Still Running Gooooood

Well it was another night of the BBT3 and another strong performance from me. I final tabled the Skill Series HA tournament (half PLH and half PLO) this week in my attempt to defend my title after I won my BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat in last week's Stud8 Skills game. This makes I think final tables in four of the last five BBT events. Is that right? Who would've thought it, just a short week ago before my big win. Certainly not me. I had only made "the points" -- which I never even consider for a single millisecond while I play because I'm a Man -- in I think two BBT events prior to this streak. And right here is exactly where I would like to explain to you my secret -- the secret for winning the large-field blonkaments brought about by the BBT.

If only I had any god dam idea. I think I play all the poker games well, and I think I play pretty well in most of the BBT3 tournaments most times I play them. This is certainly not true all the time, but more often than not I show up and I play the games well. I have been wracking my fucking brains trying to figure out what specifically I've been doing differently over the past several tournaments that has me not only lasting, but making the final table repeatedly, always in at least decent chip position, and enabling me to nab my one BBT3 win so far.

My first thought in situations like this is always exactly the same thing: playing tight. I figure, I must be playing tighter if I am lasting longer, especially given my success in the last couple of Skills games, which have seen me take down about 15 or 20 bustout bounties after going literally 11 or 12 Skills games without recording a single one. But you know what? I don't think I am playing tighter, to tell you the honest truth. I have spent a lot of time reviewing my big hands from the past several BBT3 tournaments and I see myself perhaps folding a couple of marginal hands that I might otherwise have played -- the QJo from the cutoff seat in an unopened pot early, for example -- but really I am playing some marginal hands and pushing somewhat hard with them early, midway and late in these tournaments. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not playing stoopid poker as a rule, but when I review some of the plays I've been making in large pots before the last couple tables in these tournaments, I see a lot of marginal stuff going on and lots of chips flying to the middle out of my stack with not a whole lot working for me.

Similarly, I can confirm it is certainly not great cards that have been leading me to so many final tables in these things. I have not been seeing my share of AA and KK in the holdem games, and I'm not flopping quads against other people's flopped boats in the Omaha variants. Those of you who have sat at my table in one of these recent tournaments -- think how many times I am beating you with AA or KK or something. It's just not happening. I've seen guys like PirateLawyer and DonkeyPuncher last night showing lots of AA and winnings lots of big pots with monster starting cards. That ain't me.

So what is it that's working so well for me in the BBT3 blonkaments lately? I think it is a combination of two simple things, neither one of which is a whole lot in my control. First, I am hitting some big hands in very big spots. This does not extend to the quality of my cards in general, but when I've needed to fill a flush near the end of the tournament and I've made a call on 5th street in Stud with just the flush draw against two opponents, I have hit my flush in a big spot. I turned trips in a big spot where my opponent had flopped top and bottom pair earlier this week. In a few key spots, when I have absolutely needed it most, I have come through with a big hand or a big draw or my shit has been holding up. I am running good in that respect.

Also, I am jumping out to big stacks early. In some cases, really big. If you look, I have been chip leader in almost every blonkament of the past week or so with around 20 players left. The early big stack is so key because it enables you to survive and withstand some of these asscock chasemonkeys, especially in the limit games, who otherwise can ruin your night with one idiotic play then ends up costing you big time. When you start with 1500 chips and drop down below 1000 early, it is very difficult to come back to amass, say, a 10k stack because you have to double so many times to get from 900 chips back up to 10k. However, if I can get an early double and be at 3000 chips, and then another double before the first break, then I can get sucked out on, I can take the worst of it a little bit in a 40-60 pot with a smaller stack than mine, and still be more than ok. That is extremely helpful.

