UBOC vs FTOPS: It's Not Even Close

Well, apparently the art of putting together a kickass online poker tournament series has not been lost entirely -- it's only pokerstars and full tilt who either can't figure out or don't care about the needs of their U.S.-based poker customers. On pokerstars' side, it appears to be the latter, as the real issues with the annual WCOOP on pokerstars are the start times, which -- all being in the early afternoon east coast time -- make it more or less impossible for any U.S. player who works a job or is not either a professional poker player or unemployed to play in them.

But, as I have written about here several times over, in full tilt's case the problem is far worse. Full tilt seems to have adopted a hybrid approach to the U.S. - Euro issue, offering a number of events in the afternoons (prime Eurodonk time) as well as a U.S.-facing event almost every evening during the quarterly FTOPS tournament series they run. But what's so horrible about full tilt is that, while three or four years ago I looked forward with baited breath to playing in the myriad attractive events they had to offer in the FTOPS, nowadays they have slowly but surely eaten away at all of the good events, leaving in place just a small handful of pretty much bullshit tournaments in their FTOPS tournament series.

Ultimate Bet, on the other hand, has really got it going on. I imagine some of this stems from the site's past problems, and the resulting need / desire to really cater to their players, but why on earth is catering to the players such a lost art these days? In the land where full tilt has almost no good FTOPS tournaments anymore, and does whatever they can to promote gimmicks like Rush poker and the new multi-entry tournaments that are straight-up designed to hurt the customer base at the expense of the poker site's rake coffers, the UBOC has come around this year and I cannot tell you how exciting almost every night's tournament is. It is like night and day compared to the FTOPS, which leaves me asking why the shike can't full tilt offer the customers what we want?

Let me show you exactly what I mean. Here is a comparison of the current UBOC VI schedule of tournaments, and the upcoming FTOPS XIX series scheduled for next month. After each event on the list, I'm going to put a rating (scale from 1-10, 10 being most attractive and 1 being least attractive to play), indicating how attractive that tournament is to me to want to try to play in, being that I am basically these sites' exact demographic among U.S. players for their periodic tournament series -- my ratings will take into account the game being played, the structure, the buyin, and the gimmicks involved. And to keep things as short as possible, I'm only going to list the tournaments that are in prime evening time on the weeknights (say, after 7pm ET New York time) -- so none of the afternoon events in the east coast. Take a look at the below and you tell me who knows how to satisfy their U.S. poker tournament customers, and who simply just doesn't give a shit:


UBOC VI:

1/17/11 20:05 UBOC 4 NLH 4-MAX $300+20 $100K guaranteed Rating: 5
1/17/11 20:05 UBOC 5 NLH ($200 Rock Star Bounty) $200+15 $100K guaranteed Rating: 10
1/18/11 20:05 UBOC 6 PLO 6-MAX $200+15 $50K guaranteed Rating: 9
1/18/11 20:05 UBOC 7 NLH Deep Stack $300+20 $100K guaranteed Rating: 9
1/19/11 20:05 UBOC 9 PLO 1 rebuy + 1 add on $200+15 $100K guaranteed Rating: 8
1/19/11 20:05 UBOC 10 NLH Deep Stack 6-MAX $500+30 $250K guaranteed Rating: 6
1/20/11 20:05 UBOC 11 NLH Deep Stack $150+12 $75K guaranteed Rating: 10
1/21/11 20:05 UBOC 12 Sniper NLH Deep Stack ($15 bounty) $150+12 $75K guaranteed Rating: 10
1/24/11 20:05 UBOC 18 NLH 1 rebuy + 1 add on $200+15 $150K guaranteed Rating: 8
1/24/11 20:05 UBOC 19 8 Game Mix (HORSE+PLO, PLH, PLO8) $200+15 $50K guaranteed Rating: 8
1/25/11 20:05 UBOC 20 Sniper NLH Deep Stack ($20 bounty) $200+15 $100K guaranteed Rating: 10
1/25/11 20:05 UBOC 21 NLH/PLO Mix $200+15 $50K guaranteed Rating: 9
1/26/11 20:05 UBOC 23 PLO8 $200+15 $75K guaranteed Rating: 7
1/26/11 20:05 UBOC 24 NLH Deep Stack (antes from the start) $300+20 $100K guaranteed Rating: 10
1/27/11 20:05 UBOC 25 NLH ($200 Centerfold Bounty) $150+12 $75K guaranteed Rating: 10
1/28/11 20:05 UBOC 26 NLH Deep Stack $150+12 $75K guaranteed Rating: 10

So, in UBOV VI, there are 16 nighttime events, perfect for primetime U.S. players, and of those 16 events, seven score a perfect 10, another three events score a 9, and still another three tournament score an 8 on my 1-10 scale of how much I would like to play in these tournaments. The buyin levels are generally good -- $200 or so -- there's not a ton of gimmicks, and there's certainly not a ton of shitty games or tournaments with so many bells and whistles that are designed to benefit the flonkeys at the expense of the skilled players. Even when they offer rebuys -- which I think is an essential part of any real tournament series for sho -- they generally limit those to 1 rebuy and 1 addon. This is still a lot of money to put into one big tournament, but it just doesn't compare to a straight-up unlimited rebuy, where you have no idea how much you might have to buy in to compete with the others in there whose bankrolls might otherwise allow them to play incredibly loose over a number of different buyins a la Daniel Negreanu in the WSOP rebuy a few years back. In all, out of 16 events designed for U.S. players, fully 13 of them are the kind of tournaments I am really interested in playing, and as a result, I've played in many of the UBOC tournaments and really find myself looking forward to the series almost every night of the week while it's running.

Now let's flip over to full tilt, who again is scheduled to run FTOPS XIX starting in just a couple short weeks once again on their site, where once again I will provide the schedule, stripping out the afternoon events, and putting an attractiveness rating 1-10 next to each event:


FTOPS XIX:

2/7/11 21:00 ftops #4 NLH 6-MAX $1000+60 1M guaranteed Rating: 1
2/8/11 21:00 ftops #7 HORSE $200+16 100k guaranteed Rating: 6
2/9/11 21:00 ftops #10 NLH 6-MAX Rebuy $100+9 500k guaranteed Rating: 5
2/10/11 21:00 ftops #13 7-Stud Hi/Lo $200+16 100k guaranteed Rating: 3
2/11/11 21:00 ftops #16 Razz $300+22 100k guaranteed Rating: 1
2/12/11 21:00 ftops #21 2-7 Triple Draw $300+22 6-max 100k guaranteed Rating: 1
2/14/11 21:00 ftops #27 NLH Multi-Entry $1000+60 750k guaranteed Rating: 1
2/15/11 21:00 ftops #30 9-game 6-MAX Multi-Entry $500+35 200k guaranteed Rating: 1
2/16/11 21:00 ftops #33 NLH 6-MAX Rebuy $300+22 1M guaranteed Rating: 1
2/17/11 21:00 ftops #36 7-Stud $200+16 100k guaranteed Rating: 1
2/18/11 21:00 ftops #39 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo $200+16 150k guaranteed Rating: 1
2/19/11 21:00 ftops #43 Badugi $200+22 50k guaranteed Rating: 1

O. M. M. F. G. Look at that embarrassment up there. After seeing UB go out of their way to satisfy what they U.S. customers want at the times when the U.S. customers can play the most when it comes to their annual UBOC series, just look at the filth that the FTOPS has become. Of the 12 weeknight events in New York prime time, one of them is a 6 (being generous -- HORSE), one a 5 and one a 4, and the other nine U.S.-accessible tournaments are all 1's on my scale. Flat-out 1's. And frankly, a lot of them should really be more like negative 100's -- in that I would not play them even if someone else offered to front me the full buyin and to keep 90% of what I win -- because going through the motions of actually playing such a shitty game would bother me a heck of a lot more than the price of the buyin.

It's pretty unbelievable really if you think about it. Every single one of the 16 UBOC nighttime tournaments on Ultimate Bet scores higher in terms of attractiveness to me, than every single one of the 12 nighttime FTOPS events on full tilt. How can that be? There's not a single exception -- the very best of the FTOPS weeknight tournaments -- a $200 limit HORSE event -- is less attractive to me to play than the very worst of the UBOC tournaments, which was the 4-max $300 buyin nlh event. Think about that!!

It's just another example -- right along with Rush poker and Multi-Entry tournaments and the like -- of full tilt not having the customers' best interests in at the front of its mind, or really as a consideration anywhere in its mind at all. Whereas UB is actively looking to excite their U.S. fan base and create tournaments that we actually want to play in.

And people actually wonder why I continue to play at UB despite their past problems.

FTOPStupid

It's really amazing what full tilt has done with the FTOPS. I know ultimately this post is going to read an awful lot like at least one or two other posts I have done here either 3 months, 6 months, 9 months or exactly a year ago, but what can I say. Full tilt keeps making the same mistake, and I keep suffering as a result, so you read about it here.

Go back just about a week right here and you can read all about how I was looking forward to sitting down to play some FTOPS tournaments for the first time in at least a year. I haven't been playing hardly any mtt's recently and the upcoming FTOPS seemed like as good a chance as any I would have to get back into the thick of things and to play for some real money. I was amazed in that post because I literally hadn't been looking forward to the FTOPS this much in a long, long time, maybe a few years even, and at the time if you had asked me how many events would I play in the series, I would have probably guessed somewhere around 7 or 8 tournaments total.

Instead, here we are on Friday, nearing the end of the entire tournament series, and how many events have I played in total? Just one. How pathetic is that? And it's not pathetic of me -- it's pathetic of full tilt, as usual. I mean, it's not like I ran out of money or "broke even" one too many times. And it's not like I've been too busy, or just haven't been interested in playing poker after all on these days. Much the opposite -- I've sat at my pc probably all but one or two of the last nine nights since FTOPS XVII began and played in poker tournaments. Some of them with buyins as large or larger than the corresponding FTOPS event that night! The FTOPS tournaments, on an almost nightly basis, just do not stack up to what else is available out there for the mtt player to partake in.

It's almost like full tilt is going out of their way to make the nighttime events bad, and/or to put the good events at times when Americans with day jobs cannot make the games. I mean, the very first event of FTOPS XVII was the standard series-opening $216 nlh event, which I played that same night as my FTOPS post referred to above. I lasted not more than 90 minutes or so, at which point I managed to run 15 outs into top set that turned into a boat before I knew what hit me. It was a fine time, I enjoyed playing for some big money, and although I did not at all appreciate the setup hand I took it in stride and moved on to bigger and better things that night.

