Hot Hand #11 (Result), Running Bad (Part II), and Lost

What a fucking night of poker. On the good front, I would say I played very, very well for the first time in days. I played reserved, and I didn't make any of the stupid over-pushes that I've been prone to over the past few days with less than great hands. I took advantage with my strong hands, finally getting back to my usual ways of using deception and distraction to send the messages I wanted about what I was actually holding. So on the good side, last night saw the bad play that has plagued me for much of the past week seemingly gone, hopefully for fucking good.

And on the bad side, people sucked out beats on me anyways like Keeley Hazell's latest instructional video. Hole E. Shit I cannot believe some of the stuff I saw tonight. I know I've written over the past few days about some of the horrendously fidiotic plays and raises and calls I've made at the tables of late. Well last night was the other half of the perfect storm I've been writing about other than my bad play: bad luck. Following is a snapshot into my Wednesday night at the virtual poker tables. And oh yeah, let me just warn you now, this is going to be one big whiny fucking pussy post. If you can't take it, get the fuck out now while you still can, because I am less than uninterested in your opinion of me making big whiny fucking pussy posts like this. There, consider yourself warned.

Actually, first let me finish up with Hot Hand #11. You want to know what this guy had last weekend against my second-nuts set of Kings on the small blind-big blind slow played hand? Ask and you shall receive:











FUCK YOU POKERSTARS! Is this unfuckinreal or what?! Man that King on the turn is looking just so juicy now isn't it? How nice. I come back to this fucksite for the first non-WWdN tournament in weeks, and this is what I get. That is a great example of the kind of shit I've been running into again and again and again since I won that $5000 in the 30k guaranteed tournament on full tilt one week ago now. Un fucking believable. Now everyone please be sure to tell me how I should have known this from his allin move on the turn, how I brought it on myself by checking before the flop, etc. God how I love when people say stuff like that. I really do. So please keep those comments coming. Un. Fucking. Believable. You honestly could not make up some of the refuckulous stuff I've seen on pokerstars this year. I mean, you could make it up, but you wouldn't. If you were watching Tilt or whatever that horrendous ESPN poker show was called, and this hand happened, you would turn it off. Too stupid, too obviously staged. Well, nope. It's all real and it's been happening to me nonstop this past week.

Oh and hey, before I forget and speaking of ESPN, be sure to go by and congratulate one of our own, Dr. Pauly, for nabbing a ridiculous gig with ESPN to write feature articles for ESPN Poker during the WSOP this summer. Can you believe that?! That has got be just about the coolest fucking this I've ever heard for one of our crew. You know, no offense but most of us poker bloggers are basically just hacks, writing stream of consciousness or diary-style about our daily poker exploits. But Pauly is different. He's a real writer. And the fact that ESPN has recognized this is simply incredible. Writing poker for fucking ESPN. Unreal. Congratulations Pauly!

Anyways, about the bad luck I've been running into of late, last night there was lots, lots more.

It's about 10:10pm ET. We're in the Mookie, and I look down to find pocket Kings UTG+1. Lucko, UTG, pops it 3.5x, and I just smooth call, hoping to catch a reraiser preflop so I can re-pop it from there:



The flop comes 887. Lucko, who has been running bad this week himself, leads out for 300 chips into the 360 pot.

I quickly push allin with what I have to be fairly sure is the best hand here:



Lucko think and thinks, and eventually types "donk call" into the chat before calling my allin raise with this beauty:



AQ. And not even soooted! So I'm an 88% favorite on the flop. The offsuit 4 on the turn makes me a 94% favorite with one card to come. 15.7-to-1 odds? No problem!



Fuck off, Hoy! So I'm out of the Mookie in 10 minutes. Sweet. But the fun was just beginning for me last night.

Btw, two quick points about the Mookie. #1 I have no rant for Lucko. He admitted it was a donk call before he even made the play. I respect that. It's the guys who either don't understand good poker, or who do understand it but are too much of babies to admit when they've exhibited donkery, that really get me riled up. Lucko knows exactly what he did last night. He had already tried to give away his stack early on in the Mook with just QJ, but that attempt was thwarted much to everyone's dismay. Then this hand. And never fear, he was out of the Mook himself, even with my big stack, maybe 15 minutes later. Sounds like he wanted to be playing well in that thing about as much as I did last night. Running bad can be a funny thing like that. So anyways, to Lucko I say well done, calling with any possible outs against me lately is a +EV move, and my chips could not have gone to a better guy. In the battle of two guys both running bad this week, I think we saw whose luck is really worse right now than the other. Nice job.

And I also want to take a moment to congratulate Schaubs on taking down the $15 bounty I laid on the head of blogger killer Miami Don last night in the Mookie. Schaubs got his hands on that bounty early on, when he took pocket Kings up against Don's pocket Jacks, saw a Ten-high flop, and a couple of raises later both players were allin. So congrats to Schaubs for keeping Don from winning his 18th straight Mookie tournament, as well as to TFG for taking the entire tournament down and giving us our first new champion in like a month in the biggest of the weekly blogger tournaments. Still no points cashes for me in the BBT, and frankly it's hard for me to imagine when that is ever going to change with the way things have been running for me against the bloggers lately. They call my preflop raises with 54s and flop a flush against my pair, flush draw and oesd. They call my preflop raises with JTs against my ATs, and flop two pairs vs. my one pair. They call with AQo on a raggy flop against my KK, and hit a 16-to-1 Ace on the river. That my friends is just not a recipe that leads to BBT points right there. Ugh just thinking about all that makes me sick.

OK, so on to some other fun happenings from my poker night last night.

So I played the 9:40pm ET satellite to the midnight bracelet race that I've been playing every Monday and Friday (and some Wednesdays) since I won my first bracelet race of the year a couple of weeks back. Before that I was playing basically all of the 3 or 4 race satellites between 9 and 10pm ET every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but now that I've won the one 2k WSOP prize package, I've only been focusing on the larger buyin $26 sat at 9:40pm ET on most of these days.

