The Vote

Well, I just sent my vote in for the heads-up finale of Survivor Poker: Donkey Island. In the end, it came down to my fellow Fish-mates, veryjosie and smboatdrinks, both of whom in my view played a very strong game. All along I knew that, come the last vote, I would vote for the person who deserved it the most based on their play throughout the series. And I think I know who that person is.

First, let's start with Josie. Now, I'm not even going to try to say I was privy to a small fraction of all the inside shit going on on Donkey Island over these past few weeks. There are entire camps that I had no insight into whatsoever, obviously given some of my posts along the way. But all that said, I had access to some pretty solid intel at all points of the game, which was an unexpected surprise for me coming in. I had pretty regular conversations on strategy with a couple people on the Donkeys, and Josie and I emailed and chatted regularly pretty much start to finish about things. This worked out well for me because I actually got pretty well into the game, I ended up liking the whole thing far more than I ever thought, and, frankly, I know a lot of the guys in the contest pretty well all things considered. And I never had a single design about winning the series, or even lasting long at all, so I didn't have even the beginnings of hard feelings towards any of my teammates who had backstabbed me. I had no agenda to get revenge on any of those guys or anything like it, and frankly more than anything else, Josie and I had I think a symbiotic relationship. She fed my interest in the series and in strategizing and in all the inner workings and decisions and backstabbery, and in return I provided my thoughts, based on what I knew.

Anyways, this isn't a post about me and my run through Survivor Poker, right now I'm talking about Josie. My point was I had a lot of insight into what she was doing, and without going into specifics, often times Josie and my conversations involved specific offers or even specific emails she was sent by other participants in the game. And, as there's no point at all to not letting the cat out of the bag right now, Josie basically ran all the decisions, almost from the getgo. I read her post and she might be understating her involvement in the early decisions a little bit, but from the fourth or fifth tournament all the way straight to the end, Josie was calling the shots. Every single week, every single tournament, in the latter part of team play, and all the way through after the merger right up to the very end, if you got on her bad side, you were gone in a flash. Josie would snap her fingers, and you would just disappear, no matter who you were or which team you came from. And this is not to say that the other players weren't active doing their own things, setting shit up, allying and fake-allying and backstabbing others. I was privy to emails and such from a few different people along the way, and I am well aware that everyone had their own shit going on. But when it comes right down to it, most of those other alliances ended up not meaning shit in the end. Josie called the shots, Josie made the plans, and Josie spent literally hours strategizing, thinking through scenarios, considering who her biggest danger was right now, etc. etc. etc. Trust me, I know she did. You just can't say enough about what a good job Josie did from the beginning in planning this thing out, and it showed as in the end she was literally always two or three steps ahead of those who would have had her undoing.

And then there's Boat. And admittedly, Boat was not someone I spent much time emailing or chatting with during Survivor Poker -- at least not after he dipped his knife in acid and slipped it quietly between my second and third vertebrae to end me before my time on Donkey Island -- and like I said I know of an alliance or two he was involved in after the merger of the teams occurred roughly halfway through the series. So I know he was moving shit and he was shaking shit -- you don't last through 16 other blonkeys in this thing without making some shit happen for yourself. But the bottom line is -- boat and Josie aligned from Week 1, from Day 1 really, and more than anything else they simply did what was so damned impossible for everyone else on Donkey Island, over and over and over and over again -- they stuck together. And I don't say this lightly -- Boat did a really good job in this game, albeit in a more passive way than Josie who played much more the leadership role in the process. But Boat actually did two things very well in Survivor Poker, things that aren't nearly as easy as you might think. First, he chose his alliance well. Josie, obviously, was a great choice for Boat, and she stuck with him straight through to the bitter end just to prove it. Picking the right alliance isn't nearly as easy as it may seem -- just look at me, who was forced to try to ally with a couple of slimy weasels. Or look at Jordan, allying with Goat just so Goat could f him up. Or, likewise, Goat allying with Jamy. But Boat picked exceedingly well in whom he chose to ally with. And, I think it's fine to admit it now, there were a couple of moments there where Josie wasn't 100% sure. At one point Boat was working on something as some kind of a contingency plan with one of the final 5 or 6 players left, and Josie was getting nervous. He wasn't admitting it to her, but it was pretty obvious. So even that alliance had its moments -- I am sure on both sides -- but it was a very good choice for Boat. And that's the other thing that Boat did so well -- he actually stuck with his fucking choice despite all the temptation to do otherwise. We saw how hard this was for the Fish first when they were guaranteed passage to the merge if they just stuck with my plan, but then they turned around and voted me off, all but assuring themselves that their ranks would be cut in off over the ensuing month. We saw the same thing time and time again, and most flagrantly with the Donkeys who simply could not just vote together as a group by the time the merge happened and who literally gave it all away, every single one of them. Well, boat wasn't able to stick with the quasi-alliance he and I had, but he did a fabulous job of sticking with Josie, and it paid off. He played a great game of Survivor, and is fully deserving of being where he is here at the end.

There's another reason that I definitely considered voting for Boat in this, I should mention, and this has nothing to do with Boat to be honest. While I said all that up there that I thought Josie played a great game, the bottom line is, by the time we were down to maybe 8 players left, it was in my mind unbelievably obvious that Josie was the ringleader and needed to be taken out immediately. And yet, somehow, nobody ever did anything about it. With about 8 left, it was obvious. With about 7 or 6 left, people openly starting posting about it, which I chose not to do. But still, everyone knew, but nobody did anything about it. It was excruciating when I think about it, watching these monkeys repeatedly let Josie grow strong and stronger over like 5 or 6 tournaments in a row, literally eliminating her biggest perceived competition day after day after day after day, and nobody did anything. Josie undeniably played a great game, but this shit was also handed to her. Absolutely handed to her. I mean, not literally handed to her. But the Donkeys had Josie and the entire Fish team dead to rights, and then they fucked it up. They made a terrible decision like four straight weeks, and just stood there and let Josie's rise to power be consummated. Even among the Fish -- where, make no mistake, there were active attempts to unseat Josie brewing each and every week around the middle of Survivor Poker -- they simply could not get it together to eliminate the ringleader until it was too late. But watching how badly everyone played in the face of an obviously mounting threat from Josie -- and knowing the bloggers' general history of cowtowing to the new hot chick on the blog and then having to watch the same sad scene play out once again with Josie over and over again through this series, I can't deny that some small part of me definitely considered voting anti here and surprising in support of smboatdrinks just for that reason alone.

But in the end, I voted for the right person here to win Season 1 of Survivor Poker: VeryJosie. I have a lot of respek for what Boat did in the series, and as I said above there is little doubt in my mind that he is fully deserving of his top-two finish. He played the game very, very well, and I take nothing away from him for being more of a passive and less of an active participant in getting there. But I just didn't want to vote for the guy who ultimately in my view rode the coattails of the person who he is up against heads-up here. Boat did an awesome job picking and sticking with Josie, but Josie ultimately is the reason that Boat ended up here where he is.

I think to sum up my feelings, if Josie had gotten voted out in week 3, I think there is almost zero chance that Boat lasts to the final 2. But Boat could have gotten voted out in week 3, and I can't see how that would have changed Josie's chances of ending up here much at all. Boat deserves a lot of credit, but Josie is the reason that both of them are here ultimately, and for that she gets my vote.

Well played to both of you two, well played.

On the Road Again

In between more trips halfway across the country this week, I thought I would pop in with some general thoughts swirling around my brain while I have some internet downtime courtesy of free airport wireless from Boingo! So what's happened since last I checked in here?

The Tournament. Damn. What an incredible run this time around, quite possibly the best March Madness in history if you're a fan of upsets and of the Little Guy. Everyone said there were no great teams this year, but by the time the tournament actually came around, I think it was pretty clear that Ohio State and Kansas at least were a cut ahead of the rest, with Duke pretty much right on their heels behind them. And yet somehow, the whole "no great teams this year" ended up proving out, as we have an amazing 11-seeded VCU in the Final Four, joined by 8th seeded Butler to accompany #4 Kentucky and #3 UConn. It's the highest sum of the four Final Four seeds in NCAA tournament history, and Saturday afternoon's VCU-Butler matchup will be the highest sum of two teams matching up in the Final Four in tournament history as well. It's the first time we've had no #1 seeds into the Final Four in a decade, and the first time with no #1 or #2 seeds in tournament history. Suffice it to say, these are four teams as befitting of the "there are no great teams this year" mantra as any collection you could find.

This Butler story is simply amazing. There are just no other words to describe a guy out of that tiny school, that unknown basketball program, and that weakass heretofore disrespected conference and make it to the Final Four. Twice. Consecutively. What Brad Stevens has done this year cannot be put into words, but go read my post about him last year if you want to know what I already thought of this guy's coaching skills after last season's run. Stevens' career has been on the upswing for years, and this latest run of back to back Final Fours could be just the beginning for who has got to be thought of at this point as America's best college basketball coach.

