Thoughts From the Borgata Fall Poker Open -- Part I

That's right -- an actual poker post ahead!!

So I went and played in the Borgata Fall Poker Open last week. Long story short, I made a nice run, played about 13 hours in a one-day event, and lasted through more than 98% of the field before being eliminated just short of the final table. The event I played was a bounty event, and I managed to pick up 6 elimination bounties -- more than covering my full buyin for the event as it was -- plus a small four-figure cash for finishing in 11th place on the day. Although I lost the vast majority of my stack on a dominated suckout that took me out of the tournament instead of vaulting me into the top half of the final table, for reasons I will describe below, I did not and do not feel I had much right to complain about that, and complain about that suckout I will not.

The interesting thing was, I really did not play very well in this tournament. It's not all that usual, but I've definitely had a number of these sorts of runs over my career back in the online poker days, days where I never really get it together, my reads are not really all that perfect, I make some mistakes, but somehow manage to survive through them and make a nice run. But I really did not play very well in this event, and my total lack of current experience playing the game really showed in my opinion, in a lot of different ways.

For starters, I got very little in the way of cards for the first several hours in this tournament, but I handled that fact much more poorly than is necessary for any aspiring successful poker tournament player. Like, I got no good starting cards. At. All. My first six hands of the tournament all had a 2 in them, and 9 out of my first 10. I could not believe it. That's about as bad of a beginning run as one could ever imagine for sure (what are the odds? 2/13 of having a 2 in any given hand, right? so 6 in a row to start is 2/13 to the 6th power, right? For those keeping score, that is 0.0000136, or 13 in a million for those less math-inclined), and that's not even counting that the next three hands after my 7th hand did not include a 2, also had 2s in them again. But aside from the astonishing math behind this occurrence, I handled this horrific string of starting cards as poorly as could be imagined. I mean, here i was having driven two hours to play this tournament with some blogger friends, and here I was completely tilted out of my mind after what, 30 minutes of play? And I hadn't even gotten sucked out on, or even lost a pot yet for that matter. But you should have seen me. I was complaining to my fellow players, showing my cards after every fold to players already out of the hand, and just generally driving myself crazy over what was, albeit a mathematical freak show, just 10 bad starting hands to start a tournament. That's all. But I literally had to get up and take a walk around the luxurious Borgata poker room after the 10th hand was dealt to me, that's how out of my mind I was just from seeing all those 2s in my pocket cards. Clearly, I was out of the right mindset and out of experience in playing mtt's, and it really showed.

Similarly, after months and months generally away from the game, my instincts were no more in no-limit form than one would expect them to be. After managing to calm myself down once the 2s stopped flowing almost exclusively to my hands, I proceeded to bet or raise a few times with total garbage either before or on the flop -- I had to try to play with something, didn't I? -- based largely on what I perceived to be weakness among the players in front of me, and I was generally wrong about as often as I was right. Almost every time I tried to open-steal in the earlygoing from middle or late position, some clown behind me who I had been sure was looking like he would fold, would instead reraise, and I would end up sheepishly folding. Around the three- or four-hour mark, I was getting to be around half the average stack (I was never really above average in this entire 13-hour run, it would turn out), and I made two different flop raises against guys I had read as tight and weak, and on both instances was forced to fold when my opponent surprised me by reraising me allin. Yes, I made the good fold in each case, but both folds -- in particular the second one -- were crippling to my already weakened stack. Although I obviously made a number of good reads as well to have lasted as long as I did, I simply could not count on my instincts to carry me very well in this tournament, something which I know stems from a total lack of experience playing the game over the past seven months time.

Lastly, I sucked out not once but twice with almost all of my chips in the middle just to last as far as I did. After the second big flop fold on my bluff that I mentioned above, I was down to around 4000 chips (starting stack had been 12,000) and a good 20-25% of the average stack. I was basically done. The action folded to me in middle position on the very first hand of the 5th hour, and I insta-pushed with A9s. I support this move of course, being as totally short and desperate as I was, and what I really wanted (within the realm of reason) was a hand like 66 or 88 to call me and give me a fighter's chance for a double-up. But unfortunately for me, the big blind woke up with AQs, instacalled my short ass of course, and I started to pack up my stuff when a 9 fell on the flop, which amazingly held and I was back at least to around half of average, and more than 15 big blinds which at least gave me some room to move. But I had gotten it in totally dominated, and had won a 1-in-4 chance just to be able to survive.

I made an even worse read later in the tournament, after picking up some more chips when I made my first two playable starting hands of the entire day, both during Hour 6, when I was dealt JJ and AK in two out of three hands. That was a long-ass time to wait for a freaking starting hand to play, and I had to suck out once allin preflop just to even be around to see these cards dealt to me, but at one point after accumulating some chips from those two hands, I started just plain beating on the guy two seats to my left, who was always the big blind to my button. He had shown himself to be totally and openly tight as hell, and so I had started raising his c-bets with abandon, and just generally constantly putting his entire stack at risk in situations where I simply did not think he had the fortitude to gamble it up without a very strong hand that I did not think he had. And it had been working. I had made him fold three separate times on three stone bluffs from me, and he was getting pizz-nizzed with me and made no bones about it with his facial expressions and mannerisms. This guy was just fixing to mix it up with me, and I knew it because I could read his emotions like a book. But, I let my lack of sharp poker instincts get the best of me by falling into the worst kind of trap with these tight players. I think it was Tommy Angelo's book where I saw this excellent tidbit about playing against tight players -- when you pound on these pussies enough and make them fold over and over again because they're too afraid to play a big pot without the nuts, these guys absolutely are fixing to play a pot against you. But they're tightass pussies, so they're not fixing to take a big bluff up against you. They're just waiting, holding on and praying for a hand like pocket Aces. That's the kind of hand these guys are praying to mix it up with you with. They're generally not the types to try to take you on with a big bluff, because that's not their game.

