Donkey Island Poker

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mookin' to the TOC

Is this the real life? Or is it just fantasy?

This one is gonna take a while to really hit me. I woke up this morning after a scant three hours of sleep, and I had to check the computer screen to make sure it wasn't all just some elaborate beer-fueled fantasy, but it appears to be genuine and official:

I am now a Mookie winner.

That's right. On Wednesday night (well into Thursday morning, actually), I took my place among the most hallowed names of all of poker bloggerdom. Nay, the most venerated names of all time. The name "Hoyazo" has now been etched in stone in Mookie's Hall of Champions, forever more right up alongside such lofty legends as rbledj494 way back on July 23, 2006 -- not to be confused with rmbj494 who won his Mookie on December 13, 2006.

Ahhh but you say, that was 2006, back when the Mookie was still a brand new thing, very different from what it is has become. Look to the next year, when the BBT was started and the word really started getting out about the Mookie, check out all the big names to nab Mookie victories in 2007. Ok then, so my name is now alongside the likes of mtnrider81 (March 21, 2007) and, of course, how could you forget NomeyMyHomey (May 2, 2007), and of course Julius_Goat on September 12, 2007. And of course 2008 as well, with another voraciously-attended BBT series, has contributed its own set of awe-inspiring Mookie champions, names like Jasper6294 on June 4, Roberto55 on November 11 and 777GMoney on November 26 to name a few. Shit, any tournament which can boast the likes of numbbono, waffles, evil wonka and piratelawyer all as three-time champions, I mean what more do you need to know. So to become a part of this group, enshrined, hallowed for ever among the greatest names to ever play this game, it's hard to put into words how I feel right now. Again, I still haven't even begun to really get my head around the accomplishment and the notion that I will be permanently etched in that kind of company, forever.

I knew things were going my way in the Mookie this week when, of the 68 runners who came out to play, my erstwhile prop bet opponent Mookie himself was a no-show, as was everyone's favorite chip dumper. So that was two obstacles out of my way just like that. Then, when I saw that Blinders was the first one out on the night, I knew my path to the final table was clear with the Master of the Mookie and the King of Expected Value out of the way.

On a whole, I got what I would describe as fair cards for me for a Mookie. In the end, through nearly 300 hands I received no AA and one KK, which I doubled with. I also got dealt JJ three times, and QQ and TT two times apiece, with AK twice and AQ twice as well. As I said, the way I won my first Mookie was not with superior starting cards so much as with superior luck in my big hands holding up. In a nutshell, I got in dominating or otherwise way ahead (I'm not talking races, or even "waffles races", which for those who don't know are hands favored to win about 65% of the time) several times on the night, and for the first time in as long as I can ever remember in a Mookie, I didn't lose a single 80% or better shot on the entire night. In this way I was able to take advantage of most of the big cards I was dealt, even though it wasn't really a particularly common occurrence compared to what is to be expected. In fact, I don't think I got sucked out on at all the entire night, other than when I called pushmonkey's shove with 10 left in the tournament with my A4 versus his K7o and he promptly flopped top two pairs, which is barely a suckout at all ultimately so much as a 40% hand winning in a given instance. And I can affirmatively say that I did not suck out on anyone else myself either all the way through, which is amazing given the total crap I was seeing hold up and suck out and win again and again all around me from basically start to finish on the night.

My strategy for the night was simple: bet and raise like crazy, as usual before the flop, but also on the flop and even on the turn as well. With the big fields and the silliness of the BBT, this is the way I've been approaching most of these blogger tournaments, and it has worked fairly well, with me squarely in the top 20 overall so far for the BBT, which just on Wednesday reached the midpoint of its 13-week run. In the Mookie on Wednesday, I played one of my most aggro games of all time. I raised relentlessly preflop, and I bet out on the flop and turn more often than my usual, to mostly good success start to finish, buoyed by the twelve hands I was dealt in the range of AQ+ or TT+ during the tournament. Purely from stealing alone, I had grown my 3000-chip starting stack to 3600 chips by the end of the first hour, good for 25th place of 51 remaining at the first break.

Here was my first big hand of the tournament:



Here, there were four limpers in front of me in the big blind for 120 chips apiece, and I looked down to find the Ladies in my hand. Those of you who know how I feel about pocket Queens know there is no way in hike I would consider limping along there, so I went for an outsized raise-the-limpers-move sort of raise to 700. Hacker59, a former Mookie winner himself, pushed and I insta-called. My 82% hand held, the start of that big trend on the night for me, and I had managed to near-double with my first big hand of the night early in Hour 2. For the balance of Hour 2, I bet, raised and stole my way to maintain the stack I had amassed from the Queens, sneaking my way into 6th place with 35 runners left as we neared the end of the hour.

Just before the second hour completed, I got into my second big hand of the night, this time with my only KK of the evening:



I played this one just slow enough before the flop, opting not to put in the reraise that would have committed sophie2002 to the pot to call, such that by the time she c-bet the flop after my check, she was committed to calling my check-raise on the flop with just the AK unimproved. Once again, an opponent with just four outs twice failed to hit, and my 82% hand once again prevailed, surging me up to 3rd of 32 left, where I stayed through most of the next hour thanks again mostly to some seriously aggro betting from me on all streets which repeatedly took me down many pots, big and small. This period included three of the five hammers I won pots with on the night, getting me as high as 2nd place with 19 left around midway through the third hour of the tournament.

Late in Hour 3, Carmen pushed her short stack into my pocket Jacks with her 7s -- yet again, an 81% hand holds up for me -- representing yet another instance where I was able to get serious value out of the relatively small number of strong hands I was dealt on the night:



This hand gave me my first chip lead of the night, in 1st place of 16 remaining:



Now it's nice to be in first place -- rather be there than in any other spot at least, obviously -- but it's not like I haven't been there before. I have been final table chip leader at the Mookie three or four times in the past year or so, all four of which ended in disaster of course, including once already earlier this year. I know how these things tend to go with me, so 1st of 16 left was nothing to get excited about in the least.

Here was also the point where I took the first screenshot of my ftp stats for the night. It seemed to me that for nearly three hours I had been taking down a lot of pots. A lot of em, even for me. So I checked it out, and you can see it for yourself, my stats through 179 hands of the Mookie this week, just short of the third break:



That statistic that I had won 22% of the total hands dealt at my table, at a full ring table over nearly 3 hours is utterly disgusting. I tend to push that number higher than most people when I'm playing well due to my preflop aggression factor, but 22% in a full ring tournament over three hours? That is unheard of, plain and simple. At 9-handed tables like I had been playing at for basically the entirety of the three hours so far, the math dictates that everyone should be picking up roughly 11% of the pots. To perform at twice that rate over such a long period of time in relative terms, well, it really just goes to show evidence of just how aggro and relentless I was in my approach to the tournament on Wednesday evening.