Lastly, and to be honest as I review everything this is the most direct conclusion I am drawing: people are playing bad poker against me. I pretty much always get called down with anything by just about anyone, so it stands to reason that when I am hitting some draws and making some nice hands early, I can really amass a stack, and that's just what I've been doing. In Stud8 last week, someone grossly overplayed two low pairs against me from 5th through 7th street with an obvious high hand even though I clearly had Aces over from the betting action and the cards on my own board. In the MATH this week I got lucky and survived an allin call with the hammer early against my opponent's overplayed AK, but then two players donked me like 4500 chips within minutes with crappy one-pair hands or even just primary draws on the turn with 9 outs or fewer and just one card to come. Even last night I got off to a nice double early in PLO when my opponent got stuck playing a not-great Omaha hand and then called off his stack on the turn with two pair and a flush draw on a board with a high straight possibility to get started off hot. It's been happening a lot with me lately, which like I said is partially reflection of the fact that I have been hitting some draws with a bit more frequency than usual, and the fact that people tend to play against me as if I am constantly in there with garbage. Calling me down allin preflop early with shit like JTo, K9s, stuff like that.

A great example of all of these ideas can be found in the hand I profiled yesterday with PirateLawyer from the MATH. Yesterday I reposted the hand history from PL's blog and asked what you guys thought I probably had. Here it is again, from PL's blog:

"Then after a long period of inactivity I play Q5s from the small blind vs. Hoy, who has me covered in the BB. This was a significant mistake in situation selection; I end up spewing a large amount of chips needlessly.

Full Tilt Poker Game #6129182836: Mondays at the Hoy (45101299), Table 9 - 200/400 Ante 50 - No Limit Hold'em - 0:02:52 ET - 2008/04/22
Seat 1: jimdniacc (8,783)
Seat 2: PirateLawyer (20,798)
Seat 4: hoyazo (22,685)
Seat 5: wormmsu (23,121)
Seat 6: BuddyDank (6,596)
jimdniacc antes 50
PirateLawyer antes 50
hoyazo antes 50
wormmsu antes 50
BuddyDank antes 50
PirateLawyer posts the small blind of 200
hoyazo posts the big blind of 400
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to PirateLawyer [Qs 5s]
wormmsu folds
BuddyDank folds
jimdniacc folds
PirateLawyer raises to 1,200
hoyazo calls 800
*** FLOP *** [5d 4h Kh]
PirateLawyer bets 1,400 - middle pair, second kicker = easy c-bet
hoyazo calls 1,400 - Hoy could well be floating here, or he slowplayed preflop
*** TURN *** [5d 4h Kh] [Kd]
PirateLawyer has 15 seconds left to act
PirateLawyer bets 1,900 - time to fire a second shell now that's it's less likely he has a king
hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act
hoyazo raises to 5,700 - this smells like a positional raise but I can only beat a bluff or bottom pair
PirateLawyer has 15 seconds left to act
PirateLawyer calls 3,800 - I decide to call and re-evaluate on the river; I might check-fold or open-shove depending on what comes
*** RIVER *** [5d 4h Kh Kd] [Ks]
PirateLawyer checks - frankly, this card completely surprised me and I froze like a deer in the headlights
hoyazo bets 14,335, and is all in
PirateLawyer has 15 seconds left to act
PirateLawyer has requested TIME
PirateLawyer folds - I reluctantly fold but escape to fight another day
Uncalled bet of 14,335 returned to hoyazo
hoyazo mucks
PirateLawyer has returned
hoyazo wins the pot (16,850)
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 16,850 | Rake 0
Board: [5d 4h Kh Kd Ks]
Seat 1: jimdniacc (button) folded before the Flop
Seat 2: PirateLawyer (small blind) folded on the River
Seat 4: hoyazo (big blind) collected (16,850), mucked
Seat 5: wormmsu folded before the Flop
Seat 6: BuddyDank folded before the Flop

I folded to Hoy's pressure even though I didn't really think he had the goods; all I can beat is a bluff."

The answers you gave in the comments for what I was holding ranged from possibly the case King to make quads, or perhaps a middle pocket pair, but most of you had me on either a busted flush draw, or just flat out air.

What really happened was PL open-raised from the small blind, and given his nature I didn't put PirateLawyer on shit when he goes for the steal in this spot. So his preflop raise in this particular situation told me just about nothing about his hand. If he had been really strong or really weak I suspect he would have smooth called, so his open-raising there told me he probably has a hand between 20th percentile and 80th percentile of all starting hands, but not much less than that. As in, I figured he is open-raising easily with garbage like 86s, T7o, any soooted face card, stuff like that. I barely narrowed his hand range at all, but to be clear I had him on total ATC garbage all through the hand.