Well, about 7 hours in, I forgot all about that and made a dumb call against this tightass in my big blind, and I nearly lost my chance for a score as a result. At this point there were probably around 60 players left out of the 251 who started in the $350 buyin event plus the $100 bounties, and I open-raised from the button for the umpteenth time against his big blind, this time with me holding A9s. The tight big blind just called, so I knew he wasn't super strong (because no tightwad just calls with AA or KK in that spot, take it from me, they're too afraid of getting sucked out on and they're too angry and disbelieving that I have any hand after I try to steal from them for the 15th time over just a few hours time), but I figured he had to have something. The flop came down K94 rainbow, giving me middle pair top kicker, and knowing that the guy had to strongly suspect me of stealing from him again, I figured I was actually in pretty good shape here so I went ahead with a standard c-bet of around 2/3 the pot. Well, Mr. Tighty finally grew himself some balls and pushed allin, which for me represented about 90% of my remaining stack. I would still be alive if I called and lost, but only in theory as I would have had just a few big blinds left to play with. Effectively, this was an allin push against me, and as I sat there replaying the hand, his expressions and mannerisms, and just running through the history I had built up over a couple of hours of play abusing this guy over and over again, I think I let my instincts convince me of what I at first knew to be true -- this guy had top pair. I don't think his tight ass would have played TT, JJ or QQ with just a call of my stealy-looking raise preflop, and I did not think he was loose or aggressive enough to throw away a chance at even min-cashing (the top 27 finishers would get paid in this event) by moving in here with pocket 8s or lower given the two overcards on the board. So I stared at the K94 on the board, and I even noted that absolute lack of real draws available (thus giving more credence to his bet representing a made hand of some kind), but as I kept thinking things through, I could feel myself convincing myself that I should call. "This guy is furious at me", I told myself (which was undeniably true). He's just been waiting to push back at me and get some of his chips back for hours, I said inside my own head (also obviously true). And yet, even though at first I clearly saw him for having some kind of a middling King in his hand -- because, after all, a la Tommy Angelo, the tightwad player isn't waiting to bluff me with nothing, but rather to push 'em in when he honestly believes he has the best hand -- the more I stared at the board, the more my fuzzy and out-of-practice poker instincts chipped away at what was clearly the right inclination -- to fold. I distinctly remember asking myself "Come on, what are the chances that this guy happens to hold one of the other three Kings in the deck, in the big blind no less?" Ahhh, the favorite move of the guy convincing himself to make the wrong play. The answer to that question, of course, was that the odds of him holding a King were pretty damn high, given his action in the hand and what I knew about his play over the previous few hours. I also distinctly remember telling myself that, given my A9, I beat all hands but top pair, so if he was in there with a hand like J9 or 89 or A4s or something, I was well ahead and in great shape. All true mathematical points, mind you, but simply inappropriate attempts to get myself to make a big call with second pair top kicker against a super tight player who would not have been in there without a good hand himself. Now, you throw in a couple of draws on the board, and my second pair top kicker starts to look a little better, even against a tight player like him, but the rough texture of that board should have told me all I needed to know, and the right move was to fold there, for sho.

But instead, after agonizing for some time, I made the call, slowly flipping up my A9 semi-confidently after all the self-convincing I had done, but of course I was deep down not surprised to see the tight guy table KJs. It's the perfect hand for him to have called my stealy-looking preflop raise with, and to push allin with on the K94 flop. It was obvious even, in retrospect. I mean, I should have been able to predict his exact hand more or less down to either KT or KJ with that action and what I knew about this player. But again, my less-than-honed poker instincts took over and convinced me to make the play that I started off the flop knowing to be wrong. Basically, almost any time in my entire poker career when I have actively convinced myself to turn a fold into a call, I've been wrong, and it's something that I almost never used to do when I was playing poker regularly. But take half a year off from the game with any regularity, and here I was, screwing up and making the ultimate rookie mistake against a guy whose play was so awful that a child could have known my second pair was behind. I asked how much his stack was and cut out the chips, lamenting the tiny pile I would have left to toss in on the very next hand and clear out of dodge, and as a result I didn't even see the Ace fall on the river to give me the hand and a new lease on life in the tournament. I made "the face" to the guy I had just eliminated, taking his $100 bounty chip for my third bounty on the day in the process -- you know that face, the one that any guy who's played a million poker tournaments gives when he knows how pissed and disappointed the other guy is because he himself has been sucked out on and outplayed someone only to get beat by dumb luck more times than he can count. To his credit, my opponent gave me back the "it's ok, it happens" face -- a look I have still not even close to perfected, myself -- and from there I was able for the very first time all day to play with at least a little bit of chip utility in my stack.

All this is to say, I made a nice deep run in the tournament last week, but I got my usual dearth of playable starting cards, and my instincts were about as off as they ever get. I simply did not play great poker on this day, but I was lucky enough and played just well enough to survive and actually manage to win some decent cash despite my poor instincts at the tables. Despite all of this, however, one thing I did do in the tournament was make a number of solid laydowns -- despite the one stupid screwup against Mr. Tightie that I described above -- including one pretty big laydown in what turned out to be by far the biggest pot I saw all day. More on "the pot" in tomorrow's post. And yes, that will mean two poker posts in two days, so just deal with it.