And enough with the talk about the Big East. The Committee hopefully learned something this year about parity, as they allowed in 11 teams that beat the crap out of each other for three months in to the big dance from the Big East, surpassing the Big East's own record of 8 teams into the NCAA Tournament back in 2008. I'm all for allowing in all the teams that deserved it, but frankly I did not think Marquette did quite enough to get in, and I though the way Villanova ended the season -- including losing in the first round of the Big East tournament to lowly South Florida to cap a horrible second-half slide to their year -- also made them prime ground to be bumped out for a more worthy squad. I mean, the Big East deserved to break that record this year, but they probably should have had just 9, or at most 10 teams in. Crushing the all-time record like that, and allowing in 11 of 16 teams in a conference as a result, was I think kind of a mistake. But don't be one of those clowns who points to the Big East only getting two teams into the Sweet Sixteen. That's just bogus. Number one, nobody ever said that inviting a team into the Big Dance means they are going to win the tournament, or win four games, or win two games. It is and ever was only a way of rewarding a team for a good season, and in that sense the committee let in who they thought deserved to be let in. They let the Ivy League winner into the Big Dance every year...does that mean they think Princeton has a legitimate shot at taking the whole shebang down? Of course not. So just because a lot of the Big East teams didn't last long, that really is not actually related at all to whether they deserved their bids.

Frankly, I think most of the pretty much bad Big East teams lost early, and that is just the way it should be. I mean, I just said up there that I probably would not have let in Marquette or maybe even Nova, but those decisions are defensible to me, and the fact that Nova, Georgetown and Louisville all got crushed early did not surprise me much. I profited from my expecting that in my pools, in fact. Same thing with Pitt and Notre Dame, who paying close attention to the Big East this year led me to have fairly low expectations for come tournament time. The thing with the Big East this year is that, while quite probably the deepest conference in college basketball history, it really was not in my view the best conference in college basketball history. Not by a longshot, really. I don't even think this year's Big East crop was quite as good overall as a couple of years ago, when Villanova and Pittsburgh had that amazing late-tournament showdown. That year, the Big East had about eight teams ranked in the Top 25 all season long, which was sort of like this year although maybe not quite as deep. But that year, the conference also had arguably three of the top four teams in the country in Nova, Pitt and UConn. We were looking at a conference with legitimately five of the ten best teams in the land all concentrated in it, and three or four tournament-worthy teams to boot as well. That was a crazy strong conference in my view. This year's Big East was crazy, crazy deep -- the conference's 9th place team in UConn is very close to winning the national title right now -- but at the top, the small handful of very best teams in the country at no point included anyone from the Big East, all season long. The closest anyone in the conference has come to being one of the country's best is right now, with UConn, who with Kemba Walker is playing as scary as anyone in the sport, but it's the first time all year. The Big East may have had 8 or 9 ranked teams through most of the 2011 season, but very rarely did we have anyone ranked in the top three or four, and not at all more than one at any point. And with soft Pitt and Notre Dame teams at the top of the conference by the time the seedings for the Big Dance were handed out, I did not pick either of those teams to make a deep run. The deepest I had any Big East team going this year was UConn, based on the way they played and the way Kemba Walker stepped up in the Big East tournament, although I did not pick any Big East teams to make this year's Final Four. Which makes perfect sense to me, and certainly does not mean that these teams did not deserve to be in the Big Dance to begin with, but I never thought the conference had a top-5 team in it all year, albeit having several teams in the 5-25 range on the national rankings.

Getting away from the tournament for a minute, the Phillies are heading into the 2011 season with a major whimper, as second baseman Chase Utley sounds to me like he is going to be sidelined for a good couple of month at least with a still-ailing kneee, Brad Lidge is looking like he will start the season on the DL as well, and even star pitcher Roy Halladay took a beaning line drive off the bat of Manny Ramirez right in the back of the head the other day. To this Phillies fan, it feels like the year has slipped away before it even started, and with the problems this team had scoring runs in 2010 as it is, plus the loss of 100-rbi man Jayson Werth's bat from the starting lineup, and Utley likely not 100% if in there at all for a good half the season, things are not looking good for this team to make it back to the World Series anytime soon, even despite their vaunted pitching staff. You heard it here first -- this Phillies squad isn't going to score enough runs to be as great as everyone thinks they're going to be.

Oh and let's not forget Survivor Poker, which is winding to a close here as we have just three players left: smboatdrinks and veryjosie from the original Team Fish, and muchtim from the original Team Donkeys. Since I last checked in about the goings-on at Donkey Island, the Fish fulfilled their plan of banding together as soon as they had snatched the majority back from the Donkeys shortly after the merge, and summarily eliminated the remaining Donkeys player by player by player, until certain members of Team Fish pissed off their own ringleader with backstabbery and deceipt such that their own elimination became more important than finishing off the Donkeys. Thus, muchtim has managed to squeak his way in as the remaining Fish alliance of josie and boat have eliminated their own would-be mutineers in turtle and xkm over the past couple of games. Now on Wednesday, we all have a chance to really impact the outcome of Survivor Poker, because whoever wins immunity out of josie, boat and muchtim gets an automatic pass into the final two, and they get to pick which of the other two remaining players to bring along with them. I think it's a safe bet to assume at this point that the two surviving fish would vote for each other if either of them wins immunity on the day, but the really interesting thing would be if muchtim manages to pull off that feat. Who will muchtim choose to bring along with him to the final heads-up showdown? The person he has been secretly allied with for weeks? Or the person he has been secretly working against all the while? Or are those one and the same person? Wednesday should be good times at the Dank at 10pm ET on full tilt, and I definitely expect to be there along with a nice crowd of bloggers. Take a big chunk of the stack of any of muchtim, smboatdrinks or veryjosie on Wednesday night, and you will be personally influencing the overall outcome of the series in a meaningful way, so hopefully I will see you there for the festivities.

Assuming I am back home in New York by Wednesday night, that is.

Long Live The Dank

As nice as making my second straight flush of 2011 is (the first being the royal flush I posted last week or so), it's even better when it happens in a blogger tournament, and still better at a final table of said blogger tournament. Even better than that, at a severely short-handed table, in this case when down to 3-handed left in the inaugural Dank tournament that finally officially replaces the Mookie as the Wednesday night private blogger tournament. But the best of all has got be when you make a straight flush when down to 3-handed in a private blogger tourmament, and you actually beat another straight flush:



Now granted, we both only used one card from our hands in combination with four obvious straight-flush cards on the board, but still, this one was pretty awesome.

Even more awesome was that it led to this:



So, as was so astutely pointed out by the guys on BDR last night this morning right around 1am, after struggling in vain to win my first Mookie for the better part of three years, publically embarrassing myself countless times with my gaffes and final table blunders, and enduring all the inevitable the late-game coolers and the heads-up suckouts, the guys finally change things over to The Dank, and I take down the very first one. Hopefully this means the curse of the Mookie will die with the name, as I not only won this one but did so by getting lucky in the final hand with A5 vs A6 allin on the flop, in addition to the straight-flush hand above as well as a few other nice rivers along the way.

There is so much more for me to write about right now (Survivor Poker winding down, the NCAA tournament refs butchering yet another March Madness, I could go on and on), but suffice it to say that the last week has been a whirlwind of cross-country travel and back on a couple of large deals at work that have had me absolutely unable to come up for air in any meaningful way for several days on end. I've just barely enough time to get this posted before diving back down deep in yet another 3-hour conference call with a government client lawyer who acts as if he is being paid by the minute for as long as he can drag our negotiation out. So for now this will have to be it, as I will look to get back some of my free time over the next week or two at work and back to my more normal blogging schedule.

Donkey Island and Merging Multiple Entries

Since last we got together like this, the dynamics on Donkey Island have changed significantly. The last time I posted about Survivor Poker, the Donkeys and the Fish had merged, but we were still looking at a 5-4 advantage for the former Donkeys and thus the likelihood that if the remaining Team Donkey members just stuck together tight, they could pick off whomever they wanted from Team Fish one by one by one. Instead, however, the exact opposite has happened. After coming into the merge with the Donkeys leading the Fish 6 members to 4, since then we have seen Goat, then Katitude, and now Jamyhawk this past Sunday night get voted off the island by a fairly solid majority, taking three more Donkeys out of the picture, and leaving us at this point with just three Donkeys left (heffmike, muchtim and brainmc) as compared to the four remaining Fish (xkm, iaatg, smboatdrinks and veryjosie).

What the Fish have done here in the past week of play is nothing short of astonishing. As I mentioned above, and frankly as people have been saying on an almost weekly basis since Survivor Poker took off a few weeks back, if the Donkeys had just voted together as a group -- as recently as this very Sunday night -- they could have at least forced a tie, and more likely simply picked who from the Fish to remove, and just gone and done it week after week after week. But just like I wonder why my teammates would have stabbed me in the back when I know I offered them an objectively better alliance then what they were left with once I was gone -- and we've heard the same refrain from many of the other eliminatees in the game thus far -- for some reason the Donkeys could just not keep it together, and the result has been that, amazingly, the Fish have instead been the ones to just pick off a different Donkey after every single tournament over the past couple of weeks.

And the Fish aren't just taking out any old random Donkey members. Noooo, far from it. Just look at the last four people eliminated from Team Donkey here: Jordan, then Goat, then Kat and now Jamy. Although I cannot specifically speak for each of these players, I can say for sure that each of those has been perceived to be one of the "leaders" of that side of the alliance, and probably in most cases has been the single biggest leader of that alliance, and each tournament over the past couple of weeks has ended with the current Donkey heavy being summarily voted off of Donkey Island. Goat helped work to have Jordan eliminated, and then the next week it was Goat being blindsided and removed from play, led largely by Jamy. Now it is Jamy who has taken the step down from surviving player to the tribal council, a week after he, too, thought he had been in control of things, at least on his side of the house. But with five votes coming in for Jamyhawk on Sunday night, it is clear that not only did the four Fish vote for Jamy, but at least one member of the old Donkey alliance has joined in as well.