As the third break hit, I was in 2nd place of 12 players remaining. I got back into 1st of 11 after I made a steal on the flop with a donk bet into an 8000-chip pot against two other players on relatively short stacks who I figured were more interested in waiting for the final table than in calling off here on the bubble. And then here with 11 left is where I made the call with my A4s against pushmonkey's K7o and he doubled through me for my worst loss on the night as far as getting it in when ahead, but as I mentioned even this was what, a 57% favorite for me or something? The key for me was all of my significant favorite hands held up, from start to finish, for the first time maybe ever. But here, the pushmonkey hand suddenly dropped me to 5th place with 10 remaining. When the final table bubble burst a few hands later, I had stolen my way back to 3rd of 9, but still with a lot of work to do in my second consecutive Mookie final table.

Through 221 hands as the final table began, here I am still having won 21% of the total hands dealt at my table all night, seeing 18% of flops in the process:



Early at the final table, I had the hand that set up the run I ended up making for the roses. I'm sitting in the small blind, and pushmonkey, who had been living up to his name in a sick, ridiculous way all throughout this tournament, put in the button steal raise, which I immediately read for weak. I know I had just Q6o in my own hand, but looking at the stack sizes, I saw that I could push here with ATC and face pushmonkey with having to call off a quarter of his remaining stack with what I felt strongly was not a good hand. So I went for it:



I thought this would be an easy fold if pushmonkey was actually weak like I thought. But I guess I was wrong:



And, mind you, this call happened so fast, it was like he was already clicking the empty space on his screen where the "call" button was going to pop up when it became his turn. Well, here I was again with yet another 75-80% favorite with the money allin, a spot where I have gotten screwed in this tournament so many phucking times it's sick, but once again as you can see, my dominator held, and I was back in business near the top of the leaderboard at the Mookie final table.

At the fourth break, I was in 1st place of 7 remaining at the final table:



Obviously it's good to be final table chip leader anytime any way, and I had a nice chip lead over second place at the time as well, which is always good and another nice testament to my aggression even as the final table wore on. But I did have Chad sitting right behind me so I knew I had to keep my eye on that fucker if no one else. Through 251 hands, and still only 7-handed at the final table, I was still winning an utterly sick percentage of total hands dealt at my table:



My next large hand occurred about 20 minutes into Hour 5, and it was one of those hands that had to tell anyone familiar with my history in the Mookie, on full tilt, and in online poker in general that perhaps that night could be my night. I limped for 1200 into a 7500-chip pot from the small blind with 92s, based purely on pot odds and nothing else:



After the flop checked around, I led out on the turn after I picked up a runner flush draw and given the weakness shown on the flop:



And I got called by one player, not Chad thankfully. When my flush filled on the river, I debated how to best get paid off on the hand at this point. I had the sense from my opponent's call on the turn that he could have been on a draw, or holding something beatable but strong like two pairs, and with the flush having come runner-runner, I figured I had a decent opportunity for an overbet for value. The idea is that, since it's going to be so hard for me to get paid off anyways on that river, I can just pretend the guy made a straight on the river or flopped trip 7s, hope that is correct, and make as big of a bet as I think he will call if holding one of those hands. I quickly determined that that size was allin, so I pushed for the large overbet to the pot:



and somehow, he called and lost:



And check out the hand he lost with:



Bloooom. What can I say? After all the countless times I've been donked out of a tournament, sng, blonkament, cash table, you name it by losing with flushes -- runner-runner flush over flush being my preferred way of losing in terms of how many times it's happened -- to finally get to be on the winning end of one of those situations was about as sick as it could be for me. Not sure if you call that "luck" right there given the fact that I think I played the hand very well on all streets, but dam if that wasn't a sign right there that perhaps something different was in the air tonight. Instead of running AQ into AK or AQ into AA down to four-handed like happened to me twice in the Mookie during the BBT3, here I am with 5 players left flush over flushing someone in runner-runner fashion to vault to a solid 5-handed chip lead.

Unfortunately, shortly after this point, Chad's JTs fell to pushmonkey's KQs allin preflop, and pushmonkey once again nabbed the big chip lead against just myself and MaggieO, with push holding more than twice as many chips as myself and nearly 4x Maggie's stack:



I made a few of my most key decisions in the tournament during this 3-handed phase, which lasted about 15 minutes I would estimate. First, I struggled hard with this one to Maggie, before laying it down:



Then a few minutes later I was faced with a similar situation, but this time against pushmonkey who again had been flipping up utter garbage with regularity all through the previous couple of hours, to the point that a preflop raise from him almost meant nothing better than ATC:



Again I laid this one down, despite feeling I was likely ahead as I had been earlier when I had made the decision to call pm down with my A4 and then lost my 57% favorite hand to his K7o. I just kept thinking that if I could just hold out for a slightly better spot I might be able to make a huge move based on a mistake by one of my opponents. Not 5 minutes later, I got my chance. I was dealt my third and final JJ on the night, and I raised the 3000-chip big blind to 9000 from the button. Just pushmonkey called, and when the flop came down K87 rainbow, pushmonkey led out with the donk-bet despite my being the raiser preflop:



I figured the odds of me being ahead with my JJ were substantial, especially given the way pm had been playing on the night, and if I was going to lose JJ to K4 in 3-handed play then so be it, it is the Mookie after all and I am cursed, right? Anyways, I think I should like my hand here, so I'm all in:



Pushmonkey pretty much instacalled me again here, just as he had earlier on the night when he held just 76o preflop on a pretty large pot. When he called so quick I knew I had to be beat by a King-rag type of hand, but then I saw this:



There are no words.

My 75%+ favorite held up yet again here, giving me an 82k - 63k - 58k lead in what turned out to be a close matchup in three-handed play, but gave me my first Mookie chiplead with as few as three players left in at least two full years.

Again, despite being fairly sure I was ahead here, I once again figured I had to be able to find a better spot to play, so I folded another chance to knock out the pushmonkeying pushmonkey himself here:



and again here:



By the time Maggie called my very suckbetty river bet here with just A5 unimproved in her hand:



I had her pegged for feeling a little too over-aggressive and a little under-trusting of me, so when I made my inside straight on the turn a few hands later:



I checked, expecting her to bet so I could get her allin, but instead Maggie failed to take the bait. Then when the river made a higher straight possible, I decided to go with the math and the odds that I was ahead and try to get the rest of her chips right there:



Maggie called, and I won. Turns out she called me with this hand:



Now I know she was short in this spot, but T3o? Now that's what I call a lack of respect. I mean she's gonna lose to any A, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 or any pocket pair in my hand, and some of the 3s I might play as well. But such it is, she was very short at the time, and I had been betting and raising like a maniac all night, showing hammers and just generally being way aggro even for myself, and this is the kind of thing that can happen if it breaks just right for you in that kind of situation.

