner-runnered a recockulous flush on me, and IGH in 490th place out of around 1200 runners. While I lasted fairly deep again considering my complete lack of cardage throughout, the frustration level just continued to mount as I received abjectly nothing to work with in the entire tournament, and I got called by a guy who had no business calling me but just couldn't let go of a 9-out draw. And of course he hit. This is the way it's been lately for me online. Get almost nothing to work with, run fairly deep anyways on all bluffs and steals, and then get recockubeat or recockusetup. The frustration is palpable.

It got so bad that I didn't even play the Riverchasers last night. That's not like me, but for the past few nights I have been logging out of the poker sites early thanks to growing tilt issues from consistent phuckage at the tables. I am not having fun at all while I play these days, and I've known for a couple of days that a break would do me good. Unfortunately, right now is not the time for me to get that break, as I had already previously qualified for the FTOPS on Thursday and again I am already signed up for the FTOPS 6-max limit holdem tournament on Friday night as well. That one oughta be a fun one to tilt my way out of for sure. But I don't even know that I will play the donkament tonight, as Monkey Hour of that thing tends to get me on raging tilt on a weekly basis, even the four times I have gone on to win that tournament over the past year. Right now is just not the time for me to get sucked out on in the same tournament 18 times in an hour.

I will leave you with my one bright spot from the night last night, which was watching Chad at full tilt "pro" Aaron Bartley's table while Bartley time and time again played recockulous starting cards in just about every one of the five HORSE games, sucking out a few redonkulous winners along the way before eventually Chad busted his ass for the $216 bounty and another ghey "I busted a donkey" t-shirt. Well, after getting donked a few times by Bartley and the regoddamdickulous cards he was playing, Chad eventually told me in the girly that he was going to play just like Bartley and see where that would get him. So Chad chased a bad hand hard in razz, and ended up sucking out runner-runner low cards.

Dealer: Aaron Bartley shows 8,7,6,3,2
Dealer: cracknaces shows 7,6,4,2,A
Dealer: cracknaces wins the pot (3,398)
with 7,6,4,2,A
Dealer: Hand #5165521026
cracknaces: just for you Bartley
Aaron Bartley: now THATS bad
cracknaces: fight fire wirh fire, how does it
feel to be donked?
Aaron Bartley: shrug, thanks for trying

That pretty much made my night. Bartley is about as bad a HORSE player as there is among the ftp "pros".

Have a great weekend everybody. Here's hoping I can turn things around before tonight's FTOPS #5 in LHE, and Sunday night's FTOPS #9, the $322 buyin nlh tournament hosted by Erick Lindgren.

Tilt! Tilt! Tilt!

I have a confession to make.

I've been playing on tilt for at least a week now. There's no sense in denying it any longer; the people in our group with whom I am closest already know this from my 10,000 pissed off girly chats every night. Even though I've had some poker success during the week, that success has not come because I am in the right poker mindset. Instead, I've had to get pretty much wasted just to be able to stay calm enough to play anything even remotely resemling good poker, and at best that's all it's been -- remotely resembling good poker.

I spent some time overnight trying to think about exactly what has me on tilt. When I got up this morning, it seems somewhat clearer to me, at least some of the things. Some of this stuff (most of it, really) has no business tilting me, and in fact goes to show just how easy it is to take me off my game. That is one of my many personal weaknesses and one that has direct application at the tables. Just another part of the constant struggle I go through every day to try to improve my game and rein in those things that counteract me playing my best poker. But nonetheless, I'm here now and I'm telling you, there's some shit out there that literally has me on tilt before I even sit down at the pc. Then it only gets worse during the night, and inevitably like in this week's Riverchasers tournament I end up donking on purpose or targeting one particularly annoying player at the table, making plays I know I will lose with just because I want to go out, in a vain attempt to shake this tilt that's been lingering on me for days. It's ghey and it sucks.

For starters, some of the stuff that goes on in the chat box in these blonkaments is just plain ridiculous. I don't care who you are and I don't care how completely, totally 100% accurate what you're saying is. A lot of people have written about this recently, and there's a reason for that. It's not appropriate. Although I was not the literal first blogger to play in the first blonkament, I've been playing in them consistently for nearly three years now, back since the very early days of the WWdN. In fact, I might have literally played in more blogger tournaments than any human being alive, given the focus I have always placed on playing regularly in these things and the length of time I've been doing it. I almost bet that really is true. So I am qualified to talk about this stuff, and I'm here to say that when you are launching personal attacks at other people in the chatbox in our private tournaments, you are despoiling them. Period.

