Mtt Update

Still haven't had the time to do a proper recap of my score in UBOC Event #4 a few days back. It's just hard to find the time this week in the evenings with all the double-guarantee tournaments running all day long on full tilt in addition to the rest of the UBOC series on UltimateBet. If I don't get to do a real recap, I might just post the two or three most significant hands for posterity's sake, but hopefully this is something I will get to in the next day or two.

In the meantime, I had my first cash in a big mtt on full tilt of the past three days, a tiny score for just a few hundy in the 150k, which is double the usual 75k guarantee which runs nightly at 8pm ET for a buyin of $150 + $13. Normally this is a tournament I stay away from, because (1) I am rarely home in time to play it from the beginning anyways, and (2) even the few times when I have been able to play, I find the level of competition to be noticeably better than at the $50 or $100 level where my mtt play tends to focus. I think I've only cashed in this thing twice before in my entire life, so in that sense running through to the final 60 or so players was a nice feat, especially with the mtt being double its usual size, up in the 1200-player range on the day. But in the end, a run to the 60s just doesn't mean squat in terms of cash in a tournament like this, so I'll take my $300 profit and plow it back into full tilt's double-guarantee tournaments over the next couple of nights.

For the first night in a few, I did not participate in any of the UBOC events. They smartly have a "mini-UBOC" which runs the exact same tournaments as the big UBOC events at the exact same times, but at one-tenth the buyin. The problem with these events for me is that, for the most part, the mini UBOC events only have a tiny guarantee -- usually 10k or less -- and I just don't generally take the time these days to play any mtt without at least a 20k guarantee. I just don't want to go through the rigamarole and roller coaster of luck and timing that it takes to run deep in one of these tournaments, bust out in 4th place, and win what? $500? Definitely not worth it from my perspective. So I've been staying away from the mini UBOC events generally, but otherwise I think the variety of events in the UBOC has been pretty great, personally. They've had some rebuys at reasonable buyin levels, they've had some nice deep stack sniper (bounty) tournaments in the $100-$200 range, and they've had events in no-limit and limit holdem, both 6-max and full-ring, as well as plenty of Omaha and Stud events to pique my interest. As I mentioned yesterday I have built up a massive stack in a few of these other events but so far it has not translated to any big scores since UBOC #4, and on Wednesday night I was tempted by the $1000 buyin nlh event that seemed to be attracting all the big pros from UB's roster.

I originally registered for the 1k buyin tournament, but later unregistered after more carefully considering the situation. I have the money in UB thanks to my score last week in UBOC #4, but do I really want to drop a grand to play this tournament? It struck me how different buyin levels are at live vs online tournaments. In a live casino, a tournament with a $1000 buyin would be big, but nothing so huge in my experience that it would attract all pros or something. Not even close. For the most part, if I play a $1000 buyin event in a live casino in Atlantic City or Las Vegas, I would expect the average level of skill of my competition to be mediocre at best, with plenty of total donkeys in the mix ever-ready to get involved with subpar hands and try to suck out on someone even for $1000 a pop. But in an online tournament, the 1k buyin events in my experience tend to turn out a whole different level of opponent. I'm not trying to say these things are not beatable or anything, but in an online event, a 1k buyin tournament will generally speaking be comprised of mostly solid players, something I would never say about a live 1k buyin event. I've written about this before with respect to the Monday 1k mtt on full tilt -- that field every week is good enough such that my expected value from playing the tournament is measurably lower than when I play, say, the 5050 or a similar-level of buyin. The bottom line is that, for online poker play at the major sites available in the U.S., all the lower limits available make a buyin like 1k something that generally speaking only the best of the best tournament players are looking into.

With that in mind, I ended up unregistering from the 1k UBOC tournament and saving that dough for a better spot. Again, it's not a question of not having faith in myself or not thinking I can do it. I do have faith and I do think I can outlast anyone in the world in the right situation in a large-field mtt. But, that doesn't change the fact that my expected ROI of entering the 1k event is significantly lower over the long run that my expected ROI of entering the other tournaments I normally confine my play to.

Tonight's UBOC was much better as I recall, although I think there is only one of them instead of the normal two events starting simultaneously at 8:05pm ET. I think tonight's is a $200 or $300 buyin pot-limit Omaha event or something like that. Too lazy to look it up. But I checked on Wednesday night and I recall thinking that Thursday's UBOC would be a fun one to play, so I will definitely plan to be there at 8pm. I'm sure I'll make an appearance in the $26 buyin 28k guaranteed (56k this week!) 8pm mtt on full tilt as well, and you might even see me once again in the 40k (80k this week), $150 buyin mtt at 8pm as well. The 8:30pm ET 50k ($30 rebuy) that I won recently is also a distinct possibility. I haven't had a big cash yet in this week's double-guarantee festival on full tilt, but that won't stop me from trying. It only takes one great run to make up for several months days of mtt futility.

New Year, Housekeeping, MATH Pimp and Another Shot at the Big Time

Back in the office on a Monday for the first full week of the new year, so that can only mean one thing:



Mondays at the Hoy is back again on full tilt! 10pm ET every Monday night, password as always is "hammer". Any and all are welcome, whether you've played in 10,000 Hoy tournaments before or if tonight is your night to lose your Hoy virginity. We love n00bs in the MATH tournament, and as I've mentioned here before first-timers have had an uncanny amount of luck or skill in finishing high up the leaderboard in this tournament, so come one and come all to try your skill against the best of the best in the world of poker blogging. The buyin as always is $26 or a tier I token on full tilt, and the game is 6-max no-limit holdem. And since it's a new year, that means we will start up a brand new MATH moneyboard for 2008. 2007's moneyboard was won by Columbo in a stunning performance fueled by several big cashes late in the year including in the large-field BBT events. Columbo eked out cash and tournament player cmitch as well Bayne who crushed the first BBT earlier in 2007, so kudos out to Columbo for a truly impressive performance and the well-deserved of King of the MATH for the past year. Tonight we start a whole new moneyboard for a whole new year, so here is your chance to make a name for yourself early and often in the first blogger tournament of the new week every week.

Btw I am still working with full tilt on a possible reward for the top finishers on the 2007 MATH moneyboard. I will be back within a week or two with the details of that but there may (and I repeat, may) be a little something in the works on that front. It won't be anything huge but I would like to give something back to the guys who performed the best and helped make the MATH the fun tournament that it was during 2007. I'm looking at a small freeroll tournament for the top portion of finishers or something similar, but a few of the details are still to be worked out so we'll see what happens. I will let everyone know right here as soon as I know anything on that front.

So, today I was going to start my new turbo sitngo strategy post, but I'm not quite ready for that yet so that will have to wait another day or two. Hopefully when it comes it will be applicable to most of you and written in such a way that most of you will be able to make use of it if you so choose. But in the end I was up a little too late last night playing these turbo sngs and a few satellite tournaments as well. More on that in a minute.

So our boy jeciimd is off to Australia today for his two-week package that will culminate in his playing in the Aussie Millions nlh tournament starting on Monday the 14th. For those of you who don't know, this is a 7500 AUD buyin tournament, and it is a 5-day affair, plus three Day Ones split into three days. So the whole tournament runs from Monday the 14th to Sunbday the 20th if memory serves. I think I mentioned this earlier, but jec has literally never played a live tournament in a casino in his life, and in fact has never even stepped foot in a casino at all other than one short evening jaunt during college to Atlantic City. That in my view is not good and creates a number of additional issues for jec as far as feeling comfortable at the tournament that I wish did not exist, but we all have to deal with the cards we are dealt and this is jec's situation. I spent some time this weekend and gave jec my last-minute pep talk. My advice essentially amounted to be comfortable, dress comfortable, bring snacks and drinks you like if you can. And play tight. Not that jec of all people needs it, but this is a fucking 5-day event. I told him there is no excuse for him all of people, who rarely to never makes moves early as it is, to get allin on any flop without at least top two pairs. Period. I told him this is true for Day 1 at least, and maybe Day 2 as well. Jec bought part of me for my run in the World Series of Poker last year, and I went ahead to cash, so I have returned the favor and bought a similar-sized piece of him this year for his run at the Aussie Millions. And never fear, the biggest instruction I have jec was to blog blog blog godammit. As I mentioned the tournament doesn't start until next Monday Australia time, but jec says he plans to be online by this coming Wednesday. I will of course post any updates I hear here about him here as well.

So, I am off to a pretty good start with my goals for this year. First and foremost, one primary goal of my blog, something that I did not even list in my 2008 goals post but which has always been pretty much the reason I am here doing what I do every day, is sharing poker information and experiences. While I think I've done a fine job of doing so in my own right on the blog, my blogroll over there on the left is sorely out of date. So later today, I will be correcting that problem by adding a bunch of new links to the roll, in no particular order. A number of these are blogs I read with some frequency but just have never added them to my roll for some reason, a few of which I could have sworn were there in fact but I was surprised to see they were not. Some of them are old bloggers taking a new stab at writing regularly about poker, and some of them have been doing this for some time and have started doing a great job of regularly updating, so I am adding them here. I apologize to those whom I have left off for all this time, as well as to those I of course am forgetting with this new update. I've never been the type to just list every single blog out there, as I really want my readers to be able to click any link on my blogroll and be able to get reasonably current, regularly updated poker stuff, but it is high time to expand things quite a bit and today is the day that finally happens. I will be adding those links throughout the day on Monday, and I will probably even mention them specifically over the next couple days once I get all the new links up over there.