So here I was, heads-up in the Mookie for only the second time in my lifetime of playing Mookies -- it's gotta be at least 150 of them I've played now -- and I had a 122k to 82k chip lead. It was a nice chip lead, but nothing even close to prohibitive. Whoever would win the next allin pot would likely win the tournament, no matter which of us it was. Fortunately, pushmonkey, who had already sucked out on me allin preflop once during the tournament but then had also gifted me a huge stack of chips by calling allin when dominated by me not once but twice in the final 10 players left, and I could not have played more than four or five hands of heaqds-up play I don't think before this happened:

I was dealt K8o, a better than average hand in heads-up play, and pm started the action by raising the 4k blinds to 10k. I called for another 6k into a 15k pot with what I figured was likely -- but by no means definitely -- the best hand, given pm's shorter stack and erratic play I had seen so far on the night. The flop came King-high, giving me top pair, and of course I checked to pushmonkey since he had been the preflop raiser, but again he scrwed up my plans by checking behind. When the turn then brought a raggy 2, which was also the third heart on the board (I held the 8 of hearts), I sensed an opportunity to get in my checkraise there, since I had been surprised as it was that pm failed to c-bet the flop, but now with the three hearts I figured it would be a good bluffing opportunity that pushmonkey was not likely to miss. So I checked it to him again:



This time he did lead out, betting just 9k into the 21k pot, a decidedly smallish bet that could either mean extreme strength or extreme tentativeness. I quickly followed through with my plan to checkraise big, determined to go with my top pair decent kicker against an uncertain range in my opponent, especially given the weakness I had showed on the flop and the turn already in the hand:



PM called quickly and turned up:



And there I was. The whole word went silent. The buzzing of the little fan on my laptop, gone. The sounds of "Live Free or Die Hard" on the tv, faded to nothing. Even the crickets outside, I heard none of it. Instead, my entire Mookie life flashed before my eyes. I saw myself losing heads-up to Surf a couple of years ago when I had outflopped him and had just two cards to fade 2 outs to nab the Mookie title. I saw myself losing AA to KK down to a scant two tables left during the BBT2. Me pushing AQ into AA when 4-handed in the BBT3, and then not a three weeks later once again pushing AQ into AK, also 4-handed. It all cycled right through my vision, all in a split second, as I raised my hands in the air in silent celebration. I wanted to make sure I enjoyed the moment before the river fell, because with three Aces and four Queens, 7 outs once would still give pushmonkey a roughly 15% chance to suck out and further my Mookie Curse forever.

This was it: the moment of truth. Who am I gonna be? The Red Sox, who finally bust through the worst curse in sports history to win a World Series in 2004? Or the Cubbies, who Bartman'd away their best shot at the World Series and furthered their own curse with another tale for fans to tell their children and grandchildren? Winner or loser? Champion or runner-up? TOC or nada? Red Sox or Cubs?



It's the Red Sox, folks!



I write this today from the computer of a Mookie winner. And nobody can ever take that away from me.

Battle of the Blonkaments

Man, everywhere I look these days there is another post about the upcoming BBT4. I laugh because half of those posting about how much they are looking forward to playing in the series are the exact same people who were acting like tantruming children a year ago the last time we "got together" to do a BBT series. And believe me, if anyone knows about children having tantrums, it's me.

So let's see, this is four events per week from March 1 through May 31, plus three Big Games as well for good measure. That's thirteen weeks, four events per week for 52 tournaments, plus the three Big Games will make for 55 events total in BBT4, with buyins ranging from $5 to $75.

55 tournaments over three months. And with a whole lot at stake, as full tilt has once again come through in a big way with two Main Event seats to the World Series of Poker (typically these have come as $12k prize packages in the past) plus five WSOP preliminary event packages, which are worth $2k apiece. Al has indicated that there are likely more prizes to come (maybe those of us who finished in the top 20 in the BBT3 will be given the opportunity to "win" our FTP jerseys back again this time around?), but 34 grand is already quite a package for full tilt to be putting up just for a bunch of blonkeys to get together and play some pokah. So it's not like this is chump change here by a long shot. And, I have made no secret of my intention to make it back to Las Vegas this summer to play once again in the WSOP. Although we're not quite officially set in stone yet, the frontrunning weekend right now for the Hoy 2009 Vegas trip is looking like the weekend of June 27-28. Actually if all goes according to plan, I will be arriving in Vegas on Thursday or Friday, June 25 or 26, and staying until sometime early the following week. And there just happens to be a $1500 no-limit holdem tournament as part of the World Series that plays on Saturday the 27th at 12pm local time, which I definitely intend to be in on. So clearly, the money and prizes available in the BBT4 are much more than enough to capture my attention.

That said, I haven't exactly been playing a lot of blogger tournaments lately, have I? Sure, once in a while I will drop in if I've got nothing else going on, but in general I have really gotten away from regularly playing these things over the past year or so, really since the BBT3 ended. My god do you remember that bullshit from the BBT3? Talk about bringing out the ugliest, most pathetic sides of some people. It's a sad thing to have witnessed, in my case from the inside as I formerly hosted a tournament in the first three BBT series, but whereas I found the first BBT to be good, clean fun for the most part, I think the newness wore off on that somewhere along the way. By the time we got to the second and finally the third BBT series, several of the bloggers involved were pretty much regularly acting like assholes. Is it any wonder that attendance at blonkaments overall is what, down by 2/3 from a year or two or three ago?

So, the question is, will I be able to stay away from the BBT4? For a guy who has barely missed a single tournament in the first three BBT series, what's the over-under on the number of BBT4 tournaments will I end up playing in?

Blonkaments

Lots of changes at hand for me these days has lots of thoughts swirling around my head, thought about the blog, about poker, and many about things totally unrelated to anything I write much about here. One decision has really crystalized for me this week, and those closest to me in our group will know it is something I've had on my mind for months, literally. In fact, it's a decision I had already finalized a couple of months ago until being talked out of it at the last minute by some fellow bloggers.

I'm not going to schedule Mondays at the Hoy for next month, or really anytime in the future as far as I'm concerned right now.

That's all. To me the whole thing is not a big deal for myself or for anyone else in the least, but for some reason some people thought it would matter if I did this, so I let myself get talked out of it for the past several weeks. But my heart is just not in it, if you can't tell from reading here. I don't really care about pimping it anymore, and I don't even really care about playing in it or reporting on it like I once did. So no more MATH for the time being, and this time it's for reals.

It's amazing to me to think about how much has changed over the past few years I've been involved in the whole poker blogging scene. Back when I first got into it, Wil Wheaton probably had as big a part as anybody in starting up the whole craze of private blogger tournaments when he ran his WWdN tournament every Tuesday night at 8:30pm ET on pokerstars (password as always was "monkey" lol). I remember with no problem at all how much I used to look forward to playing in that thing. It was literally the highlight of my week it seemed at the time. We're going back a good four years now, but that WWdN was literally the focus of my entire week back in the day. I loved getting together to play with all the bloggers for our one weekly get-together. It was the chance to chat, to catch up, to needle some friends and donk it up for fun. And honestly, I wouldn't have missed a WWdN for the world, as anyone who played in it regularly like me can attest to since I was always around.

