Tilt Continues

For whatever reason, this has been one of the toughest two-week periods ever in my three years of playing poker online. For starters, my 8 to 10 suckouts and setups a night has escalated out of the blue to more like 15 to 20 a night, and when you consider that these numbers are absosmurfly real and not the least bit exaggerated, maybe a few of you at least can begin to consider what this really must feel like to go through on a nightly, hourly, almost minute-ly basis. It ain't fun. In the past two weeks, I have been recockudonked out of big tournaments after deep runs at least five or six times at multiple poker sites. I'm talking about hands like flopping the overboat in the final 100 in that pokerstars 50-50 tournament, getting my overpair donkey opponent allin and then losing to a higher boat on the turn. I have been bounced early from small tournaments, like earlier this week when I lost early in the token frenzy with a turned straight -- again allin on the flop --- to a riverflush. And I've taken horrible beats in blonkaments, like flopping a set in the MATH this week, pushing hard and getting someone to make a hopeless call but then losing to a higher set on the turn, or even in the Mookie this week when I find my only "premium" hand of the night in pocket Queens, only to run it into KK and AK and finish the hand in a distant third for another middle-of-the-pack elimination. And, although this fact is unconfirmed, it is even possible that I might have made a few straight-out bad plays mixed in there as well, which of course also seem magnified whenever you're in a run like this.

What's worse is that once again it is FTOPS time on full tilt, and once again I enter the series in a shitty poker mindset. Just maybe three weeks ago, I was playing great poker and I was feeling great about my game, and about the game in general. I won four satellites into these FTOPS events over the span of just a few days, I was playing great, actually winning 50% or more of my races, actually winning 80% of my dominating hands when allin, etc., and all of that tends to help quite a bit in making the right decisions at the poker tables. It's when you start losing 75% of your races, and losing 40-50% of your 80% favored hands that you start second-guessing yourself, not pushing hard enough on the flop and letting people stick around to suck out on you, etc., and that's when it gets really bad. Anyways, what kills me is that here we are back in FTOPS land again, and just like every single other FTOPS I have played in -- five of them now, as I recall -- except for one of the big tournament series, I enter it in a horrible poker mindset and just generally on a bad streak.

Last night I had several railbirds watching me in the HORSE megasat when some anus wanker sucked out a miracle straight on the river to eliminate me when I had flopped TPTK with my AQ against his AJ and bet out my entire stack against him along the way in limit holdem. I even tried one of those super turbo satellites half an hour before the HORSE event to try to play into there, but I couldn't pick up a good hand and as you know if you've ever played these things, it's impossible to win them without picking up at least one good hand along the way. It was a desperate move, and believe me when I say that in retrospect I'm glad I didn't play in FTOPS #3. But I did play in FTOPS #2, the $240 PLO knockout tournament I mentioned yesterday, and it was highly frustrating for me as well. I survived about an hour and 40 minutes in this thing, and even with four starting cards in every hand, I never once received AAxx, KKxx, a single double-paired hand or even a single double-suited hand. Now I'm nowhere near interested enough to try to calculate the odds of that happening, but my guess is that it has got to be way way low. So with absolutely not a single good starting hand over 100 minutes to play with, I was at an extreme disadvantage throughout the PLO tournament, growing increasingly frustrated given my poker plight of late, and eventually after those 100 minutes I ended up betting big with just TPTK on the flop against a big stack as my own stack dwindled down to less than half of average. Well, I got called by a guy who had 789x on a board with T63, so he had 9 outs to a straight. 9 outs twice, not counting some silly runner-runner draws that either one of us could hit to win. Well, two cards later he had runner-runnered a recockulous flush on me, and IGH in 490th place out of around 1200 runners. While I lasted fairly deep again considering my complete lack of cardage throughout, the frustration level just continued to mount as I received abjectly nothing to work with in the entire tournament, and I got called by a guy who had no business calling me but just couldn't let go of a 9-out draw. And of course he hit. This is the way it's been lately for me online. Get almost nothing to work with, run fairly deep anyways on all bluffs and steals, and then get recockubeat or recockusetup. The frustration is palpable.

It got so bad that I didn't even play the Riverchasers last night. That's not like me, but for the past few nights I have been logging out of the poker sites early thanks to growing tilt issues from consistent phuckage at the tables. I am not having fun at all while I play these days, and I've known for a couple of days that a break would do me good. Unfortunately, right now is not the time for me to get that break, as I had already previously qualified for the FTOPS on Thursday and again I am already signed up for the FTOPS 6-max limit holdem tournament on Friday night as well. That one oughta be a fun one to tilt my way out of for sure. But I don't even know that I will play the donkament tonight, as Monkey Hour of that thing tends to get me on raging tilt on a weekly basis, even the four times I have gone on to win that tournament over the past year. Right now is just not the time for me to get sucked out on in the same tournament 18 times in an hour.

I will leave you with my one bright spot from the night last night, which was watching Chad at full tilt "pro" Aaron Bartley's table while Bartley time and time again played recockulous starting cards in just about every one of the five HORSE games, sucking out a few redonkulous winners along the way before eventually Chad busted his ass for the $216 bounty and another ghey "I busted a donkey" t-shirt. Well, after getting donked a few times by Bartley and the regoddamdickulous cards he was playing, Chad eventually told me in the girly that he was going to play just like Bartley and see where that would get him. So Chad chased a bad hand hard in razz, and ended up sucking out runner-runner low cards.

Dealer: Aaron Bartley shows 8,7,6,3,2
Dealer: cracknaces shows 7,6,4,2,A
Dealer: cracknaces wins the pot (3,398)
with 7,6,4,2,A
Dealer: Hand #5165521026
cracknaces: just for you Bartley
Aaron Bartley: now THATS bad
cracknaces: fight fire wirh fire, how does it
feel to be donked?
Aaron Bartley: shrug, thanks for trying

That pretty much made my night. Bartley is about as bad a HORSE player as there is among the ftp "pros".

Have a great weekend everybody. Here's hoping I can turn things around before tonight's FTOPS #5 in LHE, and Sunday night's FTOPS #9, the $322 buyin nlh tournament hosted by Erick Lindgren.

Final MATH Recap of 2007

Happy New Year everbody!!! With 2008 upon us, here's to all of you and myself having an even better year this year than in 2007. And I mean both in poker and otherwise.

This year, I was lucky enough to have New Years Eve fall on a Monday, which meant one last Mondays at the Hoy tournament on full tilt before the year came to a close. And to end the year on a fun note, I opted for a straight-up HORSE tournament, at the same $26 buyin, to finish things out on what to me has been a truly exciting and enjoyable series of tournaments that at least for me have really made Mondays far less hateable during the past twelve months, even something to look forward to on occasion. I was pleasantly surprised to see 12 runners show up for New Years Eve HORSE MATH, about 8 or 9 more than I expected given the holiday and the party hardy types that generally comprise the blogger crew, but I guess between late partying times, kids and a few friendless dorx thrown in there we had enough to have a good group to donk it up in some non-nlh games and have a good time in ringing out the old year and ringing in the new.

Unfortunately for me, my early New Years Eve plans ended up running much later than expected, which even included me watching Evan Almighty, one of the worst, dumbest movies I've seen made in years, and as a result I ended up missing just about the entire first hour of my own HORSE tournament to end the year. When I logged on at around 10:50pm ET, I had blinded down to 300-some chips remaining, the game was limit holdem, and I found 44 in the small blind. It was raised ahead of me on the button by jec, no doubt using his alcohol-fueled aggression to attempt yet another steal my defenseless blind, and so I reraised him, planning on just taking the pocket 4s to the river and going down in a blaze of glory. Instead, both jec and the big blind folded to my allin bet on the flop and I basically more than doubled up in the process in just the one hand I had played. Which was a good thing, because then I had to drop off for another 5 or 10 minutes to take care of some last minute items at home, and by the time I logged back in, it was about two hands before the first break, and I was in late position, still limit holdem, and this time with 97o. I raised preflop once again, jec was in a heads-up pot with me this time, and I ended up pushing just a pair of 7s on the flop and then a flush draw as well on the turn all the way to allin on the river and outlasting jec's even more shitty hand. This got me up to over 2k in chips and around the middle of the 10 remaining runners at the first break, with me having played only two hands all through the first hour and pushmonkeying both of them to boot.

I still had to drop on and off for the next 15 minutes or so, but by the time we were in the razz round of Hour 2, I was in for the long haul. Of course I got sucked out on recockulously by chasedonkeys a couple of times -- razz has been pure evil to me ever since I spent a couple of months playing cash razz in mid-2006 and won a few razz tournaments to boot -- but I also managed to bust a few more guys whom I know were none too happy with the way I kept popping in, pushmonkeying and then dropping right out of the tournament. What can I tell you, I played it the way I felt I had to, and it worked out for me and to the detriment of a few other players in the earlygoing. It was ghey, but what can I say.