Now don't get me wrong. A little good natured ribbing is fine. Fun, even. I am the very first person to type in "nice call" or "well played" when some asshat calls my preflop allin with T9o or of course the JackAce. Invariably they win with their garbage hands, and I'm not trying to sit here and say that I have never let someone know that I know that they just made a bad play. I do do that from time to time, very rarely actually as I typically opt for the "gl all" or even "nh, gl" when I get uberdonked out of a blonkament and leave it at that, but I'm not trying to paint myself out to be some kind of an angel here. I'm being real about what goes on in these things. But one thing you will notice about even when I might type this sort of thing into the chat following a truly, indisputably horrible play -- I type in my one comment about the play itself, tops, and that's it. It's over. I don't sit around and harangue someone at the table for the next 3 minutes, 10 minutes, hour or whatever.

And more than that, one thing you never, ever see me do is launching personal attacks at people at the tables. In fact, even right here in the blog where I am known for making an occasional rant or two, I don't spend my time attacking people personally. That shit has no place in my blog. Are you people really not able to take a step back and see what your personal jabbing back and forth looks like to the other people at the table? Have you really lost your sense of perspective that much? I mean, it's one thing to question the poker play of someone, and to do so in a short comment or two and then move on. Frankly, I've seen most (not all, but definitely the vast majority) of the people who play in our games do this at least once or twice over time and frankly I think some degree of that is hard to keep out of the games with any real consistency, nor do I think it is any kind of a problem. But getting into personal attacks against people in public right at their table? Engaging in back and forth insults over an extended period of time in this kind of a public forum, even if tangentially related to one's poker plays? I'm telling you guys objectively: it is ridiculous, it looks ridiculous, and everyone seeing it thinks it's ridiculous. And make no mistake: it's not about what other people think about this stuff. It is ridiculous, objectively speaking.

This is the thing, guys. The people who started these regular blonkaments in the first place a few years ago, the people who helped form our ghey little group and who so wanted to have a regular forum for us to hang together, chat together and play together in groups, we never, ever would want this kind of stuff going on in the chat in these games. There is such a thing as girly chat, and if you feel the need to rant about a particular individual personally, or to rant for 5 hours about a particular person's poker play, that is a much better forum for such issues. Take it from me, especially over the last few weeks I've been doing a lot of that, and I apologize here to those of you who have borne the brunt of my angry girly chatting. That's something I need to and plan to work on as it is, but I never, ever do that in the public chat box during our weekly tournaments.

Now don't get me wrong. No one here is trying to tell you how you need to act or how you need to chat. I say this because I've mentioned this here before in perhaps a bit less of a direct way, and certainly an increasing number of other bloggers have written about this same thing in their own blogs as this seems to be happening more and more often, and basically it has gotten the same predictable and quite absurd response. No I'm not ordering anyone to act a certain way, and no I'm not telling anyone that they're not "permitted" to do anything or say anything. But, the very relevant point I am making is this: the people who play in these tournaments do not like when you do this in the chatbox. 98% of the players would be happier if you didn't act this way. Whether you like it or not, these things were not started to be and are not intended to be forums for you to launch personal attacks nor to follow someone around who indeed made a refuckulously horrid play against you and harangue them for an hour. It pisses 98% of the players in these things off when you do it, and more directly, it makes the tournaments far, far less enjoyable and less attractive to play in when you do it. And that my friends makes it wrong.

Now, having seen the highly predictable responses to this stuff when it's come up in blogs in the past, I can already see these same few offenders typing the same silly responses now. I think I will address some of those in advance.

1. "I can do whatever I want, I paid my buyin." True statement. You can do whatever you want. But it isn't right. No one's saying you aren't allowed to type this stuff. You just shouldn't, and you are ruining 98% of the other players' times to various degrees by doing what you are physically permitted to do.