I was right, but then I was wrong. PL was playing utter garbage just as I had suspected, in there it turns out with Q5s. It's a blechy, below average hand and one he could have just laid down with me and my big stack behind him given his position in the tournament and his stack size at the time, but I am ok with the float by him as long as he is not going to lose too much to the hand if he doesn't flop strong to it.

The flop comes 45K with two hearts. I figure, I know PL's game and he is c-betting me here probably 90% of the time, especially on a non-threatening flop like this, so again I have him on total air here. I was right -- Q5s is garbage -- but PL had unbeknownst to me picked up a very low second pair on the flop that is likely to be fourth pair by the time the hand is over with. Still, when PL bet out 1400 chips, I still had him on basically ATC, certainly nothing that made me think he had a pocket pair or a King, so I smooth called. I like the smooth call of the guy I think has air on the flop, almost better than raising on the flop sometimes. The smarter aggro players are more scared of the flop smooth call than the flop raise anyways most of the time, so I like to mix in smooth calling my aggressive opponents on the flop with air once in a while just to keep them guessing.

Then the turn brought the second King, and when PL bet out again, I was more sure than ever that he did not have a King in there or anything else good. So now I figure was the time for the raise, so I popped him 3x to 5700 chips and figured he would fold his nothing hand. When PL smooth called me there, I figured he had something he thought was decent. But with a King, against me, he is reraising allin in this spot, so I did not at all put him on trips. I didn't know what to make of PL's smooth call there to be honest, but I knew I didn't like it.

When the river brought the third King, I figured no way PL has a boat, so he will lay down to my allin bet with anything less than a boat. I made my allin move knowing full well that if PL had any kind of a boat whatsoever, he was going to call. In the end, I think this was a putrid poker play on my part, because I did not have a boat and after PL had called my turn bet, he more or less had to have boated up with the King on the river. And yet I made the play anyways, with this hand:



So yeah, it was total air, and frankly I think it was a really terribly played hand by both PL and myself. Me, for pushing allin for such a relatively small bet on the river after PL had seemingly committed himself with his call on the turn and given that I had to know anyone with a boat is not likely to fold here. And him, for just calling on the turn and then the fold on the river while holding the highest boat available on the board, that move is just inexplicable to me. If I knew what PL had I would have check-folded in a heartbeat of course, but to think PL actually made a boat on the river and still laid it down for 14k more into a 31k pot, it just boggles the mind.

But I show this hand (1) because PL asked me to, and (2) because I think it illustrates well that I am not playing tight or reserved poker through these things, I am not winning my big pots due to good starting cards, and that others are playing suboptimal poker against me which is the single biggest factor in my recent blonkament success.

So, tonight for the Mookie at 10pm ET on full tilt (password is "vegas1"), please keep your donking of chips to a maximum where I am concerned, because I never have good starting cards and I am probably just making a move. So call call call me as much as you can. See you tonight at 10pm ET.

Mookie Curse, Dookie Domination, WTF Else is New

Wow. I feel like a donkey's ass this morning. There's really nothing like starting drinking at 8pm, being sloppy by 10, winning a bunch of money playing drunkass mofo poker and staying up until 3am on a work night just to win $69 in a limit poker donkfest, hammered off your ass. In total, thanks to my older daugher M coming into our room at 3:40am to have her fucking toenail filed with the emery board, my total sleep for the night tallies to 2 hours and 25 minutes. That is sweeeeeet right there. But I have to say, getting my drink on to the stylings of Buddy Dank Radio for several hours is a great way to spend an evening at home alone. I was asking some people on the girly chat last night, but seriously now, what the fuck did we used to do during these blonkaments before BDR came along? That shit is the funniest and funnest thing around, bar none. If you aren't listening to the BDR broadcasts for every week's Mookie tournament, you are a phucking buffoon, that's just all there is to it.