From a team alliance standpoint, it is fair to say at this point that the Donkeys are decimated. Of the three remaining players who began Survivor Poker as Team Donkeys -- heff, brain and muchtim -- none of them was in the "core alliance" from the beginning, and at this point we are looking more at improvised desperation among those participants than anything resembling team leadership among those three survivors. The Fish alliance, however, is the much more interesting story, as after four consecutive Donkey eliminations, it is clear that the Fish have figured out how to ally and to work together to accomplish their objectives far better than the Donkeys ever did. And now, with just three of the weaker members of Team Donkey remaining, the question becomes: who is next?

Will the Fish look to take out the final three Team Donkey members in succession here going forward as they have done with the last four eliminations? This writer says No. Although the Donkey alliance is obviously completely broken down here, there are new alliances budding between groups on both teams, both large and small, with multiple Fish teammates entering into individual alliances with random Donkeys, as well as the broader teaming among the Fish that has flexed its muscles so powerfully over the past four Survivor Poker tournaments. And I can personally attest to the fact that there is even some talk of potential mutiny within the Fish, as at least one team member has begun plotting the takeout of their own perceived leader, sending out some feelers and looking for support to muster enough votes to shake things up once again.

One thing is clear at this point though, really for the first time in the entire run thus far on Donkey Island -- the next real intrigue among the eliminations is going to come from the Fish, and not the Donkeys. Getting Jordan out was big, and Goat's elimination was just as huge, with Jamy's not far behind as by all rights he was playing both sides almost from the getgo which eventually caught up with him. But at this point, it is where things will go from here on the Fish side that is the most intriguing question right now in Survivor Poker. When will the Fish start turning on themselves instead of devouring the remaining scraps of Team Donkey? And when they do, who will be the first to go? It's a good bet that there has been a pretty solid alliance all the way from the beginning among the Fish, so at some point sooner rather than later here, one of them is going to find themselves in the all-too-familiar position of listening to Buddy count down the votes on BDR and finding that they themselves are suddenly the odd man out. Most recently, it was Josie picking up two votes on Sunday night, and before that SmBoat had gotten a couple of votes on a couple of occasions, so that may be some indication of where there is at least some interest to ruffle some feathers on the Fish side. Personally I think it's high time to turn the attention back on the Fish after two solid weeks of Donkey drubbings in Survivor Poker.

Oh, I should also mention that I had an interesting occurrence happen to me last night, in Goat's $5 multi-entry nlh tournament. We had 73 runners, and I did the maximum four entries even though I didn't have close to enough room on my laptop screen to really keep up. Long story short, I got one nice big stack early, then another, and then another, while one of them remained short and near the bottom of the pack all the way as the players began to drop out. Right around the two hour mark of the tournament, we crossed the threshold below 30 players remaining, and I hadn't been paying that much attention but I still had all four of my entries remaining, even with well more than half of the field gone. Well, fast forward to a few minutes after the second break, and a couple guys got knocked out, and suddenly we were down to 27. And then one of my tables shut down, showing a note that read "Waiting for players to merge...", and before I knew it, two of my entries had combined into one, as I suddenly realized I had four entries left out of 27 entries remaining, and only three tables on which to play them at. So I merged, for the first time I've ever seen, and I can officially tell you it's real. I had often wondered how common that kind of merger would really ever be considering how deep you would have to run with multiple entries just to get to that point where it could even be possible, but here's your answer. In a smallish tournament, you just need a couple of good chip-ups and you can get there.

So I merged, and not even three hands later, I ran AA into JJ allin preflop who sucked out a Jack on the river to knock one of my entires out. About 15 minutes later, I ran KK into 66 on another table allin pre, and fell to a 6 on the flop to take out my second entry. My third entry failed to win a race with KJs vs. 55, and then I was down to just one entry remaining. That last entry did carry me all the way to the final table and a small cash in the tournament, but eventually he, too, succumbed with KK vs a lower pair, allin preflop. What more can you do, right? I was an 80% favorite to win probably about 80% of the chips in play last night between my four deep entry runs, but when you keep picking up AA and KK, playing them to perfection, getting allin dominating before the flop, and continually losing, nobody's gonna be able to overcome that kind of luck. But at least I got to live through the phenomenon of merging two of my multi-entry stacks, something I bet I won't personally experience again for a long, long time in any context.

High Intrigue on Donkey Island Tonight

And then there were nine. Nine players remain on Donkey Island in Survivor Poker, with Julius Goat joining the tribal council after another shocking elimination after Goat's own tournament ended late on Sunday night / early Monday morning. With still five players from the original Team Donkey remaining (heffmike, brainmc, muchtim, katitude and jamyhawk), and just four from Team Fish (xkm, iaatg, veryjosie and smboatdrinks), tonight could be an absolutely crucial vote, and that of course means that outlasting the rest of the surviving team members and winning tonight's individual immunity is of the utmost importance, and could have a huge impact on who is eliminated tonight and on the game in general, depending on who nabs tonight's immunity last-longer prize.

Some might argue that, with the two teams now merged into one giant team, the old demarcations of Fish vs Donkeys do not really apply any longer, and they might be right. But I don't quite see it that way. Sure, you can tell people that the old teams are now gone, and it matters directly in that there is no more team immunity for the longest-lasting surviving player on Donkey Island in the nightly tournaments, but in the end, those original alliances don't just die so easily in my view. You've still got a slight majority for the Donkeys, but that majority shrank to just 5-4 with Goat's ouster last Sunday night, and tonight could see us draw to even, with four members of each original team and each original alliance remaining. That would be a major inflection point in the challenge, because the Fish will have successfully found a way to eradicate what was a pretty significant 6-4 deficit heading in to merged play, and would have done so in a hurry. And, it would free the Fish for the first time since the second event on Donkey Island from having to worry about getting summarily voted out by a simple majority vote of the other team all sticking together and voting as a block, which is a pretty big hammer just sitting out there to be taken under the right circumstances.

Or, things could easily go the other way tonight, with the Donkeys managing to flip a Fish or two onto their side of the voting alliance, and taking out another of the Fish to bring things back down to a 5-3 majority for the former Donkeys over the former Fish, which, at a differential of two, would equal the Donkeys' largest surplus of votes at any point during Survivor Poker so far. The Donkeys regaining their 5-3 lead tonight could be devastating for whichever three Fish manage to survive tonight's vote, as it could leave them in a position where they could easily be picked off one by one by the Donkeys next week until it is nothing but the original alliance of Donkeys left on the island, and then we see who can pull it off under every-person-for-themself rules. Of course who knows if that would be the Donkeys' plan if they regained their 5-3 majority at tonight's Dank tournament, but it would again be possible, based solely on the numbers, if the vote goes their way this evening.

If there's one thing I've learned so far from the shock-a-minute eliminations we've seen so far on Donkey Island, it's that the people who seem to be totally in control of the entire game one week, often seem to end up on the outside looking in the very next. And one can only assume that that trend will continue tonight and on into the series. And with that in mind, I am beginning to see two distinct voting teams re-forming right now on Donkey Island, each of which I think is likely considering its options on how to take out the perceived leader of the other team. Do they think they can get the other alliance's perceived leader out tonight? If so, they will probably try it tonight. If not, how many and who among the other survivors need to be eliminated first, so that the other alliance's leader will not be able to survive a vote-off? Or, will a third faction spring up, a counter-culture push against one or both of those perceived to be "leading the pack" on the two respective sides breaking down roughly along the original team lines? We've seen that happen at least once before already over the past few weeks, so you certainly can't count that out tonight either as a possibility.

My guess? I'm thinking we will probably see a vote targeted at the perceived leaders of the teams tonight, and quite possibly the closest vote yet of all those we've seen on Donkey Island. Who ends up on the outside after tonight is still very much anyone's guess. And don't forget that immunity bounty, which will be basically huge from here on out, as it increases in value as the number of survivors continues to shrink with every passing tournament. If the right (or wrong) person lasts longest tonight, we could have a slew of votes needing to be changed sometime after midnight ET this evening, and again we've already seen from my own elimination how things can get turned totally on their heads in the bustle and rush that something like that can cause.

In any event, why don't you be there to enjoy, participate in, and even affect the outcome on Wednesday night? The Dank is tonight at 10pm ET under the "Tournament" -- "Private" tabs on full tilt, with a password as always of "vegas1". And at just an $11 buyin, why not stop by and make your first foray ever into the private blogger tournaments? All are welcome, and who among us doesn't love a good virgin from time to time?

Survivor Poker: And the Insanity Continues

The Goat held his weekly $1 rebuy this past Sunday night as the Survivor Poker challenge continues on Donkey Island, and -- this is getting kind of tiring saying the same thing over and over and over again every morning after one of these events -- but I simply cannot believe who got voted off. The latest victim? Julius Goat himself.