Vegas, Day Two

Had an absolutely atrocious cash game session today, losing a little over $300 at 1-2 at the MGM but having a fun time sitting with Chad, CK and even Blinders for the last few hours. But my cards were so awful, words can barely describe it. Over about 8 hours of cash game play, I received no AA, no KK, one QQ (which lost to CK's K5s), one JJ (which lost to Chad's AQ), and one TT (which lost to KJo). One AK which I won with a reraise before the flop. And I literally did not hit a single flop on the night. I must have seen (or known they were out there) maybe 15 or 20 flopped sets at my table during that time, but I literally -- no exaggeration -- did not flop top pair even a single time over 8 hours of play, let alone a set. Actually, that's not entirely true -- earlier in the afternoon I flopped broadway with JTs on an AKQ board. I bet the flop and got called by a guy who obviously had top pair or two pairs. The turn was a Jack, I bet and got called again, and then the river brought a lovely Ten, putting broadway on the board and giving me the split for my efforts. And sadly, that right there was the literal highlight of my entire 8-hour session -- getting uberfucked and splitting a pot at the river. Fun times.

I don't recall ever having this tremendously bad luck after the flop in addition to perhaps the worst run of starting cards in my entire poker history. Getting so few playable hands over 8 hours, I ended up making some stoopid river calls of medium-sized bets because I simply couldn't bring myself to lay down the three good hands I was dealt all day long. It sucked so hard, right now I'm siting here thinking that I might not even feel like playing in the World Series tomorrow at noon. There's just nothing like 8 hours of horrible cards, horrible luck and horrible decisions to make you question who you even think you are fooling by dropping 15 hundy on a silly little luck-based card game.

Oh and by the way, putting my lesson from last night into practice on the three good hands I was dealt all day (if you can even call TT and JJ "good"), I raised it up to 20 each time after a couple of limpers -- this is ten times the big blind now, mind you -- and still got called by K5s to lose half a buyin with my Queens, and by AQ to lose half a buyin with my Jacks.

So let's review. A solid 8 hours of play, only one true premium hand in pocket Queens (if you can even call that "premium"), which I raised to 10x, got called by K5s and lost to turn and river Kings. Two "semi-premium" hands in JJ and TT, each of which I also lost after raising it up to 10x the big blind, getting called by KJo and AQo and getting outflopped or out-turned in each. I flopped broadway, bet all three streets and ended up playing broadway on the board for the split. Oh, and I also lost half a buyin against a shorty when I called allin with A2 on an A23 board and learned I was up against A3. And I did not flop top pair even one time the entire night long. Fun times, did I mention that already?

Poker can suck it.

Right now, it feels like my odds of actually playing in the WSOP on Saturday are about 30%. I guess we'll have to see if that changes with a few hours of sleep to help erase the memory of today's pokering from my data banks.

MATH Recap, and Going to Las Vegas

This week's Mondays at the Hoy featured 61 runners, making for a cool $1464 in the prize pool and a slightly larger event that we have had over the last couple of weeks as the battle for the BBT3 Tournament of Champions seats continues to heat up heading into the last month of the challenge. Here are this week's eight cashers in the MATH:

8. $51.24 katitude
7. $51.24 Chippy McStacks
6. $80.52 heffmike
5. $117.12 Evy35
4. $161.04 hellory
3. $212.28 TuscaloosaJohn
2. $307.44 PokerBrian322
1. $483.12 bdidde

I passed out more or less right after my own elimination in I think 14th place on the night, so I cannot comment intelligently at all on what happened after that point. What I will say though is that our winner this week, Byron, sucked out when allin on I think four separate occasions just in the maybe 30 minutes or so I spent sitting at a table with him. There were at least two times allin with a shitty pair against a higher pair preflop only to flop a set, one other river suckout, I think to make a straight against two pair or trips or something, and then the time he rivered a 7 after calling my preflop allin with his Hammer. Not that that last one is really a suckout, but you get the drift. But from the writeups it sounds like the suckouts ended there and Byron just played his normal solid game from there and through the final table for the victory. Glad to see that another good guy will be joining me in the BBT3 Tournament of Choppions Champions, and I look forward to adding some more dead money to that field in this week's blonkaments instead of continually making the ToC field tougher and tougher on an almost daily basis. Maybe Lucko can win three or four more ToC seats and keep some other people out of there.

On the good news front, I played very solid poker on the night, my first night back at the tables for real in two weeks. Though I was definitely tired as balls by the end of my run in the MATH sometime after midnight, I did not have that urgent need to donk and sleep as I have in each of the past couple weeks' worth of blonkaments. I actually played good poker, both in the Hoy as well as the one other tournament I ran on the night, a $10 rebuy FTOPS #1 satellite that I should have had the chip lead in if not for a ghey suckout (talk about things I haven't missed over the past few weeks!). In the MATH I managed to pick up a couple of hands on the turn and river, getting paid once or twice by other two-pair type of hands, and I also floated very effectively against the right players whom I know know how to fold. With all the aggressive players I had sitting with me on the night, ranging from MATH-killer Columbo to twoblackaces, Evy and Byron to name a few, this necessitated my calling some preflop raises and even some action on the flop with not much to work with in my own hand. But my instincts were on all night, which frankly surprised me after two weeks of no real poker at all to speak of, and the whole thing felt very natural to me. So I would rate myself as ahead of the game given how I expeted myself to play after this poker layoff and with quite a bit of fatigue still lingering, and that is all goodness. Especially with my trip to Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker now coming up in just a few short weeks.