I remember back then there were some other attempts to start up at least semi-regular online events for the bloggers -- Iggy did a couple, Jordan led the DADI events, and those were fun. Again, I remember not wanting to miss them. They were events, and just being a part of it gave me something to look forward to, something to aspire to play my best in, something to really want to win. Around that time the WPBT events also started up, the first regular leaderboard-based series of private blogger tournaments. These ran for a year and quickly turned into a slew of mixed poker games, limit, pot-limit and no-limit events, and they were both well attended and for me super fun. Back in those days, playing in every single one of these things really got me going, and I know I wasn't the only one.

But without focusing on the things that led to this point, suffice it to say that today, I no longer feel that way about the blonkaments, and they are a far cry from the singular outlets of fun for our entire community that they once were. I mean, I do love the Mookie, I always have. I can't really say why, other than to say that Mookie runs a great tournament, I love his hall of fame and his winner profiles on his blog, and Mookie is an all-around great guy which I have to say is rarer that it probably should be in this group. I am proud and happy to know that I have been a part of driving the popularity and the significance of the Mookie as the "new WWdN" for the next generation of poker bloggers, as it has been and still remains the one tournament to draw the largest crowds week in and week out, and is easily the closest thing we have to a tournament to look forward to every week, at least in my book. But other than the Mook, I just don't feel it for the private blogger events anymore like I once did. As I said, this post is not about why that is, rather than just that it is.

And before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, this post is in no way an attempt to degrade or put down the people involved with the regular weekly blogger tournaments. I'm one of those people, for crying out loud. By and large, the weekly tournament hosts (myself included, obv) are all pretty much the finest people available in poker bloggerdom, and I've had nothing but fun times playing in their events, chatting with them in the girly and offline. And I am by no means saying that I won't ever play any of their events again. Quite the contrary, I'm quite sure I will play them again several times. But it's been a while since the blonkaments have been the focus of my online poker play, as they basically had been for the better part of the past couple of years. It's just not what I look forward to anymore, it's not what I yearn to win and it's just not my focus these days anymore.

So no more MATH tournaments being set up for me. We had a great run. I started this thing up back when there were very few private blogger tournaments. The Mook was around, and I believe the WWdN was still in its dying stages as well. But there was no Riverchasers, there was no Donkament, there was no Big Game, there was no Skills Series. Heck, we weren't even playing the Bodonkey on that dominating poker site known as Bodog back then! At the time, I knew that Mondays at the Hoy was fulfilling a specific need and a significant demand among bloggers, myself very much included, and the participation in the event has always borne that out. I've enjoyed being a tournament host over time, I've loved setting up the different events, reporting on their outcomes, keeping the annual moneyboard, and of course being a part of the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments in all its splendor through three separate tournament series. The people really wanted another private tournament outlet to play with the bloggers at the time, and the MATH stepped in and filled that need nicely, leading to the creation of several other regular private events on other days of the week, which for a long time was all good for the poker blogger community. Today, that need no longer exists, not with the bloggers at large, and to be honest not with myself now for many, many months.

So I'll still be around, business as usual, but I don't have any plans to host any more Mondays at the Hoy tournaments, on full tilt or otherwise. I wouldn't change a thing about the Hoy in the 2+ years I've been running it first on stars and then over on full tilt, but for me the tournament has clearly run its course and no longer fills a need that I know needed to be satiated for many of us a few years back. If you don't see me quite as much in most of the regular weekly events (sans the Mookie of course, which I feel compelled to continue donating to ad infinitum please), it's not a reflection of anything other than my diminished focus on the private blogger events, nothing more.

At the latest, you'll be seeing me next week in Le Mookie. Waffles really screwed me last week though, now the odds of him winning his prop bet with Bayne are back down to 12 to 1. I am looking for the guy to make it interesting early here so I can maybe book some more action in addition to the props I already have going with Bayne as well as IT. And of course there is always that prop bet that Mookie and I have for the remainder of 2008, but who remembers that one of us owes the other three months' worth of Mookie buyins if one of us wins the Mookie during the year, since neither one of us ever really comes close.

Have a great weekend everyone, back at ya next week as always.

Surf is the Dark Lord, and Analyzing the Blonkaments

So I get up on Thursday morning to look at the final Mookie results, and immediately two things jump right out at me. First and foremost, WTF Surf? Six fucking Mookie titles? What kind of a profile does this guy even get after his sixth title? At some point don't we just rename the tournament from "the Mookie" to "the Surf"? Jeezus Christopher. How someone wins six of these things is completely beyond me, when even making it to sixth place one time is such a rarity for me these days. Wow is all I can say. Wow wow wow.

I also noticed that the Mookie runner up last night was, well, Mookie himself. Another wow. If you recall, I have the 2008 prop bet going with Mook where whichever one of us happens to win the Mookie first during 2008 will automatically win three months' worth of Mookie buyins from the one of us who does not win it first this year. So even though I shut down and went to bed shortly after finally hammer-donking out of the Mookie myself last night, in a way I wish I had stayed up for the excitement that must have been when Mookie made it from final table short stack all the way to heads-up with the man who has bent his tournament over a knee and spanked it to a bright cherry red. The Mookie live blog is a wee bit sparse on the details of the heads-up match, but Surf states simply in his blog that he was very lucky to pick up KK during the hu contest and that propelled him to victory. Does it surprise me that Surf found KK in a key spot in the Mookie? Not at all. Surf is one of those guys who has routinely gotten a whole lot of luck in the blonkaments, and he is more than good enough to make everyone pay for the luck that he gets. But dam if he doesn't get lucky in a lot of spots. But even though it would have cost me mucho embarrassamento plus about $120 cold hard cash, I gotta feel sorry for Mookie. The guy plays hard, he sat around at my table for a good hour or two doing not much of anything, playing tight and just waiting for the good cards, and here for the second time in a few weeks he comes up just short of winning his first title. And it's not like Surf needs another Mookie championship, right? Mookie, I feel terrible for you. Congratulations of course on another great deep run, but dam man. Maybe you really are cursed in this thing just like I am.

So I just can't stop thinking today about how Surflexus has managed to win six fucking Mookie titles. Then I was thinking, well I have won five Riverchasers titles (really 5.99 if you almost count the 13-year-old sucking out like Bayne on me by getting in behind time after time after time heads-up against me), over a much shorter time period in fact, and guys like Fuel have won a bunch of MATH tournaments as well. Now of course we all know how incredibly much luck is involved in winning any poker tournament, without exception. But I'm thinking, there has to be something more than pure chance and coincidence that the same people seem to have won the same tournaments again and again and again, no? Doesn't that only stand to reason? So here are my rundowns of each of the major blogger tournaments, what I think about the play specific to each one of them, and maybe if I can, linking those factors to the people or at least the kind of people who seem to succeed the most in them.

