$T on Full Tilt, and Back to the BBT3

Man do I love the new $T system on full tilt. It's far better than the corresponding system at pokerstars, which for some of their larger tournaments only allows you to unregister and re-register for a different tournament at the same buyin level as the one you already won. Full tilt, on the other hand, basically lets you unregister from any tournament you satellite in to, and you keep 100% of your $T from that unregistered buyin for use on other full tilt tournament buyins. Unrestricted. Sitngos, mtt's, blonkaments, you name it. If you want to convert your $T to cash, full tilt will do it for you automatically without the need to match up with another specific player as is the case on pokerstars. The exchange rate is less than 1-for-1 of course (I forget exactly but they keep a small chunk for you to cash out $T from the site in this way), but I don't care about that because I cannot envision a situation where I would ever want to cash in my $T. Basically, I know I play tournaments regularly at full tilt, and therefore I have absolutely no second thought about keeping my money tied up in $T and some in cash. What's the diff, right? As long as I know I'm coming back to play tournaments there, why the F not just keep the $T? Especially if it costs me 10% or some shit to transfer it to cash direct. NFW.

So anyways, I am absolutely loving the new $T system on full tilt, as it truly has opened up a whole new world of tournaments to me that I used to always have to pass right by. I'm talking about those regularly-scheduled Sunday Brawl and Sunday Million satellites they're always running. I'm talking about all the myriad FTOPS satellites that are constantly filling up as mtts and sngs. Basically, any kind of satellite tournament for an event I would never actually play in online, all through the past I had to just scroll right by all that stuff. I mean, I got to know the colors and everything. Dark blue yes, those are FTOPS. Green no, those are Winners Choice which have terrible odds to win, or things like the Irish Poker Open or the WPT Latin America or something that I would never be going to in a million years. Not in a million billion years. Light blue maybe, those are the token frenzies which I have not been playing much lately at all. The light orange were probably the most annoying for me, which is the near-constant trickle of Sunday Million and Sunday 750k sats that must run 5 or 6 times a night over a few-hour period in the evenings all through the week these days.

In the past I learned to tune out those "bad" colors whenever I looked over the mtt schedule for the night upon sitting down to bag me some donkeys. But not anymore. Now I can play in just about any tournament I want, and when I win, just go unregister right away and 100% of that win transfers into my $T pot. I have nearly 2 grand sitting in $T alone just since they instituted the whole $T thing, which I can spend whenever I feel like it now on any tournament or sng I want to play. It's great. Last night during the Mookie I fired up an mtt sat to this week's Sunday Million. It was a $109 buyin and ended up with 30 entrants, so the top 6 won seats in Sunday afternoon's $535 buyin million dollar guaranteed prize pool nlh tournament. So yeah the buyin is a little steep, but if there is one thing I have focused on doing since winning a nice wad of cash at full tilt is to up my buyins as much as necessary to get into those mtt satellites with the ratios of winners to players that I like so much.

Full tilt is always running sats and super sats to the Sunday big guaranteed tournament. They have $8 rebuy turbo sats and supersats, they have I think a $10 rebuy sat, they run $26 buyin satellites at least a couple of times every night. They run some $75 buyin sats and even this $109 buyin one. And the bottom line is, if you have the means to make a $109 buyin and do so profitably, it is far and away the best investment to make.

If you recall my previous discussion on the winners-to-entrants ratios for mtt satellites, I will generally try to avoid a satellite that pays out fewer than one winner for every ten entrants. Ideally you want to more than 10% of the entrants to win the larger seat, or investing in that particular mtt begins to lose its value to me. There is just so much variance and luck involved in winning any particular mtt that requiring you to finish in the top 10% is asking quite a bit.