Fast forward another hour or so, and I was three-handed and in the cash in my second straight MATH tournament, against two non-bloggers but guys who both have had some success in the Hoy in the recent past and in HORSE games in general. Twoblackaces busted pretty quick at the hands of a late-street suckout in hilo I think by SRC1013_JD, leaving me and SRC -- jeciimd's almost-equally-tight brother btw -- to play heads-up for the final MATH title of the year. Although we started off fairly close to even in chips, I quickly built up close to a 2-to-1 chip lead before donking it off early in the limit holdem round by making two dumb calls back to back with just a drawing hand. Baaaaad tournament poker when you're heads-up with a chip lead, but about a six-pack of Corona Light in me kept telling me it was the thing to do at the time. Through the rest of lhe and all of the O8 round, we basically held our ground with me giving up a bit and eventually dropping to a more than 2-to-1 chip deficit as we headed into the Stud Hi round. The thing is, SRC it turns out is just as tight (if not tighter, if you can believe it) then his brother jec, and the end result was I stole probably 90% of the pots through the entire stud round to get right back into it just a few minutes in to stud play. Then I got lucky and hit a few hands, which src paid me off on to varying degrees before folding on 5th street or earlier. Finally I was back to a more than 2-to-1 chip lead, still in stud, when I made two pairs on fifth street and src had committed with I guess just an inside straight draw and some overcards. My two low pairs held up, and I had won my fifth MATH tournament of the year!



So the cashers for the last Hoy of the year are as follows:

$144 Hoyazo
$86.40 SRC1013_JD
$57.60 twoblackaces

And here is the updated MATH moneyboard for 2007, including the results of this week's tournament:

1. Columbo $1823
2. cmitch $1703
3. Bayne_s $1400
4. Hoyazo $1382
5. RaisingCayne $1110
6. Surflexus $1107
7. Daddy $999
8. twoblackaces $958
9. LJ $867
10. Lucko21 $815
11. Kajagugu $806
12. swimmom95 $804
13. Fuel55 $802
14. Astin $793
15. Pirate Wes $792
16. VinNay $775
17. Tripjax $759
18. IslandBum1 $754
18. Numbbono $754
20. Iggy $745
21. Gary Cox $734
22. Blinders $720
23. NewinNov $677
24. Waffles $650
25. XxMagiciaNxX $630
26. JJ $630
27. Mike_Maloney $612
28. ScottMc $597
29. Jamyhawk $576
30. Buddydank $553
31. riggstad $537
31. Chad $537
33. Emptyman $513
34. Byron $510
35. Julius Goat $507
36. bartonf $492
36. mtnrider81 $492
38. PokerBrian322 $490
39. wormmsu $475
40. scots_chris $474
41. whiskigrl $467
42. jeciimd $460
43. RecessRampage $434
44. Otis $429
45. leftylu $424
46. Miami Don $402
47. Zeem $389
48. Joe Speaker $384
49. Jordan $382
50. cardgrrl $371
50. lightning36 $371
52. ChapelncHill $353
53. OMGitsPokerFool $324
54. buckhoya $312
54. oossuuu754 $312
56. Mookie $304
57. Wigginx $288
58. Fishy McDonk $277
59. actyper $276
60. Irongirl $252
60. Manik79 $252
62. Wippy1313 $248
63. Easycure $244
64. Garthmeister $216
64. wwonka69 $216
66. Omega_man_99 $210
67. katiemother $209
68. Pushmonkey72 $208
69. Thepokergrind $198
70. bsquared25 $194
71. StatikKling $180
72. 23Skidoo $176
73. Santa Clauss $170
74. jimdniacc $166
75. Iakaris $162
75. Smokkee $162
77. cemfredmd $156
78. lester000 $147
79. Heffmike $145
80. Julkeus $144
81. brdweb $143
82. DDionysus $137
83. Patchmaster $135
84. InstantTragedy $129
85. cemfredmd $126
86. NinaW $120
87. UnTiltable $118
88. Fluxer $110
89. -o-LuckTruck-o- $103
90. hoops15mt $95
91. Gracie $94
91. Scurvydog $94
93. SRC1013_JD $86
94. DaBag $84
94. Shag0103 $84
96. mattazuma $82
96. crazdgamer $82
98. PhinCity $80
99. Presidentdave $79
100. maf212 $78
101. evy35 $72
102. Alceste $71
102. dbirider $71
104. kevin-with-AK $66
105. Rake Feeder $53
106. TheCloserX5 $50

I ended the year on a major heater in the blonkaments, something I love and which I really hope I can ride on into 2008. In the last two weeks of the year, I finished 4th in Riverchasers after that redonkulous hand where I minraised 7 times preflop with T8s on the very first hand. Then I ended second in the MATH after cemfredmd outlasted me on the QQ-AA headsup setup and then river suckout, followed by my donkout in 20th place of 61 runners in the Mookie last week, but at a time when I had been in 3rd place on a number of great plays before that horrible setup hand with my A4 on the 446T board against what turned out to be pocket 6s for the hidden higher boat. Then in Riverchasers this past Thursday I final tabled again, ending the night in I think 2nd place for another deep blonkament run, which I followed up by winning the Donkament last week in dramatic, crushing fashion, thanks in no small part to this guy and his generous penchant for rebuying and pushing allin preflop. I then ended things out for 2007 with another MATH victory on New Years Eve. So that was 6 final tables and 5 cashes in my last 7 blonkaments (I final tabled the Donkament the week before as well), with my only non-final table occurring on that sick Mookie setup hand (what else is new) in a spot where otherwise I had been in 3rd place through more than two-thirds of the field already as it was. So I've been playing these things really great lately, which is a trend I hope to continue into 2008, starting on Tuesday night with the brand new Blogger Skill Series, the brainchild of KOD, which tonight will begin with a $12 buyin Stud-High tournament on full tilt. Anyone who is around today I heartily encourage to participate, as to me (and I know to Chad and several others as well), the real mark of a great poker player is without a doubt the ability to excel in all the poker games, not just no-limit holdem. I will definitely be there tonight at 9:30pm ET on full tilt (password is "skillz"), and I hope to see you there as well to kick off 2008 in Studly style!

"Super Turbo" Satellite Strategy

Ha ha, what a joke of a title. But seriously, today I wanted to talk briefly about these super turbo satellites that full tilt runs for the 30 to 60 minuts prior to each of their largest buyin events. They're called "super turbo" because the pace and M sizes in these things put even the site's regular turbo satellites to shame, beginning each player with 100 chips, with starting blinds of 15-30. 15 and 30, with 100 total chips in each starting stack! And just to add fuel to the fire, the blinds rounds increase every 3 minutes, meaning you won't even get a full orbit in before the blinds are up to 20-40, then 30-60 and so on.

Given the above structure, you would think these things are basically just total luckfests. And you know what? You're basically right. The thing is, though, as with most poker variations, there is still some level of skill involved, some level of strategy involved, where you can increase or decrease your chances of winning your way in to one of the tournaments via the super turbo satellite process. At the end of the day of course, if you get effed by bad luck just one time in one of these super turbo satellites, you're done. Period. But, there are some things you can do and some general strategies you can follow to at least maximize your chances of survival and minimize your chances of losing out in one of these things.

In case you're wondering, after Thursday night where I qualified in my one attempt to satellite via the super turbo sats into FTOPS #11, the $535 HORSE event, my lifetime record in these super turbo sats is now 4 wins and 4 losses. While 4-4 may not sound so good on its face, take it from me (those of you who play these things will know what I mean), winning a seat in 4 out of 8 of these tournaments is actually indicative of me knowing a little something about what I'm doing in these tournaments. And I'm going to say again here for the record, super turbo satellites are still going to be more dictated by luck than anything else, so don't get me wrong here. But that doesn't mean there aren't any steps you can take to help increase your chances of good luck and decrease your chances of preventing yourself from qualifying for the large events in this way.