But since then? Look at the events at night so far after FTOPS Event #1:

There was Event #4 on Thursday night, the $535 HORSE event hosted by Svetlana Gromenkova, truly one of the top five worst HORSE players I have ever bumped into on my travels in online poker. I mean, you can't get it in behind more frequently and make poorer poker decisions than this biatch seems to do all the time, be it in sitngos, FTOPS or anywhere else I happen to run into her. Anyways, I tried one quick satellite to this event -- Gromenoka sucked me out like the horse that she is on the bubble -- but I've had my blood boiling several times previously in this event over the regoddamdiculous play even for $535, so I did not make much of an effort as the combination of the donkey game with the large buyin just makes this not all that attractive for a guy with my game to play.

Then Event #7 on Friday night? Stud-8. Again, I've been playing hi-lo longer than any other poker game out there, but the thought of chipping in $216 to a pool for a bunch of chasedonkeys to go nutso when they only have a decent draw at a decent hand for one-half the pot, and then counterfeit me and win, it's enough to make my eyes bulge out of their sockets. And let's not forget, host Aaron Bartley is perhaps the only numbskull on full tilt that even gives the lovely Svetlana a run for her money in terms of cluelessness. So that one was a no-go.

As usual, the geniuses at ftp did not run any events on Saturday or Sunday night -- far and away the prime time to play for anyone in the United States -- even though they have increased their FTOPS schedule to include not one, not two but three FTOPS events on each weekend day. And yet still nothing later than 6pm ET. Sheer brilliance. That's strikes through five days and 13 events of FTOPS, with only one tournament I actually attended to show for it -- me, a guy who has the money and the desire to play, was actually looking forward and anticipating FTOPS this time around, and who has played and won in every single poker game FTOPS spreads. It's unreal.

Then on to this week, where Monday started with the 1k buyin nlh event, a format which I again attempted exactly one time to satellite in to, but which otherwise is just not worth the buyin for a guy like me to play against some of the best competition on the site. Plus, I knew there would always be Tuesday night this week, which was? A $535 shootout tournament. 3-way shootout in fact. Something that only a true and total moron would ever pony up his hard earned money for. If I won $160 million in the lottery I wouldn't bother playing a 729-runner shootout at $535 a clip. No way no how, that's got to be the worst nighttime tournament in a whole schedule chock full of horrific events.

Finally this past Wednesday night saw FTOPS Event #22, which I had already seen was holdem and thus I figured finally I would get to play another event. Or not. Turns out it was a $322 rebuy. I mean, come on guys!! I'm the best rebuy tournament player I know bar none, and I would not even consider ponying up what it would likely cost to buy a fair chance in that event. Of course I logged in Thursday night as well, and of course it was $216 stud hi. One of the donkiest, most cards-driven games there is, a game where I know for a fact any fuckhole with any two pairs will call down through the river regardless of what any other board is showing or the action from the other players. Not even considering it, sorry.

And here we are. Before I am home tonight, FTOPS Event #27 will be underway. 27 events in to the FTOPS, again an FTOPS that I was anticipating highly and looking forward to participating in. And boooom, one event I've played, way back in Event #1. And on tap for tonight at 9pm ET? Razz. $322 a pop. What a fuckajoke.

And for all you smartasses out there who want to critique my willingness to play such a broad smattering of games, let's be clear about one thing: I would play a regular nlh tournament at almost any buyin below the 1k. I would play a 6-max nlh event at the same levels. I would play any pot-limit Omaha format of any kind -- hi-low or PLO -- at almost any buyin. I would play any rush version of nl or omaha in the formats I mentioned above. I would play any heads-up event in almost any game at almost any buyin level. I would play a knockout event of any of these games at almost any buyin below 1k. I would even play that shorthanded limit holdem event they've run several times as part of FTOPS in the recent past. Basically, there's only 7 or 8 types of tournaments I wouldn't participate in as part of the FTOPS, and they've managed to screw us Americans so badly that those 7 or 8 events are basically the nightly FTOPS schedule over the past week and a half. It's just unreal.

It's no wonder really that everyone on the planet already agrees that full tilt has utterly butchered their FTOPS brand. The powers that be with the FTOPS are Just Plain Clueless.

FTOPS Cometh

You know what? For the first time in a long, long time, I am actually mildly excited about the FTOPS. FTOPS XVII we're up to already, and I believe it starts this week, on Wednesday night August 4 to be exact. The opening event is as usual a standard $216 buyin no-limit tournament that you are likely to see me sitting in on Wednesday evening.

In the past, I've spent many a night trying to outlast my opponents in full tilt's quarterly mtt series. I've had FTOPS series where I've managed to participate in 9 or 10 of the events, which back when I started playing used to constitute around 2/3 of the total events in the series. I specifically recall cashing in five FTOPS events in one series way back when, which I am still reminded of whenever I bump into my stack of identical black FTOPS hats that full tilt sent me during that series, which was probably a good three full years ago or more by now.

As the FTOPS has expanded, however, and as it continues to arrive every three months and thus cheapen somewhat the value of the FTOPS franchise in my eyes, I have found myself playing in the FTOPS less and less. This decision of course is not meant to injure anybody or designed to be done in protest or anything, but rather I have just not been nearly as interested as the FTOPS has become more and more accessible to everyone, and as running into a gold jersey at my table on full tilt has become more and more commonplace at the limits I play. And most of all, full tilt has not done what I would call a good job in updating the tournaments that comprise the FTOPS. Over the past few quarterly series, I have found myself only interested in playing in two or three of the 25+ events in the entire series, either because the timing is off (as my longtime readers know I will only play in the nighttime events), or because it's not exactly my dream when I wake up in the morning to play razz for a $322 buyin with a bunch of shizzheads who can't even spell "razz" and that only has a 150k guarantee, or to play a $216 limit holdem chasemonkeydonklefest with a 250k guarantee and that will slowly deteriorate into effectively push-and-pray no-limit play with very low Ms by the time the final table rolls around. Meanwhile, there's still no high-buyin heads-up tournament as part of FTOPS, the site that lets you "play with the pros"? No $500 heads-up event or something? Come on, full tilt.

Anyways, this is not a post to slam on full tilt for what has gone down with the FTOPS. Rather, this is to say that I might actually have some interest in playing in some FTOPS events over the next couple of weeks, which is the first time I have said that in at least this year, if not longer. I cannot have participated in more than one or two total FTOPS tournaments so far out of about 60 this year spread over two series, and yet, this time around, I'm actually looking forward to getting involved and might even be willing to play an off-game in order to get my mtt junkie fix.

You see, for those few of you who don't already secretly watch every table I ever play at online, I really have not been playing mtt's lately. For a good long while, actually. I mean, of course out in Vegas in early June I was Mr. MTT. I played mtts for probably about 60% of my total time awake in Las Vegas over four days, and another 20% was spent playing cash poker as well. But as I've written about a couple of times since returning from the desert earlier this year, even though I had some great success at mtt's while out in Sin City, since then I have had a lot of trouble getting mentally up for playing in tournaments. And don't get me wrong -- I've still been playing a fair amount of online poker. Not nearly as much as when I am on a major mtt bender like seems to have been the case over maybe 60-70% of the time over the past few years, but I've been playing a fair amount of poker despite what has been an extremely hectic life both personally and professionally. Basically given all the things going on with me right now, I have been limiting myself to very short stints, things like brief cash sessions, or most commonly recently, turbo and even super turbo sngs. I've done this before, gone through a period where I am burned out on mtt's for a time, and I always come back to the good old fashioned large-field mtt, which will always be the most challenging form of poker to excel at in my book. But lately I just haven't been feeling it, and I bet I haven't played in 10 true mtt's over the past two full months if I had to guess.

But when I saw this week that FTOPS is back, something stirred inside me that I haven't felt for a few months now. A twinge, an urge. Nothing more than an inkling really, but the feeling was there and it was real. The beast is coming out of his slumber. I am pretty sure he wants to play in some of these FTOPS tournaments.

And what kind of a degenerate poker player would I be if I didn't let the beast have what he wants?

Woe is the FTOPS

What the hell did full tilt do to the FTOPS this time around? I mean, I guess it's inevitable that they would screw something up after running 850 of these series over the past couple of years, but damn sometimes I just cannot understand why people insist on fixing things that ain't broke.

Now, I'm too lazy to go back and look up the last several FTOPS schedules. But here's what I do know about FTOPS 1,000,000,000,000,000 that is currently running right now: there's barely anything for the good, hard-working American poker lovers to play. And that has most definitely never happened before.

Again without bothering to go and look up the details, I know I have played in upwards of 6 or 7 events in the FTOPS in prior runs of the tournament series. I specifically recall one of the FTOPS runs probably a good two years ago or so where I received four FTOPS baseball caps for cashing in four separate events. And I definitely recall other FTOPS series where I was debating playing in that night's event almost every single night, be it the $240 PLO knockout, $216 PLO8 freezeout, or even stud hi-lo on occasion as I recall.

And yet, somehow, this time around, I am going to play in a grand total of one FTOPS tournament. That's it. Granted, I missed Event #1 this time around due to fatigue, and that was my own choice and not something of course that I could ever blame on full tilt. But otherwise, how is it that I am playing online poker almost every night during the entire FTOPS series, but cannot for the life of me find a single event to play other than Tuesday night's $216 turbo mtt? Event #1 was last Wednesday night, the standard FTOPS-opening $216 nlh mtt, which as I mentioned I missed. But then Thursday night was a $500 shootout. $500 shootout? That's the best you can come up with over at full tilt, guys? Because -- and I don't care if you're a poker blogger, if you're me, or if you're Phil fuggin Ivey -- large mtt shootouts are not profitable poker. Period. Sure, somebody wins it every time you play it. But, unlike a general mtt where you can make some decent coin for finishing in, say, the top 50 or 100 spots in the field, in a shootout, you need to absolutely straight-out win your entire table, and then you have to sit at a new table comprised solely of people who were good enough to have just won their entire tables, and you have to win that table as well, just to make it to the final table where the real money begins, where you then get to face a full table of people who were good enough to win not only their starting table, but then their second table full of all people who also won their own starting tables. To the inexperienced winning three consecutive one-table sitngos may seem a lot easier than navigating your way through a field of 3000 donkeys in a regular nlh mtt. But take it from me, it's harder. Much, much harder. Even given all of the above, I still might've given it a shot, if the buyin wasn't $500. A $500 shootout for FTOPS Event #3? Major error.

