FTOPS Back in Da Hizzy!!

Don't forget, it's Monday night, the start to a new week and thus to a new week of blogger tournaments on full tilt, beginning with tonight's 6-max MATH tournament at 10pm ET:



As always with my private tournaments, the password is "hammer" and I look forward to seeing everyone there if you can make it. We're only in the second week of the MATH for 2008 and there was a four-way chop for first place in our first tournament of the year, which means no large payouts to any one person and therefore nobody has a big head start on anyone else on the 2008 moneyboard. Btw still no updates on a prize for the 2007 moneyboard leaders, but I'm still working on it and I will let you know here as soon as I know anything myself.

So the big news from my perspective this weekend is that FTOPS VII is back in the hee-ouse! This quarter's Full Tilt Online Poker Series will last from Wednesday, February 6 through Sunday, February 17, including a record 20 different events and culminating once again in the February 17 Main Event, a no-limit holdem tournament with a $2 million guaranteed prize pool. In keeping with my poker goals for 2008 as well as some of my biggest successes in past years, I plan to play as many of these FTOPS tournaments as I am able, focusing of course on the games which I view as my best and where I have had the most success in the past.

As with past FTOPS series, I like to look at the entire schedule early on and determine which events I know I cannot play or which don't really fit into my normal schedule, and especially which events I would really like to play so that I know which ones to focus my generally successful tournament satelliting efforts. As such, here is the entire FTOPS VI schedule:

Event #1: NL Hold-m - $200 + $16, on Feb 6th at 21:00 ET - $750,000 Prize Pool

Event #2: PL Omaha Knockout - $240+ $16, Feb 7th at 14:00 ET - $100,000

Event #3 HORSE - $500+ $35, Feb 7th at 21:00 ET - $300,000

Event #4 PLH - $200+ $16, Feb 8th at 14:00 ET -$150,000

Event #5 LH - $200+ $16, (6 max) Feb 8th at 21:00 ET - $150,000

Event #6 PL Omaha - $500 + $35, Feb 9th at 14:00 ET - $250,000

Event #7 NL Hold ‘em Rebuy - $100 + $9, Feb 9th at 16:30 ET - $400,000

Event #8 NL Hold ‘em Knockout - $120 + $9, Feb 10th at 14:00 ET - $150k

Event #9 NL Hold’ em - $300+ $22, Feb 10th at 18:00 ET - $1,000,000

Event #10: NL Hold ‘em- $1000+ $60, (6-max) Feb 11th at 21:00 ET- $1,000,000

Event #11: Limit Omaha Hi/Lo- $200+ $16, Feb 12th at 21:00 ET - $200,000

Event #12: NL Hold’em - $300 + $22, (6-Max, Rebuy) Feb 13th at 21:00 ET - $1,000,000

Event #13: HA (PL Hold ‘em and PL Omaha) - $200+ $16, Feb 14th at 14:00 ET- $100,000

Event #14: Razz - $200+ $16, Feb 14th at 14:00 ET - $100,000

Event #15: NL Hold ‘em - $200 + $16, (6 max) Feb 15th at 14:00 ET- $150,000

Event #16: Stud - $200 + $16, Feb 15th at 21:00 ET- $100,000

Event #17: NL Hold ‘em 2-day - $2,500+ $120, Feb 16th at 14:00 ET- $1,500,000

Event #18: PL Omaha Rebuy - $100 + $9, Feb 16th at 16:30 ET- $300,000

Event #19: NL Hold’em Knockout - $240 + $16, Feb 17th at 14:00 ET- $300,000

Main Event: NL Hold ‘em - $500 + $35, Feb 17th at 18:00 ET - $2,000,000

Taking a quick look at this schedule, the first event that jumped right out at me as a supremely fun tournament to play was FTOPS Event #2, a $240 pot-limit Omaha tournament which will feature a $40 knockout bounty for every player eliminated. Now, even though PLO tends to be a brutal game of suckouts and redraws, I have said here many times that it is a game I enjoy playing in a tournament format probably even more than good old-fashioned no-limit holdem, which is really saying something since nlh is the game that brought me to online poker in the first place a few years ago. It is also a game I have performed very well at in the somewhat limited time I have spent playing Omaha tournaments, so that also adds to the mystique, along with the knock format which I think will be especially fun in a brutal and fast-moving game like PLO. The one problem with this tournament? It is on a Thursday, a work day, at 2pm ET, making it basically impossible for me to play due to my day job. But then the solution hit me all at once: Fuck my job. My manager wouldn't know leadership if it bit him in the ass, and he couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag over the past couple of years. So, to repay my boss for all of his tremendous efforts, all of which have essentially worked to my and my company's detriment, I will either be taking the whole day off or at least the afternoon off. Yes, to play online poker. Deal with it.