The Goat is Gone! The creator. The godfather. He is out, voted out by receiving 6 out of 9 votes, and something tells me that we were surely looking at yet another one of those disbelieving moments as Goat listened to the final tally counted out live by Buddy Dank on BDR. Goat will I am sure comment on things himself as he wishes, although I can say from personal experience my backstab-elimination did take several hours for me to be able to write about it in an appropriately objective manner, so I would expect the same from Goat today. But something tells me that Mr. Goat had no idea that this was coming, and if the recent pattern holds true, he probably had every reason to believe that a specific other person was set to be booted on the night.

So NumbBono is out. Al is history. I am gone. Jordan is busto. And now Goat has vanished from Donkey Island as well. It certainly does seem that a lot of people who at least have played some role as Alpha Wolf have found themselves just one or two short events later the subject themselves of an elimination vote. Is that common on the tv show? It certainly does not seem like something that would be common. Guys one week contributing to the decision to vote someone else out en masse, and then the very next week they themselves are voted out? How does that happen anyways? What are the inner workings of a team that totally takes one person's vote one week, but then bands together in secret to vote that very same person out as a group just a few days later? Maybe it's because I have never even one time watched the show, but I simply do not understand the deep-down inner workings of the team members here. I guess there is a lesson right there in that, but I'm just not getting it.

Several of us have asked the same thing upon our eliminations: why didn't the alliance members just stick with the agreed-upon plan? Now, in my case I give a 10% reprieve to my teammates, because Dawn winning the individual immunity threw a huge monkey-wrench into our plans as we had basically already cast our votes for her before she even busted wolfshead to nab immunity for that night. But still, there was plenty of time and the team had standardized on another teammate to vote out. And although nothing exactly specific has been written to this effect, suffice it to say that, in addition to myself, Jordan and I imagine at least one other of the knockouts so far has believed they had a solid voting alliance heading into the actual reading of the votes. So what is it that makes someone on Survivor Poker deviate from a plan -- a plan that is pretty much guaranteed to carry them at least another few weeks without issue into the challenge -- in favor of a different plan, championed by another person who you just know is by definition ultimately trying to dick you over just as much as you are them? These are the things that just fly right over my head as things continue to play out in shocking fashion on Donkey Island.

But one thing that isn't going over my head is the likelihood of the various remaining players taking this thing down. Through a number of unnamed sources, I'm starting to develop a picture of what things are like on the inside right now on Donkey Island, and although I am sure that will change about ten more times between now and the time we crown a champion I guess in a little over a month or so, I think after this week's Dank tournament might be the right time to start posting my odds on who will survive Survivor Poker. After this week, a full half of the field will be eliminated, and if there's one thing I am happy for it is that my coverage so far of Survivor Poker has not included pre-game odds, which surely would have had guys like Goat and Jordan and probably Numb as well running pretty deep into the field before hitting any real resistance. So sometime after Wednesday night -- maybe as late as this weekend -- I will hopefully get up my first post about the eight remaining players and my thoughts on what they are exactly up to in the game, how they've survived so far, and just how far into the inner circle they may actually be, culminating in listing the odds in Hoy fashion for each survivor of taking this entire thing down.

That is, if the contestants don't do something so outlandish on Wednesday that I just have to write about that instead.

Survivor Thoughts

Don't forget that the first event of Survivor Poker: Donkey Island with the two teams merged down into one will be the Goat this Sunday, which will be back as the $1 rebuy extravaganza that it was before taking a quick $5 multi-entry spell in this past Sunday's festivities. With the teams set to merge and move into the second phase of what I am sure will only become more and more interesting and fun as it goes along, I thought I would take some time on a Friday and post some quickie thoughts I have or reactions I have to others' posts about the game.

For starters, I want to make the point that I am pleased that we seem to have at least one other person out there -- in this case, Jordan -- who gets it when it comes to the eliminations in this game. I mean, it's Survivor, folks. The whole point of the game is to make alliances with people to ensure your own survival until...well...until you have to dick the other person over to preserve yourself. It sounds selfish, but it's not -- it's the whole point of the game! Even though most of the eliminations so far seem to have involved a fair amount of lying and backstabbery, in the end getting all bent out of shape because some other person or person stabbed your back, thereby not letting you survive until you could stab their back which you would necessarily by definition be looking to do, just makes no sense at all. Yes, I can speak from personal experience that it really kind of stings in the moment when you keep hearing your name called as the votes are being counted, even when your entire team had already promised you they would be voting for someone else, but give it a short time and you will hopefully see it for what this is -- a bunch of people trying to play at its heart a selfish game as best as they can. And ultimately it's nothing more than that -- just a game -- and personally I haven't seen anything so far that makes me think there is anything sinister or dick about the decisions that have been made at all. It's just people jockeying for position among their teams -- and now the group at large -- and all trying to do what they think will help them -- individually -- best to win in the end. So kudos to Jordan for rolling with his surprise elimination the other day, as is clearly the only way to be.

Secondly, in his parting post as his submarine was leaving Donkey Island, Jordan made a number of recommendations for how to improve the Survivor Poker experience the next time around, and I thought I would react to those as well as chipping in with some of my own thoughts on this point.

For starters, I want to voice my complete and 100% agreement with Jordan's feeling that the longest-lasting member of the losing team should win individual immunity from that night's vote. Actually, let me clarify that somewhat -- I actually think the individual immunity bounties added to the Donkey Island experience so far during team play, and I probably would not have changed that situation much to be honest. However -- and this is something that I would not at all wait until Survivor Poker II to change, but rather would enact right now, prior to the merged teams begin play on Sunday night -- but now with the teams merged as one and ten players fighting it out each week, I don't see how this goes on without the longest-lasting surviving member in each tournament automatically winning individual immunity for that tournament. I know so far the vote-offs indicate a real desire of those still involved to take the poker skill out of the equation, but poker is after all a quantitative endeavor, and poker tournaments are by definition comparative and combative, and I just think it is obscene to think that someone could outlast everyone else and then get voted out that night. Although personally I would prefer the longest-lasting of the remaining players to win immunity, at an absolute minimum, if someone outright wins that night's tournament, for them to be subject to a vote-off just sticks a finger right in the eye of the poker aspects of this endeavor. I think, if we're going to have this be Survivor Poker, then the only responsible thing to do is to award immunity each week -- at least for the next several tournaments while we still have a nice big group to choose the next dickoveree from -- to the person who outlasts all others in each of the private games that are part of the challenge. Not only is this only fair in any sense of the word as I see it, but I know this would make the games themselves more important and thus ultimately more exciting for everyone involved. Make everyone play their best poker in each one of these tournaments in order to ensure their own survival. It just has to be, and it's a rule I am hoping that Buddy and Goat will announce heading into Sunday night's action at the Goat.

Jordan also suggested moving up the start times for our tournaments. This is an interesting one, because for one thing, tournaments like the Mookie have always been running at 10pm ET, although I have to admit that, like Jordan, in my old age what used to seem like a perfectly acceptable start time now seems every week like a requirement to stay up way too late and be way too tired for work in the morning. That said, personally I do not think we need to change the start time of the Dank just for Survivor Poker, in particular if the West Coasters in the group are going to miss the tournaments due to timing issues relating to having to get home from work, get settled, etc. all before a 6pm ET start time (if we were to move the Dank from 10pm to 9pm ET). I would be willing to stay up until 1am every Wednesday for a few more weeks in order to keep the Buddy where it is and allow the West Coasters to get home on a work day. That being said, I am in violent agreement with Jordan once again, when it comes to the Sunday night tournament. I know Goat was kind enough to start his weekly event at 9:30pm instead of 10pm ET, and under normal circumstances that extra half an hour might be just enough of a tweak to make the timing work better for us New Yorkers. My issue here is that the Sunday events run longer than the Buddy's, because so far they have either been a monkey rebuy or a multi-entry tournament, each of which leads to longer start times due to the rebuy aspects, and plus they also lead to much larger stacks for the players, which itself even makes the later stages of the tournament last longer than they otherwise would. The end result is that, on what is essentially a work night, us East Coasters are finding ourselves staying up until 1am or later on these Sundays just to finish out our run and fight as hard as we can for our teams or, now, hopefully for individual immunity as well. If we are going to continue with the longer-form formats like multi-entry and rebuys for The Goat, then I would suggest a 9pm ET start time for those events -- it's a Sunday, so there should not be much of an issue with people making it home from work, and over just a few more weeks it hopefully would not be a huge burden on anyone from the Left Coast to make it in time to play the first hour fairly well. We've had plenty of regular blogger tournaments at 9pm ET and the time seems to work well for everyone -- lest I remind everyone that back in the day, the ole' WWdN on pokerstars used to start at 8:30pm ET, and regularly pulled in well over 100 players. So people can make themselves available for a 9pm ET start time, and Sunday is a great day to do that based on its weekend status and the fact that our Sunday games have thus far been structured to run a little longer than the Wednesday night Dank tournaments in any event.

Jordan also commented generally that he thinks the $1 rebuy format is not a good one to retain. Not sure I can agree with him there -- although, interestingly, I agree with his general analysis of this particular game as a total donkfest that encourages bad players to make bad plays and then suck out. That's clearly what it is, we see it acted out over and over again every time we get together to play a $1 rebuy format, and there's just no debating that that is exactly what goes down during Monkey Hour in this thing. But I'm just not sure I agree that we should therefore get rid of it. In a post chock full of good ideas from Jordan, this is the one I am not sure I understand the logic of. I'm not saying I would personally select a $1 rebuy format for this event if I were in charge, but frankly, I kind of like the rebuy format in general -- in particular if the time is moved up an hour more, and the rebuy hour kept to 30 minutes as in the second Goat tournament on Donkey Island a couple of weeks back, and I certainly don't question Goat's decision to go with it. I could see, however, bumping it up a little from the minuscule $1 buyin to something more like $5 for the rebuy maybe, but frankly I kind of like the rebuy format, and I certainly don't see something so wrong with it as to question Goat's judgment on what game to bring to the table for his Sundays.