Anyways, for those of you still wondering if I am cursed in the Mookie, I offer you this brief screen movie:





I could not make this stuff up if I tried. I was so far gone by the end of the first hour of the Mook that I had to log in this morning and review the screenshots just to make sure this actually happened. But it appears to be real. What the fluck. Seriously. I mean, isn't one Jack on the flop enough to make the point? Of course I got the usual from the guy who laid this beat on me, that he put me on a steal, yadda yadda yadda. Not his fault of course. It just gets fucking older and older sitting here every Thursday morning reading once again about how I want that call every day of the week and thrice on Sunday, and how it's the full tilt server that I'm so angry with and not any player at the table, doesn't it? Well you know what? I don't want that call anymore. Not last night, not tonight, not ever. Not in the Mookie, not in the FTOPS Main Event, and not in anything. When I'm crushingly ahead of someone at the table, in particular in the Mookie, I don't want you betting all your money at me with just two outs. Why? Because you're not going to flop one of your outs. You're going to flop both of them. Eff you, full tilt. Cursed in the Mookie? You decide.

And btw big congratulations out to Alan who took down a much-deserved Mookie win this week and won his way into the BBTwo Aussie Millions Tournament of Champions freeroll coming up in less than a month now. Alan played a dominatory game, and he even overcame not one but two effing pocket Aces for his frigging heads-up opponent at the end last night in sellthekids. How that all happens is beyond me, but not only did the same player get dealt AA when down to heads-up two hands in a fracking row, but somehow that player still didn't win the whole thing. Craziness at that final table I tell you. But go see Alan's blog and tell him he kicks ass. He earned that shit this week and earned it good, and he's going to be a force to be reckoned with in the ToC.

Anyways, despite the shizziness that is the Mookie for me every single week, I did at least win another token frenzy for the first time in a few weeks, which will always come in useful for a satellite guy like me.

And then there's always this:



This is my second Dookie win in HA (PLH and PLO in alternating 10-minute sessions, just don't ask why the symbol for this is "HA" because I can't help you there) and my third Dookie win of the year. I think in fact there have only been two HA Dookie's that I can recall, and I won 'em both. So there. And I beat Drizz, without a doubt one of the finest multigame players there is, in a marathon battle that lasted until after 3am ET. Why I fought so hard to win $69 and change in this thing will forever remain a mystery, but I know I was having fun so I guess that's it. Frankly, as I told drizz at the final table last night, this thing turned into the Captain Morgan's bowl as far as I was concerned, as I think that was the only thing keeping either of us going as late as we did in the Dook. Hopefully drizz had as much fun playing it as I did. Frankly what it came down to was that we each had a ghey suckout on the other during our long heads-up battle with fairly high M's all things considered, with his suckout happening about halfway through our probably 30-minute heads-up play and mine happening on the very last hand of the tournament. But in the end, I think drizz was just not nearly aggro enough, as I won a ton of pots with nothing by just raising or reraising preflop, and especially by betting on the flop when it came raggy and/or he showed weakness, and for whatever reason drizz never pushed back. This is what gave me the chips to withstand his earlier suckout, and frankly what enabled me to be in a position to hit my own 16-outer on the river, as I had top pair, an inside straight draw and a Queen-high flush draw while drizz held 2nd and 3rd pairs plus a 6-high flush draw in the same suit:





So in the end I took it down:



All this, combined with three sng cashes on the night helped me to have a very profitable night of drunken poker. Again I have to give mad propz out to Buddydank and to KOD for doing an absolutely kickass job on the radio all through the night. For me it is awesome having a tell-it-like-it-is guy with tons of poker knowledge like Chad on the air as these tournaments get down to the final table, plus frankly I could sit and listen to Chad being frustrated at the play he sees all day and never get tired of it. It was a blast and you guys as a group were the perfect buddies to sit and get wasted and whittle away the evening with, so thanks to everyone who came out and played in the Mook last night. What say we do it tonight again for Riverchasers, 9pm ET on full tilt, password as always is "riverchasers". I might be a little late if my father in law wants to hang out for some dinner this evening, but I'll be around at some point so I will definitely see you then.

Well It Ain't Exactly a Mookie, But...