So we should talk about that. As I mentioned yesterday, my ongoing bout with mono left me with tons of time to just sit and think over the past couple of weeks, and I did so with a vengeance. One of the things I focused quite a bit on was the right time for me to go to Las Vegas this summer. As I had mentioned previously here in the blog, the second weekend of June is much better for me than the first weekend for a few different reasons, reasons which only increased upon learning that my older brother L is also planning to be out in Vegas over that second weekend. My brother and I have been going to Las Vegas together since we were in college, drinking up, smoking weed in the stairwells of the outdoor parking garages of all the big resorts in town and just generally partying it up in a manner befitting of a true "What Happens in Vegas" story. These weekends in Vegas have taken on a special meaning in my memory and truly remain some of my favorite memories of all time, whether with my family or otherwise. Now that I am married with children and all that, those times in Vegas with L are basically only a thing of the past, as we never get out there together anymore and really never just get to hang out and rage like when we were kids in the olden days.

Anyways, back to this year's Vegas trip. So after proclaiming how much better the second weekend of June was for me, some things happened. Falstaff announced that the first weekend would be the "official" weekend for the poker blogger gathering, which really bummed me out. I knew it was possible for me to make it the first weekend of June still, but not only does that weekend not work as well for me personally given some things I have going on here at home, but the WSOP tournaments available that weekend do not appeal to me either. Yes there is that shorthanded nlh event that I cashed in last year, but as I've mentioned here before, 6-max is just not my game right now like it was a year ago at this time. I always told myself that if I'm gonna drop a couple large on a single poker tournament, then I want to play exactly what feels most comfortable to me at the time. I promised myself that last year after I went out and played so well in the 6max event, given that 6max is what I had been playing almost exclusively for a few months before the WSOP in 2007. Well, this year 6max is not my game anymore, and the idea of going and dropping 15 hundy on a 6-max tournament next month has never really sat well with me.

Then my brother let me know he also would be in Vegas on the second weekend and not the first, further adding to my annoyance and discomfort with the idea of that first weekend in Sin City. Then some bloggers acted like babies at my expense, for only maybe the 1000th time in the past few years I've been doing this, once again disappointing me and reminding me that no matter how much I think someone in this group is my "friend", in reality they're not my friends and in fact, most likely they are haters like so many others out there, all making me feel even less like bending over backwards to get together with the large group. Then Mookie or someone linked me to the fact that Falstaff announced that there would be no live blogger tournament this time around like there has been at every other previous live WPBT gathering. And then I got sick. All this stuff happened within the span of maybe two weeks or so, and every factor seemed to sway my decision away from that first week of June.

While sitting home in bed, contemplating my own death and the decisions I've made in my life, the choice became clearer and clearer to me if I ever recovered from this illness: I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want to. Not what some blogger(s) who would trash all over me out of frustration whenever the fuck they want to want me to do. I don't want to play the World Series event that I don't like, just to be there the first week of June. I don't want to piss my family off by leaving at a time that is not convenient for them. I don't want to miss out on a chance to be in Vegas for a few days, away from the family and all of those "real" obligations, with my brother for the first time (and probably the last time) in years. I'm sitting there in my bed, wondering if I'm going to die, and it all just became crystal clear to me that right now in my life is my time to do what makes me the most comfortable and the happiest when I get out to Vegas next month. Nobody is into hanging out with the big group more than I am, don't get me wrong, but this year I made known what weekend would have worked for me, and frankly I think would have worked better for everyone especially given that there's not even going to be a live blogger tournament this summer, and in the end the group chose a time that simply is not convenient for me for a great number of reasons. Then I got slammed on infant-style by admittedly a very small group of bloggers, and then I got sick and realized how much I deserve my Vegas time for me and not for people who are not really my friends and many of whom secretly wish me ill.

All this is a long way of saying that this past weekend I officially made my Las Vegas plans for June. I am going out on Wednesday night, June 11, and staying until Sunday morning June 15. So I will be missing the "official" live blogger gathering, if you can even call it that. I don't know how many people are going anymore to the summer get together, which seems to have shrunk noticeably each of the past few years since I've been going, and without a live blogger tournament even scheduled for that weekend, in some ways it almost feels like the summer gathering has officially become a thing of the past this year.

Now, to be clear, I think it sucks that I may miss out on meeting / hanging out with some of you, be it for the first time or otherwise, because I won't be out in Vegas during the weekend of June 6-8. I hate that aspect of things because I have had an absolute blast the last two summers when I've been out there with the larger, albeit shrinking, group. I already know that some of the people I am really looking forward to meeting for the first time or hanging out with for the umpteenth time will be there during that second week of June, and frankly that factored greatly into my decision to stick with the weekend that is much better for me for so many reasons. And let me also be clear about one thing -- any of you who are out in Vegas between the 11th and the 15th, I want to see you. I would love to meet up with anyone and everyone who knows me, wants to know me, reads me, hates on me, you name it. I love the live blogger gatherings, and just because I won't be there during the "official" unofficial get together this year doesn't mean I don't want to see anyone. I would love to meet up with any or all of you, whoever is in town while I am there, and I sincerely hope you will take me up on that offer. I will write more about those plans as they get closer, but for now suffice it to say that I have already bought my plane tickets, and I will be out in Sin City from late night on Wednesday, June 11 through early morning on Sunday the 15th. Hopefully as many of you as possible will be around to catch up and I will happily buy you a beer. Sadly with my mono lingering it is unclear if I will be able to drink any libations of my own while I am out in Vegas, but I guess final tabling the $2000 buyin WSOP nlh event over three days while I am there will keep me pretty busy and pretty sober anyways, right? More on that later.