But I do once again agree with Jordan's last piece of advice, which was to keep things interesting with new twists. Frankly I think Buddy has done a great job of doing that so far, and I am looking for this to continue as we head into "Merged Play" now that the teams are done for. I understand that this is something the show itself does very well as a rule, and I would look for more of the same from Buddy et al over the ensuing few weeks. And, as someone who has been eliminated from the game already but who remains highly interested in not only the outcome but in the game play along the way to get us there, let me also mention that I am hopeful that Buddy and his crew can find some ways to get the Council more involved in some of these games -- be it through continued individual immunity bounties, team play linking a particular surviving player with a particular already-eliminated player and adding up their scores to see who gets that week's individual immunity, etc. Perhaps the Council could vote on the format or the gimmicks for some of the later tournaments? Maybe some of the other tournament formats available on full tilt -- multi-entry, bounties, heads-up, etc. -- could be integrated into the game in some fun way? It would be cool when down to 3 or 4 players left, if they had to win a best-of heads-up series or something to determine who is in and/or who is out? I don't know how all of this would work exactly, but the specifics were never my area of expertise. The suggestions and the improvement is my area of expertise, and as you know I am never short on those, so those are some thoughts I have to help keep the series fresh as we move into the second phase of the game.

Lastly, I wanted to say that one trend that has become clear with the elimination votes so far -- and that I think probably speaks volumes about who might be targeted for a vote-off next -- but that I have not seen mentioned anywhere is that a lot of the people being voted off seem to be those among the participants with the most "pomp" on their blogs. Now, I'm using the word "pomp" very loosely here, in the sense of "pomposity" -- that is, the blogs that come off as being written the most pompously. Now, this is of course not meant as an insult to anyone, because lord knows nobody's fits that bill better than my own, but suffice it to say that I would categorize both Numb, myself and Jordan at least somewhat in that category. Any one of our blogs over time could easily be the place where you go and read a rant about some other d-bag's bad play against us, or a lengthy post describing how we played such great poker at such-and-such tournament recently, or even something like actually presuming to make recommendations to help improve Survivor Poker, that has been going so well already on its own without our "help". But I can't help but notice that those people with blogs like this have not fared so well on Donkey Island so far, and I would not be shocked if that continues now that the teams are merged. There aren't many left, but there are at least one or two people remaining whose blogs you can go to right now and you can read some things in the recent archives that simply reek of pomp. I would not be the least bit shocked to see those people's time on Donkey Island coming to an end shortly.

So what do people think? Will the next elimination be one of the former Team Fishees, with the 6-4 majority of former Team Donkeyites enforcing their will over their newly-merged competitors? Or will the Donkeys relish in booting off Jordan the other day, and take the opportunity to join with the surviving Fish members to continue to clean out their own house? Only one way to find out live as it happens -- play the Goat on Sunday night at 9:30pm ET on full tilt (password is "survive"), and tune in to Buddy Dank Radio, including after the end of the tournament when Buddy has done an exceedingly good job of building the suspense as he reads out the votes and announces the latest elimination from Survivor Poker.

The Fish Roar Back on Donkey Island

And the hits just keep on coming in Survivor Poker. Not to be outdone by what we've seen already happen in just a few short weeks on Donkey Island, Wednesday night's Dank tournament brought a couple of new shocking surprises. For starters, Team Fish outlasted Team Donkey for only the first time since I won the opening tournament of the series, meaning that the Fish won a key battle to allow themselves to retain their four remaining team members, and instead force the Donkeys to show us all a little more about who is in charge of their own alliance as they would have to vote a player off of their team here in the last tournament before the two teams merge and it becomes every person for themselves.

But the bigger shock to me had to be who the Donkeys voted out, although I guess at some point I have to stop acting all shocked when this happens and just accept that this is the way the game is going. Jordan has been eliminated in what I can only describe as a major upset, and I will be honest in admitting that I lost a little bit of coin on two prop bets each of which involved Jordan being alive in the competition at least for another couple of weeks.

One trend I just don't think can be denied at this point is that the vote-off selections have little to nothing to do with poker prowess. Or, should I say, the teams do not seem to be keeping around the people who are perceived to be the best blogger tournament players. The Fish got rid of Al and myself pretty quick on our half of the bracket, and in two chances the Donkeys now voted off Numb and Jordan, surely two of their strongest competitors from a poker perspective. And frankly, I can see the refreshingness to these decisions. I mean, this is not the way that I would be handling the eliminations personally, but it's nice for a change that a bunch of bloggers have gotten together for a tournament series, and yet the ultimate winner of the series is not the person who plays the best in the tournaments. That's not something we've ever done before as a group, and I think what we're finding is that the participants are revelling in that, in their chance to make a run at a trophy without the pressure of needing to necessarily play the best or last the longest or win the most tournaments, what have you. On Donkey Island, the tournaments all matter, and who gets voted off can and has been greatly influenced by what happens in our tournaments, but at the end of the day the guys who in my view seem like the most skilled blonkament players seem to have very short half-lives. It's an interesting twist on the usual blogger tournament series, and one that I am enjoying. From the rail. Thanks to my own former teammates.

Seriously though, both Josie and Iaatg played excellent games at the Dank on Wednesday, both of them cashing along with myself and Joanada, and ultimately the two of them went head to head for a few hands before iaatg nabbed the title. Jordan managed to last the longest of the Donkeys (again), but eventually after amassing a number of big stacks he finally succumbed to the pressure of the blinds after seeing himself slip to the bottom of the leaderboard with 5 or 6 runners remaining. But iiatg and Josie really played smart, never once getting out of line as the pressure mounted and the number of Donkeys remaining shrank and shrank, and they fully earned the right not to have to vote someone out on Wednesday before the merger of the two teams. It was a well-fought win and well-deserved by my former teammates to preserve I think any real chance they have of survival once the merger occurs heading into the next tournament. Now down just 6-4 of the ten remaining players, the Fish gave themselves a fighting chance at near-even teams and alliances by ensuring they would not need to eliminate another team member.

Oh, and my individual immunity bounty? No dice. Several people tried, and I eliminated two Team Donkey members along the way, but nobody could take me out until the last of the losing team members in Jordan was finally eliminated. Eventually I pushed AJ into iiatg's AK when down to 4-handed and iiatg took me out, but at that point the immunity was worthless because the Fish had already secured victory and knew they would all be immune from elimination on the night.

So, with Jordan now gone, the list of my pre-tournament favorites in Survivor Poker continues to shrink, and this is really, truly anyone's game. You've got the series creator in Julius Goat still alive, and you've got several people who've been around for ages in Katitude, Heffmike and BrainMc, in addition to a number of newer or more recent bloggers like Josie, muhctim, iiatg and others still lurking in the weeds. I will repeat what I said a couple of weeks ago -- and Jordan's elimination last night only furthers this case -- but this thing might come down to a contest to see who has done the least in their blog to annoy or irritate the other bloggers who are a part of this competition. A guy like myself, or Jordan, we've got years and years worth of many many many posts on our blogs, we tell it like it is and we speak our minds, and I can only assume that what has been seen and interpreted on Jordan's blog over time makes some contribution to his being voted off last night, whether he or even the other voters explicitly realize that or not. A number of the remaining participants in Donkey Island as the teams merge together are clearly not in that boat, as they either don't blog much, are relatively new to the scene entirely, or simply don't generally make many controversial or direct statements in their blog to get other readers' dander up. I think I'm going to wait another week or so before I post some odds on the remaining players, but we've got a number of strong poker players and solid writers whose blogs I enjoy left to compete for the last ten spots on Donkey Island.

Hoy Bounty on Donkey Island

Not only is tonight's Dank tournament (why hasn't the name been changed on full tilt yet btw?) the latest tournament in the Survivor Poker series, but it's a very special one at that. What, you ask, could be more special than Team Fish's last chance to get another member of Team Donkey voted off of Donkey Island prior to the merging of the remaining members of the two teams?

Tonight's immunity bounty will be on...Yours Truly.

That's right. Come to tonight's Dank, the former Mookie which at one time years ago was the very bane of my existence as a tournament poker player, at 10pm ET on full tilt (password as always is "vegas1"), where anyone can play and anyone can make a run at head. But it's the final 11 participants in Survivor Poker that will be gunning for me the most -- or gunning for you if you manage to take me out and are not one of those final 11 players -- because if they knock me out, they will win immunity from elimination for the night, which as I mentioned is the last night of Team Play. One unlucky soul will be summarily booted off of Donkey Island in the wee hours of the morning after the Dank is over, falling one final vote short of surviving to the point when the teams merge and things really start to get interesting.

We've already seen one example where winning the individual immunity bounty literally saved someone's ass...at least until the next elimination vote, that is. The night I was voted off of Team Fish, Dawn Summers had basically been marked for elimination until she knocked out a hobbled Wolfshead and took down that night's immunity bounty. In the scramble of the ensuing couple of hours, I was nearly unanimously removed from the team in Dawn's stead, and Dawn went down in the next tournament when the Fish again had to elect someone to kick out of the game. So the immunity bounty is a big deal, and depending on exactly whose hands it ends up in, it can make a major difference.