One of my other big goals for 2008 that I did write about the other day is giving myself a shot in some more of the big-buyin tournaments. This is another one I am off to a solid start in so far this year. For starters, I played in this past Sunday's 750k guaranteed tournament, qualifying in on Saturday night via a sweet $75 buyin turbo sitngo where the top 3 finishers won their seats. I would win my way in to this thing every weekend in that very same turbo sng if I could play every Sunday evening. Overall I spent more than I would like getting in to this thing, but less than the $216 buyin so that's all good overall. I won't have much time to play at 6pm ET on Sundays for the most part as that is prime dinner/bath/bed time in the Hammer household, but I was happy to get in on the first 750k of the year, and I had a nice experience playing in it.

Since writing down last week about my unsatisfactory cash-payout mtt performance during the second half of 2006, I have noticed that I am playing more focused in the few mtt's I have played. Hopefully that continues for a little while here at least, and I think it is sad and very telling that I could so easily notice the difference that a little more focus and tightness has meant for my large tournament game, but that is still a good thing for the present and near future overall so I'll take it. I have been lasting longer in my few large mtts this year, and that extended to the 750k as well on Sunday where I got nothing early, but instead of pushing things I waited around with the double starting stacks of 3000 chips until I found some favorable situations. Never dropping below around 60th percentile in the remaining field from the starting size of over 4100 runners, eventually I doubled up when a shorty pushed TT into my QQ around the middle of the second hour, and then I chipped up nicely again around the end of Hour 2 when I won a big pot against top pair with pocket Aces. From there I managed to drop a little, gain a little back, drop a little and gain a little back, mostly holding ground as the number of players remaining continued to drop. Sometime either late in Hour 3 we crossed the 1000 players remaining threshold, with me sitting in around 600th place after having made a large laydown on a resteal. Basically, the button on a big stack open-raised the size of the pot before the flop, and I repopped it 3x more to around a quarter of my existing stack with AQo. The button thought, asked for time and eventually pushed allin. I spent maybe 10 seconds before folding. No way I go out here with AQ. I kept asking myself, what are the chances that this guy is pushing here with something like AJ or AT? He had a nice big healthy stack, and he knows I can basically knock him out if I have AK or something, let alone any pocket pair which I would be ahead if not significantly ahead of him with. Why would he take the chance this early with this big a stack of ruining his entire run? Answer: highly unlikely that he would. So then the question became, with just under a quarter of my stack already in the pot, was it worth me calling his allin in the hopes that he did not have AK, AA, KK or QQ -- all hands easily representative of the strength he was showing here -- just to be a slight dog in a race situation? Answer: not to me, not with still a just around average stack left over even if I folded. I never asked the guy what he had and in the end I don't really care. What I am concerned with is the process to my thinking, and I feel confident that my thinking was sound in that spot. This is a way of thinking about chip stacks and big decisions for most of your stack in tournaments that I see as key for anyone serious about running deep in these things. The primary goal is always to survive, and to survive with enough chips to make it worth your while to continue. I still had it, and the chance of me being up against QQ-AA or AK, and thus having a very poor shot of remaining alive in the tournament, or almost surely being against a lower pocket pair and still being less than 50% to remain alive, it was just not the right spot for me at that time.

Sadly, with just under 1000 players remaining, and my stack at the lowest it had been in a good hour or so, I made a bad play following up on what I think was a solid tournament play in laying down the restolen AQ preflop that I described above. I called from the blinds with QTs into a five-way pot, and the flop came down JT4 with two hearts. The action checked around into what was already a large pot thanks to the big blinds four hours in to the 750k and the 5 players in, and then the guy on the button put in a smallish bet, which to me just reeked of weakness and an attempt to steal a big pot. But I made the mistake of forgetting all the other three players in the pot other than the button and myself, and the fact that there were eight other hidden cards in their four other hands, and I went ahead and raised it allin with my middle pair and Queen kicker. In a 2- or even maybe 3-handed pot I think this is a fine if not strong tournament move, in particular when I don't have a medium-large stack. But with five players in the hand, I should have known that (1) the odds of someone in the hand having made top pair were somewhat high -- gotta be better than 50% though I have no calculations to back that up (any of you pokerstovey or mathy donks want to give that one a try?), and (2) none of these guys were going to lay down top pair to my allin reraise. So I raised it to allin, and one of the guys who had checked the flop to begin with to my left went and called my bet. The original bettor was in fact weak and folded, but I knew I was behind even before he flipped up the KJ for top pair King kicker. I did not hit a miracle and IGH in 900-somethingth place, about 500 spots from the cash in the 4100-some runner tournament. This was yet another example of a bad tournament poker decision and is exactly what I was talking about in my goals post from the other day as far as needing to get my late-stage tournament game in order. Final tables, I feel supremely confident after killing the sitngos these past few months. But getting from the late stages to the cash, normally a strong situation for me, has seen me plagued with bad decisionmaking and that is why I need to play some more of these things to get back that experience that I have been missing so much from only playing these multi-seat satellites which generally offer a very different balance of decisions heading into the bubble time.

So after my nice performance but then bustout in the 750k, among other things I decided to continue to pursue my big-buyin tournament goal and play in the $100 buyin satellite to the Monday 1k on full tilt. This one has 24 runners, awarding 2 seats plus $280 cash for third place. The tournament took more than three hours overall, and there was a lot of shit in the middle there including me getting sucked out on three times including a real beauty on a 3-outer with just one card to come in the first hour to knock me down to under half of my starting stack early on. Nonetheless, I perservered, and here was the result of it all:



BOOOOOooooooom!!! So I will be playing again in the Monday 1k this evening at 9pm ET on full tilt, which I am once again very excited about as it is a $1000 buyin tournament. This will be my 4th attempt in this tournament in the year or so it's been run on Monday evenings, with a couple of poor performances and one hideous suckout just short of the money in my first three runs in this thing. But I said I wanted to play more of the big buyin tournaments, so here I am with a solid start to that in 2008 so far with the 750k this past weekend and now the Monday 1k tonight. And the way this satellite to the 1k ended was pretty sick too -- check this out:

So after leading the entire way from 7 players left down to the bubble with 3 players left, I finally took the inevitable bad beat, moving allin on an Ace-high flop with a slow-played A9 and being called by a slow-played AT, which had me down to just over 5k in chips while the other two players had more than twice my chip stack. Then, after I had chipped up a bit but was still in 3rd place of 3 remaining with about 8k to the other two players' roughly 12k in chips, this flop and turn came up:



Obviously, with the huge raise up there from the big stack for almost all his chips, he's got to have a 2, right? And I'm thinking the guy on the bottom also had to have a 2 to be betting 5100 chips to begin with in this spot. Don't you think? Well, take a look at this setup hand:



Boooom! I would like to feel bad for DIAMONDJIM555 there at the bottom of the screen, but after watching him call allins within the last four or five players with J4o and JTo on two separate occasions from a good-sized stack, he had it coming and I am quite sure that the best two players left won the 1k seats. Of course then this guy at the top right of the screen who won the 1k seat with me kept telling me I had to thank him. He wouldn't even push allin for a while, he just kept folding preflop and demanding thanks from me for busting the other larger stack to get me into the top 2 and winning my seat. Of course I had to be a dick so I just kept typing in "thank you full tilt" instead of thanking him directly, as if it was him somehow who created that wonderful setup hand for me, enabling me to play in my fourth lifetime Monday 1k tournament tonight on full tilt.

And this is where the rubber meets the road with my goals for 2008. In 2007, I won plenty of satellites, but I did a piss poor job for the most part of turning them into actual cash winnings. I have gotten sucked out on recockulously in many key spots for sure, but still. Monday night will be my second big chance already of 2008 in a large-buyin tournament with a huge prize pool, and in a relatively small field. Like I wrote about in my goals post last Friday, this is where I either start turning all these satellite wins I seem to be able to generate with relative ease into some actual cold hard fucking cashish, or I keep wallowing in the mire of lots of satellite wins and little cash wins to show for it. So not only is Monday night my night to get a head start at the top of the 2008 MATH moneyboard just like it is for the rest of you, but it also is my time to shine in a nlh tournament where any cash at all will mean a nice four-digit payout to me. Feel free to come and rail me in that starting at 9pm ET, but otherwise I'll see you tonight at 10pm ET for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!