OK so it's about 45 minutes in to the bracelet race satellite. I find pocket Kings (again) in middle position, and I bump the 160-chip big blind up to 480. The cutoff, sitting on a larger stack than mine, repops it preflop to 1280 chips. Of course I move allin in response:



He calls almost instantly. Now, take a moment and think what does this guy probably have to have reraised me preflop, and then to instantly call my allin re-reraise? What hands would act like this? Pocket Aces, maybe pocket Queens, or AK, right? Being that I had 2 of those three hands (and any other hand he could reasonably have) dominated, I got it allin and hoped for the best. So what's he show me when we flip up the cards before the flop?














That's right. Not even the Jackace! It's the powerhouse known as the fucking Tenace! It doesn't even have a name because almost nobody is that fucking bad to be reraising and then calling allin re-reraises preflop with big stacks with fucking Ace-Ten. WTF did this anushole think I possibly had here to raise and then allin re-reraise him here? A9? A6? 77? Geezus this one was hard to even believe. And I play with bloggers most nights, so that is really saying something let me tell you. Anyways, we can stop the foreplay and jump right to the money shot:



Fuckoff! Love it.

What's that? You want more? OK. More it is.

So last night I also played in the token frenzy that I've been writing about. In fact, I was thrilled to see how many bloggers were in this thing last night, which in the end I believe I counted was 17 guys from our crew out of the 104 total entrants in the frenzy at 9:45pm ET on Wednesday. Awesome. I love seeing so many people in there trying to win their token to this Sunday night's Big Game, the next event on the BBT slate and the biggest-buyin of all the weekly blogger tournaments at $75 (or a Tier II token) a pop.

Anyways, we're maybe an hour in to the frenzy, and I've gotten a bit short on chips. I find ATs on the button, and someone in middle position with a big stack raises preflop, so I just call. The flop comes fucking AQT rainbow. Top and bottom pairs for me. With a short stack, of course I only have one option here which is to get it allin, and with the preflop raise coming from middle position, I'm figuring hes on some kind of Ace or else a pocket pair, either way I am almost surely dominating him. Right?



Wrong! Blammo! Did I say "Fuckoff!" yet for this one? Wow is all I can say.

And congratulations to Byron and Mike Maloney for being the two bloggers I recognized who won their Tier II tokens in the token frenzy last night, joining Al and Wippy from the night before as four bloggers in two days who have won their way in to Sunday night's Big Game. I will definitely be back in that token frenzy again on Thursday night, at 9:45pm ET, and tonight there is no BBT event so as far as I'm concerned there is no reason for any of us not to be taking our shot for a measly $14 to play our way into the top 18% of finishers and win a Tier II token. I'll be there, and I'd love to see as many of you as possible as well as we continue our weekly assault on the single best and easiest way to win a $75 token for use in the Big Game.

Ok so maybe you're wondering, Hoy's luck was obviously atrocious in tournaments last night. Well, what about cash games? Actually, I have some of that for you as well. I've alluded to it here, but I've been 1- or 2-tabling at $.50-1 6-max nlh cash for the past week or two. I will make no comment at all here about my success or lack thereof in such endeavors, but early on Wednesday night saw me lay this great read on an opponent to get my hands on their entire stack. Well, almost, anyways.

So three players limp in, including me, to see a flop of 88J (two hearts). I'm first to act in the small blind, and I have K8o in my hand, so I've just flopped a monstrosity. I bet the pot, because Real Men Bet Their Trips as I've said over and over and over again on the blog:



Just the button calls. The turn comes a raggy 3 of diamonds. So, no flush possible yet, and no straight draws filled yet either. I lead out again:



This time my opponent minraises me:



I figure this means one of three things. He clearly has some kind of a hand, to have called my potbet on the flop and then be conspicuously minraising me here on the turn. He must have either (1) a solid Jack, which definitely is possible and the minraise here could be his attempt to try to determine if I am on an 8 or not, or (2) a pocket pair, medium or high, and again he needs to figure out if he is actually ahead or not, or (3) another 8 in his hand. I discounted possibility #2 pretty quickly because he did not raise it up preflop, and even #1 seemed a bit unlikely to me here because the minraise in this spot is not really designed to get him information. It's small enough that I could easily call even if I had just AJ or KK or something like that. No, this guy had played solidly enough that I had to put him on another 8 here. And if that's the case, I knew I was in a great spot because I had the King kicker to go along with it. So I reasoned he probably has another 8, and in that case he is likely to call whatever chips I bet at him. With me just making two relatively small (relative to our respective stack sizes) lead bets so far, he has no way of knowing I am on another 8 as well, so he's most likely going to call with his trips no matter what I bet. So I do what I have to do:



I believe Fuel calls this the "overbet for value". He calls, and I could not be more right in my read:



$140 cash, come to poppa:



Booooom! Another 9-outer on the river, an 82-18 shot, and I'm right back where I started from after that great play. Add to this that I got eliminated by Kajagugu from the Dookie (HORSE Turbo) last night when I got him in for the rest of my chips on the turn with just a redonkulous 19% draw and then he hit that, and my night at the poker tables was really fucking fidious by barely even midnight at the time. And hopefully you can see what I mean when I say that on Wednesday, unlike most of my play over the past week or so, I really did make great moves and consistently get in with the best of it, in most cases with the way, way way best of it. That 81-19 favorite I lost with on the river in the Dook was I think the worst odds I had of any of my tournament eliminations last night before midnight. Think about that. Gross.