But finishing in the top 20% is a whole other story. Sure that is still hard to do, but when full tilt is going to pay out 6 Sunday Million seats out of 30 runners, that helps me in two major ways. First, of course, it upps my odds of winning. Assuming all 30 entrants were of equal skill, my odds are 10% to win in the sat that awards 3 seats because it had a $50 buyin instead of $100, and 20% to win in the sat that awards seats to the top 6 finishers. It's just simple math. Even if you allow for variation in the skill among the players generally, it's not going to change the fact that awarding seats to the top 6 of 30 instead of to the top 3 of 30 increases every single player's odds of winning a seat.

But the other major way that a better seat ratio helps me -- and secretly this might be the more beneficial of the two benefits -- is that I only have to play down to the final 6 people. This means, for example, that we only had to play two hours flat on Wednesday night to play from 30 runners down to the final 6 in a standard (non turbo) format mtt. If that thing has to play down to 3, it adds another 30, 40 minutes of lucksackery and donkdickery that we all have to survive to get that seat. It is without a doubt measurably more difficult to take top 3 in a 30-person mtt than it is to take top 6. With top 6, if you get a huge stack in the middle of the thing you can probably shut it down entirely. You can certainly call some short-stacked donks with hands like JTo and shit like that and take your chances with that stack, which also helps ends these things earlier and makes it easier for everyone else to get there. Even as you get near the final table, when you know you only have to hang on for the top 6 instead of the top few spots, the action is just nowhere near as frantic, as allinny, or as movemakey. There is just more margin for error, more room to be a little more patient instead of forcing the issue. In short, it's a measurably easier, more pleasant tournament to play down to 6 than it is to play the lower buyin, higher ratio satellites.

So yeah, thanks to the whole new $T thing, last night I can log in to play the $109 mtt sat into the Sunday Million, and in two hours flat I can log off having donked out of the Mook and the Dook long ago, and yet still more than pleased with my night thanks to winning myself the $535 seat. The Sunday Million a tournament I'm sure I would win but one which I would never play in due to the 6pm ET start time, but now I can still play the plentiful satellites into it with abandon. Because as soon as I won the sat last night, which was done in line with the big-stack-early-then-wait-it-out approach I mentioned earlier thanks in no small part to cracking some bitch's Aces allin preflop with my 9s, I went and unregistered from the Million. That is $535 of tournament buyins just sitting in my account now, waiting to be used on things like BBT3 blonkaments, the 5050, stoopid prop bets with bloggers on things like if anyone will win 3 blonkaments in the series, if anyone will win 2 more tournaments during just the rest of the BBT3 and similar silliness.

Man winning that ToC seat earlier this week feels good. As you know if you read here with any regularity, I put a good deal of expectation on myself to play well in the blonkaments, and I'm not ever showing up for 2nd place. I don't really care about the money involved in most of the private events -- though the Big Game is dam nice when I cash in it every other month -- so final tabling or making "the points" is something I never even consider. But if I'm going to make a commitment of the time, the effort, just the general thinking I will do about anything that happens in blogger tournaments over the next year, then I put high demands on myself to perform well in them. I like to. And even though I won two events in the first BBT, both I think Riverchasers events in the second half of the series after running horribly in the first half, I was completely shut out of the BBTwo which was the first series that included a Tournament of Champions only for the BBTwo event winners. So I got to sit and watch while the winners battled it out and jeciimd eventually took the crown and won the 18k Aussie Millions package, instead of playing with the big boys.

This time around, now I know I won't have to watch enviously from the sidelines. And that is a really awesome feeling. Like I said here after Waffles won his seat in the Mookie the other day, I definitely believe the Tournament of Champions is more interesting and just better with me in it. I think that about mostly all of the seat winners so far. And there are some other people out there who will definitely add to the panache of the whole thing, but who are not in the ToC yet. From a historical BBT perspective, previous BBT champions Bayne and jeciimd still need to qualify, and previous BBT write-in champions Fuel55 and the Goat need to get in there. For the social aspect, we need to get LJ in to the ToC, Riggs needs to find his way in as well, and maybe some Kat, Irongirl or even some Al for good measure.