To make matters even more interesting, Team Fish's Very Josie has put a $20 bounty on the head of Team Donkey player Heffmike for tonight's tournament, and come tournament time there may be other bounties in effect as well, in addition to the individual immunity bounty on my own head. So there is a lot of cash and valuable prizeware available as bounties in tonight's Dank, in addition to the fun of slinging chips with some of the best poker playing bloggers you read every day.

So hopefully I'll see you all for the Dank tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt!

Treachery and Deceit In Survivor Poker

Donkey Island Event #5, the multi-entry nlh blonkament this past Sunday night, was a lot of fun as expected. Attendance was a bit lower than I had hoped it might be for one of the most fun and truly impactful poker tournaments in years, but with 81 total entries I guess it is hard to complain. I bought in for the maximum 4 entries, and I played fast and loose, freed from the need to play safe early in a push to win individual immunity thanks to my untimely ejection from Donkey Island last week. Although I got off to decent starts in three of my entries, they were ultimately destined for losing a race, losing a race, and getting sucked out on as a dominated favorite allin preflop, and I never had an impact on the outcome of the game as I pushed a lot of edges, deliberately took on a lot of big stacks and good players, and played highly aggressive poker start to finish. I think my deepest entry went out in 20-somethingth place, and I eliminated three players total among my four entries. Not a strong result from me, but then, I wasn't the story from that tournament -- the story was Survival.

Once again, Team Fish lost the team immunity challenge on the night. I've been saying it for weeks -- the blogger tournament skill level on the two teams simply does not balance out. Who has been kicked off from Team Fish so far probably isn't helping matters either in terms of guys who can survive in a last-longer format, but even from the getgo as I've been saying all along, the long-term blogger tournament success on Donkey Island is squarely focused on Team Donkey, and the Fish have been getting summarily wiped up, being outlasted by multiple entrants from Team Donkey each and every week of the series. Having already been forced to eliminate three members from its 8-person team, and with iaatg having won the individual bounty immunity already on the night, the Fish were faced with another crucial vote-off, having to choose between SmBoatDrinks, VeryJosie, xkm or Dawn Summers, and in the end it was Dawn who was voted off.

I suppose it gives me the slightest bit of gratification to see my grand plans generally continued on with Team Fish's elimination decisions even after my own elimination last week by the very same people who voted out Dawn on Sunday night. I'm not sure why that is. I mean, it's certainly not a vendetta I have against Dawn or anything. I like Dawn just fine -- I just think you make yourself an easy target if you skip out on the first three "challenges" we have in the form of team tournaments on Donkey Island, especially when your team goes down in flames hard in two of them as a result. But Dawn should have and would have gone instead of me on that night if she had not won herself personal immunity, so I guess that's why it just feels kind of "right" to me for Dawn to be out in the following tournament. In any event, the next event is the final event of team play during Survivor Poker, and that one should be interesting if the Fish manage to lose another one there and have to really start trimming the fat and drop it down to three players. I have a feeling I know who will be out if that happens, but obviously I wasn't really on the inside with my own team so what the hell do I know.

Speaking of which, I have gotten a lot of questions from people over the past few days asking about the specifics of my vote-out the other day. Although it is lame on some level to admit, I'll just go ahead and lay out generally exactly what happened last Wednesday night, but to be clear, yes I got straight-up double-crossed by my teammates in a very direct way. I guess I don't see the need to use actual names of anyone from the team, or to attribute any specific action to any one person, as that doesn't seem right to me in terms of their own ability to keep doing what they're doing in the game, but suffice it to say that a number of people on Team Fish had indicated their joint intention somewhere during the beginning of the tournament time that Dawn Summers would be voted out if it came to that, and I do believe (though clearly, I could be wrong) that would have happened if not for Dawn nabbing the individual immunity by knocking out Wolfshead early in that night's Dank tournament. Within literally seconds of Dawn's winning immunity, I received two notes from other members of Team Fish discussing who would be voted for instead of Dawn since a vote for Dawn would now equal a vote for oneself. I was asked my intention on a few occasions over the next hour or so, and I provided the same person as my intended vote to multiple members of Team Fish. At one point there was even a group communication -- one that included confirmation of a sufficient number of votes to ensure success -- including myself and the majority of the existing Team Fish roster at the time, indicating that the group would be voting in the manner agreed upon.

I went to bed around 11:30pm or so, having sent in my vote for the designated person to Buddy, fairly confident to be honest just based on how the events of the night had transpired. I mean, of course I would have been most confident if Dawn was eligible for elimination, as not showing up for three tournaments made her easy fodder in everyone's mind, which was borne out by her near-unanimous elimination this Sunday night. But the thing that really had me feeling confident I would survive another couple of tournaments (because I thought I was covered on that night, and then I figured -- correctly, it turned out -- that Dawn would go next) was that the team had contacted me -- not the other way around -- the very minute that BDR broadcasted about Dawn's winning immunity. Two different members of Team Fish, within literal seconds, asking what the new plan should be and here is what they thought, etc. So it wasn't even like I was initiating this stuff and might have come off as desperate or something. These people came to me with a plan, we had some mutual individual discussion and then some group discussion, and a plan was agreed to by a number of teammates. I have the emails to prove it -- there was literal agreement from again enough members of the team to ice the vote, to vote for the same specific person on the team.

And then I woke up in the morning, grabbed the iPad from next to the bed, and read I think on Heffmike's blog that I was voted out. And near-unanimously too. Apparently around the end of the Dank when Team Fish was offishially eliminated once again and knew it would have to vote, there was some dissension within the ranks that had initiated the discussions with me earlier in the night and had participated in the majority-group vote and decision. Ultimately it isn't important who specifically the dissension originated from, or whether it had been pre-planned or simply more of a spur-of-the-moment thing -- suffice it to say that the group of people I was in discussions with clearly included more than one person with whom I had had overt friction in the past. Be it on my or their blog, in someone else's blog's comments, or even in the chatbox of our weekly games going back way back when, I was essentially "forced" to ally with people who clearly have exhibited some Hoy Haterism in the not too distant past. There just wasn't any other choice. I tried to be as careful as I could about who I allied with as a result, but ultimately this is why I said all along that a guy like me has zero shot, no shot whatsoever in a format like this. It's fucking highlarious fun for almost any group of 3 or 4 or 5 bloggers to vote Hoy out in a snivelling, mutinous, back-room deal in the wee hours of the morning. Come on -- you know you would love to participate in that! So I did the best that I could, but I was fighting an uphill battle right from the getgo on Donkey Island, and every night I survived by hook or by crook was like a gift.

So yeah, that's how it happened, guys. To remove all rumor and conjecture, yes I was straight-up double crossed by my teammates. A majority of the team contacted me during the tournament and initiated a discussion on who to vote for, a decision was made and agreed to in writing by all, and then all of them but for me set up a late-night meeting after the fact where it was decided unanimously by the persons in attendance at this meeting that I would in fact be voted out instead.

Now, to be clear, and very much unlike the first two guys who got voted out of the game, I hold absolutely no grudge whatsoever against my teammates who voted me out. I suspect that ultimately has a lot to do with my expectations level for myself coming in to this tournament -- I imagine that both Numb and Al thought they had the tournament skill and the popular vote to avoid eliminations for some time, probably throughout all of team play for that matter, whereas I literally lost money on a prop bet that I would be voted out in the very first event where Team Fish had to vote someone out. But whatever the reason, I'm not going to sit here and repeat what's been said multiple times already by eliminatees, that I won't forget what these fuckers did to me, that you can be sure I will vote against those aholes when it comes time for the final vote at the end, etc. In reality, I never thought I would last even for three tournaments, and I had fun goofing around and chatting with some guys I haven't really chatted with before, which I know I never would have done if not for Survivor Poker, so that's another plus. But the truth is, I harbor no ill will at all towards anyone on my team, I knew that the exact kind of backstabbery that did happen to me last week was going to happen much sooner than later to me no matter what I did, and I actually find myself still rooting for my former teammates on the Fishies as we move each day deeper into the Survivor Poker series. And to be clear, I would love to vote for one of them if they manage to last down to the bitter end on Donkey Island -- I definitely plan to vote for the person who I think deserves it the most, and I know there's gonna be a whole lot of shenanigans to happen between now and then so it's not worth speculating on that just yet, but I certainly will not hold against any of my teammates the fact that they calculatedly contacted me, cold-bloodedly lied to my face, and then mutinously plotted against me behind my back after I was fast asleep, awash in a veil of false confidence.

I'm already looking forward to Wednesday's Dank tournament, the final tournament of the "team play" portion of Survivor Poker. If the Fish can just win that one, they can stem the bleeding and enter the merge with 4 players versus Team Donkey's 6. Somehow, going in to the merge down 6-4 seems a heck of a lot better than heading in down 7-3. In the former, the ex-Fish people might have some chance of weaseling their way in to the larger group's consensus. But just like it was easy to find a consensus along the earlygoing for those who had not been showing up on time or at all for all the games, I expect it will not be difficult for the ex-Donkeys to come together to vote out those last 3 surviving Fishies if they head in with more than a 2-to-1 disadvantage in people after the merge.