Anyways, I do have to end this post with a couple of bright spots. First, I ended up staying up until 3am because I made another run to the cash in the nightly 30k guaranteed on full tilt, which I did manage to satellite into via the 8:30pm ET $8 rebuy sat as usual, busting out in 35th place for a profit of over $150 overall in the event, covering all of my tournament buyins on the day and then some. Plus, having clearly determined what readable fonkeys a couple of the guys at that cash table were, I stuck it out there for another hour so and ended up leaving with over $250 in my stack for one of my biggest cash wins in several weeks. So in the end last night ended up being a solidly profitable one for me, thanks to my hanging in there until late night and finally running into a streak of nice luck. But getting to that point was among the most frustrating experiences I have had at the virtual tables in quite some time, and I still can't believe the consistency with which I got fucked off across the board in almost every tournament I touched.

And before I go, was that not one of the best Lost episodes ever? I really feel like they gave us a lot of shit last night, did they not? But can somebody please tell me one thing. Please. How the fike could anyone on that island possibly trust Juliette at this point? I mean, once she pulled that key out for the handcuffs when she was with Kate, any possible inclination someone might have had to trust her had to just completely disappear. Don't get me wrong, I think Jack is correct that all she really wants to do more than anything else is get off that island. But that doesn't mean she wouldn't do Ben's bidding, since Ben seems to have no problem promising anything to anyone if it gets him what he wants. I just don't believe that for even one second. Just like I don't believe Juliette's sister is really alive. He showed her a fucking video? That shit can be doctored so easily, I bet some of our photoshoppy blogger brethren could probably make that video with some good equipment and maybe a week's time. And who the fug is "Jacob"? And what about this "Richard" character Ben was speaking to when he rolled the video footage of Rachel. WTF is going on on that show?!

Running Bad, and Hot Hand #11 (Part III)

It's happening again.

Since my big 5k+ win in the nightly full tilt 30k tournament last Thursday evening, I am once again playing like total donkey. And I'm consciously watching myself do it too. I mean, I'm pushing allin preflop very early in tournaments with AK or 44 against one raiser. I'm calling sufficiently large bets on the flop with hands purely on the come. And I'm reraising allin on the flop with top pair, even when I pretty much know I'm beat. I'm not exactly doing this as a suicide mission, but rather I just tell myself "awww, it's only an $8 satellite, and maybe he'll fold his better hand." And let me tell you, "maybe he'll fold his better hand" is not where you want to be when all your chips get into the middle in an $8 online satellite tournament.

It's all part of a very familiar fucking pattern with me, one which I've written about before here on several occasions and which torments the shit out of me since I know it's coming and still seem utterly unable to do a damned thing about it. I win a big tournament, I make a big huge score in an mtt online, and for the next couple of months, I play like an arrogant fuckass at the tables. I make moves just like the ones I've described above. I managed to hold it together after my big bracelet race win a few weeks back, and I was so effing proud of myself for that, but I guess this 30k tournament score on the heels of the bracelet race is just too much for me, that it's just made my head too damned big for its britches. It's very frustrating. I want to play good poker. I mean to play good poker when I sit down to the virtual tables at night. But then something happens, and I suddenly watch in horror as my hands are clicking on the wrong buttons, clicking "call" when I want to muck preflop, clicking "raise" when I want to fold to a continuation bet on the flop. It's really terrible, and I am just mired in the throes of it right now. I'm at my worst at the poker tables lately, and I know it. And I don't seem to be able to do a damned thing about it.

Of course, it doesn't help that I'm running into one of the worst patches of luck I've ever experienced over the past week or so. Those two always seem to coincide for some reason -- when I'm playing my worst and not making the smart moves that have led me to the mtt success I've had as a poker player, that always seems to be the same exact time that all the 2-outers and 3-outers are hitting against me, and all the perfectly refuckulous flops are falling to give me a second-best hand while giving my dominated opponent the unknowable near-nuts at the same time. It's the perfect storm of frustration, the confluence of bad play and bad luck that always seems to strike me after a big win and render me utterly powerless to stop. I hate it.

Let's see. Last night I played in the 8:30pm ET $8 rebuy satellite into the 30k, as well as the $14 sat at 8:45pm ET. In the rebuy sat, I doubled up early and was near the top of the leaderboard, but eventually down to 11 players left with the top 7 winning seats and me in 6th place, my AQ on the button lost to a donkey in the big blind who called my allin with pocket 4s. That's a scary bad call -- knowing you are basically exactly 51% to win or 20% to win -- for a guy who desperately needed to hold on to his chips at that point near the bubble, but when you're up against me right now the 4s are definitely going to hold. In the 8:45pm ET version, I busted maybe 15 minutes in when my pocket 9s were busted allin preflop by an uber fucking donkass who called my preflop allin with -- get ready for it -- King Jack. Offsuit. Now obviously I am a fool for allowing myself to get allin preflop with pocket 9s that early in the tournament, and there is no doubt that that is true, and that is the bad play part of my recent trend in online poker for sure. In this particular case there was a preflop raise and then two callers of the raise ahead of my 9s, and I thought I might be able to push everyone out even though I figured I was surely racing against at least one opponent. Still a fully donkish play on my part just 15 minutes into a tournament in which generally bad players and bad play are rife. But putting that aside for a second, to even think about making that call (everyone else had folded) with KJo in a tournament is beyond comprehension. I mean, I can't imagine how horrible I would have to be as a player to even take a second's pause before mucking that garbage hand against all that action. But there you go, there's the bad luck element coming into play. He calls, I'm laughing, and then the Jack on the river (of course, it's always the river at times like this) takes me from laughing out loud to instead steam pouring out of my ears.

At the same time was the 8:30pm WWdN tournament, where I started off nicely, chipped up a bit, and then found pocket Aces UTG no more than 15 or 20 minutes into the event. I limped, a move I make quite often with Aces UTG (only UTG, btw), especially since I had limped and even limp-folded from early position several times already at this table. Of course nobody raises and like 7 players see a flop of I think KJ8 rainbow. Knowing it is still highly likely that I am ahead with no straights or flushes possible on this flop, I bet out the size of the pot, and get only one caller. I put him on a King, and when the turn is a harmless-looking offsuit 4, I bet the pot again. This time he raises me probably 2.5 times my original bet. Yes, I have no doubt I'm beat. There's the horrible luck again coming into play. And yes, I made the call anyways. There's the bad play. He flips up?