Don't forget Razz tonight in the Skills Series. Man I hate razz, with a passion. But I've been doing much better in the Skills games since making an adjustment a few weeks back, recording maybe 20 knockout bounties in just the past few weeks, and who could forget of course me dominating my way to winning my BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat in Skills in Stud8 a few weeks back. So hopefully I can stay alive for a little bit at least tonight in Skills. And of course if you like to blow donkeys, there is always Smokkee's blowdog tournament Tuesday night at 9pm ET as well.

So before I go, I basically was completely shut out from the whole poker blog scene for two weeks while I've been sick. Can anyone tell me, were there any great posts on any blogs over the past two weeks that I just can't miss?

Busting Huck, Negreanu's 6-Max Philosophy, and WPBT In Vegas

The last few nights have been kinda weird for me online. As I have written about several times before, immediately following a big mtt win for me online, I tend to play like a total asshole for some time as my hubris-filled brain typically has needed some time to come back down to earth about my own play and the size of my roll in order for me to play my best poker again. I have tried everything I can think of in the past to counteract this tendency, but to no avail as each of my biggest mtt victories has been followed up by a good couple of months of worthlessness. First there was the cooler that lasted basically all of last summer right after I won the party 40k, and since this was my first "major" mtt win online I don't even think I realized how my inner donkey had taken over until sometime near the end of the summer. Then it happened again last winter after I won the pokerstars $11 Rebuy Madness in September, where I didn't win another major mtt until New Years Day of this year. Even after my big HORSE win on January 1, it took until late March for me to win this bracelet race tournament on full tilt. Generally speaking, I have just not played good, solid or smart poker at all after big wins, so this week I've been trying really hard to take it easy after winning my way into the WSOP last week.

I was happy to see that I came in 2nd in the Hoy on Monday night, my first real night of play after winning my WSOP seat on Friday, as just not tilting out early like a hubrisian asshole was enough to satisfy me, let alone actually cashing and playing well enough to win if not for the luckbox to top all luckboxes flopping nineteen boats and 14 nut flushes in just a couple hours of play. Similarly, I played solidly again in Tuesday night's WWdN, lasting to the top 20 out of 59 entrants, and only going out when my allin raise with K♣Q♣ was called on a flop of T♣7♣5♠. My opponent flipped up pocket Jacks, a call I can't begrudge anyone from making with the overpair there, but leaving me with a full fifteen outs, all of which failed to hit despite my roughly 55% chance of winning that hand on the flop. But my point is, I played well again and did not donkarooni which was nice.

Other than these blogger tournaments, I have purposefully been taking it easy online for the past few days, opting only to play one other bracelet race since Friday (not even sure why, to be honest, but we'll get to that), and then I was back to my 8:30 and 8:45 satellites into the nightly 30k guaranteed tournament on Tuesday night as well. Long story short, I donked out of the rebuy sat when I ran top pair on the flop into pocket Kings, but in the $14 turbo sat at 8:45pm ET, I managed to consistently build my stack and then held on to final table the event and win my entry into Tuesday's 30k guaranteed. In the end, I was too tired to make the deep run that I wished I could have in the actual 30k, but I did last into the top 50 out of 317 entrants, and more than that, I had the opportunity to bust my first-ever full tilt pro after having sat at the table with numerous of these guys in my days on full tilt. Maybe 30 minutes into the 30k, I was up around 5000 chips from the 3000-chip starting stack, due mainly to three perfectly-executed stop-and-go plays with top pair good kicker in the earlygoing, and then at the top of my table shows up none other than 2000 WSOP winner Huckleberry Seed.

Huck was already on a bit of a short stack when he arrived, sitting at the time on around 1900 chips, and he did not play many pots as the action began with him at the table. There was the typical annoyingass observer chat going on that seems to follow any time one of the name pros is at your table, but otherwise things were pretty uneventful, and Huck was playing pretty tight. Maybe 10 minutes after he sat down, I open-raised a pot 3x from UTG+1 with pocket 9s, and Huck then called from the SB and the BB called my 3x raise as well. We saw the flop three-handed:



As you can see, the action was double-checked to me, and I opted to bet the pot, my standard flop move when I believe I am ahead and/or want to represent that I am ahead. I didn't think either of the other two players had played their hands so far like they had pocket overpairs -- no reraise preflop and no bet on the flop either -- and therefore the only hands I realistically had any concern about were AQ or KQ. Going with the odds of all the possible hands that these two players would have called with preflop and checked the flop with, I figured my 9s were most likely best, so I bet it out as you see above. Huck sat for just a few seconds and then pushed allin for his last 1745 chips. The big blind folded, and I was left to contemplate what Huck's move meant there.