Play the Goat on Sunday

While I continue to wallow in having had my time on Donkey Island cut short by my teammates, don't forget that the next tournament of Survivor Poker is this Sunday, and unlike the past two weeks' $1 rebuy format, this time around Goat has set up a $5 multi-entry tournament. I like that structure ten times better than any $1 monkey pushfest, and I think it will make the tournament a lot more interesting, let alone make it easier for the better players to probably end up battling it out at the end.

In case you live under a rock or something, Survivor Poker is that thing that basically everybody who's anybody has been writing about in their blogs this week, and it's the brainchild of one Julius K. Goat, who if you read his blog is already used to filling our days with things that are crazy and awesome, so it should not be surprising that such a crawesome idea would have sprung from his head. So come out to full tilt at 9:30pm ET on Sunday night and play the Goat (password is "survive" -- not that I know anything about that!), and buy in once, or buy in four times, and take your shot at helping Team Fish outlast the Donkeys and force Team Donkey to splinter their happy little alliance there if at all possible. Because so far, other than acting in near-unison after tournament #1 in booting Numb, those guys have just been sitting around scheming amongst themselves, making plans for the eventuality that all of their times will eventually come as well in this tournament series. I say it's about time we start learning a little bit more about the alliances going on within the Donkeys -- other than of course than Numb wasn't in on it. But who else is on the outside looking in? Because I can solemnly guarantee you that it's already been decided who will get voted off of the Donkeys if they ever do lose another tournament during Team Play time, whether you realize it or not, and that the required number of votes to make that happen have already been secured.

Which reminds me, for those of you on either team still on Donkey Island and hoping Sunday night will not be the night that your name is called, remember this piece of advice that became apparent to me basically the moment I was shocked to see Numb summarily voted out by his team in near-unanimous fashion just minutes after taking me to the mat at the final table of the very first Survivor Poker tournament earlier this month: If you don't already know who your team will be voting out if they lose the tournament that night, then it's probably going to be you.

End of the Road

Well, that was fun. Really. Survivor Poker was a blast for me, for all three tournaments I stayed alive. Which, frankly, is three tournaments longer than I thought I would. While I won't take the time to review exactly what happened to me, suffice it to say that the others on my team certainly took the game more seriously than I did, and in the end they played the game a heck of a lot better than me. I thought I was safe for another couple of votes, but it turns out that somebody else on the team obviously had got into my teammates' heads and once that happened, the die was cast. And that is the reason why I now write to you as a less than proud member of the tribal council and not a current player on Donkey Island.

So let's see, with still two more tournaments left during Team Play, Team Fish grows more handicapped by the day. Now it will be iiatg, Dawn Summers, Josie, xkm and SmBoatDrinks going up against the stacked Team Donkey lineup twice more to try to last the longest and thus avoid having to shorten that team even further.

I've had about five people since last night ask me how the team could vote me off when that so clearly seems to hurt their chances to avoid elimination votes during the balance of Team Play. I think there are a lot of good answers to that question. For starters, the Team Play time of the competition is short. At first I thought it would last for half of the game, but the more recent rules announced that the teams would only persist for the first six tournaments, of which four are already done after last night. So we're talking about a total of two more tournaments that my five ex-teammates need to survive in order to make it to the merge. And I think a lot if not all of the people left on my team take some amount of comfort in that -- think about it, even if the worst possible outcome goes down and Team Fish loses and loses hard on Sunday night and then again at next week's Dank tournament, that's still a total of only two more players who need to get eliminated, and I think there is fairly good reason for pretty much all five of the remaining Fish to think they cannot possibly be "it" over the next two weeks. Even though two of them may soon find out that they were wrong, much like I did this week.

Moreover, what have I really done in these four tournaments to show my worth as some kind of a "stopper" to my teammates? Yes, I won the first tournament, and yes I strategically outlasted NumbBono to make sure I took care of my team before just pushing allin every hand after that. But what about in the other three tournaments since then? In the first Dank, I lost a big pot early to somebody and was never able to recover, busting among the first handful of players out and hitting the sack early. In last week's Goat tournament on Sunday night, I played great, of course getting donked on 15 or 20 times during Monkey Hour but then righting the ship near the end and building up a nice stack after I went set over set vs. Goat early in Hour 2. At some point, twoblackaces raised preflop from middle position, and I just called to trap with AK, and the flop came K33 to boot which is pretty much the literal best flop imaginable for someone with my holding. TBA bet out like I knew he would, I raised, and he immediately pushed, but I knew with this board and the fact that he had raised preflop that I was ahead. That is, until TBA flipped up 53s to turn that best-possible flop for me into the "unmitigated disaster" flop instead, and two hands later IGH. And then in this week's Dank, I once again was off to a nice start, building up a workable stack and trying to outlast as many of the Team Donkeys as I could, and then a poo flinger got allin against me with just an inside straight draw on the flop. They did not hit their straight, but the river rewarded the play with a miracle trips and IGH early again despite having taking advantage of my opponently badly in the tournament. So what value have I really shown to these guys anyways, beyond my historical success in blogger tournaments in general? I mean, yeah I won the only tournament our team has won so far in this series, but otherwise I haven't done any better than anybody else on my team -- with not even a top-20 finish to show for those other three efforts -- and we have been suffering as a result. I imagine that if I had won 3 of the 4 tournaments already, I would still be writing to you today from inside Donkey Island instead of out here on the Council, but then there would still be 7 members left of our team instead of the 5 we are down to now.

The last thing to think of in terms of making this decision -- and this surely played in to Al receiving so many of Team Fish's votes the other day as well, though I don't think he gets this yet -- is that the popular bloggers are always going to be good targets to take out whenever you think you can get the popular vote up enough to get them out. Why wouldn't somebody want to take AlCantHang out of Donkey Island at the very first chance you get, as early as possible in the competition? The longer a guy like that stays alive, the more of a risk he is to continue staying alive, and eventually to vote you out in a later week? People out there have to realize that there are very valid strategic reasons, in addition to the personal reasons mentioned above, for anyone on my team to want me out of the competition as soon as humanly possible. Even if I can help the team a little bit over the next week during the remainder of Team Play, geetting rid of me specifically when the ability was there to do so would be a wise move for anyone with designs of running deep, and this is certainly not lost on me.

One of the interesting aspects to all of this is what is likely to happen when the teams do merge in just one short week from now. Because the way I see it, judging by what happened in the very first tournament -- the only tournament that Team Fish managed to win so far -- Team Donkey obviously has a nice, tight voting alliance going on, and one can only assume that the Team Fish participants will be fighting an uphill battle to get inside that alliance once the merge happens. With much of the successful blonkament experience now gone from Team Fish, I would not want to be them and head into the merge with just 3 Fish combining with those 7 Donkeys and their strong voting alliance -- that does not sound to me like it bodes well for the surviving Fish. If the Fish can manage to win the next two tournaments during Team Play this coming week, then they can cut that margin to 5-5 and give themselves a much better chance at post-merger survival. Again, if I had been playing better in these tournaments so far, I would feel much more justified in giving my teammates crap for eliminating me when I can help so much, but as I said above, I've been getting covered in flung monkey-poo so far in these events and haven't been able to do much of anything to help the team any more than anybody else among the Fish.

Here now a quarter of the way through the competition, I thought I would take a quick look at handicapping some of the potential winners here. In the end, one thing I have definitely taken from this so far is that the people surviving so far seem to be centered on those without much history, and without much public involvement in the group. Basically, people who haven't had several years to build up a bunch of haters that inevitably amass when someone has a public blog that people in our group read, in particular someone like myself who tells it like it is, and someone who has had poker success as well to boot. All of these things tend to lead to haterism, and haterism is deadly as anything you can imagine in a competition like Survivor Poker. I knew as soon as Goat pitched me on this idea that I could not last more than a few weeks, because there are just too many people out there with a reason (or fifty) to want to vote against me the first chance they get. I mean, look at the people who have survived now three elimination votes from Team Fish. Josie, who is new, and hasn't had any time to get people to hate her. I mean, who hates Josie? Nobody. SmBoatDrinks? Boat has won a coupl e of Mookie's or something in his day, but I ask again: Who hates him? iaatgwhateverhisnameis? I've seen him in some BBTs in the past and also he has won a Mookie or two as I recall, but who hates him? xkm? There's another guy without a prominent blog to have pissed people off in over the past several years. Who even knows these people really? But I can't help but notice that those are the guys who are surviving these elimination votes so far.

Taking that into account, I think Boat and Josie have as good a chance as anyone to survive from Team Fish. They are generally well-liked, and are not out there enough with strong opinions to be hated by anyone that I can imagine. On the Donkeys side, we haven't really seen enough of their voting strategy yet to have a good feel as to who can survive from their team, but I have some general thoughts. Not only is Team Donkey stacked with experienced blogger tournament players, but my sense is that they are also the more experienced Survivor viewers and those more facile with the nuances of playing the elimination type of game. I predict some serious alliances, and some serious dicking over of alliance-mates, coming out of the Donkey side of the house in the second half of this competition, which should make for some compelling viewing as the series wears on. I think Goat will be hard to get knocked out of his own brainchild, although to be honest I am not sure he has the raw lack of scruples that I'm sure will be necessary to finish as the victor in a backstabby competition like this. Something tells me that Jordan and Jamyhawk are likely to run deep in this thing, although I expect to post some more detailed odds a little bit later in the competition as we continue wearing down the list of eligible players still alive and well on Donkey Island.