K4. Now he's not at all a donkey here, in that I let him limp in for free from middle position (not that I would have even put up 30 chips with that dog of a hand preflop, but I can't fault the guy for making the play for that small bet that I myself made possible by not raising with my Aces UTG). Nonetheless, my Aces are still a favorite over any other hands on this flop with no straights or flushes possible, and I knew by his lack of reraise that he hadn't nailed the flop hard (this is a blogger type as opposed to a wwdn donk that also tend to populate Wil's weekly tournament on pokerstars, so I've played with him several times before). Then the turn just has to be a five-outer 4, completing the unlikely two pairs for my opponent and setting me up for another hilariously bad call on my part where I knew -- I absolutely knew -- I was beat but of course I donkeycalled it anyways, at that point mostly just so I could make it official and write about the beat here on the blog today. That's just the way things are going for me lately.

I also played the 9:45pm ET Token Frenzy that I wrote about yesterday on the blog last night. I was very happy to see a bunch of bloggers in there, which I take as a very good sign that people are making a concerted effort to qualify for this Sunday night's Big Game, hosted by the blogtournament specialist himself. I myself played, and in fact as I recall I had a blogger at each table I was seated at through the event, starting off with Buddydank and then eventually moving over to a table with cmitch. And btw, out of the blue yesterday cmitch's blog started loading on my work pc after over a year of being consistently blocked by websense. Not sure how many people read cmitch on a regular basis, but he is a very accomplished cash and mtt player (witness his 10th place finish in the 19k guaranteed on full tilt just last night) over a long period of time, and has lots of great hand analysis on his blog which makes for a really great read. As I've written about here many times before, I do about 99% of my blogreading at my office during the day, so being able to add cmitch to the daily reading list is a major plus for me, and you should go check his blog out if you haven't yet, or if you have previously been unable to view his blog due to dorkwork restrictions like I have at my office.

Anyways, although I eventually busted in the middle of the pack from the token frenzy (another fucking big blind special, just par for the course for my night last night and really the entire last week), it was great to see so many bloggers in that thing last night trying to get in to the Big Game this coming Sunday. And congratulations to Al as well as to new blogger Wippy for both winning their Big Game tokens in last night's frenzy. Lost permitting, I plan to be in there again tonight, at 9:45pm ET, taking my next stab at winning a $75 token for this Sunday's Big Game which is also part of the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments challenge, and I encourage as many of you as possible to join in again and continue our blogger assault on the $14 buyin tier II token frenzy tournament this week on full tilt. At one point last night while that thing was filling up, it looked more like a blogger tournament than a regular public full tilt tournament with all the bloggers signing up early. Let's try to get even more bloggers in there tonight. Remember, it's $14 to buy in, and about the top 18% of the field will leave less than two hours later with a $75 token in their account. Let's do it tonight! And if you're lucky, you start out at my table, because I am playing like a complete fuckass lately and I'm getting horrendous luck to boot, so me chipas es su chipas or however someone would say that if they knew how to make those verbs and pronouns plural in Spanish (as I, obviously, do not).

OK, so back to Hot Hand #11. Yesterday we left off with me betting out half the pot from the small blind after nailing top set on the turn of 67TK with my slow-played pocket Kings, and then my opponent in the big blind raising me on that flop from my 100 chip bet to 400 chips, making it 300 for me to call, and I asked what you all would do in this spot. The comments I received were somewhat varied, starting with one or two bloggers suggesting that I just call this raise here, and then check the river in the hopes of inducing a bigger bet at the river from my opponent. A few other guys proposed a more of a slow-raise approach, suggesting I re-pop it here to 900 or 1000 chips to try to either take it down right now, or to induce a call or reraise from a clearly worse hand than my top set. I think the majority opinion, however, was to just move it allin here, in the hopes that this guy actually has hit something big and will be willing to dump off the rest of his stack to me. The thinking here seems to be that since my opponent has reraised me fairly big here, and since I have the near-nuts, why not make the biggest play I can and hope he will have to call since he likely has something big to be making the raise here to begin with.

To be honest, I tend to like that last approach, in situations where I feel my opponent clearly has a strong hand, and it's something that I do all the time when I am in that position of having Aces when I think my opponent has Kings, or having top set on the flop when I think my opponent has bottom set, etc. However, in this spot, I just didn't get the feeling yet that my opponent really was necessarily on a huge hand. The raise to 400 chips here, to be honest, felt more like a steal to me than anything else. I mean, it's hard for me to expect this guy to have any kind of a big hand on the turn here given the lack of a preflop raise (so probably KT or any pocket pair is out since against just my small blind limp preflop, he might probably have raised me right there with those hands), and it's not like he committed a huge portion of his stack with his raise. Although 400 chips is a raise of the size of the pot, due to the lack of a preflop raise and the checks from both of us on the flop, the pot is still small now relative to the stack sizes of both myself and my opponent, and thus I was more of the impression that this player didn't necessarily have anything great in his hand yet. Given that, I opted not to go for the allin move, which again I would be very apt to do if I had a better read of real strength from the guy with the way he had played this hand from before the flop until now. At the same time, I also opted not to just call his bet here, as I think he has committed enough to the pot that there is some likelihood of him feeling tied on enough to call a little bit more, and given that, I would be remiss if I didn't go for those extra chips now. Plus as an added bonus of reraising here, the pot will be that much bigger after the river comes, meaning that if he does call a reraise from me now, then he may be that much more apt to call some more chips into the pot on the river, including maybe his entire stack. His raise was also small enough in absolute terms on the turn card here that I did not want to just call in case he was semi-bluffing me with just a flush draw and an overcard or something like that, and then hit his flush on the river because I let him draw to it for just 400 chips instead of getting him to lay down with a reraise here.

