Survivor Poker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BBT ToC is Me (Redux)

"Like I said, I am playing some really solid tournament poker lately, across all my poker playing including the BBT5. I just haven't yet had the opportunity to hold up where I need to along the way in the series. A lot of the old standbys from the private blogger tournaments, guys who have made appearances in prior BBT Tournament of Champions, seem to be playing overly aggressively or otherwise somehow not on their game so far four tournaments into the 24-event series, which should help my cause all the more. Hopefully 24 total chances at the ToC is enough for the math to work in my favor one time, because I'm confident I will be right there and still alive when it's my turn for the luck to even out in this thing."

-- Me, yesterday afternoon

Funny how things work sometimes. Here I was about six hours prior to the Poker From the Rail tournament as the open events of the BBT5 resume this week, and I was feeling good about my game although severely wanting as far as my results thus far in the BBT5. I wrote a whole post describing my opinion of my play -- aggressive, solid, hardly any mistakes, folding when necessary -- and I ended with exactly what I was thinking and feeling when I wrote the post on Monday afternoon: just give me a little run-good and hold up where I need it, and I will be there with the stack and the mentality to take advantage.

And that's pretty much just the way it happened.



Unfortunately, the Under is going to win in a landslide today, because I just don't have time to do a full recap post, though I am hoping to find the time one night this week for that. But the last I heard, the line was set on BuddyDankRadio at 70,000 words for my post today. I just don't have any time today, so I'll try to keep it under 40k if at all possible.

The really abridged version of my Poker From the Rail win on Monday night is that I got an early double-up with slow-played pocket Aces, then basically sat around for about two full hours in the 4k-8k range, hovering around the middle of the pack but unable to break out and unwilling to let myself get too low without aggressing my way back to respectability. I played my usual aggressive game from the getgo, and I was able to withstand an early suckout with AQ vs AJ allin preflop for about a third of my stack thanks to the early double with Aces.

But despite the early pocket Aces (I would see them, as well as pocket Kings, one more time apiece in the latter half of the tournament), in the end my biggest pots of the night were generally won with crappy cards. One hand comes to mind when I got allin with 74s and rivered a straight against pocket Jacks, and another with 76s when I pushed allin on a resteal preflop against katiemother and won a key 40-60 shot against her overcards. I recall winning at least one key pot at the final table with one pair with 96o for that matter. I played a very wide range of hands on the night overall, and played them extremely aggressively from the very start to the very finish, and I ran just good enough along the way to make it happen.

And don't get me wrong, this was not one of those tournaments like I've definitely had from time to time where I luckflonked my way to the title. Far from it -- I would say without a doubt that I played the best tournament poker of anybody in the tournament last night. I just happened to run good a little bit along the way. But I got what I would describe as good starting cards -- far from deck-slappage, but as I mentioned I saw AA twice and KK once which is unusual for me, plus a bunch of AK's that I recall out of nearly 400 total hands on the night. And even though I mentioned the couple of key spots where I activated the run-good and survived in what I thought were good spots to make the moves I was making, I also survived two absolutely brutal bad beats when 3-handed and heads-up allin preflop and dominating -- in addition to winning the biggest pot of the entire tournament with my ATs vs Troublecat's TT allin preflop during heads-up play. So overall it was a smattering of some good luck and some bad luck, some good starting cards and plenty of bad, and overall some seriously great poker tournament play from me along the way, among the best I can recall playing in a blonkament.

Although I do hope to get more into this later in the week, I should mention the heads-up battle that saw me come in with more than a 3:1 chip deficit thanks to a major suckout one hand before heads-up. I was up against Troublecat, who many of you may know as the guy who won an event at the LAPC some years ago back when poker blogging was in its nascence, and he and I battled it out hard core to nab the seat. I think he said the heads-up match eventually lasted 72 hands, nearly half of the hands seen on the entire final table, and it was definitely one of those epic heads-up battles that happen once in a long while in the big blonkaments. It was fun but frustrating, as I played a significantly more aggressive game than Ryan did, as I must have won a good 65% of the hands we played heads-up. Much of this was due to the fact that Ryan played very passive with the big chip lead for almost the entire time while I played aggressive like a jackass and just hoped not to get called, or to suckout or win a 40-60 if I did, and once again that's exactly what happened when he reraised me and I called with ATs against Ryan's TT. The flop brought not one but two Aces, and suddenly it was I with the 3:1 chip lead. I played the chip lead far more aggressively than Ryan had, and after one more allin where I lost a 60-40 shot to end it, I finally vanquished Troublecat after about 50 minutes of heads-up play shortly after 2am ET when we both got in with top pair but my kicker was just a couple of pips ahead of his.

My overall impressions of the night: I played awesome tournament poker, especially heads-up where I refused to give up despite playing about 65 of the 72 hands from a significant chip deficit. Especially in a ToC-driven BBT series, I can't say I am any kind of a fan of the structure being such that really from the final two tables it was almost all preflop push-n-pray poker. I don't mind that and frankly most online mtt's end up playing out that way, but when you have to outright win an event in order to make it in to play for the big prizes in the ToC, it just feels wrong that Ryan doesn't get a seat in addition to some others who got sucked out on at the final table if that happens multiple times in a short BBT series like this.

And most of all, I ran well when I needed it, just like I was saying yesterday.

ToC here I come!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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!