Yeah I did not recognize the name of the guy who won the Mookie last night, but I did recognize the guy who won the Dookie:



That's right, I took down the Dookie last night. And I have to give credit for this name where it is due, to jeciimd, who's been referring to the Mookie 2nd Chance as the Dookie for at least a couple of months now in our girly chats. It's stuck with me and I love the name, so that's me, this week's Dookie champion! Last night at 11:30pm ET the game was HA as chosen by Zeem, which for those of you who don't know is alternating rounds of pot-limit holdem and pot-limit Omaha (high). These are two of my best games so I always go into anything like this expecting to do well, but of course it never seems to turn out that way for me whenever anything associated with the Mookie is concerned. As I've written about here many times, although I've been playing the Mookie regularly for over a year now, and the Dookie regularly for however long it's been going (probably a good 6 months maybe?), this is my first win of anything associated with the guy who runs the biggest weekly almost-exclusively-blogger tournament around. I won a few normal sized pots early, took a couple of people for suckers as per my usual with semi-slowplayed nut hands in Omaha high, and then near the end won a few big pots to take a significant chip lead into the money spots with just three players left. From there it was just smooth sailing, and I never hit a big draw once I already had the money in the pot, but I also never got drawn out on when somebody else got it in big with a not-yet-made hand. And that my friends is a recipe to winning Omaha, where a lot of my big wins ended up coming in last night's Dookie tournament. Lord knows winning an HA event with 17 donkey participants late at night isn't much. But I'll take it. Perhaps this is a harbinger of things to come in the real Mookie the next time I can get back in there?

Speaking of which, the funny thing is that I've been focusing so much on getting into the WSOP via these nightly bracelet races on full tilt, that I actually have ended up playing poker right through Lost each of the last two Wednesdays, but I still have literally not had room on my screen to play the Mookie. In the end I've found it makes the most sense on most Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for me to play all three of the 9:10pm ET $14 turbo sat, the 9:20pm $14 turbo rebuy sat and the 9:40pm $24 turbo sats into the midnight bracelet race, where a full top 10% of the players win the $2000 WSOP prize packages, because it's hard to win your way in via just one satellite, and on one occasion already before last night I have managed to money in more than one of these things, which just puts $216 cash into your account for every additional seat won beyond the first one that nets you your buyin into the midnight tournament. Last night was sorta one of those nights, as I actually scored in both the rebuy satellite and the $14 satellite (bubbling in one of them for $74 cash instead of the full seat), and so eventually by around 11:20pm ET when I was just finishing up Lost on the DVR, I knew I'd be racing for bracelets once again at midnight.

Anyways the point I was trying to make about the Mookie was that my laptop screen, even at a 16.1 or whatever inch display, is only really large enough for me to play 4 tables at once in online poker, and even at that there is a lot of overlap between all four of the tables. So by the time 10pm ET runs around and it's Mookie time, I was already in the 9:10, 9:20 and the 9:40pm satellites to the midnight bracelet race, and of course I also have to play the actual Wednesday night bracelet race at 9:30pm ET, which is the best of the early races each week because it is a $75 buyin instead of the normal $24 that pays only one seat out of 10 million players in it. These Wednesday night 9:30pm $75 buyin jobs usually end up paying 3 seats out of 80 or 90 players, as was the case last night, so I had to play that thing as well, and as a result there was just no room on my screen. It's hard enough trying to act like I'm focusing on Lost so that the Hammer Wife doesn't get pissy with me while I've got four online poker tournaments running at the same time. To try to throw in a fifth, which I guess would have to just go right in the middle of my screen and block off most of each of the other four windows, is something I've tried on a few occasions but it thoroughly doesn't work. So no Mookie for me last night, though 46 runners did come out for another great showing for this event which I'm sure was a lot of fun as always. And did I mention I won the Dookie last night? Like the title says, it ain't a Mookie, but it is the next best thing so I'll take it and I'll take it hard.

I don't even remember how I got knocked out of the 9:30pm bracelet race, but I know I lasted into the top third of the field, and usually when I don't recall the specifics of a beat the next morning, that means that it wasn't a bad beat or a horrible play by me, and was probably instead me pushing a middle pocket pair into an overpair or something like that. But the midnight race was a little different. At $216 a pop to buy in, one might think that the level of play in this tri-weekly event is pretty solid. But one would be wrong. There are always a certain number of good players in this thing, no doubt, but when it comes right down to it, the guys in this tournament are pretty much total donkeys no less than the jassacks who populate the lower buyin bracelet races and generally speaking all the lower buyin mtts on a site like full tilt or pokerstars. Let me just tell you my elimination story and you can see what I mean.