So here are your basic rules for increasing your luck in the super turbo satellite structure:

1. First and foremost, just like I've written about before about other satellite tournaments, is satellite selection. In the case of the super turbos, there really are only two choices. First you have the 1-seat qualifiers (all of the full tilt super turbo sats are 1-tablers), and then you have the 2-seat qualifiers. That's really your only decision. Of course, the sats where the top two finishers win seats will be exactly twice the buyin cost of those which award only one seat. So, the overall point here is, if you can afford it you should always try to play the two-seaters. For example, when I qualified the other day for the 1k buyin FTOPS #8 nlh tournament, I played a few of the super turbo sats, and in the end the one I qualified for the tournament in was a 2-seater. That meant that I had to spend something like $235 to buy in to the sat, and that my friends is a lot of money, even to me on the bankroll that I play with online. That said, look at what happened in that sat -- when down to 3 players, one with 400 chips, one with 360 chips and me with 120 chips, the idiot with 360 pushed foolishly with A3 and got called by the 400-chip guy with TT, with the TT holding up and I was in, just like that. The chip stacks after that play were 720 chips to my 120 chips. Anybody here think I'm good enough in super turbo structure to overcome that chip deficit? Me neither. And that's why you want to be in the two-seats-awarded sats moreso than the one-seaters where at all possible. Yes I could have spent just $118 on the 1-seat satellite, but then you are deciding that you have to win outright out of 9 players in a very luck-driven super fast, super low-M strucutre, and even for the best player or the biggest luckbox in the world, that is a very tall order. It just is. Finishing in the top two out of 9 players is a far easier feat, and frankly in my opinion, if you have the money it is almost always worth it to play those instead.

2. This may go without saying, but when it comes to actual playing strategy in these super turbo satellites, the biggest point of all is that you absolutely, positively cannot lose any big hands, the entire time, even when heads up. You just can't. You can't call a raise in limit holdem (such as the HORSE super turbo sat this week) before the flop, thereby having 40 of your 100 starting chips in the pot, see a flop that you miss entirely, and just fold to any action. I mean, I suppose I can conceive of a situation where I could see myself doing that, but at the end of the day, not really. Once you're in for 40 of your 100 chips, it would take a truly extraordinary situation for me to fold, even if I miss the flop. Your chances of clawing your way back into contention are exceedingly small once you're down to 50 or 60 chips and a few other guys have won allins between two or three of the 100-chip starting stacks. Once you commit any chips to a hand, you're basically committed to see the hand through and taking your chances to either have your lead hold up, or spike a card on the later streets to hand you the victory. If you approach anything resembling a super turbo as a situation where you can call a preflop raise and then fold on the flop, you're done. A gone goose, as T.J. Cloutier would say. Once you're in, you're in. And this leads to my last two strategy points, for these otherwise luck-driven satellite tournaments.

3. Don't wait for monsters. They just don't come. When I won the HORSE super turbo satellite this week on Thursday night, I did it in exactly 22 hands total (see below). Out of 22 hands, do you think I saw AA and KK twice each? I'm not this guy you know. No, the best hands I saw all night were AJ in limit holdem, AKK5 in O8, 235 in razz (that really was a premium starting hand of course), and K55 in stud hi. Not exactly a bunch of strong -- or even playable, really -- starting hands. But you simply have to loosen your standards, in most cases significantly, if you're going to have any shot at all in these things. You basically get one orbit to make a move, and that is it. Think about it -- you're starting off with 100 chips, and the big blind is 30 chips. You're basically almost going to have to play the hand the first time you're in the big blind, and unless I am dealt total garbage that I'm sure is dominated against 3 allin raisers ahead of me, that's exactly the way I play in the big blind. You have to. The structure is made to force you to, and if you try to resist, you're going to very quickly find yourself after just a few hands in these super turbo satellites down to 55 chips (100 to start, minus 30 for the bb and 15 for the sb), when 2 people at your table will already be over 250 chips. And let me tell you, a 5-to-1 chip deficit is no easier to come back from in super turbo than it is in a regular structure tournament. In fact, it's harder because you have absolutely zero ability to wait for anything resembling a strong hand.

4. And the previous two points lead to this, perhaps the most useful individual hand strategy advice I can give for the super turbo sats: Play hands with strong showdown value. This is because, as described above, most of the time when you and another person see a flop or the first street after the first round of betting in whichever game you're playing, you are almost always going to go to showdown. Again, the structure of the super turbos makes you play this way. See a flop, see 4th street, and you're going to show it down. By the time the flop or 4th street is out, almost every player involved will have more than half of their chips in the pot, and that is almost never a good time to throw your hand away. So, this very high likelihood of going to showdown means you're playing things like high cards in limit holdem and Stud hi, and high pairs with A2s in O8. A hand like 55 in limit holdem is nice, but since you know you're going to see all five cards almost every time you play it, you should really view that hand as just what it is hot-and-cold -- about a 50% chance of winning or losing. I would almost prefer to play a hand like AT or KJ over a hand like 55 or 66, and things like middle soooted connectors like 54s and 87s are greatly diminished in value, because you're not getting the odds to play them, with the likelihood of just folding them on the flop if you miss, that you would in a normal poker situation. So focus on the high cards and the strongest hands in terms of going to a showdown in every game, and that's the best thing you can do in these ridonkulously quick super turbo satellites. Often times, I am pushing the first time I am dealt two cards ten or higher in lhe, or the first time I am dealt A2xx or two sooted combinations in O8, etc. Anything that has a decently high chance of being ahead after five cards, without regard to how well these things play on the flop or the turn per se.

There you have it. Now I will show quickly how this works in action, detailing my super turbo satellite HORSE victory from Thursday night to show how to apply the above points in practice. This super turbo took precisely 22 hands for me to win -- 6 lhe, 6 O8, 6 razz and 4 stud hi -- so again you can see just how few opportunities you're going to have to get the big cards in one of these things, and how important it is to push almost right away when you are dealt decent showdown hands.

I folded the first four hands dealt to me in lhe before the big blind hit me, which is what I always do unless I'm in the blinds or unless I'm dealt the kind of strong showdown hand I'm talking about -- big pairs or any two big cards, really. I got lucky when the big blind hit me that I found my old friend the JackAce, which I was probably going to try to play anyways since the big blind represented 30% of my stack at the time anyways, but it definitely meets my high-card strong-showdown requirements for the super turbo structure:



Here I get effed hard by the setup flop, especially given the super turbo nature here:



But then, can you say Resuck?



I didn't play any other hands in lhe, but then in the first hand of O8 play I decided to go up against three other fuckers with AKK5. This is a very strong hand for high, and solid for low as well all things considered, and it also squarely meets my standards for strong showdown hands as a result:



I nailed a big big flop with the hand, allin against three other fonkeys whom I've watched playing hands like 279Q and K854, etc.:



And here I won huge, scooping the large pot with again what I viewed preflop as a very solid showdown type of hand:



And suddenly we are down to four players remaining, with only the winner getting the HORSE FTOPS seat, and with me leading in chips 445-220-100-35.

I then split a big pot against the short up top when I flopped bottom two pairs and he made his low on the turn, and before I knew it, O8 was over and that friendly lovable game of razz was upon us.

Razz is where I made my big move, of all games. I like to think that full tilt felt bad about that anusass from the previous night's HORSE megasatellite and decided to make things right. Not throw me a bone, mind you, but just make me whole for that effing. Anyways, razz started off with me winning two hands by betting out with the low card showing on 3rd street and taking down 40 chips each hand.

I made a big fold here, when a 5 raised it up and I had two low cards, but only one below the 5 and one Jack underneath. With some chips to play with finally, I did not want to do anything to jeopardize my lead, and in razz of all games you do not want to start out behind your opponent any more than you otherwise have to:



Here I had to take on a shorty who decided to make his move allin with a 6-up in razz:



and I busted him somehow here:



I am now up 558-242. I really want to win at this point. It's a big chip lead, but remember with the super turbo high blinds and incredibly low Ms, one mistake can be a very big game-changer.

Here is a decent win at stud hi, I'll take it:



And here is the piece de resistance hand, also in stud hi, where at first I bet out here with a couple of high cards showing:



He raised me allin, and I felt I had to call:



Turns out he had just an oesd, not a very good play in stud hi but at the same time, at these M levels you basically have to pick a hand and go with it.

The end result:



Boooooom! Nothing like winning a $535 satellite tournament in stud with a King-high, huh?



And there it is. Hopefully this is helpful for those of you who are just crazy enough to play the luckfestivals known as the super turbo satellites on full tilt.

Now, if you're wondering how the actual HORSE FTOPS #11 went, it was myself, KOD, jec and emptyman that I know of among our group, and we represented pretty well at first, all three of us making it to the fourth hour of the tournament with over a third of the 673-person field already gone. But check out my starting table in this thing:



So not only do I have full tilt pros David Bradley (who?) and Keith Sexton, but emptyseat88 over there is none other than Scott Fischmann, and of course I've also got the donkalicious KOD to my right as well. What a starting table! Anyways, to make a very long and frustrating story short, the ftp pros at the table played generally horribly, and Fischmann over in the corner there played about as bad a HORSE game overall as I could possibly imagine. I have a bunch of screenshots of his clownings, but he got called down with just QJ on a Ace-high flop against a preflop raiser, he got called down when he bet on every street with A9 unimproved, losing to AK, and several moves like that. When he finally busted in razz on the last hand of the second hour to Keith Secton with a Ten-Nine low, KOD typed into the chat: "pro." It was good times.