Then they followed this up with last Friday night's limit holdem tournament. Just what I'm looking for -- a chasefest. And don't get me wrong, I understand that they have other events in the afternoons on those days, but for us working stiffs in the U.S. those are of course not doable, and ultimately in the past I always played the FTOPS on at least one if not both of those second and third nights of the series. This time around, I wouldn't consider it. And I know that $500 shootout is a new event for the FTOPS, a big mistake in my view. I didn't play over the weekend as I never do, and of course as usual FTOPS misses out on an opportunity to get the "family men" active on the weekend nights when they probably have the best opportunity of all for big fields. Why not just run a regular $100 or $200 nlh event? What about a $100 rebuy or something? Can I get anything on the weekend nights?

Then here starts Week 2 of the FTOPS, and I don't even remember what Monday night's event was, but I do recall that it blew. Tuesday night was the usual $216 turbo mtt, which I played but busted early from when my pocket 9s of course ran into pocket Queens from a guy who had raised at least 17 of the previous 5 hands before the flop. And then before logging off, I went ahead and looked with anticipation to see which other FTOPS events I would be playing this week. And you know what? It's none of them None! Wednesday night is the $322 rebuy, which at that buyin level just plain sucks for 99% of full tilt's user base. Thursday is I think Stud Hi. What a joke -- no "chase to two pairs" for me. Friday is the usual Razz event, which full tilt for some reason insists on carrying an increased buyin of $322 instead of the standard $216. And since I'm not a masochist chasemonkey peabrain who tires of getting dealt rolled up Kings in the only situation where I want nothing to do with them, you won't find me razzing it up either. And then that's it, just like that, FTOPS is over.

What the hell happened to the $216 O8 event that was in the evening early in the second week for the past umpteen hundred FTOPS series? Why is there not a $100 or even a $200 rebuy tournament, instead of this insistence on making that a $322 buyin? Why is there no knockout tournament anywhere in the evenings during the entire series?

I know that pokerstars has completely given the middle finger to Americans with their WCOOP, making every single event start in the middle of the afternoon New York time, which effectively shuts out the working-guy Americans entirely and unfortunately for pokerstars simply means that what they're really running is the WCOEP since the whole thing is primarily played by Euros. But in the past full tilt has distinguished itself among all other online poker sites by offering up a very attractive mix of games available in the weekday evenings four times a year, at buyin levels and at times that are actually accessible to the average, day job-having Americans who make up a big slice of their user base. This time around, full tilt seriously dropped the ball.

Now, in addition to offering far and away the best nightly tournament structures available anywhere in online poker, thanks to full tilt we can now look to UltimateBet as the site that also offers the best regular online poker series for normal red-blooded Americans with their UBOC. And if I'm full tilt, that is the saddest part of the whole debacle known as FTOPS MCMXLVIII.

FTOPS Profit

The last couple of nights, I have turned a nice profit from Events #1 and #3 of the FTOPS on full tilt. And I didn't play either event.

See, on Wednesday night I did play a little poker, which consisted mainly of me getting suckout-eliminated from four separate tournaments in the early part of the night. But one thing I noticed -- other than my inability to hold in any big pot when I was ahead when the money got in -- was that I was tired. Although he is growing like a champion, I still have a young baby at home, and that means I don't always get nearly as much sleep as I would like to get, and I guess the night before was a late one because my eyes were definitely drooping, even by as early as 8 or 9pm New York time.

At some point, I saw a system broadcast on full tilt that indicated that FTOPS Event #1 was about to start. My first thought -- after thinking "What? FTOPS is back already again?" -- was that I should play. The first event of the FTOPS is always a $216 buyin straight nlh tournament, and I've cashed in it several times over the 774 FTOPS series full tilt has run over the past several years. As I opened the tournament and gazed upon the more than 5000 entrants piling in for their shot at the elusive gold jersey, I found myself thinking about the time it was going to take to outlast that field, if the poker gods would even see fit to permit me another deep mtt run in this. I remembered how much I needed sleep just then as well. And then I did something I never used to do.

I closed the tournament without registering. Back in the old days, I would never take this kind of cue from my body, and I never listened when in my heart of hearts I knew I was not in the mental state required to navigate a large mtt effectively on a given night. And I've thrown away a lot of money that way -- thousands, I am sure -- when I never really had a chance to make a big score right from even before the first hand was dealt. But not this time. I saved myself a sure loss of $216 on Wednesday by not playing FTOPS #1, money I would surely have thrown away needlessly a couple of years ago. I did the same thing on Thursday night, when I toyed with the idea of playing the $500 nlh shootout in FTOPS Event #3, especially since I hadn't played in Event #1 the night before. But once again, cooler heads prevailed. I wasn't too tired this time around, but you know what? I really hate shootouts. This thing maxed out at 729 players, and I would need to win outright against 8 other $500 buyin players at my table in order to win anything, and even then it would be only a min cash of less than the buyin to the event. Bottom line is, it is about 100x easier to finish in the top 81 out of 729 runners in a regular mtt than it ever is to be one of the final 81 players in a 729-person shootout, because there it's only one person per table who can cash at all, and the big winners have to win their entire table twice just to be in line for the big money. And yet, despite my dislike for the shootout format in mtt's, I still held the registration window open for the better part of an hour, kicking around the idea of giving it a go. But once again, I opted to avoid what I knew would be a waste of time and money for me, and I let the FTOPS go for yet another day.

Today I have $751 extra in my full tilt account thanks to the FTOPS. And I haven't even played in the series yet.

Huge Mini FTOPS Score

After nearly 11 hours, a failed attempt by me to chop with the chip lead and three players left, and three sick suckouts against me when down to four or fewer at the final table, I present to you my largest online score ever:



I'll get a proper recap post up at some point when I can. But right now my ass is fried.

FTOPS Main Event

So earlier this week I had written about losing around $2000 of cash on three separate 2- or 3-outers on the river, all occuring when the money got in after the flop. It's something I've been focusing on for a good couple of years now, a strategy which I see most the great professional mtt players follow fairly religiously in the tournaments they play in -- almost to a man, these guys hate to get it allin without the mortal, uncatchable nuts. So I've been trying to do less and less of the get-it-allin-well-ahead before the flop stuff, even though I used to do that all the time. I've written about it here countless times over the past couple of years, but after getting it in ahead and taking the number of suckouts that I take,I have really been focusing on turning those 80% favorite hands before the flop into 90%+ favorites after the flop by waiting an extra round or two before getting all the money into the middle.

So there I was earlier this week, running in "the" 40k, "the" 32k, and those juicy turbo satellites into the FTOPS Main Event, getting knocked out of all three on either 2-outers or 3-outers despite waiting until after the flop to get all the money in to the middle. What does this mean, exactly? I'm talking about having pocket Tens in the small blind, and the cutoff bumps it up on a typical steal-raise, and rather than push my last 20 big blinds into the middle right there preflop when I'm fairly sure I'm ahead, I figure I will wait until the flop, and just give myself a chance to get away where the donkey with the A4o would have spiked his Ace on the flop and taken me out. So I just call, the flop comes all rags, and then by checking I induce my opponent to push allin on me. I flip up my Tens and he shows pocket 9s. 9 on the river, and IGH. When you've played 3 or 4 hours into tournaments over the previous few days and that has been the way it's ended for you just short of where the money really gets big three separate times, it can be very hard to swallow.

Then, one day after writing about this was when I made that fantastic run deep into the 50-50 on full tilt which I wrote about on Thursday and Friday of last week. This is the one where I picked up my first premium pair of the entire night in pocket Kings with exactly 10 players remaining out of the 1195 who started, the guppy chip leader calls my preflop pot-sized reraise with 75o, pushes all-in to me on a 7-high flop and then manages to suck out the river 7 to eliminate me in tenth place despite playing the hand about as poorly as it could have been played on every single street. That was conservatively another $4000 or so of Tournament EV added to my already $2000 from earlier in the week, all raped away from me by river suckouts after I managed to get myself in well ahead in key spots in big tournaments.

Well, Sunday night this weekend was the FTOPS Main Event, which I did play in, and played in very well might I add. I managed to chip up on several hands, mostly bluffs of course, in the first hour or two, and my first really big hand did not occur until just about two full hours in to the event. It's worthy of some screenshots, because hand histories just don't do these things justice all the time.

So I'm around 33% above the starting stack, right around average just short of two hours in to the Main Event. I pick up pocket 3s on the button, and since I've done my usual thing and been a stealy mofo throughout the tournament so far, of course I have to raise here so I go for my standard 3x raise to 480 chips. The small blind, a guy who had tried at least one time previously to move me off of a hand he thought I was stealing with by using a minraise, which he quickly folded to my pot-reraise, reraises me here with a below-average stack:



Now, even though I obviously don't have the odds to properly set mine, the bottom line was that this guy had gotten out of line a couple of times already, I figured there was a very good chance I was already ahead and that he would push any raggy flop allin on me from first position. So I went for the call:



The flop comes down T73 rainbow -- my only flopped set of the day -- and my opponent bets a big portion of his stack but not all of it:



OK so now I can whittle down his range of hands to literally just a few, all of which I am crushing. To not push allin here, he either hit top pair top kicker with AT, or better yet, he has AA-QQ and desperately thinks he's going to double up here, with a small chance that he might have flopped a higher set with 77 or TT given his please-call-me bet here on that short stack of his. Either way, I am content to play this one slow, just in case, so I just callin the hopes of seeing the turn card before committing the rest of his stack to the pot. In keeping with the tournament strategy I mentioned above and have written about incessantly here for the past couple of years, waiting until after the turn will just give me that much more information, and maybe if an Ace, King or Queen falls, and he does something that really indicates a higher set, I can at least consider getting away from the hand, unlikely though that may be:



So the turn comes and it is basically another rag, after which my opponent quickly pushes all in:



So here I am, I've waited until after the turn card here, and there is just nothing on this board that can possibly get me to fold here. My opponent's actions are consistent with a high pocket pair, and I nailed his ass by flopping the set on the flop in a spot where he rightfully assumes I have been stealing with air all along. I've seen all the cards but the last card with my deceptively strong hand, and my opponent has forced me to a decision for the rest of his stack. I've lessened the risk of my getting drawn out on significantly by not only waiting until after the flop but also until after the turn. What more can I do, I can't fold here obviously. So I call, with much confidence:



Booooom. Well played with the one pair for a just under the average stack in a $535 buyin tournament.

River card:



2-outer on the river, after waiting for not just the flop but even the turn before getting the last half of my opponent's stack into the middle. Sound fucking familiar?