So it's almost exactly 2am ET. I'm up much later than I should be given that the Hammer Girls are up like clockwork by 6am every single morning and I am up with them, as I need to get into work earlyish anyways so I couldn't sleep much past that time even if the kids had pixie dust sprinkled on them by Mr. Sandman himself. There's about 3 minutes left until the end of the second hour of the tournament, and of the 97 original entrants (top 9 will win WSOP packages), there are exactly 45 players left. So we're through just over half the field, and I am sitting on a stack of 4800 chips, putting me in around 28th place of 45 remaining players, and about 25% below the tournament average at the time of around 6300 chips. So I've chipped up a bit, won a few nice hands but otherwise have managed to avoid the big suckouts or the bonehead plays or the setups or just otherwise the bad luck that can all conspire to knock you out early from one of these things. I need to think about making some moves, but with blinds at I think 400-800 and 75-chip antes and me still near the middle of the pack, it wasn't quite crunch time yet for me. Soon, but not quite yet.

I look down to find AJs, my first "big" hand (ha ha) in some time, in early-middle (UTG+2) position in an unopened pot. I make the standard move to raise it up 3x to 2400 chips, the exact same opening raise I've made from early-middle position in 100% of the other hands I have entered in the entire tournament. It folds around to the button, who is sitting on a stack of around 10,000 chips, who thinks for a few minutes before actually typing in to the fucking chat "One time, poker gods, just one time" before calling. And this biatch had been playing like such a calldonkey in the tournament, I knew with nearly 100% certainty she wasn't trying to F with me and really had Aces or something. You just have to take my word for it on that.

The blinds fold, and the flop comes J82, all hearts. My AJ is in diamonds, and at this point over half of my stack is in the pot, and with all those hearts out there and me holding TPTK, I make the executive decision to push in my last 2200 chips or whatever it was and take this shiat down right now. Instantly the biatch types in "thank you poker gods" and calls, flipping up....

A4. Of hearts.

So let's review. This whore calls off a full quarter of her largeish stack halfway through the field in the midnight bracelet race, with A4s, when facing a 3x raise from early-middle position. That is a recipe for fucking disaster right there, but this is not atypical of the kind of play that you will see rampant throughout even the $216 buyin bracelet race. It's despicable. The fucking fool even knows she's making an utter bonehead play, to the point that she actually types in "one time poker gods, just one time" before making the call, and then happily puts in a quarter of her hard-earned stack with A4 against a preflop early-middle position raiser. Smarrrrrrt. I mean, it's bad enough to make this kind of call with a hand like A9 or AT, which are probably dominated or behind a pocket pair, but could be ahead if I am pushing with a weak Ace, unlikely as even that is. But to call off a quarter of your stack with A4 against a middle position preflop raiser, that is even worse than calling it off with a hand like JTs, which at least is likely to be two live cards as opposed to the A4 which is probably dominated, and in any event even if I am on a hand like two high non-Ace cards, when she has the 4 in her hand she knows she can't possibly be more than a 60% favorite or so, and is probably more like a 20% to 40% underdog. Horrible, horrible play, and even more horribly rewarded by full tilt for her donkery. So no, the play in these $216 buyin bracelet races is no good, and maybe only marginally if even at all better than the lower buyin races. And I still haven't won a bracelet race yet after 3 weeks of trying, with my closest performance yet still last Saturday night's limit holdem bracelet race, where I was 1st out of 4 players remaining before running into the asshat calling the cap raise preflop with Q7s (!!!!) and then flopping two pairs and turning a boat. Sick.