Mookday, MATH Recap and Monday 1k Donkery

Greetings to everyone and I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas or at least some nice time off with yourself, your family and/or friends even if you don't celebrate like this blogger. For many of you it is now back to the grind for the next few days heading into the New Years holiday next Monday in the U.S., but for me it is more time off as I have a very much needed vacay from work throughout the remainder of this year. This should give me some time to blog a little bit, and I will tell you that I am working on a nice -EV post on turbo sitngo strategy that I am hoping to crack out for y'all sometime in next week is my guess. It will probably come in several parts, but if nothing else I am looking forward to how Hoy Synopsis goes about distilling those badboys down into summary posts.

So the Christmas Eve $6 rebuy turbo super-double-secret special MATH tournament on Monday night had 12 runners, and full tilt almost got the structure exactly right for what I had requested. I say "almost" because, although the format was turbo like I asked and that did include the 30-minute rebuy I had requested, it was not in the end the exact same structure as the nightly turbo rebuy satellites that full tilt regularly runs. Those turbo satellites feature a 30-minute rebuy period, followed by a 2-minute break and an add-on, and then an hour-long session by the end of which the winners are quite often already determined. For the MATH this week, there was instead a 30-minure rebuy period, no break, and just another 30 minutes of non-rebuy poker immediately following the end of rebuy time. And the funniest part of all was that after an hour of turbo play, then full tilt allowed us all to add on for an additional $6 the original starting numebr of chips of 1000, which starting after the end of the first hour equated to exactly two big blinds. Not smart. Nonetheless, a good time was had by all and I have to say I am really enjoying getting back to the fun of the blonkaments now that the BBTwo has come and gone.

Long story short, I absolutely dominated the MATH rebuy this week. I was in the middle of the pack after the first hour, but I quickly built up my stack, busting several players in the process, and by the time we were 5- or 6-handed at the final table, I had a big chip lead. I just kept adding and adding to my stack all through the end game, such that when I got heads-up with cemfredmd, who was playing at his first-ever Hoy final table, I had about an 8.5-to-1 chip lead. After a couple of folds I think my chip lead had dropped to around 5-to-1, and then I was dealt pocket Queens which I slow-played preflop for only one raise, opting to push allin on a raise on the raggy flop that fell. Unfortunately for me, my pocket Queens were up against cem's ultimate setup hand of pocket Aces (heads up!!), and suddenly we were nearly even in chips. To make matters worse, a few hands later and still with the chip lead, cem got it allin again on the flop with a naked flush draw on a Q54 flop, which I called with my pocket Tens. Turn rag, river flush card and I was crippled. So my nearly 9-to-1 chip lead disappeared over the span of maybe 5 minutes on what amounted to a massive recockusetup followed by a suckout, and before I knew it I was out in second, and cem had won his first ever MATH tournament.

The three cashers from this week's MATH event were:

1. cemfredmd -- $126
2. hoyazo -- $75.60
3. TheCloserX5 -- $50.40


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

1. Columbo $1823
2. cmitch $1703
3. Bayne_s $1400
4. Hoyazo $1238
5. RaisingCayne $1110
6. Surflexus $1107
7. Daddy $999
8. twoblackaces $931
9. LJ $867
10. Lucko21 $815
11. Kajagugu $806
12. swimmom95 $804
13. Fuel55 $802
14. Astin $793
15. Pirate Wes $792
16. VinNay $775
17. Tripjax $759
18. IslandBum1 $754
18. Numbbono $754
20. Iggy $745
21. Gary Cox $734
22. Blinders $720
23. NewinNov $677
24. Waffles $650
25. XxMagiciaNxX $630
26. JJ $630
27. Mike_Maloney $612
28. ScottMc $597
29. Jamyhawk $576
30. Buddydank $553
31. riggstad $537
31. Chad $537
33. Emptyman $513
34. Byron $510
35. Julius Goat $507
36. bartonf $492
36. mtnrider81 $492
38. PokerBrian322 $490
39. wormmsu $475
40. scots_chris $474
41. whiskigrl $467
42. jeciimd $460
43. RecessRampage $434
44. Otis $429
45. leftylu $424
46. Miami Don $402
47. Zeem $389
48. Joe Speaker $384
49. Jordan $382
50. cardgrrl $371
50. lightning36 $371
52. ChapelncHill $353
53. OMGitsPokerFool $324
54. buckhoya $312
54. oossuuu754 $312
56. Mookie $304
57. Wigginx $288
58. Fishy McDonk $277
59. actyper $276
60. Irongirl $252
60. Manik79 $252
62. Wippy1313 $248
63. Easycure $244
64. Garthmeister $216
64. wwonka69 $216
66. Omega_man_99 $210
67. katiemother $209
68. Pushmonkey72 $208
69. Thepokergrind $198
70. bsquared25 $194
71. StatikKling $180
72. 23Skidoo $176
73. Santa Clauss $170
74. jimdniacc $166
75. Iakaris $162
75. Smokkee $162
77. cemfredmd $156
78. lester000 $147
79. Heffmike $145
80. Julkeus $144
81. brdweb $143
82. DDionysus $137
83. Patchmaster $135
84. InstantTragedy $129
85. cemfredmd $126
86. NinaW $120
87. UnTiltable $118
88. Fluxer $110
89. -o-LuckTruck-o- $103
90. hoops15mt $95
91. Gracie $94
91. Scurvydog $94
93. DaBag $84
93. Shag0103 $84
95. mattazuma $82
95. crazdgamer $82
97. PhinCity $80
98. Presidentdave $79
99. maf212 $78
100. evy35 $72
101. Alceste $71
101. dbirider $71
103. kevin-with-AK $66
104. Rake Feeder $53
105. TheCloserX5 $50

For those of you wondering how I did in the Monday 1k buyin tournament on full tilt, I donked it up hard on what I knew even then was a really bad play, maybe 40, 45 minutes in to the tournament, that I think shows really well how important it is to go with your read and to not call of your chips like a fonkey unnecessarily. I raised it up from 3x middle position before the flop with pocket Tens, and the player in the small blind reraised me 3x, which I called to see a heads-up flop with the fifth-best (maybe 6th) possible starting holdem hand. Easy, standard call as far as I'm concerned. The flop came down a fuly raggy 822, and my opponent bet out around the size of the pot. I was concerned -- those of you who railed me will note that I paused for some time even here on the flop to ponder the best response -- and for some reason I opted to just smooth call his bet. Here I figured he could have been on a middle pair slightly lower than mine, or maybe AK or conceivably AQs, and by just calling I was hoping he would slow down on the turn, or at least that an Ace or a King would come so I could get away from my overpair pocket Tens. I knew he had reraised me a standard amount preflop and that was indicative of a strong hand, but I made the decision that I was not quite sure enough he had a higher pocket pair from just his standard flop c-bet, and I was not quite ready to give up the hand yet. A real man would probably either fold or raise here, but I fucked it up and played too passively in a situation that simply does not call for passivity when you hold a medium pocket overpair on the flop against a preflop reraiser.

The situation only got worse on the turn, which came down an ultimately raggy offsuit 5. This time my opponent moved allin into what was now already a large pot, and I must have sat there for a good minute, using up my alloted time and part of my time bank while I contemplated where I had gone wrong with the hand. For some reason, even though I had told myself when I called donkishly on the flop that I would fold to any action on the turn, when I actually saw that action on the turn, and the huge number of chips in the pot, that nagging feeling in the back of my head starting piping up. And let me tell you guys, the nagging voice back there is almost never right. I rely on my reads almost exclusively when I play poker, but not that guy. The one with the nagging, skeptical voice about everything. The guy back there always saying "really?" and "no way!". That guy is stoopid, that guy is not analytical, and that guy is -EV. But on this night, I let him get the best of me, talking myself into thinking that the very action I said would cause me to fold quick now somehow represented instead the desperate push of a busted big slick. Knowing that he might be likely to play 99, A8 or AK in this way, and basically ignoring the preflop reraise and my read all along that he probably had a higher pair, I went ahead and slid all my chips in on the turn there after much thought, basically knowing the whole way that I was calling off my stack in an uncharacteristic fonkplay by me. He flipped up pocket Kings (der der der!) and IGH early, in the first round. Sad, but I brought it on myself 100% and I have nothing and no one -- not bad luck, not the full tilt rng server, not the other player, nada -- to blame for it but myself.

Just chalk it up to lessons learned I guess. When I smooth called this guy on the flop, I figured I was probably behind and decided then and there that I could smooth call here because I knew I would fold to any action from him on the turn unless I myself improved. Well, I got that action, and instead of following through with my own promise, I called off my stack with one pair on the turn like the uberdonkey that I played like that night. That my friends is some baaaaaad poker right there. Haters, rejoice!

So don't forget the Mookie tonight, 10pm ET on full tilt, password is "vegas1" as always. I am already registered and so should you be for the biggest donkey kong game played by the bloggers every week online. And to follow up suggestions from Mookie as well as from Trip I received last week, if anyone out there has any fun ideas for prop bets I can participate in for 2008 given that I've never won a fucking Mookie title in all my life, I would love to hear them. Effing Trip even had the nerve to suggest that I should give him odds in that endeavor. I'll state here for the record what I told Trip in the girly chat last week -- if anyone is giving up odds in a battle of who will win the Mookie first in 2008, it's everyone else to me. I can't play for shit in this thing, I lose dominated pairs to flopped quads, I've been sucked out on every which way but Sunday at the final table, on the river, in this thing. You all should be giving me odds in this, not the other way around. You'll get no odds from me in any prop bet that involves someone winning the Mookie before I do next year. So don't even think about it.