First, on Monday nights is my MATH tournament. This has been running for something more than a year and a half now, and it has always been either a $22 buyin (on pokerstars) or a $26 buyin (on full tilt). This buyin is basically a little more than twice the buyin of the Mookie, the Riverchasers or really any of the other regular weekly blonkaments, and that buyin has led in my opinion to a slightly increased quality of play overall as compared to the other tournaments on average. I say "slightly" because I don't want anyone to think that I think that the players in the Hoy are so great or so much better than anyone else, because that I surely do not think, but the $26 buyin does tend to keep out some of the people who don't really even have the roll to support playing a $26 tournament once in a while, which is generally the less-than-best poker players among our group, to use a nice euphomism. As a result of the play in the MATH being better than average as compared to most of the other blonkaments, the game has always been a highly aggressive one, something that has only gotten more pronounced since I switched the format to 6-max nlh. The most successful tournament players are always the aggressive ones, and with the least successful players unable to buy in for $26 a pop, we are left with not only a better than average quality of player, but a more aggressive than average group as well. And thus, in very general terms, I think the secret to succeeding in the MATH has been to be someone who plays well against aggressive players. Hence, someone like Fuel has performed well overall, with several outright wins over the past year, because he plays against aggressive people at high stakes probably more than anyone else. A guy like Bayne who hits draws like it's going out of style has had a bunch of Hoy success as well, since hitting the board hard against aggro types is almost guaranteed to pay off consistently. I too have won several MATH tournaments over the past year and a half, as I think I have a better grasp of restealing from other aggro types and when to move in from late position than probably most of the other players out there. So as I said, in general the Hoy is a more aggressive game than most, and the players who play the best against aggressive players have tended, on average, to be the most successful as a result.

Quickly I will talk about the new Tuesday night Skill Series tournaments. There have only been six of these so far, but I think already a very noticeable trend has emerged. These games are mostly limit (with the one pot-limit holdem tournament just this week), and more than anything else, it's almost the exact opposite of the discussion I just had about the MATH above. In limit tournament, the key is not so much aggression as it is tightness, and the one thing we are seeing so far in general in those tournaments is that the guys who know how to play tight, tight poker in the earlygoing are the ones who are consistently succeeding. So here I am talking about players like Zeem, who has played more than enough limit poker in his day to understand exactly what I mean about playing tight early. Miami Don is another guy who has been successful in the Skill games so far because he's been playing some very tight poker as he likes to do, especially early on. We all remember Gary Cox winning not one but two Razz tournaments over the past few weeks, playing his usual tightass style for the most part. And before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, I will remind you all again that "tight" is not an insult -- in fact, in this context, it is nothing short of high praise. Tight is right in limit poker tournaments, and the donkeys like me and Fuel and others like us have been getting for the most part crushed in these things because we insist on playing speculative hands, way too early in the tournament, and dribbling away chips early on while these guys I mentioned above always seem to get out to early chip leads by saving their chips for the truly strong starting hands.

Now on to Wednesday and the Mookie. This one is perhaps the most interesting tournament to analyze, basically because almost everyone who's anyone in the poker blogging world comes out to play. But that fact actually plays in to why a guy like Surf has had the most success in the tournament overall, as well as a bunch of other guys who have won hardly any other blogger tournaments. Think about that -- there are tons of guys whose names I will not mention because I specifically don't want anyone to take offense, but who have won one or even more than one Mookie but haven't won even one or two other blogger tournaments in their entire lives. Go check out the list right here and see it for youself so I don't have to name any names for you all to understand exactly what I'm saying. Sure lots of those guys have had other tournaments successes, but a bunch of them, even many of the multiple-time winners, are basically one-trick ponies in the blonkament careers despite the fact that I've seen them playing in many other blogger events in their day. Now this is not meant to be an insult in any way, shape or form, but merely a very meaningful observation as far as what it takes to win a Mookie. In my view it takes two main things to have a solid shot to win a Mookie, due to the large fields and due to the low buyin of $11 which means a lot of players who are not the tight-aggressive style normally indicative of the higher-bankroll guys. It takes (1) aggression to get through this big field, and (2) luck, moreso than in the other tournaments due to the large field and large number of passive and loose players. You don't see so many loose or passive players in the MATH, and certainly not 30 or 40 of them like there are every week in the Mookie, so you simply have to aggress and you have to be lucky any time you win a Mookie. And that right there is a description of Surf's game in a nutshell. Aggressive and lucky. A lot of the other Mookie winners, incuding again many of the players who have won it more than once, fit this same mold. They are people who play very aggressively every week -- often too aggressively to win most of the other blonkaments on any kind of a regular basis -- but on the couple of weeks where they played this aggro style and have gotten very lucky in doing so, they have gone on to win. Get a lot of good starting cards, bet with and nail a lot of flops, pick up big hands against other slightly worse big hands at the final table and bet them hard, that is the way you win a Mookie, moreso than any of the other private blogger tournaments, and that's why a guy like Surf does so well in them in my view.

Now on to the Thursday night Riverchasers tournament. This one is interesting because it is usually another large field, similar to the Mookie, and the quality of play is not very high given the low $11 buyin and the fact that a lot of the original Riverchasers crowd have proven to be, well, donkeys for the most part. Yes some of the RC players are actually quite good -- guys like Perticelli, riggstad, even Donkette -- but I will still stick with my statement above as far as the original RC crowd as a group. The thing that I think differentiates winning this tournament from the way you win the Mookie is just that -- the overall quality of players in Riverchasers is simply worse, and in many cases more aggro as opposed to more loose-passive as compared to the Mookie. And the reason that I have had so much success in Riverchasers compared to absolutely no success in the Mookie -- other than just being flat-out cursed in the Mookie of course -- is I think that the tricky, trappy players tend to get rewarded better in the Riverchasers because the donkeys are more likely to be out there, betting or calling allin with their top pair shitty kickers in the RC than you see in the Mookie. Sure there is plenty of that in both, but in a nutshell I can only speak from my own experience to say that I have gotten off to big stacks early and late in the Riverchasers more times than I can count by getting a good or even just reasonably good hand (TPTK, middle two pairs, etc.), and being able to play the hand so as to get raised or called for huge bets from someone with really a shitty hand or just a draw or something. I think when it comes down to it, that has been why a guy like me or even someone like Waffles who will also trap you when he gets good cards have had much more success in RC than in the other tournaments. The field is slightly more donkish, but I think generally more aggro than the similar-sized Mookie, which in general I find more passive and loose than aggro like the Riverchasers.

So that's my analysis of the main weekly private blogger tournaments, and what it takes to win them. The MATH I think rewards players who play well and who play against other aggressive players the best. The Skill Series rewards the tight players who understand the need to wait patiently for strong starting cards early. The Mookie rewards the lucky and aggressive players more than the other tournaments. And the Riverchasers rewards the trappers and slow-players the most because the other players tend to push and call big bets with all kinds of garbage. Maybe some of you out there can do a similar analysis of the Bodonkey on worst-poker-client Bodog, which sounds from what I've read to be a slower structure that more rewards tight players like Peaker, and I'm sure there are some conclusions that can be drawn from Kat's Friday night donkament as well, though I was not going to touch that today because, even though I have won four of them, I really don't know exactly what to say about strategy in a tournament that involves about 150 rebuys from 25 players over a one-hour period.