And about yesterday's ATC hand, it seems just about everyone agrees with my own feelings on the hand -- that it is a clear fold. 96o is just a downright crappy starting hand -- must be in the bottom 35% or so of all starting hands -- and putting in any more chips in this spot is to me a terrible idea, even if you are currently the 2nd place chip stack in the tournament with 54 players remaining out of 400 who started. Truth be told, this example is actually a combination of another hand from Harrington on Holdem Volume II, but with a twist. In the Harrington hand, the pot odds were more like 3 to 1 and he therefore advocated making the call. It's a call I still would not make, personally, because even though the pot odds in that spot were basically (barely) there, 96o is just so not likely to win the hand that I would not want to lose even a tenth of my stack on the off chance that I can eliminate a player this early on in the event (54 players left, with 40 making the money, and presumably only the top few reaching the big bucks). With 96o, even getting more or less very close to the "correct" pot odds to call preflop, I'm not making that call. But to me, Harrington's example obfuscates that issue by making the pot odds to call 3-to-1, allowing the reader to rely just on pot odds alone instead of really thinking through the whole "Any Two Cards" concept, and that's why I changed the situation somewhat. And what I did was, I reviewed the last ten Hoy tournament final tables, and I set up the pot odds in this hand to be basically exactly what they've been on a few occasions where players with big chip stacks at the final table have called -- not open-raised, mind you, but called -- smaller stacks with hands equal to or worse than 96o. In one case the MATH hand in question that called the allin at 2-to-1 odds was exactly 96o -- which went on to win btw thanks to donkey gods -- and in the other case, the Hoy big stack took a significant loss of about a quarter of his stack making a 2-to-1 pot odds call when holding 94o.

My point about all this is a fewfold I guess. IMO there are only a few justifications for making any ATC play here. #1 is if you have good pot odds to make the call. Even though I might not choose to devote a lot of chips to a highly likely losing situation just because I barely have sufficient math pot odds to make the call, I will agree that on a big stack, making such a call is justifiable if the pot odds are there. #2, as many of the commenters point out, if you are getting some good first-in viggorish by being the guy open-raising with ATC, instead of the guy calling an allin with ATC, that can also make a lot of sense. The chance that you could win the pot outright without seeing a flop by causing your opponent to fold right then and there can easily compensate somewhat for the actual lesser holding in your hand. And lastly, as Blinders and some others mentioned as well in the comments, the ATC play IMO really only has useful application nearing the end of tournaments, unless you're getting just unbelievable pot odds of course in which case you happily make the call from the big blind with 32o when your stack is 87,000 chips, and the short stack from the small blind has just gone all in for his last 870 chips. But to be making an ATC type of call like Harrington advises in this example with 54 players left in a 400-person tournament, not even at the cash bubble yet let alone anywhere near the final table, to me this is not a great plan. I may do some more stuff on ATC one of these days as I certainly have more to say about it, but in general I guess I should hope that you donkeys continue to make these ill-advised ATC calls late in blogger tournaments. I do wish Lucko would write more about this one of these days, as he is perhaps the only blogger type I've seen who really seems to have a good grasp of the strategy (and the math) behind this type of play. Maybe if you guys bother him enough in comments on his blog, he'll return to this topic at some point in the future.

As my asswork continues to block all pokerworks blogs, I don't know but can only assume that cc is back tonight with his Thursday bash on pokerstars, at 9:30pm ET and with a password of "pokerworks" as always. If he is, I will be in there tonight as I look to make it two in a row in the blogger tournaments after last night's Dookie win. I also was excited to see that Al is back with the latest Riverchasers tournament tonight on full tilt, which goes down at 9pm ET and with a new password of "riverchasers6". I will most definitely be in there, as Riverchasers has quickly become the new largest weekly private event for us with its eclectic mix of blogger donkeys and drunk donkeys, and I always have a good time seeing how full tilt comes up with a way for me to get sucked out on or set up in this thing to knock me out without cashing. Fun times. I'll also be in on whatever bracelet race there is tonight at 9:30pm ET on full tilt -- I know Thursday alternates between two games but for the life of me I can't remember which, and of course the dorkwork blocks full tilt's website since me accessing that site also causes all the evils of the world, so I can't check for sure. But I always seem to be up for my nightly 9:30 bracelet race donation in the winner-take-all format that nobody actually ever wins. And knowing me I'll probably try my hand at a chance or five in some more of those heads-up $13.75 token sngs on full tilt during the night, so if you want a piece of me in one of those (brdweb learned the hard way about this a few days back as I recall), you know where to find me. Just let me know.