See you tonight at the Mook!!

Merry Christmas, MATH is ON, as is the Monday 1k

Merry Erev Christmas everybody! In case you're wondering, that is "Jew" for Christmas Eve, and I do hope everyone has a wonderful holiday for those of you celebrating this evening and tomorrow. I know it's a sort-of holiday so many of you won't be around and reading blogs on the day, but I wanted to mention a couple of quick things. First and foremost, for those of you who will be around and online on Monday evening, I am running the second-to-last Mondays at the Hoy of the year in its regularly scheduled slot of 10pm ET tonight on full tilt:



As I mentioned last week, tonight's MATH will be a special format in honor of the smaller field and holiday celebration for many of you Christ worshippers out there. Specifically, tonight we will be playing full tilt's standard evening turbo rebuy satellite structure, which a $6 buyin. I did this #1 to mix things up on an otherwise slow night, and #2 in response to comments to last month's $10 rebuy that an even smaller buyin might be better for most bloggers. Now, being Christmas Eve, I don't expect most bloggers to be online tonight at all, but for those who come, the idea tonight is to just relax, have some fun and donk it up for the 30-minute rebuy period followed by the remaining hour or so that I would expect a turbo event to take. And again tonight's MATH tournament will follow full tilt's own standard turbo rebuy structure, so there shouldn't be any surprises for anyone who does come out and play. For me, Christmas Eve is the perfect night to be playing on full tilt, because nothing else is open anyways, there's not much of interest to me and my kind on tv (none of the weekly prime time shows are new, that's for sure), and most of all, the crowds are likely to be smaller than usual on a night when I highly doubt full tilt will otherwise be lowering the guarantees for its usual nightly guaranteed tournaments. So come out tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt to play Mondays at the Hoy, with a password as always of "hammer", and I hope to see you there, whether you are a long time blogger or a "Hoy virgin" as we always seem to come up with most weeks these days.

In other poker news, I'm excited to report that last night I qualified once again for the Monday 1k, a $1000 + $60 buyin tournament on Monday nights at 9pm ET that carries with it a $150k guarantee. This will equal the largest buyin tournament I have ever participated in on full tilt, which I have done now three times, all three of them being this Monday 1k event (this week being the third), so that aspect of things is exciting if nothing else. I made an actual effort to qualify for this on Sunday, not something that is usually on my radar screen, but I did so because again, as I mentioned above, if nothing else I expect this field to be a little lighter than usual, and that is all good when there's already a 150k guarantee going and when the general level of skill in this thing is somewhere north of "uber donk", something I would not normally say about the games I most often frequent on full tilt. For $1060 a pop, if you're expecting stellar play then you are going to be sorely disappointed, but at least people won't donk allin on the first hand with top pair no kicker, won't call with just oesd's on the turn and similar nonsense that over the long term will just throw their buyins away.

So with all this in mind, first I played the 10:45pm ET $26 buyin satellite into the Monday 1k on Sunday night, but in that one I believe I was literally the first player out out of 26 runners when my AK ran into KK on a King-high board just a few hands in. Yay me, see even I play far more donkishly for $26 than I ever would for $1060. So then I did the unthinkable and registered for an 11:30pm ET mtt satellite for the Monday 1k with a $75 buyin, using one of my constant storehouse of tokens won from the nightly token frenzy tournament that I have so loved to frequent this year. In the end, there were only 11 runners in this thing, but due to the $1060 buyin of the underlying tournament, it still was winner-take-all (much like the early $26 buyin satellite) which is not my usual preference for such things. But I am a big fan of playing in tournaments with overlays, and in this case we had 11 players ponying up $69 apiece to the pool for a total prize pool of $759, while the tournament awarded exactly one $1060 seat. So for a total overlay of right around 40% of the actual cash prize pool, there was no way I could stay away from this one.

I got a little bit lucky very early in this 11-player satellite when within the first five hands, I was faced with this situation on the river:



I had played pretty slow given my meh stating cards, but being in the big blind I felt that K9s was surely playable. The Ace on the flop had scared me a bit, but then this river allin came kinda out of nowhere and I just couldn't find a fold to a guy I figured probably had some kind of low Ace. Obviously any two pairs with an Ace, or the obvious straights on the board had me beat, but I went ahead and made the call and saw this:



Setup hand for him, and well played on all streets by me. So this early doubleup basically took me to the final table as one of the two large stacks, but with a ton of low-M poker still to be played:



I won a nice pot with pocket Kings in the early stages of the final table, and I made some big folds like K8 on a KJ9 flop to a minraise on the flop against an aggressive player, figuring that with my big stack I had no reason to risk losing a lot of chips and my favorable chip position with such a mediocre hand in the hand. I moved allin over the top before the flop from the button against an early position short stack's allin with my 99, ended up racing against AQ, and my 9s mercifully held up which is always nice early at a final table that you really want to win. I won a top pair hand with KQ as well against this flush-chasing donkey to my left who simply could not lay down a flush draw to save his life, and kept hitting them against myself and other players which was super annoying, but with five players left at the final table here was the situation:



So I was still looking good, though I had another similar sized stack across the table from me, and this guy LegacyRik on my left, the flush chasing soooted donk, who somehow has actually won close to 100k lifetime from full tilt on mtts. He was the guy who scared me the most because of his penchant for betting and calling with flush draws and seeming to hit them far more often than the 35% flop odds would dictate.

Speaking of which, I actually had this fucker eliminated shortly after this point here when I made the unlikely backdoor flush on the turn, which I had bet my top pair with on the flop and the soooted donk had called me so I knew he wasn't on another flush draw as well. So I raised him allin quickly on the river, trying to act like an overconfident bluffer:



Unfortunately LegacyRik beat me into the pot with this:



Fucking unreal. Have I mentioned how often I lose with made two-card flushes in this game? My lifetime record is so negative with made flushes and no pair on the board that it's not even funny guys. Dammit if I can understand how I lose so often with made freaking backdoor flushes even, but somehow I find a way. I bet this guy just about the size of the pot on the turn too, which he called instantly being the flush chasing donk ("FCD") that he is. Dam him and dam full tilt for continually rewarding the fukdonkery.

Anyways, one lucky hand later where he called a preflop allin with the jackace of all things -- sooooted of course, and he was up to 8570 chips, the guy across the table with 4670, and me up top with 2365, with the short stack at under 700 chips to my immediate right. God that sucked. But the short stack doubled through the guy across the table shortly afterwards, and then he thankfully called my allin reraise preflop with his A6o against my TT, and somehow I dodged the other 16 aces in the deck to get back up to 4300 chips for myself and the guy across the table, and still 8200 chips for the FCD to my left, down to three-handed for a winner-take-all shot in tonight's Monday 1k. I knew I needed to be the one to eliminate the guy across the table with his nice stack if I were to have any realistic shot to beat FCD, but then this hand went down where across-the-table guy raised allin on the flop with top pair King kicker, and FCD called almost his entire leading chipstack with, well, you guessed it, another naked flush draw:



Worst. Call. Ever. Coming from the big stack with just 3 players left and winner take all, this was just about the worst move imaginable for that clown with 100k in lifetime mtt winnings to make. But he did it anyways. And full tilt said thank you in its customary way as well:



Sick. This made me about a 3.8-to-1 chip dog heading into heads-up play, and I knew my chances were slim. Just about the only weapon I had against this donkey was that I knew he was an FCD and I guess had to hope he would chase in some dumb situations like he clearly had done here since I don't ever get strong cards at the end of tournaments it seems. The heads-up match with this guy ended up lasting over 40 minutes, which was brutal but I guess in the end should not be too surprising since even I in the short stack heads-up had more tan 35 big blinds when we sat down to settle our differences mano a mano. I did get KK once and did not get my reraise called preflop. I found QQ early as well, but an Ace on the flop and a King on the turn (of course) led me to lose just a small pot to FCD's K8 after the river came down. At the first break I was down exactly 13,000 to 3500 chips, and still feeling pretty pissy about the way this whole thing had shaken out.