Whatever the case, congratulations again to Mookie for another deep run in his own tournament, I'm sorry he did not take it all down, but there is always next week. And congratulations out to Surflexus for another job well done, winning his sixth effing Mookie in just the past couple of years. That my friends is a record that this donkey claims will never be broken, by anyone. So there.

Don't forget tonight is the Riverchasers at 9pm ET on full tilt (password is "riverchasers"). And how could anyone forge the return of "Lost" as well tonight in a two-hour season premiere also starting at 9pm ET on ABC. Or at 9:45pm ET on the DVR if you're me and refuse to watch commercials anymore like you cavemen without DVR or Tivo might. See you at the RC where I will look to trap me some donkeys!

Blogger Tournament Nirvana, and Eye Tells

Congratulations to LJ and to Rake Feeder for chopping up the latest Skill Series tournament, this week in Omaha 8 or Better, after Rake Feeder overcame a more than 4-to-1 chip deficit when down to just three players remaining. As I have said about most of the Skill Series tournaments so far, having played in the O8 game last night I will say without hesitation that winning this thing is quite an impressive feat. I was going to write a whole post all about the play last night, but in the end let me just say that never have I seen so many players calling raises -- and even raising themselves -- in O8 with hands like 668J, 7799, and 4567, the exact worst kinds of hands in this game. I got burned by players doing this all night to end with me busting in the middle of the pack -- I shouldn't even have lasted that long but I got lucky a few times when down to a short stack -- but I will say again, somehow making it through this minefield is really something to be proud of in my view. And I will say this -- the crowds in the Skill Series games have been truly awesome. I have never ever been one to count the people in the tournaments we play, and I don't evaluate myself or anyone else or their tournaments by how many people show up in absolute numbers. But, I am thrilled beyond my wildest expectations that we are getting 40-50 players every Tuesday night to come out and play together as a group in some non-holdem games. And part of me really enjoys seeing everyone playing these games in...um....non-traditional ways. Some of those people are actually winning doing it, and others are lasting far and at least making it hard for everyone else to put them on hands. I guess all I'm trying to say is that I could not be happier with how many people are interested in playing something other than holdem on full tilt every Tuesday night, and I already really look forward to the Skill Series as one of my favorite times with my fake internet friends (and haters) each week.

As an aside, this has happened kinda quietly from my perspective, but has anyone noticed how right now seems to me to be the height of blogger private tournaments? Think about this for a minute. There is no BBT going to really create an "artficial", temporary incentive for people to play, and yet just look at the regular crowds we are seeing in what is now 5+ nights a week of blonkaments. I am sure things like the BBT, the big overlay Smokkee has secured for his weekly Tuesday night Bodog tournament and some other interesting developments like knockouts and changes to some non-holdem games all the time have all contributed, but just look at what we are doing together every week now. I've been getting more than 30 people for the MATH on most Mondays. The Skill Series on Tuesday has been drawing close to 50 people a week to play games that many people (clearly) don't even have the first clue how to play. Smokkee has reported a record turnout for the bodonkey now several weeks running, including 37 players last night. On Bodog, easily the worst poker client ever created! That seems crazy to me. Of course on Wednesdays you have the Mookie and his usual crowd of 60-80 people, and again I'm talking without the BBT. The Thursday Riverchasers tournament, which I remember started off as just mostly RC guys and a few friends from the Boathouse, has now become the place to be online on Thursday nights, also bringing in between 50-80 players or more on most nights it runs. And on Fridays of course there is the donkament, which also continues to grow and seems to be pulling in a good 25 or so players every week on a night when most people cooler than me are out partying it up. Then of course there is the monthly Big Game and HORSE deep stack event on Sunday evenings, another hard night to play for many people, and those too tend to draw 20 or more even with no BBT involved, even with the Big Game's lofty $75 pricetag.

Then I think back to just a year ago. I had just started up the Hoy and was getting maybe 15 or so players every week to come out on pokerstars. The WWdN, also on stars, was well beyond its heyday a few years back when I used to play this thing with 120 of my closest friends, and was in fact heading for its demise. The Mookie was there and already doing well, but was probably averaging more like 40 or so players than the nearly twice that we seem to get most Wednesday nights these days. There was no Thursday tournament, there was no bodog tournament and there were really no weekend tournaments to speak of -- no donkament yet, not really a Big Game and that was it. The private blogger tournament as an institution was maybe not dying, but it was past its prime that is for sure. Now just one year later, the blonkaments that existed then have nearly doubled on average, and a bunch of new ones have arisen as well that are every bit as big and as fun and as much looked-forward-to every week as the older ones, even with Wil and his WWdN that really started it all falling by the wayside. And all this proliferation has happened despite what a very small minority of bloggers have complained about as far as people now using the blonkaments as a springboard to post negative comments about people's plays every day in their blogs, insulting people, whatever. Personally, I will always chuckle at the attempts to curb free speech from some people who complain about what others write in their own personal blogs and who claim themselves to be such big proponents of blog-what-you-want, but I guess it is really noteworthy to me and very obvious just now with the bodonkey growing and the Skill Series becoming what it is so quickly, just now much everyone is in to the private tournaments, really more so at this very moment that at any time before. I am thrilled about that and look forward to what the future will bring on that front.

So yeah tonight is the Mookie, 10pm ET on full tilt, password as always for Mookie's events is "vegas1". My prop bet with Mook is still in effect -- three months of Mookie buyins for the winner from the non-winner if either one of us wins the tournament during 2008 -- although with our dual final table performances last week it is probably not likely to happen again for me at least anytime soon. That said, I have been playing awesome in the blonkaments recently, on one of my best stretches since I started playing these things a few years ago in fact, so I guess you never know. Historically I have not gotten the cards or the luck needed to last in the Mookie in particular, but like I said I did final table it last week so who knows what will happen. And be sure to tune in once again to Buddydank Radio, where I understand Don and crew will be taking over once again in what is sure to be another top notch show for the radio program that is at its absolute best ever right now, right along with the blonkaments in general these days.

Before I go today, I wanted to share something I read in my latest poker book that I've just completed this week. The book was called Beyond Tells, by James McKenna, and let me start by saying this book was almost unreadably bad. I hate to say that about any poker book, but when your editing is as bad as this book's was, you really deserve it. And I'm not just talking about your normal poker book fare bad editing -- the Super/System and Phil Hellmuth style writing with the exlamation points and the caps and the bold everywhere. I mean, this book had entire passages -- entire pages even -- totally duplicated from other parts in the book. There would be the same two paragraphs, and I do mean word for word identical, just a page apart from one another. It's the kind of thing that makes you wonder if there even was an editor for this book, because believe me when I say that anybody who actually sat down and read through the book from front to back like I just did would have picked up on this stuff immediately. So that was very, very frustrating, especially since it probably happened literally ten times in the book. But more than that, the substance to this book was just about as flimsy as the editing. It was probably a good 300 pages or so, and yet I don't think there were more than 2 or 3 points in the entire book that are even worth considering let alone worth discussing out loud or here in the blog. It was probably literally the single worst and most worthless poker book I've ever read, and believe me I have read them all.