Now granted, it was early enough in this thing still, with some 2500 runners remaining and only nearly 800 making the cash, that it is very difficult to ascribe an actual cash value to that disgusting, despicable suckout. Maybe just a couple hundred bucks, being fair to the math. But who knows what this could have turned in to. And like I've been saying all fucking week, it hurts especially much when I am going out of my damn way to decrease my risk by waiting to see as many cards as possible on the board before getting the majority of the money into the middle, even when I'm fairly sure I'm ahead on an earlier street. I mean, higher pocket pair losing to lower pocket pair allin preflop is bad enough. That is an 82% favorite or so in most cases, and anytime you lose a big stack on that kind of a dominated hand, it just feels wrong. But when I've got the Tens over the Nines after the flop and the money goes in, that is what, a 91% favorite? So this week alone, I lost two 91% hands and one three-outer on the flop as well for an 88% hand, all in key spots in big tournaments with real cash on the line. Then I closed that week out by getting beat after the fucking turn card with a 2-outer for a 95% favorite, up in flames, in the biggest tournament of them all.

I mean, what do you do when even 19-to-1 isn't good enough to double up in a huge spot in a $2.5 million guaranteed tournament?

It isn't often that I wake up the next morning still feeling physically ill about a bad beat. In fact, it's been years now since I almost ever care about a bad beat even an hour or so later. But this one, coming on the heels of a week of close calls, deep runs and horrible anal rapages, is really clinging with me. Someone think of something to say to put this into perspective please.

FTOPS Comes Through After All

It was a good weekend of poker for me, and it couldn't have come at a better time as I have been getting crushed by the tables at full tilt for a while. The weekend still saw me get hammered with suckout after suckout like usual, but I managed to nail a couple of big ones in key spots to record one of my biggest weekends in a loooooong time on the virtual felt. First on Friday night there was this:



This was for a $2620 seat into FTOPS #22, the two-day tourney, and it was I think the biggest satellite win I have ever recorded on line. I think. Of course I unregistered for the actual event as fast as you can say "I saw Dark Knight this weekend and the first two endings were good but the last four endings really made the thing way too long like every other movie made in the past five years".

Seriously now, if it ended after they got the Joker it would have been prolly top 25 or 30 movies of all time. Instead they ran it another 80 minutes and took it out of the top 50 entirely, without a doubt. They went and turned a 9 into a 6, once again because the ego of the editor would not allow him to cut anything. And it wasn't just me -- everyone I've spoken to says the identical same thing -- that it was just too long -- and you could see it clearly in my theater. First hour and a half, total mesmerization from everyone. Last hour and 20 or so, like 20 people just in my immediate area (myself included) looking at their watches, falling asleep, checking the time on their cell phones, etc.

Heath Ledger though -- dayummm. I had heard he was awesome so many times that I went in there fully expecting to be let down. He was even better than advertised. Could there ever be anyone more destined to win Best Actor than this guy? I mean, as soon as he died, the Academy probably had already pencilled him in, but he did put on an awesome performance, one that shocked me by actually rivalling Jack Nicholson's portrayal a decade and a half ago. Couple the show he put on with his untimely death, and Tom Hanks might as well not even accept that cushy role slated for release later this year. This Oscar has Heath Ledger's name written all over it.

But can someone please tell me, why the F even bring up all that stuff about Two-Face? Why is that guy even in this movie? And all that ghey bullshit about rigging every cell phone in the city for sonar? Come on, why do you have to go and do that, huh? Was it really necessary at all for the plot to this film? I just don't get it.

And who the fuckleberry keeps giving Maggie effing Gyllenhall sex-symbol starring roles? Don't people know she is hideous? I mean it's not just that she pales in comparison to the real hot chicks in Hollywood. She is downright hideous, to the point that I physically don't want to look at her. Look, it is Bruce fucking Wayne. He is hot, single, and the richest guy in the world. Of course he's gonna be tagging the supermodel chick. And yet Maggie G. is his lifelong love? Puh lease.

And what's with the recockulous Batman voice whenever he has the suit on? Guy sounds like a fucking grizzly bear or something. Why can't he just use his regular Bruce Wayne voice even when he's in the costume? Some things I'll just never get.

Anyways, back to the poker. So I won that $2620 on Friday night for a nice padding of ye olde roll, and then on Saturday midday on a whim I decided to sit down to this, another turbo mtt satellite to the same FTOPS #22:



Blooom! And agin, I immediately unregistered for the tournament itself, which I will never, ever have a sufficient roll online to play in. But that was $5240 in $T over basically three hours of play between Friday late night an Saturday early afternoon, you can't beat that. That shit will allow me to donk around for what? At least a week or two, given the shit I am still suffering regularly on full tilt?

These turbo megasats are the shizzle. The first one, $216 to get in (I just buy in for cash), and the top 13 finishers out of 181 win the seats. And it's turbo, so it suits my game great and allows me to make a quick hit one way or the other. 1 hour and 44 minutes later, I net over $2400 despite overcoming a sick dominated suckout against me that had me down to fewer than 10 big blinds about halfway through the tournament when my AKo could not hold up against A9s. And the second mtt sat on Saturday, that one had a $535 buyin with 263 entrants, and the top 50 getting the $2620 seats. 1 hour and 41 minutes later, bloooom! Another $2100 net. Both of these satellites have awesome, awesome odds of winning considering the amount of money at stake, and the shit gets done quizznick. What more can I ask for? Like any turbo mega, it gets a bit hairy and pushfestian at the end there, but in both tournaments I was never close to the bubble line in the last several orbits of either, and I had a relatively easy run in both all things considered.

The trick with the turbo megasats is actually fairly simple. You have to be highly aggro, which is to say that if you get AK for example, you are basically getting it allin and hoping to get called. If youget a pocket pair Tens or higher, you're basically getting it allin and hoping to get called and take your chances. Otherwise, you just need to work hard to extract maximum value from every big hand yuo make after the flop, and you really can't afford to let an opportunity to do so pass you up. So you need to get a big stack as early as you can, and then keep your eyes on the stack sizes to make sure you are in position to win at all times, or as close to that as you can. So, for example, if you know there are 200 runners with 1500 starting chips and the top 20 finishers win the seats, then you can easily do some quick math and figure there re 1500 x 200 = 300,000 starting chips in total, and with the final 20 winning the seats, that means that the final average chipstack will be 300,000 / 20 or 15,000 chips. So, if 15,000 will be the average final stack of the 20 winners, then I want to try to build my stack until it is at least 10,000 or 15,000 chips, and then I want to try to preserve that stack size. That's all it takes. Get up to enough chips to win the seat, and then do whatever I have to do to to maintain.

And maintaining in these turbo megasats -- or really in any turbo satellite for that matter -- most definitely does not mean check and fold. It means steal enough to maintain that stack, but don't take any crazy chances when you don't have to. It means call with your monsters, but otherwise you're folding everything unless you are the first one in and have a reasonable shot of stealing the blinds and antes. And one of the keys is definitely to push before getting on the literal bubble when youre within 10 people or so of winning the seats. If you let yourself fold down to the point where you suddenly find yourself on the outside of the ITM positions looking in, you've already fucked up by waiting too long. Once I get myself into the top 20 spots when 20 spots will eventually win seats in the tournament, it is my job to steal when I can, and to resteal when it makes sense, to ensure that I do not allow myself to drop out of those ITM spots without a fight or without getting unlucky.

Also this weekend, I ran down to 24th again in the 50-50 on full tilt. I absolutely pwn that structure. In this tournament, I was actually dealt four separate premium hands, which is about 200% more than usual for me. Sounds good, right? Well, unfortunately, my AA lost to KK allin preflop about 3/4 of the way through the field, a disturbing trend that has seen me lose I think 9 of the last 11 times I have picked up AA vs KK, and otherwise I was dealt QQ three times and went 0 for 3 with them. It was not a good night for cards. And yet somehow I stole and restole my way to the final three tables, but eventually ran KTo into A2s and could not stop n go my way to victory thanks to my opponent flopping a flush draw and one overcard. What can you do, it was still another great run for me in the 5050 tournament on top of what was otherwise already a large weekend for me at the tables.

Unfortunately my weekend success most definitely did not extend to the FTOPS Main Event on Sunday night. The play in this thing was definitely horrible overall (what else is new), and that worked to my benefit by helping me to nearly 18k in chips from the 5k starting stack about three hours in. But eventually the exact same stuff full tilt has been pulling on me for weeks caught up with me, as I raised UTG of all places with the hammer and then went on to flop 72J. I got the guy in for a pot-sized bet on the flop, and another nearly-pot-sized bet on the offsuit King on the turn. Then on the rivered 9 I reverse hoyed the guy for his last 3500 chips or so, and of course he called and showed? Pocket 9s. You gotta love that. I make the hammer play of a lifetime, get big bets in on both streets, the guy can't lay down 99 with the Jack or the King on the board despite my UTG raise, and then the two outer on the river basically depleted me, taking about 90% of my stack. Yes I managed to aggro my way back from 2500 chips to over 13k, but the damage had already been done. I was finished as soon as I nailed two pairs with the hammer after an UTG raise but then lost to the 2 outer on the river. Eventually, once again getting short, I raised with K7s in the cutoff and got called by A6s of the exact same suit. No doubt how that one ended up, and IGH around 1000th out of over 4800 entrants. It was a good run, but a very poor ending despite outlasting more than 3000 anusheads.

Not that I can complain after the weekend I had online. Overall I netted more than 5k in pure profits, and more importantly I had a fuckin fun time doing it. I still need to find a way to avoid getting sucked out on when I'm way way ahead in key spots though if I expect to last real deep in anything big. Not sure what I'll be focusing on this week now that the FTOPS has come and gone once again, but I'm hoping to try to enjoy myself a little bit in a few weeks I have off in between jobs. That, and hopefully not watch my former company implode before my very eyes under the weight of an increasingly horrid financial crisis in this country and around the world.

Dont-Want-To-Play Tilt

I donked very much on purpose out of the FTOPS on Monday night, around the middle of the first hour. For a $1060 buyin. That's all you need to know about my mindset right now. I literally called an allin reraise with of all things the dreaded JackAce. And it's not like I thought there was a chance in hike that I was ahead.

Similarly, I donked my way all the way up to 3rd place out of around 300 remaining in the 50-50 last night. But then I suffered one stoopid bad beat that took half my chips, and from there I literally tossed into the garbage my still top-80 stack. On purpose. With 83o or some shit against a tight preflop raiser who was obviously calling my push.

I just didn't give a crap, and I didn't want to be playing poker.

Not sure what I've done in the past when faced with this feeling, although I remember feeling it (several times) before. Does that mean I play tonight or take another day off? I suppose only time will tell.