In the end, I busted out in 263rd place out of 673 when some anushole drew out on me on 6th street in razz and my 76 lost to his 75. I had been a board-lock ahead on 4th and again on 5th street, but then on 6th I caught bad and he caught good, and the rest was history. The thing is, when you bet out on 3rd, 4th and 5th streets once the blinds and antes are into fourth-hour territory in a double-stacked limit tournament like this, that is a major chip loss, in this case taking up about 80% of my previously 100th place or so stack. When I looked on Friday morning, it turns out that none of the four bloggers in the event cashed, which bums me out because like I said we had represented fairly well during the first several hours of the event before it looks like things started falling apart for all of us around 1am ET. Oh well, it was a frustrating but good time and I'm glad I did it, if nothing else to win that super turbo sat to play in this $535 buyin tournament for a total of $66.

Friday night is FTOPS #12 in 6-max limit holdem, a game I am very strong at and which I am really looking forward to. As with all the limit games, in tournaments the big key I find is simply not to lose any big pots early, period. If I'm not sure I'm ahead, I do not want to call any large bets chasing or drawing dead. Limit really gives the opportunity to make some tricky and fancy moves, and to mix up your play, sometimes betting out with the nuts and sometimes check-raising, sometimes even checking and betting or raising on a later more expensive street. I will also try to get it on the donkament at 9pm ET on full tilt (password is "donkarama" as always), so if you're around I look forward to seeing you there. Sunday is the FTOPS ME, which I may or may not play in, depending on how things go for me between now and then. Best of luck to anyone who is in the ME, and I'll hopefully chat with you over the weekend either at the tables or in the girlie.

The River is a Bitch

Well, obviously I am worthless for the BBTwo. It's funny -- this is exactly how my performance in the first BBT started, almost uncannily similar to this one. For the entire first month (here we are about to finish the fourth week of the challenge), I had exactly one in-the-points finish, out of I think the first 12 tournaments or so. Same as this time around. And just like the first BBT, that one points-finish was a worthless final-two-tables kind of performance, nothing worth even mentioning or being the least bit happy about. I was so out of it after the first month of the original BBT that my game outside of the blonkaments was suffering, and my interest in playing poker was lower than it had been for months. I didn't like playing against the bloggers, I knew they were playing stoopid against me just for shits n giggles, and I barely wanted to play any real poker at all. I wasn't even thinking about the BBT anymore at that point. I knew I was done, I knew I wasn't playing well and was experiencing horrible luck, and I didn't even care about the whole thing anymore.

Fast forward five months to the BBTwo. Almost four full weeks in the books now, and I have just one in-the-points finish. That was I think in a Riverchasers tournament where I busted somewhere in the upper teens -- again, absolutely nothing to be the least bit happy or proud about, and believe me, I'm not. Otherwise, just like the first BBT, my performance is a history of bad beats, horrible plays by my opponents and a few bad ones by myself as well. Just like last time, I'm getting instacalled allin preflop by the jackace, by fucking T9o, by pocket 6s, and losing to all of these horrifically poor plays where my opponent is not only displaying terrible poker but is getting in factually behind as they should with plays like these, but I'm still losing. And I haven't played great either, don't get me wrong, a lot of which is a result of my disappointment and disillusionment with poker in general right now, another similarity to the first BBT.

As most of you know, almost immediately after the first month ended in BBT1, things started to turn around for me. I made a final table, then I came in 2nd place in the MATH. After that I won a Riverchasers, following it up with another RC win and still another second place finish at the hands of a highly skilled 11-year-old kid who really knew when to call allin with J6o and then suck out in heads-up play. I finished near the top in another MATH, and then ended the BBT by taking second place in the Big Game. I wish, wish wish I could get back inside my head from back then and get a sense of what I was feeling, of how I turned things around so quickly and so dramatically for the final two months of the challenge, where I cleaned up and basically outperformed everyone else on an improbable run from deep in the 100s to a final finish in 4th place, winning a Nintendo Wii that I still use regularly with my family at home.

How the fuck did I do that? I was so awful in the first month of the BBT1, and yet so great after that point. What did I change? Was it luck? Mental attitude? Did I just play better, smarter poker after that point? Who knows. What I do know is that I am now back to the exact same point I was after one month in the first BBT. I mean, I am completely and utterly broken down and beaten down at this point. As in, I just don't care about the BBT anymore. I don't care about the Tournament of Champions, I couldn't possibly go to Australia in January anyways, and I don't care about winning any events, turning a profit for the challenge, anything. I don't even care about not embarrassing myself with my BBTwo performance in front of all you clowns. None of it matters to me right now.

Man I am down on poker just now. I've spent a lot of time since Wednesday night thinking it over, and I think I have a handle on why, or at least a big part of the reason: the river is fucking killing me lately. I was chatting with Goat on the girlie the other night and he was telling me how he keeps getting in ahead on the flop but then getting crushed by the turn card. I believe he went out of the Mookie this week when he flopped AKQ to his JT for the flopped nuts, got allin and called by someone with AK, and the turn card came a King to eliminate Goat early. That is a tough beat and I feel for the guy, I really do. But at least he got called by someone who was clearly going with that hand no matter what happened, and I can't question the guy one bit who got it allin on that flop while holding Big Slick. And more than that, all things equal it is only about 734 times worse (to me anyways) to be ahead until the last card, but have that fucking river rip your victory away and smack you in the face with defeat at the very last moment. And lately, the river is fucking me like it's going out of style, and it is just completely demoralizing to me.

On Monday I got beat out from the MATH in a race situation when I flopped a pair but then lost to a straight at the river. So, it was just a race that I lost, but the way it shook out felt pretty fugly to me. I'm basically 50-50 going in, I take the lead on the flop and my opponent has basically 3 outs to beat me. The turn is a rag but does make a straight draw for my opponent, making me now about an 80% favorite with one card to come. Looks live I've probably survived another race, I'm doubling up and it's all good. Then Booooooooom, I'm done.

On Tuesday I played FTOPS #9 the PLO8 event, and as I mentioned yesterday, I lost five big pots to bust near the end of the first hour in unceremonious fashion. The thing is, all five pots I was ahead on the turn and got effled on the river. Five times in 40 minutes. It was gross, seeing my opponents turn up an anussy hand that was given a victory on the river. In each case I was definitely at least 80% to win heading into the last card. When that happens five time in 40 minutes, every single one of them on the river, at least for me it has a major effect. It's very hard to overcome. In the span of just a few days, I've reverted back to that guy from a couple of years ago when I had only been playing online for a little while -- when the cards are flipped and all the money's in the middle, whether it's a race or if I'm dominating, I already know what's happening on the river. I could tell you the exact card that's coming. And lately it never seems to fail. That is such a demoralizing, annoying feeling that it really weighs on me.

Then last night I'm in the Mookie, and I also played the 9:45pm ET megasatellite to Thursday night's $535 HORSE tournament. Well, technically I also played that FTOPS #10, the $322 rebuy nlh tournament that I satellited into the night before, but just as I said I would, I refused to rebuy at all, so when my AKs lost to a flopped set of 3s in the first 6 minutes or so, I logged out of that tournament without a second's thought or care about it. But otherwise, the Mook and the HORSE sat were my only two events of the evening. And here's how it went down.

I made the second break in the Mook, though I got rivered for a 1200-chip pot in the earlygoing by Roccoboxer who could not lay down his open end straight draw on the flop or turn. I lost the minimum I think, as my bottom two pair on the flop was good all along, but on the river the top card paired, giving Rocco and his inability to lay down middle pair middle kicker the undeserved victory. That was 1200 chips gone on the river, when I knew I was ahead before that time. What can you do.

Anyways, eventually I've made it to the second hour, with around a third of the large field of 112 players eliminated, and I had just won an allin preflop race against a shortly when I flopped a Jack to my unbeatable Jackace and held off a medium pocket pair from another short stack. This had gotten me back to around the starting stack of 3000 chips, and I was feeling like I maybe had a second lease on life in this thing after a couple of tough beats in the earlygoing. Then this hand:



Here, I'm still in the bottom fifth of the leaderboard and I need to build some chips fast if I'm going to survive much further than where I'm already at, so I will readily take an allin preflop with AQ against a guy who limped from utg+1 to start the hand. Of course I'm not pleased to see the JJ, but at the same time I am now racing and with the chips already in the pot at the time it was an obvious call even if Mr. Subliminal had shown his cards before we got it allin, so all that is fine.

So, here's your flop:



Ba ba ba Booooooooom! And I'm going to double up here and be in great shape all of a sudden. It feels good, I like the play I made and I can win a race once in a while for sure. The turn comes an offsuit 4, and we're down to just two outs. Two outs once. It's another of those 95% favorites of mine that you hardly even really consider as possible to lose. I mean, 19 to 1 is 19 to 1, and one of out every 20 times you face this situation, you are going to lose. But it's 1 in 20, and I've already lost to several 5% shots at the river over the past week or two, so no way it happens here.