Shortly into hour 2, I raised preflop with AT, and FCD called. Flop came KT6 with two diamonds. I figured the odds were high that I had the best hand, so I bet out 660 chips into the 720-chip pot, about a fifth of my remaining stack at the time, and he reraised me pretty quick allin here:



I decided the quick bet and the allin sizing just didn't sound like a King to me, and that I knew I had 5 outs against even a King-high hand anyways. He hadn't reraised me preflop so I wasn't concerned about AK or even really KQ, but KJ, KT, etc. were always possible. In the back of my mind I knew that flush draw was there too, and having seen him dump off a significant chip lead already once tonight on nothing more than a naked flush draw, and with me sitting on second pair top kicker, I decided to go for it. I was already down so much in chips I figured I wasn't losing much if he did in fact have big slick or something. I called and he showed this:



FCD!! FCD!! FCD!! Seriously. This is such horrible big stack poker I just cannot believe that this guy has won nearly a hundy large playing mtt's on full tilt. When you're the prohibitive big stack in a tournament and down to just a few players left, the last thing you should ever want to do is get it in with a draw against a guy who's already bet before and after the flop. Why would you ever want to jeopardize a nice chip lead on a 35% shot against a guy who's already shown strength and is therefore not likely to fold his short stack at this point in the hand? With just 9 outs? Makes no sense at all. For the record, I think pushing with a fairly short stack in this spot -- as long as there is some fold equity given the amounts of chips involved -- makes some sense. That guy has not nearly as much to lose and a lot more to gain. But to risk your entire 4-to-1 chip lead on just a naked flush draw against me having bet preflop and on the flop already, that is pure suicide and is the exact opposite of how you should want to be playing your large stack shorthanded in any tournament or sng. Anyways, miraculously he did not hit, and suddenly I was back in this thing, down only 9620 to 6880 in chips. Dam what a bad play, I can't even believe it now as I review the screenshots today.

Maybe 15 hands later, I checked preflop with K8o, he minraised to 240 chips, and I called. The flop came a delicious K84, this time with two hearts. Knowing this guy was an FCD even on the turn card, I checked here, because I had top two pairs, the only two pairs I will ever normally slow play with in nlh as I have mentioned here several times. He checked behind, I bet 2/3 the pot on the turn when an offsuit Queen came, which he called. The river then brough an offsuit 6, where I went for the massive overbet for value and pushed allin in this spot:



He instacalled with this:



Now that is just a cooler hand right there for him, though he should probably have bet his top pair shit kicker on the flop, where I would have likely raised and he might have gotten away from his hand. He should probably have raised his top pair shitty kicker on the turn, opting instead to just call, and I give myself a lot of credit for slow playing top two pairs on the flop to perfection. That said, this particular river card is I'm sure the only reason he called me down, and suddenly it was I with the chip lead, 13,400 to 3100 chips, determined not to give that lead back up to this guy who had played bad and gotten lucky so many times during a short tournament.

I would love to say that from here I just dominated, but that's just not how the cards are. I lost a medium-small pot with top pair to his flopped two pairs. I chased a couple of flush draws -- unable to give up the possible irony of busting the FCD by hitting a flush draw of my own -- and lost small pots as a result. I had a few railers at this point and they would have seen me get back down to around even with the guy over the next 15 or 20 minutes once or twice, but each time I came storming back, all the while just waiting for another good starting hand with which to hopefully trap this chasedon of a player. But for all his donkchasery, he was simply not much of a bluffer, and that made it difficult for me to get paid big with my big hands unless he also happened to make a big hand, or a big draw, which was pretty infrequent. I tried stalling him out for a while once I got the big chip lead, I tried playing fast, but basically nothing could get this guy off his game.

I have to say again, all of the hundreds of sngs I have played over the past couple of months really came in handy again at a time like this, as I am just super super comfortable when shorthanded at tournament final tables of all sizes these days. I simply cannot overemphasize enough the importance to anyone interested in final tabling and winning large mtt's of playing a lot of sngs to hone and practice your final table and shorthanded play. There is just no substitute for hundreds of sngs of experience in playing shorthanded with a big chip lead, shorthanded as the small stack, shorthanded as a desperately small stack, shorthanded with even stacks, etc. Go out and play some sngs, at any buyin level you are comfortable with, really, if you are truly interested in bettering your end game in mtts. You will not be disappointed. It was these very skills that I relied on in playing from the small stack at first, and then on maintaining my chip lead and even fighting my way back from even once again in what turned out to be a real marathon heads-up battle with this flush-chasing donkey.

Anyways, I played Aces with kickers higher than 8s pretty hard before the flop against the FCD, and I tended to play any top pair fairly strongly as well which is pretty usual for me in heads-up play. Knowing what an FCD LegacyRik was firsthand, I ended up calling a lot of his bets on the flop, and then betting out or raising his smallish bets on the turn when the likely draws on the board had not come in, and all of these moves worked out well for me and enabled me to climb back up to around a 3.5-to-1 chip lead. Eventually, with me up to 12,430 to 4070 in chips, I saw a free flop from the button with 85s, which came down 952 all clubs. I had no clubs in my hand, but I sensed that this might be my chance to get the FCD to show his true colors and chase just about any decent one-card club flush draw in his hand. Figuring my middle pair was likely best at this point in an unraised pot preflop, I checked, waiting to see if a club fell on the turn before committing any substantial part of my stack, and just hoping he might have happen to have te Ace, King or Queen of clubs in his hand and be unable to let it go due to his FCD ways. He checked behind pretty quickly. Hmmmm. So far so good on the flush draw read, and hopefully he doesn't just have a 9 for top pair on the board. Well, those concerns disappeared when a beautiful offsuit 8 fell on the turn, making me now two pairs on a completely raggy board, and yet still that pesky one-card flush draw out there as well. So here I bet out around 2/3 the pot, 440 chips into the 530-chip pot, and my opponent thought briefly before raising me to 1440 chips, more than a third of his existing stack. Clearly he was committed here, and with my two pairs and the unlikelihood of him having flopped a flush in this spot, I had to push it on the assumption that he might very much call with just the one-card flush draw based on several examples I had seen at the table during the night:



He called for the rest of his chips, and showed this:



Bingo! FCD strikes again. It's amazing how consistent some people's poor play can be, and therefore how exploitable. The river ragged off:



and that's how I got into tonight's Monday 1k Christmas Eve special on full tilt!



So I'll see you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy, the $6 turbo rebuy special, on full tilt, and if you're around, feel free to rail me in the Monday 1k this evening as well!

Monday 1k Hand -- Lessons Learned

Out in 12th place in the Riverchasers event last night, I had a nice run with no cards as per my usual. Eventually I got called when I made an aggro move with nothing on a position play and got called by a better hand. So be it. That's the kind of stuff you have to do to win an mtt, at least the kind of stuff I have to do to win an mtt since I never seem to be the guy getting the AA and KK in the key spots at the final table or two, and on the few times I do I seem unable to have the hands hold up. I think swimmom took down the tournament in the end, adding another impressive mtt to her blonkament resume in just the relatively short time she has been playing with our group. In fact, between swimmom and katiemother, girl power has really been working in the blonkaments for several weeks, as one of those two players alone always seems to be somewhere in the mix at the final table of late.

So to close on the week I have found that I've been spending even more time analyzing and re-analyzing that hand from the Monday 1k earlier this week when that small-dicked donkey chat-stalked me for four hours after I took most of his stack on the play. To recap, we were about 45, 50 minutes in to the Monday 1k buyin mtt, with blinds at 30-60, and I opened from the cutoff with Q♥J♥ with a 3x raise to 180 chips. Ol' Littledick repopped my raise 3x to 540 chips from my left on the button. The blinds folded, and the action came back to me, where I called the reraise for another 360 chips into what became an 1170 chip pot.

The flop came down A♥T♠4♥. Action was to me on the flop, and I checked with my big draw, with the intention of check-raising any bet from him allin since I put my opponent on a big Ace from his preflop reraise. My opponent bet 820 into the 1170-chip pot, at which point I went for the allin checkraise for my last 2400 chips. Littledick instacalled, flipping up AK, and I hit my flush on the turn to nearly eliminate him from the tournament and get me started off to a nice stack in the 1k, on my way to eventually bubbling out on a sickass runner runner beat of my JJ on a J42 flop. Man that is delicious just re-thinking about it now. Dam.

Anyways, we had a lot of discussion here earlier in the week about my play on the flop, and I had argued that the play was significantly +EV thanks to my 45% chance of winning (12 outs twice) plus what I figured to be a significant chance that he would fold to my allin bet since I had him on just top pair on the flop. Frankly I don't think this assertion can be disputed, mathematically speaking. From discussion with various other players and from thinking things over myself, however, I can see now that I probably overstated the 80% estimate I had made that he would fold to my allin reraise. I definitely think the allin checkraise is a more powerful-looking move then me just having moved allin for 2400 chips into the 1170-chip pot on the flop, which to me looks very draw-ish and/or short-stacky, which was definitely not the impression I wanted to give here. Putting my opponent on a high Ace, I needed to do the thing that would most increase his likelihood of laying down top pair strong kicker, so I don't have an issue with that decision per se.

That said, it is clear to me now that there was probably not an 80% chance of your random ftp donkey, even in this 1k buyin event, laying down TPTK for another 1600 chips, even if it was about 2/3 of his remaining stack early in the tournament. The right chance of him laying down is probably a lot closer to 25% than to 80%. Fortunately, even with just a 25% chance of him laying down to my allin checkraise on that flop, when that combines with my 45% chance of winning the pot at showdown with one of my 12 outs, that should easily take this play into >50% equity territory, so I still think the play has a clearly positive expectation the way I played it. Even if I was giving my opponent a bit too much credit for being willing and able to lay down TPTK in this spot.