The one most interesting point that I did take out of Beyond Tells was something that the author says about a tell you can get from most players' eye movements. Basically, McKenna makes the following points:

1. When a player's eyes move up to the right, they are visually constructing.
2. When a player's eyes move up to the left, they are visually remembering.
3. When a player's eyes move down to the right, they are dealing with internal feelings.
4. When a player's eyes move down to the left, they are having an internal conversation.

Now, of course, the subject of what is being constructed, remembered, or discussed or felt internally is still up in the air so it's not like eye movements alone can tell you whether to call or bluff someone during a live poker session, but in general I find this whole line of argument to be very interesting. Basically, all things equal, the author argues that if someone bets the river out of nowhere for example, and then you see their eyes unconsciously move up and to the right while they place this bet, then the chances are that they are bluffing because they are trying to construct an image in their heads of the cards they wish they had and or the hand they wish they had just made. Similarly, the author argues, if someone takes their time before making a call and their eyes are moving down to the left during this time, the chances are they have a so-so drawing hand or some sort of mediocre holding and are genuinely trying to decide whether to call or fold here, as opposed to actually being very strong and just fake-pausing to get you to show some more strength on later streets. If a guy's eyes move up and to the left while he bets out strongly on the flop after raising preflop, argues McKenna, then it is likely that he is accessing his memory banks of how he got you to call his nuts in an earlier situation or perhaps an earlier session. And so on and so forth.

So my question to you all is, is there anything to this eye movement business? The first time I read this, it seemed like a bunch of hooey to me. What do you all think about this? Are eye movements specifically something that you pay attention to when you are playing live poker?

Tilt! Tilt! Tilt!

I have a confession to make.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Run at Riverchasers

One thing I've been loving about all the big blonkeyments getting double stacks at some point during the BBT is that now I can really pull a Hellmuth and show up late to almost every one of them without it really mattering too much. I mean, even at 1500 starting chips, it didn't matter much if you show up, say, 20 minutes late and your stack is down to 1420 or something. But it's really no biggity to walk in like I did on Thursday night about 20 minutes late to the Riverchasers tournament now that it starts off with 3000 chips, so when I came back late from hitting the bars after a longass day of work, I slid right in and was only down to like 2955 chips as I got things going.

I started off bluffing like crazy as per usual in Thursday's Riverchasers tournament, since I got almost no actual cards to work with. I did get dealt QQ once within the first 30 minutes of the tournament, my one truly playable starting hand, and naturally a King-high flop fell. But after the flop and the turn checked around, I bet out on river and won the pot. Otherwise, I got no good cards, and won a number of small pots with just bluffs and steals. What else is new.

My first big hand happened about 30 minutes in and it went down at the expense of fellow blogger Garthmeister. Stlphily had raised the 50-chip big blind to 175 from the cutoff, and after he had spent basically the entire tournament stealing in probably 90% of the chances where the action was unopened to him in late position, I put basically no credence whatsoever on that particular raise, so I called with my KQ from the button, as did Garth in the big blind. The flop came KQ7 rainbow, and when stlphily led out for 450 into the 700 chip pot, I figured right there to minraise with my top two pair, a hand I will often slowplay with but in this case I figured why not vary a bit with a minraise and see where that can take me. Well no sooner had I clicked the button with this minraise that Garth was in there over the top allin:



Stlphily folded quickly to all this action ahead of him, and check out my chat to Garth in that image above. I basically knew what he had, knew I had the non-set nuts, and had to do some quick math before I decided that the likelihood that Garth was actually behind me plus the 4 outs I would have even if he did have the dreaded set of 7s was enough to get all my chips in with top two pairs. To be clear this is not someting I would have done even with top and bottom pairs or bottom two, but with top two pairs and the chance that I was ahead even now to AK or K7 or AA or something like that, I felt the call was the right move, even openly suspecting I was up against a flopped set. So I called Garth's allin, and he did in fact have the 7s I had feared:



But the river came down one of my four outs, and I was off to a big stack early thanks to a little bit of luck:



Not knowing for sure that Garth had the 7s, I don't actually think I played this hand too badly. I think the real man move is to lay down the two pairs there to the likely set, but since I had one of each of the top two on the board, I felt it sufficiently unlikely to be a set other than 7s, and with my extra redraw outs anyways, I think I make this play again. But the real man lays it down on the pocket 7s read I think. In any event that was how I got started off to a big stack earlyish in this week's Riverchasers tournament, and it was one of two suckouts I came up with on the night in the tournament.

The next hour saw me bluff and steal my way along to retaining my big stack and even growing it just a bit. I saw my first of a number of AK's in the tournament during this time, with which I managed to bust HappyHarry50 when he tried to take the JackAce up against my big slick. This hand helped me enter the first break in 5th place of 29 players remaining (44 total runners started the event at 9pm ET).

I started off Hour 2 trying to continue my bluffing ways, but twice in the first half hour I got caught. Once it was a no-name guy who raised me allin when I moved on the turn after a checked flop, and in that case I quickly laid down my Ace-high hand. A second time about 90 minutes in, it was Alan again raising my bet, this time on the flop, and once again I had to lay it down before I got involved in a big pot without a big hand. That was one of my big strategies that I executed so well on the night, especially for a blonkament -- I never let myself get busted with nothing on a pure bluff. When I got "caught" betting or raising with nothing, I slowed down, never once putting in one more bet after getting the vibe that I might be behind in actuality on the entire night. Well done me. That right there is the secret to winning no-limit holdem IMO. Steal those small pots, but don't go broke with nothing in them. Last night I played this game to perfection, doing a ton of stealing and bluffing but not getting busted in a big pot without a big hand.

I mentioned earlier that stlphily was going absolutely crazy with the steal-raising, so he became a target of mine for resteals, as in this hand, where stl folded to my reraise:



Simiarly, I continued stealing as the second hour of Riverchasers came to a close, which I continue to state here for the record really is the only way to survive and eventually win these blonkaments -- or just about any mtt for that matter -- unless you're a luckbox, which I can honestly say I basically never am. You just have to take a hand with some potential when the action folds to you on the button or the cuttoff, and stizzle with it:



J8s? Check!



98o? Check!

These sorts of moves basically kept me afloat all through Hour 2, leaving me in 8th place of 13 remaining at the second break. I had 8430 chip, while Kat sat in first with 20,845. So I knew I had my work cut out for me to even make the final table let alone the cash (top 5 of 44 would be paid).