Or not.

Now tell me something, can I count this in my mind as a "suckout"? I am curious about people's thoughts on this. I mean, certainly preflop allin it was a race situation, and in that sense nothing that happens to either player is a suckout if you think about it only that way. But seeing it another way, preflop it was a race to see if I could hit an Ace or a Queen, which had basically a 50% shot of happening. And it did. So me hitting my Ace is certainly not a suckout of any kind. But him hitting his two-outer on the river, isn't that a suckout at this point? My 50-50 shot "won", surpassed his JJ, and now he hits the 2-outer, again at the river? I think it's a suckout but I would be interested to hear others' thoughts on the topic. Not that it matters of course in the end, but I feel like I got sucked out on at the river again and want to wallow in it some more today.

Let's think about the question another way. I agree 100% that it is no kind of suckout if I have the JJ, he has the AQ, and my Jacks hold up until river, where the Ace falls and I lose. Yes that was technically a 6-outer at the river, but once you're allin preflop, it is roughly a 50-50 shot through all five cards, and just because the Ace or Queen happened to fall on the river, to me that is clearly not a suckout in any way, shape or form. It's just a lost race. But this is a different situation from that. Here, the race already was won on the flop by the AQ hand, and it leaves the pocket Jacks with just two outs to overcome the deficit on the flop. This is clearly not a "resuck", since there was no kind of suckout whatsoever on the flop when it was basically a 50-50 shot going in. The 48% AQ hand hit its card, the race was over, and only then does the set of Jacks fall on the river. To me, that is a big bad fugly suckout. It's a plain old 2-outer on the river the way I see it, and not just because it happened to me. Again, I acknowledge going in that it obviously does not matter one bit in the end whether or not this was a "suckout", but I was thinking about this hand overnight and I'm curious to know what you guys think about it.

Either way, it was another sick, sick river loss where I was wizznay ahead after four cards. Out of the Mook in the low 70s somewhere. And congratulations to Mike Maloney for taking down this week's Mookie and for winning the 12th of 27 seats to the BBTwo Aussie Millions Tournament of Champions. Mike is a great guy and a very solid poker player, so congratulations to I'm sure a well-deserved win. And I have to say, I do feel bad for runner up Astin, who busted out with his second 2nd-place finish so far in the BBTwo to go along with a good 3 or 4 final tables. That has gotta suck, but congrats as well to Astin for playing without a doubt as well as anyone so far in the BBTwo, regardless of what the points system says or doesn't say.

So, on to the HORSE megasatellite, which would award 20-some seats out of 253 or so players to Thursday night's $535 HORSE event for FTOPS #11. In this one, as is always always always the case with any level of buyin in HORSE on full tilt, the play was complete and utter shit. It was worse than shit. It was the shit that the flies excrete who sit around all day eating the shit that comes out of horses' asses. It might even have been worse than that. I want to show you another rivering, on a hand that took just about my entire stack away from me, just because I want you to see how god dam awful at this game these assholes really are.

So the game is razz (what else?), and the blinds are 120-240 with an ante of 20. I raise it up to 120 with a 2 up, and only the 5 up across the table from me calls. Then comes 4th street:



Of course I'm betting with me showing A2 and my heads-up opponent picking up a Ten. Fonkey calls, which of course makes me happy because now (1) I know I am ahead, and (2) I know exactly what he has underneath, which must be near perfect (one would think) to make a fonkorific unjustifiably -EV call like this. Simply no understanding of razz at all is the only explanation. Not with my A2 showing and me having bet on 3rd street.

Fifth street is more awesome for me, although my opponent also catches good which is fine with me given my up cards:



So I bet out with my A23, and he calls again with his 5T2 showing. Quelle fonkey! So now I know (I think) that he must have A2 and not A3 underneath, because at this point with me betting all the way and now showing A23 up, that's the only possible explanation for his calling still at this point now that the bets have doubled.

Sixth street, still more awesomeness for me:



So here I am, showing fucking A236 and having bet out on every street, and here's the guy with a Ten up calling that bet. Now, he doesn't raise here, with the bets already doubled on 6th street, so there's basically no way he has a wheel with an A4 under. There could be no possible explanation for not raising with a wheel at this point, and flat calling will only cost you a bet and basically can't possibly win him anything extra on 7th. But my point is, when he calls me here with me showing an A236 and him showing 5T32, what could he have here? As I said there's no way it's A4 underneath, but I have to figure him for an Ace and some other rag. Sure I guess it could be A6, but with A2356 and me showing A236, doesn't he raise here with the second best possible 6? If he's not a total fuckafonk he does. But not here. So I don't even see how he could have A6 underneath. In which case, this guy is making a horrific fonkplay no matter what he has going on underneath those two down cards of his. What, is he going to put me on a complex 5-street bluff when I'm showing A236 and have bet on every single street here? Now now please.

Now, naturally because this is razz, and because the river is my fucking bitter enemy over the past week or so, I brick out with two pairs on the river. This leaves me with a filthy 9-low, but obviously there is no way I can fail to bet here. This guy could easily be drawing to a wheel-type of hand, and he has to be willing to fold anything but a made 6-low at the river given the A236 I am showing. Any experienced razz player will know that this dickhead cannot call here with out a 6-low. Period. Any fidiot will know that. I'm showing A236 and I bet on 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th streets. I obviously have the low, period. Even a fuckfool knows this. So I bet out. My opponent thinks for a few minutes, and calls me. Shit!

Of course my 9-low lost the hand, if he was willing to call me on the end. So what did this fonkafuck have to make this brilliant play? Check it out:



And there you have it. Now thanks to full tilt's clusterfuckian idea of mixing up the holecards every time they show in the stud variants, we will never really know which cards he had under in which spots. So let's play what I like to call "best possible scenario": since the 5 underneath paired his 3rd street card, let's just assume that the 5 fell on the river and did not help him. That means he called me on 3rd street with (84)5 when I had a 2 showing. Objectively bad play, that cannot be denied. Some of you out there might think this is a fine call for 3rd street, but that's because you are fonkeys. It's -EV and that is an objectively true statement. In fact, it's a terrible call with that 8 underneath (even worse if he really started with (54)5).

Then on 4th street, my favorite part of the whole hand I think, he calls again with let's assume (84)5T, with me showing A2. Now how the flockity flick do you make this call? Do you think maybe he forgot he was playing razz, and instead thought he was maybe playing home game poker, with 8s and Tens wild? I mean, there is just on other explanation for this play. I haven't been playing crazy (you really can't in a game like razz), I bet with the low card on 3rd, and now I've picked up A2. Un fucking real.

On 5th street he calls again with (84)5T2, with me showing A23. That is unbelievable, now for a double bet when I am showing the three lowest possible cards, and he has a fabulous made Ten-Eight low. Just wow.

On 6th street he calls again with (84)5T23, now an ever-powerful made 8 low against a guy showing fothermucking A236 and who's been betting on every street. More brilliance. What the flying flock could this assclown possibly think I am holding here? It's not a question of me bluffing him -- I'm showing A236 for crying out loud!! And he has a made 8 low. Obviously he only calls on 6th street to try to draw to his wheel, which is exactly what I put him on. But what a terrible, terrible play.

Then of course my river affliction kicks in, double-pairing me and ruining my otherwise beautiful hand. Here my opponent, who I can only assume was hoping to draw to his wheel, pairs his 5, leaving him with that made 8-low against me with the A236 showing and having bet ever since the beginning of the hand. I bet, and of course he can't lay his monster 8 low down at this point, can he? Because the fact that he has a smooth 8 low is highly relevant here, with me showing A236 and betting all the way, right? Just unreal. Needless to say, I did not make it into the HORSE event tonight, although I know that at least jeciimd, emptyman and KOD will be in there today so stop by and check them out at some point after the 9pm ET start time this evening if you like to watch luckboxes in action. :)

So F the river. And speaking of rivers, don't forget tonight is the next Riverchasers tournament, at 9pm ET on full tilt. This is another BBTwo event, so get in there early to play for the next Tournament of Champions seat to be awarded. As for me, I am done with BBTwo. I mean, I'll be playing tonight because I've been focusing more on the blonkaments this year than anything else (sad as that is), but I am irrelevant. I can't stop people from instacalling me even with hands like T9o for most of their good-sized stack, I can't start off with five pocket Aces in the first hour like sooome people, and I can't even win my 19-to-1 shots with one card to come. So I'm done. But I'll be there and I'm going to try to just take the whole thing more light-heartedly than I have been previous to now. Giving up can be good like that I guess. The Riverchasers is always a highly skilled tournament made up of highly skilled players, so I can't expect to compete with the big boys like that and I won't even be trying anymore. I give up.