2. "Hoy you hypocrite I've seen you rant about people ten thousand times in your blog." This one is one of my personal favorites. Read the blog guys. I will say all I want about the way someone played a hand. That's attacking someone's poker. I don't typically spend my time attacking someone personally though, and there's a reason for that: I don't actually have personal issues with most people who read here and who play in our tournaments, and I don't like to use my blog as a forum to make someone specific look or feel bad for some personal issue involving them. Tell someone they made a poor play, and you won't hear me complaining. Tell someone they made a poor play for 45 minutes in the chat, and that's not something that I ever do. Ever. And I'd like to see where in this blog I take my valuable time attacking someone on a personal, as opposed to a poker, level.

And before you get cute, I freely admit that recently in the comments here, I let a couple of people have it pretty good for some things they said in the comments. Let me just say that when someone starts off a comment with "no offense", and then goes on to call what I'm doing "assinine" and to accuse me of just trying to exert control over other bloggers, they're gonna get it, especially when I'm kinda tilted already as it is. Plus, notice that that is done not in the chat box of our tournaments, not even in my blog, but in the comments to my blog. Believe me, I wanted to post that whole comment and my tremendous response to it here. But I didn't. Because say what you want about me, but I'm never looking to use my blog to make someone look bad on a personal level in front of my readers. If you make a truly bad poker play against me you are likely to read about the bad play here. But you're not likely to read about what a dickhead I think you are on a personal level. And frankly I rarely ever like reading about what a dickhead someone is on another blog either, though of course I defend anyone's right to say what they want in their own blog.

And again, this isn't a post about what people write in their blogs at all. It's about the way people behave in the chat box during our tournaments. Like I said above, no one is going to try to physically stop anyone from being a penis head in the chatbox. That decision is going to have to be made by each individual himself, in each specific situation. What I am saying though is that the people who came before you, the people who started up this entire tradition of our group getting together regularly to play this game we all barely know and love, the people who still make it a priority every week to come together and play in these things, we don't like what a lot of the chat in these things has turned in to. And the "we" I am referring to represents a good 98%+ of the people who play in the tournaments. These are the facts, what the people do with those facts is of course out of anyone's control.

Anyways, the shit that's been going on in the chat box in our private tournaments for the past couple of months I would say definitely contributes to my tilt these days. Just about everyone hates it, and I love our private tournaments and I love what they represent, and I hate knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that a few people's antics in the chat make so many of the truly nice, fun and interesting people I've played in these things with for over two years not want to show up anymore. That is clearly a suckdickity outcome (that's a bad thing, not a good thing in case it's not clear), but it's just as clear that it's already happened and continues to happen as we speak, and I wish it would change. It bums me out that I have no control over changing that.

I guess the other thing that's been tilting me lately is some of the recockulous luckboxery I've been seeing from the same people again and again and again, combined with those same people then turning around and denying their luckboxery and even accusing other people of the very same luckboxery that they themselves have exhibited so obviously. Just like the first thing I talked about above, there really is no good reason why this seems to tilt me so bad, but it does and that's something I need to get cracking on fixing since I always aim to play my best game. I mean, I've read posts this week where people have actually taken the time to write an entire post about how they're not really a luckbox at all, and in the very post where they make this argument, they go on to show five or six examples from just one hour of play which make it so fucking recockulously obvious how lucky they got that the whole thing reads like a poor childrens' joke. I've written about this many times before, but getting refuckulucky in a tournament that you do well in is part of the game. It is rare that someone lasts deep into a big tournament and does not get lucky at some point along the way. And getting lucky of course includes getting a lot of good starting cards, it includes getting strong hands when your opponent gets slightly less strong (but still strong) starting hands, and it includes things like winning 5 races in a row, it includes flopped 5 sets during a tournament, it includes river suckouts in key spots, it includes all of these things. I like a guy like Alan who wins the Mookie this week and then has the balls to get on his blog and post all the awesome starting hands he was dealt. That's great, and of course it doesn't take a dam thing away from his performance in the tournament. He played his good cards well, got a little lucky, stepped up at the end and won the tournament. Big deal. There's no insult buried in admitting that one got some good cards to play with. It's what happens when you win a tournament. The only insult is to the readers when you luckchuck all the way to the final table and then try to claim it was all skill and that luck played no part in it at all.