One commenter earlier in the week also made the point that I would never have been able to lay down TPTK if the roles were reversed. All I can say to that is you never know. I lay down hands better than top pair and I do so with some regularity. I'm not saying I never push with TPTK, don't get me wrong, but probably at least once every night in the blonkaments I end up laying down some overpair or two pair or better hand based on a read or a particular play or player. I might raise allin with TPTK, but to call an allin early in a tournament with just TPTK is not something I usually do. It's certainly not good tournament poker in my book, that's for sure.

And this brings me to my main realization about this hand from the 1k the other day. I think it's pretty clear that with a 45% chance of winning the pot at showdown, plus some chance of getting my opponent to fold since I am the aggressor check-raising him allin, it is pretty easy for me to get my equity in this pot above the 50% mark with this move, making the overall play a +EV move for me to make. But, that does not automatically make it the right move for me to make. In the end, although my flop check-raise allin was +EV, it was also a very high variance move. And early on (first hour at least) in a large buyin (this was $1060 to play) mtt is simply not the time for high-variance moves, in particular ones that represent only small equity advantages as opposed to getting allin with a 90% chance of winning the hand. Yes I was more than 50% to win if you take my 45% chances with 12 outs twice plus my fold equity, but it's not like the fold equity brings me up to 80 or 90% to win or anything. I was a favorite to win chips over time with my play, but only a little bit. And, to get that slight favorite situation, I had to put my entire stack at risk during the first hour of a big tournament, at a time when I had a perfectly playable chip stack to wait for a better spot.

So I took a very high-variance, slightly +EV chance early on in a tournament. I may have overestimated my opponent's ability to lay down top pair in this spot to boot, but even if I had it exactly right, I'm still risking my entire stack 40 minutes in to a 1k buyin tournament for a slightly better than 50% chance of doubling up. Is that really worth it? Is that really any different from moving allin with your 77 30 minutes in to the Mookie when you know the other guy has AK and is pot committed? Normally in that situation I'm always the guy preaching how a good player can afford to wait for a better spot than a race situation early on in an mtt, and I have to say I think it's probably just as applicable in the 1k hand earlier this week. If I could have that hand back, I would like to take a lower-variance approach, even if it meant check-folding my 12 outs on the flop. I have a philosophical problem on some level with giving up 12 outs twice plus some fold equity, but I do think over time that that is not the best way to play the situation just in the first hour of a $1000 buyin mtt. I won the hand in the end, and I certainly didn't "suck out" or "get lucky" to win the hand since I was well into positive EV territory to make the play that I made and I had a 45% chance of winning at showdown, but it's a play I need to focus on not making as a rule due to its high variance. Again, high variance plays, especially ones that are not much into +EV territory, have no place in the earlygoing of an mtt, at least not the way I play the game.

So that's something to take out of this situation, and as far as constantly adapting my game, I'm glad for all the discussion and the fine points made by many of my poker friends and everyone out there who spent some time thinking about the hand and sharing your thoughts here. And I think one thing is crystal clear from all this analysis: the only really big donkey move in the entire hand was the instacall from Littledick. TPTK allin on a scary flop with an Ace, a Ten and two suited cards is most definitely not an instacall allin in the first hour of the Monday 1k. That was a horrifically bad move by the dickless wonder, and his total lack of forethought cost him. If he thinks forever, and then as time runs down he calls after carefully considering his options, then so be it. That's not a terrible play, and I guarantee you he would not have been nearly as pissed off as he was as a result. The only reason this guy chat-stalked me for four hours after this play was that he completely and utterly failed to consider anything about what my likely hand was to be checkraising allin on that flop. And if you're never even considering what your opponent is holding when they put you to a decision to all your chips, then you too will be faced with chat-stalking as your only option for revenge, because you'll be spending a lot of your time sitting on the rail, bemoaning the "fish" who don't think before they act, when all the while you'll be describing your own play to a tee. Instacall a big stack allin on the flop with just TPTK should be out of the vocabulary, out of the poker repetoire, of anyone who considers themselves a serious nlh tournament player. I guarantee you better results with just that one small change.

As usual I will try to check out Kat's donkament tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt (password is "donkarama"), though as usual the timing can often be a bit difficult for me on a Friday. As some other bloggers have written about, I love to lament my horrid luck in that thing, which is really legendary if you ask me. I will go 20 rebuys into the donkament, losing 14 hands of which I am the favorite going in in 12 of them. It's like the Mookie for me, but on steroids. Monkeydonks call me with 54 and 97 and Q3 in that thing and suck out. My luck during the first hour of the donkament of late has been nothing short of disgusting, so we'll see if I can make it out tonight to try to change that today. Or at least you should try to make it to what is always one of the most fun nights of blonkey poker there is. Maybe I'll see you then!

Effed Early and Late in Monday MTTs, and MATH Recap

Despite winning another buyin at the 6max cash tables overall on the night, it was a sick, sick night of poker for me overall that saw me make exactly zero suckouts against anyone over 4 hours of multitabling, while 2 vicious suckouts against me combined with one mega setup hand to really phuck me and phuck me hard out of my mtt action on the night. And given the stakes involved, it was one of those very rare (for me) nights where when I woke up in the morning, I was still just about as sick as I had been the night before. I hate when that happens, when the very first thing that pops into my head when I first wake up is "Did that suckout really happen to me? Did it have to be in that spot?" That's me here on Tuesday morning, and I don't exactly know when the gross feeling is going to go away.

After a nice couple of sessions at the cash tables, where I finally have my pokertracker working again after a quick email to support (thanks Gnome for the suggestion), I began the latest Mondays at the Hoy tournament with high hopes, as I've been playing well in mtts again lately after a month of poor results in that arena. I couldn't have played more than five or ten minutes before I limped from the blinds to see a 4-way flop with K♣5♣. The flop comes all clubs. Soy delicious.

Because I'm a man, I manage to get thepokergrind to call my allin reraise on this flop, which you would think would thrill me. But no, I've written here many times before about how I am somehow well into the negative over time with made two-card flushes in holdem, and how I am quite sure it is not because I overplay these things. Well, I figure he's obviously got the Ace♣, and/or a set and is going to boat up on me, I know it's going to happen. So it was almost a relief when he flips up....Ax sooted in clubs! Flopflush King-high into flopflush Ace-high. That is rich you muggafuggas, really rich. Well I'll just add that one to the everlovingly huge tab that the giant flush up in the sky owes to me and will have to begin paying back to me someday. Flopping a flush is supposed to be a fucking pot of gold, but somehow for me it's a spitoon full of coal. So phuck you flushes. I hope you get AIDS and die. Please.

In the end, all-around good guy Bayne squeaked into 4th place and the money in the MATH by showing tremendous patience as the short stack on the bubble, adding $95.04 to his current lead atop the 2007 MATH moneyboard. Coming in 3rd place on the week was Kajagugu, who won $142.56 in his first cash of the year after losing a 20k+ stack pretty quick after Bayne busted in 4th place. Thepokergrind managed to make good use of the chips he was gifted from me in the earlygoing, busting out with a 2nd place finish and $198 won for his best MATH performance of the year in what I know from his blog has been a focus for his play of late. And winning this week's Mondays at the Hoy title, along with $356.40 of cold hard cash contributed to by the 33 donkeys runners, was everyone's favorite poker shock jock, BuddyDank himself! I could not listen to the radio show last night with Hammer Wife asleep right next to me, but I'm sure Buddy was on fire and loving life as he powered his way through a tough and larger-than-normal field for the victory.

So here is your updated 2007 MATH moneyboard, including this week's action:

1. Bayne_s $1270
2. Columbo $1168
3. Hoyazo $1162
4. RaisingCayne $1110
5. Pirate Wes $792
6. VinNay $775
7. cmitch $774
8. Iggy $745
9. NewinNov $677
10. Lucko21 $665
11. Waffles $650
12. IslandBum1 $642
13. Astin $616
14. Fuel55 $568
15. Tripjax $561
16. Buddydank $553
17. Byron $510
18. Julius Goat $507
19. bartonf $492
19. mtnrider81 $492
21. PokerBrian322 $490
22. Chad $485
23. scots_chris $474
24. Emptyman $461
25. Mike_Maloney $456
26. RecessRampage $434
27. Otis $429
28. Surflexus $402
28. Miami Don $402
30. jeciimd $382
30. Jordan $382
32. Blinders $379
33. lightning36 $371
34. ChapelncHill $353
35. Zeem $330
36. LJ $326
37. OMGitsPokerFool $324
38. oossuuu754 $312
39. leftylu $295
40. Wigginx $288
41. ScottMc $282
42. Fishy McDonk $277
43. Irongirl $252
43. Manik79 $252
45. Wippy1313 $248
46. swimmom95 $245
47. wwonka69 $216
48. Omega_man_99 $210
49. katiemother $209
50. Pushmonkey72 $208
51. Thepokergrind $198
52. Gary Cox 194
53. 23Skidoo $176
54. Santa Clauss $170
55. jimdniacc $166
56. Iakaris $162
56. Smokkee $162
58. cemfredmd $156
58. NumbBono $156
60. lester000 $147
61. Heffmike $145
62. Kajagugu $143
62. brdweb $143
64. Mookie $137
64. DDionysus $137
66. Patchmaster $135
67. InstantTragedy $129
68. Ganton516 $114
69. Fluxer $110
70. hoops15mt $95
71. Gracie $94
71. Scurvydog $94
73. wormmsu $91
74. Shag0103 $84
75. crazdgamer $82
76. PhinCity $80
77. maf212 $78
78. Alceste $71
78. dbirider $71
80. Easycure $67
81. Rake Feeder $53

So Bayne adds to his lead and becomes the first member of the $1200 club in the MATH this year, while Buddydank soars up into the top 20 with his $356 and change won this week, while Kaja and thepokergrind both break into the moneyboard for the first time as the fourth and final quarter of the year begins.