See you tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt!

Lost, FTOPS and the BBT

Well it's Wednesday, and that means two big things in my world every week. #1 is the Mookie, which goes off tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt (password is vegas1 as always) as the BBT continues in its 6th week, close to the halfway point of the challenge. More on that in a minute. But #2 is Lost, and with tonight just the second to last episode of the year, and with the show on probably an 8-episode kickassawesome streak. So needless to say, expectations for this evening are high.

In Lost, I don't really know what to expect for tonight's episode. And thanks to Schaubs for pointing out that there is a special show called Mysteries of Lost or something like that scheduled for Thursday night at 10pm ET as well this week, which is billed as something to get new viewers up to date in advance of the finale, but also allegedly to expound upon some of the already-explained secrets of the island. But as far as tonight's episode goes, I'm going to go ahead and guess no mention of Jacob or anything like that. I don't see how Locke is going to be dead at this point in the show, so I expect him to play some role tonight. I remember the scenes from last week involving Desmond telling Charlie something like "This time, you're really gonna die, there's no way to get out of it this time", so hopefully this will be the week where that finally happens. I'm also hoping to learn some more about Naomi and Penny, and it looks like tonight will be the big raid on the island camp by the Others, so I expect another random death or two along the way. And I've heard a lot of crazy shit about the finale coming up next Wednesday, one week from tonight, but I don't want to spoil anything big for the readers so I'll just leave it at that for now. Suffice it to say, next week's explosive season ender should prove to include enough craziness and new and totally unexpected information that it will change the very nature of what Lost is. How's that for a teaser?

Back to poker, last night was the FTOPS #5 HOSE event, and I started off strong. But after close to two hours of play, I ran into one of the worst suckouts ever, and it completely tilted me out of the thing. A guy hit a 2-outer on me at the river in stud high after I had read him just right but he couldn't get away from his bluff, calling my two pairs down all the way to 7th street with just his buried pair of twos. Of course he nails a third two at the end to take down my Aces over 9s. I shouldn't have tilted of course, but this hand left me with under 1000 chips instead of being back in the top 20 out of some 400 players remaining (651 I think started off), and I just didn't have the heart to get it back. Of course getting sucked out on a few hands later for my remaining chips didn't help either, but that's par for the course I guess so what can you do. Anyways, tonight is FTOPS #6, the 6-max nlh event, and since I love 6-max so much I will be buying into this tonight since I failed to qualify in any satellites for this event. I only got to play one reasonable-buyin sat for this thing since full tilt did an uncharacteristically poor job of making non-monkey-buyin-level sats available at any time during the evening hours ET. That one satellite was Tuesday nightt at 11:30pm ET, where I headed into the final 20 players (the top 11 would win seats) in 2nd place overall but still managed to crash and burn without making the money after a one-two punch of suckout-then-setup to rain on my parade. Thing is, though, I've been playing so bad in the FTOPS events overall that I'm thinking I actually won't buy in to Thursday's O8 event after all. Friday I'm already in FTOPS #8 the pot-limit holdem event, and I won't play Saturday before Sunday night's FTOPS Main Event which I have also already qualified for. Who else is playing in the Main Event out there, other than Fuel?

Anyways, back to the BBT. This is something I have realized I should have done long ago, but frankly I am just going so very badly in the BBT tournaments that I admit I have not been paying the BBT race enough of the attention that it deserves. And today I am to change that, taking the time that I would clearly be devoting to the BBT leaderboard if I were on it instead of hopelessly far away from it. So let's delve a bit into the top of the BBT leaderboard here as we close in on the halfway point in the challenge this weekend.

First, the bottom of the current top 10 on the leaderboard is Pirate Wes otherwise known as a10419. Wes is a tough player who knows how to play all the games, and per his blog he has rededicated his focus to blogger events this year, the results of which are really showing as Wes has steadily climbed not only the BBT leaderboard but also the 2007 Hoy moneyboard. Wes has consistently shown that he has the tight spirit needed to accumulate points in an event like this, and yet obviously with his $591 won so far from the BBT tournaments, he has the ability to run deep as well. Look out for Wes as the second half of the BBT race begins. Next in 9th place is Mike Maloney, who is presumably from Chicago given his web address, and who's been playing with the bloggers for most of 2007. At 8 events, Mike is tied for the fewest events with points among all the top ten BBT points players along with Miami Don, and yet despite those only 8 BBT scores, Mike has really made his deep runs count, easily winning the most cash of any player so far from the BBT tournaments, at over $1000 where no one else on the list is even over $800 that I could see. It's almost hard to believe Mike is only in 9th place on the leaderboard with stats like that, but again this is obviously another player with great potential to make a serious run at the top spot by the end of June.

In 8th place is that guy Sirfwalgman, but you may know him as Waffles. Waffles was on a bad blonkament run at the very beginning of the BBT, but since then he has really turned things around, finding his stride in winning the Mookie just early into the BBT run, and parlaying that success into many BBT pointing opportunities over the past several weeks. Waffles joins with 7th, 6th and 5th place players Buddydank, Astin and jeciimd, respectively, as the only four guys in the top 10 to have moneyed in fewer than three of the BBT tournaments so far, but Waffles has still managed to make the BBT points in 10 out of 15 events entered, and those numbers can't be argued with when you throw in two final tables and nearly $400 in cash won out of both of those two final table appearances. If Waffles can keep his stack from getting too big early, when he tends to get a little liberal with the chips, he is playing great, has all the momentum and is poised to push hard for the glory over the next couple of months. Buddydank, in 7th place, takes Waffles' points-focused approach even further, pointing in a truly impressive 12 out of 15 BBT events played, although through 3 final tables Buddy has only come up with $191 in cash to show for it. Nonetheless, 3 final tables in 15 large blonkaments is nothing to sneeze at by a long shot, and it's 3 more than I've been at, so what can I say other than nice job to that.

6th place on the current BBT leaderboard belongs to Astin, fresh off his win at the MATH this week. Astin has made the points in 10 out of 12 BBT tournaments so far, which is very, very hard to do and is a testament to his having kept his cool and waited for big hands throughout the tournament series to this point. And he's won over $600 so far as well, putting him in 5th place overall in total dollars won from the BBT so far heading into the last week of the first half of the BBT season.

Starting the top five in 5th place in the BBT standings is jeciimd. Jec is a funny case in that he has probably been the most consistent point-casher overall among the top ten BBT point-getters, pointing in 14 out of 17 BBT tournaments played. That said, jec has been to only one final table, something only four people in the current BBT top 40 players can say, and he amazingly has yet to cash for an actual money payout in any of the 14 tournaments he has reached the points. Although these cash stats suggest perhaps a bit too much tightness, you can't argue with jec's consistency, nor can you argue that with just one big performance in an upcoming BBT tournament, jec will vault himself right to the top of the standings. And in 4th place on the BBT board is Miami Don, the only guy to have won two of the BBT events, which consisted of the MATH and the Mookie in consecutive weeks, in addition I believe to a third Mookie which sadly for Don occurred just before the BBT tournament series began. Don was hot as ballz early on in the BBT race, but since then has cooled a bit as players have been gunning for him after his big back-to-back run in April, but with two wins, three final tables and over $650 in winnings after just 13 BBT events, he is clearly a force to be reckoned with going forward in the challenge.

In third place on the current BBT leaderboard is oossuuu754, another blogger new in 2007 and who has already won a WSOP Main Event package on full tilt earlier this year. oossuuu burst onto the scene early in the BBT race by making his first of three cashes so far in the challenge. Each of those three cashes has been significantly deep however, even despite no outright BBT tournament wins at this point, that osu has amassed 3 final tables, all 3 of which were cashes, for nearly $600 in winnings over the past six weeks of the BBT. As one of the only two players to participate in each of the 18 BBT events so far, osu is just a shade ahead of Don for third in the current BBT standings and looking to move higher.

Second place, and last week's BBT leader, is Iggy, another guy who has been playing the kind of tight early poker that you need in order to survive to the points in this kind of a tournament series. But Iggy has also proven that he is a master of mixing it up in these tournaments, gearing up once the BBT points are in and culminating with some nice aggressive play by the time the final table approaches. And the results have been spectacular, with Iggy recording BBT points in 12 of 14 events he's played, including a high of 5 final tables and 3 cashes totaling over $700 so far from the BBT schedule. As one of only three guys to crack the $700 cash mark, Iggy has also vaulted to the top of the 2007 MATH moneyboard with two big cashes in recent weeks in Mondays at the Hoy, and only recently lost his short-lived spot atop the BBT leaderboard to the new leader in this most recent week.