Miami Don final tabled one more tournament on Blowdog in the afternoon, and still another final table in the evening on Monday. That guy is really figuring shit out after a long time chasing the mtt dream without really getting the whole game about late-stage tournament play. There is almost nothing better than watching a friend advance his game like that. Hopefully Don will take some time to write about some of the changes he has made to his game almost overnight in the past few days that have brought him such awesome results.

Maybe he can teach me a thing or two about having the right mindset to play a tournament these days.

I have more questions about major areas in my life at this moment than I've probably had in quite some time. I'm not sure if that is contributing to my general poker malaise or what, but I'm just not focused on the game like I need to be if I expect to actually play the the game properly. Much of the uncertainty in my life should (hopefully) be taken care of over the next few days, so perhaps once that is done I can get back to my normal routine. For now I have no plans to play any more large-buyin FTOPS events, as believe me when I say I am just throwing my money away. Literally.

Hey, at least I write when I'm running bad. Personally I find it really cheapens the whole blogging experience if I only post when I am on a hot streak. To me this feeling of frustration and just lack of focus and desire to play is part of the fun in a sick way, part of the real poker experience. At least, everyone goes through it, some more often than others, and when you read here you've always gotten a real-world view of poker from the eyes of a regular tournament player. It ain't all fun n games folks, especially for an old tilter like me.

See ya around. Maybe I'll donk it up at some super low limit cash tonight or something to try and clear my head. Who knows.

Weekend Recharge

Man. A nice weekend of no poker whatsoever. No mtts. No sngs. No frigging FTOPS. And I have got to say, I am feeling gooooood this morning. You know it's bad when just staying away from the game for a few days feels so dam good.

I have really taken some sick losses lately. I don't mean in big spots so much (though many have been), but rather some just disgusting hands the way they all played out in the end. I'm still seething over getting pokerstarsed hard in Pauly's tournament last week, and that was a full week ago for crying out loud. But pokerstars has previously pissed me off so much that I didn't play there for a fucking year, and it's sad how quickly I get reminded why. When some f-wad is literally trying to lose and then stars hands him the most recockulous flop imaginable in a totally unreadable situation to stack my far better hand, it just brings me right back to all those feelings I've had over most of the past few years about stars. I don't know what I'm actually trying to say, because it's not like I actually believe that pokerstars if fixed or anything -- I've had far too much success on that site to think it is anything but totally on the up-and-up just like full tilt -- but that doesn't stop my brain from recognizing the patterns on the sites and reacting to them. When dickheads are calling large preflop reraises with 75o and then flopping straights against high pocket pairs, with A2s and then flopping trip 2s, it has to make any thinking person wonder why they keep playing at that site.

And the shit hasn't just been happening on stars either. It's just been a bad couple of weeks for me for sure. That's why this weekend was so enjoyable for me. On a whim I decided to take my girls home to my parents' house for the weekend, where they absolutely love to go and hang out with their grandparents, swim in the pool and eat some good old-fashioned Philly food. I will admit to having eaten not one but two Philly cheesesteaks over just the four meals I was home with them this weekend, and dam is that shit good. It's sad, really, how impossible it is to get a truly good Philly steak anywhere in New York City. I mean, this is the biggest, baddest, best city in the world, and the food from all walks of life and all ethnicities and geographic areas is known the world around, and yet you can't get a dam Philly steak anywhere to save your life. Oh sure, plenty of restaurants have a Philly steak on the menu, but when you actually order it, it's not thinly-shaved top round steak grilled in succulent frying oil on a fresh, fluffy Philly-style bun. Typically it is some crappy filet mignon, sliced maybe 4 or 5 times and then laid out on a toasted piece of garlic bread or some shit. As a Philly guy, let's just say it is a major insult and leave it at that.

Anyways, this weekend I chowed down on some real Philly steak right from the Philadelphia area, had a blast with my kids, and completely avoided poker. Until I got back late on Sunday and found perennial tournament hater Miami Don not only running way deep in the Bodog 250k guaranteed for one of his biggest tournament scores ever, but I also learned that Don went nuts this weekend and cashed for another two large or so in a few other mtt's over the past few days. Seeing another blogger really start figuring shit out mtt-wise is what it's all about, and it being Don is especially cool for me since we have spent so much time together chatting about the game, about tournament strategy, and really just bitching to each other about the successes we wish we were having in our respective poker pursuits.

So that right there was my one and only poker highlight of the weekend, and I have to say that I liked it that way. Now for tonight I had previously qualified for this $1060 buyin FTOPS nlh tournament that I have played I think once before, and I am inclined to give it a go again tonight after a weekend away to recharge. If I'm not feeling it I will surely unregister and keep the nice wad of cash for another day, but one of these days I figure I will play well and avoid the sickening suckouts which have twice dusted me out just short of the money in the full tilt 1k buyin events and hit a nice score. I certainly feel up to the challenge myself, even though I have to acknowledge that the 1k buyin tournaments are a much, much harder field to play against than my usual $26 and $50 rabble. So come on by tonight during the 9pm ET 1k FTOPS event and see if I am still alive and kicking, and otherwise maybe I'll see you elsewhere on the felt during the evening's pokerings.

FTOPS IX

So the FTOPS is upon us once again, with the first event of FTOPS IX slated to go off on Wednesday evening at 9pm ET. Given my stated focus on playing in the bigger cash tournaments out there, I am always a real FTOPS whore, which will be especially true this time around since the last time the FTOPS ran in May, I was completely out of pocket thanks to a little dose of mononucleosis. Fun times as that was, I'm definitely looking forward to making some runs in this month's FTOPS tournament series, which I believe is the biggest and longest of any FTOPS series yet run by full tilt -- now 25 total events and I believe $15 million in guaranteed prize money. Today I wanted to take a look at the entire schedule of events and see which ones I plan on playing and which I might consider taking a shot at, even if it means buying in direct for cash. This is actually the first time I have ever sat down and looked at the entire schedule, so me doing this is more for me than it even is for you guys, but here is the full schedule of the 25 events comprising FTOPS IX, along with any comments I have after each:

Event #1
Wednesday August 6th
21:00 ET $200 + $16
NL Hold 'em $1,000,000

This first event of the FTOPS is one I have played in in basically every single FTOPS series that has run since I've been a full tilt tournament guy, as the series always begins with a standard-buyin $216 no-limit holdem tournament. This one is no exception, and I'm expecting it will be really huge since they've been running a billion satellites into this thing over the past few weeks. It's a bit late at this point, but the best ways to play into this thing on the cheap are either the nightly $10 rebuy turbo satellite that runs somewhere shortly around 9:50pm ET every night heading up to the onset of the FTOPS, or the incredibly soft $75 one-table sngs that run at all times and which pay out seats to the top 3 out of 9 finishers.


Event #2
Thursday August 7th
14:00 ET $240 + $16
PL Omaha/8
Knockout $200,000

Would love to play this one as I did two FTOPS series ago, but the timing in the middle of the day and with me leaving my current job in a couple of weeks, it's just not going to happen. This is a kickass tournament though, I highly encourage all you suckbox luckdonks out there to get in on the draw-heavy Omaha action. You know who you are.


Event #3
ThursdayAugust 7th
21:00 ET $200 + $16
NL Hold 'em
4 x Shootout
6-Max $250,000

This looks new to me, although recall that I did not play at all in FTOPS VIII so it might have been in there as well. I suspect I will be buying in direct to this one on Thursday night.


Event #4
Friday August 8th
14:00 ET $300 + $22
NL Hold 'em
1 rebuy and 1 add-on
6-Max $600,000

Another kickass tournament that I won't be playing in because of the timing. Personally I wish the 1r1a FTOPS event could be $216 buyin instead of $322, but in a way the larger buyin isn't so bad since it is only a maximum investment of under a grand. Maybe next time around for me.


Event #5
Friday August 8th
21:00 ET $200 + $16
Stud $100,000

Stud tournament? Blech.


Event #6

Saturday August 9th
14:00 ET $500 + $35
PL Omaha
6-Max $300,000

Here's another one for the suckboxes out there. The timing makes this one a no-go for me but I'm sure some of the omadonks will have a blast spending a grand to qualify and then dropping the 5 hundy when some longshot draw sucks out at the river.


Event #7
Saturday August 9th
16:30 ET TBD $100 + $9
NL Hold 'em
Rebuy $500,000

Not a huge fan of big-buyin rebuy tournaments, but at $100 a pop I do like the setup here and wish the time were later so I could get in on some of this. I don't mind missing it thought as the donkery is sure to be fast and furious early in this thing.


Event #8
Sunday August 10th
14:00 ET $240 + $16
NL Hold 'em
6-Max Knockout $500,000

Badass tournament right here. Shorthanded, knockout and a nice buyin level should combine for a super fun event. Again there's no way I'm playing a 2pm Sunday event but for those of you who like to frequent the Sunday Brawl, this one should be a no-brainer.

Event #9
Sunday August 10th
16:00 ET $500 + $35
NL Hold 'em
Heads Up $500,000

More badass. One of the few setups where I do think $500 is a good buyin level is in the heads-up tournaments. Once again Sunday at 4pm ain't happening for me but if I had the time and the cash I would be in here for sure.


Event #10
Sunday August 10th
18:00 ET $300 + $22
NL Hold 'em $1,500,000

This is another tournament that has run in this same time slot in basically every FTOPS for a couple of years now, and also one to which full tilt runs copious satellites to allow anyone who wants to get in and has a modicum of tournament skill to win his or her seat. Personally I have already won 3 if not 4 seats to Event #10 this time around, which was the same story in the last FTOPS I played in because they not only have excellent 1-table sngs for the $322 nlh tournament, but they also run regular nightly mtt satellites to it for a $50 buyin, I think maybe at 10:40pm ET every night, or something right around there. That nightly mtt sat is a great place to run into some bloggers as well as it is one of the best values around for your money in mtt play.

Event #11
Monday August 11th
14:00 ET $200 + $16
Limit Hold'em $200,000

Omg thank god this one is a Monday at a bad time. Let the Euros have their little limit tournament and save the real poker for that evening.


Event #12
Monday August 11th
21:00 ET $1,000 + $60
NL Hold 'em
6-Max $1,500,000

This is the one I mentioned yesterday that I am really looking forward to given how infrequently I get to play events with 1k buyins. The way to get in to this one is to qualify in the $165 buyin satellites that run I think several times nightly, most notably for my schedule at 10:20pm ET every night leading up to the FTOPS. The best part about these sats which themselves have that steep $165 buyin is that full tilt is smart about it, and they run nightly turbo supersatellites to get into the $165 events for the couple of hours preceding the satellite every day of the week. I've still never cashed in a 1k buyin event on full tilt, although I have come sickeningly close once in the FTOPS and once in the regular Monday 1k, so I'm hopeful I can do more than I have in the past in this one when it goes off in a couple weeks.