And now we can move on to the real reason I am still feeling sick this morning: the Monday 1k. I mentioned here in Monday's post that I had satellited in to the Monday 1k buyin mtt with a 150k guarantee over the weekend with one of those tier II tokens that I love to win in the nightly 9:45pm ET token frenzy on full tilt. 259 runners showed up, contributing a lofty 259k prize pool to be paid out to the top 27 finishers. I got no cards at first (what else is new) but ran some huge bluffs in what I thought were good spots to get off to about a 50% bump from the 3000 chip starting stacks around the end of the first hour. Just before the break I played a very interesting hand , which I'm going to profile in a moment because the pussy vagina who was involved with me ending up stalking me for several hours in the chat and being abusive about the way I played, and I'd like to get your thoughts. Basically, I had an up and down 2nd and 3rd hours, where my stack vacillated from around 10k at most to around 3k at the least, but I never gave up and I never made one of those oh-so-tempting awfuckit calls, but I did manage to win one big race near the end of the third hour when I called an allin with AKo preflop and nailed a King on the flop to stay alive. I also endured one uberlame suckout where I had my opponent dominated allin preflop for all his chips, but he four-flushed me. Another flucking fush, what can ya do. Unfortunately my night ended early into hour 4, just 6 spots from the payout positions, when I reraised my opponent allin preflop when I held JJ, and he called quickly with AKo, the same thing I had benefitted from doing earlier in the evening. In the end, he won the race as a roughly 48% underdog going in, but that doesn't begin to describe the scene. Once he and I were allin preflop, the flop came down J42 rainbow, giving me the literal nuts with top set on a board with no discernible draws, and I was stylin'. I was going to be top 10 in chips with 33 players remaining and 27 spots paying out a minimum of $1500. Yeah baybeeeee.

Turn Queen.

River Ten.

IGH 33rd place of 259 runners with 27 spots in the money.

Now if that ain't some sick shiat, I don't know what is. In the end I can't get too crazy about it because I was just a 52% favorite preflop when the money went in, but to have it happen in that order and give me the nut flop with no draws whatsoever, that one fucking stings me, even the next morning I have to say. Basically, my opponent needed to make one of four outs on the turn and one of four outs on the river to beat me at that point, as there was no way other than the runner runner straight for my opponent to catch up to my nut flop. Even running Aces, Kings or AK at that point wasn't going to win it for him. But that's the way it happens I guess. So I go 3 1/2 hours into this thing and play great with not much to work with and then get donked by a runner runner 0.6% chance on the flop to lose just short of the money. Ouch.

OK and now the hand I wanted to profile from earlier in the tournament. As I said I received one of my worst and longest-lasting beratings ever after this hand by the pussass I played the hand with, and I would like to get your thoughts on the way the hand played out.

Blinds are 30-60, and I'm in the hijack where it's folded around to me. I have QJs. I like to raise here and try to take down the blinds, and I know if someone calls I have a good hand to do some damage with regardless of what my opponent has. I kick it up to 180 chips. Vegan213, the bfp of the tournament (Biggest Fucking Pussy), reraised me to 540 chips from the cutoff. Vegan had been a stealy guy at this table for a while, and to be honest I put him on a steal and figured with big soooted connectors I had a good hand to see a flop with and hope to hit something big. This is admittedly not a strong move on my part and it's not something I do very often, but as I've discussed here previously I find myself calling preflop raises in situations like this more and more as I get more and more comfortable with my postflop play and in knowing that I can lay this hand down unless I flop strong to it, which means something better than TPTK or at least a draw to something strong.

The flop comes AT4 with two hearts, giving me the flush draw and the inside straight draw, and I figured with pussyshit's preflop reraise he very likely had an Ace in his hand, one that based on his play he would want to push strongly. With at least 12 outs to an almost surely winning hand, I figured this guy will surely bet out nearly the size of the pot on the flop with what I figure is a big Ace, and then I can raise him allin and make him lay this down if he is anything but a TPTK monkey. I checked to him, and he bet out 825 chips like a good little puppy dog:



Following my plan all along, and knowing I had at least 12 outs to the almost surely winning hand, I reraised allin on this flop, almost indifferent between him calling and folding. With 12 outs more or less assured, I figured I'm looking at more than 40% equity in this pot, and maybe more depending on what exactly my opponent has, but either way I'm figuring this guy for having a solid top pair hand. I guess it's better that he folds since I'm not quite 50% equity with my two-way draw, but in the end I figured if he's not a donk he has to lay down any non-two-pair hand to my allin reraise for his and my entire stack here.

Vagina Man instacalls my allin bet, and flips up his AKo. Bingo! Top pair top kicker donkey to the rescue! I love these guys. TPTK donkeys have probably made me more money over my poker lifetime than any other type of player out there. I mean, it's one thing to be the guy making a big raise and creating pressure by putting your opponent to a decision for all their chips, but to call off your entire stack on a huge overraise allin for about 3 times the current pot, with just TPTK, is...well...you guys tell me what it is.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the hand, because the turn card brought me the sweet victory:



and this assclown Vegan213 proceeded started laying in to me on the chat. These are the guys that I really make my money on, both at tournament and cash tables -- the guys who not only are TPTK donkeys, but who live in denial and refuse to open their minds to the possibility of ever getting better. When you're instacalling a huge overbet for your entire stack with just TPTK, I say you need to check yo'self before you wreck yo'self. But maybe it's just me. Am I way off base here? I read this guy like a book, I got him to bet out and commit himself on the flop and then I moved in the rest of my chips in a spot where he has to fold. Instead he called, and lost, and berated me horrendously, for several hours. Literally. At like 1am ET, when I finally got donkeyfucked by the roughly 140-to-1 runner-runner straight against my JJ on the J42 flop, suddenly there was Vegan213 to type in "hahahahahah". I love it.

So this guy literally stayed awake for four fucking hours after I busted his ass after what I view as a donkey instacall by him. He stays up until after 1am, watching every single hand I play, just hoping, waiting, praying for me to bust out somehow. Then I get donked by a less than 1-outer, and he is suddenly right there, four hours after my hand with him, laughing at me in the chat. Wow. Which leads me to one opinion about Vegan213 that I just can't escape no matter how hard I try:

Vegan213 has a small penis.

I just don't know what else leads to the kind of feelings of inadequacy that poker obviously stirs up in this individual. Did I really play this hand so poorly? Did he really play it so well?

Them Fightin' Phils, MATH Pimp and Monday 1k Here I Come!!

The fans of Philadelphia are rejoicing with me today over our Fightin' Phils. After what feels to the Philly fans like a three-year mountain climb, one that only got steeper the closer to the top it came, Sunday afternoon saw the Phils win and the Mets lose, capping a historic comeback to lead the Phils to this generation's division championship. I say that because, unlike teams like the Sox, the Angels and the Yankees, the Phillies win the NL East approximately once every 20-25 years over their history. I mean, we're talking about something like six or seven division titles in franchise history. Over 120 years. How siock is that? But today is this generation's Phillies divisional championship, and to us from the City of Brotherly Shove, there is no sweeter feeling in the world.

The amazing thing is that we hapless Philly sports fans know that we are experiencing a feeling today that you cannot possibly understand unless you too are from Philly and grew up in this sports environment. Otherwise, you just think you know how this feels, but you don't really. These jagass Yankee fans up here in New York City cheer when their team makes the playoffs for the 13th straight year, but nobody will admit what I already know from being a daily sports radio listener in the nyc market -- three or four months ago, the entire city to a man wanted Joe Torre fired, Brian Cashman fired, and George Steinbrenner to hurry up and croak already so we could rebuild or retool or whatever with a new adminstration. Same thing happened a year and four months ago at the beginning of the 2006 baseball season. They're fair weather fans up here in New York, it's almost laughable when you really see it for what it is.