I've also been noticing that the A-lister quotient so far in the BBT3 Tournament of Champions is really suffering. No Iggy this time around? Everyone's favorite little person won his way in early in the BBTwo thanks to numerous players spewing their chips at him with nothing but air. Is StB, aka NightRanger on full tilt, going to re-enter the world of winning blonkament play, or has the stink of those fifth-circlers gotten him too off his game to get back to the winner's circle where he used to hang out with some regularity not too long ago? I've even seen the good Doctor making some rare BBT3 tournament appearances lately. We need to get some of these guys in to represent for the old schoolers, the ones who started everything that has led up to us being offered nearly 40 large in free prizes as part of the third go-round of the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments.

There are a few other good poker tournament players whom I would like to see get in to the Tournament of Champions. Chad obviously makes the thing 10 times more fun, even sans his quite solid chatbox abilities. Cmitch and surflexus are each very solid players and great guys who are definitely worthy of a slot in the big one. Emptyman is great at all the HORSE games and so should have a good shot with all the Skills Series and alternating limit RC tournaments, and Donkette of course is the best poker tournament player of all the bloggers so she I'm sure will play her way in as well before all is said and done. Just having crossed the halfway point of the BBT3, it is my hope and expectation that most of the people I mentioned above will find their way in to the end-of-series event where two 12k WSOP Main Event packages and two 2k WSOP preliminary event packages will be awarded to the top 4 finishers out of a maximum of what, 53 runners. I'm just glad I will be there to participate in all the fun this time around.

Even if my BBT3 "win" was really just handed to me wrongly. Muhahahahahahahahahahah!

Suckas.

MATH Recap, Sickness Recovering, and WSOP ME Satellite

As Monday evening rolled around at the Hammer House, I was still feeling kinda sick after a weekend of the flu. I had gone to work in the morning on Monday but ended up heading back home for the afternoon where I was on back-to-back calls in what proved to be a crazy day across the financial markets in the U.S. Come sundown I was feeling up to making a run in the MATH, and I figured I would find something else interesting to run while the Hoy was going on. I ended up settling on this $215 buyin satellite on pokerstars to the $1050 buyin WSOP ME qualifier on Friday night. With better than one in five entrants winning the big seat, that is the kind of satellite ratio I am always looking for, so I decided to give it a go to try to win a 12k Main Event prize package for the first time in my life ever even playing a satellite to one of these things. In the past I could never play these things because my life is not set up to allow me to play the Main Event, but nowadays with these events awarding only cash to my account, I figured now is as good a time as any to try to make some runs for the cash.

I relied on some reads and got lucky to run into some stoopidly aggressive players early on in the $215 supersat on pokerstars, getting me off to a 1st place start with 13 players remaining out of the original 17 who started. When we made it down to the final table with 9 players remaining, I was in third place but that was ok because the top 3 runners would each win the $1050 seat to the Friday WSOP tournament. From close to the top of the leaderboard, I then followed a strategy that I almost never adopt in these multi-seat satellites with a good chip stack, in that I decided to go right at the one prohibitive largest stack at the final table, hoping to use my sizeable stack to make him lay down rather than risk what probably seemed like an almost guaranteed fold-to-the-points victory for him. Generally this is not an advisable strategy when I myself was still already in the winning top 3 slots, but I was only barely ahead of 4th place and I knew I needed to make a few moves to solidify my position. And I was only semi-lucid, which always helps.

So first I made this ludicrous two-bullet bluff (raised the flop and then pushed here as well):



Luckily, he folded:



And I was solidly in 2nd place of 7 remaining, again with 3 winning ths $1050 seats. A few hands later I just pushed allin again when I held Jacks and the flop came Queen-high with two rags, in a heads-up pot with just myself and that same big stack, after he had called my preflop raise. I was playing highly aggro poker, but it worked for me and before I knew it I was basically tied with the other guy for the two large stacks at around 8k apiece, among 5 smaller stacks largely at 2k or below, with the top 3 finishers winning seats. From there it was fairly smooth sailing, using my big stack to steal enough pots to maintain my stack size while letting the smaller stacks clash or waiting for myself or the other big stack to pick up monster hands. By the time I picked up pocket Aces, we were already down to 5 players, and I made it 4 as the table shorty pushed into me before the flop. A few hands later saw the other big stack call allin with Ace-rag against the new table shorty's King-rag, the favorite held, and I was in:



So that will be me at 8:30pm ET on Friday on pokerstars, playing in the $1050 WSOP ME qualifier to win the 12k prize packages for the World Series of Poker. Woo hoo.