The last question for me right now -- and frankly, one I do not know the answer to just yet -- is what I will do from here. Do I keep making an effort to play in these Donkey Island tournaments, or just let them happen around me and get in there only when I can? And more importantly, assuming I do play some or most of them, what is my objective? Do I try to keep the Fish in the game and do my best to knock out the Donkeys? But why, what's in it for me to do that? Do I just try to play my best and win? Or, do I do what I can to work against my former teammates, the ones who were convinced at the last minute to vote me out this week by a 4-1-1 margin? I could see any of those options making sense. Every time I see Numb run deep in one of these things like last night, I find myself wondering why he does it for that team that so screwed one of their best players right after he ran the deepest of anyone right off the bat in week 1. I'm not sure I would be interested in being that guy.

One thing is for sure -- with 42 runners in the Dank last night as proof, Goat and Buddy have definitely found a nice way to make our regular blogger tournaments fun again. If you haven't been getting in on the action so far, there's still plenty of time to participate and even affect the outcome of Survivor Poker: Donkey Island.

Time to Turn it Around

Donkey Island continues tonight with the Dank at 10pm ET on full tilt -- password is "vegas1" as always. And tonight is the time for Team Fish to turn it around. We need some strong performances in the Dank tonight, almost as much for our own self-confidence as for our success during the remainder of Team Play. Hopefully if nothing else, everyone shows up for the first time out of the four tournaments so far in the series, giving our team our best possible shot at outlasting the Donkeys for just the second time during Survivor Poker's run so far.

One aspect I really enjoy about Goat and Buddy's creation here is that even those who are not directly involved in the battle over Donkey Island this time around can still participate freely in the games, and can even have a meaningful say in the outcome. Anyone out there with $11 in their full tilt account, the password "vegas1", and a desire to get kicked squarely in the nads can show up to play the Dank on Wednesday night at 10pm ET. It's been great seeing some of the guys these past few weeks coming out to play and try to take their shots at the surviving Donkey Islanders in addition to the first prize in the tournaments themselves.

Hopefully you'll be there for Wednesday night's Dank tournament at 10pm. I'll be expecting an all-Fish final table.

Survivor Poker

So the game wages on, and somehow after four tournaments, I am still alive and well on Donkey Island. And this, despite my team being required to make an elimination vote in two out of the first three events of the series.

The fact of the matter is that -- and this is not a complaint, in that I know the teams were put together randomly out of the 16 people who signed up for the game on a first come, first served basis -- but these teams are not fair, in the sense of equally dividing up blonkament skills. If you wanted to count up how many total blogger tournament wins each team has over all-time history, you would see what I mean. I mean, sure, I have won 4 google blonkaments myself and this makes the teams seem equally balanced at first glance, but in truth we probably have just 3 or 4 total blonkament wins outside of myself on our entire team put together. And our team includes a bunch of people like iiatg, Al, Riggs and Dawn who simply do not play a lot of blonkaments, period. There is simply not a lot of blogger tournament experience on Team Fish on Donkey Island, and it shows as we play out the series. Whereas, if you look at Team Donkey, you've got guys like Jordan, and Heff, and Numb, guys who have won between them probably 20 blogger tournaments right there in their day, maybe more even. And again, that advantage in experience really shows as we play these games -- in the first event that I won, I had no other Team Fish teammates left in the final 7 spots in first Goat tournament. In the first Dank tournament of Donkey Island, the last five Survivor Poker players were famously all from Team Donkey. And now in Event #3, it was once again a number of Team Donkeys left when Al, our last Team Fish representative on the day, busted well before the top spot. Team Fish is just not executing well enough on anything resembling a consistent basis to avoid these elimination votes, and our team is slowly decimating itself as a result.

But the most annoying part about the team split in my view is that some members of Team Fish continue not showing up to the tournaments at all, or coming in late and missing out on opportunities to help the team out. I mean, it's not enough that all of the blogger tournament win experience is on the other team? We also have to have 2-3 teammates not showing up for each tournament? So, we're facing a significant experiential disadvantage, and the team's response to deal with that is to only give ourselves 4 or 5 chances to outlast Team Donkey every week while Team Donkey has two or three more entrants than us in addition to more historical success in these games?

Unlike Team Donkey, who almost every week is faced with possibly having to vote someone off of their team who gives them a real shot to win team immunity, Team Fish has had it pretty easy so far when it comes to having to cannibalize ourselves with elimination votes. First it was Riggs, who has yet to show up to a single tournament out of the three that have been played, and then Al went next after missing the 2nd tournament, despite Al being our longest-lasting participant on Sunday night. I pretty much know who I will vote for next as well, as we still have some people who aren't showing up for all the games.

I imagine that real Survivor isn't like this, in that there probably is no option for people to just "not show up" for the challenges on Vanuatu like we can have happen here on Donkey Island. But in Survivor Poker, showing up for the games and playing your best to give your team the best chance to avoid an elimination vote is basically all you can do to show your team your worth. We've never done a team-based blogger tournament series before, but one thing that is coming out of it so far is that you can really screw your team -- not just yourself -- by not showing up here during the "team play" portion of the game, which will still persist for the next three tournaments of Survivor Poker.

If some people weren't showing up for the challenges in real Survivor, and their team kept losing as a result, I can only assume that would lead to them getting voted off pretty quick myself, but never having watched the show I cannot say for sure. What I can say, however, is that in Survivor Poker on Donkey Island, if you're not showing up for all the games, in my mind you are easy fodder for a vote-off. I mean, do I want to be sitting here next week with just myself and two other players showing up, trying to outlast 6 or 7 other Team Donkey donkeys to try to avoid getting voted off myself? Give me a choice, and I'll choose the people I know will be there on both Wednesday and Sunday over any perceived skill or experience differential in blogger tournaments in general.

What Team Fish lacks in experience, we make up for in heart. We've got some good players left that I am confident are waiting to make some noise over these next three blogger tournaments while "team play" is still in effect. I do not expect to be voting another team member out this Wednesday night after the Dank has come and gone.

GOoooooooo FISH!!!

Dank and Donkey Island Pimp

So tonight is the Dank at 10pm ET on full tilt -- the buyin is a mere $10 and the password as always is "vegas1", and as always the tournament is open to anyone and everyone. The Dank has been coming in right around 20 players or so over the past few weeks as it is, and now with Donkey Island Poker in effect, I'm hoping we could get a little more than that out for the game this evening.

I have to say, even after just one day of Donkey Island Poker so far, I am actually pretty intrigued, much moreso than I ever thought I would be, let alone at this point in the game. Of course, first and foremost my focus has been and continues to be outlasting everyone from Team Donkey, which will mean for the second straight week that someone from Team Donkey is subject to being voted out of the game, while my teammates on Team Fish will remain immune from an elimination vote. I just want to go out there and play my game and try to last as long as I can in every one of these tournaments because, Team Fish not being subject to an elimination vote means that I am not subject to being booted, and even though at first I didn't know what I thought of this whole Survivor Poker idea, at the moment I think I would like to see my stay in the game extended at least for a little bit longer here.

Regarding the elimination of NumbBono after our first Donkey Island tournament this past Sunday, let me just say for the record that if anyone votes someone out of the game because that person eliminated the voter from that week's tournament, that some is pretty much backwards thinking there if you ask me. Think about it -- since the only objective from team play is to have at least one person from your team outlast all the players from the other team, it's actually kind of a great thing to have one of the 8 team members eliminate all other 7 of his or her teammates on their way to amassing the huge stack that will be needed to outlast and survive the longest in these tournaments. I can easily imagine a situation where I'm in there with three or four players left, and I've got 100k in chips, whereas Player A from Team Donkey has 75k, Player B from Team Donkey has 70k left, and Player C from Team Donkey has 55k left. I have more chips than any single player on Team Donkey -- and thus in theory I have a better chance of outlasting each of them than any of them do of outlasting me -- but if one of them eliminates the other two, suddenly I am a 100k stack facing a 200k stack from Team Donkey for all the elimination marbles. It's actually the best thing that can happen for a team to have all of their big stacks eliminated and absorbed by the same teammate where at all possible. So, the notion of people voting out Numb because he knocked them all summarily out of the tournament is not only inaccurate I think, but also really not a thoughtful approach to the Survivor Poker game at all.

In any event, tonight at 10pm is the Dank and the next leg of Donkey Island poker. Will Team Fish have to face its first elimination vote and potentially kick off the man everyone loves to hate from their team? Or will Team Donkey be forced to further cannibalize itself, designating a second member of its team for elimination from the game here just four days into its beginning? One of the cool things about this part of Donkey Island Poker at least it that I know going in that, if I just keep winning these tournaments, then my team will not be voting someone out, and I am in like Flynn for at least another week. Even though winning a poker tournament against a bunch of flonkadonks is at least 50% a total crapshoot on any given night, I have to admit I do like that feeling of control I get from knowing going in that if I perform my best, I can personally ensure that I am still in the game next week, no matter how much my team is conspiring against me and no matter how bad anyone else on my team plays tonight.

Go Team Fish! Down with the Donkeys! And that's "Donkeys" with a capital "D", just to clarify.

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.