Looking at the slate of satellites for this tournament, the ones that jumped out at me immediately are these $33 + $3 PLO sitngos, with the top finisher out of 9 runners being awarded the FTOPS #2 seat. So, being the entreprenurial guy that I am, I solicited some PLO-loving bloggers on Friday night, waited two hours for one of these sngs to fill, and then I played in my first one. After getting sucked out on twice and sucking out on KOD once, I found myself in 2nd place out of 3 remaining (these particular sngs are winner-take-all). At that point I ended up pushing preflop with a decent but not great starting hand, got called by a high pocket pair, and that pair ended up making a set on the flop so IGH in 3rd place. One attempt, one strike. Then on Saturday night this weekend, everyone's favorite PLO blogger was up for the challenge once again, and this time our satellite filled from just us two to nine players much more quickly. Fast forward about 40 minutes, and I was heads-up with Bayne himself, with me at close to a 2-to-1 chip lead, and I got in ahead of Bayne's medium-pocket-pair hand and actually had a favorite hold up against him to take it down:



So that was $72 spent, and I was qualified for FTOPS #2, a $240 knockout PLO tournament. Good stuff, good investment.

Next up on the slate was FTOPS #9, a $322 buyin nlh tournament hosted by Erick Lindgren, for which full tilt has been running some good mtt satellites on a nightly basis -- in particular I like the $75 buyin mtt sat at 10:10pm ET every night. Again, and you will find this to be a pattern with me, I strongly prefer the larger-buyin satellites (if your roll can afford it of course), because although everyone would of course prefer to play into these things as cheaply as possible, the cheaper the satellite buyin, the harder and more rare it is to win your way in through that low-buyin satellite. Personally, with the roll I have and the success I have had over time in satelliting in to larger-buyin tournaments, I prefer to take what I consider to be the second- or third-level buyin satellites, ranging in the $40 to $75 range depending on the size of the underlying tournament. For example, with this nightly $75 buyin satellite into the $322 FTOPS #9, that basically means that 3 out of every 13 players will win their seats. If your roll can withstand it, this is the kind of ratio you want to see in your mtt satellites, because having to win outright out of 30 players in a $26 satellite into the same $322 buyin FTOPS #9 is about 100 times harder to pull off than just finishing in the top few spots out of 13 runners.

Anyways, I tried this tournament on Friday night as well, the first night I really started seeing these FTOPS satellites back on the tournament tab on full tilt, and I flamed out early with I forget what. It wasn't a good play by me whatever it was, as I do not recall getting sucked out on in that spot (I only took about 435 suckouts this weekend, costing me I would estimate maybe 10 grand in winnings, so it was a good weekend overall for me and a highly lucky one as well compared to the way I usually run). So I also tried it again on Saturday night, a satellite in which cmitch and I both made it to the final table around the end of the first hour of the nlh event, albeit both with short stacks. And when I say I had a short stack early at the final table, let me show you what I mean:



195 chips, with 8 players remaining and the top 3 getting seats to FTOPS #9. 195 chips. This was the result of a really bad call by me on the previous hand where I had called an allin from a similar-sized stack to my own on an AA7 flop against a guy whom I had not read for a strong hand when he called my preflop raise out of the blinds. I agonized and then eventually made the allin call holding pocket 6s, and he flipped up some garbage like KJ or KT for the higher two pairs, and I was mega-crippled like you see above.