So most of my other poker attention on the night where I still wasn't feeling up to snuff consisted of Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt. 79 runners came out for the MATH, with the top 10 spots paying out a lofty $1896 prize pool, including over $597 awarded to first place. As with last week, our first elimination came on the very first hand, this week with OMGItsPokerFool scoring the gigli honors, and I have to be glad he did since I busted just a few minutes later as the third player out. Basically, I was dealt pocket Jacks, I reraised preflop and the original preflop raiser just called my reraise. The flop came all rags, I bet a pot-committing amount, and thus when my opponent raised me I felt obligated to call despite knowing pretty well that I was beat. He flipped Aces (natch) and IGH just like that. A bad play by me no doubt, and my earlier than usual blonkament eliminatio nis probably at least somewhat caused by my state of mind and ill disposition on the night, but in the end a bad play is a bad play, and nobody made me push just overpair Jacks very early on in an mtt against a guy who had raised preflop and again on the flop. Bad play.

Here were the ten cashers in this week's Hoy:

1. $597.24 dwal78
2. $388.68 Loretta8
3. $265.44 TripJax
4. $199.08 Chippy McStacks
5. $142.20 BuddyDank
6. $94.80 BamBamCan
7. $56.88 Breeze81
8. $56.88 kevin_with_AK
9. $47.40 AltronIV
10. $47.40 DaBag

And here is the updated 2008 MATH moneyboard, including this week's results:

1. columbo $928
2. astin $664
3. lucko21 $650
4. dwal78 $597
5. Pirate Wes $581
6. Tripjax $553
7. fuel55 $512
8. surflexus $488
9. pureprophet $484
10. zeroluck001 $476
10. Jordan $476
12. TuscaloosaJohn $423
13. twoblackaces $409
14. Loretta8 $389
15. ChiipyMcStacks $316
16. Breeze81 $310
17. bayne_s $291
18. tilt away $289
19. jmathewson_III $274
20. Miami Don $224
21. Roberto55 $217
22. Donkey Shortz $215
23. VinNay $203
24. DaBag $202
24. Byron $202
26. buckhoya $150
26. Mike Maloney $150
28. BuddyDank $142
29. chitwood $127
30. cubanlinks $120
31. LJ $119
32. kevin_with_AK $106
33. BamBamCan $95
33. thepokergrind $95
35. ANIguy $89
35. bartonf $89
37. HotPants29 $74
38. katiemother $67
38. Hoyazo $67
40. CheckinMyAA $62
41. PirateLawyer $60
42. DonkeyPuncher74 $56
42. RaisingCayne $56
44. jeciimd $52
44. zeroluck001 $52
46. AltronIV $47

So lots of repeat winners on this week's list of 10 players to make the cash. And congratulations out to dwal for taking down this week's title as well as the latest BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat to play for the WSOP packages that I'm going to be busy winning Friday night from pokerstars. Dwal calls himself an "up and coming blogger" in his own blog, so go check him out if you are looking for a new cynical view on this whole blogging thing.

And don't forget tonight with the latest BBT3 tournament on full tilt with the Skills Series. Yes Chad has pretty much dropped off the face of the earth, but his Skills games are still going strong, with this week's flavor being HOSE, or alternating rounds of limit holdem, O8, Stud Hi and Stud 8. Basically "HORSE", minus the razz to save a few heart attacks and get a few fewer pets kicked. HOSE goes off at 9:30pm ET on full tilt, with a password of "skillz". And of course you also have the Tuesday night Blowdonkey by Smokkee at 9pm ET.