First I considered again the pocket overpair possibility. Although I could certainly see Huck smooth-calling my raise preflop with a high pocket pair, and even maybe checking the flop with the plan to checkraise me after I put in my continuation bet, the fact that he moved it allin with his checkraise screamed out to me some form of weakness. Many donks out there might do the allin checkraise with JJ or QQ, but a real-life professional like Huck Seed, I reasoned, would likely instead opt for a more reasonable reraise of, say, 3x my bet in the hopes of getting me to call. So I just wasn't putting the guy on the overpair here. And that left just AQ or KQ as far as reasonable holdings for Huck to be on here given that he had smooth called my preflop raise from the small blind. Would he make this allin reraise with AQ or KQ? Maybe. Actually I think with AQ, that hand is still strong enough to probably have warranted a reraise before the flop (remember this is 6-max holdem here), and probably also strong enough to not push allin here. The KQ was the only hand that I really believed fit well with everything Huck had done so far, and knowing that he was a professional player and not some online donkass mofo really helped me narrow things down like this. In the end I just decided that the likelihood of specifically KQ in his hand was sufficiently low that I had to make the call. So I did:



and Booooooooom!:



My first ever full tilt pro elimination! And of a former WSOP Main Event winner no less. Does that mean that I am going to win my own WSOP tournament when I play this summer now? It does, doesn't it? Now, am I correct that knocking Huck Seed out of the regularly-scheduled nightly 30k guaranteed tournament automatically nets me the $109 buyin in cash into my account, right? I know full tilt has this policy of getting the buyin for any scheduled mtt in which you knock out a full tilt pro, but I guess I don't know all the details as I haven't ever read the small print. How long does it usually take full tilt to pay up on these bounty payouts, does anyone know from personal experience?

Speaking of 6-max holdem, I finished that crappy Daniel Negreanu book over the weekend, the one that might as well be called Not Really Poker Wisdom But Actually Poor Advice for Anyone But Total N00B Hold'em Players, and he does make one point near the end of the book that I think is spot on. In his brief section on short-handed poker, Daniel makes the point that ring game nlh is about trapping and winning big pots, while short-handed poker is much more about winning the antes. As someone who has spent about a million hours just this year playing in satellites and in large buyin 6-max nlh tournaments on full tilt, I think this is a very insightful and spot-on commentary about the differences between no-limit holdem at a full table or a short table. Part of the reason that I have done so well in these 6-max events this year is that I am constantly putting in those raises to take down the pots before the flop whenever possible, and I do much less trapping than I ever do at a full ring nlh tournament. Sure it's fine to see a flop once in a while with my KK or QQ in the 6-max tournament, but in general I am basically always raising with these hands and always hoping to take it down before the flop, and move on to the next hand with the chips I've won from this one without taking the chance of having my big hand busted. Well said, Daniel.

Lastly, I want to mention here again the WPBT gathering in Vegas this summer. As most of you should know by now, the dates we are meeting are slated for the weekend of June 7-10. I would love to know how many of you out there are in fact planning on going out for that weekend. I will definitely be there, and I will be playing my WSOP event during that time as well, although I haven't quite figured out exactly which day I will be arriving, where I will be staying or, most importantly, which WSOP event I am going to play in. Anybody else out there planning on playing in any WSOP events over that second weekend of June? I think I mentioned this briefly earlier in the week, but on Thursday, June 7 at noon is the 6-max nlh event at a $1500 buyin, something which I would obviously love to play in due to my penchant for 6-max play this year. The other event I have my eye on is on Saturday, June 9 at noon, which is the regular $1500 nlh tournament. There is also a $2500 HORSE tournament that begins on Saturday night at 5pm, but that event is probably a distant third behind the other two events I mentioned above as far as what I am most likely to play in. Anybody have any thoughts as to which of these events I should pick for my first WSOP bracelet? Anyone planning on playing in any of these themselves?

Live Poker, and the MATH is Back

After missing last week's event during the Hammer Family's relaxing trip to sunny southern Florida, I am back this week and looking to make my thunderous return to my favorite blogger tournament of the week...mine!



10pm ET tonight on pokerstars. Be there or be squizznare. Hopefully Fuel will be there, because if he does I am going to lay a $10 bounty on him for whoever eliminates Fuel from the tournament. I've seen so much donkery when players go up against him recently in these blogger tournaments, I want to incentivize somebody to play some real poker against this guy and take him out early. The MATH final table called and said it is sick and tired of Fuel always being there, and always being there with a big stack at that. So, $10 transferred to your pokerstars account if you knock the big man out of the Hoy tonight. See you there.

OK so I have a lot to talk about this morning (what else is new). I guess first let's discuss WSOP Circuit Event #6 at Caesar's in Atlantic City, in which I played on Saturday at noon. This was a $300 buyin event, and in the end sported I think over 1150 players in what was either the biggest or the second-biggest-ever WSOP Circuit tournament, a fact which I kinda liked because believe me when I say the donkeys were out in force in this thing. It never ceases to amaze me that people will make the trek out to a real-life casino and pony up $340 of their hard-earned money to play in a poker tournament in which they should know they haven't got a rat's ass chance of winning. But I am getting ahead of myself.

So I arrive at Caesar's at around 10:30am for the noon start time of the event, and after parking and finding my way to the tournament registration, it was maybe 10:45. The line for "registration" at the event was pretty long, but happily it only took maybe 20 minutes to get through it all and get myself registered. To my dismay, however, nobody asked me to pay the $340 entry fee during the registration process, and this was when the nice lady at the registration counter told me I had to go wait in another line -- the "WSOP Cashier" line -- in order to pay my buyin and officially enter the event.

Now, I'm no tournament structuring genius, but this is a goddam idiotic idea, plain and simple. I mean, they've already got me waiting in line for 20 minutes and providing my personal information to "register". Why not take an extra, what? -- 30 seconds? -- and have me pay them the money right there? It makes absolutely no flipping sense at all. So instead, I waited in two 20-minute lines to get into the tournament instead of just the one 20-minute line it should have been. Luckily I had gotten there way early so this was not an issue, but can you imagine the rant you'd be reading right now if I had missed getting into the tournament because of this effing regoddamdiculous line issue? I still can't understand why they would do it this way. In any event, I got registered with maybe 30 minutes to spare, and was even able to meet up briefly with Jordan for a few minutes before the event, and then we both headed to our tables to sit down.