Twenty years ago, you couldn't find a Yankee fan in this entire city. Anywhere. Oh I'm sure there were some, but they wouldn't admit to it. New York was a Mets town, through and through. It was all Keith Hernandez, Daryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden and Ron Darling back in the mid 80s. The Yankees, just seven or eight years away from their last world championship in 1978, were a nothing team that nobody cared about. People don't like to talk about that now, but it's the complete truth. And the Mets "fans" are just the same way nowadays. Nobody will admit this now of course, but just 3 or 4 years ago nobody in this town cared about the Mets. And for another 3 or 4 years before the Subway Series in 2000, it was the same thing. This place was all Yankees, all the time. You couldn't find a Mets fan, and you couldn't give away a Mets ticket most of the time during the year. Now of course there's all these fans and everybody in New York loves the Mets. Yeah right.

Anyways, my point here is that say what you want about what the fans do out of frustration, but take it from me as someone who's been a raving lifelong Philadelphia sports fan and who had season tickets at various points of my childhood to the Phillies, the Eagles and the Flyers -- there are no more passionate, and no more hardcore, sports fans anywhere in the country than in Philly. I mean that. Unlike these fair weather donkleshits in New York, in Philadelphia we bleed for our teams, and that definitely includes the Phillies. Philadelphia I think will always be an Eagles town, and I'm fine with that, but we do love us some Fightin' Phils. And after finishing a handful of games out of the playoffs in 2005, and just a dropping to just a couple games out during the last week of the 2006 season, the 2007 smackdown is among the greatest mountains one of my Philadelphia sports teams has ever climbed.

And before I move on, I need to make a few more points about the Mets and Phillies this season. A lot is being made about the Mets' historic collapse in 2007, and no doubt that's exactly what it was. But to position this in your minds as just a Mets collapse and not a Phillies domination is missing the point. Of course the Mets had to lose 9 of their last 10 games at home, and 14 of 17 overall or something to end the season. It's sick how that team failed to adjust and just went out there these past few weeks expecting to lose. But in order to put that kind of pressure on the Mets, the Phillies had to go out and play basically .750 ball during the last three weeks of the year in their own right. .750 ball! And that they did, beating some good teams along the way, including a number of teams whom the Mets could not handle during the same time period.

And more than that, let's not forget the very direct role that the Phillies had in the Mets losing all those games. We swept the Mets a couple of weeks ago in the early midst of the Mets' losing streak, and took another 4 game series sweep from them about six weeks ago that is what really started off their whole late-season slide. Yes I wrote earlier about how the Mets have played sub-.500 baseball now for nearly four and a half months to end the season, so they actually kinda sucked almost all season long after a hot start, but when it comes right down to it, the Phillies put the Mets on tilt about six weeks ago with an ugly sweep at Shea, and the Mets began a tailspin that included another 3 out of 3 losses to the Phillies and concluded in a basic inability to win any games against any teams, home or road, with their ace on the mound or otherwise. The Phillies deserve nothing but credit for their NL East title this year, and they single-handedly caused and continued the slide in their opponents, including handing 7 losses out of 7 games to the Mets at the end of the year when every Met win obviously counted an awful lot.

Tom Glavine. How does that guy life with himself this morning? 7 runs in the first third of an inning, in without a doubt the biggest game he's pitched in his time as a Met. Dayumm.

Charlie Manuel. I had left this guy for dead years ago, and I certainly didn't think the Phillies would ever win anything with him at the helm. Well, it's time for me to eat some crow. I still don't think Manuel is a great manager, but what he did this year is nothing short of miraculous, and I have to give him that credit where credit is due. The Diamondbacks coach has to get serious consideration for coach of the year in the National League no doubt, taking a team nobody expected to do shiat and winning the NL West with the best overall record in the league (at 90 wins, the worst league-best record in the majors in history, but still). But in the end I don't see how you can not give coach of the year to Charlie Manuel after what he's done, what he led the Phillies through this year and over the past few years. Today I hoist the guinness to you, Charlie Manuel.

And let's not forget Jimmy Rollins' role in all this. This guy came out shortly befoer the 2007 season in late February and made it clear that his Phillies were the team to beat this year. He then followed this up by becoming just the third player in major league history to record at least 20 home runs, 20 doubles, 20 triples and 20 stolen bases in the same season on his way to what I'm sure will translate to the Phillies' second consecutive NL MVP award, knocking in and scoring huge runs all through the Phils' late push in leading his team to defeat the rival Mets on the last day of the regular season in historic and dominating fashion. Wow. That guy is gonna get laid any day he wants in Philly for the foreseeable future. What a fuckin stud.

Speaking of linking back to columns written several months ago that ended up being quite prophetic, check out what this guy said here. That's right guys, that's me talking right there back in mid-January of this year about the Chargers' laughable decision to fire Marty Schottenheimer at the end of last season, and how much they would live to regret that call. Sure, everybody and their mother is out there now in their blogs and in their columns, whatever, noting how lame it is that they fired Schottenheimer at 14-2, and now the Chargers have already lost three times, in just their first four games of this year. But the real men were out last year before this actually happened proclaiming how recockulous of a move that was. Fire a guy who took you to 14-2 and a win over the Pats in the AFC Champsionship game before one of his defensive players fumbled an interception return that all but sealed the game. Nice move you jucking fackasses, seriously.

After all the Phillies dust had cleared this morning, someone mentioned to me that the Eagles might have gotten beat down on pretty good last night. Did the Eagles really even play this week? My memory is just one big drunken, cigar-filled haze, I have to be honest here. Was there even nfl on Sunday this weekend? All I remember clearly from Sunday after about 3pm ET is seeing all those kids and women crying in the stands at Shea after the game. You can bet I recorded that shiat on the dvr for posterity's sake. That must have been a good 300 straight seconds of just pictures of tears flowing on the shocked faces of the Mets fans in the stands. Just priceless.

Anyways, before I forget, don't you forget that today is Monday and that means that tonight is Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt:



Same as always, Monday night at 10pm ET on full tilt, password is "hammer" as always. And once again a real shout-out to the folks over at full tilt's support department, who responded to a really last-minute request from me to get the October 1 MATH tournament set up for me on very short notice. Once again full tilt comes through. I've read a lot of people bitching about the customer service function at full tilt, but I have to say I have received far more personal and far better service from full tilt than I ever, ever did or would have received from pokerstars, no doubt.

One other thing about Monday night this week -- on Sunday I not only won another buyin and a half at the 2-4 nlh 6max tables, but I also used one of those $75 tokens I keep winning in the nightly token frenzy tournaments to play in my favorite target for the tier II tokens -- the weekend evening 11:30pm ET satellite into the Monday 1k. Well, I played this biatch on Saturday and donked out in about 3 hands when TP2K failed to hold up against a flopped set at a time when I really didn't feel like playing and I probably should not have been. Well, I entered it again on Sunday night, and here was the result:



This was a fun tournament because I started off reeeeaaaaal slow and watched my stack dwindle to about half of its starting size over the first 45 minutes to an hour or so, before I finally made top pair on a few hands and I think even found KK in middle position and managed to play it a little slow on the flop and turn before springing the trap and eliciting a fold with an allin reraise on the turn with just the overpair to the board. Eventually we hit the final table with me in 3rd place of 9 players remaining, but I was still around a third of the chip leader's stack despite sitting near the top of the board when the final nine players kicked off the action on the blue screen.

After a few good plays to chip up a bit, I reraised allin preflop with big slick, got called by QQ, and flopped an Ace to double up and jump into 2nd out of 5 players left in the satellite. About 10 hands later, I reraised allin preflop once again with big slick, this time by the current chip leader at the time, once again was called by QQ, and once again I flopped an Ace to win out and take a huge chip lead, about 3-to-1 over 2nd place with just 3 players remaining. From there it was just playing good late-game big-stack poker, relentlessly pushing, raising and reraising, when I thought I was ahead for a three-handed game, and I was able to maintain and even build my big chip lead to the point that I was still up 16,500 to 6500 chips after #2 took out #3 on a poor bluff by the third place guy. I had a nice lead but I needed to be very careful because, just like in the smaller-buyin satellites into the Monday 1k, with the 1k buyin there ends up being no prize for second place in these winner-take-all satellite tournaments. In the end my short-stacked aggressive opponent raised me allin preflop when I had actually limped with AQ, and I had to make the call, after which he flipped up A9o. My kicker held up, and I had won my way into my second Mondak 1k tournament, which will begin tonight before the MATH at 9pm ET.

So come by tonight and check me out at 9pm ET in the Monday 1k, which had a 150k guarantee and lately has sported more like a 200k or more prize pool. The best part about this event is that the size of the field tends to be small and manageable, suc that if you get off to a strong start you can really make some noise, and with a 1k buyin, even the lowest cash positions pay a pretty penny, or at least what seems like a pretty penny to me. And either way, let us all hoist a beer or seven tonight to my Philadelphia Phillies who fought back from against all odds this summer and took down their first NL East in a generation for their hardcore hometown fans. And I'll see you tonight at 10pm ET for Mondays at the Hoy!