But when I see these people posting how they did not lucksack in a tournament to pick up pocket Aces twice, pocket Kings twice, and to flop 3 sets in just the first hour of a tournament ("but I played all my hands so well!!!"), it just makes me sick. I mean, my reaction to a post like that is obviously not important, their lucksackery still exists no matter what they say of course. But it really drives me crazy. I've complained about this for a year or more in the blog. You get lucky as shit and win a tournament, don't act like you did it all on skill. It's called keeping it real. Be like Astin who is man enough to post all the AA and KK and QQ and AK hands he was dealt. Be like Alan the other day. Be like The King who won his first BBT tournament in the Riverchasers this week, and happily posted a kickass post about his three flopped sets (I think there were actually five) and about the 3-outer he hit in a key spot late in the game. That's what a real Man does. Only a pussyshit lucksacks his way through an hour or three and then goes on to his blog and claims it was all skill and how awesome he played is what got him where he ended up without referencing the fact that he couldn't go fucking five hands without flopping a set or top two pairs, and didn't go 10 minutes without picking up a premium starting hand or better yet, flopping huge against someone else's premium starting hand. Somehow the idea has been formulated and then perpetrated by dickheads that one can get lucky but then make that luckiness disappear by revising history and claiming it didn't happen. We're all there watching, you shitforbrainses! Your luck already did happen. Can you really be such schmike (yes that is the plural of "schmuck" in my language) to think you're going to trick us into thinking you were playing with air that whole time? We just saw your cards for the past four hours!! Christ. I'm getting tilted all over again just typing this stuff.

And please guys, don't win 18 races in a row and then bitch for 30 minutes in the chat about the one you lost. And don't call 313 allins with Queen-high and suck out every time, and then lose your shit on someone in the chatbox when they call you down with Ten high and beat you. It's like I just said above -- we've all sat here watching you play for the past few hours, for the past several tournaments, etc. We've been seeing the plays you've made. We know what you've been pushing and calling allins with. Even bloggers aren't fool enough to be tricked into forgetting how we've seen you play recently. How about a little fucking ownership, a little fucking personal responsibility here? Own your fucking lucksackery. You play like a monkey, you get rewarded with repeated lucksackery, and then you're going to go apeshit when that same lucksackery bites you in your own ass? I don't get it. And it tilts the shit out of me, at least it does lately anyways. Those of you who played the blonkaments with me this week will know, I donked myself out of them with idiotic cards for the most part, just because I was pissed. The only one I didn't do that in was the Mookie, and that's because I know my Mookie Curse was already in effect and would take care of that anyways -- even if someone flopping frigging quads on me when allin preflop with my higher pocket pair over their lower pocker pair hadn't happened when it did, it was only a matter of time in the Mook for me of course. But otherwise I've been playing like an abject shithead in these things, and for the most part it's because I am letting the luckshits get to me and especially letting the "dirty chatters" get to me.

Do us all a favor. Have all the personal battles you want with other bloggers. Enjoy yourselves. But do it in a more private forum. Yes I laugh my ass off sometimes at the shit I see in the chat, including in the Riverchasers last night which for whatever reason always seems to bring out the worst in some of the bloggers in the chat box. But it's not right, and it makes people who should never feel this way, feel like not playing with our ghey little group anymore when they themselves were the people who created these tournaments in the first place as a chance to get together, and most importantly to have fun. I need to try to remember that more myself, but so do a lot of us. Do what you can to keep the ridiculous hour-long post-elimination diatribes out of the chatbox, and keep the personal attacks and the personal issues away from everyone else who comes out to play and to try to win a few bucks from their friends and have a fun time. Every time I see this stuff, invariably from people who had never even heard of a poker blog when the rest of us were starting up the whole idea of these regular private games together a few years back, it concerns me. I foresee a world where some people might even want to do tournaments that are even more private than the ones we already run, where the password does not get out to the people who are perceived as negatively impacting the experience for the vast majority of everyone else.

So stop acting gheyly. Stop tilting me. Have some fuckin fun in these things guys. I promise I will do the same.

Donkament tonight, 9pm ET on full tilt. Not sure if I will make it there or not (who am I kidding, I will fucking be there for my weekly poker therapy), but the $1 rebuy is always a great time and hopefully something that won't get people too worked up to remain civil in the chat. And don't worry, no matter how nice people are to each other in the chat, I'm still gonna get trashed in the thing. I just wish Buddy would be on air getting trashed and broadcasting live with me.