I had told Jordan I was annoyed going in not only because of the two-lines situation, but then also because I had been randomly assigned seat #10 at my table. There's nothing inherently wrong with seat 10 of course, but this would mean I would be seated right next to the dealer, and typically in my experience there is less room in this seat and in seat 1 (other side of the dealer) than anywhere else at the table. So I was not looking forward to that. You would think, therefore, that when I got to the table and found that I was actually not right next to the dealer, that I would have been pleased. But no. Caesar's, who was really not fully staffed to hold this many players, had made the brilliant decision to play 11-handed tables for this tournament. I hate that. The extra hand added at each table always makes it that much tighter that you have to play in the earlygoing, and at some point it becomes too much for optimal poker play. But the worst part about it isn't that -- it's that these tables are simply not built to fit 11 people. So, as a result of Caesar's not being able to fit everyone in the two rooms they had set aside for this tournament, everyone around every single table got to be squished in between two other people, legs touching and elbows banging into each other every couple of minutes. Not cool.

Anyways, back to the donkery. The guys at my side of the table were pretty solid for the most part. One to my left (seat 11) was a guy who didn't play a single hand for the first 2 hours of the tournament, so when he did finally get in there preflop I knew to evacuate immediately unless I had a premium hand (which I didn't. At all.). Seat 1 was a guy who ended up being a complete donk. About an hour or two into the event, this guy managed to call an allin reraise on a flop of AA4 with his pocket Jacks, even though there were two players left to act after him, both of whom had raised or called the raise preflop and therefore pretty clearly had an Ace (at least one of them). So he lost about half of his stack there. Then the same player also called an allin on the flop of AJ7 from a guy who had raised it up preflop, and this time he flipped over KQs. So, here was a guy who knew the basics of preflop play, but had no clue whatsoever how the heck to get away from his decent starting hands when he didn't hit the flop, and had no respect whatsoever for an Ace coming on the flop.

The 4 seat was similar, but at least knew when to lay it down to a scare card on the flop when he had an underpair or two undercards. His problem, though, was that he was one of these any-Ace guys. He lost probably 2 or 3 thousand chips in two hands, one where he called a preflop raise with A8o, an Ace flopped, and he check-called all the way through the river before losing to AK, and the other hand the same thing happened when his A6 lost to AQ with an Ace on the flop. Pure donkery.

I tried hard to isolate against these two players, but I simply didn't have the cards this would have required since all the good players at my end of the table were all playing the exact same strategy every time the 1 seat or the 4 seat entered a pot. In fact, this strategy helped me to win what was probably one of my two biggest pots of the day, which happened when the 4 seat just limped preflop from early position. The tricky, aggressive player in seat 8 kicked it up 3x when the action got back to him, and I read him for just an isolation play such that when I looked down to find AQo, I reraised him another 4x in the hopes of chasing his ass out right then and there. It worked and I won maybe 600 chips or something early on in the tournament. That aggro player in seat 8 would bust himself about an hour later when he fired not one, not two but three bullets (the last an allin) at a board without an Ace on it, when he turned out to be holding absolutely nothing whatsoever. I used to play that way, but at this point in my poker career I recognize that as totally avoidable. I'm all about bluffing, and firing two bullets is often a requirement if you expect to be able to win pots with your bluffs. But betting it all through three rounds of bluffing after you've been called once and then again twice, and you have totally nothing, that is not sound tournament poker right there, not by a long shot.

Anyways, as far as my own performance in the tournament, let me put it this way. I lasted about 7 hours overall, so it was much better than my first WSOP experience which was at the actual WSOP last summer at the Rio where Joe Hachem runner-runnered me with a flush to knock me out near the end of the second hour. However, in 7 hours of play, I saw exactly four pocket pairs -- twice 9s and twice 5s. I won a pot with only one of those four shitty pocket pairs, and that was when I was short near the end of my run and managed to more than triple up with my pocket 9s against a clown who bet everyone else out of the pot once I was allin, with him playing A4s on a board without an Ace. I got the one AQ hand, which I won a decent pot with early, but otherwise, the best Ace I saw the whole day was A9. So, in just over 7 hours of play, I saw only two pairs 66-AA (those were the two sets of pocket 9s), and no AK, no AJ and no AT, and just the one AQ hand. So it was some pretty awful cards overall, and I had almost nothing to work with. Still, I managed to hold my own with no cards to speak of, lasting 7 hours until my shortstack allin push with A9o was called (inexplicably) by another short stack with JTs on a flop of 875. Putting side how horrendous this call was -- it's one thing to bet with two overs (one of them an Ace), but a whole other thing to call almost your entire stack with two overs Jack-high, which is hugely donkorific -- but the board then brought a 6 on the turn, giving me the straight, and then an 9 on the river, giving my donkponent the higher straight and IGH.

I don't know what place I ended in, but I would estimate probably between 600 and 700 players were left out of the field of roughly 1150 players or so. So my overall performance was pretty meh, but believe me when I say I am proud of how I played given how horrible my cardage was from start to finish in this thing. I laid good reads on players almost the entire time -- save for one hand where I pushed with pocket 9s on a K44 flop, got called by pocket Tens, and then got bailed out by the 4 on the turn and the King on the river to tie for what would have crippled me early. I didn't make any stupid moves, and I laid down a couple of blind steals to big reraises from the blinds when I had an easily-dominated hand like QTo I recall one time, and K9s I recall in another instance early on. Clearly I need to play better in these things if I expect to make a serious run at the WSOP in June, but again, with absolutely no cards to speak of, I am ok with my performance overall this weekend.