So, I didn't want to just call in this spot because I wanted to get some more chips from him invested now when I believed he was willing to do so, and I didn't want to move allin on him just yet because I was afraid he wasn't strong enough with whatever he had to call that. So, I ended up going for the reasonably big reraise, enough to show him I mean business and make any draws laughably fidiotic for him, while at the same time keeping it maybe just barely small enough that if he is on something like top pair or two pairs or something, he might be willing to call my reraise as well:



No sooner had I congratulated myself for making this reraise here and for getting this guy tied on with my slowplay from the very beginning of the hand, that my opponent responded (fairly quickly, btw) to my reraise with this:



The allin re-reraise on the turn. KT76, two suited cards, with me sitting on two Kings in the hole.

Anybody folding here? Why?

Assuming no one is folding, I will tell you that I did call his allin raise here, quickly in fact as I got this fugger to do exactly what I wanted him to do from the moment I first checked the Kings before the flop. Anybody want to guess what he was holding? Think back to all his moves from before the flop, the check on the flop on a T76 board with two suits, the pot-size raise on the turn of KT76 with two suits, and then the quick allin re-reraise on the turn after I had reraised 3x his raise on that same flop with the top set on the board. I think I will hold back the final screenshot showing what he had until you all have a chance to venture your guesses. I think a hand like this is an excellent exercise in hand-reading as far as reviewing all the actions at every stage in the hand to put a player on a holding or range of holdings. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I'll get up here tomorrow with the final results of what this guy had in his hand.

Tonight, token frenzy at 9:45pm ET, and then the Mookie at 10pm ET (password is vegas1 as always) as the BBT rolls on tonight. Everybody come out and play in this thing, as I bet we're on track for more than 80 players in the Mook as the big blogger tournaments all look to be setting records for participation and interest with the onslaught of the BBT. And oh yeah, one other key point -- in light of Miami Don's utter and complete destruction of the blogger tournaments over the past couple of weeks, I am officially laying a bounty on Don's head for tonight's Mookie. I want to tie this bounty to the BBT in a good way, so given what I've been calling for this week in attacking the token frenzy tournament, I am hereby laying a $15 bounty on the head of Miami Don, so whoever eliminates the Don from tonight's Mookie tournament will receive a $15 transfer from me on full tilt, enough to pay the $14 buyin plus the rake in one of these tier II Token Frenzy mtts later this week or weekend on full tilt. So, knock Miami Don out, and I personally will pay you to play for a token into Sunday night's Big Game to help shake things up even more in the BBT. Hopefully that will be just the incentive needed to make some bloggers show some sack in the face of Don's relentless aggrodonking ways tonight at the Mookie. See you then!

MATH Recap,and Hot Hand #11 (Continued)

What a night it was at our second Mondays at the Hoy tournament on full tilt last night, which saw a record 52 runners come out and play for the $26 buyins for a fatty $1248 prize pool on the night to be shared among the top 6 finishers in the event. Yours truly managed to donk out early once again, thanks to a highly questionable call by another donkey blogger of my preflop raise, coupled with a flop that not only hit my hand very well, but miraculously hit the donkey's hand even better, creating the perfect storm of rediculousness which I then was all too happy to make worse by making a horrible allin play on the flop. I need to try hard to focus more in these blogger events, as lately my time and energies have been much more focused on winning another bracelet race, playing the 30k, satelliting in to these races, the 30k, the winner's choice tournaments, the weekly 1K tournament, and even now and then one of full tilt's tri-weekly WSOP ME qualifiers. Clearly, that lack of focus on the blogger events -- which I will always continue to play despite how poorly I am playing in them at any given time, because deep down I like the camaraderie of our ghey little group more than anything else in the world of online poker -- is really starting to show, as I continue to treat all the other players at my table like I would treat the players left at the final table of one of the big tournaments I am used to playing in and focusing on. So, for example, in last week's Mookie, when that guy called my preflop raise heads-up, I simply flat refused to put him on a hand like 54s. Only a certain type of player is ever going to make a move like that, and that's not at all the type of player I have been spending about 95% of my time playing against over the past several months on full tilt.

Similarly, last night in the Hoy, when I raised preflop very early in the event with my AJs and the flop came JT5, I just wasn't in a mindset to put the donkey blogger who played back at me on the flop on a hand like JTo. He called my preflop raise into a heads-up pot with that hand! The realization is really starting to sink in finally that if I expect to do well in these blogger tournaments, I need to adjust my play from the kind of play I am used to seeing in the larger events. Bloggers do call preflop raises heads-up with 5-high ("but it was sOOOOOooooted!" Ha!). They do it all the time. Bloggers do call preflop raises heads-up with easily and often dominatable hands like JTo (a hand which I in fact was dominating last night before the flop came down). Many bloggers' play is such that they would even defend these moves after the fact. These fuckers actually think this is the way to play the game.

To be clear, I'm not writing this to sound like the pompous shitbag that I clearly am. And I certainly don't mean to absolve myself from the truly donkorific move of getting it allin on that flop with measly TPTK like I did last night very early in the Hoy to end up the second player eliminated from the event. I take full responsibility for both donkouts in these last two BBT tournaments. But at least I know exactly why I made the moves, and against a different level of competition, I would have won both pots and lived to tell about it. I am saying all this because I want my mind to go through the exercise of typing it and thinking it all out. I want to read it over four or five times with my own eyes once I publish this badboy in the morning. That's the only way I'm going to get out of this funk I've been in lately with the blogger events. As you all know, I've been on an incredible hot streak lately in my mtt game overall, but that has been largely focused on those bigger-buyin events that I mentioned earlier. And yet in the blogger tournaments, I've largely played like complete and utter donkey. And this dichotomy, and my failure to adjust to it, is why. After months of focusing on mostly $100 and $200 buyin events, and satelliting in to those events against many of the same players I am usually up against in the bigger-buyin tournaments, here I am trying to play against bloggers as if they are all Johnny fuckin Chan and Daniel Negreanu. It's time to stop doing that, Mr. Hoy. And I'm happy at least to know that my next opportunity is right around the corner, at the next Mookie tournament on Wednesday night. I will be there, and you should be too. Last week the Mook had 78 runners, and I am sure we can break 80 this week as the blogger fields continue to rise for the Battle of the Blogger Tournament events.