Event #13
TuesdayAugust 12th
14:00 ET $200 + $16
HA (half PL Hold 'em,
half PL Omaha) $200,000

Bad time for me, but a fun game with half holdem and half Omaha high. The best part is, the pot-limit structure as opposed to no limit definitely favors the more skilled players as opposed to the two-card push monkeys that we all know and love.


Event #14
Tuesday August 12th
21:00 ET $500 + $35
HORSE $300,000

Here we have my biggest money drain so far in this FTOPS, as I have probably played 4 different satellites mostly at $75 apiece without success to qualify for this bad boy. Sometimes I really can't believe I'm the same guy who was so strong in HORSE back a couple of years now, and it seems like forever ago that I managed to win the weekly Sunday HORSE 30k guaranteed tourney on full tilt. I plan to make a few more attempts here in the coming week or so, but I'm not going to go nuts with it, and at $535 to get in, I really hope I don't just buy in direct. From my view, if I can't find a way to satellite in to this event for a reasonable price, then I don't belong playing in there either.


Event #15
Tuesday August 12th
21:00 ET $200 + $16
NL Hold 'em
Turbo $500,000

I will most definitely be in this event, as turbo mtts are one of the secret pleasures in my poker mtt life. It's a fairly new FTOPS event, but I believe it is the one and only tournament I actually made the time to play in May when I was bedridden, and I cashed it and ran well doing so. Best part about this one is that the whole thing is probably done in just over two hours start to finish. Like I said, there's almost no way I miss this thing, and although I do not recall seeing many satellites to it thus far, I will fork over the cash to get in direct if that's the way it has to be.


Event #16
Wednesday August 13th
14:00 ET $200 + $16
Omaha/8 $200,000

I would love to play a good old-fashioned O8 tournament as this is a game I have had a fair amount of success in over time, but unfortunately the Euro-friendly time once again is shizz for me so I will have to pass. But that won't stop me from continuing to compete in the many sng satellites to this event, which are soft as balls, and then just unregistering and keeping the $T.


Event #17
Wednesday August 13th
21:00 ET $300 + $22
NL Hold 'em
6-Max Rebuy $1,000,000

Hoy says no to $300 rebuy tournaments. Some aggro donk with a huge bankroll though will win a pretty penny when all is said and done here. My guess is no bloggers really try to run an event like this though, myself definitely included.


Event #18
Thursday August 14th
14:00 ET $500 + $35
NL Hold 'em
3 x Shootout $300,000

Once again the timing is wrong for us working stiffs in the U.S., and of all structures I am not really a shootout guy in any event.


Event #19
Thursday August 14th
21:00 ET $300 + $22
Mixed Hold'em
6-Max $300,000

I mentioned yesterday that I recently qualified for this tournament, and I'm actually really looking forward to it. Yeah I'm not a huge limit holdem fan, but I've read all the "bibles" of limit play and I can play it well despite its donkish nature as a game that generally rewards and really forces drawing hands to stick around and suck out. And mixing it with half no-limit really makes for an entirely different feel than a straight dickass limit tournament. Definitely my preferred way to get in to this thing are the regular $105 sng satellites that are always filling up on full tilt.


Event #20
Friday August 15th
14:00 ET $200 + $16
NL Hold 'em
6-Max $400,000

Nothing like some good old-fashioned 6-max nlh, even though this isn't a game I've spent any real time playing for over a year now. If I'm around that Friday night, I will make an attempt to get in this thing. That said, this will also be my last official day at my current employer, so I might likely be hammered out of my mind.


Event #21
Friday August 15th
21:00 ET $300 + $22
Razz $150,000

I'm pretty sure only a monkey plays online razz at this buyin limit. I haven't been sucked into playing this event in any FTOPS yet, and I won't be starting now.


Event #22
Saturday August 16th
14:00 ET $2,500 + $120
NL Hold 'em
Two Day Event $2,000,000

Someday maybe I will play in this thing. But not this time around. Two days including afternoons over a weekend is not happening for me. Plus I imagine I'll still be sleeping off quite a hangover after my Friday night end-of-work festivities.


Event #23
Saturday August 16th
16:30 ET $100 + $9
PL Omaha
Rebuy $350,000

I'd love to play any $100 PLO rebuy tournament, but #1 I am not nearly luckboxian enough to survive in this thing with fewer than 15 or 20 rebuys, and #2 the time is bad at 4:30pm ET on a Saturday. So no-go for me, but the luckboxes ought to be out in force for this one.


Event #24
Sunday August 17th
14:00 ET $120 + $9
NL Hold 'em
Knockout $400,000

Again, Sunday at 2pm ET is bad for me, but otherwise I would love to play any knockout tournament with a low-ish buyin in the FTOPS.


Main Event
Sunday August 17th
18:00 ET $500 + $35
NL Hold 'em $2,500,000

Obviously I would love to play in the Main Event, especially given that juicyass $2.5M guarantee, and I am more than willing to buy in for cash although I'm quite sure I can satellite in between now and the 17th if I make it a point to do so. They have a nice $20 nightly rebuy satellite that is quite winnable compared to the other straight $26 sats they run, plus there are usually a few sng satellites going as well, and of course there is always that juicy night-before megasat with the $50 buyin where 1 out of every 10 runners will win their seat. Odds are around 50-50 I would say of me being in there, although if I do win a satellite seat then I might get up the nerve to attempt to get pre-approval for this one.


OK this post is much longer than even I intended, so I'll get it up there now. Look for me tonight in the megasatellite to FTOPS #1 that will run tonight I think at 9:45pm ET. I've already won multiple seats to this event but as I mentioned above the megasatellites are simply the very best value out there for anyone who understands solid tournament and satellite poker.

FTOPS #14 Cash, and Playing Turbo

On Tuesday night I played and cashed in my first FTOPS event of FTOP VIII, which was FTOPS #14, the $216 turbo no-limit holdem event. The tournament featured 2140 runners, making for over 80 grand to be paid to first place, and payouts to the top 234 finishers.

Being that this was a turbo tournament, the strategy is basically completely different from any regular-speed event out there. If you recall from yesterday I was estimating that the cash arrives sometime before two hours is up, and this one held true to form. But given that you basically need to survive a very short, very quick tournament, the focus right from the getgo needs to be on doubling up fairly quickly. If you let yourself blind down from the 2000-chip starting stack to 1100 chips, then even if you double up at the end of the first hour, you are basically dead in the water. What I'm looking to do in any turbo event like this is to double up sometime in the first half hour or so if at all possible, and I will even take some chances or make some questionable plays to possibly get into such a situation if the conditions seem right.

About 15 minutes in to FTOPS #14, I got my chance as I was dealt pocket Queens utg. I raised and found one caller in late position, and we took a heads-up flop of Q54 rainbow. I had flopped the joint, with no reasonable draws available, so I checked my nuts since there was basically no card that could come on the turn that would scare me. He checked behind. The turn brought an awesome card for me, an Ace sooted to one of the flop cards, and this way when I bet about 90% of the pot I got quick-called by the late position player who obviously had an Ace. Then on the river, knowing my strategy is to double up early, I went for broke and pushed allin for my last 1200 or so chips into an 800-chip pot, and my opponent thought for about five seconds before calling with A9, having made two pairs on the river. Lucky card and lucky hand for me, which is exactly what I'm gonna need to make a run in any large turbo mtt.

Five minutes later I look down to find AA in the hijack (one spot to the right of the cutoff seat). The action folded to me so I put in my standard 3x raise to 240 chips, and the big blind reraised me 3x to 720, leaving himself just under 2000 chips behind. This is always an interesting situation, because of course with AA and especially in a turbo mtt I want to get it allin as early in the hand as possible, but I would hate to blow a guy off of JJ or QQ or AK with an allin reraise here. Knowing that this opponent had put in the last raise with his hand, I opted for what I usually like to do in this situation which is just the smooth call. Now, with over 1500 chips in the pot and just under 2k in his remaining stack, the odds are going to be quite high that he will c-bet here -- probably allin, if he has a clue -- regardless of what comes on the flop. He can't really put me on pocket Aces because of my smooth call of his preflop reraise, so if anything he likely has me on two high cards or a middle pair and going for the preflop takedown without any callers when I open-raised from the hijack. Anyways, once again things went exactly according to plan and my opponent pushed in half of his approximately 2000 chips on the all-rag flop, and I thought for a few seconds before raising him allin. He agonized, and then, shockingly, folded, sending over 3500 chips my way while leaving himself with just around 1000 chips remaining. Maybe he was just restealing with air all along, or maybe he had a hand like AJ and figured he was clearly behind my raising range here? In any event, this hand boosted me to 59th place out of 1780 players remaining, still at just 9:24pm ET.

In keeping with my hoped-for strategy coming in, these two early near-doubles were enough to put me in good shape for the rest of the first hour without any other large pots. I won a medium-sized pot when I called a shorty's button-push with my KTs and outran his A8s. I was dealt AA again at 9:46pm ET and took down the pot uncontested before the flop, at which point I was in 97th place of 1131 remaining. Otherwise, I won just two other pots in the first hour, both on preflop steals where I put in an open-raise -- in these two cases with 98o and with 62s -- from the back half of the table in situations where the stack sizes behind me were not so large nor so small that they were likely to want any action without being the first one in to the pot. This is a key feature of any turbo mtt, and really of any regular large mtt once you're down in the real end game -- with medium-sized stacks behind you, you simply have to be willing to steal some blinds and antes once they get big enough to be worth stealing, and it will be nearly impossible for anyone to survive deep into a tournament like this without habitually stealing in the right spots.

And by stealing in the right spots I don't mean raising utg with QJs at a full table just because the large big blind is going to be hitting your stack next hand. And I don't even mean stealing with A5s from 3rd position at a full table either. I'm talking about being on the back half of the table, no one else is in yet, and you open-raise from say the cutoff or the button. Notice I didn't mention what you hold in your hand, because it is simply not relevant. These are not value raises or even semi-value raises like one might argue the QJs or A5s raise I mentioned above could be. I am not talking about putting in chips because you think the hand you've been dealt has an expectation to win this pot in a showdown. I mean purely putting in raises based on position and position alone. Yes you need to be careful at some point lest it become obvious to everyone that you are literally raising with any two cards on your button or cutoff every single time the action folds to you, but if you let yourself get too cautious or play too scared, and you will have no chance whatsoever in a turbo mtt. None. Zippo. Not even if you get lucky with your starting cards. Not even Astin-lucky.