About 20 minutes into Riverchasers Hour 3, I reverse hoyed shamanalix with AQ on a QJ3 2s flop, and he called allin with T9o for the oesd, which did not improve on the turn or river. This elimination vaulted me up over 16k in chips for the first time in the tournament, into 3rd place of 11 remaining. This was a big hand for me in retrospect, as it got me into a much better chip position relative to the other remaining players than I had been previously, and it all stemmed from a 65% hand holding up for me against shamanalix.

A few minutes later we made the final table, with me solidly in 4th place of 9. Nowhere near the leaders, but measurably above the smallest stacks as well. This is a great place for me to be heading into a final table, where as I've mentioned here previously I often try to play a little less recklessly and a little more close to the vest at first, to let some of the short stacks drop out and to try to get into a good position to double up against one of those more desperate stacks. So for example, in contrast to some of my steals and resteals above at a time when I was more willing to be a little reckless earlier in the event, this is how I like to resteal early at an mtt final table:



So early on here at the final table, where it pays to not play so crazy for a bit, I try to pick a good, strong hand with solid showdown value and move aggressively and strongly against a middle position opener who by virtue of that position is likely to be weakish. I was actually hoping for a call here in this spot above -- he folded. The thing that's so strong about this move is that my opponent, unless he's playing donkish, really has to fold even middle pocket pairs if he cares about surviving to the money here.

More stealing at the final table, this time a semi-standard move for me with any Ace in the cutoff or on the button:



And here's another huge resteal for me:



The above is a good example of the evolution of my aggression as the final table wears on. Here you can see we are already down to 7 players left from the original 9 at the final table, and in this case TATA on the left side of the screen had been stealing so consistently, so repeatedly any time she was given the chance that I felt I had to make a move here, if for no other reason than to show myself as someone who can't just be relentlessly pushed around. She folded (thankfully), leaving me in 3rd place of 7 remaining as we neared the bubble at 6 players left in the tournament.

And here, nearing the bubble, is where Evy35, apparently a friend of Al's, absolutely blew up. First she found AA at the final table and knocked out gator845 in 8th place. Then she called allin against another largeish stack with her 77 vs his JJ, and promptly flopped an oesd and then turned trips! And then there were 6, and we were officially on the bubble.

I kept stealing as many pots as I could, enjoying seeing others picking up the elusive final table pocket Aces, and managed to maintain my position as the 6 players jockeyed to avoid being the guy on the outside looking in when it comes to the cash payouts for the Riverchasers tournament. Eventually, though, when I found my best hand to that point at the final table in AQs and Evy had open-minraised from middle position ahead of me, I pushed allin and actually felt indifferent to whether I wanted a call or a fold here. Unfortunately, Evy showed me this:



So that's two pocket Aces at the final table now, and I'm about to head home on le bubble. But then the flop brought me my second of two big suckouts on the day:



and we were back in business. Two suckouts in my favor, and two suckouts against me on the night in the latest Riverchasers tournament, but this one was huge against the definite table luckbox outside of this particular hand. And suddenly, I was right up with the biggest stacks, slightly in 1st of 6 left and finally not so much in danger of bubbling out of the tournament any longer. It's a gross way to get there, but I'll take it.

Eventually a few hands later saw RakeFeeder busted when he open-pushed with T3o and got called by A9 from Kat's button. I had made the Riverchasers money again! I was in 2nd place of 5 remaining when the bubble burst on the night, with Kat back in the lead with 36k in chips to my 30k at the time.

Here is me continuing to steal as the final table wears thinner, again moving in for a standard raise amount with a hand with potential on the button:



Unless you're a serious luckbox, if you want to win mtts with any consistency, I've said it before and I'll say it again, you're just going to have to steal, resteal and steal some more. That was me last night, and basically every night I play in these blonkaments that we all love so much.

Here was another funny hand:



That's right -- now the third pocket Aces for Evy at just the final table! That is some seriously unreal rng shit right there. Fortunately, while I was complaining about this redickulous luck with the pocket Aces, I managed to pick up pocket Aces of my own (my only AA or KK of the tournament, mind you), and I busted Kat when she got it allin preflop with me with her Hammer. Somehow my Aces held up, and we were down to four players, with me again in the chip lead with 59k to 51k for Evy to 12k to 9k for the last two players.

Meanwhile, Evy's sick final table luck continued, as check out this highly dubious call:



and then her reward for this play:



Yeeeech. But now I was in front with just 3 players remaining. I lost my chip lead a few hands later when PouringReign and I got allin preflop with my Ace-high against PR's King-high, but trip Kings on the flop did me in and knocked me briefly down to third place of the 3 remaining players.

About 7 minutes of 3-handed play later, I made this check-raise on the flop with what I figured to be the best hand and a good spot where PouringReign might be willing to push in with any of a few possible draws:



PR eventually called with this hand, after asking if I was the one with just a draw (I did not respond), and I held on to eliminate 2nd place:



So Evy and I entered heads-up play at this week's Riverchasers tournament at basically a dead heat, 66k - 66k in chips. Of course with the way the final table had gone for her to this point, I'm busy seeing flashes of the 12-year-old in my head, and just hoping not to see a repeat of that abomination of a night for me. Luckily, I would not have to wait long to get it on with Evy. On the very first hand of heads-up play, I ended up making the 4th-nut flush on the turn, and after I checked the turn and it checked back to me, I made this recockulous overbet on the river, hoping to elicit a call from what I felt sure was a worse hand than mine at this point given the action from Evy on the hand:



As I mentioned, only four hands could beat me at that point, and I felt very sure that Evy did not have a higher flush than mine given the passivity with which she played this hand, and some of the more aggressive betting I had seen from her in other spots throughout this final table. Just like a hand I played at 1-2 cash with Fuel55 a few months ago that I wrote about here, I opted to take a page out of Sklansky's no-limit holdem book and figured I should play this hand as if my opponent had either a middle flush or possibly had made one of a few possible straights with the cards on the board that might be enough for a tired player to run with and call off her stack.

Well, it worked:



That overbet trick has come in handy on a couple of occasions for me when I think I have concealed an actually strong hand that I am sure is ahead, and where the board is such that I think it is possible that my opponent could be slow playing some (lesser) good hand already as well. It worked for me there, leaving Evy with just 400-some chips to my 131k.

Here is the last hand for Evy's last 440 chips:



and I had taken down another Riverchasers tournament!



The best lesson I can take from this particular event, and from my three Riverchasers tournament victories this year in fact plus the one 2nd place loss to the 12-year-old, is to drink up for this thing. Last night was probably the drunkest I've played a blonkament in several months, perhaps since my last Riverchasers victory, and I plan to continue that trend heading into the next several blonkaments in the coming weeks. As usual, if possible I will plan to play in Kat's $1 rebuy Donkament tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt (password is "donkarama" as always), where hopefully I can continue my return to a winning streak after taking down the Dookie on Wednesday and now another Riverchasers tournament on Thursday. So what if I'll never win a Mookie, right, who cares?!