After this point, however, began one of the greatest comebacks in poker tournament history, right up there with Jack "chip and a chair" Strauss in the World Series of Poker back in 1982. Starting with less than two big blinds in my stack, and with cmitch the next closest stack at over 1300 chips, I began by doubling up twice with two high-card hands that held up in showdowns to give me at least a little bit of breathing room. At some point cmitch and I think one other player dropped out, and I was then in 6th place of 6 but was right up around 1000 chips. This gave me just enough chips to get the players behind me to fold with allin bets from me once or twice, allowing me to chip up even further. About 25 minutes after being down to 195 chips, I was actually dealt a real hand for the only time at the final table, taking JJ and doubling through the next-shortest stack once again who got allin with an Ace and a kicker lower than my Jacks. From here it was just play good-timing poker, pushing aggressively whenever no one else had shown any strength while being sure not to get stuck calling anyone's allin with an inferior hand, and I was able to survive to the bubble when one of the big stacks got caught with a straight against another big stacks' trips, bringing us down to four players, with one short stack and the other three of us in good position to win the FTOPS #9 seats. The shorty made a bad move and made things easy by pushing allin on the very first hand with what turned out to be 63o, getting called by AQ and that was all she wrote -- over about 90 minutes I went from 195 chips and in a distant last out of 8 players remaining to this:



BOOOOooooooooom! So getting in to FTOPS #9 is in the books. That one is the first Sunday of the FTOPS, and it's at 6pm ET but I can make that happen with Hammer Wife. The Hammer kids don't really stay up that much past 6 anyways most days, and she can finish that off on the night in exchange for something good I can figure out to throw her way. Hammer Wife tries to act like she isn't in to this whole poker thing, but she's good like that. So anyways, this one was $150 spent for a $322 buyin. Wish it was less, but I'll take it.

Then on Sunday night, having already won my way into FTOPS #2 and #9 earlier in the weekend, I was focusing on another tournament that I really enjoyed for the first time in the last FTOPS series -- FTOPS #5 in 6-max limit holdem. This is another $216 buyin tournament, and it is scheduled for Friday evening, February 8 at 9pm ET, a time when I pretty much always play the FTOPS as this last night of the first week of FTOPS has traditionally been saved for pot-limit holdem, but this time around it will be shorthanded limit. As I've said here many times, I really can't stand limit holdem for its donkchasey nature, but if you adjust properly, find a high enough buyin so that it keeps out at least the abject fonkadonks, and play is shorthanded I find that this is an enjoyable game for someone who has read and practiced a lot of limit holdem strategies and techniques. For this tournament, I very quickly located the best satellite for my roll, which was once again one of these second- or third-level buyins of $70. Since the underlying FTOPS #5 is 6-max, the sng satellites running for it are also 6-max which I love and which makes good sense, so for a $70 buyin you get to play a sitngo with 6 players, the top two of which will win their seats to FTOPS #5. Me likely. So, fast forward about two hours in this, my first attempt to satellite in to FTOPS #5, and skipping over about 4 suckouts that each threatened to cripple me in various ways and at various times in the sat, and here you go:



So, it was a highly fruitful weekend for me on the FTOPS front, winning my way into FTOPS #2, #5 and #9 with a total investment of under $300 to win seats worth $256, $216 and $322 for a total of nearly $800. So not only am I in to three big tournaments that I really want to play in, but I've done so at a very low cost relative to the cost of just buyin in direct, which of course is the whole objective all along of playing in these satellites to begin with. Later in the week I plan to discuss the other FTOPS VII tournaments I am looking to play my way into, and which satellites if any are out there that look the most attractive to me to do so.

One last thing:



That is me winning another donkament this past Friday, my first of 2008 and my third blonkament victory already in just the first couple weeks of the new year. In this one I was in 12th place out of 15 players with 5500 chips -- just one late-hour double-up above the minimum rebuy + addon after I sat out for the first 40 minutes or so of Monkey Hour for the third straight week to have dinner and watch a little tv with Hammer Wife. I very quickly doubled up with AQ over AJ at the beginning of Hour 2, and then managed to ride that medium stack to the final table. I had a blast at the final table taking out all the entire tuckfard nutz boys one by one by one, including my own personal punching bag NutzCarson on the old favorite "counterfeit" bad beat when my A8 beat his 88 on a QQx99 board. Sorry Carson, I am sure you'll get me back one of these days in this thing! Anyways, it was $60, but again as with all the blonkaments it is far less about the money and more about the fun and the pride. And with a goal of winning 15 blonkaments in all of 2008, to have already knocked out three of 'em in just a couple of weeks is a very good start for a guy who takes setting and meeting my goals very seriously when it comes to poker.

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

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.