Anyways, at the first break I was happily still alive, sitting on 7280 chips and in 223rd place out of 675 remaining. Remember, the top 234 finishers were slated to receive payouts in this event, so I was getting close. And in the second hour of these turbo events, the blinds and antes are already starting off huge, so I looked for that number of 675 remaining to start dropping off fast right from the getgo in Hour 2.

It is fitting given all that I said above that the first three hands I won in the second hour of FTOPS #14 were all open-steals from the button or cutoff. I successfully stole pots in the first 20 minutes of Hour 2 with J5o and 87s from the cutoff, and with Q4o from the big blind. As I said, this is what it takes to survive in a large turbo mtt, and I got quite lucky in a sense here in that no one pushed back on any of these steals from the blinds, which would have forced me to either fold out 25% of my stack or to call allin with a crappy hand. So I lucked out there, as I did when I found AQs in the small blind and then the stally short stack on the button open-pushed ahead of me. I held up against his A3 and suddenly I was in 120th place of 390 remaining.

Then it was back to stealing. I stole a pot at 10:21pm with T6s, and then I open-raised from early position with A9o, a risky move that once again would put me in a terrible position of folding a big pot or calling off with a dominated hand if I got reraised, but as always I am looking to win this tournament, not to merely cash, so I wanted to take a chance at a time when people were already looking at the bubble and less likely to play when not first-in. It's amazing really when people start looking at the bubble in these big turbo mtts. It was 10:24pm -- a mere 84 minutes after the start of this tournament -- and you could visibly see people feeling the pressure of the bubble. The stalling among the short stacks was already in full force, and the medium stacks were agonizing over several decisions but invariably deciding to fold rather than risk a chance at cashing in a situation where they could be dominated or even racing.

At 10:26pm ET, I was in 146th place of 289 remaining, with remember 234 getting paid. In turbo mtt terms, this is reeeaaaaaal close, like minutes-away kind of close. People just cannot hold on to their stacks when the blinds advance as ridiculously fast and high as they do in a turbo format. It's really a fun format to play as long as you are fully comfortable stealing and restealing with nothing against weakness and pushing some perceived edges. A few hands later the action folded to me in the hijack and I figured I would really take advantage of the bubble pressure by going for another steal, this time with K7o. It's not a terrible hand, but again not something I am raising for value here, that's for sure. But at that point down to 255 remaining players and just 21 away from the cash, I figured no way any of the medium stacks behind me play without AK or a high pocket pair, and we all know the odds of that happening in a given hand to one of four players remaining behind me are quite low. So I raised it up, putting in about 25% of my stack once again thanks to the ridick blinds and antes, and mercifully I once again took it down. That bubble is a powerful beast, affecting the play of nearly everyone but the very large stacks as it grows ever closer to bursting.

At precisely 10:34pm ET, just 94 minutes after the cards went in the air, that moment arrived and the cash bubble burst, with me sitting in 136th place out of 231 players remaining. It felt nice to cash in the only FTOPS event I have played this time around, and having satellited in for one attempt at a $75 sng made it extra nice. As I pondered what I could do now to try to make my next big move to the top of the leaderboard now that the cash bubble was out of the way, I look down to find pocket Kings in the hijack, and before I could even process my good luck, I had a guy with a medium stack like mine push allin ahead of me from early position. Yes!

Of course I got it allin before the flop with him, and he flipped up I think pocket Tens. It was great, I was around an 80% favorite with my Kings, but alas it was not meant to be. He rivered (of course) a Ten and bested my Kings, my first bad luck of the tournament on the very hand after the cash was reached. Instead of being a top-25 stack of 200 players remaining, I was crippled to just over 2k in chips and within the bottom 20 players left in the tournament. I did manage to suck out myself and double up with 87o against someone else's KK, but coming from the chip stack I was at the time, it became exceedingly difficult to stay afloat and basically I was required to steal the blinds and antes more than once every orbit just to keep my stack from dwindling, which is the worst possible place to be in in a turbo event like this with very low Ms and quickly-accelerating blinds.

At 10:43pm ET, just nine minutes after the bubble burst, I was in 111th place out of 147 left, and really in a desperate situation blinds-wise and M-wise. With the 1600-chip big blind about to hit me on the very next hand, I pushed allin from utg with of all things the Hammer, and got called by one player in middle position. Any pocket pair above 7s would leave me severely behind, but instead my opponent flipped up AQ and I had some life, essentially with no different odds against his hand than if I were holding J6, two unders vs two overs which is somewhere in the neighborhood of the upper 30's percentage chance. It was a situation I preferred instead of blinding away a third of my stack on the very next hand, and then another quarter of the remainder on the next, not even counting the then 200-antes I think. Unfortunately, I was unable to spike a 7 or a 2 and I busted from the tournament.

In the end I was eliminated in 127th place out of 2140 runners, and had done so over an hour and 45 minutes of fast and furious action that you almost never seen on full tilt because they so rarely run the large turbo mtts. Personally, I loved this event and I hope they do it again next time the FTOPS comes around. Although I acknowledged yesterday and I mentioned it again here today that so much of survival in a turbo event comes down to getting those one or two big hands early, and in not pushing into someone with a big hand late. The luck factor increases measurably from your standard-format mtt where there is just much more time to wait for good cards and more play early when the stacks are relatively deep. But as I also mentioned in my post on Tuesday, this is a format that my game is very well-adapted for. Anyone who knows they need to focus on stealing more near the bubble and otherwise in the mid- and late-game should consider playing some of the many turbo satellites that full tilt runs on a nightly basis. They don't have quite the craziness of a large turbo mtt, but even those formats with fewer than 100 runners will still present any player with the opportunity -- really the necessity -- to steal the blinds repeatedly like it's your job. It's a very fun way to play poker, and like I said I really dig the turbo mtt format, and I'm not just saying that because I cashed.

Oh yeah if you're wondering, I made $492 and change for my 127th place finish in FTOPS #14. So not nearly deep enough to get to the big money, but like I said I'll take it for a $75 investment and for the result of the only FTOPS tournament I have played so far this time around. At the very least it's a nice confidence boost after a couple days of running bad, and will fund my playing a couple more of those 10:45pm ET mtt satellites for $109 into the FTOPS Main Event on Sunday afternoon at 6pm ET.

Congrats to Chippy McStacks whom I saw won the HOE Skills event on Tuesday. I believe that is two events won now for Chippy, so at least for one more day the upcoming BBT3 Tournament of Champions did not get harder and in fact grows one person smaller. With two wins by Chippy, two by corron and I believe three by Lucko, that should take the planned 55-person ToC down to 51 by my count. Who would've thunk it, 51 blogger donkeys playing in a freeroll where $28,000 will be awarded to the top 4 finishers. Awesome.

See you tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt for the Mookie (password as always is "vegas1"). I'm feeling kinda frisky today, so I am guessing maybe out in the first hour tonight for me after last week's rare final table appearance.

Short Night in the MATH, and FTOPS Turbo Tonight

70 runners came out for Mondays at the Hoy this week, as the crowds have been growing a lil' bit for the Hoy over the past few weeks as the BBT3 boils down to its last three weeks. 70 contestants once again means the top 8 finishers are paid out, with a total of $1680 in the prize pool for the tournament. So our winner once again will clear over $500 of pure profit for their efforts in my weekly 6-max nlh tournament.

Man did I have a short night in the Hoy, busting near the bottom of the pack after exactly 36 minutes of play. A couple seats to my right was Tuscaloosa John, who as most of you know has been crushing the BBT3 so far with his typically TAGgy brand of tournament poker, and Tusca got off to a shortish stack early, I don't remember how. But as a result, he was stealing more liberally than usual from his button and even cutoff as I recall. I took advantage a couple of times, including flopping top pair no kicker and checkraising him out of a pot on the flop with a rare minraise from me. My kicker was literally a 3 so I did not want to stay in that pot for any more chips than my minraise committed me to on the flop, so I got lucky there I suppose.

But then my focus on Tusca's stealing got me into big trouble, a leak in my game that I simply have to get better about. I'm working on it, but sometimes I put too much stock in what I know to be true about the way someone plays, without giving enough credence to the fact that everyone picks up monster hands sometimes. So anyways, Tusca steal-raises from his button yet again, maybe the 6th or 7th time he had open-raised in that position already on the night, and I opt to smooth call from the small blind with K6s. The hand is nothing great of course, but it's soooted and frankly I figured ahead of or very close to Tusca's stealing range here. The big blind also smooth calls. The flop comes K87, I think with two of a suit, but not my suit. I could lead out into a nice-sized pot for the early part of this tournament, but instead I figured I know Tusca's game and he is going to c-bet here if we just check to him, and then I can checkraise him good and he'll have to fold to my top pair. So I checked, the big blind checked, and as planned Tusca bet around two-thirds the size of the pot I think. Perfect.

Now I look at the stack sizes for the first time in the hand. Clear mistake #1 by me not to have been hyper aware of this already. But Tusca's 1600 chips (starting stacks in the MATH are 3000) means that any raise I put in from Tusca's c-bet will clearly commit him. So I am going to just push allin if I raise at all -- might as well maximize my fold equity, right? So then since I'm just now on the flop realizing that I'm playing for a full half my stack, I pause to re-evaluate the hand. I have K6 on a K87 board. Sure someone could be in there with two pairs or top pair with a higher kicker, but what are the chances? Tusca has been stealing almost from the beginning with 90% of his hands into unopened pots on the button. I just flopped top pair. And, Tusca hasn't really shown any real strength so far in this hand at all -- no reraising or anything, just a steal-raise from the button and then a standard c-bet. Odds are strong that, given my top pair, he does not have top pair and I just have no reason to believe he has anything else ahead of me. So, I go for it and move allin. Tusca, because he is a Man, thinks for a while before calling allin with? AK. Top pair top kicker. Suh-weet read, Hoy wtg. Half my stack down the drain, bad play and bad read by me, way too early in the tournament to make a move like that with a nice stack.

But never fear, I got my chance to double back up pretty soon afterwards when maybe one orbit later I picked up pocket Kings, I believe again in the big blind. Awesome. Even better is that I think it was Chip who opened utg with a minraise. The utg minraise, coming from a solid player like Chip especially, screams out like a strong hand to me, one just begging to be called or reraised. If this guy has Aces to my Kings with me on a half-stack now, then so be it I am going home. But otherwise I viewed this as a great opportunity for me against a hand that I am likely between a 65 and 82% favorite over. So when the action folds around to me, I take a page out of this guy's book (never thought I'd be saying that) and did the ol' over-raise for value. Chip had raised preflop from 50 to 100, and I pushed in for my last 1500 or so from the blinds with my Kings, fully expecting the call. Chip instacalled, and amazingly it wasn't Aces -- it was pocket Queens. At least I had made a great read to follow up on that terrible read against Tuscaloosa John earlier.