The best part of my run to AC on Saturday happened after the tournament ended, when I met up again briefly with Jordan before heading over to the Borgata and meeting up with a few other bloggers from the area. First off, this was my first time ever in the Borgata, and I was pretty impressed (although I will say that Caesar's was pretty sweet too as I think about it). But I quickly headed over to the Gypsy Bar, where I found Al and F-Train hanging out amidst several groups of hot chicks, and some very attractive bartenders to boot as they were quick to point out. I had a few Captain n Cokes with the guys and shared some nice conversation with a few guys who I don't usually get to hang with. As I recall I think F-Train had been a bit put off by something I had said about a hand I thought he had when we sat next to each other during the WPBT gathering in July 2006, and that was the only time I had ever hung out with the guy until this weekend, so it was nice to reconnect there with someone whose blog I really enjoy. I was sure to compliment F-Train on having been blogging a bit more actively than he had been previously for quite some time, and I hope he keeps that up as I always enjoy reading his poker thoughts.

And unsurprisingly as well it was great to chat with Al, who was even nice enough to show me around the Borgata poker room (very foncay btw) for my first visit there before I took off at around 9pm after a long day of pokering it up, live style. Al and I discussed a few ideas which I myself had been kicking around for a while and which hopefully will come to fruition soon, and it was of course great to throw a couple back with the man who has brought the Riverchasers poker tour as well as countless great posts -- and let's not forget the hot chicks -- to us all over the years at his blog.

Near the end of my stay at the bar, Derek came by and we chatted for a bit as well. Derek was actually the very first blogger I met at the WPBT gathering last summer, as I sat at a 1-5 spread limit holdem table in the Excalibur with some people I was sure I recognized from pictures on various blogs, and in the end I was sitting right between Derek and Zeem as I recall. Derek and I shared a few laughs while we listened to Al's friend's band really rock it up in the Gypsy Bar, and I was glad to get to chat with him for a bit before I left for the long drive back to nyc. Also, at the Borgata poker room I was glad to be able to say hi to Heather, whom I also have not spoken to since last summer's WPBT gathering, and who was very gracious to me despite my freakout a couple of weeks back. I thought that was super cool of her, as to be honest she must think I'm some kind of assidiot and I can't blame her. Heather asked how my tournament had gone at Caesar's, and generally like I said was very gracious towards me which I thought was great. If I were more of a man, I really had intended to apologize to her in person there, but at the time there was a crowd around us and they were on their way to the bar or something so it didn't seem right. But I was a fool a couple of weeks back, I admit it here for all to see, and I really appreciated her being cool to a guy who like I said she must think is some kind of a freak. I'm actually not a freak, but I have loads of respect for Heather -- not just for her game at many different variations of poker, but also for her work with the WPBT gathering last summer and at her dedication to her friends and the hard work that they were putting in to get the bloggers together like that -- and I was really glad to be able to meet up with her for just a few minutes in AC this weekend.

OK I think that's all for today. I have a lot to say about the NCAA Tournament coming up this week, but I will save that for tomorrow since I've written so much already about my trip down to AC this weekend. Let me just say here how proud I am of my Georgetown Hoyas, who not only won their first Big East regular season crown outright for the first time since the early 1990s as I recall, but also won their first Big East tournament title since 1989. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I am actually proud to be a Georgetown alum, and this is coming from a guy who was at the school for the end of Alonzo Mourning and the beginning of Allen Iverson, and believe me when I say I have been a raging Georgetown basketball fan ever since I graduated in the mid-90s. This year has been a coronation of sorts for new Hoya coach John Thompson III, and I can't describe what a perfect capper it was to my AC trip to be able to listen to the entire Big East Tournament final against Pittsburgh on my XM radio during my entire drive back up to the city. After taking a 15-point lead into the half in that game, I was sure my Hoyas would give up the inevitable run in the second half, but instead they never let Pitt make the game closer than 13 points, pushing the lead up to I think 25 at one point before ending with a 23 point victory and a huge smushing to win the coveted Big East championship. Well done to my boys in blue and grey, you have truly made me proud once again to be a Hoya fan.

Also, I saw that Miami Don is running a March Madness pool on Yahoo!, which I fully intend to join as soon as I have the chance to actually look at all the brackets, and I think it would be fun if a bunch of you donkeys joined in as well. The link is right there on Don's blog so go check that shiat out if you have the chance, and like I said I will definitely be in there picking my Hoyas to walk to the Final Four since we all know Carolina is having a down year despite them winning the weakass ACC this season.

Oh yeah, and last night I busted from the $69 buyin 9:30pm ET Bracelet Race on full tilt when my AKs ran into QQ on the second hand of the effing thing. How the phuck is it that I can never, ever win when I have pocket Queens, but nobody else can ever lose when they take QQ up against me in a big pot? Dam those biatches, they have literally been the bane of my existence for the better part of the past year, since I got what I consider to be "good" at online poker.

OK, come out to the Hoy tonight on pokerstars at 10pm ET. Password is "hammer" as always. I'm still on top of the 2007 money leaderboard for the Hoy, so come and try to dethrone me if you dare. And don't forget, win $10 extra for busting Fuel from the event if he is man enough to show up as well. See you then!