And that new BBT points leader is Bayne_s. Bayne is another relatively new blogger, with posts ranging back to early 2006 but who didn't really start posting with much regularity until this calendar year for the most part, and his game has steadily improved as he has played more with the bloggers and gotten to know you donks who can't fold, the ones who always slow play, and the guys who are screwed down tighter than youknowwho's youknowwhat. And the results have followed suit, as Bayne has also inched into the top 5 of the 2007 MATH moneyboard while also nabbing this week's top spot away from Iggy in the BBT race. Having also played all 18 of the BBT tournaments thus far, Bayne has made the points in 12 events (only jeciimd has pointed in more BBT tournaments -- 14), including 5 final tables (tied with Iggy for the lead), and three cashes. With 787 BBT points, Bayne is slightly ahead of Iggy's Iggy's 763, and over a hundred points more than oossuuu754 and MiamiDon in 3rd and 4th place. So Bayne has a small lead going over the angry dwarf, but he's looking good here as we near the halfway point of the challenge to be able to hold on at least for one of the top few spots that award fabulous prizes at the end of the Battle.

So there, please make sure to come out tonight to the Mook to continue your own chase for the top of the BBT leaderboard, as well as on Thursday night for the latest Riverchasers private tournament, also on full tilt poker. And be sure to congratulate these guys who are blazing the trail for us all, all of whom are showing that the way to survive in a points-driven tournament series like the BBT includes playing smart, tight poker early, outlasting the donks, and then turning things on as time moves on and the final table grows near. I may or may not be in the Mookie toinght depending on what's happening with Lost at the time, but since I'll already be playing in FTOPS #6 in 6max nlh, I might just be able to squeak in some nice Mookery on top of things in advance of next Wednesday's epic season finale of the greatest show on television since the X-Files started suckin after Season V.

The Truth Is Out There baybeeee. Trust no one.

Basketball, Bracelets and the Big Game

Georgetown 80
Belmont 55

The Hoyas started off slow, but they quickly took a big lead and put this game away early. As they should against a team like Belmont. Offense intended. One down, five to go.

In my March Madness pools, I did ok. I'm right around the middle in most of the pools I am participating in, which include Miami Don's, UpForPoker's, Equinox Gym's, and a private pool run by a friend of a friend from my old stomping grounds up in Boston. Unlike many other people, I have entered the exact same pool in each, and only one entry in each. I'm not looking to maximize my chances of winning the cash in these things. Much like why I would never multi-account when I play online poker, I'm playing to win based on my skill but have no interest in bending the rules because money is just not my primary objective. Being the best is. So I've made my picks, and I actually decided to follow a strategy I've honed over the years which is not to pick the same national champion as everyone else because if they do win it, that makes it nearly impossible to win these pools. Instead, I've gone out on a limb and picked my Hoyas to win it all, even though deep down I do not see how they possibly have the horses to get past that monster Greg Oden and Ohio State. But I know if I pick OSU like many other players will pick, I won't really have a shot at winning. So I figure why not go with the Hoyas, who I honestly do expect to get to the Final Four, and then see if I can get lucky. Because if Georgetown does win, not only will I put myself in the hospital with severe alcohol poisoning, but I'll probably win a pretty penny in multiple NCAA pools as well.

Anyways, did I tell you guys that Duke was going to lose yesterday or what? I think I wrote a bit about this yesterday, but just to elaborate somewhat, the NCAA selection committee (I don't capitalize those words because the committee has not done anything to earn my respect) whacks off to the ACC. Every. Single. Year. As a result, you get a team like Duke -- who honest to god barely deserved to even make the tournament -- ending up with a 6 seed. Now, the selection committee can do whatever it wants and give any team whatever seed it wants. They think this makes them powerful in that they can overlook what a truly terrible season Duke had and what a truly mediocre team they really were this year, give them a 6 seed, and act like the actual games this season never happened for Duke. Never mind that they finished 8-9 in the crappy ACC after the conference tournament opener loss. Still, let's just give them a 6 seed and act like they were good this year after all. But you know what happens? Then you have them playing an 11 seed like VCU in the opening round of the Big Dance, only they're not like your normal 6 vs. 11 matchup. Duke, who themselves is really more like a 10 or 11 seed this year, is basically playing a game against a team that's every bit as good as them. They're expected to win handily being a 6 against an 11, but it's a fake 6. It's a selection committee whackoff 6. So was I surprised to see them lose to VCU last night? Not in the least. Duke sucked this year, and even the whackoffs couldn't get them to play like an actual 6 seed. Fuck 'em.

Same story this year for Maryland as well as Virginia -- #4 seeds for those two shitteams? Are you kidding me? But what can you do, when these selection committee members go home and eff their wives, they're not thinking of their wives while they're doing the nasty. They're not thinking of Christie Brinkley, or Carmen Electra or Tera Patrick or whoever floats your boat. They're thinking about making sweet, sweet love to the ACC. To the conference itself. Right in the puss. It's despicable and it's so transparent, year in and year out. But just like ever year, they can't do shit to actually make these ACC teams worthy of their seeds. So Maryland finally managed to pull away against #13 seed Davidson yesterday, but for a long while there they tried to lose that game too. And same story today with Virginia when they play Albany. Virginia will probably win the game because Albany barely even squeaked in to the tournament despite not being the best regular-season team in the America East conference this year. But if you're one of those sillies picking these alleged #4 seeds like Maryland or Virginia to get past the Sweet 16, you in trouble sista. They suck, and they're both more like 8 seeds than 4 seeds. So when they play those 5 seeds in the round of 32, they're up against teams that are in reality better than them for the most part. And then when they play the 1 seeds in the Sweet 16, they're not like a 4 against a 1. In reality, this is more like the top seeds' second round games, an 8 or a 9 against a 1 seed. And as you know, those teams usually get crushed and crushed hard.

Meanwhile, quality teams like Marquette who was in the top 25 all season long and had a great record in the Big East, the best conference in college basketball, they get a 9 seed that should have gone to Duke, and then they end up losing to a Michigan State team with a great coach who was very close to their skill level come tournament time. Give Marquette the 6 seed they deserved, and they'd have beaten a team like VCU. But instead they're out because they were underseeded, as the selection fuckers do every year to the Big East teams. Syracuse, who (it pains me to say) probably deserved a 10 seed in this tournament, they're not even given the chance to prove that they belong here after their 10-win season in-conference and 22 wins overall. What a filthy effing joke. But as long as nobody forces the selection committee to stop the silliness and the corruption, they will continue overseeding ACC teams every year, and underseeding the Big East teams. But unless the committee finds a way to pay off the referees and maybe even the players, those overseeded ACC teams will continue to go belly up in the early and middle rounds of the Dance because they're consistently up against teams who aren't seeded as high as them but who are as good or better than them in reality. And I'll continue to love every fucking minute of it, especially seeing those Duke anuses lose to a team with the word "Commonwealth" in their name. It's always a good day when Duke loses, especially in the NCAA tournament to end their season. What a bunch of jokers. Josh McRoberts? McSucks. Coach K? Coach F. Off.

OK how about some poker content here? Let me begin by saying this. I think I'm done playing low-buyin HORSE tournaments. Last night I played in the nightly bracelet race on full tilt, which on every other Thursday I believe is HORSE, at 9:30pm ET. I ran well in it, despite my apparently terrible O8 play (why do I love making that joke so much?), but eventually I took back-to-back redickubeats and I could not recover. I think I've just accepted that I am too tilty to play low-buyin HORSE tournaments anymore. Cash games I can still handle HORSE just fine and tend to do quite well in. I play all the games well (except the one, of course ;)) and when I can always go back to my pocket or back to the cashier for more money, I can almost always excel in limit HORSE on a cash table. But in tournaments, where one or two bad donkeysucks can effectively eliminate you and leave you scratching your head in anger, I just don't have the mentality for that anymore. You may notice I haven't talked about the nightly $26 buyin HORSE tournament at 10:15pm ET on full tilt in several weeks. That's because I gave up playing it about two months ago. I final tabled that biatch probably 6 or 7 times in the maybe 4 month run that I gave the thing, finishing as high as 3rd I think several weeks ago, but for the most part I decided sometime in late January/early February that for all the monkeys you need to get through to hit the larger payouts in that thing, the payouts weren't nearly worth the pain and suffering.