Speaking of which, don't forget that this Sunday night is the latest Big Game hosted by none other than blogger tournament guru (I can't believe I'm even saying that) Miami Don. The Big Game carries a $75 buyin, and it is also a part of the BBT so there is plenty of reason for you to play it this weekend, not the least of which is the fatty prize pool that this baby is sure to present for the top finishers. Now I know for many of you the $75 buyin is a bit on the steep side. I used to be like that too. But then I found this nightly 9:45pm ET token frenzy on full tilt, and there is just no longer any excuse not to at least make a serious go at playing in the Big Game and hopefully the $1000 first prize in that event. For a mere $14 buyin, the top 18% or so of the field in this nightly mtt wins themselves a $75 token, just like that. It usually takes less than two hours to get to the finish line in this nightly Token Frenzy, and the play as I've written about previously is nothing spectacular by a long shot.

So here is my proposal. No matter what else I also have going on at the time, I am committing to playing in that 9:45pm ET Token Frenzy every night for the balance of this week. I suggest that we bloggers, as a group, take this nightly token frenzy tournament by storm for the rest of this week, and get as many of us bloggers as possible into Sunday night's Big Game. There is no reason why a good 10 or 20 or more of us cannot win our Big Game buyins via the next few Token Frenzy tournaments this week, given the buyin and the level of play in these things overall. I am really hoping to see a bunch of familiar names and familiar ghey little avatars in this thing tonight and over the next few nights. Again, I know $75 is way steep for a great many of the bloggers out there (especially you donkeys who call preflop raises heads-up with 54s and JTo, surprise surprise). But $14 is much more manageable, no? Especially for a nearly 1-in-5 shot of winning your way in to the biggest-buyin of all the BBT events and also one of the most fun, the game that's so big that it can only be played once a month in the Big Game.

OK so back to the MATH on Monday night. Long story short, I managed to stay up until the final four players at around 12:45am ET, and as the game got closer to the end I saw more and more high quality play, which always brings a smile to my face. I also saw more suckouts and brutal setups and bad beats than I've seen in quite some time last night overall, and a lot of allin preflop racing that could have taken most of the top 6 cashers in the tournament out of the event before the cash spots. But such is the life of the mtt player -- you have to win some races with pockets, and you have to win some races with two overs, if you expect to make it deep in these things -- and last night was no exception to that general rule. After the top three players decided on a 3-way chop for the second straight week in this thing, in the end, this is how the final leaderboard shook out:



That's right, folks. Miami Don won it again. This makes two straight Mookie's and now the next consecutive MATH all won by Miami Don, the guy who is a cash game specialist and who, frankly has had more negative things to say about the donkament monkey-pushing aspects of mtt's than just about anyone I know. It's an amazing feat that is just about unrivaled in the brief history of the Mookie and the Hoy tournaments, so everyone should go stop by the Don's blog and tell him what a star he is. And you know what else this means, right? That's right, it's going to be time to put a muggafugging bounty on this guy's head for the next couple of BBT events. No way I'm letting someone with three big blogger tournaments in two weeks without doing something to up the incentive to knock the donk Don out in the next couple. Showoffery like this has got to be stopped, and I'm hell bent on doing just that. Seriously, though, congratulations to Miami Don for yet another huge win in the biggest-ever Hoy field just five days after going back-to-back by winning the biggest-ever Mookie field on full tilt. Unbelievable. And congratulations to our six cashers, including my brother-in-law Lester000 for 6th place and just under $75 and change for his second Hoy cash in a month, 5th place and a few pennies short of $100 to NewinNov for his second Hoy cash of 2007 as well, 4th place and its $137 payout to lightning36, as well as the three-way chop for $312 apiece to each of new blogger oossuuu754 in 3rd place, cmitch in 2nd place and Miami Don taking it down again for first. Uber impressive job by Don there, really amazing as far as I'm concerned.

And speaking of uber, is there anyone out there who has not yet read Iggy's latest uberpost? So help me god if that little midget isn't back and better than ever in his old home at Guinness and Poker. If you haven't read Iggy's latest, go do yourself a favor, set aside a good hour or two to really absorb everything, follow some of the links -- you know, reading an uber in style, the way it is meant to be read -- and you will not be disappointed. If I may say so myself, this particular post has got to be one of the blogfather's all-time best. Oh, and when you go there, keep in mind what a fucking idiot Jen Tilly is for that check on the river. "I thought you had pocket Kings?" Huh? Cheesus Christ somebody please sign that donkey up for some blogger tournaments right away, she will fit right in.

OK anyways so here is the updated 2007 Hoy money leaderboard after this week's tournament:

1. Hoyazo $580
2. Fuel55 $458
3. Bayne_s $410
4. Zeem $330
5. Miami Don $312
5. cmitch $312
5. oossuuu754 $312
8. VinNay $310
9. Wigginx $288
10. IslandBum1 $282
10. ScottMc $282
10. Pirate Wes $282
13. Manik79 $252
14. Byron $234
15. Omega_man_99 $210
16. Columbo $204
17. NewinNov $190
18. Waffles $180
18. bartonfa $180
20. Santa Clauss $170
21. Iakaris $162
21. Smokkee $162
23. l.e.s.ter000 $147
24. lightning36 $137
25. Chad $120
26. Ganton516 $114
27. Shag0103 $84
28. PhinCity $80
28. jeciimd $80
30. Easycure $67
31. Julius Goat $60

So there we are, up now to 31 different players cashing in the weekly Monday night MATH tournament so far this year. Thanks in large part to the 3-way chops over the past two weeks at the top of the leaderboard, the top four players on the leaderboard remain unchanged from last week, and you know what that means, right? Yup -- more pompousassossity from me today in my post. Yes I'm still in the lead folks. Yes I'm still more than 25% higher than even the second place ATC donkey guy on the leaderboard. Yes none of you can possibly catch me, ever. Blahblahblah yaddayaddayadda, you know, the usual Tuesday morning blather for me here. Hey, with how shitty I'm playing in these blogger tournaments lately, I have to take my credit wherever I can, right? So thank you to everyone who came out to play and who made the 52-person MATH the biggest field ever for this tournament and who made for some really nice payouts for the six cashers in the event, as well as adding another $104 of juice to the BBT prize pool, all of which will be coming back to you, the bloggers, as BBT cash payouts and to fund the BBT Tournament of Champions freeroll coming up in early June.