So I'm allin preflop with my KK against cem's QQ, looking to double up back to 3000 chips and get a new lease on life in the MATH after the disastrous hand with Tusca. But the flop came Q89, the river brought a Jack and I could not resuck the inside straight or higher set on the river that I so meritoriously deserved, and IGH. Early. At 10:36pm ET. So it was a night where I made one bad read for a large pot in an over-aggro situation, and then got slammed by the odds when I got myself into a very good situation after a very good read by me. I guess I can live with that, but the past two days saw me play bad and run even worse, after a nice week getting back into the poker swing last week after a couple of weeks away from the game and away from everything but sleeping. For example, the past two nights in the 10:45pm ET FTOPS ME megasat have seen me bust out both times within the first half-hour of play with AKs allin preflop against one time KK and one time JJ. Now, those are both not the worst examples of bad play out there, but the bottom line remains that I am forcing the issue by getting allin in 20 minutes before the flop against raisers and reraisers with AKs. This may be a perfectly great play two hours in to this tournament when the Ms are shrinking and desperation is on the rise. But 20 minutes in, I can make that play if I want to I suppose, but I can't complain when I lose the race (or am dominated like in the first situation). I am just not playing my A game, and I'm running poorly picking up AKs vs KK and AKs vs JJ and losing KK to QQ and stuff like that. It's a bad combination for an aggressive player like me, and one I need to right before I really leak my roll as a result.

Here are some people who did play well enough in the MATH to cash this week:

8. $58.80 -- RNallin
7. $58.80 -- peacecorn
6. $92.40 -- que31dawg
5. $134.40 -- actyper
4. $184.80 -- Wadzilla
3. $243.60 -- Blinders
2. $352.80 -- PokahDave
1. $554.40 -- Shabazz Jenkins

So Shabazz Jenkins, whom I understand to be quite a good player in his own right outside of the BBT3, has finally won his BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat here in the 13th to last event of the tournament series. Shabazz is yet another strong entrant to join in the ToC over the past few weeks, and will only further limit each of our respective expectation from that tournament overall by winning his way in. But as I've written about before, with all the $28,000 just in WSOP prize packages being awarded in the Tournament of Champions, I personally think it should be hard as hell to win, which means getting in as many strong players as we can into the field.

Well that's all I have for you today, as I continue to struggle with my game and my decision-making in the early part of the mtt's I've been playing just lately. In addition to the latest BBT3 Skills Series tournament tonight at 9:30pm ET (password as always is "skillz" and it is open to everyone, I think tonight might be HOE?), I think tonight is the night of the one FTOPS tournament I already qualified for, which is the $216 Turbo nlh event hosted I think by Mandy B, another of the dubious red FTOP pros as far as I'm concerned. So that will go off at 9pm ET, with my guess that the whole thing is completed within 2 1/2 or 3 hours given the redonkulous late-game structure of these turbo events. I'm just hoping to make it through a couple hours or so, which is my estimate of how long it should take to run to the decent money payout positions. And of course there is the Blowdonkey tonight as well if that's how you roll, also I believe at 9pm ET, over on that "other" poker client. So lots of excitement tonight for those of you who like to donk it up ToC-style with the bloggers and/or are interested in a $216 crapshoot
tournament, turbo-style. See you tonight for all the fun and festivities.

Monday Craziness, and When Does the FTOPS Start Again?

Another Monday, another BBT3-enabled Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt:



See you tonight at 10pm ET, password as always is "hammer". $26 buyin shorthanded no-limit holdem is the game, same as ever. 13 events left to win your BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat, so get in the game tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt.

Anyways, as I reflected over the weekend, a bunch of crazy shit actually did happen while I was out of commission for a couple of weeks, most of which I never even had the chance to mention in the blog since I was so dead to the world for about a week and a half or two weeks there.

1. In the feat whose craziness simply cannot be topped, Waffles went and won the BBT3 Player of the Month for April, along with the 2k WSOP preliminary prize package that goes along with it. When we had chatted on the girly at some point before he officially claimed the POM, Waffles said he would not play the actual WSOP with the money unless he wins the Main Event package in the upcoming BBT3 Tournament of Champions. At some point when I caught up on my blog reading after resurfacing sometime last week, I think I saw a post from Waffles that he was considering playing one of the preliminary WSOP events. Waffles, if you're out there, come play the 2k nlh tournament with me on Thursday, June 12 I think it is. You will crush that field I am sure. Anyways I know I was close at some point near the end, and I went on a big run in the middle of the month there, but when I got sick there was simply no chance of me playing. It wasn't a question of heart and it wasn't a question of pain threshold. Those of you who've had mono I am guessing will understand. I could not sit down and play for more than 5 or 10 minutes. Period. And in the end, Waffles was outplaying me thus far in the month, he was leading the race by a decent margin, and he would have gone on to win anyways.

Now at least we all get to see what we thought we'd never even have to think about seeing -- Waffles' spewage after his first big score. All you guys who've won a big tournament or made a big online score for the first time will know what I'm talking about. With 2k sitting in that account, it is gonna be dam hard for Waffles to play smart poker for a while me thinks. It's fun to get to be in that situation, don't get me wrong, but continuing to play smart gets about 10 times harder once you get a little roll to help you not worry about things.

2. I am still trying to figure out wtf happened to Buddy Dank radio while I was gone. I knew something about a new thing called Live Poker Radio, which I had processed as really just a name change, but maybe I was wrong about that. But otherwise, I basically passed out for two weeks with BDR being just BDR, our normal awesome online radio show hosted by Buddy and IT, rolling live and on-air during most of the weeks' private blogger tournament. But then I wake up and like Rip Van fuggin Winkle, now it's officially called Live Poker Radio, and they're broadcasting from the Borgata? WTF?

As you might have guessed I have been unable to listen to BDR or whatever it's called now for the past several weeks, where I am sure most of these details have been hashed and rehashed, but for those of us who haven't been awake enough to listen, can somebody give me the scoop? Are Buddy and IT down in Atlantic City broadcasting this shit live from the Borgata? How often are they broadcasting from there? Whatthephuck is going on with that shit, I have no idea but it sounds really awesome.

3. The quarterly FTOPS series of high-buyin poker tournaments basically started without me even knowing. And if you've read here for a while then you know how rare and odd that really is. Usually I am all about the FTOPS, and I will devote basically the month before the tournament to qualifying for as many FTOPS as seem interesting to me, usually averaging around 30-40% of the buyins spent to qualify for as many events as I want to play. This time around, however, I struggled to stay up to play in the Mookie last Wednesday, and when I logged in to full tilt I suddenly see the graphic up top of the lobby on the client that says FTOPS #1 and has some unnamed, probably horrifically bad red FTP pro's picture on it. I was like "Holy shit, the FTOPS is going on right now already?" So I literally missed the final two weeks of qualifying for the FTOPS before the series started, and as a result of this total lack of ability to plan, I haven't even thought about playing a single event yet. I saw some blogger donkeys qualifying for several seats so far, but I've been too out of it to even know although I have not heard of any big blogger scores so far in this thing.

So here's my plan for this week. The one FTOPS event I did qualify for this weekend in a $69 buyin 1-table sng is the one coming up I think on Tuesday evening, the $216 buyin Turbo nlh tournament. I play a whole lot of turbo tournaments in my nightly satelliting, and this thing definitely sounds interesting to me. Yes it will be quite a crapshoot about 80 or 90 minutes in or so, but it's a crapshoot that I definitely have developed the right game for, so I'm looking forward to that one. I know I say this all the time, but if you have the means, I highly recommend the $75 buyin sng sats to the $216 FTOPS events. They are so choice. You pay $75, and the top three finishers out of 9 players win their seat. It's quick, and it's effective if you know what you're doing. Top 3 out of 9 donkleshits just isn't that hard to do if you know how these things play.

Otherwise, there are probably only a couple of other FTOPS I would realistically play in at this point. I would have loved to have played in tonight's 1k buyin tournament as I have in the past two FTOPS series, and I would have too if not for being sick given how easy this one is to qualify in in one of the many, many satellites they run, but that's not gonna happen this time around. I played in the megasat on Sunday night for the 1k FTOPS event, but I picked up the dreaded open ended straight flush draw early in that one. I say "dreaded" because somehow I always end up allin against some top pair monkey or a higher flush draw, and somehow my oesfd never seems to hit despite being the alleged favorite on the flop to take it down.

Anyways the real plan is to probably play in most of the 9:45pm ET mega satellites this week, which FTOPS will run every night as they always do these days during the FTOPS. For those who don't know, these are almost always $50 buyin tournaments, and they run as mtt satellites, posted on the regular mtt tournament lobby in dark blue font. They are almost always satellites into the following night's FTOPS event, whatever that is, and typically they will take the exact same format as the underlying FTOPS event itself. It's good stuff, and with the advent of $T I can even play a gheyass game like razz where I would never actually drop the actual $322 to actually sit down and be dealt rolled up trips three times an hour at razz. No way. But I'll play it and keep the $T in a second. And with so many seats available in these 9:45 mtt sats -- that's why I always call them megasats -- they are much, much easier to qualify for the FTOPS in. Again, of course, the caveat is If you know what you're doing. To only have to end up in the top 100 finishers out of a 486-person mtt, again, it's just not that hard. Not saying it's a walk in the park, but top 100 out of 486? Come on.

The other thing I will have my eyes on this week are the nightly 10:45pm ET megasats into the FTOPS Main Event. These are typically $100 + $9 buyin mtts, they guarantee at least ten $535 FTOPS ME seats, and on average they probably attract somewhere between 55 and 80 runners a night. So basically it costs $109 to play, which may make these tournaments prohibitive for many of us and that is something I can completely be down with at this buyin level. But again, if you have the means, a 20% chance of satelliting in to the ME every single night this week? I don't care if I win the seat right away tonight, but as long as I am feeling up and awake for it, I will try to get in there every night this week until the FTOPS concludes with the $535 buyin Main Event next Sunday at 6pm ET. And if I do win a seat, then I will try to figure out how to get Hammer Wife to be cool with me playing. Man if they could just move that shit to 8pm instead of 6pm ET, I would be golden. But either way, I will definitely take at least a few cracks at the ME this week, and if I can play my way in for less than the $535 buyin, then I will view my goal for the week as being accomplished.

That, and winning a few more BBT3 tournaments maybe.

See you tonight at 10pm ET for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!