See, the problem with limit HORSE in tournaments is the stud games (razz, stud high and stud hilo). These games by their very nature are fucking replete with suckouts. There is a reason why nobody plays razz, stud or stud hilo in a no-limit format. It's because it is so common for the hand that's ahead to end up losing. Same reason nobody who's serious about poker plays no-limit Omaha. In omaha and stud games, there is very rarely a huge favorite early in the hand, and the possibilities for late-hand suckoutage are just everywhere, all the time. Even the AA double suited hands in omaha are rarely more than a 2-to-1 favorite over whatever random holding an opponent has before the flop. Even the buried pair of Aces in stud high is not much of a favorite over someone who is playing 3 suited cards or 3 connected cards early on in a stud hand. In hilo this discrepancy is even worse, since half the pot can go to the low hand in any event. So nobody plays these games no-limit, since it would make no sense to try to get all your money in early in a stud or omaha hand when, virtually no matter what you hold, you aren't possibly a really significant favorite. Contrast this with a game like holdem, which is quite often played no-limit, and make no mistake there is a clear reason why holdem is the only poker game that is commonly spread no-limit. That's because if you have Aces or another high pair, or if you are dominating your opponent, you can be as much as a 4-to-1 or higher favorite right from the flop. See, now it makes sense for the best players in the world to get all their money in early in the hand. You can be 90% or more to win on the flop in holdem, something which almost cannot possibly happen in omaha or stud after 4th street. This is why those games are spread at limit (or occasionally pot-limit) only, while holdem is regularly spread as a no-limit game.

But I digress. This is all a long-winded way of saying that these limit stud games are killing me. In 90% of the razz, stud and stud hilo hands I go deep into in these HORSE tournaments, I'm only going deep into the hand because I'm ahead. I've got a high pair or two pairs in stud, I've got a low draw and a flush draw in hilo, I've got a 4-card 7 in razz. I wouldn't be in there if I didn't have a good hand and am highly likely ahead. But in limit, very much unlike no-limit, there is nothing I can do to keep these donkeys from just paying a little bit more money to draw to their idiotic inside straight, or to draw to the runner-runner flush with 3 cards to come because they can't get away from the fact that they started with 3 suited cards in stud high or hilo. Believe me, I try it. You just can't get the donkeys to go away from those fuckdraws in a limit HORSE tournament. Again, on a cash table I want them to chase those draws, because they'll only hit them, say, 1 time in 4 or whatever, so I can take a lot of their money while they act like morons at the table. But in a tournament context, that 1 time in 4 when they do hit the draw, they snarf a huge pot away from me because I have correctly made them pay bigtime to chase, and suddenly my stack is decimated.

Last night in the bracelet race, I was in the top 5 with 40 or so players to go. I had played my typical solid game up to that point, winning a couple of big pots when truly terrible players could not get away from two pairs despite my door card pairing in stud high, or when the guy with the 76 low in razz could not fold despite my showing A246 on the board. I don't know why players like this get the urge to play HORSE, but one thing I've definitely noticed is that when it's a bracelet race, that really tends to bring out the huge donks. As it is, players online barely even know how to play most of the non-holdem HORSE games. Tell them it's a bracelet race, and every holdem-only donk in the universe who is on full tilt at the time wants a shot. It can be very lucrative, and makes it fairly easy for a well-rounded player like me (except in O8, of course) to climb the leaderboard like last night, but to actually win one of these things, you have to avoid about a million donkeys making about a million donkeychasing plays, and in the end it is very clear to me that it takes far, far more luck than skill. Much moreso than in a no-limit poker tournament where at least I know I have the ability to make a lot of the monkeychasers lay down their foolish draws, and where they might not even bother chasing the 4-outers, the inside straights, etc.

So, in 3rd place with 39 players remaining last night, I first had a monkey hit a river flush in stud high when I had been pushing a split pair of Aces from 3rd street on, which turned into Aces over Tens for me on fifth street when his board showed nada. That was about half my stack as I had been attempting to convince this assidiot to lay down from 3rd street on when it was apparent all along that I was way, way ahead. Then, on the very next hand, a guy raises it on 3rd street with a 9 showing, and I have a split pair of Jacks. I reraise, and he calls with his pair of 9s even though anybody but a monkey's anus would correctly fold in this spot. I go on to make two pairs, again on 5th street, and I'm betting out the whole way, and this guy just can't get away from that pair of 9s. Because, you know, split 9s is just about the best possible hand in stud high of course. Long story short, the monkey's anus ends up spiking a nine on the end, face down of course so even I couldn't know enough to get away from it, and suddenly in the span of two hands I've gone from 3rd out of 39, to 38th out of 39 players remaining. I tilted my ass outta there just as fast as I could for my last 400 chips on the next hand, and growled my way to bed. How annoying.

Anyways this is all why I don't plan to play the $26 buyin HORSE tournaments anymore (let alone those $5 jobs, which I played once upon a time and which are even worse -- somehow -- than the $26 buyin HORSE tournaments). I will still play in the Sunday night $216 buyin weekly HORSE guarantee whenever it entices me -- I have had very little trouble satelliting in to this tournament within a couple of tries in probably 80% of the weeks I decided to try to play, and this despite the fact that in one of the five HORSE games, I have no skills to speak of, mind you. Incidentally the best way I've found to get into that tournament if you're interested is to play the satellites that start late afternoon / early evening on Sunday night a few hours before the actual event kicks off every Sunday at 9:30pm ET. I used to stay up with jeciimd into the wee hours of the morning on Thursdays and Fridays and try to play my way in in the 12:30am ET $69 weekly HORSE satellites, and on occasion I'll still play that with him. The nice thing about that tournament is that it usually only has a very small handful of players so you only have to outlast typically 2 or 3 other competitors to win the seat. The downside, however, is that only one seat is awarded, and if you get a little bit of bad luck it can be very difficult to recover. In the Sunday night satellites, however, the total opposite is typically true. The two best sats I've found to play into the Sunday night HORSE 20k guaranteed tournament are the very last two that run, which I believe are a $26 satellite at 7:30pm ET -- typically with 30-40 runners and awarding seats to the top 4 or 5 finishers -- and then at 7:45pm ET the $75 buyin satellite, which usually has more like 15-20 players, but with the top 5-7 finishers winning their way in. Either one of these presents a nice opportunity to play your way in fairly easily to the $216 buyin HORSE event, and if I can win pretty regularly without even knowing how to play O8, just imagine what you can do with your totally well-rounded HORSE skills in these things. And although there is still plenty of monkeyage to go around in the big HORSE tournament, you just can't underestimate the value of eliminating that lowest level of donkey from a limit event like this. Trust me on that one.

OK what else real quick for this weekend. So Friday night is always a fun night for me on full tilt these days since they not only run the $26 nlh bracelet race at 9:30pm ET, but they also have the midnight ET nlh bracelet race that has the $216 buyin, meaning that 1 in 10 players in that thing win the 2k WSOP prize package. My nlh game has been on on on over the past few days, so I'm feeling good about my chances in one of these $75 or $216 buyin bracelet races coming up over the next week or so. Hopefully I'll get where I want to be. I won't buy in for the full $216 into these midnight races, because when the prize you're playing for is only worth $2000, you just can't buy in to too many tries at $216 a pop or it becomes not worth your while right quick. But, full tilt as usual comes through big time for its players with not one, not two, but three juicy satellites, all turbos, into this event every night it runs. First, at 9:10pm ET every night of a midnight $216 bracelet race, there is a regular $14 turbo sat into that event, awarding a seat to basically 1 out of every 14 entrants or so. At 9:30 every one of these nights, there is a $14 rebuy satellite as well, which typically has 30-40 players and which will typically end up paying out 7 or 8 seats depending on the exact number of entrants and the number of rebuys and addons. And then at 9:40pm ET these nights, full tilt also runs a $26 buyin turbo satellite into the midnight bracelet race, which has the best odds of all due to the buyin, and awards roughly 1 seat for every 8 entrants. In all, it's not too hard to satellite your way in for cheap into one of these $216 races, which as I said are really great because all you have to do is end up in the top 10% and you win your WSOP seat and the 2k total prize package. I myself have satellited my way in to 3 of these midnight races so far, and although I have yet to win my seat in one of them, I came fairly close just this past Wednesday as I wrote about recently, and like I said I'm feeling it lately so any day now you may be reading about my big win right here.

Last thing -- don't forget about the latest Big Game, hosted by Miami Don, which is scheduled for this Sunday at 9:30pm ET on full tilt. Remember, the buyin for this badboy is a $75 token, and this tends to make the prize pool in the $1500-$2000 range or more every time this game runs. And as I've mentioned here several times in the past, this is to me always one of the most fun times I can have with the bloggers. It tends to bring out the best of the best among our crew, and the payouts are big and the trash talk can be even bigger. And now with the advent of these "token frenzy" mtt's on full tilt (god I love that name), including the $75 token frenzy every night at 9:45pm ET, it is easier than ever to win yourself the token you need to get in to this thing if you have any modicum of mtt satellite skillz. So I will definitely be in there on Sunday night, and I hope many of you will get it together enough to make an appearance as well. If you want to pad your bankrolls on full tilt and play against a really good group of bloggers, there is no better outlet for that than the Big Game, happening this Sunday at 9:30pm ET. See you donkeys there! Hee hawwwwww!

Btw I like Notre Dame -4 over Winthrop, and Texas -8 over New Mexico State today, for entertainment purposes only of course.