OK, on to the continuation of Hot Hand #11.

Thank you to all of the commenters from yesterday, the general consensus of which seems to be that I probably should have bet on the flop. In general, you commenters are being a bit rigid IMO with that advice, but the one very intelligent comment that did come up again and again was that since this is 6-max nlh, and 6-max tends to be much more LAGgy than the other forms of ring nlh out there, I probably could have gotten away with a preflop raise here and still had a decent chance of getting a call, if not a resteal attempt, from the big blind when I open-limped from the small blind with my well-hidden pocket Kings. The main points I made yesterday as to why I went with the limp are that #1 this was my only premium starting hand of the tournament so far, so I felt a stronger than usual need to make sure I made more than just the blinds with this hand, and #2 you absolutely must mix up your play somewhat with both good starting hands and bad if you expect to consistently win in these large-field online mtts. I fully accept the idea that I might have been able to raise preflop without losing the big blind since this is 6-max, but obviously I have more of a chance of making a big hand here if I check than if I bet, so that was my thinking. As I said yesterday, I would often raise here with a big hand, but I like to check it sometimes as well just to keep everybody honest.

Anyways, here is what happened next in the hand. If you recall, I checked the T76 two-suited flop with my pocket Kings that included one of that suit as well, and my opponent checked behind. Then the turn card was the King♠, giving me top set on the board in a way that my opponent could not possibly put me on that hand given my check preflop and my check on the flop as well. At this point I decided to go with the advice that a few of the later commenters yesterday suggested, and bet half the pot, or a bet of 100 chips into the then 200-chip pot:



I agree with most of the commenters that there is little value at this point to me to continue checking the hand with now top set. I'm hoping that he's hit a little piece of the board -- hopefully a King, but maybe even a Ten of some kind would do, or possibly a draw -- or that maybe he'll put me on a steal and try to rereaise me right here on the turn or maybe make a move at me on the river. My hand is so strong at this point that I'm not worried about chasing the guy out of the pot, so my 100-chip bet accomplishes three things: #1 I can win the chips in the pot right now if my opponent has nothing, #2 it helps get some money into the pot if my opponent chooses to call me with anything he likes in his hand, and #3 and most importantly, I bet half the pot and not the full pot because with how strong my hand just got on the flop, I don't actually want to chase him out here. If anything, I want to give the impression that I'm actually kinda weak, maybe I'm downright stealing in fact, so I bet it small. After the check preflop and the check again on the flop from me, this halfpot bet looks perfect to me like the actions of a guy who's weak and just wants to try to steal a small pot here without taking barely any risk of losing significant chips here in the process. I love the halfpot bet here for all these reasons, and I don't really see the need for a full-pot bet here on the turn, when even a halfpot bet is giving my opponent clearly poor odds to draw to any possible flush, and truly terrible odds to draw to an inside straight, with just the one card to come. So I'm betting enough to make any draws bad plays for my opponent to make, and yet little enough to appear like I am weak when I am in fact hugely strong here.

And my opponent's response?



Yep. He reraises me the size of the pot, to 400 chips total, making it 300 for me to call, and bringing the total pot size to 700 chips.

Now what do you want to do here? The guy has basically walked right into my trap and raised me where it's almost impossible that I am behind. Even if he lucked into flopping a set or something, the King on the turn has now given me a massive lead with just one card to come. Is he just going for the pure bluff-resteal here? Or does he have something playable and thinks he is actually best? Given all these possibilities, what is my best move now? Do you smooth call him and try to get him to commit some more chips on the river before pushing him out of this pot? Or do you go for the big reraise right here and try to blow him out right now? Or, is the dreaded minraise an option to consider here, just to see what his reaction is? Does anyone think I should just call (or fold) here, worrying that I am behind based on the current action in the hand? What's your move?

Let me know your thoughts everyone in the comments, and I will be back tomorrow with the conclusion to the hand.

Hot Hand #11 -- Back by Popular Demand

OK I'm back and better than ever today after a nice long weekend with the family, and I'm ready to get right back at ya with the latest in my Hot Hand series of posts. Yes, I'm bringing this feature back, primarily because I love to do them and frankly I've received comments from more people than I would imagined who say they love these posts and really miss when I used to do them more regularly. As I've explained in my comments on a few occasions, I take so many screenshots as I play the game that it actually becomes a tremendous amount of work to sift through them all every night and cull out the best ones to create these Hot Hand posts. That may not make any sense to you all out there, but imagine having to go through maybe four or five hundred screenshots every single night to find adequate hands for these kinds of posts. Anyways, take it from me, it's a lot of work and much harder than it may seem.

Before I start, don't forget tonight's Mondays at the Hoy tournament, which is also part of the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments as the BBT begins its second week in full force. Mondays at the Hoy will take place tonight in its regularly scheduled time slot at 10pm ET, at its new home on full tilt poker. The password is "hammer" as always. There is actually one exciting change to the MATH tournament which you will see starting this week, and which is a change I am really liking and I hope you all will too, and is something that is only available since the change to full tilt from its old home at pokerstars: starting with the MATH tournament tonight, and continuing thereafter, the MATH will now be a double-stack tournament, meaning everyone will start with $3000 in tournament chips, instead of the regular 1500-chip starting stacks for most of full tilt's other regularly scheduled tournaments. With the blind structure still intact, this will make for much more room to play, and more importantly, much more ability to make a mistake or two, or to try a bluff or two early on, and still leave everyone with plenty of chips to play it out for a while. Naturally this guy will still find a way to bust early, but for the rest of us the double stacks should make for an improved structure and a more fun tournament overall for everyone. So, we'll see you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy as the BBT rolls on this week, still in its early stages where everybody has a chance to make some noise on that leaderboard in a big way.

And a very special thanks to Al, the Man of the Hour in my view who once again was able to come through in a pinch when it looked like the tournament might not be able to be scheduled in time for tonight. As many other bloggers can attest to, when I've needed something done in a wholly unreasonable period of time in the world of online poker, Al has once again come through and been able to accomplish the unthinkable. Thank you Al!


I also wanted to mention before I get to the new Hot Hand post that I did update my post this weekend from last week's 5k+ score in the 30k guaranteed tournament on full tilt. I used the same body of the post, but added a bunch of screenshots and some more detailed commentary on the big hands since I was able to review every screenshot this weekend from every big hand I played in the entire event. Hopefully this is of some use or at least some enjoyment to you all out there. The updated post is right below this one, or alternatively you can just click here to go straight there.

OK, so without further adieu, I present to you Hot Hand #11, which is a question of how to extract maximum value from a premium hand that is folded to me in the blinds:

Here's the setup: I'm playing a 6-max nlh tournament on pokerstars. It's late in the first hour, and I've managed to increase my starting stack of 2000 chips to more than 3500 chips, although by this time that is only about 15% above the average chipstack for the tournament right now, and most of the table has similar sized stacks to mine. I am in the small blind, and the action folds around to me preflop. I look down to find pocket Kings:



What do you do here? This is a situation that comes up all the time if you play enough holdem, and I'm not sure there is even a "right" answer to the question. Do you raise here like you normally would with pocket Kings, trying to represent a steal and hopefully get pushed back on or at least called by a surely lesser hand? Or, alternatively do you prefer to just limp here, feigning weakness and not really caring whether you get reraised or just called by the big blind with what again you are sure is the best hand at this point? How do you like to play this hand?

I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on this question, because as I said I don't even know that I think there is necessarily one approach that is better or worse than the other. For me, I opted to check here:



There's not really any huge reason why I checked it rather than raise it up a standard amount (3x or 4x). I'm sure on many other occasions I have put in raises here, and I am probably roughly as apt to do that as I am to play it slow when this situation arises, all things being equal. I think what ended up tilting the scale just ever so slightly towards my check here was that I was just barely above average in this tournament, and even though I had grown my stack a bit, to be honest I had not gotten a big hand dealt to me yet in this thing. Given this, I really wanted to make sure to give myself a good chance to win a solid amount of chips with this hand, more than just the 100 chips from the big blind. Thus, I was willing to take a chance of letting a cripe hand flop big or something without getting any information about his hand before the flop, knowing that I had the second best possible starting hand, and that even if an Ace did fall on the flop, I probably still was best unless the big blind raised me before the flop (which he didn't). So that was my thinking in checking the action here, although again I say I don't feel particularly strongly about this play either way, and the very fact that I would be willing to either check or raise maybe 50% of the time each in this situation is exactly what randomizes my play to the point that an opponent in the big blind could never get a read on my hand in the small blind regardless of whether I bet or check it when I'm first to act in the small blind in any given situation.

So the flop comes down T76, with two clubs (I hold the King of clubs, if that influences anyone here). I act first in the small blind, and there are 200 chips in the pot:



Now what? Do you lead out here, and hope he hit something to get him to call or raise? Do you think there's a good chance of him putting you on a steal if you bet here? Or, do you opt to continue the charade of weakness, check it, and see what develops?

Again, please give me your thoughts on how you would play this. For me, this decision was fairly simple, given what I had done so far in the hand and my motivations for doing that. There's still the same 200 chips in the pot, and I still stand to win only the big blind's 100 chips if I chase him out here on this truly ragful flop. So, given my intentions as described above when I checked the pocket Kings out of the small blind to begin with, and given that the two clubs can't really scare me too much especially since I hold the King of clubs as insurance anyways, I went for the check again here on the flop:



Now, those of you who play with me often know I'm not generally one to give free cards that could come back to hurt me without a really good reason, and such a reason does not exist here IMO, so to be clear my plan is, if he leads at this flop now, I will go for the sizeable checkraise, and hope he either folds so I can win some real money here, or even better would be if he lucked out and hit top pair or something, in which case I am thrilled to be in here with pocket Kings and the backdoor club draw to boot.

Instead, unsurprisingly my opponent checks behind on this raggy flop. Obviously I am fine with this.

Awesomely, the beautiful King♠ arrives on the turn card, giving me top set on the board and posing me with an interesting conundrum. Now what's the right move here? IMO when I made top set on the flop, my focus needs to change now from slow-playing to figuring out how to extract the maximum value from my opponent on the hand. Is a bet likely to do that here? If so, how much (remember, the pot is still just 200 chips)? Full pot? Half, to feign some more weakness and represent a steal? Or do I check again here and try to get this guy to bet, with me less concerned about any free cards now that I've made top set on the turn? Do I have any reason to believe this player has anything at this point in the hand? How do I get the most value out of the hand at this point?

There's more to the story to come tomorrow. Please post your thoughts in the comments, and I will get the next screenshots up for tomorrow's post after everyone has had a chance to weigh in with their comments on how they would play this hand, and whether I played it right or let some opportunities slip past me to make some additional chippage from my lone opponent in the big blind.

See you tonight at 10pm ET for Mondays at the Hoy!! Once again on Full Tilt!